6

Mr. Curtis was furious, and Bennett understood why, but what else could he have done? If he’d killed the German and left the body there, that would have been worse, wouldn’t it? There was no time or way to invent an accident. So those people had a disappearance on their hands, that’s all, no way to be absolutely certain what had happened. Maybe the German had even walked off on his own. After all, the others had forgotten all about him, they’d walked off themselves and left him there.

“All right, all right,” Curtis said, at last calming down a little. “You did what you had to do.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The three of them stood in Curtis’s quarters on the site, a small construction trailer kept strictly for his use, the rare times he was here. Half of it was an office, simple but complete, with Internet access and fax machine, where they now talked. The other half was a bedroom and bath, which Curtis had never used.

Bennett had brought the German directly here, because what else was there to do with him? Curtis had been seated at his desk, computer screen open before him, and when he’d seen the German he’d jumped to his feet, yelled at Bennett to shut the door, and had demanded to know where the German had come from and what was going on. Now, the first shock of it done, he was a bit calmer. “All right,” he said. “The damn fellow can do some work for us.”

“Oh, good, sir, like the other one.”

The German was recovered now from his tussle with Bennett, but merely looked at them both with a vague expression on his face, as though they were speaking a language he didn’t understand. Gesturing at him, Bennett said, “Should I give him to Li too?”

“No, I don’t want them together,” Curtis said. “Take him to the other side, there’s a dig supervisor named Chin.”

“Good, sir.”

“And come back.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bennett took the German by the arm and led him outside. Halfway across to the building, the German made a sudden dash toward the main gate, and Bennett had to grab him and hit him several times to calm him down. But then he went along quietly.

They were digging cross-tunnels in two directions from here, trying to reach as many water tunnels as possible, so Bennett delivered the German to the work crew on the second side, then returned to Curtis, now at the large table, with construction plans laid out. Looking up at Bennett, he said, “Any trouble?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Come over here.”

Bennett went over to stand beside Curtis and study the plans. God, it was good to be back in construction again! To be standing in a site office, shoulder to shoulder with the boss, looking over the plans. This, Bennett thought, is where I’ve been supposed to be, lo, these many years. “Yes, sir,” he said.

Looking at the plans, Curtis said, “We don’t have as much time as I’d hoped, Colin.”

“No, sir.”

“Them being here in Hong Kong, and in one of the tunnels, suggests they know far too much.”

“It’s that Mark Hennessy, sir,” Bennett said, meaning, there’s a bad employee, and here, sir, right here at your side, is a good employee.

Curtis said, “I suppose part of it is Mark, but not all of it, he didn’t know that much. I think it’s mostly George Manville, figuring things out. Why I didn’t get rid of him when I had my hands on him I’ll never know.”

“You thought he could still help you, sir.”

“Well, I was wrong about that,” Curtis said. “But it isn’t going to stop us, Colin.”

Us. “No, sir!”

Bending over the plans, Curtis said, “We’ve linked seven of the tunnels. I’d hoped for ten, and more profit, too.” He tapped the plans. “There’s some gold out there we won’t be getting, Colin.”

“We’ll be getting a lot, sir.”

“Oh, yes, I know we will. But we’re going to have to do the job right now.”

Surprised, Colin said, “Now, sir?”

“Tonight.” Curtis looked away, at the flat rectangle of window framing the sunlit construction site. Within, the air-conditioning faintly hummed, “In a way,” Curtis said, and Bennett knew he was talking mostly to himself, “it’s better to have them here. Deals with everything at once.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re going to be my eyes and ears, Colin,” Curtis said, and there was a knock at the door. Curtis said, “That’ll be Jackie, I just called him to come over. Let him in.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bennett didn’t much like Jackie Tian, his manner of being on the inside track here in Hong Kong, but he’d never let either Tian or Curtis know it. He crossed to open the door, and smiled a big smile at Tian, saying, “How are you?”

“Good,” Tian said, curtly, as though Bennett were too unimportant to care about. Entering, he said, “Afternoon, Mr. Curtis.”

