I looked at my watch, being careful not to take my hand off the wheel, just angling the wrist, because they seemed rather excited and I didn't want any accidents. Both guns were suddenly pressed harder against me and I had a verbal warning. The time was 19.52 and I noted it because it's often important to remember what time an event happened: or this could be just rationalizing the subconscious need for orientation. To know the time was to control the situation, if only in terms of being informed, of being able to measure one of its elements; and I suppose this was a sop to the whimpering little organism as it tried to get my attention — they're going to kill you… it's three to one and you've had it and there's nothing you can do but I don't want to die, don't let them-
Bloody well shut up.
Sweat on my hands.
'Down!' he said at the next intersection, pointing with his thin hand, its striking edge swollen and inflamed. He'd be somewhere near the yellow standard and still having trouble with the bricks. In a couple of minutes we came to a quay on the west side of the typhoon shelter and the man made me put the station wagon through a narrow gap between ropes and warning flags where the parapet was being repaired. Nobody was here, because at night there was nothing to come here for.
'Stop!'
There was a lot of sign language: I had to get out and stand with my hands raised against the wall of the rope store while they patted me all over for the gun, beginning to chatter when they couldn't find one. I could hear two of them back inside the car, pulling up the seats and snapping open the glove compartment.
'Where gun?' they asked me, frustrated.
'What the hell would I want a gun for?' Getting irritable now, a good mind to call a policeman, so forth.
It was possible they were brighter than they looked, so I launched a daring tirade of indignation in colonial English, mentioning the severe punishment they would receive at the hands of the judge, and the long years in prison they were risking by their infamous conduct. They let me go on for ten seconds or so, not because they were listening but because they were completely thrown by not being able to find my gun. Then they told me to shut up, and began on my wallet. They had a photograph of me — I could see it was another copy of the one I'd found on the boy in the snake shop — and they began comparing it with my face and the photograph in my passport, making me stand facing the tall lamp at the edge of the quay. They weren't too satisfied, but then I didn't see how they could be, because passport photos are only ever good for a giggle and the one their network was circulating in Hong Kong was grainy.
I stood as they'd placed me, hands by my sides so as not to attract attention if anyone came by. A gun was pressed against my spine while the other two went through my papers: driving licence, membership card of the British Numismatic Association, representative's card for Mendoza S.A. of Buenos Aires, the letters of introduction.
'You've made a mistake,' I said.
They looked at me and then at the papers again. I don't think they'd understood, but I sensed they were pretty impressed by the cover material and for the first time it occurred to me that I had a chance of getting out of this alive. The feeling was quite heady, and an indication of how depressed I'd been getting before I'd seen the straws in the wind. The thing was that all they'd had to go on was the photograph: the copy of the one on file at the Bank of China. The station wagon was clear and so was the Harbour Hotel, and they'd picked me up on sight alone: part luck and part efficiency. There weren't many English in Hong Kong but the faces of Caucasians looked much alike to the Asians and they'd been very good and that was probably why they were so excited when they'd got into the car. Now they were beginning to wonder if they'd got the right man.
'You're looking for someone else,' I told them, shaking my head. The two of them looked up again.
'What this?'
He held out one of the letters of introduction, trying to sound accusing. He could have questioned any of the other papers just as welclass="underline" he wanted me to react, that was all.
'Coins,' I said. The Mendoza letter heading carried three gold pieces, sumptuously embossed and gilded. With great care I moved my hand, pointing to my pocket.
'What coin?'
I took a risk and tapped my pocket with a stiff finger, making my small change clink, then bringing my hand very slowly to point at the letter. 'I am a coin dealer.'
'How this?'
He meant my left hand.
'Accident.' I didn't want to go into that one so I produced a short embarrassed laugh. 'Look, I thought you were going to rob me, but now I can see you're looking for someone in particular.' I spread my hands till the gun prodded my spine. 'I am not the man you are looking for.'
It was the only possible hope. They were young and inexperienced and would fear their superiors; and they weren't keen on knocking off an innocent party before they'd made sure who he was. On the other hand they felt frustrated about this: they were three of the toughest young thugs I'd ever seen and they were longing to make a killing for the hell of it because that's what their Pekin instructors had been training them to do for so long.
'You come Londan?'
He had the inhuman stare of the disciple newly ordained: with all the power of Mao behind him, he was addressing one of the imperialist vermin he had learned about at the desk and on the blackboard. They'd stuffed his head with ta tzu-pao and his stomach with government rice and sent him out crusading, a true Son of the Socialist Revolution, a brave Soldier of the People's Liberation Army, neither lance in his hand nor falcon at his wrist but just an itch in the pit of his guts to do in reality what he had done so many times in make-believe, spilling the sawdust out of the sacks in the sweaty gymnasium, sending them swinging on their ropes at a chop of his hand or a kick of his foot without even hating them, and dreaming of the day when his masters would give him something alive, something to hate, something to kill.
Something like me.
'No,' I said, 'I don't come from London.'
I didn't think he could read Roman characters. He couldn't: he didn't react. The passport and the other papers didn't mean anything to him and that was why he found them impressive: their very unintelligibility was mystic and had power over him. He went on staring for a moment and then turned suddenly away to talk to the other man: not the one with the gun at my spine, the one with the blepharitis. They spoke in Mandarin still, the Kuo-yu, and I couldn't follow; but it seemed as if they thought they'd made a mistake and didn't know what to do next, so I began rehearsing a speech in simple Engish. They wouldn't understand but the words would implement my gestures and provide the vehicle for tone: and the tone was very important — rueful, conciliatory, half-admitting myself as party to their unfortunate mistake.
'Listen,' I said, and they looked at me. 'If you will let me go, I will tell no one. It is a silly mistake. I will go away quietly, and forget.' I rang the changes on this theme, bowing myself out of their ken, taking a step towards the station wagon, shaking my head sorrowfully about our foolish misunderstanding, the bloody thing poking sharply into my back as I took that one step nearer the car. I stopped and waited for them to react.
There were chimes sounding somewhere, probably from one of the English churches. Eight o'clock, the hour when a young married widow with a taste for Ming and emeralds and soixante-neuf would be going through the doors of El Caliph to receive in surprise a dozen gardenias in lieu of dalliance; when a thin owlish man with a thing against insects and a scar on his soul would be waiting in the shadows on a Hong Kong junk and listening to these same chimes, checking his watch; and when Clive Wing, coin dealer, was standing on a deserted quayside wondering how many minutes longer he was going to live.