1

Martin Ha loved his daily commute. There were times when he thought it was the best part of his job, particularly on the bad days, which were fortunately rare. But on all days, in all weather, he loved his commute.

For one thing, he began it later than most other workers, not having to be in his office until ten in the morning, Monday through Saturday. And for another thing, he could be leisurely, traveling by bicycle and ferry, not crowded into a tram or a careening bus or stuck in traffic jams. And finally, he could commute in casual clothes, and change into his uniform when he got to work.

And so it was this Monday morning, a sunny day, moderately humid, the moisture in the air somewhat muffling the perpetual clack of mahjong tiles from every balcony, every side street, every cafe. Dressed in tan canvas shoes and white knee socks and tan shorts and a white short-sleeved dress shirt, his cellphone hooked to his belt, Ha kissed his wife Nancy, wheeled his bicycle out of the apartment, and took the elevator down to the street.

Martin Ha lived on a comparatively quiet side street in the middle-class neighborhood called Hung Horn, southeast of Chatham Road, an area heavily populated by the city’s Chinese civil servants, in which group, dressed for his commute, he seemed barely likely to belong. Mounted on his bicycle, teetering slightly as he made the turn onto Ma Tau Wai Road, this slender knobby-kneed serious-expressioned man of about 40 looked as though he might be a rickshaw driver on his day off. He didn’t look like anybody important at all.

Ha rode his bike down Ma Tau Wai Road and right onto Wuhu Street and then left onto Gilles Avenue, all the while ignoring the usual press of traffic that raced and squealed and struggled all around him, the other bicyclists, the hurrying pedestrians, the taxis and trucks and double-decker buses and even, though this was off their normal grounds, the occasional bewildered tourist. Gilles Avenue led him at last to the new Hung Horn ferry pier. Until just a few years ago, where he now stood had been Hung Horn Bay, next to the main railway terminal, but the bay had been filled in just recently, to make more precious land, on which had been built the opulent new Harbour Plaza Hotel, five minutes from the railroad terminal and even closer to the ferry pier.

The ferry ran every ten minutes or so, and took only fifteen minutes to cross the harbor, and this was what Martin Ha loved. The view from the ferry. Out in front of him, across the sparkling water, Hong Kong Island gleamed and blazed in the sunshine, its glittering towers bunched together like the crowded upraised lancetips of some buried army. Behind him, almost as huge, almost as modern, almost as gleaming and sleek and new, clustered Kowloon, Hong Kong’s mainland extension, the gateway to China. In the old days, you could take the train from that railway terminal beside the ferry dock on Kowloon and travel all the way across Czarist Russia and all of Europe to Calais in France, and then board one more ferry, and be in England. The jet plane had changed all that, of course, but the sense of it was still there, the ribbon that tied two worlds together.

Off to his right, as he stood against the side rail of the ferry, holding his bicycle with one hand and watching the great glorious harbor around him, Ha could see other ferries at work, particularly the green-and-white boats of the Star Ferry, the ferry the tourists rode, a trip half as long and half as glorious as this voyage Ha took twelve times a week.

At Wan Chai Perry Pier, Ha mounted his bike again for the short ride down Harbour Road and Fenwick Pier Street and the pedestrian walkway over broad and busy Harcourt Road down to Queensway Plaza, behind police headquarters. As he approached the building, the salutes began.

* * *

Three minutes to ten. In his blue uniform of a full Inspector in the Hong Kong Island Police, formerly the Royal Hong Kong Police, Martin Ha settled himself at his desk by the windows overlooking Arsenal Street and looked at the various papers that had been placed here by Min and Qi, his assistants. There were the overnight reports of crimes in the various districts, the reports of undercover agents, and messages from those who felt they needed to speak directly with the inspector.

The last twenty-four hours had not been bad in Hong Kong, Ha was happy to see. Pocketpicking was still the most persistent and irritating crime in the city. The Big Circle gang had not been heard from, not for several weeks now; good.

The Big Circle was a very loose association of mainland criminals, some of them former Red Army soldiers, who would sneak across the border from time to time to pull off usually pretty spectacular robberies, mostly of banks and jewelry stores. Their raids generally seemed to have been scripted by the same people who made Hong Kong’s action movies, with plenty of high-speed car chases and flying bullets. Now that Hong Kong was Chinese, the mainland authorities were making more serious efforts to capture or at least control the members of the Big Circle, so that particular crime wave might be at last ebbing.

Ha got to his phone messages last, and among them was surprised to see one from Inspector Wai Fung of Singapore. Ha had never met Wai Fung in the flesh, but they had spoken a number of times on the phone and communicated even more by fax, and their departments had cooperated in a number of smuggling cases.

Was this more smuggling? Intrigued, Ha intercommed to Min to return the call from Singapore, and three minutes later he was put through.

“I apologize for having to ruffle your day,” Wai Fung said.

Ha was aware that an unruffled day was Inspector Wai Fung’s dearest wish in life, but he himself didn’t mind a little excitement from time to time, so long as he could win at the end. He said, “Smuggling?”

“Not this time, no. In fact,” Wai Fung went on, and Ha could sense the man’s unease, “I can’t tell you with any certainty what the problem is. I can only tell you a group of people are coming to see you, and that, although I would prefer not to believe their story, I’m very much afraid they may not be simple alarmists.”