“Hello, Jackie, we’ve had a little problem here.”

Tian looked at Bennett as though assuming he was the cause of the problem, and said, “What’s that?”

“The people who’ve been bothering me are here in Hong Kong. Colin found them in one of the bank tunnels, but they didn’t see him.”

Surprised, Tian said, “In the tunnel? You mean, they know what we’re doing?”

“They can’t know everything,” Curtis said, “or they’d be in this room with us right now, and a number of policemen as well. But they know something, they know too much to risk waiting anymore. As I just told Colin, we’ll have to change our plans, cut back on what we hoped to accomplish, and run the operation tonight.”

Tian frowned down at the construction plans on the table, though Bennett doubted the man could read them. “Will that work?” he asked. “We aren’t everywhere we wanted to be, are we?”

“We’re close enough,” Curtis told him. “There’ll still be plenty of profit for all of us, Jackie.”

“Good,” Tian said. “I’m ready to go live somewhere else for a while.”

Curtis laughed, sounding a bit shrill. “I think we all are, Jackie,” he said. “Now take a look at this.”

The three men bent over the table as Curtis moved a finger along the various tunnels. “Jackie,” he said, “your job is the bulldozer and the vaults. Is the submarine hooked to the bulldozer?”

“It’ll trail me like a geisha,” Tian said, “everywhere I go. It’s on the wheeled carriage.”

“All right. Once we start, we’ll have to move very fast. They’ll know something’s happening, their alarms will be going mad, but they won’t know where we’ve come from and they won’t know where we’re going and they won’t be able to come down to interfere with us.” Turning, he said, “Colin, that’s where you start. The first set of explosives are in position—”

“Yes, sir.”

“—and you’ll set them off when Jackie says he’s ready. He’ll radio you as he moves, and you’ll be in here with the controls.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When the submarine’s full,” Curtis said, “Jackie, you’ll come up out of there, with your crew. But moving fast, Jackie.”

“Count on me,” Tian said.

“When Jackie radios you that he’s clear,” Curtis said to Bennett, “you fire the explosives, to breach the seawall at the ends of the tunnels.”

“Right, sir.”

Curtis said to Tian, “Is the new diver here?”

“He’ll be here tonight,” Tian promised.

“He stays in the tunnel with the submarine,” Curtis said. “Once the tunnel fills with water, he uses the external controls to guide it down the tunnel and into the harbor. Then he switches it to radio control, and I guide it from there.”

“Right.”

“Then he comes back through the tunnel and up here.”

Tian said, “Why doesn’t he just go out across the harbor, come out anywhere?”

“And be questioned?” Curtis shook his head. “The only safe way in and out, Jackie,” he said, “is this construction site. That’s what it’s here for.”

“Fine,” Tian said.

Curtis turned back to Bennett. “Now, the second set of explosives,” he said, and tapped the plans here and there, “we’re going to have to move. We’re in fewer tunnels, the physics changes, and to be honest, I’d feel more comfortable if I had George here to look at my figures. But I’ve done it, and I know I’m right.”

Bennett hadn’t the first idea what Curtis was talking about, but that didn’t matter. “Yes, sir.”

Curtis said, “I’ve marked the new positions. They all move, all six of them, slightly. But the exact position is important, all right, Colin?”

“Absolutely, sir,” Bennett said. He frowned at the plans as though to memorize the new positions of the explosives, though in fact he’d be carrying a set of the plans with him when he made the changes.

“Once the tunnels are flooded,” Curtis said, “you trigger the second explosives with the radio.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You will then have thirty minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When those explosives go,” Curtis said, and turned his bland eyes on Bennett, “they will destroy every bit of evidence of what we’ve done. I think it possible there’ll be some damage even here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t try to leave the island,” Curtis said, “but do get away from this neighborhood. Maybe east, over toward Wan Chai. I want you all safe,” Curtis assured them.

“Yes, sir,” they both said.