Typhoon (2008) Read online

  “You know what really pisses me off?” The waitress had brought him a vodka and tonic and handed out four menus and a wine list. Joe was the only person to start looking at them while Miles began to vent his spleen.

  “Your guy Patten. I talked to some of his people today. You know what’s going on down there at Government House? Nothing. You’ve got three months left before this whole place gets passed over to the Chinese and all anybody can think about is removals trucks and air tickets home and how they can get to kiss ass with Prince Charles at the handover before he boards the good ship Rule Britannia.”

  This was vintage Coolidge: a blend of conjecture, hard facts and nonsense, all designed to wind up the Brits. Dinner was never going to be a sedate affair. Miles lived for conflict and its resolution in his favour and took a particular joy in Joe’s inability fully to argue issues of state in the presence of Isabella. She knew absolutely nothing about his work as a spy. At the same time, Waterfield had made Miles conscious of RUN back in 1996 as a result of blowback on a joint SIS/CIA bugging operation into the four candidates who were standing for the post of Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. That had created a nasty vacuum in the relationship between the four of us, and Miles was constantly probing at the edges of Joe’s cover in a way that was both childish and very dangerous.

  It is worth saying something more about the relationship between the two of them, which became so central to events over the course of the next eight years. In spite of all that he had achieved, there is no question in my mind that Miles was jealous of Joe: jealous of his youth, his background as a privileged son of England, of the apparent ease with which he had earned a reputation as a first-rate undercover officer after just two years in the job. Everything that was appealing about Joe—his decency, his intelligence, his loyalty and charm—was taken as a personal affront by the always competitive Coolidge, who saw himself as a working-class boy made good whose progress through life had been stymied at every turn by an Ivy League/WASP conspiracy of which Joe would one day almost certainly become a part. This was nonsense, of course—Miles had risen far and fast, in many cases further and faster than Agency graduates of Princeton, Yale and Harvard—but it suited him to bear a grudge and the prejudice gave his relationship with Joe a precariousness which ultimately proved destructive.

  Of course there was also Isabella. In cities awash with gorgeous, ego-flattering local girls, it is difficult to overstate the impact that a beautiful Caucasian woman can have on the hearts and souls of Western men in Asia. In her case, however, it was more than just rarity value; all of us, I think, were a little in love with Isabella Aubert. Miles concealed his obsession for a long time, in aggression towards her as well as wild promiscuity, but he was always, in one way or another, pursuing her. Joe’s possession of Isabella was the perpetual insult of Miles’s time in Hong Kong. That she was Joe’s girl, the lover of an Englishman whom he admired and despised in almost equal measure, only made the situation worse.

  “When you say ‘Patten’s people,’ ” I asked, “who exactly do you mean?”

  Miles rubbed his neck and ignored my question. He was usually wary of me. He knew that I was smart and independent-minded but he needed my connections as a journalist and therefore kept me at the sort of length which hacks find irresistible: expensive lunches, covered bar bills, tidbits of sensitive information exchanged in the usual quid pro quo. We were, at best, very good professional friends, but I suspected—wrongly, as it turned out—that the minute I left Hong Kong I would probably never hear another word from Miles Coolidge ever again.

  “I mean, what exactly has that guy done in five years as governor?”

  “You’re talking about Patten now?” Joe’s head was still in the menu, his voice uninflected to the point of seeming bored.

  “Yeah, I’m talking about Patten. Here’s my theory. He comes here in ‘92, failed politician, can’t even hold down a job as a member of parliament; his ego must be going crazy. He thinks, ‘I have to do something, I have to make my mark. The mansion and the private yacht and the gubernatorial Rolls-Royce aren’t doing it for me. I have to be The Man.’ “

  Isabella was laughing.

  “What’s funny?” Joe asked her, but he was smiling too.

  “Guber what?” she said.

  ” ‘Gubernatorial.’ It means ‘of the government.’ A gift of office. Jesus. I thought your parents gave you guys an expensive education?”

