The Year of Dangerous Loving
John Gordon Davis
An enthralling tale of courtroom drama, blackmail and high adventure in Hong Kong in the last year of British rule, from the bestselling author of Hold My Hand I’m Dying and Roots of Outrage.Adventure, romance, political insight and dramatic locations – ingredients that have established John Gordon Davis as a major name in international adventure thrillers. Now he has added his own experience as a lawyer in Hong Kong to create an action-packed tale, filled with powerful courtroom scenes, set against the dramatic background of a city preparing for political upheaval.Al Hargreave, Hong Kong’s Director of Public Prosecutions, is taking a break in nearby Macao to recover from the collapse of his marriage when he meets Olga, a beautiful Russian. Almost before he knows what’s happening, they are planning a new life together – the only problem is that Olga’s pimp has other ideas.Suddenly Olga is snatched away, and Al is presented with an impossible dilemma. Either he commits professional suicide by intentionally losing a case against a Russian Mafia boss, or he gives up any chance of happiness, and leaves Olga to suffer an unknown fate at the hands of her captors in Moscow.
JOHN GORDON DAVIS
THE YEAR OF
DANGEROUS LOVING
Copyright (#ulink_d0145220-bcc9-5bc1-a145-e107c6033892)
HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1997
Copyright © John Gordon Davis 1997
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com
John Gordon Davis asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007574377
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2014 ISBN: 9780008119331
Version: 2014-12-19
Dedication (#ulink_89a3913a-dad5-58e8-b721-918a9be456a4)
To Buck and Diana Buchanan
Contents
Cover (#u49856729-e065-5518-ae40-b1e17dc95e79)
Title Page (#u6c1b832b-3233-599a-b1fc-ff737a681b9b)
Copyright (#ulink_3c91f75a-bca4-5e96-a495-ea41ea3be9c8)
Dedication (#ulink_3e3de18e-93c4-5389-bb05-731ef706b5f7)
Part One
Chapter 1 (#ulink_f3e060db-1906-5b3a-a3fb-130530276b16)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_10810d0d-ba67-5e67-b484-1bb85b86de52)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_54b97c1b-85ea-5c5b-b863-e741aa4d2e8e)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_98193ba7-6f36-5135-8cc6-4b9a4c2a485e)
Part Two
Chapter 5 (#ulink_af86a173-831d-5e51-9861-b09186ab1192)
Chapter 6 (#ulink_78ca3524-2e4b-5e9b-8b38-4c0449b4c684)
Chapter 7 (#ulink_91699544-5978-55b7-9a48-7c74401fe73b)
Chapter 8 (#ulink_1564671f-6dfd-598a-a78d-9f69880e024b)
Chapter 9 (#ulink_63290005-d131-553f-9a19-f4ca2090b09e)
Chapter 10 (#ulink_ee746d2a-8c5c-5805-b148-d9717d19d89e)
Chapter 11 (#ulink_d312f791-da7a-5a4b-bc7f-fc9f97e648eb)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Three
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Four
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Five
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Six
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Seven
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Eight
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Part One (#ulink_0c4e3239-c652-5cac-9f9c-c19cda8a3b93)
1 (#ulink_9f34849c-877d-57e5-a6ca-ef28a5abf62c)
‘Send a policeman to arrest me – I’ve just shot my husband!’
That was the dramatic announcement Elizabeth Hargreave made when she telephoned Jake McAdam at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club that hot Friday night. McAdam thought she must be drunk and he asked to speak to Hargreave.
‘He’s driven himself to hospital,’ Liz said, and hung up.
Then McAdam took it seriously. He went back to the bar and asked Max Popodopolous to go to her immediately and keep her away from the police while he went to look for Hargreave.
McAdam traced him at the Jockey Club Clinic. Ian Bradshaw was in attendance, and said that Hargreave would be all right: the bullet missed the lungs.
‘Thank God for that. How did you get involved in this?’ McAdam asked. Ian Bradshaw was an expensive surgeon who did not hang around casualty departments of hospitals.
‘Called me at the yacht club – he refused to let a government doctor treat him, he doesn’t want any official reports. You can’t see him, he’s still under anaesthetic.’
‘Did he tell you how it happened?’
‘Says it was an accident. Gun went off unintentionally. Don’t say anything to the police. Nor to the press.’
‘Of course not. But the press are going to love this.’
‘How embarrassing,’ Ian said. ‘Did you know the marriage was rocky?’
‘No.’ McAdam added in Liz’s defence: ‘She sounded as if she’d been drinking.’
‘Al had been drinking too. We all drink too much in this town but we don’t wave guns at our spouses. He doesn’t play around, does he?’
‘No,’ McAdam said, ‘nor does Liz.’
‘What will the police do about this?’
‘Nothing, if it was an accident.’
‘But pointing a gun at somebody is a crime, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but it’s the sort of thing that can happen in a marital row. The police can’t do anything if Alistair doesn’t lay a charge – which he certainly won’t; he’ll want it hushed up.’
‘I hope you’re right, I like Liz. And Alistair. Amazing, isn’t it, what can go on in a marital bedroom without anybody else suspecting? Just goes to show, marriage can be one of the most stressful of undertakings. Well, I’ll go’n finish my dinner. You can see him in the morning.’
McAdam then telephoned Hargreave’s apartment. Max answered.
‘Okay, she’s gone to bed with a sleeping pill, the neighbours have been looking after her. I’ve fended off the cops, told them she’s not in her sound and sober senses and can’t make a statement.’
‘Any press around?’
‘Somebody alerted them; they’ve been clamouring at the door. I fended them off too.’
‘And what’s the scene-of-crime look like?’
‘The bullet hit the book Alistair was reading before hitting his chest. Another bullet-hole in the wall above the bed.’
‘Jesus, she fired two shots?’
‘After the first shot Al grabbed the gun, they struggled for possession of it and it went off a second time, hitting the wall.’
‘Al was reading?’
‘Apparently he was lying in bed, pretending to read, ignoring her. They’d been quarrelling.’
‘Did you find out what about?’
‘Not really, she was crying. Bits about how infuriating Al is, how he used to be life and soul of the party, now he doesn’t want to go anywhere, just work work work, et cetera.’
‘So she pulls a gun on him? There’s more to it than that.’
‘Oh, she’s convinced he’s seeing another woman, that’s all I got out of her before she passed out. She was furious because he was drinking in Wanchai this afternoon – she found lipstick on his ear. And he disgraced himself at the Chief Justice’s dinner party by falling asleep. They were both the worse for drink probably, Al’s been hitting the bottle of late – overwork. Do you think there’s another woman involved?’
McAdam sighed. ‘No. Al’s too honest a soul to lead a double life. Too much of a worrier.’
‘But how did he come by the lipstick?’
‘In Wanchai? Easy. I’ve come by a bit of it myself down there over the years. He probably picked it up dancing.’
‘Al dance? In Wanchai? Come on. Anyway,’ Max sighed, ‘I’ll spend the night here to make sure she doesn’t blab to the police when she wakes up. Will you look after Al in the morning?’
‘Sure, first thing.’
‘And Jake? Don’t go back to the club now, you’ll only be asked a lot of questions by the press boys.’
History is confused on the earlier events of that afternoon, avid gossip making hearsay more confounded.
One version of the story has Alistair Hargreave carried shoulder-high into the Pussycat Bar in Wanchai by the police after the jury returned a verdict of guilty in the big heroin case he had just successfully prosecuted; another is that the police even instructed the manager to get the bar-girls out of their beds to entertain the Director of Public Prosecutions because Wanchai does not warm up until night; another is that he was so drunk that he took several off to bed at once; yet another is that his wife found him in bed with one of them and shot him in flagrante delicto.
None of this is correct. The truth is that, after the jury returned their verdict, Hargreave went with the police investigation team to have a Chinese meal in Wanchai to celebrate; that a good deal of booze was drunk and that later they adjourned to a nearby bar called the Pussycat to have just one more; that the place was jumping, despite the comparatively early hour, because a shipload of American tourists had arrived; that Hargreave met some of his journalist friends there and had several drinks; and that he somehow acquired some lipstick on his ear whilst successfully resisting the blandishments of a bar-girl. When he finally emerged into the garish Wanchai sunset, he couldn’t remember where he’d parked his car and ended up taking a taxi home. His wife was very angry because he was late for a dinner party, because he had been drinking in Wanchai, because he was drunk, because he had lost the car, and she became angrier still when she discovered the lipstick. They arrived in a borrowed car at the Chief Justice’s party when everybody was already seated, and Hargreave promptly fell asleep, because he had been up most of the previous night preparing his closing address to the jury. He had to be kicked awake several times before his wife took him home in disgrace: and then, ten minutes later, two shots rang out.
The next morning the front-page headline of the South China Morning Post read: LEADING LAWYER SHOT.
Mr Alistair Hargreave QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, last night drove himself to the Jockey Club Hospital suffering from a gunshot wound to his chest.
Friends immediately rushed to the Hargreave home where a spokesman for the family, Mr Max Popodopolous, also a lawyer, refused to allow Mrs Elizabeth Hargreave to answer questions from either the press or the police. At the hospital another spokesman for the family, Mr Jake McAdam, told both police and the press to ‘get lost’.
Police enquiries continue.
Mr Alistair Hargreave is a former Commodore of the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, a fine tennis player, and a leading member of the legal community. Last year his yacht, Elizabeth, won the Hong Kong–Manila race under his captaincy in record time in very bad weather …
The front pages of the Hong Kong Standard and the Eastern Express were in similar dramatic vein. Hargreave had them all on his bed when McAdam arrived the next morning.
‘Thanks, pal,’ Hargreave said, ‘for pulling me out of the soup. Max too.’
‘How you feeling?’
‘Just a flesh wound, Ian says I can go home next week. Home …?’ He snorted softly.
‘You can stay with me,’ McAdam said, ‘until this blows over, whatever it is.’
‘Thanks, but I don’t think it’ll be necessary. Just before the fireworks she announced she was going home to the States forthwith.’
McAdam sat down in a chair. ‘What’s the story?’
Hargreave slapped the newspapers. ‘The police were here earlier. Told them to take a powder, it was an accident. They didn’t believe me but there’s nothing they can do if I won’t testify. She won’t blab anything to the cops, will she?’
‘No, I’ve just spoken to Max on the phone; Liz is all weepy and remorseful. The cops have called again and Max fended them off.’
‘Remorseful?’ Hargreave closed his eyes. ‘What’s Max talking to her about?’ He shook his head. ‘No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to hear what a shit I am.’
‘You’re not, you’re a hell of a nice guy.’
‘Sure.’ Hargreave was silent a moment, then: ‘Old Liz, you know, she’s not such a bad old stick. In fact she’s a very good old stick. She’s just unhappy.’
And she’s not an old stick, McAdam thought, she’s damned attractive. He waited, then said: ‘Why’s she unhappy?’
Hargreave sighed. ‘Don’t want to talk about it. You playing marriage counsellor?’
‘You’ve got a bullet wound – we don’t want you to get any more.’
Hargreave sighed again, eyes still closed. ‘Accident. Won’t happen again.’ There was a silence; then he continued with reluctance, ‘She’s unhappy because the marriage has been going downhill for several years. And that’s my fault.’
Downhill for years? The Hargreaves had always presented a solid matrimonial front to the world. McAdam waited again, then asked, ‘How is it your fault?’
There was another silence. Then: ‘Oh Lord, how can one summarize marriage failure in a sentence? Don’t want to talk about it.’ He sighed. ‘It’s my fault because I’m bored with life here, because I don’t want to have anything to do with the bullshit Hong Kong social scene any more. So she’s bored, because I’m boring. The marriage is therefore boring. Worn out. Don’t do anything together any more. And that’s all I want to say.’
‘You’re not boring.’
Hargreave snorted softly. ‘I even bore myself. I’m bored, Jake. I’m bored with the Law. Been there, done that, every case is just more of the same old guff. I’m bored with lawyers and most of all I’m bored with His boring Lordship. I’m bored with witnesses, with juries. I’m bored with Hong Kong.’ He sighed. ‘About the only thing I’m not bored with is booze.’ There was a pause: then before McAdam could say anything Hargreave continued: ‘What else is there at our age? Got all the money we need – even if we’d like more — but we’ve got enough. We’ve got the success we strove for. So what else is there?’
‘Climbing the Andes? Sailing round the world in your yacht? Buying that ranch and raising those cattle?’
‘But that’s several years down the line, till I’ve recovered from my last stock market misadventure. Meanwhile I have to soldier on.’ He grimaced, eyes closed: ‘And that’s why old Liz pulled the gun on me. To shake me up, give me a fright. It went off, that’s all there is to it. Don’t want to talk about it.’
Like hell that’s all there is to it, McAdam thought. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘boredom happens in marriage.’
Hargreave did not open his eyes. ‘Does it? Or just happens to me? I think it just happens to me. Out there all the other guys who’ve been married twenty years are still happily screwing their wives every night. And old Liz, you know, she’s a very attractive woman.’
Oh dear, McAdam thought – so this is it? He ventured: ‘I doubt all those married men out there are still doing it every night, Al, I was married once myself.’
‘And evidently I’ve got unhealthy appetites. Like booze and gambling.’ He paused. ‘How can you make love to a woman who’s always fed up with you? Always telling you what a washout you were at the dinner party last night, you don’t tell funny stories any more, all you talked about was politics.’
McAdam wasn’t sure what to say. ‘Well, maybe you should spend more time together, take her out for a few romantic dinners.’
‘Bit late for that – don’t feel very romantic with a bullet in my chest.’
‘But you love her.’ He added: ‘Don’t you?’
‘Ask me another one. Right now I’m angry, mortified. Whole town knows. Wish the earth would swallow me up.’
‘Do you think she loves you?’
Hargreave snorted again. ‘She’s too angry with me for that. Fed up with me. This fed up –’ He indicated his chest – ‘even though it was an accident. When people do that, raise their hand to strike, or pick up a weapon, it means they’d really like to do it, even if they stop themselves.’ He sighed grimly. ‘I almost wish she’d had an affair, maybe that would have made me less intolerable.’
‘You told her to have an affair? Last night?’
‘No. She accused me of having an affair. Oh,’ he shook his head, ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Utterly untrue. God, who with? Friends’ wives? Don’t want a guilty conscience as well as being bored.’
McAdam hesitated: ‘Apparently she found some lipstick on your collar?’
Hargreave groaned and opened his eyes. ‘Oh Christ. That was just some Wanchai whore trying to be persuasive. Nothing happened, didn’t even buy her a drink. The cops were with me, they’d bear me out.’ He closed his eyes again. ‘But Liz was furious, yes, accused me of having it off down there, accused me of all kinds of womanizing for years.’ He sighed angrily. ‘Utterly untrue.’
‘So what happened with Elizabeth? You told her you were innocent. Then?’
Hargreave sighed. ‘Furious with me for being late for the CJ’s dinner party. And drunk. I wasn’t really drunk, just exhausted after the case. Fell asleep at dinner. Snored, apparently. Gave me hell coming home, particularly about the lipstick. I refused to fight, went to bed, started to read while she ranted on about Wanchai whores. Next thing she’s standing at the end of the bed with the gun shouting “Answer me!” Then, bang! Bullet knocks the book out of my hands and hits my chest. I sat up with a certain alacrity. Couldn’t believe it.’
‘Jesus. So?’
‘So I leap off the bed, spouting blood. Grabbed the gun. We wrestle for it. Thing goes off again, punches a hole in the wall. She runs to the telephone and calls you. Drama. Then the neighbours come rushing in. While I stagger out and drive myself to hospital. Now the whole fucking town knows.’ He slapped the newspapers. ‘What did she say to you?’
McAdam hesitated, then said, ‘“Send a policeman to arrest me, I’ve just shot my husband.”’
Hargreave groaned. ‘Drama. She knew the cops weren’t necessary – that gun’s got a light trigger.’
‘I didn’t know you had a gun.’
‘Hangover from our days in Kenya. When we were seconded there ten years ago I bought a gun in case of burglars. It’s quite kosher, fully licensed.’
‘Where is it normally kept?’
‘My bedside table. Didn’t notice her get it, she was striding up and down giving me a bollocking.’ Hargreave sighed. ‘She didn’t intend to shoot me – just being dramatic.’
‘Okay, but this doesn’t look good from a police point of view. She fires, then she struggles to retain possession of the gun? That would sound like serious intent to the jury.’
Hargreave took a deep, tense breath. ‘No jury, no cops. Natural reaction to struggle over a weapon once you’ve produced it to be dramatic. I just hope she goes back to America and cools off.’
‘Well, when I spoke to Max an hour ago he said she was packing her bags.’
Hargreave opened his eyes and raised his head. ‘Really?’
‘But it might be bravado. Want me to go around there and pour oil on troubled waters?’
Hargreave looked at him, then slumped back. ‘No,’ he said tremulously. ‘It’s for the best. Let her get out of this bloody awful town for a while …’
2 (#ulink_354dcef0-0f2b-5717-985b-8384dd8ec32c)
In the Hong Kong summer your skin is oily, your hair is oily, the sun beats down oily maddening hot on this teeming city on the South China coast: on the frantic money-making, the towering business blocks and the apartments crowding along the manmade shores and up the jungled mountains; on the myriad of resettlement blocks and the squatter shacks, beating down on the sweeping swathes of elevated highways and byways and flyovers and underpasses, on the buildings going up on the mountains that are chopped down to make more land for teeming people, on the mass of factories and the shops, the jampacked traffic carbon-monoxidizing everywhere, the narrow backstreets and ladderstreets and alleyways, the jostling sidewalks, and the signboards fighting each other up to the sky. It blazes down upon the mauve islands and mountains surrounding the teeming harbour, with its container ships and freighters from around the world, and its cargo junks and sampans and jampacked ferries, beating down on the noise and work and money-making. But it is China’s money-making that comes first and foremost in this clamorous, anachronistic, capitalistic, British colony on the crazy-making China coast: Hong Kong is Communist China’s capitalist colony – it is only Great Britain’s in name. Hong Kong is a very unusual, dramatic place.
And this year it was even more dramatic because the question on everybody’s mind, the question everybody had to answer was: ‘Shall I go or shall I stay? Shall I leave this crazy place and start life over again, or shall I take a chance on China and trust in the Lord?’
Ten years ago they had trusted in the Joint Declaration – in which Great Britain and China agreed that ‘only the flag will change’ when the territory reverted in 1997 – ten years ago they had trusted in China’s avowed policy of ‘One Country, Two Systems’, trusted in the internationally-binding agreement that the new Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong that would come into being would be autonomous and governed democratically, that British law would continue to apply, trusted in the Basic Law which China had drawn up enshrining these principles. Ten years ago there had been hope, and that hope had got stronger when Communism collapsed in Russia and eastern Europe, stronger yet when Premier Deng of China declared that ‘to become rich is glorious’. In those days even Alistair Hargreave, who trusted Communists only as far as he could kick them, had resolved to stay after 1997. And then had come the massacre in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, where thousands of Chinese were gunned down by the People’s Liberation Army tanks for demanding democracy; Hong Kong’s hope was trampled into the blood of Tiananmen.
‘Communism is dead,’ Hargreave had said. ‘Long live the fucking Communist Party!’
There was little hope after Tiananmen; thousands of business people left Hong Kong for Canada, Australia, England, America. And now, in that long, hot, maddening summer of 1995, Great Britain was timidly trying to enforce the Joint Declaration by holding the first fully democratic elections for the Legislative Council, and China had announced that she would destroy the new Council when she took over, Joint Declaration or no. There is no democratic nonsense in the paradise of the People’s Republic of China and there would be none in the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong: there would be no independent judiciary and no freedom of the press either, Basic Law or no Basic Law, United Nations or no United Nations.
It was a bad time for Hong Kong, that long hot summer of 1995. Shall I go or shall I stay?
It was a bad summer for Alistair Hargreave, although it had nothing to do with China’s treachery. Within a week of being shot by Elizabeth he was back at work, showing a brave face, but he was very embarrassed. Lord, he hated the solicitude, the polite circumlocution, he hated people feeling sorry for him: most of them believed that Liz had shot him deliberately, that he had come by the lipstick the usual way. He went to work early, came home late and did more work with the help of whisky. He declined all social invitations. Occasionally he had to meet Jake McAdam or Max or Bernie Champion for a drink, and even those encounters were embarrassing: these guys were his closest friends and expected him to open up to them, but Hargreave did not want to open up to anybody, he wanted to turn his face to the wall. As they said, there were plenty of women out there who would be pleased with his attentions, but he could not bring himself to go through the bullshit involved; he would feel a fraud. And, oh yes, he missed Elizabeth, even though he knew the marriage was a certifiable failure now. Sometimes, in the long hot nights in the empty apartment he considered taking some leave and flying to California to see if they could try again: but in the cold light of hungover dawn he knew it couldn’t work. Finally, towards the end of that long bad summer he decided what to do: pull himself together, stop feeling sorry for himself, take early retirement after he had had his next annual leave and get the hell out of this bloody embarrassing town whether he could afford it or not, and start life anew somewhere. He felt better after he had made that decision. Then the letter from her Californian lawyers arrived.
It was the usual hostile stuff that lawyers prefer, advising him that they were instructed by Elizabeth Amelia Hargreave to institute divorce proceedings against him in the Supreme Court of Hong Kong, reminding him that in terms of the law of California, where the marriage was solemnized, the said Elizabeth Hargreave was entitled to half the matrimonial assets. The grounds for divorce were his ‘mental cruelty’, his ‘persistent refusal to lead a normal social life’, his ‘unnecessary dedication to work at the expense of his home life’, his ‘excessive drinking and gambling’, his ‘embarrassing attentions to other women’, his ‘unreasonable withholding of conjugal rights’ and his ‘mediocre performance of same’. No mention of her shooting him. Fuller particulars of his cruelty would be provided in the petition that would be served on him shortly: meanwhile it would expedite matters and reduce expenses if he would indicate whether he intended to contest the action.
Lord, it hurt him. And mortified him. But no way would he contest it – Unreasonable withholding of conjugal rights and his mediocre performance of same … No way could he wash his dirty linen in public; no way was he going to stand in the witness box and argue about any of it, let alone his lousy sexual performance. Anything rather than that – let Elizabeth take him to the cleaners, let the divorce slip quietly through undefended, just let the earth swallow him up, let him resign his post immediately, fold his tents and steal out of this bloody awful town.
