THE NIGHT WAS growing long into the early hours but the Hong Kong summer offered no compromise under the low cloud ceiling. The temperature had dropped just one degree, to thirty-three, since the darkness crept in from the South China Sea. The humidity hovered around eighty-eight. And air-conditioning was a thing of the past for the two Chinese and the Australian: for a long time to come and perhaps forever, but if that was how it turned out it wouldn’t matter—because they would be dead. It was that kind of assignment.
Their final experience of the luxury of an artificially-cooled atmosphere was in the air-conditioned Vauxhall which chauffeured them from Police Headquarters at the western fringe of Wanchai to the small house above the village of Wong Chuk Yeung in the Sai Kung District of the New Territories. The car, with its plain-clothes driver, had left and the trio were on their own, for there was no one at the house to meet them. But everything they had asked for was there, in an unmarked wooden crate. It wasn’t much—a complete change of clothes for each man plus two bundles of meagre personal belongings. And two sets of identity documents and travel permits. The clothes—from underwear to denim jackets and trousers—were old and dirty, manufactured in Shanghai. The contents of the bundles had also originated in the People’s Republic of China and were old and ill-used, personal to people other than the two men who now had possession of them. The documents had been produced in the Colony, by a specialized unit of Special Branch, but they were indistinguishable from the genuine articles.
Thus, when the three men left the house thirty minutes after entering it, two had entirely different identities and one had no identity at all. An Inspector of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force and an agent for DI6 emerged as Red Chinese peasants.
And a Chief Superintendent of police was an enigma—an Occidental possessing only the Oriental clothes he wore.
‘You know something, Po?’ John Crown muttered irritably as he led the way over the crest of the hill above Wong Chuk Yeung, using one hand to wipe sweat from his forehead and the other to tug the trousers away from his crotch.
‘What’s that, Mr. Crown?’ Chang Po answered, moving along easily with the bundle slung over his shoulder, ignoring the sweat beads that coursed across his face and dripped off his chin to splash on to his shirt.
‘They didn’t wash this gear before they delivered it. And the comrade who wore this outfit had crabs.’
‘You might not be joking,’ Kwan Sung offered sourly. ‘I know a CIA guy who’s been impotent for three years because of a germ he caught down there from wearing somebody else’s dirty underwear.’
Crown scowled at the DI6 man. ‘Nice to have this bloke along, isn’t it, Po?’ he said. ‘Reassuring.’
Kwan grinned. ‘It’s not true. He’s cured now. It was only for two years he couldn’t raise it.’
They started down the brush-covered slope of the hill, Crown choosing a course that took them to the north of the sprinkling of lights that marked the village of Kei Ling Ha. The brief conversation had been the first exchange of words since leaving the house. There, while changing their clothes, a few comments had been made in isolation. During the car ride from the island, through the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, and out of metropolitan Kowloon into the country, silence had reigned. Partly, perhaps, because there had been so much talking in the run-up period to the assignment and the trio had exhausted everything of importance they needed to say to each other. Partly, without doubt, because tension which had been held at bay for so long was now coming close to the surface and inhibiting men who would be ashamed for others to know how they were affected, which was a self-deception, for each of the trio was aware that the others were as taut with fear as he was. This was inevitable as far as Crown and Chang were concerned, for they had been working partners for many years and knew each other better than most brothers. And Kwan, because it was a part of his dangerous job, was able to judge men as much by what they didn’t say as what they did.
But now Crown had chanced his arm with inconsequentials and the two Chinese had plunged in after him. The ice was broken: in appropriately cold tones at first because falseness would be more difficult to detect.
‘The way my sex life is right now, I wouldn’t know the difference,’ Chang said, the final member of the trio to attempt the cross-over into a lighter mood. He did it as successfully as the others.