  “Anyway …” Joe said, encouraging Miles to continue.

  “Anyway, so Chris is sitting there in Government House watching TV, maybe he’s arguing with Lavender over the remote control, Whisky and Soda are licking their balls”—Lavender was Patten’s wife, Whisky and Soda their dogs. Miles got a good laugh for this—”and he says to himself, ‘How can I really mess this thing up? How can I make the British government’s handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China the biggest political and diplomatic shitstorm of modern times? I know. I’ll introduce democracy. After ninety years of colonial rule in which none of my predecessors have given a monkey’s ass about the six million people who live here, I’m gonna make sure China gives them a vote.’ “

  “Haven’t we heard this before?” I said.

  “I’m not finished.” There was just enough time for us to order some food and wine before Miles started up again. “What’s always really riled me about that guy is the hypocrisy, you know? He’s presented himself as this Man of the People, a stand-up guy from the sole remaining civilized nation on the face of the earth, but you really think he wanted democracy for humanitarian reasons?”

  “Yes I do.” The firmness of Joe’s interjection took us all by surprise. To be honest, I had assumed he wasn’t listening. “And not because he enjoyed making waves, not because he enjoyed thumbing his nose at Beijing, but because he was doing his job. Nobody is saying that Chris Patten is a saint, Miles. He has his vanities, he has his ego, we all do. But in this instance he was brave and true to his principles. In fact it amazes me that people still question what he tried to do. Making sure that the people of Hong Kong enjoy the same quality of life under the Chinese government that they’ve enjoyed under British rule for the past ninety-nine years wasn’t a particularly bold strategy. It was just common sense. It wasn’t just the right thing to do morally; it was the only thing to do, politically and economically. Imagine the alternative.”

  Isabella did a comic beam of pride and grabbed Joe’s hand, muttering, “Join us after this break, when Joe Lennox tackles world poverty …”

  “Oh come on.” Miles drained his vodka and tonic as if it were a glass of water. “I love you, man, but you’re so fucking naive. Chris Patten is a politician. No politician ever did anything except for his own personal gain.”

  “Are all Americans this cynical?” Isabella asked. “This deranged?”

  “Only the stupid ones,” I replied, and Miles threw a chewed olive stone at me. Then Joe came back at him.

  “You know what, Miles?” He lit a cigarette and pointed it like a dart across the table. “Ever since I’ve known you you’ve been delivering this same old monologue about Patten and the Brits and how we’re all in it for the money or the personal gain or whatever argument you’ve concocted to make yourself feel better about the compromises you make every day down at the American embassy. Well call me naive, but I believe there is such a thing as a decent man and Patten is the closest thing you’re going to get to it in public life.” The arrival of our starters did nothing to deflect Joe from the task he had set himself. Miles pretended to be enthralled by his grilled prawns, but all of us knew he was about to get pummelled. “It’s time I put you out of your misery. I don’t want to come off sounding like a PR man for Chris Patten, but pretty much all of the commitments made to the people of Hong Kong five years ago have been fulfilled by his administration. There are more teachers in schools, more doctors and nurses in hospitals, thousands of new beds for the elderly. When Patten got here in
‘92 there were sixty-five thousand Cantonese living in slum housing. Now there are something like fifteen thousand. You should read the papers, Miles, it’s all in there. Crime is down, pollution is down, economic growth up. In fact the only thing that hasn’t changed is people like you bitching about Patten because he got in the way of you making a lot of money. I mean isn’t that the argument? Appeasement? Isn’t that the standard Sinologist line on China? Don’t upset the suits in Beijing. In the next twenty years they’ll be in charge of the second biggest economy in the world. We need them onside so we can build General Motors factories in Guangdong, investment banks in Shenzhen, sell Coca-Cola and cigarettes to the biggest market the world has ever known. What’s a few votes in Hong Kong or a guy getting his fingernails ripped out by the PLA if we can get rich in the process? Isn’t that the problem? Patten has given you a conscience.”

