'I think — excuse me. Lady cancel table.'
'She what?'
'Lady cancel table. Not come tonight.'
Hugo's, the Man Wha, the Tai Pan Grill, trying Kowloon now as well as the Island, no go, every time a negative, trying the Miramar as the low grey Jensen came round the curve of the drive and parked under the row of lanterns.
She was alone.
19.07.
Small neat steps that would have left footprints in a dead straight line, not turning her head as she came towards the doors, not looking upwards. I had a cover line if she saw me here but it might be dangerous, better she didn't see me, turquoise tonight, a discreet shower of sequins, her midriff bare, where the mole was, though I couldn't see it from here. The Honda arrived within ninety seconds and although the driver didn't get out I could see it was the short Chinese, the one I'd taken to the Mauritius Hotel. A whiff of exhaust gas came on the air.
I went to the top of the double staircase and looked down. Not every word was distinct but there wasn't any delay at the desk: the room had been reserved. The boy was taking her to the lift, her short hair bright as she passed below the lamps. It stopped at this floor and I was in my room when they came past, a breath of something by Faberge, she'd told me she always seemed to go for the expensive ones, she didn't know why.
She wandered, for the next half an hour, among the few people who had moved on to the lower terrace, not speaking to any of them, not looking anywhere in particular but sometimes at the sea, drinking three vodkas in a row-twice going along the lantern path under the magnolias, so that I had to use the binoculars to keep her in sight among the shadows there. Then she got fed up and came back, her steps quicker and her bag swinging, and sat at one of the tables not far below my windows, clasping her bare arms and swinging one foot all the time, now and then swatting at insects.
Taking calculated intervals I got out the map from the briefing material and spread it on the bed, looking at it for half a minute in every five, Directorate of Overseas Surveys Series L882, Sheet 20, Hong Kong 1:25,000, Cape D'Aguilar (Hok Tsui) Area, Grid Zone Designation 50Q. Very close to Grid Ref. 2:14–24:60, roughly in the centre of Tai Tam Bay, Macklin or Egerton or someone had put a red cross: Tewson drowned from boat here. Peripheral features: Tai Tam Village, prison at Tung Tau Wan, Lo Chau Island, Turtle Cove Beach. A second reference, blue cross: Slipway where Tewson hired boat. Also Witness 3 and 4. This was 1,650 yards from the centre of the bay where the red cross had been marked. Witnesses 3 and 4 were two of the Chinese fishermen who had seen Tewson in trouble. A green cross marked the point on Turtle Cove Beach where Tewson's papers had been washed up later. Submarine contours gave only 5 fathoms within a 100 yards of the shore near the slipway, 10 fathoms for the general bay area.
She hadn't moved.
The report was attached to the map. Approximately twelve noon Tewson hires boat from Mr T'sai, game weight tackle. Alone on board as before.
There were some bits about Tewson's being noticed by several people: coastguards, narcotics officers, the crews of fishing junks.
Approximately 16.00 hours several others, including the four key witnesses, see Tewson in 'some kind of difficulty'. Mr Fu Jen-chang sees boat rocking, flurries in water (normal surface conditions smooth throughout bay), 'silvery flashes on surface'. Mr Yung Lung-kwei, fisherman on junk within 100 yards of Tewson's boat, sees him 'struggling' with what appeared to be a fish, just prior to his overbalancing and falling in. Another witness -
A woman laughed suddenly below and I went to the window, thinking it might have been Nora, but she hadn't moved, and no one was talking to her. From here she looked small and somehow significantly alone, untouchable, sitting there with her secrets, trying to drink some of them away. I wondered where she'd been, that day: whether she'd been on the slipway watching the distant blob of the boat when her husband had struggled with his fish, and lost. I wondered whether she had known it was going to happen, this event that had brought so much change in her fortunes.
There were still beats out on the channel, their lights making patterns across the still water; and one of them was swinging in a curve towards the jetty, the throb of its motors fading to a murmur. It was the fifth I'd counted since Nora had gone out to the terrace, and three of them had left their mooring again. She'd watched each of them as they'd arrived, and she was watching this one, not leaving the table but keeping her small head angled attentively.
I picked up the 7 X 50's again and focused them on the jetty.
The glow of the lanterns left shadows, and I could have seen better by the more diffuse light of the moon that was just rising. A small group of men, one of them remaining with the launch as the others began moving towards the building. The; woman's laugh came again from below but I didn't look away. There were four of them, three wearing white shirts or jackets. i As I went on adjusting the focus I saw that two of them hung back a little. As they came under the terrace lights the details were immediately clearer: three Chinese and a European, two of the Chinese hanging back quite a few yards (big men, possibly bodyguards), the other Chinese walking side by side with the European, who wore some kind of bush jacket and a pair of sunglasses.
I got this man into sharp focus and studied his face for a moment and then put the binoculars down as he saw someone and gave an awkward little wave of his hand. Nora had left her table, smoothing down her dress and going to greet the two men, the Chinese holding back a pace, the two others remaining by the pagoda some dozen yards away. The European embraced Nora, kissing her on the cheek, a shade embarrassed, Nora a shade cool and breaking away rather soon, perhaps because they'd all kept her waiting for nearly an hour.
I shut the window quietly and went to the phone.
A girl answered and sweat broke out on me at once because we were going to have to work very fast: Mandarin had shifted gear again, kicking hard into phase three, and we had to go with it.
'He come,' the girl said.
Briefing said the arrangement was that Chiang would remain on close call continuous throughout this operation but that didn't mean he could go and — 'Yes?'
Goose, gold, so forth.
'For London, urgent, immediate, coded numerals.'
He didn't answer. Getting his pad.
'Ready?'
'Yes.'
I gave it to him in Cantonese: there didn't have to be any mistakes. There were two signals but the first was the most urgent.
'Saam — yat — baat — saam,' extended phase digits, 'Leong say — leong — sup — saam,' reverse transfers for the sake of speed, 'Yat — look — baat,' throw in a suffix group of three fives repeated to cancel any inadvertent alert in case he left an omission in the blanks. 'Read back.'
He was quicker in his own tongue, only just giving me time to phrase it mentally in English, but he'd got it all right, first go:
Need director fully urgent. Tewson alive.
Chapter Seven: OVERKILL
The sea was dead calm, a flat blue shimmer of light reaching to the hills of Lamma Island, half seen through the haze. The water near my feet lapped softly across the big smooth stones, swirling around the piles of the breakwater. It was nearly dawn.
The man under the looking-glass tree hadn't moved.
I put the binoculars up again. The jetty of the Golden Sands Hotel was half a mile away, and the launch was still there. A figure was moving about on it, opening the engine hatch and half disappearing, and I thought if he was going to start it up it would mean they'd be leaving soon and there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing.