Hong Kong Read Free Page A

gone to grad school, then got into the high-tech business world in Silicon Valley. When he was named consul general to Hong Kong two years ago, Fortune magazine said he was worth more than a billion dollars. Of course, he was also a generous donor to political causes.
    Maybe he should call Tiger, ask him out to dinner. Then again ... He decided to wait another day. If Tiger didn't call, he would call him.
    On the second page of the paper was a column devoted to a murder that apparently happened last night. The body was discovered just before press time. Jake recognized the victim's name—China Bob Chan—and read the article with a sinking feeling. As the key figure in a campaign finance scandal in Washington, China Bob had been getting a lot of press in the United States of late, most of it the kind of coverage that an honest man could do without. Chan's untimely demise due to lead poisoning was going to go over like a lead brick on Capitol Hill.
    On the first page of the second section of the newspaper Jake was pleasantly surprised to find a photo of Callie with two of the other Americans on the seminar faculty, along with a three-paragraph write-up. Amazingly, the reporter even spelled Callie's name correctly. He carefully folded that page to keep.
    All in all, Jake thought, the newspaper looked exactly like what it was, a news sheet published under the watchful eye of a totalitarian government intolerant of criticism or dissent. Not a word about why the PLA troops were choking the streets, standing at every street corner, every shop entrance, every public facility, nothing but the bare facts about China Bob's murder, not even an op-ed piece about the implications of his death vis-a-vis Chinese-U.S. relations.
    Jake's attention was captured by several columns of foreign sports scores on the next-to-the-last page. Australian football received more column inches than the American professional teams did, Jake noted, grinning.
    He tossed the paper down and stretched. Ahhhhh ...
    Someone was knocking on the door to the room.
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    "Just a minute!"
    Jake checked his reflection in the mirror over the dresser—no need to scandalize the maid—then opened the door a crack.
    A man in a business suit stood there, a westerner... Tommy Carmellini.
    "Come in." Jake held the door open. "I'm not going very fast this morning, I'm afraid."
    "Have you seen the morning paper?"
    "China Bob?"
    "Yes."
    "I saw the story."
    "It's true. Chan's as dead as a man can get."
    "Let me take a shower, then we'll go downstairs for some breakfast."
    "Okay." Tommy Carmellini sat down in the only chair and opened his attache case.
    When Jake came out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, Carmellini was repacking his sweep gear in the attache case. "No bugs," he told Jake.
    'The phone?"
    "Impossible to say. I have no idea how much impedance and resistance on the line are normal."
    "Okay."
    "How did you know the story was true?"
    "Alas, I met China Bob last night a minute or two after he had joined the ranks of the recently departed. He was warm as toast and the hole in his head was brand-new. There was a spent 7.65-millimeter cartridge under a table a few feet away."
    "Who shot him?"
    "I didn't. That's all I know for sure."
    "Do you have the tape on you?"
    Carmellini sat and removed it from his sock. He passed it to Jake Grafton, who examined it cursorily and put it in a trouser pocket.
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    After they had ordered breakfast in the hotel restaurant, the two men talked in general terms about the city in which they found themselves. Jake told Carmellini that he and Callie had met in Hong Kong, in 1972. "Haven't been back since," Jake said, "which was a mistake, I guess. It's a great city, and we should have come every now and then to watch it evolve and grow."
    Carmellini was only politely interested. "How come," he asked the admiral, "they sent me over here to help you out? You're not CIA."
    "You sure about that?" Jake Grafton asked.