That letter arrived on a hot Saturday at the end of that long, tormenting summer, six weeks after Hargreave came out of hospital. He had intended venturing out socially for the first time since the shooting incident, and had arranged to meet Bernie Champion at the horse races in Happy Valley, the first meeting of the season: but the letter changed that. He could not face his friends with that letter ringing in his ears, nor the yacht club crowd; but neither could he face the empty apartment. So that left only one place to go, to get the hell out of himself, out of this embarrassing town: Macao.
And so it was that Alistair Hargreave, on impulse, took a taxi down to the hydrofoil jetty and boarded a vessel to the Portuguese colony of Macao, forty miles away, on the other side of the River Pearl: and his life took a very serious turn.
Many events in life are mere coincidences, in that something happens only because something else has just happened to happen. Had the lawyer’s letter not arrived that very day Hargreave would have gone to the races in Happy Valley, not to Macao, and he would not have made a fistful of money by betting recklessly on greyhound races – he knew nothing about greyhounds and didn’t bet on animals whose form he had not studied. Had that letter not arrived that Saturday he would not have got drunk in the process of making a fistful of silly money and he would not have gone on to the clamorous floating casino to blow it. Hargreave, being a cautious, serious gambler, believed in quitting when he was ahead, and furthermore he eschewed games of pure chance. Had he not gone to the casino he would not have found himself throwing silly dice at the crap table, winning more money, and standing next to the beautiful Olga Romalova. Had the letter from Elizabeth’s lawyer not arrived that very Saturday, had Hargreave gone to Macao the following weekend to drown his sorrows, even if he had ended up at the very same floating casino, he would not have met Olga Romalova, for her work permit expired that week and she would have returned to Russia. Had he not been winning silly money, the beautiful Olga would not have followed his bets, jumping up and down in excitement and planting a big fragrant kiss on his cheek. Had she not done that he would not have rubbed the dice against her for luck and felt her magnificent femininity as she hugged him in delight when he won yet again, he would not have been emboldened to invite her for a drink. Had he not done that, his life would have been very different.
Despite all the whisky inside him Hargreave was surprised that she accepted: he had presumed that elsewhere in the clamorous casino was a husband or a boyfriend about to reclaim her. When, at the noisy bar, she looked into his eyes and said she was totally unattached, Hargreave thought it was his lucky day. What a beautiful, magnificent girl … So when he invited her to dinner, thinking that beat-up Alistair Hargreave had made a conquest, her reply disappointed him greatly.
‘Thank you, that would be very nice, but I am a singer at a night-club so we must first go there so you can arrange to take me out.’
Bitterly disappointed, was Hargreave. A prostitute – what kind of night-club singer can you ‘arrange’ to take out? So it wasn’t his lucky night – it wasn’t true love after all. A prostitute, a smashing girl like this … But night-clubs, and prostitutes, were simply not Hargreave’s scene – he had not been to bed with a bar-girl in twenty years. So he mumbled an excuse and watched her walk away to work with regret.
It was watching her walk away that did it: those long golden legs, her silk dress sliding over her beautiful buttocks, her tumult of blonde hair down her back, the dazzling smile and cheery wave she threw over her shoulder: she was pure sexuality. If he had not watched her walk away, if he had shrugged off his alcoholic disappointment and gone back to the crap table, his life would have been very different: but for the next hour, while he drank another row of whiskies midst the Chinese clamour, that image of her sexuality steamed in his mind. Maybe she really was a singer, not a prostitute? Maybe arranging to take her out meant nothing more than advising the manager she was going to be absent for a while, perhaps it simply meant rescheduling her performance? And when he finally scraped together his drunken resolve and set out into the teeming Macao waterfront to look for her, coincidence continued to play a vital part, for he did not know which night-club she worked in. He could have wasted hours looking in the Troubadour or the China Nite or the Pearl, and given up: but he went first to the Heavenly Tranquillity because it was a well-known place he remembered hearing about over the years. And if he had been even five minutes later he would not have found her, because she was a very popular prostitute.
‘Hullo, Alistair,’ she murmured behind him as soon as he had sat down at the crowded bar in the glittery tourist joint, ‘so am I very lucky tonight?’
Even then Hargreave had no actual intention of trying to go to bed with her, despite the drink: he had looked for her only out of an intoxicated desire to see that female sexuality again, and maybe to hear her sing, to admire her, to lust after her from afar. But when he turned and saw her again, that lovely face, those big blue eyes and the sparkling smile, those perfect breasts, those long golden legs, he was lost: if she was a prostitute he simply had to have her, he simply had to possess that magnificent body just once.
‘Olga. What a surprise!’
‘Is it? You didn’t look for me? I am disappointed.’
‘Will you have a drink?’
‘Will you have a dance with me first?’
Oh yes … Alistair Hargreave was not a dancing man, but he had to feel this glorious woman close against him immediately, he just had to hold her in his arms.
Her dress was mid-thigh length to show off her long legs, her lovely breasts swelled against the low-cut bodice, her smooth skin warm through the slippery silk. They danced close, and he could feel her body-heat against him, the warmth of her belly and thighs, he could feel the cleft of her buttocks under his hand, her mound of Venus pressed against him.
‘You want to make love,’ she whispered.
Oh yes please. Hargreave was smouldering with desire. He did not ask, ‘How much?’ He did not care how much.
3 (#ulink_2326b0a5-18d8-55e8-8ddf-f96afcbcc6b2)
It was very expensive: five hundred American dollars bar-levy to buy her out of the club for the night, plus five hundred dollars ‘for me’. Hargreave knew it was an outrageous sum, that he could have her for half if he protested, but it would be ungentlemanly to bargain with a lady. He paid unflinchingly at the bar, with his winnings. He had not had a woman for a long time, and he simply had to have this glorious girl splayed out beneath him tonight.
And what a wonderful night it was. When he woke up beside her in the Estoril Hotel that Sunday morning to the sound of church bells, hungover and exhausted, he felt no remorse. He was not concerned about having been recognized in the Tranquillity club: it was a well-known tourist venue and anyway there had been nobody he knew. He did not flinch when he remembered he had not used a condom, he felt no moral guilt at the sound of those church bells.
When he woke up he was thinking of her golden nakedness, the breathtaking beauty of her as’she had slipped the silk dress off her shoulders: her glorious curves, her jutting breasts, her soft hips, her long perfect legs. She was the most naked woman in the world. Then came the wildly erotic business of showering together, the glorious soapy feel of her, her breasts and buttocks and thighs gleaming, slippery: he had wanted her so much that he had not been able to produce an erection. That’s how come he had not used a condom: he remembered her leading him to the bed, her riotously golden hair splayed across his loins as her wide mouth did its magic on him. That’s when he had thrown caution to the wind, toppled her over and clambered on top of her nakedness, thrusting frantically up into the sweet hot depths of her.
No; no regrets. And when he woke up that sultry church-belled Macao morning with Olga’s sleepy nakedness against him there was no question about an erection. And after it was over, in a crescendo such as he had never known, he had no doubt about how he was going to spend today. Lying beside her, exhausted, he said:
‘Don’t go. Stay.’
She sat up, tousled, and beamed down at him: ‘Yes? Lovely!’ Then she added apologetically, ‘But I regret you must pay.’
Hargreave grinned. Of course she didn’t regret it, but the solemn way she said it was endearing. ‘How much?’ He did not care.
‘The same as last night?’ she said with an anxious little frown.
‘On a Sunday? Surely there’s a discount for a Sunday; no night-clubs do big business today.’
‘No,’ she said earnestly, ‘every weekend in Macao is high season. Monday to Thursday is low season, but Sunday is full price: I’m sorry, darling.’ It seemed she almost meant the endearment.
‘But the night-club won’t know – tell them you spent the day in bed with a headache.’
She said earnestly: ‘They know everything, and if I do not pay they will punish me.’ She widened her eyes, made a guttural noise and drew her finger across her throat.
Hargreave grinned. ‘And such a beautiful throat. Okay, but I haven’t got five hundred US on me.’
‘Credit-card!’ She scrambled up on to her knees and hugged his head against her glorious breasts. ‘I’m so happy!’ She reached for the bedside telephone, punched the buttons, and spoke rapidly in Russian.
They were lying squashed up together in the bubble-bath, drinking champagne sent up by room service, when there was a knock on the door. Hargreave heaved himself up and draped a towel around his waist.
A tall white man stood outside, smiling politely. He had slick black hair, was athletically built, and carried a briefcase. ‘My name is Vladimir. I have come about Olga, sir. I am the accountant.’ He walked in, opened his briefcase and pulled out a credit-card machine.
Accountant? Very fancy name for a pimp. He was the guy to talk to about discounts. ‘I get a different price on Sunday?’
‘Will Olga return to the club at seven o’clock?’
Oh, he wanted her tonight. ‘No.’
‘Then it is full price, sir.’ He ran the machine over the card, wrote ‘Goods’ on the slip, and gave it to Hargreave to sign. It was made out to Gorky Enterprises. ‘You are satisfied with Olga’s service, sir?’
‘Oh yes.’
Vladimir produced a visiting card, printed in English on one side, Chinese on the other: there was no address but it gave a Macao telephone number. ‘If you have any complaints, please call immediately. We have many girls, all very good, all speak English, sir.’
Lord, a thousand dollars. But Hargreave signed the slip without second thoughts.
‘Thank you,’ Vladimir said. ‘Have a nice day.’
It was a lovely day. Afterwards, when he was to look back, it seemed the happiest day of his life to date, the start of the happiest period of his life. After finishing the champagne in the bath – her happy, slippery nakedness all over him felt like love – they had a late breakfast on their balcony overlooking the waterfront and harbour, with another bottle of champagne, while downstairs the hotel’s casino hummed and tinkled.
‘So tell me about yourself, Olga.’
‘Where do you want me to begin?’ She grinned. ‘And what do you want me to leave out?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Not even about my profession?’ She added, with a twinkle in her lovely eyes, ‘You must not worry about Aids, you know. I always make love only with a condom. You were the first time I did not.’
He was thankful to hear that, though he had not thought about it since the sound of the church bells. ‘Why didn’t you?’
She clasped her hands under her chin. ‘Because … I wanted to do it like that. I wanted it to be natural. Because I like you. Because I was –’ she searched for the word – ‘reckless about you.’
He wanted to laugh, and squeezed her hand. ‘Yes, I also felt reckless. Because I like you too.’ He felt like a teenager.
‘Because you think I am sexy?’
‘Because you are very sexy, and very beautiful, and because you are a very nice person.’
‘How do you know? All I did was take your money and say let’s fuck, like a prostitute.’ She smiled: ‘Because you wanted me to be a nice person? Because you are unhappy with your wife?’
Her perspicacity surprised him. ‘How do you know I even have a wife?’
‘In my business you learn about people. You looked like a man who is not experienced in talking with prostitutes, you were very polite, so I thought you are probably a nice married man and such a man must be unhappy with his wife if he has followed me to my night-club when he should be at home with her.’ Before he could respond she added, ‘Is she nice, your wife?’
He was surprised that he wanted to talk to her about it: he had never confided in anyone except Jake McAdam, and for the last seven weeks he’d been too embarrassed about the shooting incident to show his face socially, yet here he was sitting over breakfast with a Russian prostitute and it felt as if he wanted to open his heart. But he only said:
‘Yes, she’s nice. However, she’s gone back to America now, we’re getting divorced.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ She looked concerned. Then she snapped her fingers. ‘Of course! That scar on your chest – you said it was an accident. But she shot you, your wife! I read it in the newspaper.’
He was surprised and embarrassed. Even a Macao prostitute knew about his humiliation? ‘You read the Hong Kong newspapers?’
‘And your photograph, I recognize you now!’ She pointed a scarlet fingernail at him. ‘You told me you are a business man, but really you are a big lawyer!’ She swept both hands down over her golden locks. ‘That big English wig!’
Hargreave smiled wanly. ‘So you do read the papers.’
‘For my English. So,’ she smiled, ‘you are a lawyer. So your nice wife is asking for lots of nice money in her divorce?’
‘Something like that.’
‘And now you are spending so much money for me!’ She took both his hands across the table and sparkled mischievously: ‘So I will make it a very good day for you, don’t worry, darling! We will make love as much as you like. Any way you like! Tell me how you like to do it.’
Hargreave seemed to feel his loins turn over. He grinned.
‘Let’s check out of here and go to the Bella Mar Hotel, it’s more secluded. And I’d like you to go home and change into a daytime dress. Bring a bikini, they’ve got a nice pool at the Bella Mar. I’ll meet you there. Know where it is?’
‘Of course I know the Bella Mar.’
4 (#ulink_961a2a5b-d97d-56b7-982c-f066f0783b93)
Of course she knew it – she was a Macao whore. But that did not trouble Hargreave – he was going to have a nice day for a change. A lovely day! Nor did it worry him that he might be recognized – in an appropriate dress Olga would be just another tourist. Nonetheless he checked the hotel register when he signed in and was relieved that all the guests were foreigners; nor was there anybody he knew in the bar or on the terrace.
The Bella Mar is a grand old Portuguese hotel on the knoll, overlooking the tree-lined esplanade and the Pearl River estuary. The floors are polished wood, the ceilings are high and a sweeping staircase leads up to airy, old-fashioned suites with ceiling fans. The blue swimming pool is on the terrace below the verandah.
Olga Romalova dived and swam the length underwater, her long blonde hair streaming silkily behind her. She broke surface at the shallow end, her hair plastered. ‘How much?’
‘Nine seconds. You’re improving.’
‘Once more.’
She climbed up the ladder, gushing sparkling water, and walked back to the deep end in her tiny bikini. Hargreave, seated at a table under a beach umbrella drinking a Tom Collins, watched her every movement. She was truly beautiful. There were other couples at other tables, all watching her. The Chinese waiters were watching her. They doubtless knew her, but Hargreave did not care: they didn’t know who he was and he was happy – surely every man here must envy him, every woman must surely envy her exuberant beauty. Olga came to the deep end of the pool, held up her finger and demanded, ‘Ready?’
‘Ready.’ Hargreave looked at his wristwatch.
‘Now!’ She dived in like a goddess and streamed frantically underwater, her feet kicking. She gushed up at the shallow end. ‘Yes?’
‘Yes – eight seconds flat.’
A man at a table clapped, then everybody was clapping good-naturedly. Olga climbed out of the pool, beaming, gave them a wave and flopped down in her chair under the umbrella. She picked up her vodka and grinned: ‘I am improving, last week my best time was ten seconds. It is because I have stopped smoking.’
‘You come to the Bella Mar often?’
She shrugged. ‘Sometimes. It depends.’
‘I wanted to be an athlete,’ Olga said, ‘a swimmer. Athletes make good money in Russia. But there was no pool on the collective, so I swam in the river. So cold. For a pool I must go fifty kilometres on the bus. So expensive. So I thought, I will be a gymnast. I could walk on my hands, do backward somersaults. At my school we had parallel bars, a springboard, climbing ropes. I practised like crazy. But my teacher told me I am too big to succeed.’
‘Can you still do backward somersaults?’
‘Yes. Want to see?’
‘Later,’ Hargreave grinned.
She continued: ‘My mother always told me that the farm is not good enough for me, I must leave when I grow up – so little money, so much work. She died when I was ten. So I looked after my father, he was a sick man – he was a foreman, a very good farmer, but he was always sick, with tuberculosis, he died when I was fourteen. My big brother, he left many years before to work in the mines. So I went to an orphanage. I wanted to study to become a vet, but there were many difficulties, so when I was sixteen I went to work in a factory in Yekaterinburg. Do you know where that is?’
‘No.’
‘In the Urals. Very cold in winter. Big city, grey skies, grey buildings. I worked in an aluminium factory. We made plates, cups, pots, knives, forks. Millions and millions. But nobody buys them because people do not like the taste of aluminium. But still we make them, because Gosplan says so, because of the mines and the big hydroelectric stations producing the power. You know Gosplan? It is our big ministry for economics.’
‘Yes.’
‘Nobody buys our aluminium plates. Our wages are very little, and always late. Then we heard that some KGB men are stealing our plates and cups and making them flat with a steam roller and selling it to the West for much money. We were angry. But still we went on making plates for the KGB to steal because Gosplan said we must. Then one day the factory director sends for me. In his office is a man I haven’t seen. He says, do I want to be an actress, because I am pretty.’
‘He was wrong. You’re beautiful.’
‘I said, “Yes, of course!” So immediately I go to Moscow. Many days by train. So exciting. In Moscow they say to me: “We are the KGB, Mosfilm does not really want you, we want you to be a diplomat.”’
‘A diplomat? How old were you?’
‘Eighteen. Of course I was not going to be a diplomat, they were cheating me from the start, I was going to be one of their girls who sleeps with foreigners to get information. And for blackmail. But I did not know then. They said: “To be a diplomat you must first learn how to dress nicely, Western ways.” So they began to train me.’
‘What did they teach you?’
She grinned. ‘Mostly how to make love. And I already knew that, most Russian girls learn that very young because there is nothing else to do. I was kept in a hostel like a student, but I was really a hostess for KGB officers. I was taught to cook and entertain, even to sing Western songs, how to dance, very sexy, but after the party – there were always many parties – after the party I had to go to bed with one of my trainers.’
‘How did you like that?’
She shrugged. ‘I hated it, but they said it was part of my training. One of them I liked, the others I didn’t like.’
‘Were you paid a salary?’
‘Yes, I was working for the state. Then after only six months Gorbachev disbanded the KGB. Everybody was very anxious, and angry also. Then my trainers told me I was being sent to Istanbul to continue my studies. But, of course, when I got there I had to be a whore.’
Oh, Hargreave was so glad to learn she had been tricked. ‘Istanbul? Did you protest?’
‘At first I cried and cried, and argued. But what can I do? They hit me. The other girls told me the KGB would kill me if I tried to run away. They said a girl called Natasha had been killed, as a lesson. And I had no passport, no money. No job in Russia. And we were kept in this big house with high walls, and there were guards.’
Hargreave thought, Oh, you poor child. ‘And? Who were your customers?’
‘Rich Turks. Rich Arabs. And some Westerners, businessmen, English, Italian, Germans.’
‘How did you feel?’
He felt a stab of anguish when she shrugged. ‘Afterwards I got used to it. It was a nice big house, nice rooms, nice bar, nice garden, good food. The madam saved your money for you, every month you got paid, you could send it home or buy things, or put it in the bank. So I thought, this is better than Yekaterinburg, better than the KGB hostel where I got fucked for nothing.’
Hargreave didn’t want to hear that. ‘Were you allowed out?’
‘Only when the KGB trust you. But if you run away they will catch you. And how can you run away without a passport?’
‘Did you try?’
‘Not then. Natasha tried. They killed her.’
Lord. You poor child. ‘So the KGB were still functioning despite being disbanded?’
‘No, the Mafia was controlling us. But many KGB are Mafia now.’
Yes, Hargreave thought, that was common knowledge. Right now the Hong Kong police were trying to deal with the Russian Mafia who were using Hong Kong as a staging post for international smuggling. And here he was sitting in the Bella Mar Hotel with one of the Mafia’s girls: in principle he was compromising himself. But he did not care, he was happy for the first time in a long while, he was having a lovely day with this exotic girl, and she had nothing to do with smuggling – prostitution in Macao and smuggling in Hong Kong were far removed from each other, the one almost legal, the other not. Nonetheless he said:
‘Please don’t tell any of your friends who I am.’
She smiled. ‘Of course not, darling. In my business you must be discreet. You would be surprised what important Hong Kong people come to us, but I won’t tell even you.’
Even him? That felt like a compliment. He said, ‘Vladimir, the guy who came with the credit-card machine this morning, he wouldn’t know who I am, he wouldn’t read the papers, would he? He’s got my name now.’
‘No. And even if he knew he wouldn’t do anything, he only wants business.’
‘Is he a big noise in the Mafia, or is he just a pimp?’
‘A pimp. He says he was KGB, a big man, but he is nothing.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Don’t worry, darling, I won’t let anybody hurt you, I like you.’
He liked her too, he just didn’t like a pimp knowing his name. But he put it out of his mind. For heaven’s sake, the Triad societies controlled most of the girlie-bars and brothels in Hong Kong, did that mean every government official who went to a girlie-bar in Wanchai was compromising himself?
‘And how long were you in Istanbul?’ he said.
‘Almost three years. Then I was sent back to Moscow. That is when I tried to run away. One of my girlfriends was from Estonia, which had become independent from Russia, she said it was nice there, we can make a new life. But I had no passport, the Mafia had it. So I bought a gun, and we went on the train and I tried to hide when we crossed the border. But the Estonian police found me and sent me back to Moscow. I was very worried. I got a job in a café but the Mafia soon found me. They punished me because they said I had not finished my contract, and they kept me in an apartment and made me work.’
‘Your contract? Had you signed a contract?’
‘Yes. I signed many forms when they said I was training for diplomatic work.’
‘For how long was this contract?’
‘Three years. But now I am on a one-year contract.’
‘And how did they punish you?’
‘They beat me with their fists. But not too bad because I had to be in good condition to work. But they said next time they would kill me. So I did not try to run away again.’
Oh you poor child. ‘So they made you work in a whorehouse?’
‘No, I was sent out to customers in the big hotels, like the Metropole. That is a famous Moscow hotel. But I always had a guard with me. Then, after two months, they sent me here, to Macao. As a “dancer”.’
What a sad history. ‘How do you like it here?’
‘I like it. Here we are free, because we cannot escape to China, or Hong Kong. I like Macao.’
‘And the work?’ Please God she didn’t like the work.
She shrugged. ‘I am used to it. It means nothing now, to me it is just like being a gymnast, or being a tennis player. What else can I do?’
Oh dear. But it had meant something last night, and this morning, hadn’t it – all that hadn’t been faked, had it? ‘And how long will you stay?’
‘Until next Thursday. My Macao work-permit is finished then.’
Next Thursday? Hargreave stared at her. And what he felt was No … Oh, no, she couldn’t just disappear, this gorgeous girl.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Back to Russia. Moscow.’
‘And in Moscow you go back to work? Where?’
‘I don’t know. In the big hotels.’ She smiled. ‘Will you visit me, darling?’
Jesus. ‘But do you want to go?’
‘No. I would like to stay here.’ She grinned: ‘Then you can visit me every weekend?’
‘Can’t you get your work-permit extended?’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘The Portuguese police? They will want a lot of cumshaw to extend it. And Vladimir’s boss says it is important to change the girls every year.’