The silence, as they crossed the road that ran north to Sai O and drew close to the shore at Three Fathoms Cove, was more comfortable. Preparations for this assignment had taken over two weeks. During that intensive period the two policemen, who in the strict sense of the word were no longer that, had been forced by pressure of other influences to set aside the personal aspects of their relationship. And the DI6 agent was, beyond the fact of his existence as a skilled working partner, an unknown quantity. So, at last on their own without the constant attentions of the cold-eyed, flat-voiced experts and advisors Crown and Chang sought to re-establish the old rapport. And they and Kwan took the first testing steps towards adjusting to each other as many-faceted human beings instead of flesh and blood computers with a single designated purpose.
‘There she is,’ Kwan said, releasing one hand from his grip on the bundle and pointing.
They had reached sea level now, on the western edge of the broad inlet of Tolo Channel that was Three Fathoms Cove. The agent was pointing across the stretch of tranquil, black water to the south-east. Crown and Chang halted and looked in that direction. A boat which appeared as nothing more than a shadow, blacker than the sea, was gliding towards them on a diagonal course.
‘Things are sure happening on the nose so far,’ Chang said, switching his bundle to his other shoulder.
‘When things start well, they sometimes get even better,’ Crown commented, and gave each of the Chinese a grin before he started to pick his way across the rocks towards the water’s edge.
‘The power of positive thinking?’ Kwan asked Chang as he moved out on to the rocks, careful to follow the same zigzag line as the Australian detective.
Chang brought up the rear, treading just as cautiously as the others. A broken ankle, or even a sprained one, would ruin the entire operation. ‘Mr. Crown’s making the effort to keep our spirits high,’ he said evenly. ‘He means worse, really. He always looks on the black side. Claims that way he’s never disappointed.’
‘Notice how I always have this look of being pleasantly surprised?’ Crown asked as the two Chinese caught up with him and squatted at his side on a flat rock against which the incoming tide lapped playfully.
Kwan didn’t respond. Instead, he peered out across the cove, to where the motorized junk with its sail furled was reducing speed as it nosed in towards the shore. Until tonight, he had never seen the Australian look anything but dour. The recent grins had provided a welcome change, but expressions of feelings were immaterial in the context of what the three men had to do. And Crown simply had the wrong face. The features of a forty-five year old man who had probably been clean-cut handsome in the past but who had now gone to seed early. A fleshy face above a short, thick neck and below long, jet-black hair. A face with piercing, steel grey eyes and a constant five-o’clock shadow. And it wasn’t only the face that was wrong. Crown was six feet one inch tall and was built to a weight of two hundred and twenty pounds: muscular where it counted and with a paunch he could have done something about had he wanted. In short, a Westerner with a Westerner’s stature and features. Who had to be taken into and brought out of Red China—where Westerners were almost as rare as topless waitresses—in secret.
The agent sighed inwardly. It was the way it had to be, because Crown was the only man able to do the job. And, from what Kwan knew and had surmised about the detective, if it had to be a Westerner, this one was as good as many and better than most. For his appearance was the only thing wrong about him.
The junk drew too much water to get closer than twenty yards to shore and as she rode the tide on a disengaged, idling engine, a rubber dinghy was lowered over the side. A single man rowed to the rocks, making hardly a sound with the oars.
The package tour to China?’ he asked as he brought the dinghy expertly alongside the water-smoothed rock on which the trio stood.
‘Happiness is a Hong Kong Chinese,’ Crown muttered, reaching down to take the line handed him by the man in the dinghy.
‘I’ve seen better looking cruise ships,’ Chang commented, stepping down into the dinghy, then helping Kwan to get aboard.
‘Hello, Hoi-Kow,’ Kwan greeted, tapping the oarsman on the shoulder. ‘You and the boys are still running the tub on time.’
‘Hi, Mr. Kwan.’ He grinned, genuinely pleased to see the agent. ‘And we still got the cheapest rates in the business.’
‘You have to,’ Kwan answered, helping Chang to hold the dinghy close to the rocks while Crown slid cautiously aboard. ‘Because you don’t offer any guarantee about a return trip.’
