Chapter Twelve
When Teller walked into the coffee shop of the Lee Gardens Hotel three hours later Brigit waved urgently to him from an alcove in the far corner, facing the entrance. And when he approached she rose and put her arms around his neck and gave him a warm kiss on the mouth. Teller winced and pulled away.
“I’m sorry,” she said defensively. “I should not have done that.” She turned abruptly and slid back onto the seat.
He eased himself beside her. “Don’t be,” he said. “It’s been a long time. I missed it.”
“You have a strange way of showing it,” Brigit’s gaze was fixed on his face, but when she noticed the bandage on his arm she exclaimed: “What is that Jason. What happened to you?”
“It’s not serious,” Teller responded. “I ran into our friend and he proved to be more agile than I was.”
He went on to explain the events over the past twenty-four hours, stopping for her numerous interruptions, and when he finished she put her hand lightly on his. “Jason, I’m scared. I am really frightened for you. Please, let’s go to the police and let them look after it. It’s far too dangerous.”
“I’ve already arranged to talk to someone,” he said. “Not the police, the accountant. He’s in a higher, or a better, position to do something.”
“Good,” Brigit said, then: “When?”
“Tonight.” Teller looked into her face and saw lines at the corner of her eyes. To him they were no more than traces of frequent laughter, though he knew she would regard them with loathing and would magnify them more in her own mind than they would be in a mirror. He had to admit, however, that recent incidents had deepened them. Without taking his eyes from her he went on: “When I saw the accountant in the hospital this morning I was in two minds. I was angry at being nearly killed for something I am just trying to report on, and I wanted to get out of the whole thing also because it has nothing directly to do with me.”
“It’s something the police should be handling,” interrupted Brigit. “Not you.”
“You’re right I know,” Teller answered. “But now I can’t just drop it. I am personally involved. The bastard tried to kill me. It’s become a personal thing almost. Him against me. Me against him.”
“For god’s sake Jason. No-one’s playing a game. That man is a murderer and he’s out to make you his victim. Tell the police. See your friend tonight and give him everything You can and then go on a holiday somewhere. Anywhere but don’t stay here. Don’t do something stupid.”
Teller held her look. “I can’t” he said quietly. “I can’t let it go. I am partly responsible. I have to do something.”
“You’ve done enough. More than enough. You uncovered and revealed this animal for what he is.” Her reasoning was intense and he could see the fear and anger in the pink rash discolouring her neck. “You even found him, saw what he looked like, and almost died because of your involvement. Don’t you think that is more than anyone can expect?”
When Teller remained silent and fingered the stainless steel knife on the paper place mat in front of him, she added: “You can do no more Jason. Give it up. Let the authorities do it. Let them find out who he is and arrest him.”
Teller looked up. He stopped toying with the utensil and looked squarely at her. “I know who he is,” he said. “I know his name. I know where he lives. I even know he put a deposit on a video machine at a store in Humphreys Avenue the day before yesterday.”
“What?” Brigit almost shouted the question. She noted the couple at the table opposite and then leaned forward and repeated in a whisper: “How could you know that?”
He told her about the receipt and removed it from his wallet, placing it on the table before her. “You see,” he said. “I can’t forget it now.”
“What are you thinking Jason? You’re not going to do something foolhardy are you?”
The word was perfectly in keeping with her accent somehow. While most people would use the appendix ish Brigit, who had largely taught herself to speak English on native soil, used the correct noun with the contraction at the back of her throat. He smiled wanly and the corners of his mouth rose, but his eyes were cold, tired. “I’m going to check in here for a while. And I’m going to think things over very clearly. What I am not going to do is involve you any further. I want you out of this mess.”
“Yes,” she said. “Well, you can‘t get rid of me that easily. You have involved me whether you like it not. I’m in and I’ll stay in so long as I can help you.”
Teller was about to protest but she help up her hand to silence him. “Anyway, you said yourself my flat is being watched and my telephone has been tampered with. So I think I should stay away from there also. I’ll move here.”
“Now you’re the one being foolish,” said Teller. “Why on earth would you want to do that?”
Brigit smiled. “For an intelligent journalist you are not very perceptive.”
