“That’s the family’s punishment,” Kwan explained, “for having brought up a child without the proper discipline.”
“The family has to pay for the bullet that kills you,” Mortimer said, musing, thoughtful. “Is that the usual procedure in China?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know about that.” The reporter fell into silence, brooding, seeming to lose interest in his next question.
Kwan took the time to glance over at the pool, which was now empty, and then the other way, at the interior of the café. A westerner sat alone at the next table, drinking coffee and reading the Hong Kong Times. He looked up, his eyes meeting Kwan’s for just a second, and then he went back to his paper, but in that second Kwan suddenly felt afraid.
Of the man? No. He wasn’t from the Hong Kong police. He was a European or American, heavy-set, about forty, with yellow hair like a Scandinavian. He wore a short-sleeved shirt, pale blue, and a dark red necktie, but no jacket. He had a large gold ring with a red stone on the little finger of his right hand.
Click.
Kwan looked at the table, and Mortimer’s cassette player had stopped. “You’ve run out of tape.”
Mortimer looked up, embarrassed, as though he’d been asleep. “Time went by fast,” he said, laughing awkwardly, and spent the next moment fumbling with the machine, turning the tape over, starting it again. “Where were we?”
“My family would pay for the bullet.”
“Oh, yes.” That fact still made Mortimer uncomfortable. “And you’re sure you wouldn’t have an opportunity to make any sort of meaningful state—”
“Mr. Mortimer?”
It was the waiter, standing beside their table, bowing in Mortimer’s direction. The reporter looked up, reluctant and irritable. “Yes?”
“Telephone, sir. You can take it at the cashier’s desk.”
Mortimer was torn, indecisive. He rubbed the knuckles of his right hand against his bearded cheek. “I don’t know,” he said, glancing at Kwan, at the cassette player, then back at the waiter. He made an aggravated mouth, as though angry at the interruption, or angry at himself, or just angry. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Here I come.” With a bright meaningless smile at Kwan, he said, “Sorry about this. Be right back.”
“Yes, fine.”
Mortimer followed the waiter away toward the door. Kwan saw that he’d left the cassette player on, and was about to reach out and turn it off when the westerner from the next table stood up, came smoothly and swiftly across, and said in a low voice, “Mortimer betrayed you, that was the price of the interview. There’s no phone call. Get up and follow me.”
Kwan immediately recognized the truth. Mortimer’s strangeness at the end, his wanting to believe that Kwan could turn capture and trial to his own advantage, his reluctance when the “phone call” came. The end of the tape had been the signal; that was all the interview Mortimer would be allowed. Another realist; Mortimer had believed that Kwan’s betrayal was a fair trade for getting Kwan’s story into a magazine read by millions of people all around the world.
Kwan rose. The stranger was already walking away, striding away, around the curved glass wall toward the rear of the café. Kwan followed him, to a door that said, in three languages: EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY — ALARM WILL SOUND. The Stranger pushed open the door. No alarm sounded. He went down four metal steps, Kwan hurrying after, permitting the door to close itself behind him, and then they crossed a corner of the rock garden to a stone path and headed for the pool.
Looking to his right, Kwan saw through the windows three chunky men in pale gray tight suits and dark neckties standing indecisively at his former table. One of them looked up and saw Kwan, and pointed, becoming excited. Kwan turned his eyes front, watching the broad pale blue back of the tall westerner in front of him. Who was he? The accent had seemed not quite American, but not at all British, nor Australian. Canadian? Was English his second language? How had he known about Mortimer, and about Li Kwan? Where were they going?
Around the pool, past the sunbathers and a slightly rancid smell of coconut oil. Then, beyond the attendant’s cabana, full of towels, they came to a pale green wooden fence, eight feet high, containing an unmarked and scarcely noticeable door. The stranger opened this, and they both stepped through to an alleyway. Garbage cans were stacked below a loading dock to the right. The street was to the left. As he closed the door, Kwan looked back and saw the three policemen running this way, around the pool. “They’re chasing us,” he said.
“That door’s locked.”
It is? Kwan looked at the door, but had no time to think any more about it, because the stranger was moving quickly now toward the street; not quite running, but striding with very long legs. Kwan had to trot to keep up with him, like a child.
Illegally parked at the curb just to the right of the alley was a white Toyota; like a million others in Hong Kong. The stranger pointed to the passenger door: “Get in.”
The door was unlocked. Kwan got in, and the interior was stiflingly hot. He rolled down his window as the stranger got behind the wheel. The key was already in the ignition. The stranger started the motor and pulled away into traffic, and then at last Kwan could say, “How did you know?”
The stranger smiled. He drove patiently but professionally through the jammed streets. “You are not part of a conspiracy,” he said. “Your government says you are, but you are not.”
“Of course, I’m not.”
“Neither am I,” the stranger said. “But if I tell you who I am, and how I found out what was going to happen to you, and why I decided to help if I could, then we would both be parts of a plan. And that’s a conspiracy.”
“That’s specious. What con—?”
The stranger laughed. “Of course, it’s specious,” he said. “But you wanted an answer, so that’s the answer I gave you.”
“The only answer I’m going to get, you mean.”
“Well, here’s another one, then,” the stranger said. “Next time, you might not be so lucky. You might get caught. And if you get caught, they’ll be sure to say, ‘Who helped you escape last time?’ It would be better for me if you didn’t have an answer.”
“Well, all right,” Kwan said. “That isn’t specious. It’s merely convenient.”
Again the stranger laughed. “What gratitude!”
Kwan felt himself blush. “I beg your pardon! I was so confused, it was so fast— Of course, I’m grateful! You saved my life!”
“Use it well,” the stranger said.
They took the ferry over to the island of Lamma, its small houses gleaming in the sun. Along the way, they got out of the Toyota to stand at the rail and breathe the cool sea air and look at the world sparkling all around them.
“You’ll have to leave Hong Kong,” the stranger said. “Your reasons for staying here are no good any more.”
“I don’t know where to go,” Kwan said. He seemed to have given over all control, all capacity for planning, to this man who had saved his life. “I don’t know how.”
“By ship, I think.” The stranger gestured out over the water; a big passenger liner like an oval wedding cake, with an American flag for decoration at the stern, was just pulling out of Hong Kong Harbor. “Those ships have many Orientals in their crews. Especially in the kitchens.” He smiled at Kwan. “You’d make a fine dishwasher, with that education of yours.”
“I don’t have any papers.”
“Maybe someone you know,” the stranger suggested, “would know someone who works for one of the shipping lines.”
“The family I’m staying with, they might.”