Thunder God

CHAPTER SEVEN

The man known only as Mr Luk watched the distant sea crash against the rocks of Dragon Island. Somewhere above him, high in the subtropical canopies, was his master’s house. From there the view stretched three hundred and sixty degrees, from Hangzhou Bay in the west and the East China Sea in the east.

But down here, on the docking platform, things were less salubrious.

Luk fixed the motorboat to the mooring post and told two guards to take the prisoner into the boatshed. Normally he would take his work into the master’s basement where the slaves waited in terrified silence, but on this occasion time was short and the boss had told him to make it fast.

Luk knew why the man had to die. He was a criminal investigator in the Special Branch of the Shanghai Municipal Police. Such a man would be feared by most, but in this case Luk knew this dynamic would be very much reversed. The inspector knew only too well who had kidnapped him from his apartment in Nanhui. He had already begged for his life very convincingly.

All of this meant nothing to Luk. He couldn’t feel emotions. Some had called him a robot, but never to his face. He thought of himself simply as pure and neutral. Whatever he was, his master appreciated it and he was paid very well for his unique talents.

They dragged the inspector into the boatshed. His screams were muffled by the oily rag they had stuffed into his mouth when they piled him into the hull of the boat. The men tied him to an old engine block while Luk half-closed the door, but not completely. He liked to watch the Nankeen night herons flying in and out of the Xixi wetland park. They offered him solace in a brutal world.

Then Luk lit the portable paraffin blow lamp.

Yes, the fools had failed in the West, but that was in the past. Now the quest had been passed to him things would be different. He would not make the same mistakes as the others had. His master’s desire would bring the sort of savage reforms to the global system that it so badly needed.

Problems like the inspector simply had to go away.

He ordered one of the men to remove the rag, and the inspector gasped for breath. His desperate, babbled pleas for mercy were silenced by a casual wave from Luk’s index finger.

“Tell me all about Jason Lao,” Luk said quietly, as if he were asking an old friend about a mutual acquaintance.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the inspector said. “Please, my wife is pregnant! Please don’t kill me.”

“Shhh, inspector. You will disturb the herons.”

“All I can tell you is Jason Lao contacted the SMP from his base in Hong Kong and I was ordered to put a tail on you. That is all. They didn’t tell me why I was to follow you.”

Luk smiled gently and stroked the inspector’s sweat-soaked face. “That was very rude of them, and very unfortunate for you.”

“If I knew anything, I swear I would tell you.”

“Inspector, believe me when I tell you that in the next hour you will tell me everything you know and a lot more you don’t…”

The men laughed. One of them lit a cigarette and leaned against the boatshed door. The bay was especially hazy today, Luk considered.

“Who were the Westerners that Lao met in his Hong Kong office recently?”

“How should I know? I was told nothing by my superiors except I must follow you.”

“The problem I have with that is that a man of your rank is always involved in the strategic planning of such operations. So now you will tell me with whom and why Lao had that meeting. We know the American was a US Army general by the name of McShain, and we know why he’s here in China, and of course we know about Zhang Xiaolu, naturally. I want to know who the others were, and who they are working for.”

“I’ve already told you, I don’t know!”

Luk contemplated the man’s desperate pleas. They meant nothing to him.

He did the kind of jobs other men preferred not to do, but this kind of work had never kept him up at night. When he was nine, the care home where he was growing up in Kowloon had referred him to a psychologist for evaluation after he had stoned a wounded kingfisher to death.

After weeks of discussions, the diagnosis was that he was a sociopath, who could easily turn into a psychopath without extensive counselling. This meant he was among the four percent of people born entirely without a conscience. The standard advice for dealing with psychopaths is to avoid them at all costs. They might not be inclined to hurt you, but if they are, they have no conscience to stop them.

Luk had never found any of this to be at all problematic. In fact, he had found his total lack of conscience to be nothing but conducive to getting ahead in the world. It had proven particularly useful when he was navigating the series of juvenile detention centers and prisons he grew up in after the care home years.

But there was a downside: like most psychopaths, Luk got bored very easily. He often filled the void with drugs and alcohol, only this made him even angrier. He knew no joy, no love, no grief, no guilt. He knew only about gain and loss. Life to Luk was a simple zero sum game which he generally won.

Today, staring at the pathetic and forlorn spectacle of the inspector as he begged for his life, he was reminded of that kingfisher, the one he had killed in the hills of eastern Kowloon.

“Mr Inspector,” Luk said quietly, his hand gripping the blow lamp. Its fierce flame was blindingly bright in the half-light of the humid boatshed. “It is unfortunate for you that I do not believe a word of what you say.”

Luk stepped forward, his short, bulky frame now looming over the restrained police inspector. He smiled like a kindly teacher and raised the blow lamp. Moments later, the inspector’s screams frightened the distant herons and terrified them up into the sky.