‘How much cumshaw will the Macao police want?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps a thousand US dollars.’
Lord, was he mad to be thinking like this? It was on the tip of his tongue to say ‘I’ll pay it’, but instead he asked, ‘And would Vladimir agree?’
She beamed at him. ‘Oh darling, do you really want to do it? So I can work –’ she made her eyes sparkle – ‘really work with you?’
Oh Lord, Lord … He grinned weakly. ‘Would Vladimir agree?’
‘Vladimir, yes, but I do not know about his boss.’
‘Who’s his boss – where is he?’
‘He is in Moscow, I have never seen him. But I think he will agree, why not? Oh darling!’ She squeezed both his hands. ‘Is this really true?’
Hargreave sat back. Oh God, what was he doing? He smiled.
‘I must think. It’s a lot of money.’ He hated saying it – a gentleman does not talk about money at a time like this. And that’s only the start of it, he thought, she would expect him back each weekend.
‘Yes, a lot of money, I understand. And now your wife, too.’ Then she brightened: ‘Do not worry, darling – we still have a whole afternoon and a whole night!’ She grinned: ‘And I am going to make it so wonderful for you that you will say yes! What do you want? Do you want handstands? Backward somersaults? Belly dancing?’
Hargreave threw back his head and laughed.
And, oh dear, it almost felt like love. He knew it was not, of course, but that was how it felt.
She did make it wonderful. Afterwards, lying on the big four-poster bed under the ceiling fan she whispered, ‘And you were wonderful. Last night you were drunk, and you had no dinner, but finally you were okay. This morning you had a big hangover, and you’d had no breakfast yet, but you were good. But this afternoon you had your breakfast and your lunch, and you were wonderful! I had a lovely orgasm, darling.’
‘Did you really?’ He felt very pleased. Mediocre performance of same, huh?
‘Yes.’ She leaned on her elbow and looked at him earnestly. ‘Didn’t you know? That was real. Oh, okay –’ she swept her hair from her eyes – ‘prostitutes always pretend, huh? To make the man finish quicker? Right, that’s what I do – but with you? No. That was real. You know why?’
‘Why?’
‘Because you are a very sexy man. And because I like you so much.’
Him, a sexy man? He grinned – he wished Liz’s lawyers could hear this. Olga flopped down beside him again. She snuggled against him.
‘I was going to say I love you. That is what I sometimes have to say. It is bullshit, of course, but that is what they like to hear, maybe. But I will not bullshit you. So I say, I like you, very much.’
He squeezed her golden shoulders. ‘And I like you, very much.’
‘Okay. So now I let you go to sleep, and when I wake up I give you another triple-A blowjob so you like me more, then I do a belly dance, then some backward somersaults, then we have a nice dinner. Oh …’ she squeezed him, ‘I do not want to go back to Russia.’
He woke up in the sunset. She was still asleep, spreadeagled on her belly, her hair flamed across the pillow, her lovely buttocks naked. And, no, he did not want her to go back to Russia next Thursday, never to be seen or heard of again. Looking at her lying there made him want to mount her again, it seemed he couldn’t get enough of her. Yes, but what about the money? It’s not the thousand bucks up front for the Portuguese police, that’s easy enough, what about every time you come to see her, even if it’s only twice a month – what are you letting yourself in for? How can you afford it, even once a month? Of course you shouldn’t do it – it’s crazy to even think about it, so put it out of your mind. But he looked at her lying there, and he could not put it out of his mind. He got off the bed carefully so as not to wake her, went to the bathroom and turned on the shower.
Fuck the money? You’ll make a deal with her? Live dangerously? Cross the bridges as you come to them?
Yes, and fuck Elizabeth’s lawyer as well, with his law of Community of Property? He stepped under the shower. Yes, cross the bridges as you come to them! Live dangerously! You’ve never lived until today!
When he emerged from the bathroom she was sitting on the bed with the telephone to her ear, speaking in Russian. She gabbled for another ten seconds then banged down the receiver, jumped up beaming, arms wide, and laced her hands behind his neck. ‘I have done it!’
‘An extension to your work-permit?’
She was delighted with herself. ‘At first I thought I make a deal with you – I give you a discount every time until you have got back the thousand dollars cumshaw for the police. Then I thought, no, this is my business not yours, so I will pay the cumshaw! And I will give you a discount every time! And so I telephoned Vladimir and told him!’
Hargreave wanted to laugh. ‘And it’s arranged?’
‘Vladimir agrees, and the police will agree. Vladimir will telephone the boss in Russia tomorrow. Oh darling –’ she jumped up and down – ‘I am so happy! And you?’
Yes, he was recklessly happy. Fuck the money! ‘But Olga – I will pay the thousand cumshaw.’
She turned out of his arms, her palm up. ‘No. Not fair.’
Okay, thank God. ‘And you think Vladimir’s boss will agree?’
‘Why not? But I will pray!’
He grinned: ‘You’re religious?’
She put on a mock frown, placed her fists on her lovely hips. ‘What do I look like? A Communist?’
Hargreave threw back his head and laughed.
Part Two (#ulink_ec381f72-7262-554f-a2d6-3be7bb032e35)
5 (#ulink_278f3801-6701-5701-a286-f55b92e11c82)
All the next week it seemed he could not get the image of her out of his mind. Her glorious nakedness, the sweet smell and taste and feel of her, and the memory of her standing at the immigration gates at the hydrofoil jetty that Monday morning, midst the clamour and jostling, the smells of diesel, of China, smiling all over her lovely face, her hair still wet from the shower, waving energetically: ‘Goodbye – goodbye …’ Hargreave went aboard the hydrofoil and slumped back in his seat. He could not wipe the smile off his face as he sat back in the air-conditioned first-class cabin skimming across the hazy South China Sea. And when the distant islands of the British colony loomed on the horizon, the myriad of ships from around the world at anchor, then the skyscrapers rearing up along the harbour front of Hong Kong and Kowloon, the most expensive real estate in the world with its mad money-making and its dense traffic and swarming people, it seemed he could not bear to wait to get back to sleepy little Macao next Friday, to Olga. He did not care what the weekend had cost him.
He disembarked at the ferry terminals, queued up to pass through the congested immigration barriers, then joined the sweating crowd along the walkway above Connaught Road. He hurried along the raised thoroughfares, past the marbled stock exchange with its fountains, where he had lost so much money the year before, past the elevated turn-offs to teeming Central with its hotels and shops and alleyways and towering business houses, until he descended through the crush towards Statue Square. Lord, give me sleepy Macao every time. Statue Square was teeming with pedestrians hurrying to work, cars and taxis and buses pouring out pollution around it. He hurried past the grand old Legislative Council building that used to be the Supreme Court, through the park that was the cricket club in the good old days, and crossed into roaring Queensway with its sweeping flyovers. Three hundred yards ahead the Supreme Court building reared up bleakly amongst the skyscrapers. He reached the basement parking area and rode up in the elevator to the first floor. He crossed the big atrium and entered the Crown Prosecutor’s chambers.
He was almost an hour late. There was the usual Monday morning bustle, his lawyers heading off for the courts in their wigs and gowns. He hastened down the long corridor, greeting his staff, and entered his chambers. There were several policemen waiting to consult him, and both his secretaries were speaking on telephones. He signalled to Miss Ho, entered his big office and closed the door. He slung his overnight bag on the long conference table and went to his desk. There were half a dozen telephone messages from policemen asking for an appointment, his in-basket high with files.
Miss Ho entered. ‘Good morning, Mr Hargreave.’
‘Morning, Norma. What problems?’
‘No problems, Mr Hargreave. Nobody sick.’
What a wonder! Over a hundred lawyers to worry about, and this Monday nobody was sick – it had to be a good omen.
‘Well I’m sick, Norma, sick and tired of this job, so treat me gently today.’ He slapped the pile of files. ‘I’ve got all this to read. Those policemen out there – send them to Mr Downes and Mr Jefferson and Mr Watkins, and if you’re stuck send them to Timbuktu.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Norma said, ‘but what about Superintendent Champion? He’s just telephoned for an appointment.’ She added: ‘The uranium case?’
Hargreave sighed. ‘Okay, I’ll see Mr Champion, but nobody else today.’
‘Where were you on Saturday?’ Bernie Champion complained, big and sweaty in his suit. ‘You said you’d be at the races. And I was going out for a Chinese chow last night, thought I’d invite you, I wanted to pick your brains.’
‘Which you’re doing now?’
‘Which I hope to do now. You look like death, where were you?’
Hargreave felt wonderful. ‘I was sailing.’
‘Like hell, your boat was in the yacht club all weekend, large as life. Who is she?’
‘I went to Macao.’ Hargreave smiled.
‘Macao, huh? Hope you wore a condom. How’s the chest?’
‘Healed very well. What’s the problem with the uranium case?’
Champion sighed. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘you don’t want to talk about it, but I’m your friend and I’m asking you seriously, how are you?’
Hargreave hated this solicitude. ‘I’m fine, Bernie.’
Champion grunted. ‘Haven’t seen you around for a while, that’s all. Max, Jake and I, we were expecting you at the races, said you’d come.’ He raised his eyebrows: ‘And Liz?’
‘She’s fine too. She’s divorcing me, I got the letter on Saturday.’
Champion looked at him. ‘Divorce? I heard she was coming back.’
‘What?’ Hargreave stared.
‘Rumour at the yacht club. She phoned somebody and said she’s coming back, don’t know who. But listen, pal.’ He sat forward. ‘If you want her back, fine, I’ll play violins. But I’ve seen plenty of domestic strife in my thirty years in the cops, and if there’s going to be any more, don’t have the gun around. We nearly lost you. Imagine if she’d really hit you? You’d be six feet under and she’d be in jail. We don’t want that, for either of you.’
Oh God … Hargreave massaged his forehead. Liz returning, just when he was starting to feel he could show his face again? ‘She’s not coming back, it’s just a rumour. Her lawyer’s letter was only written last week, and it was very explicit.’
Champion said sympathetically, ‘And how do you feel about a divorce?’
‘Please, I don’t want to talk about it, Bernard. Now what about this case?’
The uranium case – Hargreave was sick of it. It wasn’t a case, it was a big amorphous file of theory and hearsay, mostly Investigation Diary reporting rumours which came to little. But it was Bernie Champion’s pet investigation. The only hard evidence was that a year ago the German police had arrested an elderly man called Wessels at Munich airport carrying a small sample of radio-active weapons-grade uranium in a glass jar. Enriched uranium is the basic ingredient in the manufacture of nuclear weaponry. Mr Wessels had just arrived from Moscow when he was arrested, and he had been about to board an aircraft to Hong Kong. He had refused to tell the German police how he had acquired the uranium in Russia, or to whom he was going to deliver it in Hong Kong: then, whilst being interrogated, he had died of a heart attack, leaving everybody none the wiser. The German police had sought the cooperation of the Hong Kong and Russian authorities. The Hong Kong police suspected that the notorious Chinese Triad societies were involved, intending to purchase large quantities of uranium to re-sell to terrorist organizations or warmongers like Gaddafi of Libya or Saddam of Iraq: but no evidence was uncovered, only rumours. A certain Colonel Simonski of the Moscow police had tried to trace the source of the uranium, without success: Russia was in chaos following the collapse of Communism but the government and all the personnel at nuclear sites insisted that none of their inventory had been stolen, every gram being accounted for and stored under tight security. Simonski had filed a detailed report to his superiors alleging, inter alia, that corrupt Russian bureaucrats were hand in glove with Mafia gangs to export nuclear material to Third World countries: he had promptly been removed from his post in the Organized Crime Squad and assigned to administrative duties. But his investigations were continuing, unofficially. There were some statements, forwarded to Champion by Simonski from Russian informers, who reported that this Russian crook had reported to this other Russian crook that this Russian bureaucrat at this godforsaken Russian nuclear plant had a deal with this unnamed Russian scientist who had not been paid his salary for six months to flog uranium for a staggering amount for export to Mr Gadhafi or Mr Saddam to blow us all to Kingdom Come in World War III. All serious stuff – but all hearsay.
‘So what’s new?’ Hargreave said.
‘Read the last page of the diary.’
Hargreave read it. More forgettable Russian names reporting rumours of a delivery of uranium to Moscow for shipment by air to the Far East.
Hargreave nodded. ‘Bad news. But where exactly are they going to ship it to?’
‘Right here,’ Champion said emphatically. ‘Hong Kong. Because we’re a huge duty-free port. For onward shipment to somewhere like North Korea, or the Middle East.’ He sat forward. ‘So I want your recommendation for more investigation money, I want to go to Vladivostok and Moscow and pay for information and get some statements from witnesses, so we can nail the Russian Mafia when they fly into Hong Kong. But the Commissioner of Police is worried this is a wild goose chase. However, he’ll allow me the funds if you recommend it.’
Hargreave was inclined to agree with the Commissioner. ‘But this is an offshore investigation so far, in Russia. How can I recommend paying out Hong Kong taxpayers’ money?’
‘Because,’ Champion said, ‘it ain’t offshore. Because when this stuff arrives in Hong Kong, who is receiving it, working with the Russian Mafia? The 14K. Terence Chang himself.’
Hargreave sighed. He’d heard all this before from Champion. Yes, everybody would love to nail the 14K, the biggest, strongest, nastiest Triad society in the world. And Terence Chang, the grand master. ‘But where’s your evidence?’
Bernie Champion tapped his head. ‘Trust me. Recommend the money and Simonski and I will get the witnesses’ statements in Russia, the plans for the shipment, who’s going to receive it in Hong Kong, the works. Then when that uranium leaves Russia we’ll do an Entebbe raid on the airport and catch everybody redhanded. Work backwards from there and uncover the whole murderous network – World War Three averted.’
‘Which airport will you raid?’ Hargreave demanded. ‘We don’t want radio-active uranium flying into Hong Kong!’
Champion said irritably, ‘How do I know which airport? I haven’t seen a Russian witness yet!’ He waved a hand. ‘Hell, man, this is the biggest, most important investigation imaginable – nuclear weapons to blow us all to smithereens, and you want to know which airport I’m going to catch the crooks at?’ He shook his fat face. ‘I don’t know, do I, until I’ve done the investigation with Simonski. But that takes money. Simonski hasn’t got access to police funds because he’s been removed from Organized Crime – and the Russian police have no money anyway.’
‘How much do you want?’
Champion pointed at the file. ‘It’s all itemized in there.’
Hargreave sighed. ‘Right, I’ll read the file again. But I’ll have to discuss it with the Attorney General.’
‘Why? You’re the Director of Public Prosecutions.’
‘Because he’s my boss.’
Champion snorted. ‘Notionally. Jesus, Al,’ he appealed, ‘can’t you see how important this is? Imagine if the Islamic Jihad or the IRA could build nuclear weapons!’
Hargreave put the file on top of his in-basket. ‘I’ll read it.’
‘How about dinner tonight?’ Champion said.
‘I won’t have an answer for you by tonight, Bernie.’
‘No, I meant just dinner. Haven’t seen you for ages.’ Champion looked at him appraisingly. ‘You need to get out of yourself, have some fun. You look exhausted.’
Fun? Hargreave had never had so much fun in his life – that’s why he looked exhausted. ‘Better not, Bernie, I’ve got a lot of homework to do and I need an early night.’
Which was certainly true. He was tired when he got home; all he wanted to do was have a few drinks and something to eat and hit the sack. But suddenly he was determined to do something about himself physically, to get into better shape. For Olga. So he went jogging.
He had not jogged for months and he certainly did not feel like it today, but he forced himself to do four kilometres round the mid-Peak roads, sweating in the sunset. It was agony but he kept it up. Olga was twenty-three, for God’s sake, and if he hoped to keep up with her he had to pull himself together, get some muscle-toning. Preserve the remnants of his youth. Tomorrow he would go to the gym. And he must do something about his diet – eat better: three meals a day instead of one and a half. He jogged doggedly to the supermarket at the bus terminus and bought some liver. He walked back to his apartment block with it. While the amah prepared it, he made himself go through the Canadian Air Force exercises that he used to do: press-ups, sit-ups, stretching. He was exhausted when he finished, sweating, but he felt good.
And virtuous. He showered, and he felt glowing. He looked at himself in the mirror. His pallor had gone. Forty-six years old – and she’s twenty-three. Oh, those breasts. Those legs. That creamy smile … You’ve got to get in shape or you‘ll just be another old guy trying to hang on to a young chick. No whisky this week – and get some vitamin pills tomorrow. He drank only two bottles of beer before dinner, and although he did not like liver, he ate it all. He went straight to bed afterwards. His last thought was of Olga, what she was doing. He groaned – he could not bear to think of her with another man.
The next morning he did more than buy vitamin pills, he telephoned Dr Bradshaw. ‘Ian, I want a tonic, can I come to see you?’
‘Sure, what kind of tonic?’
‘Something to give me a boost, I’m on a health-kick. Jogged four kilometres last night.’
‘Hell, take it easy,’ Ian said. ‘How do you feel now?’
‘Just fine. Stiff but good. And I want some advice on diet.’
‘Don’t overdo it on the exercise, we’re not as young as we used to be. What brought this on?’
‘And Ian – can you give me something to improve my sex-life?’
‘Hey!’ Ian said. ‘This is good news! Look, I’ll give you a course of vitamin B shots, but health is the best aphrodisiac. Good food – but watch the cholesterol. And watch the exercise at your age; don’t jog, buy a mountain bike.’
At his age. At lunchtime, instead of going to the Hong Kong Club for a beer and a sandwich, Hargreave went to the gymnasium near the Peak tram terminus, with Ian Bradshaw’s vitamin B shot buzzing in his system. He bought a season ticket.
It was years since he had been to a gym and he was not sure how to use all the equipment correctly, but he watched the next guy and followed suit. Lord, it was hard work. The gym was milling with sweating, muscled young men who knew what they were doing and Hargreave felt self-conscious: he was not flabby, but he was out of condition. And so pale – it was weeks since he had been sailing and he had lost his tan – and he wouldn’t be sailing this weekend, no sir. Then some older men came in, and he did not feel so bad – they were out of condition too. Then he felt worse – they knew how to use the machines, they weren’t sweating and puffing like he was. Hargreave watched them furtively as he doggedly slogged his way through the equipment. He was exhausted when he reached the end of the circuit, his legs and arms trembly. But by the time he got back to his chambers, after a hot shower and a nutritious lunch at the gym’s health bar, he felt great. He wanted to tell everybody where he’d been. Then the telephone rang.
‘A Miss Romalova for you, sir,’ said Miss Ho.
‘Put her through! Olga! Are you all right?’
She chuckled. ‘I am very well, except for my poor pussy. And my heart, my heart is very sore also.’ Hargreave was blushing. ‘Will my heart get better on Friday?’
‘Yes.’ Oh yes, he could not wait for Friday. ‘So your work-permit is okay?’
‘Yes, the police have extended for three months. And the big boss has agreed also.’
Oh, yes. ‘Well, I’ll be there on the seven o’clock ferry.’
‘Lovely! Which hotel do you want to stay in?’
‘The Bella Mar.’
‘So expensive. Why not another hotel, not so much?’
‘No, the Bella Mar.’ He had to have her in one of those airy, exotic suites, beauty like hers deserved the Bella Mar.
‘Shall I reserve? Maybe if I reserve I can get a small commission.’
‘Fine.’ Hargreave grinned.
‘I will give it back to you.’
‘No, you keep it,’ he laughed.
She seemed to accept that as reasonable. ‘I cannot meet you at the ferry, darling, because I must be at the club. But do not come there because then you must pay entrance, and the drinks are so expensive. Telephone me there when you are ready, and I will come to the hotel. But you will have to pay the bar-levy, I’m sorry.’
‘That’s all right.’ Talk of money made him uncomfortable.
‘But I will give you a discount for me, darling, don’t worry. And we will have a lovely weekend, I promise.’
Hargreave grinned, blushing: ‘And I promise you.’ He wanted to tell her about his health-kick but he felt silly.
‘Oh darling, I am so excited. I thought about you all last night at the club.’
Hargreave didn’t want to hear about the club. ‘I thought about you too.’
‘Did you really? I am very pleased. Okay, I must go to sleep now, I have to work tonight.’
Work. He did not want to think about it.
After he hung up he slumped back in the chair, and tried to make himself think about it. Lord, what am I doing, feeling like this about a …? Say it – a whore? Feeling possessive … romantic … smitten. Feeling … over the moon about her. Aren’t you making a bit of a fool of yourself? Don’t forget she’s a whore.
But I wouldn’t be the first man to get smitten by a whore. Whores can be fascinating. Exotic, romantic, even, you wouldn’t be the first man to fall in love with a whore.
Fall in love? What are you talking about, man? You’re not in love, you’re just in lust You’ve had a bit of a tough time with Liz, unloved, sex-starved, so it just feels like love, you just feel sorry for yourself. Whores are for fun, not love …
Okay, so have fun. Enjoy it, stop analysing it. Stop thinking about her ‘work’, and her ‘customers’, stop flinching about ‘discount’ and be grateful for it, grab every discount she gives you because this fun is going to cost you plenty if you keep it up. A three-month extension on her visa? How can you keep up with this for three months? And you won’t want to, you’ll burn the whole thing out soon and she’ll go back to Russia and you’ll be relieved. So be cavalier, just enjoy …
But cavaliers were fit, cavaliers could keep up with their lovers, they did not fall by the wayside just because they were forty-six. He felt tired when he got home from chambers, and he wanted a stiff whisky, but he made himself go out to jog again. But he only managed two kilometres before his heart and his knees told him to stop: the image of her nakedness could not beat the ache in his legs today. So, you gave yourself a workout at lunchtime, don’t overdo it. He walked back to his apartment block on Mansfield Road. He had one beer, one whisky, two boiled eggs, and went to bed. He was asleep before eight o’clock.
The next morning he could hardly stand. His knees were not swollen but they were giving him agony.
‘Cartilage inflammation,’ Ian Bradshaw said cheerfully on Wednesday. ‘From jogging – told you not to do it. Buy a bicycle, I said. Or an exercycle, one of those stationary things that executives use. And buy yourself a pair of proper running shoes – but don’t run, go for walks. Get the best, with springy soles. And for the next week that’s all you can wear on your feet.’
‘But I can’t wear running shoes to chambers.’