“Brigit, “he began “I….”
“No more, yes?” she said quickly. “That is agreed.” She bent and picked up a large shoulder bag from under the table. “You see, I too can plan ahead. I have brought my things. Now we should go and see if this hotel has any qualms about an unwed couple checking in together.” Again the smile lit up her face. “You did not mind in London. Do you mind here?”
He rose with her. “No,” he answered. “I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all.”
*
While Teller and Brigit were discussing their particular and immediate futures, the rest of Hong Kong was continuing to reel from the devastating effects of the financial crisis that had shaken the western world’s stock and futures markets.
Billions of dollars had been wiped from accounts and in an act of desperation the Board of Directors of the Hong Kong market had closed the doors to the floor for the remainder of the week.
Markets in Australia, Japan, London and on Wall Street struggled through the second shock waves but the territory’s marker boards were clear. The effect of this unprecedented move added to the local consternation and foreign suspicion. The reason for the closure, that it was ordered so that brokers could clear the backlog of paper transactions, was generally disbelieved and a volley of accusations were hurled at the Stock Exchange Board and the administration which had quickly supported the decision.
One of the most vocal critics was again the Legislative Councillor Martin Lee. His opening salvo was not unexpectedly aimed at the legality of the action. In a minute examination of the conditions controlling the operation of the market, he maintained the closure was unconstitutional. He followed this with a resounding call for the Exchange Chairman to resign. A barrage of acrimonious words were exchanged as Lee gathered supporters, most, if not all of them, victims of the crash. The torrent of injured cries rose by the hour and between Tuesday, September 22 and Thursday, September 24 Hong Kong seemed almost to be suspended in time. Paradoxically, the interest in the financial situation was greater during the time of Exchange inactivity than it had ever been during the most bullish of periods.
But for all else in the territory there was little interest. The anxiety was exemplified by two incidents which took place on Wednesday September 23. In the Legislative Council that afternoon a councillor was granted permission to ask a late question on the crisis. The Financial Secretary answered it in predictable administrative jargon. But if he had expected the matter to rest there he would have been sorely disappointed. A series of searing supplementaries followed and at the end of the session there was no doubt the protagonists had reached for their big guns. Lines had been drawn.
As that confrontation was taking place, the Chairman of the Stock Exchange was giving a press conference to express his pre-emptive action to the financial media. From the outset he was unsettled and the wear of four days of long, wearying manoeuvring showed clearly on his face. The press conference opened sharply and was honed with each stabbing question.
The climax surprised everyone. A foreign journalist asked the Chairman to explain how he could close the market without being in breach of the law. Perhaps the question could have been more diplomatically framed. But the direct words and indirect implication had been uttered and the Chairman reacted. As an astonished press corps watched and recorded, the Chairman erupted and threatened to have the offending journalist arrested and prosecuted for slander. It was an outburst which did nothing to ease the minds of those who had already suffered in the crash. Television screens that night removed any lingering doubts that Hong Kong was in the grip of destructive panic. And the newspapers the next morning replayed in slow motion the events of the previous twenty-four hours, second guessing more devastation on the horizon. They were not to be proved wrong.
As bundles of newsprint landed on the streets to be gobbled up by workers heading for their offices, the Financial Secretary who had taken a battering in the Legislative Council the previous afternoon sat at a table with his head on his hand, cocked to one side in a weary resigned pose. He knew the action he was about to take was fraught with risks.
But he had been left with no alternative. With the closure of the Futures Exchange, or Hong Kong’s legal casino as detractors called it, a large number of brokers were backed up against a wall. There was no way commitments could be met. It was therefore agreed that the government would have to step in with a rescue package if total collapse of the markets was to be avoided. The size of that package was set at two billion Hong Kong dollars – with another two billion kept in reserve in case the first injection was insufficient. An emergency Executive Council meeting had sanctioned the bale-out and all Legislative Councillors were urged to publicly support it.
At midday on Thursday September 24 Omelco issued a statement backing the bale-out. Also at midday the Chief Secretary walked into the office of the accountant and slumped down heavily in a vacant chair.