  Joe gave this last word real spit and venom and all of us were a little taken aback. It wasn’t the first time that I had seen him really go at Miles for the lack of support towards Patten shown by Washington, but he had never done so in front of Isabella and it felt as though two or three tables were listening in. For a while we just picked at our food until the argument regained its momentum.

  “Spoken like a true patriot,” Miles said. “Maybe you’re too good for freight forwarding, Joe. Ever thought about applying for a job with the Foreign Office?”

  This was water off a duck’s back. “What are you trying to say, Miles?” Joe said. “What’s that chip telling you on your shoulder?”

  This was one of the reasons Miles liked Joe: because he took him on; because he bullied the bully. He was smart enough to pick apart his arguments and not be daunted by the fact that Miles’s age and experience vastly outweighed his own.

  “I’ll tell you what it’s telling me. It’s telling me that you’re confusing a lot of different issues.” Things were a little calmer now and we were able to eat while Miles held forth. “Patten pissed off a lot of people in the business community, here and on both sides of the Atlantic. This is not just an American phenomenon, Joe, and you know it. Everybody wants to take advantage of the Chinese market—the British, the French, the Germans, the fuckin’ Eskimos—because, guess what, we’re all capitalists and that’s what capitalists do. Capitalism drove you here in your cab tonight. Capitalism is going to pay for your dinner. Christ, Hong Kong is the last outpost of the British Empire, an empire whose sole purpose was to spread capitalism around the globe. And having a governor of Hong Kong with no experience of the Orient parachuting in at the last minute trying to lecture a country of 1.3 billion people about democracy and human rights—a country, don’t forget, that could have had this colony shut down in a weekend at any point over the past hundred years—well, that isn’t the ideal way of doing business. If you want to promote democracy, the best way is to open up markets and engage with politically repressed countries at first hand so that they have the opportunity to see how Western societies operate. What you don’t do is lock the stable door after the horse has not only bolted, but found itself another stable, redecorated, and settled down with a really fuckin’ hot filly in a meaningful relationship.” Joe shook his head but we were all laughing. “And to answer your accusation that my government didn’t have a conscience until Chris Patten came along, all I can say is last time I checked we weren’t the ones willingly handing over six million of our own citizens to a repressive communist regime twenty miles away.”

  It wasn’t a bad retort and Isabella looked across at Joe, as if concerned that he was going to let her down. I tried to intervene.

  “Confucius has been through all of this before,” I said. ” ‘The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.’ “

  Isabella smiled. “He also said, ‘Life is very simple. It’s men who insist on making it complicated.’ “

  “Yeah,” said Miles. “Probably while getting jerked off by a nine-year-old boy.”

  Isabella screwed up her face. “If you ask my opinion—which I notice none of you are doing—both sides are as bad as each other.” Joe turned to face her. “The British often act as though they were doing the world a favour for the last three hundred years, as if it was a privilege to be colonized. What everybody always seems to forget is that the empire was a money-making enterprise. Nobody came to Hong Kong to save the natives from the Chinese. Nobody colonized India because they thought they needed railways. It was all about making money.” Miles had a gleeful look on his face. Seeing this, Isabella turned to him. “You Yanks are no better. The only difference, probably, is that you’re more honest about it. You’re not trying to pretend that you care about human rights. You just get on with doing whatever the hell you want.”

  All of us tried to jump in, but Miles got there first. “Look. I remember Tiananmen. I’ve seen the reports on torture in mainland China. I realize what these guys are capable of and the compromises we’re making in the West in order to-“

  Joe was pulled out of the conversation by the pulse of his mobile phone. He removed it from his jacket pocket, muttered a frustrated: “Sorry, hang on a minute,” and consulted the screen. The read-out said: “Percy Craddock is on the radio,” which was agreed code for contacting Waterfield and Lenan.

  Isabella said, “Who is it, sweetheart?”