‘You’re the boss, aren’t you? Get a black pair, to go with your pinstripe suit, I’ll give you a medical certificate saying you’re a stretcher-case without them. Wear them to court, to cocktail parties, or you’ll have a cartilage removal operation – want that?’
‘No,’ Hargreave said sincerely.
‘Otherwise you’re in good shape,’ Ian said. ‘Heart fine. Got some colour again. Let’s look at my scar?’
Hargreave peeled back his shirt. Ian peered.
‘You’re healthy. Getting older, that’s all. I did a good job on that bullet, what’s left is pretty sexy. Tell the girls it was a jealous husband, makes them feel protective.’ He sat back. ‘What news of Liz?’
Hargreave pulled his shirt back on. ‘We’re getting divorced.’
Ian nodded. ‘Still in San Francisco?’
Hargreave buttoned his shirt. ‘I think so.’
‘No truth in the rumour she’s coming back to town?’
Jesus. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Yacht club. Don’t know the source.’
Hargreave’s heart sank. Just when he was going to have some fun. ‘I’ve just received her lawyer’s letter. If she’s coming back it’s just to pack the rest of her things.’
‘You can come and stay in my guest room while she does,’ Ian offered. ‘You don’t want any more scars. Did you marry under Californian law?’
‘Yes.’
Ian shook his head. ‘Same with me and Janet. Community of Property, half of everything you own. If Janet divorced me I’d be in trouble. Okay!’ He slapped Hargreave’s arm and stood up. ‘Just remember you’re forty-something, not thirty-something, come back for another vitamin B jab next week, and eat your wheaties. And whoever-she-is should have a smile all over her face. But no jogging. Buy an exercycle if you don’t want a bicycle.’
6 (#ulink_754252bb-ac40-535d-aa15-0140e1172dce)
He ended up buying both. He went to Lane Crawfords for the super sports shoes – they didn’t have his size in black, he had to take a white pair – then he went to buy an exercycle. There were all kinds. Hargreave went for the most expensive model, with various speedometers and clocks and mileometers and calorie-counters. State-of-the-art. Made in America. And expensive, compared to similar machines made in China, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan. ‘But much better everything.’ Hargreave wanted much better everything. For Olga? No – for himself. About time he spent some money on himself. He arranged to have it delivered to his apartment, and he was about to go back to his chambers when he spied the mountain bicycles.
They were impressive. So gleaming – all the colours of the rainbow, all the gear, all the variations. Hargreave spent another hour with the salesman, asking searching questions. ‘What about knee-impact?’ He ended up buying the latest Canadian lite-weight fibre-glass super 36-Shimano-gears job, a machine which, judging by the salesman’s account, would take him over the Himalayas with ease. Nothing but the best for Hargreave! Then he had to buy the latest in crash helmets, metallic red – he fancied blue but they didn’t have any. Then gloves. Then a rainproof tracksuit. And goggles. And two sweatbands – ‘You must have two, sir …’
Hargreave arranged for the whole purchase to be delivered to his apartment and walked stiffly back through the crowds to his chambers. He was pleased he had grasped the nettle of his ageing body, which no lesser savant than Ian Bradshaw had said was not too bad, which Olga evidently thought was pretty damn good. And she would know …
His own wit made him grin widely.
‘Enjoy,’ he said to himself. ‘Just enjoy …’
But it was hard work to enjoy.
His exercycle and bicycle were resplendent in the middle of his living room when he arrived home, his red helmet and other gear draped on the sofa. (Ah Moi, his amah, was both mystified and amused.) Hargreave decided not to ride his new bicycle today: he was stiff all over, it was hot outside, the rush-hour was still on, all good reasons for the Great Indoors. With determination he got into his tennis shorts, pulled on his new sports shoes, switched on his television, mounted his new exercycle, checked that all his dials were on zero, and began to pedal.
He pedalled hard, staring at the television; within moments he was exhausted. He stopped. He looked at the mileometer: some four hundred yards. He looked at the clock: thirty-two seconds. He looked at the calorie-counter – not a sausage. And so boring.
Well, so these things take time – he had found the exercycle at the gymnasium hard work too. Maybe he should start with the mountain bike.
Hargreave put on his flash red helmet and descended in the elevator with his flash new Canadian Super-lite, Shimano-36-gear, hot-and-cold-running-water mountain bike. He mounted it, and set off. ‘Into the Unknown …’
And, Lord, it was the unknown. It was thirty years since Hargreave had ridden a bicycle; he had forgotten what hard work is required of the legs. The area immediately surrounding his apartment complex was flat, but within two circuits his legs were aching. He came to the exit and stopped for a little rest. From here he had the choice of three directions: the steep, winding road up towards the Peak, or a more gentle incline around the Peak, or the road that led downhill towards Central. Rush-hour traffic was using all three roads. Hargreave got the ache out of his legs and chose the road that inclined gently around the side of the Peak. He adjusted his helmet, selected second gear, waited for a gap in the traffic; and went for it. He pedalled flat out across the road, then swung right, uphill.
He pedalled furiously as traffic overtook him. The ache came crashing back into his legs, his heart started pounding. He pedalled and pedalled, feeling nervous now midst the sweeping traffic roaring up from behind. He pedalled and pedalled, standing now, toiling, teeth clenched, desperately trying to keep to the extreme left of the road, out of harm’s way. He pedalled and pedalled, trying to think of Olga to obliterate the pain; then he just had to stop. He wobbled to a halt beside the kerb.
He was exhausted: his whole body was trembling, his legs crying out; even his arms ached. His head was hot in the helmet, and he took it off. A legal friend passing in his Jaguar recognized him and shouted ‘Go, Al, go!’ Hargreave managed a sheepish wave. So now he was self-conscious as well as exhausted. If they knew why he was doing this, for a twenty-three-year-old Russian whore, they would kill themselves with laughter. He looked backwards. Maybe he had done threequarters of a mile.
But a Hargreave does not give up easily. When the pain in his legs subsided he took a deep breath and toiled on.
But toiled. This gentle incline was not gentle at all. And it went on and on. He knew the road well, he thought he could visualize the turns and gradients ahead, but it all looked very different from here. He tried to put the machine into a lower gear, shoving the levers like the salesman had shown him – which made the handlebars wobble dangerously. A passing car hooted at him, swerving. Desperately he pushed both levers simultaneously and the gears crunched and jerked and then spun, in no gear at all – suddenly Hargreave’s legs were whirling, he wobbled, his front wheel hit the kerb, and he crashed.
Fortunately he was going very slowly. Hargreave only toppled off his bicycle. But he landed with a nasty thump, on his side. A passing motorist hooted and laughed. Hargreave clambered up, embarrassed.
‘Oh Lord …’
When the ache subsided in his legs, he examined the gear mechanism, cussing.
He did not understand what he was looking at, though it had seemed intelligible in the shop: there were layers of cogs on both the pedal contraption and the rear wheel: the selection of which particular cogs the chain operated at any given moment was determined by the little levers on the handlebars. Right; understood. But now the chain hung lifelessly. Hargreave gingerly lifted it with forefinger and thumb and tried to put it back on the cogs. Any cogs. The chain refused to oblige. In exasperation he wrenched, and finally the chain reluctantly took its place. Wearily Hargreave remounted, shoved off and trod on the pedals.
And fuck me if the infernal machine was not now in top gear. He wobbled to a halt again, another motorist blaring at him. ‘Oh fuck off!’ Hargreave muttered. He retreated to the kerb and glared down at the cogs.
‘Okay, that’s it!’ Hargreave said – he simply did not understand the gears. He wasn’t going to fuck about with the fucking chain again. So there was nothing for it but to return home – mercifully downhill – and get one of those kids in the apartment block to explain the gears to him. Grateful that his ordeal was almost over, he awaited another gap in the traffic, then wheeled his bicycle across the road. He reached the other side with doubtful safety, took a deep breath, faced his machine downhill, and mounted.
Alistair Hargreave, Director of Public Prosecutions, was about a mile uphill of the entrance of his apartment complex when he set off. Downhill, in top gear. He wearily trod on the pedals, once, twice, and the machine leaped forward like an enthusiastic pony. And off he sped.
And this was more like it! This was what he imagined when the salesman had eulogized about the Shimano 36-speed gears, making it sound as if he would whiz gracefully everywhere. Hargreave went swooping down the hill effortlessly, cool wind suddenly on his sweating face, the sunset caressing instead of beating him – this was almost like sailing! There was no other downhill traffic and he had half the swathe of road to himself. He trod on the pedals harder, and the machine surged again, going faster, and faster, the uphill traffic flashing by now. Hargreave pedalled joyously, effortlessly, gracefully, the wind whistling in his ears, drying his sweating face; harder he pedalled, and harder. And, oh, he would love to just keep going down this steep winding peak all the way down to Central, fun fun fun all the way. That’s what he’d do tomorrow, by God – ride down to the Supreme Court and then take the Peak tram home with his bike and then it was downhill once more from the top of the Peak to his apartment.
That is how Hargreave was feeling on his new Canadian mountain bike as he approached the entrance to his apartment complex. Halfway down the hill his speedometer told him he was doing thirty miles an hour, threequarters the way down he was doing thirty-five. When he was a hundred yards from the entrance he was doing an exhilarating forty, and he felt twenty-three years old, like Olga. When he was fifty yards from the entrance, Hargreave began to apply his brakes for the turn.
First he applied the rear, and the machine slowed somewhat, screeching. Twenty yards from the entrance Hargreave felt he was going too fast to make the turn and he jerked on the front brakes as well and the machine lurched. Ten yards from the entrance Hargreave panicked: he had to make a ninety-degree turn into a blind gateway at terrifying speed. He wrenched on both brakes with all his might and rang his bell frantically. He hurtled towards the entrance. Two yards from it he filled his lungs and bellowed ‘I’m coming!’ and he clenched his teeth and swung the handlebars.
Hargreave swung into the blind entrance at a breakneck fifteen miles an hour, slap-bang into an oncoming car. All he knew was the terrifying wobble of his hurtling turn, his wheels juddering, then the bonnet of the car looming towards him, the skid of its wheels as the driver slammed on the brakes, the blast of his hooter, the radiator roaring towards him, then crash! Hargreave smashed into the car head-on with a blinding jolt, his front wheel buckled and his rear wheel bucked, and he flew through the air. He went sailing over the handlebars, hit the bonnet, skidded along it, and smacked head-first into the windscreen.
The windscreen was fucked. The bike was fucked. ‘And so am I.’
7 (#ulink_37caecf7-4a14-5079-aa94-5715d597f3e0)
That was Wednesday. Hargreave took it very easy on Thursday. He did not go to the gym. He did not ride his exercycle. He did not have a drink. He did not even go to his chambers – he stayed in bed. But he re-read Champion’s uranium file, finally making a note in the Investigation Diary that he recommended the expenditure of further police funds ‘in view of the international importance’. It eased his conscience that he had done some work.
But when Friday dawned he felt wonderful. He still had some stiffness, but he was rested, he had been off the booze for thirty-six hours, his body felt wide-awake: and tonight he was going to Macao! He swung out of bed in the sunrise, to get the day by the tail good and early – and he winced. He had more than some stiffness: the wonderful feeling was only in his head. He walked to the bathroom very experimentally. His knees were still painful and he had a big bruise on his hip. He lowered himself very carefully into a hot bath and lay there, eyes closed, thinking of Olga.
After a moment he felt as excited as a teenager again, his aches and pains did not matter a damn. He knew it was crazy, but that’s how he felt.
It felt even more like that as, in the sunset, the hydrofoil sped across the South China Sea towards Macao. The whole world was exotic, the haze, the mauve islands, the junks, the Pearl River mouth, and he was going to the most exotic girl in the world. He was smiling with anticipation as he swigged his cold San Miguel beer in the first-class cabin, his first drink in forty-eight hours: it was going down into his system like one of Ian Bradshaw’s vitamin B shots. He was impatient with the delays at the immigration counters, but he loved the crowds, the noise, the smell of the place. He had a grin all over his face as his taxi sped and honked and swerved him along the teeming waterfront, then wound up the knoll to the gracious Bella Mar. He strode into the picturesque old hotel, and he loved every creaking floorboard and pillar and potted palm and smiling Chinese. It almost felt as if he had come home. He checked in with a flourish and hurried up to his suite with hardly a hobble. He dumped his bag, snatched a bottle of whisky out of it, poured a big shot, then picked up the telephone and dialled the Heavenly Tranquillity Nite-Club.
‘Hullo, darling!’ Olga cried. ‘Are you really here?’
‘In the flesh. In the hotel. In the bedroom. In the bed.’
‘Oh darling, do not go anywhere!’
Twenty minutes later he heard her running up the staircase. He flung open the door as she burst into it. And there she was, even more beautiful than he remembered, her mass of golden hair piled up on her head, her big blue eyes sparkling, her lovely bosom bursting out of her dress, her wide laughing smile. Hargreave’s heart turned over at the sheer glory of her. ‘Olga …’
He clutched her joyously, felt her fulsome young womanness against him; and he turned her as he kissed her and jostled her towards the bed, laughing into her mouth. She collapsed on to the bed, making giggling noises, and he fell on top of her, one hand wrenching up her dress, the other grappling with his belt. ‘The door –’ He scrambled off her, his trousers halfway down, hobbled painlessly to the door, slammed it and turned back to her. Olga was laughing, her dress up round her waist, her lovely long legs bent as she raised her hips and wrestled her panties down. As Hargreave blundered towards her she hooked them on to her big toe, pulled back the elastic, then let go. They sailed through the air over his head as he collapsed, laughing, on top of her.
They had a wonderful time that weekend. For a week he had fed on the image of her beautiful body, and now he truly had her again. And despite his aches and bruises, his health-kick had paid off: it seemed he wanted to make love to her all the time. And it felt like love. It had almost felt like that last weekend when he left her waving on the jetty. For at least half the week it had still felt like that as he laboured at his exercises; only sometimes had he managed to convince himself that it was only a crazy case of lust. But this glorious weekend he knew that it was not just that, it was better – it was besottedness. He was besotted with her, her tumult of golden hair, her fragrant loins, her magnificent breasts – it seemed he could not get enough of her, there was no feeling more magnificent, more lovely than her body under his, her legs locked around his, thrusting, thrusting into the sweet hot depths of her. Every position she adopted was wildly erotic but the most magnificently important one was to feel her full naked beauty splayed out underneath him.
But there was plenty of laughter, too, and plenty of other fun. She loved jokes. They had the same sense of humour, the same sense of the ridiculous. She thought his health-kick was a hilarious story, and when he came to the bit about writing off his new mountain bike she went into roars of laughter. That established him as a raconteur, and thereafter, whenever he started to tell her a joke she began to giggle, even before he reached the funny part, and when he came to the punchline she threw back her head and guffawed, her lovely eyes wet.
‘The way you tell a story!’
He was a scream, apparently. Hargreave knew he could tell a good tale when he felt like it, when he was in the mood, but it seemed a very long time since he had felt like that; he had forgotten how entertaining he could be. Now he was happy, and it was lovely to be in lust with somebody who laughs a lot and thinks you’re very amusing, it was delightful to laugh at his own jokes again. She was a good story-teller too. She was a natural mimic, her imitation of the English and American accents was very good. She was a born actress, and told a story with her hands and eyes and face and body-language. He was delighted to find out that Russians and English laughed at the same things, that many of his jokes had Russian versions which were often funnier.
‘Darling, Russians tell lots of jokes because they drink so much because that is all there is to do, jokes and drink is all we have to laugh about.’
And it was fascinating, exotic, that she was Russian; from behind that Iron Curtain, suddenly let loose in the big wide world. He wanted to know all about her life in Russia, about her parents, her home, her schooling, her work, her friends. He built up a long series of images of her, hoeing the collective fields in the spring, harvesting in summer, the sweat running off her, her lovely girl-thighs steamy, dust and grit in her flaxen hair, her sexy hands coarsened; he imagined her bleak schoolhouse, hot in summer, cold in winter, smelling of unwashed bodies and chalk and books.
‘I always sat at the very back of the class so I could cheat easier – everybody cheats all the time in Russia, darling, it is the only way to get anything –’
He imagined her swimming with her friends in the muddy river in her underwear.
‘– and sometimes we swam naked, when there were no boys, that was great fun, oh that made us want to be free, to run away from Russia, swim in the lovely blue sea in the sunshine with palm trees on the beach, and Coca-Cola and icecream, and then dance and fuck like crazy, like the Americans do –’
The image of a dozen Russian schoolgirls romping naked in the river was erotic, even if it was muddy. ‘What made you think Americans did that? Did you have access to American books and magazines?’
‘Of course, they were forbidden, but somebody always had some old magazine that had been smuggled, or from the black market, and of course we were taught at school that Americans were terrible people who only thought about eating food that makes them fat, and making money and making war – and that they fuck like crazy. Anyway, we studied the magazines and saw the fashions and the beautiful girls and the beautiful cars and the beautiful food and the white beaches with the palms and the Coca-Colas and the icecream and beef-steak, and the blue sea, and it looked pretty good to us.’
He grinned: ‘And did you? Fuck like crazy?’ He was not sure he wanted to hear the answer.
She shrugged. ‘That’s all there is to do in Russia, darling. But we were only schoolgirls, we didn’t have much experience yet.’
Her candour was endearing, almost. She was a very honest soul. ‘So how old were you when you first went to bed with a man?’
‘Man, or a boy? I made love to my first boy when I was fourteen. Not too bad, huh? I’d had big breasts for two years. I was driving a tractor. I was having an orgasm, because the tractor seat was vibrating between my legs. This boy saw me and he said, “Come here and I’ll give you a better one”’
‘And he did?’
‘He did.’ She looked at him, her eyes sparkling with mischief, then she laughed and hugged him to her breasts. ‘Oh darling – the look on your face! Do I make you jealous?’
‘Yes.’ Hargreave grinned sheepishly. It was almost true.
‘I’m so glad!’ She rocked him, then collapsed back and stroked her fingertip across his eyebrow. ‘Oh, you’re such a nice man. Such a nice English gentleman. I think I love you …’
It seemed that his heart turned over. It felt as if he loved her too.
And his mind formed images of her working out in her school gymnasium, leaping off springboards, flying through the air, doing somersaults, cavorting on the parallel bars.
‘Can you really do all that stuff?’
‘Oh, yes, I was in competitions. I was quite good, but not good enough to be famous, my breasts were too big, even when I was fifteen. But I won some prizes. Shall I show you how I can walk on my hands?’
‘With all that wine inside you?’
‘No problem.’ She got off the bed, did a cartwheel across the room, then sprang on to her hands. She balanced there a moment, her body straight, her legs rigid, her toes pointed, her hair sweeping the floor: then she bent her knees and walked across the carpet on her hands. ‘Yes?’ she grinned at him, upside-down.
‘Very good.’
‘And now …’ She stopped, straightened her legs again, then parted them into a Y; then she dramatically raised one hand. She lifted her arm out sideways, her fingertips pointed. ‘Yes?’
‘Amazing!’
She carefully replaced her hand on the floor, brought her legs together, and did a nimble spring. She landed on her feet in a flash of golden locks, her face flushed. ‘You want to make love like that?’
‘I can’t wait!’
‘Here I come!’ She ran across the room and took a flying dive on to the bed, laughing.
‘Oh …’ He looked at her lying there beside him in the elegant room, her hair awry across the crumpled pillow, the China night out there, and it was hard to imagine her in a sexless smock toiling in an aluminium factory in the winter making pots and pans, living in a tiny grey apartment in a vast, smog-bound, joyless city: she was an exotic creature of the sun and sea and glittering nightlife, how could such beauty be caged in a factory?
‘I could not live like that any more. And that is why I decided to fuck my way to freedom.’
Fuck her way? He had not heard this last weekend.
‘What other way is there for a girl in the aluminium works? Everybody was fucking everybody anyway, what else was there to do? But I did not fuck my shift-boss and my floor manager like the other girls just to get a little more overtime on my ticket, not even the factory manager, although he begged me many times. No, I fucked the Party Secretary, because I wanted him to help me get to school to study to be a vet. That is how everything works in Russia – you must know somebody in the Party who knows somebody in veterinary school. And that is how the KGB man got to hear of me, saying he was from Mosfilm.’
‘Did you have to go to bed with him too?’
‘Of course. It was all a trick. But I thought I was going to be a movie star.’ She fluttered her eyelashes. ‘And here I am, darling, in bed with you. What secrets have you got to tell me?’
It was even exotic that she was a courtesan, a woman of the flesh, doubtless one of the most beautiful of her trade in the world, that she came from that earthy, sultry other-world, that she possessed a wealth of carnal expertise. What she was giving him would be the envy of any red-blooded man, and it did not even seem that he was paying for it. It did not spoil the atmosphere a jot when there was a knock on the door on the first morning and there stood Vladimir, looking annoyed.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, darling,’ Olga said to Hargreave, ‘I forgot – the money.’ They had just finished making love and she was dressing for breakfast, screwing an earring into her lobe. She delved into her weekend bag and produced a credit-card machine. ‘I was supposed to leave the credit-slip downstairs last night for Vladimir, but I got –’ she made her eyes sparkle – ‘excited.’
Hargreave was not embarrassed but he did not like Vladimir standing there in the doorway like a hood.
Olga ran the card through the machine, filled in the amount, and gave him the slip to sign. He noticed she had only charged him for two nights. He did not query it, but Vladimir did.
‘How many nights you pay for, sir?’
‘Two,’ Olga said emphatically, ‘last night and tonight.’
Vladimir said to Hargreave: ‘Do you go home on Sunday?’
‘Maybe,’ Hargreave said. He had no intention of leaving until Monday morning.
‘No, he goes on Monday,’ Olga said archly. ‘But this Sunday is my day off, I can do what I like on my one Sunday a month. Thank you, goodbye.’
Vladimir began to argue in Russian, Olga replied rapidly and closed the door on him. She turned to Hargreave. ‘What cheek! He says if he sees you here on Sunday you must pay for another night. I told him to go to hell.’
Hargreave did not want any trouble. ‘I’ll pay.’
‘No! Tomorrow is my one day off in a month.’ She smiled at him dazzlingly. ‘I told you I would give you a discount and I have – thirty-three per cent! You get three nights for two!’
‘It’s a bargain,’ Hargreave smiled, ‘but I don’t want trouble; I think I’d better pay.’
