Typhoon Read Free Page A

listen to me. I am sorry for what I did. Tell them it was a mistake. I beg you to tell them you have resolved your problem. Of course I am not who I say I am. I can see that you are an intelligent person and that you have worked this out. But I am asking you to deal with me correctly. I am not a normal person who swims across the inlet in the middle of the night. I am not an immigrant looking for a job. I do not want citizenship or refugee status or anything more or less than the attention of the British governor in Hong Kong. I am carrying with me information of vital importance to Western governments. That is all that I can tell you. So please, sir, do not answer that radio.”
    “I have to answer.” Anderson was surprised to hear a note of conciliation in his voice. The encounter had taken on a surreal quality. How many Chinese mainlanders pitched up on a beach at 6 a.m. talking about David Rose at the Hook in fluent, near-accentless English? And how many of them claimed to have political intelligence that required a meeting with Governor Chris Patten?
    “What kind of information?” he asked, amazed that he had not already jammed Wang’s wrists into a set of PlastiCuffs and marched him up the beach. Again the voice said, “One Zero, this is Nine. Please go ahead, over,” and Anderson looked back across the water at the pale contours of China, wondering what the hell to do. A fishing boat was edging out into the bay. Wang then turned his head to stare directly into Anderson’s eyes. He wanted to convey the full weight of responsibility which now befell him.
    “I have information about a very senior figure in Beijing,” he said. “I have information about a possible high-level defection from the Chinese government.”
     
     
3
LENNOX
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Joe Lennox left Jardine House at seven o’clock that evening, nodded discreetly at a French investment banker as he sank two vodka and tonics at the Captain’s Bar of the Mandarin Oriental, hailed a cab on Connaught Road, made his way through the rush-hour traffic heading west into the Mid-Levels and walked through the door of Rico’s at precisely 8:01 p.m. It was a gift. He was always on time.
    I was sitting towards the back of the restaurant drinking a Tsingtao and reading a syndicated article in the South China Morning Post about the prospect of a Labour victory in the forthcoming UK elections. A ginger-haired Canadian woman at the next table was eating crayfish and throwing out dirty looks because of the cigarette I was smoking. When she coughed and waved her hand in front of her face once too often, I stubbed it out. The air conditioning was on high and it felt as though everyone in the room was shivering.
    Joe looked the way Joe always looked in those days: fit and undiminished, his characteristically inscrutable expression becoming more animated as he found my eyes across the room. At first glance, I suppose he was no different from any other decent-looking Jardine Johnnie in a Welsh & Jeffries suit, the sort who moves millions every day at Fleming’s and Merrill Lynch. That, I suppose, was the whole point about Joe Lennox. That was the reason they picked him.
    “Cold in here,” he said, but he took his jacket off when he sat down. “What are you reading?”
    I told him and he ventured a mildly critical opinion of the columnist—a former Tory cabinet minister—who had written the piece. (The next day I went through some cuttings and saw that the same grandee had been responsible for a couple of Patten-savaging articles in the British press, which probably explained Joe’s antagonism.) He ordered a Tsingtao for himself and watched as the Canadian woman put her knife and fork together after finishing the crayfish.
    “Been here long?” he asked.
    “About ten minutes.”
    He was wearing a dark blue shirt and his forearms were tanned from walking in the New Territories with Isabella the previous weekend. He took out a packet of cigarettes and