A half hour later several hundred armed soldiers arrived. They spread themselves two deep across the street on each end of the crowd. They also surrounded a park across the street from the bank where many people were waiting. There really weren’t enough soldiers to physically prevent the crowd from moving, so the soldiers did nothing but stand in position, waiting for orders. Then four tanks clanked up, ripping up asphalt, and stopped with their big guns pointed at the crowd.
General Tang arrived with the tanks. He looked over the crowd and the soldiers, had his officers adjust the placement of the troops, then went to the door of the bank and pounded on it with his fist. When it didn’t open, he pulled his pistol and rapped on the door sharply with the butt.
Now the door opened.
General Tang and two of his colonels marched into the Bank of the Orient and demanded to see the president.
As they walked along the sidewalk toward the Star Ferry, Tommy Carmellini said, “Admiral, I’m really flying blind. The people at Langley sent me over here with orders to help you out, but they didn’t tell me what this is all about.”
“They sent me over here,” Jake Grafton told the CIA officer, “because I knew Tiger Cole in Vietnam. Apparently I’m one of the few people in government who know him personally. Washington wants to know what in hell is going on in Hong Kong.”
“What do they think is going on?”
They each bought first-class tickets on the ferry and went up on the top deck. As the ferry pulled out, Jake Grafton said, “China is coming to a crisis. The whole country is tinder ready to burn. One spark might set it off. The Communists want to stay in power by delivering economic prosperity, which can come only if the economic system changes. They are trapped in this giant oxymoron; they want economic change without social and political change. On the other hand, the United States wants a big piece of the China pie. So the American establishment has traded technology and capital for access to Chinese markets and low-cost labor. In other words, they have invested in the political status quo, which is the dictatorial Communist system.”
Tommy Carmellini nodded his understanding.
Jake continued. “The Communist system distorts and corrupts everything. The only way a Chinese importer can get goods into the country is to obtain a government import license. These licenses are restricted to prevent private entrepreneurs from competing against state-owned enterprises. Enter China Bob Chan and a thousand like him. If you are an enterprising Chinese businessman, for a fee Chan will obtain for you an import license from a government official — in effect, he splits the bribe. This system ensures that the bureaucracy is corrupted from top to bottom. Every single person in government is on the take, party members, officials of every caliber and stripe, army generals, everybody. This system generates enormous profits that go into their pockets, and the industrialized West gets to sell high tech to China.”
“Only the public loses,” Carmellini murmured.
“Precisely. Anyway, to get specific, the Chinese government used China Bob Chan to make political contributions in America and grease the wheels to get American export licenses for restricted technology, some of it military. As a general rule, government licenses always create opportunities for graft of one sort or another, in China and America. In this case the PLA, the People’s Liberation Army, wanted the American military technology. Unfortunately, China Bob pocketed about half the money the PLA paid him to do all this American greasing. The guy who dealt with China Bob on behalf of the army was General Tang, now the PLA commander here.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The story is that Tang was sent here to find and apprehend a political criminal, Wu Tai Kwong. Remember the man who stood in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989?”
“I thought he was dead.”
“He may be. But dead or alive, he’s public enemy number one; he gave the Commies the finger. These people are paranoid.”
“That’s an occupational hazard with absolute dictators,” Tommy Carmellini said lightly.
“Anyway, that is what the army says it’s doing here. In reality, Tang and the army are here to prevent a political uprising in Hong Kong. The CIA thinks China Bob Chan washed the money to finance the revolution.”
“He was working both sides of the street?”
‘The CIA thinks so. The politicians in Congress wanted someone to come over here and root around and give an independent assessment of how deep the consul general is in all this. The White House picked me, for lack of someone better.”
“Virgil Cole?”
“That’s right.”
“Why you?”
“Well, basically, I got the impression that I’m supposed to worm my way into Cole’s confidence and get him to say things to me that he wouldn’t say to anyone else. That was the thinking in Washington, anyway. It stinks, but that’s the sordid truth.”
“Maybe it’s all bullshit,” Carmellini suggested. “Rumors go round and round. I’m an expert on rumors.”
Grafton had his arms on the railing of the boat. “Cole is apparently having a relationship of some type with Amy Chan. Her father was a British soldier and her mother was a Chinese girl who came to Hong Kong when the Nationalist cause collapsed and Mao took over on the mainland. The mother got in just before the door slammed shut, took up prostitution to feed herself. She was supposedly really good-looking, became a high-class hooker, ended up falling for this Brit soldier and having Amy by him. Of course the soldier was a shit and went tooling off to Britain when his tour was up — seems he had a wife there, too.
“Anyway, Amy’s mother saved her money and sent her daughter to America for an education. She had a degree from UCLA and was working at the American consulate processing visa applications when Cole arrived. They hit it off right from the start.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Her half brother was China Bob Chan. He used Cole as his poster boy to advertise his influence with the Americans. Amy had him over to the mansion every other night. China Bob paraded him in front of government toads, General Tang, everybody and anybody who came down here from Beijing. This has been going on about a year. Cole has been talking to congressional investigators, so he is aware of the intricacies of all this. Still, the Tiger Cole I remember from way back when wouldn’t give a good goddamn what anybody thought about his love life.”
“That’s my impression of him, too,” Carmellini mused. “I’ve seen his dossier and spent an hour or so with him, and I’d say you are pretty close to the mark.”
“We’re here to find out what Cole and China Bob have been up to,” Jake said. “I want to listen to that tape you brought over. Callie will help me with the Chinese.” He had the thing in his sock just now.
“I’ll have to get a player out of the communications room at the consulate,” Tommy Carmellini told Jake as they joined the throng waiting to get off the boat when it slid into its dock in the Central District. “It takes a special machine to play the thing.”
“Let’s get bugs in Cole’s office in the consulate. Search his desk, see what you can learn. As soon as you can, open the safes and start going through the files. I want to see anything that implicates Tiger Cole in a conspiracy to overthrow the Chinese government. If there is not a shred of physical evidence, I want to know that, too.”
“Jesus! Where’d you learn how to do investigations?”
“We don’t have time for subtleties. I want to know what in hell is going on in Hong Kong, and I want to know now. If representatives of the American government are members of a conspiracy to overthrow the lawful government of China, that could be construed as an act of war.”