‘No, I told him it was against your principles to make love on a Sunday!’ She entwined her hands behind his neck and smiled. ‘But I think we will, huh, just to cheat Vladimir? We’re going to have a lovely time!’
They did have a lovely time. The previous weekend he had thought was wildly erotic, enchanting, exotic, he had felt smitten: but this weekend it really felt as if he was falling in love. Hargreave knew enough about life to know that this could not possibly be true; he knew it was only a case of wild infatuation, of joyful lust, but love is how it felt and he did not want to analyse it, he did not want to question his happiness.
That Saturday they did not leave the Bella Mar. He wanted to take her out and walk along the esplanade with her hand-in-hand, to ride in a trishaw, take her to a smart bar, a fashionable restaurant, to parade her, show her off. That’s how Hargreave felt; he wanted people to turn to stare at her beauty, he wanted the whole world to know she was his girl, to envy the fun they were having being together. But it might have been unwise: Olga could be anybody, just a tourist, but they might meet a friend of his and though Hargreave was now a free man who could do as he damn-well liked, perhaps it would be unwise for the Director of Public Prosecutions to flaunt his affair just yet. And he did not want to waste the time that could be spent making wildly erotic love.
It was almost lunchtime when they went down the sweeping old colonial staircase to breakfast beside the sparkling pool. There was nobody he knew. When she shed her robe to dive into the pool all eyes were on her magnificence. To Hargreave it was the happiest thing in the world, almost incredible, that that beautiful body was his, that an hour ago this gorgeous girl had been naked beneath him – it was almost unbelievable how lucky he was. When she took a running dive at the pool, her flaxen hair flying, all eyes were on her, riveted by her femininity, smiling at her exuberance. And when she had swum her ten lengths and heaved herself out, the water gushing off her, her long hair plastered, and walked unselfconsciously towards him, a spectacle of young womanhood, he no longer wanted to take her out of the hotel to show her off, he did not want to go any distance from that suite upstairs with its big double bed. So the champagne breakfast evolved into a long lunch while they talked and talked, and laughed, telling each other about themselves, undergoing the delightfully important business of getting to know each other. When they were full of good food and wine and sun she said, ‘Let’s go and make love,’ and as she walked across the terrace he could feel all eyes on her, he could almost hear the men sighing, and he was immensely proud of her. It did not feel as if she was bought and paid for; it felt as if she was really his.
Later, lying spent on the bed in each other’s arms, in the quietness of afterlove, she said: ‘Are you worried that one of your friends will see you, with a prostitute?’
No, he just felt happy. ‘Nobody is likely to know anything about you, and even if they did, so what? This is the Far East, not Whitehall in London; we’re not very judgemental out here. Anyway, don’t talk of yourself like that.’
She was silent a moment: ‘You are right. With you I am not really a prostitute. Because I want to be with you. I am sorry you must pay for today – if it was up to me you would not pay. And tomorrow,’ she squeezed him, ‘you will not pay, tomorrow I will not be a prostitute.’
‘You don’t feel like one now.’
She feigned indignation. ‘You mean I am not expert?’
‘Oh, you are.’
‘You don’t want your money back?’
‘Not so far.’
‘Okay.’ She snuggled against his shoulder and smiled. ‘I don’t feel like a prostitute either, with you. I feel I am your girl.’ She sighed. ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely to go away on a real holiday together, so I really was your girl, not the slightest bit a prostitute? Stay on a beach with palm trees and blue sea and tropical fish. I have never seen a beach like that, except in pictures. Macao’s sea is so brown, from the river. And we could live in a hut and swim all day, with snorkels, looking at the tropical fish. And maybe rent a little sailboat.’
It was a pretty thought. ‘We can do that. I can take some leave.’
‘No,’ she sighed, ‘Vladimir has our passports, in case we run away. I cannot even go to Hong Kong for a day because it says on my Macao identity card I am a “dancer”. The Hong Kong immigration people know what that means. I tried one day and they sent me hack. “You are a prostitute,” they said, “we do not allow you people in here!”’
Hargreave snorted. What hypocrisy – Hong Kong was full of prostitutes, the girlie-bars of Wanchai and Tsimshatsui were world-renowned tourist spots. ‘What did you say?’
‘I made a fuss. I said: “I am a dancer, sir! What dance do you want me to do? The rumba, the samba, the tango, rock-’n’-roll? Come out of your silly box and I will dance with you!” But they sent me back on the next ferry. I was so cross – and embarrassed. But maybe I can visit Hong Kong now because when my work-permit was extended they gave me a new identity card which says I am a singer.’
Hargreave smiled. ‘Can you really sing?’
‘Yes, not bad. Every night at the Tranquillity I sing some songs, with the band. Western songs.’
Hargreave looked at her. She had told him the first night he met her that she was a singer but he hadn’t believed her. But if it really was true, this put a rather different complexion on their relationship. ‘And what does it say on your passport?’
‘Singer.’
Hargreave grinned. ‘So that’s what you are – a professional night-club entertainer, not a prostitute!’
She smiled. ‘Okay, that’s me from now on. A famous Russian singer, like Madonna.’
‘Right, that’s what we’ll tell my friends. Do the other Russian girls at the Tranquillity sing too?’
‘No, I am the only one with a good voice. But I’m not very good, darling. But,’ she added, ‘I can also play the guitar.’
‘What songs do you sing with the guitar?’
‘I can only do about twenty-five well – Western love songs. The manager likes me to do it, if I am not busy when the other singers are resting.’
‘And does he pay you to sing?’
‘Oh yes. Fifty patacas a song. Sometimes more if the people clap loudly.’
‘Well, then, you’re a paid professional entertainer! Can you really do all those dances?’
‘Yes. The KGB taught me at my training school, so I could dance with all the foreign diplomats and steal their silly secrets. Even Scottish reels I can do, with swords on the floor. And American square-dancing, and the can-can, even belly-dancing. Next time I will show you, I will bring some music and my belly-dancing stuff. Even the ruby for my navel.’
Oh yes, he would love to see her do all that. And he was impressed by her accomplishments. She said: ‘Are you a good dancer, darling?’
The foxtrot and the waltz were about Hargreave’s speed. ‘Liz did try to teach me the tango. But she gave up.’
‘I will teach you to tango, darling, it is my favourite dance – so dramatic. I have all the music, on my cassettes, I will bring them next time. Would you like to go dancing tonight, I’ll start teaching you?’
Hargreave wanted to do whatever she wanted. ‘Only trouble is I don’t want to get out of this bed. And I don’t want you to put clothes on.’
‘But I better get dressed for dinner, darling, in case we meet somebody you know!’
That Saturday night they did meet somebody Hargreave knew. They were sitting at the bar off the reception hall, having a drink before dinner, when Jake McAdam and Max Popodopolous came in with Judge Peterson. The judge slapped him on the back in passing.
‘Hullo, Dave!’ Hargreave said. ‘Hullo, Jake, Max!’
They waved and went on their way. They all glanced at Olga appreciatively. They sat down at a corner table overlooking the terrace.
‘Does it matter?’ Olga asked.
‘No.’ He grinned. ‘Anyway, you’re a professional singer, remember?’
‘But will they guess what I really am?’
They might guess but he didn’t give a damn: how were they to know she wasn’t a legitimate night-club singer? He almost believed it himself now. It was possible one of them had been to the Tranquillity and remembered her – she wasn’t easily forgettable – but what the hell, they were all his friends.
‘No, they won’t guess.’
‘The fattish, Portuguese-looking one, I’ve seen him at the Tranquillity.’
Yes, Max was a bit of a bon vivant who let his hair down occasionally in questionable night-clubs. Hargreave said: ‘He’s one of my closest friends, in fact he’s my personal lawyer, he won’t talk – or care. I’d like you to meet him, and Jake McAdam, too, the tall one.’ In fact he’d like her to meet all his friends; he wanted to say, ‘This is my girl Olga Romalova, she’s a night-club singer, maybe she used to be on the game but not any more, take her or leave her but she’s my girl.’ He said: ‘Jake, he’s got a tragic story. He fell in love with a smashing American girl about ten years ago, a newspaper reporter from New York who came out here to write a story about Hong Kong corruption. She was killed in a typhoon.’
‘Oh. What a sad story.’
And there was an even sadder story that he couldn’t tell her because of the Official Secrets Act. Long before the American girl, Jake had fallen in love with a Chinese Communist schoolmistress, and that had also ended in tragedy because Jake had been a senior policeman in Special Branch.
Olga said: ‘And now, is he married?’
‘Used to be. Twice, to the same woman. But it ended in divorce both times.’ He nodded over his shoulder. ‘And the other one, Dave, he’s a judge, also divorced. We stick together, us bachelors. Go to the races together.’
‘And Jake, what work does he do?’
‘He’s a businessman. Builds boats. And he’s got an import–export business. Does quite a lot of business with Russia, everything from pins to diesel engines, I gather. And now he’s gone into politics. He’s one of those idealistic diehards who think that Britain should never have agreed to surrender Hong Kong to China in 1997. He thinks we should only give them back the New Territories when the lease expires and hold them back at Boundary Street. He says we can survive like Gibraltar does. Of course, it’s too late now, because the handover has been negotiated, but he thinks the British Government shouldn’t have mentioned the subject, that Maggie Thatcher made a mistake. But having started negotiations, we should have stuck to our guns at Boundary Street.’
She nodded pensively, stirring her pina colada. ‘And what do you think?’
Hargreave shook his head. ‘China wouldn’t have backed down like Spain did because it’s a matter of “face”. Hong Kong is the holy soil of China stolen from the Celestial Kingdom during the wicked Opium War, et cetera. Do you know about that?’
Olga sucked the pina colada off the end of her straw. ‘Sure. 1841. I’ve read some books about China. It’s true – Britain did steal Hong Kong to force China to accept the opium trade. It is a shameful story, to force people to buy drugs like that.’
‘Well, it was a long time ago, and people thought differently then.’ But Hargreave was impressed. This was your ordinary prostitute? No, a thousand times no. How many books had he read on Russia? None. ‘Anyway, now Jake is a vociferous democrat – he’s campaigning for a seat in the Legislative Council elections and his platform is we must have complete entrenched democracy to withstand the Chinese Government after 1997 and that Britain must support us with a garrison stationed here.’ He added, ‘Jake’s one of the few non-Chinese standing in the selection. As an independent.’
‘Do you think he will win?’
‘He’s very highly thought of. But it won’t do him much good – when China takes over he’s likely to be one of the first to be thrown in jail as a subversive.’
‘What kind of trouble will he make?’
Hargreave sighed. ‘China has already announced that she’ll throw out our Legislative Council the day she takes over Hong Kong. Jake and others like him will refuse to accept that because it will be contrary to the Basic Law and the Joint Declaration. That’ll land him in jail.’
‘Oh dear,’ Olga said. ‘Such a brave man. Oh dear. And you, darling – what are you going to do in 1997?’
Hargreave did not want to think about it. Ten years ago when the Joint Declaration was signed he’d had hope that English law would survive in Hong Kong, that there would be democracy, but the massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989 had proved that was a pipe-dream and he had decided to quit in 1997, go somewhere like Spain where he could live modestly on his pension. Three years ago when things started going badly between him and Liz and there was talk of divorce, he felt like doing that even sooner. But now her lawyer’s letter had arrived, the reality of divorce under Californian law of Community of Property was upon him and his investments would be very modest when cut in half. So he would have to get a job somewhere. The only alternative was to continue to work under the new government and hope that China didn’t throw him in jail for refusing to bend the Rule of Law when they demanded. That was the bleak prospect he had faced last weekend when the lawyer’s letter arrived and he had jumped on the hydrofoil to Macao.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I want to leave, but divorce is an expensive business.’
She said sympathetically, ‘Could you get a job as a lawyer in England?’
‘I could, but I’m a colonial boy now, used to the sun. Cold, grey, rainy England? And the dreadful cost of booze?’
‘I understand. I love Russia, but it will be grey for a long time, and I am very tired of grey, I am a sun girl. But you know what I think I would do if I was a businessman? I would invest in Russia.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Russia needs everything. Communism was so bad that Russia has nothing, not even enough food to eat. You can sell anything in Russia.’
‘I couldn’t sell a damn thing. But Jake McAdam does well there.’
‘You know what I will do with my money?’ She took his hand earnestly. ‘I have over thirty thousand US dollars saved. I am going to buy an apartment in Moscow, on the west side. Because Moscow is going to go voom –’ she exploded her hands – ‘because so many foreigners are coming now that Communism is finished. And I am going to make a lot of profit when I sell it. And you know what I am going to do with it?’
‘What?’
‘Buy some farmland. My father was such a good farmer, and he taught me. And the Russian Government is saying, buy land and be good farmers. But my father was frightened of the responsibility because he only knew the Collective where the state pays for everything. My brother was the same. But I am going to buy some land for my stupid brother and me, and we’ll have our own ducks and chickens and cows and pigs and rabbits and vegetables and we’ll sell them in the market for the real price – and you know what else we’ll have?’
‘What?’ Her enthusiasm was endearing and infectious.
‘Horses! I love horses. And we’ll build a nice, proper house, with a real toilet and bathroom! No more kettles for the tub on Saturday. No more shitting outside in the little house.’
Hargreave grinned. He glanced over his shoulder to see if his friends had heard, but they had moved. ‘Say that again, not everybody heard it all.’
‘What?’ Then she smiled. ‘Okay, a bit loud, huh?’
Hargreave grinned: ‘Was it really like that?’
‘Shit yes!’ Then she clapped her hand over her mouth and burst into giggles. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ They laughed together so everybody looked at them. When they subsided she leant forward and whispered in his ear:
‘Let’s go’n dance downstairs …’
And did they dance?
Hargreave had no intention of dancing more than just enough to humour her, to be romantic, but Olga had her own ideas. ‘I’ve got my dancing feet on!’ The Bella Mar, with its dance-floor beside the pool, was a rather sedate Old China-Hand place, the elderly Chinese band given to waltzes and a bit of modest rock’n’roll occasionally just to show they weren’t totally old-fashioned. But Olga Romalova, after the first rock-’n’-roll – which Hargreave performed quite well – called across to the band: ‘Hey, can you do a tango?’
‘The tango!’ The Chinese bandleader beamed, and his men struck up.
‘Der-der-der-DA!’ Olga cried, and she swept back into Hargreave’s astonished arms and leant back so her blonde hair swept the floor. ‘Der-der-der-DA –’ and she swung upright and clasped him dramatically; then she swirled away – ‘Der-der-darra-darra-der-der-Da!’
And so Olga Romalova taught Hargreave the tango. Everybody left the floor when they started – nobody knew the dance, it seemed. But Olga Romalova sure did. At first Hargreave was mortified and tried to lead her off the floor but she had cried ‘No way!’ and pulled him back. And so Alistair Hargreave, Director of Public Prosecutions, was forced to dance the tango with the most beautiful woman in the world – and he found he could.
He could! Liz had declared him a failure, but with this glorious woman in his arms, laughing into his eyes, whispering instructions, everything that Liz had tried to teach him came flooding back with the drama of the beat, and with Olga leading him it seemed he knew what to do. So there was Al Hargreave sweeping earnestly round the terrace of the Bella Mar, doing the tango very creditably with the most exotic of partners, her hair sweeping, her breasts jutting, her long legs stalking, her back arching. And when the number ended, and fifty tourists burst into applause, it was Olga who led it, clapping her hands and laughing to the crowd.
‘Didn’t he dance good?’
There were shouts of ‘Yes’ and Hargreave was blushing as he laughed. Up there on the balcony McAdam and Judge Peterson and Max were clapping.
8 (#ulink_b8e70235-2879-5768-8c1d-118b679b13ab)
The next day, after an early breakfast, they went for a walk. It was the first time they had ventured outside their secluded hotel: but they would meet nobody he knew at this hour in this part of Macao and even if they did they would not know Olga – even if they recognized her, so fucking what? She was a night-club singer, that’s all. And if they didn’t believe that, fuck ’em, he was a free man!
It was a hot Sunday morning, the church bells pealing. They walked hand-in-hand along the old stone Praia Grande, under the trees, past the gracious old Leal Senado, the legislative council, past the governor’s residence. Out there land-reclamation barges were at work building big dykes to hold back the muddy River Pearl, to turn the bay into freshwater lakes with artificial islands where giant modern buildings would go up, hotels and shops and offices, all connected with the old shore by sweeping thoroughfares. Hargreave had difficulty understanding it: for centuries Macao had been a small, sleepy, faded Portuguese enclave on the China coast, thoroughly neglected by Lisbon; now, four years before the joint was to be handed back to China, in 1999, there was this frenetic burst of staggering investment that would transform the place into a mini-Hong Kong.
‘Has Lisbon suddenly acquired a guilty conscience?’
‘No,’ Olga said, ‘it is all local taxes from the casinos, it’s called the Infrastructure Programme, to make Macao survive after 1999.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘It is in the newspapers.’
‘You read the Portuguese newspaper too?’
‘I try. It is interesting to know what is going on. The same is happening in Hong Kong, not so?’
Yes, the same was happening in Hong Kong and Hargreave had difficulty understanding that too. One and a half years to go before the handover to the Comrades and Hong Kong businessmen and overseas investors were pouring billions into land reclamation all along the waterfronts to make more of the most expensive real estate in the world for more towering buildings: even the highly successful Hong Kong Hilton, in Central, was being pulled down to be replaced by another towering office block. And now the colonial government was building a massive new international airport on reclaimed land off Lantau Island, and when it was finished the old runway jutting out into the harbour would be sold as more real estate to be crammed with yet more skyscrapers; and all along the old flight path into Hong Kong the existing height restrictions would be repealed, old buildings would be torn down and replaced by yet more high-rise development. Lord, was there no end to the optimism and sang-froid?
‘It is the China fever,’ Olga said, ‘now that Communism is dead, China is going to go vroom. Imagine: one thousand million new customers for the world! Russia can be the same.’
‘But,’ Hargreave said, ‘just up the coast are Shanghai and Swatow and all the other China ports, and just up the River Pearl is Canton, a huge port – fantastic development is going on in all those places too. Shanghai is going to become the biggest industrial centre in China, not Hong Kong. A businessman could build in Shanghai for a fraction of the cost.’
‘It is because Hong Kong has the experience,’ Olga said sagely, ‘and British laws.’
Hargreave snorted. ‘It doesn’t take a Chinese long to learn anything; Shanghai will soon catch up on experience and I think a lot of Hong Kong investors will burn their fingers. And I wouldn’t bank on there being British law for very long – China will throw it out the window as soon as it suits them. And,’ he added, ‘I wouldn’t bank on Communism being so dead, either.’
‘Oh, it is dead, darling! Finished, kaput! Look at Russia. Capitalism has proved it is the only way to succeed.’
‘But it only takes a military coup to put Communism back on the throne and then everything’s ruined again. And China’s massive army is all the Party faithful. There was a coup against Gorbachev, and against Yeltsin. And what about this New Communist Party in Russia?’
‘No,’ Olga said, walking along with head lowered pensively, ‘the spirit is out of the bottle, the people will never accept Communism again.’
‘China put the genie back in the bottle very effectively at the Tiananmen Square massacre, didn’t they?’
Olga tapped her head. ‘“Genie”, that is the word, not “spirit”. Yes, but that was the political genie, not the money genie. A thousand million Chinese will not let the genie go back into the bottle with their money.’
‘Mao Tse-tung,’ Hargreave said, ‘and the Bolsheviks made a pretty good job of it. The guy behind the machine-gun is always right. And it doesn’t take much imagination to see them doing it in Statue Square, Hong Kong.’
Then they came around the corner of the Praia Grande and there, towering up thirty storeys high, dwarfing all the buildings around it, was the new steel and glass tower of the official Bank of China. ‘There, darling,’ Olga pointed, ‘is the reason they will not go back to Communism!’
Yes, it was reassuring, like the new Bank of China building in Hong Kong; it tended to show that the Chinese took commercial stability seriously now that Deng had proclaimed, ‘To become rich is glorious’ – but if Hargreave were a businessman he would wait and see before investing his millions. Olga said: ‘And have you seen all the factories just beyond the Barrier Gate?’
No, he hadn’t, but he’d heard about it – and he’d seen the same thing across the Hong Kong border, in the new Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in the Samchun Valley where a few years ago there had been only sleepy paddy fields. Now the valley was covered in factories and apartment blocks and businessmen from around the world were setting up industries there because land, building costs and labour were so cheap. Yet just over the border, in Hong Kong, only ten or twelve miles away as the crow flies, on the most expensive real estate in the world the same damn thing was happening. It didn’t make long-term sense. Hargreave was no businessman but it seemed to him that there had to be a levelling of the two sets of values, and surely Hong Kong’s had to go down?
Olga said: ‘And now let’s go to my old Macao, where I live; I love it.’
They walked hand-in-hand up the narrow, crowded streets, the grubby Chinese tenements on both sides, their signboards fighting each other up to the sky, the shops selling everything from silks and hi-fi gear down to lizards’ tails, through the smells of gutters and restaurants and spices and butchers and incense and smoke and urine, through the coolies and shopkeepers and urchins and mangy dogs and scrawny cats and the hammering and the yammering and the clattering of mah-jong, until they came to a tailor’s shop near the old Central Hotel. Olga pointed up at the top floor of the joyless tenement building opposite.
‘Those are my windows. It is old-fashioned but nice inside. I would take you in but my girlfriends are asleep now. I like it here because it is the old China, so much life everywhere. And I would like to show you my cats.’
‘Cats? How many have you got?’
‘About twenty, but they are not really mine, they live on the roof. Every day I feed them there and they are very grateful. I will show you another time, darling, when I cook you a nice Russian stew. But –’ she held up a finger – ‘I am learning Chinese cooking too; perhaps I must give you that, to impress you.’
‘I’m already impressed.’
‘Yes, but that is in bed – I mean in the kitchen.’
Hargreave grinned. ‘Do you like your flatmates, the girls?’
‘Oh yes, they are very nice. Yolanda is my good friend, she comes from Vladivostok, she spent all her life in the orphanage, since a baby – I was lucky. But she is so stupid, always falling in love with silly men.’ She grinned: ‘Not like me, who only falls in love with very important lawyers.’
She led him through the narrow, jostling, odoriferous streets, till they came to a squat, modern, white building with sheet-iron gates guarded by two lucky red flag-ensembles draped in yellow flowers. A small white sign on the wall read: Missionaries of Charity.