Four was the maximum load for the dinghy. But Crown was heavier than the average man and the bundles were added drag. The boat rode low in the water and was sluggish to respond to the expert oarsmanship of the rower. He sweated a lot on the short journey out to where the junk had been swung stern-on to the shore. They had a ladder over the side ready and the men scrambled aboard the larger craft. A line was attached to the dinghy and the junk’s screws were thrashing the black water into white foam before the winch had begun to turn.
The junk had a master, a mate and six crewmen. All of them knew Kwan from the previous occasions this boat had been utilized to get the agent into China. Kwan had penetrated the bamboo curtain forty-two times, Crown and Chang had been told. The detectives had been told a great deal more about him, too and, just as Kwan was happy to be sharing this assignment with Crown—albeit a Westerner—so the detective was prepared to admit that, as cloak-and-dagger boys went, Kwan Sung was okay.
The agent was thirty-four but looked a great deal younger a lot of the time. For he had a lean, smooth-skinned face with boyishly innocent features. But when concentrating on a problem he looked as old as time. And when his anger flared, his surface appearance of harmlessness was shed in an instant and he was every iota the killer his record showed him to be. A little like Chang Po, Crown accepted, although Po was not a killer and hated to take human life. But the basics of the two men were similar: particularly this ability to appear—quite effortlessly—as though butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, while all the time they were as hard and rigid as nails poised to drive home. A good capability to have, for a copper or a spy.
Kwan was a native of Nanking who had come south and crossed to Hong Kong as a refugee in the early sixties. He had chosen one of the toughest routes—the long swim across Deep Bay. British Intelligence had given him the usual rugged debriefing and then had tossed him out into the Colony’s rat race, marked as clean. The Americans had saved him from anonymity in the re-settlement areas by recruiting him, with no reluctance on his part, into their monitoring service. From there he had transferred to the CIA where he shone for a year before the British were attracted by his light and won him back. Not with money, because in an auction the Americans always over-bid. But there was a red-headed, willowy cipher clerk who worked for DI6 and to Kwan she was worth more than any amount of money. They had been married for nine years now and had four children—and only Katherine Kwan and the former head of DI6 operations in Hong Kong would ever know whether the woman agreed to sleep with her husband-to-be because he asked her or the big man at DI6 told her.
Such situations as this formed the backbone of Crown’s disgust with the intelligence services, from Special Branch upwards. But, he had to allow as the junk’s navigation lights were switched on and she swung east into Tolo Channel, with the world as it was the cloak-and-dagger boys had to exist. And, much as it galled him to acknowledge the fact, he had joined their ranks. To do a job that was the dirtiest chore in the whole lousy counter-intelligence business—maybe.
‘You got the same feeling I have, Mr. Crown?’ Chang asked, squatting down beside the Australian on the cargo hold hatch cover forward of the mast.
Crown came out of his reverie of black reflection and looked at the Chinese detective. Chang wore an impassive expression as he peered along the deck to the helm, where Kwan was still swapping easy conversation with the crew.
‘What feeling’s that?’
‘Being on the outside, looking in.’
All that Crown had transferred from his own clothes to the peasant garb was a pack of Marlboro with three cigarettes left in it. He lit one now, after delving into Chang’s bundle for a book of Chinese matches. ‘It’s going to be like that until this thing is over,’ he warned. ‘This is his scene, son. He knows the people and he knows the ropes. You didn’t have to come.’
This last was simply a comment: not a criticism. Chang showed he accepted it as such by spreading a grin across his face. ‘He’s good, Mr. Crown. But when he’s out in the field, he’s a lone wolf. In his job, he has to be. If I hadn’t come, you wouldn’t have had anyone to look after you.’
Now Crown grinned. ‘I’m humble with gratitude, you cheeky sod,’ he growled.
