At one point Hawksley knew so much he began to fear for his life. He wrote down what he knew, made a copy, then gave the copy to Sonny with a remark or two about the original.
Sonny had merely smiled, raised the money to twenty-five thousand a month.
Still, Hubert Hawksley begin to think seriously about early retirement and a return to England. He mentioned these plans to Sonny one day, and Sonny tried to dissuade him.
“I know too much,” Hawksley told the gangster.
“Not at all. Anyone in your position is going to learn a great deal, and you are a reliable man. The next man might not be. Stay awhile, see this through. Earn all the money you can. Leave Hong Kong a wealthy man.”
He stayed, of course.
And now, in the wee hours of the morning, the WB cell phone given to him by a woman trying to avoid prosecution for theft squawked into life, waking Hawksley from a sound sleep. He knew the significance of the message. Afterward he lay awake in the darkness thinking about what was to come.
Today, he decided, was going to be an excellent day to call in sick.
All over China the special cell phones rang, stimulated by a WB signal piggybacking on the signals of every television station in the country, and all over China the owners of the cell phones listened with mixed emotions.
For some, the message was a signal for a mission that had to be accomplished on an agreed timetable. For others, the signal meant to wait a little while longer. For all, it was a message heralding the coming of a new day.
The single-sheet flyers were piled willy-nilly on street corners, in subway, store, and office building entrances, and in the entrances to the endless blocks of government-owned apartment buildings. The headline on the front page trumpeted: BANK RECORDS WIPED OUT IN MASSIVE COMPUTER FAILURE.
The story began:
A massive computer failure last night at the Hong Kong bank clearinghouse wiped out the computerized records of member banks, which are all the banks in Hong Kong. Sources say that the computerized account records of the borrowers and depositors of the affected banks have been destroyed and will have to be reconstructed from backup tapes where they exist, and by hand from written records, which all banks maintain, before the banks can again open for business. The task will take weeks.
It is common knowledge that various high government officials have demanded and received personal loans at ridiculously low interest rates from Hong Kong banks, which were the only banks affected by the clearinghouse computer failure.
The story continued, citing no sources but implying that the government had willfully destroyed the bank records to hide official corruption.
Very little of the story was true, a fact Rip Buckingham had pointed out to Wu weeks ago when he was asked to write it. “The government,” Wu said, “has told so many lies that people are ready to believe the worst. The goal is to put government officials on the defensive. The story in the flyer must create doubt in people’s minds.”
The story did more than that, though. It called for a general strike and a mass demonstration in the Central District today to protest the malfeasance of the government.
Lin Pe was up at first light. She had been rising at that hour ever since she could remember and saw no reason to change at this stage of her life. She used the early morning hours to work on her fortunes or the books of the Double Happy Fortune Cookie Company, occasionally to correspond with friends. Every few weeks she had to sign all the company checks that her accountant had prepared, payroll and suppliers and utilities and the like. The checks were there on the table, but since the bank collapsed, it was ridiculous to sign them.
This morning she got out the fortune book and sat reading while she waited for a good idea to arrive. When inspiration was hard to find, as it often was, she would wait patiently. If she didn’t think about too many other things a good idea would show up eventually.
She had a lot on her mind these days: Wu, the frozen accounts at the Bank of the Orient, her daughter Sue Lin, Rip, whether she should sell the cookie company to Albert Cheung…
Sue Lin knocked, then came into the room carrying a flyer.
“Mother,” she said, “all the banks will be closed.”
Lin Pe read the story, then laid the flyer aside and sat looking out the window at the great city. “I can’t meet my payroll,” she said softly.
“Oh, no one will expect to be paid,” Sue Lin said dismissively. “Too much is happening.” She sat down facing her mother and told her about Wu’s kidnapping.
Old Lin Pe listened to everything her daughter had to say and asked no questions. When Sue Lin ran out of steam she sat silently looking at her mother, who rubbed her hands together, then smoothed her hair.
“Wong will kill him after he gets the money,” Lin Pe said finally.
“Maybe not,” Sue Lin said, unwilling to cross that bridge. She felt so helpless. “What can we do?”
Her mother sat staring at the wall, saying nothing.
As Jake Grafton walked the streets to the ferry landing in the hour after dawn, he had to thread his way around the citizens of Hong Kong, who were engrossed in the flyers that littered the streets and sidewalks.
Jake had tried to get some sleep on the couch in Tiger Cole’s office, but he had tossed and turned, unable to stop thinking about his wife. He had dropped off for a few minutes, only to have a nightmare about her, which woke him and left him unable to get back to sleep.
At one point Tommy Carmellini came in, wanting to tell him what he had heard on his listening devices. About the only thing worth reporting, according to Carmellini, was a call Kerry Kent got earlier in the evening. “She said yes, paused, yes again, paused, no, then another yes and hung up.”
“So?”
“I don’t know who called her, but it wasn’t a social friend.”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” Grafton agreed.
As the sun rose he had stood at Cole’s window watching the traffic on the street below and the people on the sidewalk reading the flyers.
Cole wasn’t there. He had gone out at some point. No doubt he is off leading the charge, Jake thought gloomily.
He couldn’t shake the thought that this mess was Cole’s fault.
If the bastard had minded his own business, stayed in California getting rich making magic technoshit for robots and the like, Callie would be safe and sound, not in danger of being murdered by a goddamn Asian gangster.
That thought made him angry. There would be plenty of time later for recriminations, but now was the time to figure out how to rescue Callie.
That’s the mission, Jake, and it’s high time you put the brain in high gear and got cracking.
He decided that he should go back to the hotel. If by chance Callie had been released, perhaps she would go there. The chances were small, but still…
“Goddamn it!” He had said the words aloud, then stood there grinding his teeth.
He needed a bath, a shave, and a change of clothes.
If Sonny Wong has any sense, someone will be waiting to ambush me as I walk out the front door of the consulate.
With that thought in mind, Grafton went out the back of the compound in a truck that had just delivered a load of fresh vegetables. When the truck stopped for a light two blocks down the street, Grafton raised the rear door and jumped down, then lowered the door and slapped it twice.
Now, walking through the streets, he was struck by the number of youngsters and the elderly out and about on a weekday morning. They weren’t the dressed-for-success business types who filled the Central District office towers during weekdays. These folks wore jeans and cotton pants and T-shirts. They carried backpacks and sacks of food.