‘This is my favourite place. This is where the Sisters of Mother Teresa work.’ She looked at him. ‘And a few years ago Mother Teresa herself came here, and said it was her best mission in the world!’
Hargreave was taken aback by her enthusiasm. ‘So you’re really not an atheist?’
‘Yes, I am an atheist, that’s what I was taught at school, but Mother Teresa is wonderful because she is so kind – she won the Nobel Peace Prize! She gives her life to the poor people. Such sacrifice! So good. Here they look after anybody, food, clothes, bed, find a job. I always give money to Mother Teresa, and any old clothes the girls don’t want, even stockings and suspenders! Look.’ She burrowed her hand into her brassière and pulled out a hundred-pataca banknote. She marched through the open gates, up to the door, and slipped it in through the letterbox. ‘See? Even though I don’t believe in gods.’
‘None at all?’ Hargreave grinned.
Olga cupped her hands to her mouth and gave a whisper-shout at Mother Teresa: ‘That’s from both of us this week.’ She giggled and put her arm around him and then led him off down the street. ‘Do you?’ she asked.
‘Yes. One.’
‘The Christian one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not the Buddhist one?’
‘No.’
‘Not at all?’
‘No.’
‘Not the littlest bit? Even the possibility? Such Christian arrogance, darling! So only you are right, all the stupid Orientals are wrong? What about Allah?’
Hargreave smiled: ‘God and Allah are the same god. Just different names given by different prophets.’
‘But only your prophet is right? Poor Mohammed and Buddha, they made a big fat mistake? So you all fight each other, to prove who is right, ever since the Romans. Ever since King Henry VIII chopped the head off his poor wife to make himself the highest priest of England! And now today you are still fighting the Arabs who say you are infidels. Really,’ she squeezed him, ‘you religious people surprise me. Such arrogance, darling!’
‘That’s what they taught you at school?’
‘It’s not true?’
‘So you reject all of it, because of its gruesome history?’
‘Pathetic history, darling! Shameful But …’ She stopped and pointed up at the sky as Chinese thronged past them: ‘See that up there? That is infinity! It goes on for ever. No end. With millions of worlds? With billions of millions of creatures. Who made all that?’ Her eyes widened. ‘It is so amazing to think about it that you must decide that somebody made it. And that is what men call God. Or Allah,’ she added. ‘Or Buddha.’
‘And who made God?’
‘Ah!’ She held up a finger. ‘That is the answer! Nobody made God – He was always there, that’s why He is God.’
Hargreave grinned: ‘But I thought you didn’t believe in God?’
‘Not the God you Christians and Jews and Arabs are always fighting each other about. You are so cruel to each other. Such bullies. How can a sensible Russian girl believe in that? But …’ She held her finger up at the sky again: ‘There is Somebody up there, I think.’ Then she wagged her finger under his nose. ‘So you be nice to Mother Teresa!’
They climbed the wide stone steps leading up to the ruin of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, only the beautiful façade remaining, towering up, with carvings and colonnades. ‘This was also the very first university in Asia,’ Olga informed him. ‘Did you know that? Started by the Jesuit missionaries nearly five hundred years ago.’
Hargreave didn’t know that. ‘I thought it was just a church.’
‘No. The Jesuits were very rich because they taxed all the ships that came to Macao to trade. They wanted money to convert the whole of China to Christianity. But then the Duke of Pombal took power in Portugal and banished all the Jesuits and took all their money, but when the soldiers came to this cathedral they found everything gone, all the gold and silver and silk, even the library. The Jesuits were sent to Goa in chains, but the treasure was never found. So where is it?’ She tapped her toe on the stone steps. ‘Under here. People say there are secret rooms under these steps leading to the harbour, the treasure is buried there. Exciting, huh?’ She added, ‘When China takes over they will probably dig all this up, to look for it. That would be terrible.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘I got books from the library. So interesting. There are some nice little museums here, I will take you one day. Have you been to the new University of Macao, on Taipa?’
‘No.’ Hargreave smiled. ‘Should I have?’
‘It is very important because now there will always be Western education in China. Like the University of Hong Kong. That’s good, huh, good for China, good for the rest of the world, it will stop China being so …’ She put her hands to the sides of her eyes, like blinkers. She added: ‘One day I would like to go to a university.’
‘And study what?’
‘There’s so many interesting things to learn.’
Oh, this lovely girl was no prostitute, not in her heart, nor in her head …
They stopped at a Chinese restaurant in the narrow crowded streets of the old quarter, where Portuguese wine was served. It was noisy and pungent with a multitude of cooking smells, all the Chinese talking loudly, young girls circulating with trays of dim sum, small plates of Chinese delicacies, and there were glass tanks of fish and crayfish and crabs with their claws bound. Olga sat with her back to them so she couldn’t ‘see their unhappiness’. She did not know that the restaurant also served snakes, puppies and monkeys – when Hargreave went to the toilet he saw them in their cages in the kitchen, but he didn’t tell her. They drank a bottle of vinho verde while they picked at a selection of dim sum as an aperitif before returning to the Bella Mar for lunch.
Olga said: ‘So you don’t know whether you will continue to work after 1997?’
Hargreave sighed; he was at a loss where to begin. ‘Do you understand what the Rule of Law means?’
She shook her head.
No, there was probably no such thing in Russia either. ‘The Rule of Law means that everybody is equal before the law, and the law always rules, not the politicians. It is the fundamental principle of the English legal system. The courts are not afraid of the politicians. But in China the Communist Party rules, the only law is what the Party wants, and that can change from week to week, day to day. And when China takes over in 1997 it will be the same in Hong Kong – despite the Joint Declaration which says that English law will continue to apply.’ He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t practise law like that, it’s against everything I believe in.’
‘So are the people in Hong Kong worried?’
‘Oh, the poor old average Chinese worker has no choice but to hope for the best – and pretend to be patriotic when China comes marching in. But thousands upon thousands of middle-class Chinese have emigrated to Canada and Australia and the US. And most of the British civil servants are worried as hell about whether China will pay their pensions, and there are very good reasons to think China will not, no matter what she promises – once they see these vast sums leaving every month to pay capitalist foreign devils who made a career of exploiting the holy soil of China, they’ll put a stop to the outflow, and there’ll be a lot of poor pensioners. Yes, they’re very worried. But the big business houses are staying because all they’re interested in is trade and most of their assets are safely offshore – they don’t care about democracy and the Rule of Law.’ He shook his head. ‘But they should – because Hong Kong is prosperous only because there is British law here to give them justice. Take that away and Hong Kong will be a dangerous place to do business.’
Olga said pensively, ‘I do not believe it. I look around and I see all the big business, all the new buildings, the big new Bank of China, and I do not believe China will eat the gooses who lay the golden eggs.’
Hargreave sighed.
‘Lord, they’ve already broken the Joint Declaration half a dozen times. Look, the Joint Declaration is a legally-binding international agreement between China and Britain, and it says, amongst other things, that when China takes over Hong Kong will be an autonomous region and that there will be democracy. So in 1985 Britain began to introduce democracy, and China immediately protested, before the ink was dry, and has been threatening us ever since, vowing to throw out our legislative councillors.’ He looked at her. ‘How’s that for breaking the Joint Declaration?’
‘But,’ Olga said, ‘it is understandable, Hong Kong never had democracy before, now Britain introduces it –’
‘How can it be understandable when China said that “only the flag will change”, that her policy was “One Country, Two Systems”, that there would be a “through-train” on which the civil servants and the legislative councillors would travel smoothly from being a British colony into the new era?’ He shook his head. ‘The only thing we can understand from her behaviour is that China simply does not understand the law because they think the Communist Party is the law and can do what it likes – that is how Communists think. They have never had democracy or human rights in China, so they simply do not understand the real world – that is all that’s understandable about them.’
‘But,’ Olga argued solemnly, ‘they will change because they want trade.’
‘But only on their lawless terms. Do you know that thirty-one foreign banks are presently trying to recover debts of six hundred million US dollars owed by China’s state-run companies? And they owe millions to numerous American companies. Like McDonald’s – the world’s biggest fast-food chain? They signed a twenty-year lease with China for a prime site in Tiananmen Square, and after a while China just evicted them.’ Hargreave frowned at her. ‘They’re simply not like us, Olga, they simply don’t feel that the everyday laws of contract are binding on them, let alone strange international treaties made with foreign devils about this strange thing called democracy … And,’ he held up a finger, ‘China will suffer dearly for it. What China needs is what Hong Kong has – the Rule of Law. Last year Fortune Magazine voted Hong Kong the best place in the world to do business in, better even than New York or London. Why? – because of our free trade, of course, but particularly because of our Rule of Law: the international business community knows they can rely on our courts. But that will go when China starts interfering – Hong Kong is going to go to the dogs.’
‘What does that mean, go to the dogs?’
‘Go into a decline. But that’s only part of the godawful story, Olga. The rest is even worse. Because what about human rights?’ He waved a hand. ‘China has agreed that our Bill of Rights will continue to apply, and they even wrote it into the Basic Law – but what does China now say? That will be thrown out along with our democratically-elected legislative council!’ He spread his hands: ‘Lord, how can anybody trust these guys on anything? And freedom of the press?’ He snorted. ‘Do you know that freedom of speech is actually enshrined in China’s constitution? Well, we all know what that means in China – life in jail, more likely the executioner’s bullet for speaking out against the Party. Tiananmen Square massacre, that’s what happens.’ He snorted again. ‘The Basic Law also says there will be freedom of the press – but what happens?’ He spread his hands again. ‘China’s propaganda chief has recently warned Hong Kong journalists to “be wise and bend with the wind”, and “to watch out”. And now China has banned television satellite dishes because she is terrified of her people learning what is going on in the rest of the world. Because information, general knowledge, is power, it empowers the people.’ He shook his head. ‘The press in China is just a propaganda machine, Olga, and it’ll be the same in Hong Kong after they take over. And that’ll be the death of our open, free-market culture that has made us so prosperous.’ He looked at her. ‘How can one do business with a country like that?’
Olga sighed. ‘But then I look at all the new business going on, the new skyscrapers going up –’
‘That’s called optimism, Olga. That’s called sang-froid, which has always been a characteristic of the China coast. That’s called dollar-signs in the eyes of businessmen who know that a thousand million customers are wonderful – the businessmen will roll with the dirty punches and smile as long as they make their dollars, they don’t care if democracy and human rights are trampled underfoot. Even though Hong Kong will go to the dogs they’ll get their money back before it does.’ He held up his hands. ‘Oh, there may be a sort of honeymoon period while China tries to find its feet, but after that the bamboo guillotine will come down. And chop the heads off anybody who disagrees with the Communist Party.’
Olga shook her head solemnly. ‘Communism is dead.’
‘Yes, and long live the Communist Party of China – where it is alive and well. Not necessarily as a Marxist economic philosophy any more, because it is a proven failure which even China can understand, but as a diehard, tyrannical regime that has been in power for fifty years and doesn’t intend to let go – like Russia did with such attendant chaos.’
Olga sighed. ‘Do you know Martin Lee, the big Chinese politician in Hong Kong? He says the same as you.’
Of course, everybody knew Martin Lee, but Hargreave was impressed with her general knowledge. ‘Martin Lee is a good friend of mine. Excellent man, and an excellent lawyer. Yes, he says the same as me – we must have democracy, so we can stand up to China and insist on the rule of law. Or rather, I say the same as him. I’m just a civil servant who can’t say anything publicly; he’s the courageous politician who is standing up to China as the leader of the United Democratic Party.’ He added: ‘He’s going to win the elections, but he’s going to lose his freedom in 1997.’
‘Will he get his head chopped off?’
Hargreave snorted. ‘Martin is probably too high-profile internationally for China to dare shoot him. But he’s a sitting duck for being thrown in jail as a subversive – along with Jake McAdam and the likes.’
‘And you, darling?’ Olga said anxiously. ‘What would they do to you?’
Hargreave sighed, weary of the question he and his fellow lawyers were asking themselves.
‘I’m not a politician; I’m just a government servant whose job is to administer justice. However, if the new government wants me to pervert justice, to bend the Rule of Law, to prosecute people who are innocent, or if new laws are made which violate the Joint Declaration or the Basic Law, or if the new powers-that-be insist I do not prosecute somebody who is guilty I will have to speak out, refuse to cooperate, I will have to set an example – and that will doubtless land me in jail, yes.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t want to practise law under conditions like that. So I want to quit in 1997, yes. But,’ he sighed, ‘I’ve got to think carefully about the financial aspects. Divorce is a costly business. So? At this moment I’m not sure.’
Olga grinned: ‘We’ll find out. Finish your wine and I’ll take you to my favourite fortune-teller!’
Hargreave didn’t go a whole bundle on fortune-tellers – he didn’t like messing with mumbo-jumbo and preferred not to know the future. Olga thought that was hilarious – ‘My fortune-teller is beautiful!’ Hargreave was reassured to find that the soothsayer was a little old Chinese man squatting on a corner and his paraphernalia consisted of a canary and a deck of little cards. Hargreave paid ten patacas and Olga squatted to observe the ritual closely. The man opened the cage door; out hopped the canary, picked a card out of the pack with its beak, presented it to the fortune-teller, was given a pinch of birdseed as a reward, and hopped back into his cage cheerfully. Olga was delighted. ‘Isn’t that clever!’
The fortune-teller gravely presented the card to Hargreave. Chinese writing was on one side, the translation in English and Portuguese on the other. He read aloud: ‘You must work hard because you will have many sons.’
Olga thought that was very funny. ‘So you’ll have to be a lawyer, darling! Many sons!’ She stood up and hugged him. ‘And maybe I better get a job too?’
That Sunday night, as they lay in each other’s arms, she said, ‘Will I see you next Friday?’
‘Yes.’ Oh yes, he had to see her next weekend. But how much longer could he afford to keep doing this? It was as if she had read his mind, for she said:
‘But what about all this crazy money you are spending? Crazy money. I will speak to Vladimir about a special price. Why don’t I come to you, in Hong Kong? We save the hotel bill and all the dinners – I will cook for you, darling!’
Hargreave smiled. The China moonlight was streaming through the French windows, dusting her naked goldenness in silver. He loved her for her concern about his money; that showed she wasn’t a whore at heart. But he hesitated: he wasn’t sure about her coming to Hong Kong yet – he didn’t care what people thought, or guessed, her alibi as a singer was good enough for Al Hargreave as an individual – but was it good enough for the Director of Public Prosecutions? And even if it was – which it was, for Christ’s sake, plenty of Hong Kong bigwigs were known to have mistresses, and a good few were known homosexuals – even assuming he could get away with her alibi, was he ready to make that kind of commitment? Wasn’t it quite a step, from a discreet hotel in Macao to taking her home to his apartment for all his neighbours to see? And even if that was okay, was it a wise thing to do when Elizabeth was suing him for divorce? And even if that didn’t matter – which it didn’t, because the marriage was over, whether he was shacked up with half a dozen girls or none – was it quite fair on Liz to have it known that her husband had a Russian girlfriend in residence? And most importantly, was it fair on Olga to take her into his A-grade government apartment and start the mental process that she was going to become the mistress of it? Was he ready for that yet? And was she, this Russian girl who had never had a real love, who had been forced into prostitution – was she ready for the heady business of being taken into his privileged life, even if only for a weekend? What would she expect the following weekend, and the next? Oh, Hargreave knew what he wanted, he wanted her every weekend, but how would she feel when he simply couldn’t afford her any longer – which was surely going to happen sooner rather than later. All these questions flashed through Hargreave’s mind, then he said:
‘Yes, come to Hong Kong. We’ll go out on my boat for a few days.’ The boat was the answer.
She sat up. ‘You have a boat?’
‘In fact we’ll go sailing for a week,’ he said. ‘Next Monday is a public holiday, so I’ll take leave from Tuesday to Friday; we’ll have eight or nine days on the boat.’
‘Oh how lovely!’ Olga cried. Then she frowned anxiously. ‘But supposing they won’t let me in with my new identity card – the immigration man may remember, me.’
Hargreave had forgotten that detail. ‘Then I’ll bring the boat to Macao to fetch you. I’ll check you through Hong Kong immigration formalities at the Marine Department as crew.’
‘Oh, wonderful, darling! And I will tell Vladimir to go to hell, he must drop his price!’
Hargreave smiled. Yes, it would be very nice to get Vladimir down. ‘And what will he say to that?’
‘He will finally do it – he knows he is getting a bargain because you are a good customer. And for me you don’t pay, ever again, I will give you back my share!’
Hargreave grinned. Oh, this was ridiculous – the DPP getting a kick-back from the Heavenly Tranquillity! She could keep her share, but he loved her for offering it. And he would pay the going price if he had to – he didn’t want any trouble from Vladimir. But yes, something had to be done, he couldn’t afford this much longer. But for the moment he could afford it, and a whole week with her on the yacht was going to be wonderful.
‘Oh darling,’ Olga said, ‘I can hardly wait!’
9 (#ulink_99f383b6-0557-56e3-8913-56ffc3484e4f)
And nor could Hargreave.
He worked hard, to leave his desk clear for the holiday ahead. Every morning before dawn he drove down to his chambers and put in three hours’ work before his staff arrived, before his telephones started ringing. He kept his consultations to the minimum and declined all invitations to lunch. At lunchtime he went to the gym and pushed himself hard through the circuit of exercise equipment, then had a sauna and a hearty meal at the health-bar. He was getting fit and he felt good. He worked until about eight o’clock, then went home and rode his exercycle for half an hour whilst he watched the news and the weather report on television. There were no storms brewing nearby. He drank only a beer or two before Ah Moi served him another hearty health meal with plenty of salad: he was saving up his drinking-time for next week. Oh, he was so looking forward to the trip. He went to bed early with half a dozen different vitamin pills inside him and slept soundly. He woke up before dawn, eager to start the new day – one day less to wait. It was going to be a lovely adventure with his lovely girl on his lovely boat around Hong Kong’s many lovely islands. On Thursday night she telephoned him.
‘Hullo, darling! Are we really going sailing tomorrow?’
‘Really!’
‘Oh – all the girls are so envious, I’m so excited! Okay, I must go and work now. Is there anything I must bring?’
Work. The only thing he wanted her to bring was some good news from Vladimir. ‘Only your sweet self.’
‘And I’ve told Pig Vladimir to go to hell because I’m taking a holiday next week, there will be nothing to pay after Sunday, darling, next week is free.’
He was very pleased to hear that. ‘And what did he say?’
‘To hell with Vladimir. If I went back to Russia last week when my permit ended I would have some holidays before I started work, not so? Darling, I must go and sing now, goodbye. Know what I’m going to sing?’
Sing. That’s better. ‘What?’
‘“Slow Boat to China”. For us.’
Hargreave grinned: ‘That’s a lovely song.’
‘For us. I must go now – but darling?’
‘Yes?’
‘I love you! Okay,’ she giggled, ‘goodbye!’ The telephone went dead.
He woke up next morning at dawn feeling rested, fit and excited. He drove down to the gym, gave himself a quick workout, got to his chambers and finished clearing his desk. At nine o’clock he telephoned the Asia Company and asked them to deliver a week’s supply of meat to his chambers immediately – there was plenty of booze and canned food aboard. He telephoned the yacht club and instructed his look-see boat-boy to hose down the decks, open the portholes, check the oil, batteries and water tanks. He sent one of his clerks down to the Marine Department with his passport and ship’s papers to do port-clearance formalities for him: international destination Macao! With a hey-nonny-nonny and a hot cha-cha! He sent another clerk to the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank to cash a modest cheque – how delightfully cheap after the Bella Mar! He did a few pressing consultations, then, at noon, he summoned his three deputies, delegated the remnants of his files amongst them, discussed briefly the points of law involved, blew a jolly kiss to Miss Ho and Miss Chan, his secretaries, which sent them into fits of blushing giggles – Mister Hargreave had never done that before – and set off carrying his sailing bag. He rode down in the elevator to the parking basement, and drove out into hot, teeming Queensway with a song in his heart. Slow Boat to China, yessir. He drove through the steamy, congested thoroughfares of Wanchai to Causeway Bay, and turned out to the yacht club. He parked beside the clubhouse and strode down to the departure jetty. The good ship Elizabeth was waiting. Ten minutes later he was steaming down the fairway towards the international lane, a smile all over his face.
It was good to be alive! It was lovely to be steering his yacht across the South China Sea to fetch his beautiful Russian girl to go sailing around the myriad of islands – how exotic can a love affair get? And look at this magnificent Hong Kong, look at that breathtaking waterfront with its new skyscrapers towering up, look at that magnificent Peak, at teeming Kowloon with its Mountains of Nine Dragons beyond – look at all that land reclamation along the shores, all those ships from around the world, the freighters and junks and ferries and sampans. Lord, this is a wonderful triumph of human endeavour, a splendid tribute to Chinese industriousness, to sheer guts and sangfroid. This tiny colony on the China coast was a magnificent monument to British law – he was proud of it, although he hated the social nonsense, the one-upmanship. For all he was sick and tired of the law, he was proud of the high standard of justice, proud to be one of the standard-bearers, and he hated all that being trampled underfoot when China took over in 1997 …
He cleared the fairway, then swung between the mass of anchored freighters, into the international lane. There was no wind; the sea was flat, a haze hanging over the islands. He steamed past the end of big Lantau Island, measured off the compass course to Macao on his chart, turned the helm and pushed the automatic-pilot button. He went below to the saloon, down the alleyway to his aft master-cabin, stripped off his suit, and pulled on a pair of shorts. He went back to the galley, switched on the refrigerator, put a dozen beers in and opened one. He took it up to the cockpit. The sea ahead was empty but for the string of China islands: oh, this is what he would like to do with the rest of his life, with Olga – throw away the calendar and sail the world!
It was sunset when he reached the cloudy waters of Macao. He chugged past the ferry terminal, under the high Taipa Bridge, between the junks and sampans, and edged into the Club Nautico. He tied up, hurried ashore and checked in with the Portuguese authorities. Then telephoned Olga.
‘Hullo, darling!’ she cried.
He was grinning with anticipation as he waited for her. When he saw her running down the jetty, laughing, it seemed he had been away a long time.
She was enthralled by the yacht: by the mellow teak, the brass lamps, the spacious saloon, the galley with the little bar, the cosy sleeping cabins. ‘Such luxury! And that nice big bunk in our cabin, oh boy, so sexy! And two bathrooms!’ She was very impressed by the galley: ‘A deepfreeze and a refrigerator! Wow – in Russia we are lucky if we have one small fridge, very old! And such a stove! I can show you what a good cook I am, darling, then you will think I am wonderful!’