“God I’m tired,” he sighed.
The accountant said nothing.
“So talk to me about something that has nothing to do with dollars and cents or stocks and shares please,” said McNamara. He lifted his lined face and tried to smile. “How is your problem Jack? Have we made any progress there?”
“Yes and no,” said the accountant, and described in succinct detail the Lock Road incident and its aftermath.
“And he’s going to tell all and then get out of it tonight, eh?” The Chief Secretary ran a hand across his forehead and roughly down over one eye. “That’s good Jack. Good.”
“I’m afraid not,” said the accountant. “He said that yesterday. Then he left the hospital. We’ve lost him again.”
The Chief Secretary sat still and stared at the man on the other side of the table for a long thirty seconds. Slowly he heaved himself out of the chair and left the office without saying a word.
The accountant knew no words were necessary. He knew what had to be done, and there was no need to be told what it was. Teller had to be found, squeezed and then made to remain silent. Then, maybe then with luck, the real quarry could be tracked down and silenced too. But the accountant was only too well aware that if they were right in their timetable they had less than two weeks to do what had to be done.
*
“I thought they weren’t going to do it,” laughed Brigit. “The girl behind the counter gave us a terrible look. I think I am supposed to feel like some harridan.” She stopped and thought, holding her smile. “Harridan. That is the word. Yes?”
“You’re right with the word,” answered Teller, “but wrong in the interpretation. I think that girl was jealous of you. Not because you were with me, but because you had the courage to do what she has probably longed to do for years but has not had the courage.”
Brigit raised her eyebrows and Teller continued: “Sure, there is as much illicit sex here as there is in London or anywhere else. And she most likely has seen it pass before her a thousand times. But she is Chinese and in spite of what you may think, in spite of the reputation of this place, the local people are very proper generally. She might like to spend a night with her boyfriend in a hotel room but she wouldn’t do it. For girls like her, sex comes much later. But you know that surely.”
“We’re not here for sex,” said Brigit.
“Don’t tell me. Tell her,” Teller laughed.
He was standing by the window, holding the white lace curtain to one side and looking down into the street eleven floors below. The throb in his arm had disappeared but his side still ached and as he let the curtain fall he felt the bandage wrapped around his waist with the tips of his fingers.
“Does it hurt?” Brigit asked from the bed where she was sitting. He turned and faced her. “A little,” he answered. “Not much. Though I think I might have overdone it a little today. A bit too soon I mean.”
“You should not have left the hospital. You could have made it worse running around like this.” Suddenly she stood up and pulled the cover of the doubt bed down. “Come on,” she said. “Get in here and rest for a while. It will do you no harm.”
Teller was about to protest but he could see she was standing her ground, hands on her hips. “Don’t argue Jason. There is no reason why you cannot. I can wake you up in a few hours if you like and we can decide then what to do.”
“What are you gong to do while I’m sleeping away here?” he asked. “Sit and watch over me like Florence Nightingale?”
“No thank you. I’ll go and have my hair done next door at Rever. I was planning to do it myself today but now I have the perfect excuse to pamper myself. I might then drop into the coffee shop for a cup of tea and a croissant.”
“Be careful about that Brigit,” warned Teller. “I don’t think anyone should see you and put two and two together.”
“Alright,” she said. “I’ll skip the tea and whatever. You’re probably right. Don might decide to drop in on his way home from work. When I come back I’ll wake you if you’re still asleep and we can have something sent up. Yes?”
Teller stripped down to his undershorts and slipped into the bed. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry to cause you all this trouble. You can leave, you know. Any time you like.”
“I am now,” she smiled and bent quickly and brushed her lips against his. “But I’ll be back.” Picking up her handbag she left the room with the instruction. “You rest, yes.”
Teller pulled the cover up against the brisk air conditioning of the hotel and stared at the cream ceiling. His limbs relaxed and his eyes felt suddenly heavy, but his mind was active as he concentrated on what he had made up his mind to do. Not that there were many details he had to memorise. In fact his plan, if it could be called that, was very simple. In the morning he intended checking out of the hotel and crossing to the other side of the harbour. While the Lee Gardens was good for now he was not confident it would remain secret. It was too close to his home and somehow the physical removal from the island would put him further out of reach of those who might be looking for him.
