‘Who is it you come to see and what is your name? I will need your official identification.’
‘Minister Sheng,’ said the driver. ‘And my name is not important, nor are my papers required. Please inform the minister’s residence that his emissary from Kowloon is here.’
The soldier shrugged. Such replies were standard at Jade Tower Mountain and to press further might result in a transfer from this heavenly duty where the leftover food was beyond one’s imagination and even foreign beer was given for obedient and co-operative service. Still the guard used the telephone. The visitor had to be admitted properly. To do otherwise could bring one to kneel in a field and be shot in the back of the head. The guard returned to the gatehouse and dialled the villa of Sheng Chou Yang.
‘Admit him. Quickly?
Without going back to the sedan, the guard pressed a button and the orange bar was raised. The car raced in, far too quickly over the gravel, thought the guard. The emissary was in a great hurry.
‘Minister Sheng is in the garden,’ said the army officer at the door, looking beyond the visitor, his eyes darting about, peering into the darkness. ‘Go to him.’
The emissary rushed through the front room filled with red lacquered furniture to an archway beyond which was a walled garden complete with four connecting lily ponds subtly lit with yellow lights beneath the water. Two intersecting paths
of white gravel formed an X between the ponds, and low, black wicker chairs and tables were placed at the far end of each path within an oval setting. Seated alone at the end of the eastern leg by the brick wall was a slender man of medium height, with close-cropped, prematurely grey hair and gaunt features. If there was anything about him that might startle someone meeting him for the first time it was his eyes, for they were the dark eyes of a dead man, the lids never blinking even for an instant. Contrarily, they were also the eyes of a zealot whose blind dedication was the core of his strength; white heat was in the pupils, lightning in the orbs. These were the eyes of Sheng Chou Yang, and at the moment they were on fire.
‘7W/ me!’ he roared, both hands gripping the black arms of the wicker chair. ‘Who does this?’
‘It’s all a lie, Minister! We have checked with our people in Tel Aviv. There is no such man as was described. There is no agent from the Mossad in Kowloon!
‘What action did you take?’
‘It is most confusing-‘
‘What action?’
‘We are tracing an Englishman in the Mongkok whom no one seems to know about.’
‘Fools and idiots! Idiots and fools! Whom have you spoken with?’
‘Our key man in the Kowloon police. He is bewildered, and I’m sorry to say I think he is frightened. He made several references to Macao and I did not like his voice.’
‘He is dead.’
‘I will transmit your instructions.’
‘I’m afraid you cannot.’ Shang gestured with his left hand, his right in shadows, reaching beneath the low table. ‘Come pay your obedience to the Kuomintang,’ he commanded.
The emissary approached the minister. He bowed low and reached for the great man’s left hand. Sheng lifted his right hand. In it was a gun.
An explosion followed, blowing the emissary’s head away. Fragments of skull and tissue seared into the lily ponds. The army officer appeared in the archway as the corpse sprang
back under the impact into the white gravel.
‘Dispose of him,’ ordered Sheng. ‘He heard too much, learned too much … presumed too much.’
‘Certainly, Minister.’
‘And reach the man in Macao. I have instructions for him and they are to be implemented immediately, while the fires in Kowloon still light up the sky. I want him here.’
As the officer approached the dead courier, Sheng suddenly rose from the chair, then walked slowly to the edge of the nearest pond, his face illuminated by the lights beneath the water. He spoke once again,-his voice flat but filled with purpose.
‘Soon all of Hong Kong and the territories,’ he said, staring at a lily pad. ‘Soon thereafter, all of China.’
‘You lead, Minister,’ said the officer, watching Sheng, his eyes glowing with devotion. ‘We follow. The march you promised has begun. We return to our Mother and the land will be ours again.’
‘Yes, it will,’ agreed Sheng Chou Yang. ‘We cannot be denied. I cannot be denied.’