‘I think you’re pretty wonderful now.’ He was delighted with her pleasure.
She was fascinated by the wheelhouse: the radar, the satellite navigation system, the sextant, the charts, the radio, the automatic pilot. ‘Air-conditioning … You told me you had a boat, not a palace!’ She went scouting around the upper deck, examining winches and cleats and ropes and halyards, demanding the function of each item. ‘Two steering wheels, two compasses …’ She held a finger up at his nose: ‘But only one Olga, sir! No girls with big tits on my boat!’ Hargreave laughed with her. ‘With this boat can we sail around the world?’
‘Of course, she’s built for it.’
‘Oh, let’s do it! Would it cost a lot of money?’
‘The wind is free.’
‘And love is free! And catching fish is free. And then money is unimportant! Oh darling –’ she hugged him tight – ‘can we please do it, I have some money saved! Around the world …’
That night they anchored off Coloane Island, not far from the Westin Resort Hotel. They lounged in the spacious cockpit in the moonlight, drinking wine. They could hear distant dance music coming from the hotel.
‘Would you like to go ashore in the dinghy for dinner?’
‘When we have our own palace for free? This is so exciting for me!’
She cooked up a storm of prawns followed by sweet arid sour pork. They ate in the teak-panelled saloon by candlelight. Later, lying in the big double bunk in the aft cabin, spent, the moon beaming through the porthole, she stroked his eyebrow and said:
‘I am so happy. You mustn’t worry about Vladimir, darling.’
He wasn’t worried; he’d cross the bridges as he came to them – for the time being he could afford this happiness. ‘What did he say, exactly?’
‘Oh, he thinks he’s such a tough guy. He tried to make me bring the credit-card machine but I refused. Imagine such bad manners, going on your boat with the machine! I said we would pay for this weekend but no more, next week is my vacation. He protested so I wrote in my pay-book, “Olga is making her holidays from Monday to Sunday” and I walked out. The girls all agreed with me, even the Chinese manager who likes me to sing said it was okay. And for this weekend I am giving you back my share, I have cash in my bag.’
Hargreave loved her for that. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her to keep it, but he stopped himself – he didn’t want to establish any precedents he might later regret. Moreover, whilst he was paying her he had control of the situation, the relationship. All he wanted was her, but it was early days yet for a commitment. ‘He knows you’ll be with me all next week?’
‘No, only this weekend. He suspects, of course, but I said I was resting and going shopping and going to the beach. If he looks for you in the hotels he will not find you, will he? He does not know about this lovely boat! So I’ve tricked that pig.’
Hargreave doubted her trick would work, but he was glad she’d tried it. ‘Is he so bad?’
‘Such a pig, all the girls say so. And always trying to fuck us.’
He wanted her out of that life. ‘And have you?’
‘Me? Vladimir? I would rather die!’
Thank God for that. ‘Does he pester you?’
‘Now he’s stopped, he knows what I think of him.’
‘Does he dislike you too?’
‘Pigs like him don’t have feelings, they’re just greedy.’
‘Does he know who I am?’
‘No. I haven’t told anybody, not even Yolanda, she thinks you’re a businessman.’ She put her arm around him and squeezed. ‘I wouldn’t betray you, darling, please don’t worry; I am very proud of you, I would like to tell everybody, but I know this life.’ She hugged him. ‘And now shall we stop worrying about Mr Vladimir and think about the lovely time we are going to have? Can I catch a fish tomorrow?’
The next morning they woke up late because they were making love much of the night. There was hardly a breeze but Olga wanted to sail: Hargreave would rather have stayed in bed with her but he wanted to please her. There are few places to sail around Macao because it is ringed by China’s islands and mainland, so he headed back to the Club Nautico, went to the Marine Department to complete port-clearance formalities, then headed back into the international lane. He unfurled the genoa. The breeze had improved, the big sail filled and wrenched, and he cut the engine.
The yacht creamed along at a graceful four knots in the silence, slightly heeled. Olga was enthralled. ‘It is so thrilling …!’ She examined the sheets and halyards carefully, asking the function of each. ‘So to make the sail smaller you wind it up with this rope?’
‘On that electric winch.’ He pointed.
‘Electric! And to make it bigger you give out more rope?’
‘Right. And to trim the sail, to tighten it, you heave in with this rope, on this winch.’
‘Right. Very good. Now how do we work the big sail?’
He operated the electric winch and the mainsail came sliding out of the mast. It filled and the boat heeled a little more.
‘Oh, wonderful. Now explain how you did that, captain.’
She climbed around the boat studying the system, pointing out parts to herself and figuring out their function. Hargreave watched her from the cockpit, charmed by her enthusiasm: he looked at her clambering around in her bikini, at her golden curves and he felt he was the luckiest man in the world. And she didn’t get seasick. He had been concerned about that possibility. The hydrofoil overtook them and she waved energetically and laughed with glee when its wash sent the yacht pitching. Macao was dropping over the horizon astern when she came back to the cockpit, declaring herself conversant with all the gear. ‘It is so understandable if you use your head.’
She wanted to understand the navigational equipment. He took her into the wheelhouse and showed her the chart. ‘Here’s Macao, here’s Hong Kong, forty miles apart, and here’s the international shipping lane connecting them. Outside of this lane is China’s waters and we can’t go there. All those islands over there –’ he pointed – ‘are China’s, and over the horizon is the mainland. If we enter their waters we’ll be arrested.’
He explained the satellite navigation system, read off the latest fix and drew in their position on the chart with his parallel rulers. Olga was fascinated. ‘So we can never get lost?’
‘Of course, between Macao and Hong Kong I only need the compass. But on the high seas I wouldn’t get lost, provided the sat-nav keeps working. If it breaks down I would use this.’ He produced the sextant from its box. ‘Elementary geometry.’
‘Oh, you are so clever!’ She meant it.
‘A junior schoolboy could do it, after he’d read this book.’ He produced Mary Bluett’s Celestial Navigation for Yachtsmen, forty pages long, including the big diagrams.
‘Then I must study it.’ She reverted to the chart: ‘And where are we going to sleep tonight?’
‘Well, it’s getting late, the Marine Department headquarters will be closed. So we’ll anchor off one of the islands and check in tomorrow. Means we can’t go ashore tonight.’
In the middle of the afternoon they cleared the end of Lantau Island and the magnificent colony opened up before them. He furled the sails and they cruised slowly through the anchored ships and into the fairway. Olga was enthralled. She sat on top of the wheelhouse, binoculars to her eyes, elbows on her knees, swivelling around, studying one side of the harbour, then the other. ‘So much business …’
Hargreave was seeing the wonders of Hong Kong afresh through her excited eyes. ‘That’s the Ocean Terminal,’ he pointed, ‘and that’s the Star Ferry terminal, and behind it is Statue Square with the old Supreme Court building. And see that big glass skyscraper to the left – that’s the Bank of China.’
‘So much money?’
‘It owns most of the best real estate in Hong Kong. That tall building beside it is the Citicorp Bank, one of the biggest in America. And over to the right, that big grey monstrosity is the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank, one of the richest in the world, where I keep my money. And behind it is Government House.’
‘Is that where you live, darling?’
‘When I’m in town. And see that ugly tall building to the left? – that’s the new Supreme Court, where I earn my money.’
She peered through the binoculars. ‘Wow … So that’s where you’re the boss?’
‘Well, the Chief Justice, the Attorney General and I kind of share the joint. And ahead is the famous Wanchai where all the girlie-bars are.’
‘The World of Suzie Wong, I read the story! So nice! I feel she is my friend! Except I am luckier than Suzie, huh?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Absolutely, poor Suzie, no director, no yacht. Oh darling –’ she flung her arms wide – ‘I’m so happy!’
Hargreave grinned. ‘And so am I.’
She smiled at him, eyes suddenly moist, then raised the binoculars again: ‘I’m a tourist!’
Hargreave pointed. ‘And see all those junks over there – in there is the yacht club where my boat lives, and over there is our famous Kai Tak Airport, one of the most dangerous in the world. The aircraft have to fly straight towards those Kowloon mountains, then do a hairpin turn and skim over the rooftops to that narrow runway jutting out into all those boats.’
She studied it through the binoculars. ‘Those pilots are almost as clever as you, darling.’ She swung back to the Peak. ‘Can we see where you live?’
‘Not from here. All right, it’s getting late, let’s go’n find a nice anchorage.’ He swung the wheel and turned around.
The sun was getting low when they returned to Lantau Island. They were on their third bottle of wine. He dropped anchor a hundred yards offshore in a deserted bay. There was a small crescent of beach between two rocky points, and a new middle-class housing development up the coast, a few miles away. To the north Hong Kong island loomed. ‘Can we swim even though we haven’t been through immigration control yet?’
‘Provided you don’t set your pretty foot ashore.’
But first they lounged in the cockpit in the sultry sunset, watching the lights of distant Hong Kong come on, drinking another bottle of wine. Olga was captivated all over again by the beauty of the place. The moon was coming up, and Hargreave was on his second whisky when she took it into her head that it was time to go for that swim. She pulled off her bikini and leaped up on to the wheelhouse top, silvery-golden in the moonlight. She dived into the moonlit sea, in a flash of streamlined femaleness. She broke surface, gasping, her hair swirling about her shoulders. ‘Come on! It feels so sexy naked.’
Hargreave did not greatly enjoy swimming – in and out just to get cool was about his speed. And he didn’t like swimming in the dark – he imagined sinister marine creatures bent on discommoding him. But in all his forty-six years Alistair Hargreave had never swum naked with a woman, and it was that erotic notion that galvanized him into action – plus, no doubt, all the booze sloshing around inside him. He put down his glass, unzipped his shorts, clambered up on to the wheelhouse and dived in to join his glorious girl down there. Olga gave a squeal and began to thrash away into deeper water, away from the island she’d been forbidden to set foot upon. Hargreave thrashed after her, to get that silvery loveliness in his arms. Olga swam away from him, legs and arms flashing in the moonlight: they were about thirty yards from the yacht when she let him catch up with her. And oh, the glorious slippery feel of her in his arms, writhing against him as she trod water and thrust her laughing mouth against his: then the stomach cramps hit him.
One moment Al Hargreave was laughing in a sensuous embrace, the next agony struck, a spasm that doubled him over, clutching his guts, holding him in a vice, wrenching his head underwater – all he knew through the agony was the terror of gasping in bitter salt water, the terrifying panic of strangulation. He thrashed back to the surface and gasped in another mouthful of choking water; he gagged and coughed, trying to spit it out. Another spasm wrenched him down, and Olga pulled him back to the surface. She grabbed him by the hair and hauled his head up, shouting, ‘Don’t panic!’ She pulled him over on to his back and thrust her hand under his chin to hold his face uppermost – ‘Don’t panic – don’t struggle – take deep breaths!’ She trod water desperately as Hargreave gasped, trying to tread water through the agony of the cramp, choking and gasping again, his heart pounding. ‘Kick your feet while I pull you …’ She started swimming with one arm, the other supporting his chin. She looked over her shoulder for the boat, and was horrified to see how far it was – and then she felt the current.
The tide was going out, sweeping around the tip of the island; the boat was fifty yards off, and within a minute Olga knew she could not swim with Hargreave against the flow. She looked desperately at the other side of the bay – the rocky point was two hundred yards away. That was the only way she was going to get him out of this crisis, by using the current. Olga turned and started swimming desperately towards that point, on her back, frog-legging, one arm back-stroking, gasping; ‘Kick – kick like a frog!’ Hargreave tried to kick, the agony shooting through his guts, his arms desperately working, his chin clasped above water by Olga’s hand, gasping, coughing, retching.
Olga swam and swam with the tide, desperately trying to steer towards the point, her heart pounding, and then the exhaustion began to take hold. She thrashed and thrashed and thrashed, and the pain came screeching into her arms and legs and pounding heart, exhaustion that built and built to agony, and still she thrashed, gasping ‘Kick – kick …’ Hargreave kicked and kicked, water slopping into his rasping mouth with each jerk, coughing and gulping in more: and then Olga could fight no longer; she just had to stop to get the pounding out of her heart; for a moment she went limp, gasping ‘I can’t go on!’ Hargreave’s head went underwater and he floundered panic-stricken, and Olga cried ‘I’m here,’ and wrenched his head up. She started swimming again, flailing and gasping.
Now the moonlit point was only ninety yards off, now eighty, the current threatening to carry them past it into the open sea beyond. Olga screwed up the last of her desperate strength and gasped ‘Nearly there …’ She thrashed and kicked with all her crying-out exhausted might, trying to steer across the treacherous current, and Hargreave was racked afresh by cramp and his head twisted out of Olga’s hand and she shrieked and grabbed his chin again. She thrashed as Hargreave tried to kick through his gut-wrenching agony, and then Olga could not fight on. She simply could not go any further, and she looked wildly at the point: it was only thirty yards off, and she cried ‘We’re there – kick!’ Hargreave kicked and kicked with the last of the agonized endurance, rasping, gasping, coughing, gagging, drowning. Then Olga’s exhausted foot found the sand.
It was the sweetest feeling in the world. She trod on the sand, sobbing, trying to say It’s okay – I’ve got you – but no words came out. She thrashed and plodded and dragged Hargreave to the rocks.
10 (#ulink_69a64dae-9d86-5861-ab0c-f5354197ef0d)
She lay flat out on her belly in the moonlight, long hair matted in sand, gasping her breath back. Hargreave lay spreadeagled beside her, trembling with exhaustion.
‘You saved my life …’
‘My fault … Shouldn’t swim … with so much booze …’
‘Never had cramp like that before …’
‘I have. I should have known better …’
She rolled over on to her back, arms outflung, and looked up at the stars. Her breasts and belly and thighs were covered in sand. After a minute, she said, ‘How are we going to get you back to the boat?’
‘I’ll swim.’
‘No, you risk your life. And mine.’
Hargreave sat up wearily. ‘You could fetch the dinghy,’ he said.
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘Can you row?’
‘I can learn.’ She heaved herself into a sitting position.
Then Hargreave realized that he had forgotten to put the swimming ladder down before he dived in. ‘Oh Lord … You won’t be able to get aboard, the gunnels are too high.’
Olga stared out at the yacht lying out there in the moonlight, registering this information: then she dropped her head and giggled. ‘Oh no! And we are naked on the beach.’ Then Hargreave saw the funny side of it despite himself. Olga laughed: ‘So the only solution is to walk naked to the village and borrow some clothes!’
‘Borrow us a sampan while you’re about it.’
‘Me?’
‘You’re the pretty one!’
Olga threw back her head in the moonlight and guffawed. She collapsed back on the sand, arms outflung. ‘This is so funny. Naked in Hong Kong! But what are we going to do, darling?’
Hargreave stood up, grinning. He walked into the water and washed the sand off his hands. ‘Climb up the anchor chain,’ he said.
Olga sat up again. ‘Of course!’
‘Haven’t done it for years; it’s damn hard, but it can be done.’
‘Not you – me,’ Olga said emphatically. ‘At gymnastics we had to climb up ropes, my arms are very strong. Look!’ She bent her elbow and made her biceps hard. ‘So impressive! I am not letting you swim out there and drown.’
‘In an hour the tide will have turned and whatever causes cramp will have gone away.’
‘No, I am not letting you …!’
‘Al Hargreave may be unathletic but he’s not a complete prick. Would Errol Flynn have let his girl swim out there alone to climb anchor chains? Sean Connery would do it in his dinner jacket.’ He spread his arms. ‘Relax. You’re marooned in the hot China night on a deserted beach with your very own yacht out there – all we’ve got to do is climb up the fucking anchor chain. What could be more romantic?’
‘With my own true love?’
‘So come here and let me wash that sand off your beautiful body.’
She did not have to save his life again when they finally swam out to the boat when the tide had turned: she stayed beside him but the cramp did not return. She was as good as her word about rope-climbing: while he clung to the anchor chain she put one foot on his shoulder, grabbed the chain above his head, stood, then went hand over hand up the short distance to the bows. She grabbed the gunnel, then swung one leg up under the rail, lost her grip and crashed back into the water with an undignified flash of naked flesh. Giggling, she tried again. This time she succeeded. She wriggled under the rail, and got to her feet.
In the morning they sailed to the yacht club. Hargreave left Olga aboard while he took a taxi to the Marine Department and completed port-entrance formalities: he got her admitted into the colony as his crew-member without a hitch – the young Chinese immigration officer recognized him and did not query Olga’s profession of singer recorded on her Macao identity card. ‘Have a nice sail, Mr Hargreave.’
They had a lovely sail, for the next week. That first day he circumnavigated Hong Kong, to show Olga the bustling industrial development and the beautiful bays and luxurious apartment complexes on the other sides of the island. ‘So much money – so much work!’ He anchored in Repulse Bay for the night amongst dozens of yachts and pleasure junks out for the long weekend. They sat on deck in a beautiful sunset, the jungled mountains looming up, the shore lined with the lights of gracious apartment blocks, music and laughter wafting across from the boats.
‘We were told at school,’ Olga began, ‘that the West was terrible, only very few people were rich, all the rest very poor, without enough food, dying of cold. Our teachers showed us movies of New York in the winter, the hoboes freezing while the rich people ate in restaurants and all their children took drugs and all the pretty girls had to be prostitutes. The American army were well-fed because their only job was to conquer Russia to make us slaves. And the whole of Europe was the same, our teachers told us, and England was worse, because you have a queen. I remember, when I was a little girl, when Prince Charles married Diana, we were shown a movie of them at Buckingham Palace after the wedding, on the balcony, the crowds of people outside, and our teacher told us the crowd was demanding bread.’
Hargreave smiled. ‘And you believed your teacher.’
‘Of course, I was only about ten. Even my father and mother believed it. I wanted very much to be a soldier for Communism to help those poor American and English people, to give them food, so their children could grow up happy like me. And when they showed us pictures of the Berlin Wall to keep out all the nasty West Germans and Americans, I clapped. I was very patriotic, darling, when I was ten.’
‘And then?’
‘And Africa – our teachers showed us such pictures of little black babies crying with nothing in their stomachs and flies on their noses and their mothers’ breasts all empty, and we were told this was the fault of the capitalists who were making them work in their factories and mines, who killed all the wild animals and chopped down all the trees for firewood in London and New York. And we saw many pictures of brave Russian and Cuban soldiers fighting to free them from such misery. And, oh, I wanted to be a soldier. I was going to be a parachutist, darling!’
‘A parachutist?’ Oh, he loved her.
‘Jumping out of the sky with my machine-gun and shooting all those nasty capitalists. And when we saw movies of the Americans fleeing out of Vietnam – oh boy, I wanted to marry a soldier so much!’
Hargreave laughed. ‘And when did you change?’
‘When I started to get tits, I suppose. When all us girls started to look at black-market magazines from the West – fashions and icecreams and motor cars. And one of my friends had a brother who had come back from the army and he told her many things. My mother was dead and my father was very sick now, and my brother had left to work in the mines. Then suddenly Mr Gorbachev was the new boss and he was talking about perestroika and glasnost. I was living in the orphanage now and I was very interested in boys, and clothes, and all this was very exciting to us. We only understood that the West was maybe not so bad, but to us it meant being pretty girls with rich husbands. So romantic. Then I went to work in the aluminium factory, but there were no pretty clothes, everybody was poor except the apparatchiks; things got worse not better because there was so much confusion, so many criminals now. Then I was offered the job at Mosfilm, like I told you, but it really was a KGB job. Then everything went crazy when the old Communists tried to take Gorbachev’s power, and I was sent to Istanbul. I was very confused.’
‘And now?’
She spread her arms. ‘Now I am the happiest girl in the world, with my knight in shining armour. Now I am not confused, even if I am still a whore.’
‘You’re not, you’re a singer.’
She smiled. ‘Yes, with you I am not a whore. And I never want to be a whore again, that is what I have learned, that is one of the things I am not confused about.’
He believed her; but what would she do the week after next when this holiday was over? He felt the happiest man in the world, too – but was this the real world?
‘And another thing I am not confused about: now I really know what I want to be. I always wanted to do it, but now I am really determined. Study to be a vet. I like animals very much. On the collective farm I often helped the vet, and I was very good at school with chemistry and biology, so interesting. So after I have bought my brother a farm I will study to be a vet.’
He was very pleased to hear that. She was no whore in her heart! But it raised a number of questions. ‘But where? In Russia?’
She wanted to say, Wherever you are. She smiled: ‘Wherever I can, darling, I will find a way to do it.’
Oh, yes, he wanted her to do it, he wanted to ensure she did it, pay for her to do it, but it was too early yet to consider the implications of all that. At that moment the two-way radio rasped in the wheelhouse: ‘Yacht Elizabeth, this is Kingfisher, come in.’
Hargreave went to the machine and picked up the receiver. ‘Kingfisher, Elizabeth, good evening, Jake. Pick a channel.’
‘Seventy.’
‘Seventy.’ Hargreave turned his control switch from the mandatory Channel 16 to Channel 70. ‘Where are you, Jake, over?’
‘Anchored about two hundred yards astern of you. Want to come over for a drink? I’ve got some friends aboard for the weekend.’ He added: ‘Including some very pretty ones.’
Hargreave hesitated. It would be nice to see Jake but right now it was much nicer being alone with Olga, and he didn’t want to face questions about her; they hadn’t even worked out a proper alibi yet.
‘Not now, thanks Jake, we’re just making supper, maybe tomorrow. Where’re you going from here?’
‘Thinking about having lunch on Lamma, join us if you like. After that just wandering up the islands, probably to Sai Kung area.’
‘Good, we’ll look for each other on channel sixteen, huh?’
‘Roger, we’ll be listening. Have a good time. Out.’