As soon as he had done that he planned to visit the address at the top of the video purchase receipt. He would pay a surprise call on the Catskinner. It was dangerous but that was as far as his planning went. He knew he should in theory have it all worked out in the minutest detail, but that was not possible. He would have to play it by ear, depending on what he found.
His eyes closed but he forced them open again and stared blankly at the ceiling. They closed again and he did not fight it this time. His breathing slowed and he could hear the air whistling through his nostrils in deeper and deeper breaths until finally even that faded and he was immersed in a blanket of warm cloud which carried him into a deep sleep.
He awoke to a warmth pressed against his ribs and a slight pressure on his chest. It was not unpleasant or uncomfortable, soothing in fact and he fluttered his lids open and turned his head. Brigit lay beside him under the covers, her face close to his, her eyes shut and her short auburn hair arranged in a spiked fringe across her forehead. Her left arm rested on his chest, her open hand lightly touching the bandage on his ribs. He could feel her right arm stretched beside the length of his body, strong, somehow reassuring.
Without intending to he contracted his breast muscles and tensed his stomach turning away to once more look up at the ceiling. The overhead fluorescent lighting had been dimmed but the sliding cupboard doors in the corner were open and the interior light cast a soft ghostly glow into the room. His movement was not sudden but it was registered by Brigit who inhaled a sharp breath and stretched languidly, sensuously in slow motion.
Her right hand clenched and her left arm slid down his chest onto his stomach, flat and open on his crotch. He twitched, relaxed and twitched again. Fully awake he felt her hand react slightly but it did not move away. Again, he shuddered and his scrotum tensed. At the same time he brought his left arm up behind her back and put his hand on her shoulder, gently pressing her closer. Slowly her hand moved back and forth and his own breathing quickened. He slid his hand across the bra strap and down her naked side to her hip where her panties elastic cut into the skin.
As he slipped his fingers under the band her left hand glided up to the end of his undershorts and her little and third fingers dipped beneath. For half a minute he lay motionless feeling his arousal grow and sensing her steady but quickening breath. He closed his eyes too and pushed his hand under the cotton garment gently but firmly caressing the smooth rounded flesh. He turned to her and kissed her lightly on the lips and screamed inside when she responded moistly and took him full in her hand.
She buried her face into his neck. “Jason,” she murmured.
They clung together and when they came ten minutes later, sweaty and impulsively she arched her head back into the pillow and sighed a low sad-sounding moan. Side by side they lay naked on the top of the bed, the glow from the single bulb in the cupboard throwing a silver glint on their damp bodies. In silence they drifted until once more, tenderly they joined and made love slowly, carefully but passionately, their lips exploring and their hearts pounding.
When again they separated he looked across at her and touching her lips with his forefinger he said: “I’ve missed you. More than I realised.”
“Don’t Jason,” she whispered. “Please don’t say any more.”
Outside it had been dark for some time and had they been aware of it they would have noted the rain had returned, beating the dust and dirt from the buildings and washing it along the gutters into the underground drains. On a normal Thursday evening Hysan Avenue where the Lee Gardens Hotel was situated would be alive and bustling with taxis and private sedans cruising in busy continuity while pedestrians came and went from the crowded shopping precincts and the nearly cinema.
But at eight o’clock on this night the traffic on the road was lighter and the sidewalks were almost deserted, save for a few brave souls not prepared to give up their sightseeing or not yet ready to go indoors to the dry but noise of the bars and discos that would in another two to three hours fill to overflowing.
Neither Teller nor Brigit were attracted often to the strobe lights of the entertainment establishments that had proliferated in the late seventies and then blossomed into huge drink and hostess palaces by the mid-eighties, preferring separately the sedate relaxation and enjoyment of pursuits such as films and friendly home gatherings and dinner parties.
With their own companions of the time they had experienced a few occasions of high octane nightlife, once even joining tables and dancing until the early hours of the morning, but they were not regular customers as so many of the younger set were.