20
By noon of that paralysing day when Kai Tak was merely an airport and not an assassination field, Ambassador Havilland had described to a stunned Catherine Staples the broad outlines of the Sheng conspiracy with its roots in the Kuomintang. Objective: a consortium of taipans with a central leader, whose son Sheng was taking over Hong Kong and turning the colony into the conspirators’ own financial empire. Inevitable result: the conspiracy would fail, and the raging giant that was the People’s Republic would strike out, marching into Hong Kong, destroying the Accords and throwing the Far East into chaos. In utter disbelief Catherine had demanded substantiation and by 2:15 had twice read the State Department’s lengthy and top-secret dossier on Sheng Chou Yang, but she continued to strenuously object as the accuracy could not be verified. At 3:30 she had been taken to the radio room and by satellite-scrambler transmission was presented with an array of ‘facts’ by a man named Reilly of the National Security Council in Washington.
‘You’re only a voice, Mr Reilly,’ Staples had said. ‘How do I know you’re not down at the bottom of the Peak in the Wanchai?’
There was at that moment a pronounced click on the line and a voice Catherine and the world knew very well was speaking to her. ‘This is the President of the United States, Mrs Staples. If you doubt that, I suggest you call your consulate. Ask them to reach the White House by diplomatic phone and request a confirmation of our transmission. I’ll hang on. You’ll receive it. At the moment I have nothing better to do – nothing more vital.’
Shaking her head and briefly closing her eyes, Catherine had answered quietly. ‘I believe you, Mr President.’
‘Forget about me, believe what you’ve heard. It’s the truth.’
‘It’s just so unbelievable – inconceivable.’
‘I’m no expert, Mrs Staples, and I never claimed to be, but then neither was the Trojan Horse very believable. Now, that may be legend and Menelaus’ wife may have been a figment of a campfire storyteller’s imagination, but the concept is valid – it’s become a symbol of an enemy destroying his adversary from within.’
‘Menelaus…?’
‘Don’t believe the media, I’ve read a book or two. But do believe our people, Mrs Staples. We need you. I’ll call your Prime Minister if it will help, but in all honesty, I’d rather not. He might feel it necessary to confer with others.’
‘No, Mr President. Containment is everything. I’m beginning to understand Ambassador Havilland.’
‘You’re one up on me. I don’t always understand him.’
‘Perhaps it’s better that way, sir.’
At 3:58 there was an emergency call – highest priority – to the sterile house in Victoria Peak, but it was not for either the Ambassador or Undersecretary of State McAllister. It was for Major Lin Wenzu, and when it came a frightening vigil began that lasted four hours. The scant information was so electrifying that all concentration was riveted on the crisis, and Catherine Staples telephoned her consulate telling the High Commissioner that she was not well and would not attend the strategy conference with the Americans that afternoon. Her presence in the sterile house was welcome. Ambassador Havilland wanted the foreign service officer to see and understand for herself how close the Far East was to upheaval. How an inevitable error on either Sheng’s or his assassin’s part could bring about an explosion so drastic that troops from the People’s Republic could move into Hong
Kong within hours, bringing not only the colony’s world trade to a halt, but with it widespread human suffering -savage rioting everywhere, death squads from the left and the right exploiting resentments going back forty years, racial and provincial factions pitted against one another and the military forces. Blood would flow in the streets and the harbour, and as nations everywhere must be affected, global war was a very real possibility. He said these things to her as Lin worked furiously on the telephone, giving commands, coordinating his people with the colony’s police and the airport’s security.
It all had started with the major from MI6 cupping the phone and speaking in a quiet voice in that Victorian room in Victoria Peak.
‘Kai Tak tonight. The Sino-British delegations. Assassination. The target is the Governor. They believe it’s Jason Bourne.’
‘I can’t understand it!’ protested McAllister, leaping from the couch. ‘It’s premature. Sheng isn’t ready! We’d have got an inkling of it if he was – an official statement from his ministry alluding to a proposed commission of some sort. It’s wrong!’