“Who are these people,” Ha asked, “and about what do they wish to alarm me?”

“One is a police inspector from Australia,” Wai Fung said, “from Brisbane there. I believe his rank is roughly equivalent to ours.”

“I don’t think I know any Australian police.”

“This one is named Tony Fairchild.”

Writing that down, Ha said, “And the others with him?”

“Three. Two men and a woman. The ones who first became aware of the problem.”

“And what is the problem?”

“There is another man,” Wai Fung said, “lately of Hong Kong, now of Singapore, named Richard Curtis. He is in the construction business. Very successful.”

“I remember that name,” Ha said. “A corner-cutter, as I recall.”

“I’m sure he is,” Wai Fung agreed. “But also wealthy and with some acquaintances of importance.”

“Yes, of course. Is he in trouble?”

“It seems,” Wai Fung said, “he might be the cause of the trouble. At least, these people claim he intends some massive destruction very soon, possibly in Hong Kong, and most likely in connection with the stealing of gold.”

“Gold.” There was a lot of gold under Hong Kong Island, of course, not in veins in the ground but in vaults within banks. It sounded like the Big Circle gang again, combining destruction with robbery. “But that doesn’t sound quite right,” he said. “Forgive me for saying so. A businessman has other ways to obtain gold. He doesn’t run into a bank with guns blazing to steal it.”

“Nevertheless,” Wai Fung said, “there does seem to be sufficient evidence to suggest an investigation might be in order.”

And better on my turf than yours, Ha thought. He said, “This Australian policeman and the others. They have the evidence?”

“They have very little that you or I might call evidence,” Wai Fung told him, “but they have a story you ought to hear.”

Ha said, “That sounds ominous. As though I’ll be opening a hornet’s nest.”

“They are staying at the Peninsula. They are waiting for you to call,” Wai Fung said. “Do please keep me informed.”

“Certainly I’ll let you know what happens, if anything happens.”

They made courteous farewells, then Ha spent a moment in thought, brooding at the phone. Some unnamed trouble, waiting to be uncorked at the Peninsula, Hong Kong’s most luxurious hotel, an unlikely venue for lurking trouble.

Phone this Australian inspector and his friends? Or perhaps learn a bit about Mr. Richard Curtis first.

Ha intercommed to Min: “A former Hong Kong resident, Richard Curtis, businessman in construction. See what we might have on file about him.”

* * *

The surprising thing, Ha thought, as he sat in the air-conditioned back of his official Vauxhall, feeling the slight forward tug of the Star Ferry taking him back across to Kowloon, was how little the city had changed. Everyone had thought the transition from British rule to Chinese rule would be fraught with problems, particularly political and social problems, everything but economic problems, but everyone as usual had been wrong.

In hindsight, it was easy to see why. For one hundred fifty years, Hong Kong had been ruled by an oligarchy installed from a far-off capital, London. Then, for just a few years, there was an attempt to paste a democratic smile on this autocratic face, but the instant the pressure was released the smile fell off, and now Hong Kong was once again ruled by an oligarchy installed from a far-off capital, Beijing. Nothing had changed.

Except, of course, for some of the gweilos living in Hong Kong, the expats as they called themselves, the Europeans and Americans, but mostly the British, who had done well by serving the far-off capital of London but couldn’t be expected to receive the same opportunity to batten off the far-off capital of Beijing.

The ones who belonged to the working class, the barmaids and jockeys and interior decorators, mostly took it in good part, vanished when their work permits expired—or shortly after, when they were found to be still on the premises—and were presumably now living much the same lives in Singapore or Macao or Manila or half a dozen other neon-lit centers of the Pacific Rim.

At the other end of the spectrum, a few Richard Curtises had also found the world shifting beneath their feet. The homes they’d enjoyed for so many years up on the Peaks, the steep hills in the middle of Hong Kong Island, behind and south of the main financial districts, they’d sold off to their Chinese counterparts, entrepreneurs who now made their comfortable livings in exactly the same way the Curtises used to do. Those who’d left had sold those mansions on the Peak before the real estate crash; not bad. And if they hadn’t gotten quite as much in the sale as they’d have liked, well, how much money did any one rich person really need?

So maybe it was true that, although Ha could see that here in Hong Kong nothing had changed and nothing would change and life would go on very much as before, for a few British barmaids or American businessmen life had changed, in that they’d had to call the movers and buy a one-way ticket somewhere else. But none of them had been destroyed by it. No one had died or gone to jail. No one had been ruined; certainly not Richard Curtis, now living the same life as before in Singapore.

Curtis, in fact, was one of the people Hong Kong was better off without, a man who was a little too quick with a bribe or a lawsuit, a little too given to ruthlessness and sharp practice. The dossier Ha had been given on the man showed him to be a sharper who expected his contacts and his influence to keep him safely above the law. It must have been quite a bump when he’d suddenly discovered that the rules had changed.

But could the man seriously harbor a grudge? Was that even possible? It seemed to Ha that it was not possible, though the people he was on his way to see would try to convince him otherwise.

Well, he thought, either they will convince me after all or I will have at the very least had an excellent lunch at the Peninsula.