They had a good time. They slept late the next morning. Repulse Bay beach was full of people; there were many more pleasure-craft anchored when Hargreave and Olga left, lots of topless girls sunbathing on decks. They did not go to Lamma for lunch: it is a pretty island, with a quaint Chinese village with excellent seafood restaurants and Hargreave indeed intended taking Olga there sometime this week, but not today: today was a public holiday, there might be many people he knew and he did not want to start tongues wagging about Olga, and why Liz shot him. So after a late champagne breakfast they set sail up the island-studded coast towards Sai Kung area. The sun shone hot out of a clear sky, the blue sea was flat but there was just enough breeze to fill the sails and keep them cool. Hargreave was very happy: this is what he would love to do for the rest of his life, sailing, messing about on boats, living on his own boat, maybe even making a bit of money out of it – he would be perfectly happy for the rest of his life in the Caribbean, taking the odd charter party out for a week’s cruising around the islands to augment his pension, he would be perfectly happy living like that with Olga. Look at her – she was loving it as much as he, revelling in the quiet shh-shh of the sea, loving the gentle slop and surge of the sails, the feeling of freedom, of free power, of working with nature, having an adventure, sailing to distant islands, sailing anywhere you like, to faraway places with strange-sounding names.
‘Darling, this is so beautiful …’
And she was so beautiful: she was sitting topless on the roof of the wheelhouse, sometimes studying the islands through binoculars, sometimes flopping on to her back, arms spreadeagled, just looking up at the sails towering above her.
‘Alistair, I could do this for ever.’
He was sitting on the wheelhouse roof near her, his legs dangling over the end, looking aft, drinking beer. ‘And what about being a vet?’
She rolled over on to her stomach.
‘You see, when I am a vet I will make lots of money. And you will not have to be a lawyer any more. You can look after the boat, you see, and maybe the chickens and ducks too, and then every weekend we can sail this boat. But –’ she held up a finger – ‘at the end of every month I do not work for the next month, because I have made so much money and anyway I am such a good vet all the animals are very healthy, so off we go sailing for a month!’
It was a pretty scenario. ‘And where’s your surgery going to be?’
Her reply astonished him. ‘Cuba.’ She added: ‘Anywhere you like: maybe Florida is better for you Englishmen, but I like Cuba.’
Hargreave grinned. ‘Why?’
She rolled over on to her back again and looked up at the sails.
‘Because,’ she said solemnly, ‘Cuba is like Russia, starting all over, only much better. So exotic. Beaches and palm trees. And rum! Cuba is soon going to collapse, like Russia, and then it is also going to need everything. And then Cuba is going to go vroom, because the Americans are going to put a lot of money into Cuba, oh boy yes. And Cuba is a very big agricultural country, many farms, many animals and they will need many vets. But all the fat American vets will not go there, because they are making so much money looking after cats and dogs in Miami, and New York, and all the Spanish vets are making too much money in Madrid, and anyway Spaniards do not love animals because they have those terrible bullfights. So they will need plenty of vets in Cuba. And Cuba will be like America was fifty years ago – many opportunities.’ She held up her finger at the sails: ‘And that is when Doctor Olga Romalova arrives!’
Hargreave grinned. ‘And when are you going to start studying?’
She looked up at him seriously, upside-down.
‘When I leave Macao. I already have enough money, even after I have bought a farm for my brother and me – I have decided I will not buy an apartment.’ She paused. ‘But, of course, if you do not tell me to go away, I will start after you leave Hong Kong.’
Tell me to go away. Oh you poor girl. Before he could respond she twisted on to her stomach, scrambled to her knees and flung her arms around his shoulders. ‘Oh, don’t be frightened of me – I am not putting pressure on you! I am so sorry! Oh darling, of course you are not responsible for me, we are just discussing and the truth is I love you so of course I want to do what you say, but I am not a crazy girl who thinks everything is decided, I am just telling you what I have decided about my life because I do not like to be a prostitute any more!’
‘I didn’t look frightened, did I?’ Hargreave grinned.
‘Oh –’ she waggled her sweaty breasts against his head and hugged him – ‘your face, so funny, so worried! Darling, there is no problem for you, I am just telling you my exciting future now I am almost not a whore any more. And I have already written a letter to the University of Moscow, and the University of Miami, asking how much it costs, soon I will know something. Oh darling –’ she clasped his face to her and rocked him – ‘do not be frightened of me – now let’s stop talking about it.’
No, he was not frightened of her: he was enchanted. Her enthusiasm and energy seemed as boundless as her beauty.
That afternoon they anchored in an empty cove on Tap Mun Chau and went ashore with goggles and snorkels. They swam along the rocky shoreline, looking at the marine life: Olga led the way, and Hargreave was not watching too much marine life; he was entranced by the beautiful form ahead of him, her buttocks, her lovely long golden legs smoothly working the flippers, her long blonde hair streaming silkily behind her: she was the most sensuous creature in the world. They walked along the deserted beach together, looking at the shells and seaweed and jetsam, Olga crouching to examine bits of this and that, holding them up to the sun to admire the colours: she caught a very worried sandcrab and held it up for Hargreave to admire.
‘Look how perfect this animal is. Look at his shell, to protect him. Look at his little claws, to catch his food – so strong. Look at his little breathing place – and look at his eyes! How can eyes so small have all the lenses and nerves and things to tell him what he is seeing?’ She put the crab down and watched it scurry away gratefully. ‘God is very clever, even though I don’t believe in Him.’
‘I think you do.’
‘Yes? Then why is there so much suffering?’
‘Because long ago God decided to let us do our own thing and not interfere, so we would develop our characters, become strong.’
‘But if He decided not to interfere, why do you pray for help?’
‘In the hope He will grant it.’
She mused, walking along, head down, very dissatisfied with that answer. ‘But God knows everything. So He knew long ago whether you would pray or not, and He knew long ago He would not interfere because He wanted you to be strong. So what is the hope in praying? You cannot make God change His mind by praying because He already knew before the world began what He was going to do.’ She stopped to pick up a shell. ‘I wish I understood that. If I did, I would pray.’
Hargreave wished he understood it too. ‘Maybe by praying we harness some of His strength to ourselves.’
‘Hmm,’ Olga mused, ‘I must think about that. Like the yogis. Maybe that is the solution to the puzzle.’
They were swimming nude, about twenty yards from the yacht, when Jake McAdam’s junk came around the point and turned into their bay. There were three girls sunbathing topless on the foredeck, Jake and a dozen people on the big afterdeck. Jake shouted: ‘Come over for a drink!’ He steamed past them and dropped anchor about a hundred yards away. Hargreave and Olga swam back to their yacht. She mounted the swimming ladder and put on her bikini and he pulled on his swimming trunks.
‘Remember you’re a singer.’
‘That’s me. At the big hotels. And I’m making my holidays.’
‘And we met in the floating casino, because Jake knows I don’t go to night-clubs.’
They clambered down the ladder into the inflatable dinghy. He started the outboard motor and they chugged over to Jake’s junk and tied up to his swimming ladder.
‘Welcome aboard!’
Hargreave need not have worried. Jake remembered Olga – ‘How could I forget that tango?’ – but nobody else had seen her before. The party was going strong and everybody was very jolly. Jake was with a physiotherapist called Monica with whom he had a long-standing affair of convenience: Hargreave knew most of the fourteen people aboard, at least casually: they were a mixed bag, as Jake’s parties usually were, from highbrow to low-brow: Doc Dobson, a bachelor from the government clinic whose ‘tiresome duty’ it was to keep tabs on the venereal health of Wanchai bar-girls; Jack-the-Fire, a senior fireman with his ageing live-in girlfriend, Nancy Smythe, who was a teacher; Harry Howard, the stockbroker with his imperturbable Chinese mistress, Petal, who was a psychiatrist (‘He’s crazy, even more than me’); Denys Watson, a very successful barrister whose weaknesses were whisky and women, who had left his long-suffering wife at home; Whacker Ball, a misogynist who was the editor of the Oriental Israelite, a caustic weekly digest of Hong Kong news owned by Jake; Isabel Phipson, the very attractive headmistress with her lesbian lover, Penny, who was Jake’s bookkeeper: though there were some new faces, Hargreave counted these people as his friends – and Elizabeth’s – and they all seemed pleased to see him. Nobody mentioned Elizabeth or his bullet wound – his dramatic scar was exposed – although there were many interested looks cast at Olga. (‘Wow,’ Isabel Phipson joshed him, ‘lucky boy, Al, where did you find her?’ ‘Hands orf!’ Hargreave grinned, and Isabel went into giggles.) ‘What a lovely girl, Al,’ Denys Watson murmured, ‘where’s she from?’
‘You hands orf, too, Denys!’ Isabel giggled, and they all laughed. Hargreave liked Denys, who stoically excluded his friends’ women from his weakness.
‘She’s from Russia,’ Hargreave said, ‘she’s a night-club singer in Macao.’
‘How do you do; I am Olga Romalova from Russia,’ he heard her say above the music and chit-chat, pumping hands energetically with Whacker Ball.
‘And what brings you to our part of the world, Olga?’ Whacker boomed.
‘I am a singer, now I am making some holidays …’
Doc Dobson put his hand on Hargreave’s shoulder and whispered, ‘What a charming girl. Even Whacker likes her.’
Charming – that was the word for her. Hargreave watched surreptitiously as he circulated around the big afterdeck: now Olga was the centre of a small circle of people, the formerly-topless girls and Harry Howard: they all laughed uproariously at something she had just said. Jack-the-Fire, who was getting along with the whisky, murmured, ‘Good on yer, Al – I hope she’s not going back to Russia too quick.’
‘I hope so too.’
‘I hope she goes back tomorrow,’ Petal twinkled, ‘just look at that crazy man of mine, eating out of her hand!’ She held a finger up at Hargreave: ‘So, maybe she’s young, Alistair, but that doesn’t matter if her heart is good, and that girl has a kind heart, I can tell.’
Hargreave felt proud of her; she was the centre of attention and she was handling the task admirably. He knew everybody was being kind because they felt sorry for him because Liz had left him in a blaze of embarrassment, but he also knew they were genuinely charmed by Olga, and he was delighted.
‘Interesting woman,’ Whacker Ball rumbled beside him. ‘Telling me about the Roman ruins in Istanbul.’ Whacker liked Roman ruins.
‘She was working in Istanbul before she came here,’ Hargreave said.
‘One of my favourite watering-holes,’ Denys the Menace slurred. ‘Which nightclub?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Hargreave said, ‘I think she mentioned the Trocadero as one of them.’
‘Trocadero?’ Denys said. ‘Don’t know it.’
Jake put his hand on his shoulder. ‘Nice to see you looking happy, pal; how long is she around for?’
‘Her agent’s trying to negotiate another contract for her in Macao, in the Estoril, I think.’
‘Where’s her agent?’
‘Moscow.’
‘Congratulations on that heroin case,’ Whacker rumbled. ‘Twenty years – that’ll keep Edward Lo out of mischief for a while.’
‘Will it stand up on appeal?’ Denys asked. ‘Evidence mostly circumstantial.’
‘It’ll stand up,’ Hargreave said. ‘There was nothing wrong with the judge’s summing up.’
‘The Chinese will probably shoot convicts like Edward Lo when they take over,’ Denys said, ‘appeal or no appeal. That’s what Mao did when he took over China. Oh, justice is going to be such fun after 1997.’
‘Are you staying on?’ Hargreave asked.
‘Where else can a beat-up lawyer like me make money like this? I’ll stay until they make life too uncomfortable, like shooting defence lawyers as subversives. And you?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘I thought you were definitely quitting?’ Isabel Phipson said. Isabel didn’t know about Californian divorce law and Community of Property.
‘Why don’t you go up on to the bench, Al?’ Denys said. ‘You’ll probably be safer from the Comrades up there.’
‘Until I hand down judgements they don’t like?’
‘Oh, justice is going to be such fun,’ Denys said again.
‘And what about our pensions?’ Isabel said. ‘We better save like hell in the next eighteen months, chaps, I don’t see the Comrades letting our pensions flow out of the holy soil every month. Are you leaving, Whacker?’
‘Me leave?’ Whacker growled. ‘When the Comrades take over is when the Oriental Israelite really starts getting bitchy – it’ll be an honest journalist’s dream.’
‘Until they close you down,’ Hargreave said. ‘And shoot you, for “literary hooliganism”.’
‘Amen,’ Denys said. ‘And us for defending him. And the judge for acquitting him.’
‘If there’s a trial at all,’ McAdam said. He turned away to recharge his glass.
‘Hullo, my dear,’ Denys murmured to Olga as she joined them. She looked radiant, the sunset on her golden hair and face. Hargreave smiled at her proudly.
‘I’ll go down fighting,’ Whacker growled. ‘I’m almost seventy, for Christ’s sake, what else is there to live for at my age but the truth? And I’ll defend myself, thanks, really give ’em an earful. No, I’m staying. I wouldn’t miss the fun for the world.’
‘Do you really think,’ Monica asked Hargreave, ‘that China will get rid of people like Whacker? And Jake? And Martin Lee?’
‘No doubt about it,’ Denys said.
Hargreave said, ‘China probably won’t shoot them, but a trumped-up charge to throw them in jail after a show trial is quite likely, to silence them.’
‘I’ve begged Jake,’ Monica said, ‘to pull his punches in his electioneering, but he won’t. I think he’s being very foolish, antagonizing China so.’
Whacker growled, ‘Courageous yes, reckless maybe, but foolish never. He’s got to tell the people the truth.’
‘He can’t tell the truth for long if he’s in jail,’ Monica said.
‘What is the difference,’ Olga asked, ‘between Jake and Martin Lee?’
Monica grinned: ‘Martin Lee is richer, smarter and better-looking.’
Everybody laughed.
‘Richer, no doubt, smarter, probably,’ Jake said, returning with his glass recharged, ‘but personally I’ve always wondered about the better-looking.’
‘I mean,’ Olga grinned, ‘why is Jake an independent, not working with Mr Lee, what is the difference?’
‘None,’ Whacker said, ‘except Martin Lee is a gentleman who only calls a spade a spade; Jake calls it a fuckin’ shovel.’
Everybody laughed again. Jake said to Olga: ‘No difference except, as an independent candidate I can say things he can’t because I’m not bound by party rules.’ He added: ‘However, I won’t win a seat – my eyes are the wrong shape. I’m only really interested in making a lot of noise so the people hear what I have to say.’
‘And what is that?’ Olga asked.
McAdam sighed. ‘What Martin Lee says: we must have a strong democracy in place so we can stand up to China when she takes over. We must show China we are a voice to be reckoned with, we must insist that Britain – and the United Nations – enforces the Joint Declaration, forces China to abide by its international undertakings, forces China to abide by the agreement that our Court of Final Appeal will be made up of respected Western judges, not party toadies appointed by Beijing who can’t read English, let alone understand English law and who will do what the party instructs – ’
‘Hear, hear,’ Hargreave said.
McAdam made a fist: ‘We must insist that Britain punishes China when she sweeps aside our elections, insist the world comes down like a ton of bricks with all kinds of economic sanctions: freeze her foreign assets, close down her embassies, throw them out of the United Nations, treat them as untouchables – really hurt them. Even threaten war – Christ, there’re six million Chinese British subjects in Hong Kong who’re entitled to Her Majesty’s protection.’
‘Hear, fuckin’ hear,’ Whacker growled.
‘But what is Great Mother Britain doing? Appeasing China at every turn, so as to not rock the boat, appeasing “in the interests of a smooth transition”. By the Joint Declaration China must not interfere with the running of Hong Kong until 1997, and our autonomy after 1997 is guaranteed but China is interfering all the time, announcing they’ll kick out our Legislative Council and abolish our Bill of Human Rights, threatening our business community with reprisals if they don’t toe the China line, throwing Hong Kong journalists in jail, telling our press they had better “bend with the wind”. And they’ve slandered our Governor for introducing reforms, calling him a “liar” and a “criminal”, “a prostitute”, a “Buddha’s serpent”, “a villain condemned by history for a thousand years”.’ He looked at Olga, ‘And what does Great Mother Britain do? Does she shake a stick and say: “We insist you adhere to the Joint Declaration or we’ll make sure the whole world kicks your arse”? No. Britain simpers and whines and does a hand-wringing exercise and appeases and compromises, all for the sake of,’ he made quotation marks with his fingers, ‘“a smooth transition”. The result? We face a Communist tyranny here in eighteen months.’ He ended grimly: ‘Britain must realize that the only way to protect her subjects is to be tough. That’s what I’m telling the people.’
‘You can’t tell them a damn thing if you’re sitting in jail,’ Monica said. Her eyes suddenly moistened. ‘Excuse me.’ She headed away abruptly to the booze table.
Everybody glanced at McAdam. Denys, to fill the brief silence, said to Olga: ‘And tell me, my dear, what’s it like in Russia these days?’
‘Alas, it is very bad,’ Olga replied. ‘So much chaos …’
Jake McAdam murmured in Hargreave’s ear: ‘She’s a knockout, Al. Now, are you guys going to stay for dinner?’
‘Thanks, Jake,’ Hargreave said, ‘but I think we’ll go back, we’ve got some nice fresh oysters waiting.’
‘Oysters?’ Jake joshed him. ‘Go for it, pal, happy sailing …’
11 (#ulink_9e9e9a3f-14ac-57b3-ba24-6baab99d71b7)
And it was happy. Sailing around Hong Kong’s multitude of islands, anchoring in deserted bays for long boozy lunches and sensual siestas: they meandered through the archipelago of Sai Kung district, went ashore in the dinghy to explore Chinese hamlets with little smoky temples to Tin Hau, goddess of the seas, where the people seldom saw a white man. They lived as they had before the battles long ago, and had come from the age of warlords to the age of television without a revolution. Hargreave bought fish and prawns and oysters from them. On up the crooked coastline they sailed, across Tolo Channel to Wong Wan Chau, then up to Crooked Harbour and Kat O Chau, overlooking Mirs Bay which brave Chinese lads and lasses swam to escape to Hong Kong, the ‘Golden Mountain Where Men Eat Fat Pork’. They sailed through Starling Inlet to Shatau Kok where the border runs through the middle of the road that is called Chung-Ying Street, Chung being an abbreviation of Chung Kwok which means China-country, Ying an abbreviation of Ying-Kwok meaning England-country. Olga was enthralled. Hargreave knew all the islands very well, they were old-hat to him, but now he was seeing them afresh through her eyes, and they became exotic all over again. They swam in deserted little bays, splashing around and playing the fool, snorkelling along the rocks exploring the underwater world, beachcombing, climbing grassy hills just to see what was on the other side: it seemed to Hargreave he had never been so happy.
And, oh no, he did not want her to go back to Macao next Monday, he could not bear the thought of her going back to ‘work’. Anyway, how could he afford to keep paying for her? He would have to make a final settlement with Vladimir and take her away from all that, or forget about her – and he could not forget about her. So there was only one realistic thing to do.
It was on Friday, the second-last day of their sailing idyll, that Alistair Hargreave finally made up his mind. They were at anchor in a little cove on Kai Sai Chau, in the hour after love; he said, rehearsed:
‘I’ve got some leave accumulated, about four weeks – I didn’t take it all last year. Why don’t we go to the Philippines, you and I, sail this boat down there, spend some time cruising those islands?’
There was silence for a moment, then Olga scrambled up on to her knees and looked at him. ‘Oh, can we really?’
Hargreave grinned, delighted with her delight. ‘It’s only six hundred miles to Manila, I’ve sailed it often, and the islands are lovely; hundreds and hundreds of them, white beaches and turquoise water. And if we get bored we can go ashore and explore inland.’
‘Oh, darling …’
Hargreave looked, at her and made the commitment. He said soberly, ‘And meantime I don’t want you to go back to Macao, Olga. I don’t want you to go back to the Tranquillity. I want you to come to stay with me in my apartment until we sail for the Philippines.’ There – he had said it.
Olga stared at him, her blue eyes shining.
‘Oh darling!’ She knelt forward and hugged him, her beautiful breasts squashed against his chest, her shapely bottom up in the air: ‘Oh, darling, how wonderful!’
Hargreave grinned. ‘So what we’re going to do is this: tomorrow we’ll sail over to Macao to fetch your things – I don’t want you doing that alone, coming back on the ferry and perhaps falling foul of our immigration clerks again. Anyway, I’ll have to see Vladimir and tell him what’s happening, clear the air.’ He left out ‘and settle my bill once and for all’.
Olga sat upright. ‘Oh, you don’t pay him any more, darling! Only for last weekend, and that is it. Finished! Don’t talk to Vladimir, let me do it, he’ll try to cheat you!’
‘But what about your so-called contract with him?’
‘I haven’t got any new contract with him! Yes, when I came from Russia I had a year’s contract so it would be legal with the Portuguese, but I finished that contract three weeks ago. All I did was extend my visa, I didn’t sign any new contract. Yes, I continued to work in the Tranquillity, but I did not sign anything, I can walk out any time I like!’
Maybe, but he didn’t think Vladimir would see it like that: Hargreave would rather make a deal than have trouble. ‘I want everything cut and dried with Vladimir, so I’ll have to see him. And we’ve got to get your passport from him, you’re going to need it to go to the Philippines.’
‘I’ll get my passport, don’t worry, even if I have to steal it from him. I’ll tell him he won’t get paid for last weekend unless he gives it to me. Just you leave Vladimir to me, darling!’
That was fine with Hargreave, if it worked – the less he had to do with the likes of Vladimir the better.
Olga hugged him joyfully: ‘Oh, I’m so excited! A whole month sailing in the Philippines!’
That’s what they were going to do. They were going to have a lovely time. But after the month was over, then what? Hargreave did not care; a lot of things would become clear in a month, he would know what to do. All he knew right now was that he could not let this happiness go, that he could not let her go back to work on Monday.
And then they were struck by Sod’s Law of the Sea.
Any experienced sailor will tell you about Sod’s Law, how crises never come one at a time at sea but in twos or threes or more. In Hargreave’s case they came in eights.
That Friday afternoon they were heading back to Hong Kong Island to clear port formalities on Saturday morning so they could sail on to Macao: they were in a strong wind when a faulty fitting on the backstay parted, the mast broke with a crack like a cannon and came crashing down on the rails, the sails falling into the sea. The second crisis was set in motion by Hargreave unwisely starting the engine to give him control over the boat while he cut the steel rigging with bolt-cutters: as the shattered mast finally crashed free into the sea the sails billowed under the keel and got wrapped around the churning propeller. The third crisis came when the mast, which was still attached to the tangled sail, hit the rudder and damaged it badly. By the time Hargreave had dived over the side with a carving knife to free the propeller, the mast had bent the drive-shaft as well. That was the fourth crisis: now they had no sails, no engine power, no steering, and no radio because the antenna had been at the top of the mast. Crisis number five was that darkness was falling and the wind and swells were buffeting the stricken yacht towards the shore. Sod’s Law number six struck at midnight when they were driven aground on the beach of Clearwater Bay.
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