And Hong Kong had a very large young generation. Well over half the population was in the age group that revelled to the music of Wham!, Duran Duran, Bob Marley, KC and the Sunshine Band, Prince and the electric Michael Jackson.
But like everything else that was changing. Population growth was decreasing and in a few years would be well below one per cent. At the same time emigration was increasing. And people were living longer in a territory which itself was thought to have a shorter and shorter life expectancy. By 1997 the demise of the ballrooms, hardly helped by the new communist masters of Hong Kong’s destiny, would be unstoppable. Life would certainly never be the same again and it was the young professionals who would suffer most.
At least that was a growing belief.
The vast majority of low and even lower income earners who were most concerned with making enough to survive, would be able to adapt to the changes foreseen without their existences being turned upside down. Life would continue for them. Life would also continue for the wealthy who would be able to settle elsewhere and see to their families’ wellbeing in societies not threatened by a political time-bomb that could be triggered by events outside their direct control or influence. They either had passports to freedom or contacts or sheer cash to rent that freedom. It was the growing sandwich class that stood to lose the most. The professionals who were raised in the belief of Westminster freedoms, but who possessed neither the travel document nor the influence to guarantee the pursuit of those beliefs. They were the ones who had nowhere to go, no control over their futures, no choice but to accept and try to cope with whatever changes came their way. It was they who the so-called democrats claimed had been sold out by the British when deciding on the form of post 1997 Hong Kong.
Yet it was these same people on which so much depended to see Hong Kong through the next decade. Some of the most influential served in the Legislative Council and it was once more to that arena which Teller and Brigit had turned as they lay drawing on cigarettes in the pale light which illuminated the room and blotted out the wet gloom of the outside world.
“Your security friend will be angry that you deceived him,” Brigit said. “Will he come looking for you?”
“I’m sure of it,” Teller replied. “He knows I know more than he does, and he considers I’m in the way. He has to get me out of the way.”
Brigit reached across him and stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. “Do you think he’ll come here then?”
“Soon enough he’ll start on the hotels and this one won’t be too far from the top of the list.”
“What can we do then? Where can we go?”
Teller told her of his plan to check into the Hongkong Hotel in Kowloon in the morning.
“What good will that do?” she asked. “You said yourself he’ll be checking them all. He won’t miss that one.”
“I’ve thought of that,” he replied. He had also considered out of the way motels, dingy guest houses and other less obvious haunts. However, he had rejected all. The accountant would have them checked as well and a gwai lo, now two gwai los, would stand out like the proverbial tree in the desert. “The only way is to move in their without the hotel staff knowing it.”
“How on earth can we do that,” Brigit enquired doubtfully. “We have to register.”
“Someone has to,” he corrected. “But it needn’t be us in person. We have to find someone who can register as the paying guest but then pass the keys on. We’ll be there, but according to the records we won’t be. The guest will look nothing like us. Those who come looking will not find anyone who resembles me or you staying there.”
“Who do you have in mind?”
He put his own cigarette out and sat hunched on the side of the bed. “I don’t know yet. But it has to be tomorrow. For all intents and purposes we have to vanish.”
It was left in this state of indecision while Brigit luxuriated in a long warm bath topped with green bubbles courtesy of the hotel. When she emerged half an hour later she looked radiant, her skin shining and loosely draped in a white woollen robe, and her hair brushed back.
She smiled and said: “I think I can solve our problem with the hotel. I know someone who can do exactly what we want.”
However, when he pressed her for details she just laughed. “No. I’m not going to tell you. This is my contribution. But you can trust me completely,. There is no way we’ll be linked.”
She came to him and linked her arms around his neck and looked into his eyes. “I’m awful I know, but that bath has left me tingly all over. I feel sexy.”
“And you look sexy too, and gorgeous,” said Teller, easing the robe from her shoulders. As it fell to the floor he picked her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. “We can worry about tomorrow later,” he said. “Right now I want you. I want to make love to you over and over and over. I lost you once before. I’m not going to let you go again.”
She hungrily pulled him down to her, filling his senses with her scent, and pressed her nakedness to him.
“You won’t have to my darling,” she said. “Nothing will separate us now.”