  I noticed that Joe avoided looking at her when he replied. “Some kind of problem at Heppner’s. I have to call Ted. Give me two minutes, will you?”

  Rather than speak on a cellphone, which could be hoovered by one of the Chinese listening stations in Shenzhen, Joe made his way to the back of the restaurant where there was a payphone bolted to the wall. He knew the number of the secure line by heart and was speaking to Lenan within a couple of minutes.

  “That was quick.” Waterfield’s eminence grise sounded uncharacteristically chirpy.

  “Kenneth. Hello. What’s up?”

  “Are you having dinner?”

  “It’s OK.”

  “Alone?”

  “No. Isabella is here with Will Lasker. Miles, too.”

  “And how is our American friend this evening?”

  “Sweaty. Belligerent. What can I do for you?”

  “Unusual request, actually. Might be nothing in it. We need you to have a word with an eye-eye who came over this morning. Not blind flow. Claims he’s a professor of economics.” “Blind flow” was a term for an illegal immigrant coming south from China in the hope of finding work. “Everybody else is stuck at a black-tie do down at Stonecutters so the baton has passed to you. I won’t say any more on the phone, but there might be some decent product in it. Can you get to the flat in TST by ten-thirty?”

  Lenan was referring to a safe house near the Hong Kong Science Museum in Tsim Sha Tsui East, on the Kowloon side. Joe had been there once before. It was small, poorly ventilated and the buzzer on the door had been burned by a cigarette. Depending on traffic, a taxi would have him there in about three-quarters of an hour. He said, “Sure.”

  “Good. Lee’s looking after him for now, but he’s refusing to speak to anyone not directly connected to Patten. Get Lee to fill you in when you get there. Apparently there’s already a file of some sort.”

  Back in the dining area, Joe didn’t bother sitting down. He stood behind Isabella—almost certainly deliberately, so that he didn’t have to look at her—and put his hands on her shoulders as he explained that the bill of lading from a freight consignment heading to Central America had been lost in transit. It would have to be retyped and couriered to Panama before 2 a.m. Neither Miles nor myself, of course, believed this story for a minute, but we made a decent fist of saying, “Poor you, mate, what a nightmare,” and “You’ll be hungry” as Isabella kissed him and promised to be awake when he came home.

  Once Joe had gone, Miles felt it necessary to polish off the lie and began a sustained diatribe against the phantom clients of Heppner Logistics.

  “I mean, what’s the matter with these people in
freight? Bunch of fuckin’ amateurs. Some asshole on a ship can’t keep hold of a piece of paper? How tough is that?”

  “They work him so hard,” Isabella muttered. “That’s the third time this month he’s been called back to the office.”

  I was trying to think of ways of changing the subject when Miles chimed in again.

  “You’re right. You gotta guy there working hard, trying to climb the ladder from the bottom rung up, they’re always the ones who get treated badly.” He was enjoying having Isabella more or less to himself. “But it can’t last. Joe is way too smart not to move onto bigger and better things. You have to stay positive, Izzy. Mah jiu paau, mouh jiu tiuh.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  It was Cantonese. Miles was showing off.

  “Deng Xiaoping, honey. ‘The horses will go on running, the dancing will continue.’ Anybody join me in another bottle of wine?”

  7

  WANG

  Joe hailed a cab on the corner of Man Yee Lane and was grateful for the cooling chill of air conditioning as he climbed into the back. A humid three-minute walk from the restaurant had left his body encased in the damp, fever sweat which was the curse of living in Hong Kong: one minute you were in a shopping mall or restaurant as cool as iced tea, the next on humid streets that punched you with the packed heat of Asia. Joe’s shirt glued itself to the plastic upholstery of the cab as he leaned back and said, “Granville Road, please,” with sweat condensing on his forehead and sliding in drops down the back of his neck. Five feet from the cab, a group of Chinese men were seated on stools around a tiny television set drinking cans of Jinwei and watching a movie. Joe made out the squat, spike-haired features of Jean-Claude van Damme as the taxi pulled away.