Both men sat in complete relaxation now, ignoring everyone else aboard the junk as she began to shudder, hitting the swell of Mirs Bay east of Tolo Channel. The familiar rapport of the detectives, which extended far beyond that necessary to support an efficient working relationship, had been firmly re-established. They went back a long way, to when Chang Po was just a kid, an orphan from out of Kowloon’s Walled City who struck up a friendship with Crown’s son, Darren, The two boys had been like brothers and it wasn’t only Darren who took a shine to the young Chinese. Crown had become like a substitute father to him and the Australian copper, less hard-bitten and cynical in those days, had felt an almost paternal pride when Po joined the police force. And now they were closer than ever, since Crown’s marriage had broken up and Po’s grandparents—his last surviving relatives—had died horribly in an arsonist’s fire. That fire had formed part of the detectives’ first case on special assignment: still on the establishment of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, but answerable to an office in London.
Had this organizational change not occurred, it was likely that Crown would have been kicked off the force. There were some opinions, held inside and out of police headquarters, which maintained that the Australian’s unorthodox approach to law enforcement would have got him fired long ago had it not been for the steadying influence of his young Chinese partner. An approach which caused the chief superintendent to ignore hidebound CID procedure and ride rough-shod over conventions, using methods which had led a newspaper leader writer to dub Hong Kong ‘Crown’s Colony’.
But Crown had survived the effects of top brass ire and his beat and that of Chang Po was no longer confined to the offshore islands, Kowloon peninsula and New Territories comprising Hong Kong. They went wherever in the world they had to follow the leads in a case: or wherever the man in London dictated. On this occasion, the man had instructed Crown to penetrate Red Chinese security and to get to Canton. Chang was not included in the order but the Australian had been tacitly pleased when he asked to go along: before he even knew the kind of dirty job it could turn out to be.
The two weeks intensive training by Kwan Sung and the agent’s back-up organization had been rugged—eighteen hours’ work a day and six hours’ sleep at night. It allowed no time for a social life and no opportunity for socializing. Crown and Chang had become the same kind of cold, calculating computerized men as Kwan and his colleagues. But now that was all over and the assignment proper was underway. Both—although Crown more so than Chang—were in essence practical men. Theory had been learned at the Police Training College outside Aberdeen and they were never entirely happy unless they were putting their knowledge to the test—beyond the reach of the by-the-book tutors and censorious superiors. So now the barriers were down.
The junk nosed out into open water through the strip between Port Island and the Bluff Head extremity of Tai Po District. Crown finished smoking his cigarette and flicked it over the side as the group of men at the helm broke up. The master stayed at the wheel while the crew dispersed to take up their positions as the fishermen they were supposed to be.
Kwan moved forward to join the two detectives, swaying along the trembling, slightly pitching deck with the expert ease of an experienced sailor.
‘Nothing’s changed since we left headquarters,’ he reported, squatting down on the hatch cover and turning to put his sweat-sheened face against the slight breeze that was angling in from the north east. ‘The low cloud will stay until at least noon tomorrow. And as far as anyone can tell, there’s no unusual activity along the south-east coast of Paoan.’
‘Or on the bay?’ Crown asked.
‘All quiet. The patrol boats are out as usual, but they’re maintaining the pattern of sweeps more or less as we expected.’
‘Company,’ Chang said, pointing away to the port quarter.
The others looked in the direction he indicated and saw a large motor launch speeding out of the narrow gap between Double and Crescent Islands. The junk’s mate fixed binoculars on the approaching craft, exchanged swift words with the captain and used a lantern to send a short signal. There was no acknowledgement but the launch made an abrupt turn to starboard. She showed the profile and markings of a Marine Police patrol launch as she cut back towards the promontory of Bluff Head.
‘Present company excepted, but the cops can be a damn nuisance sometimes,’ Kwan said.
‘We know it,’ Crown replied, before Chang had a chance to jump in and defend the force on the grounds that the intelligence units in the Colony hardly ever forewarned police headquarters about their operations.
It wouldn’t have been hypocritical on Chang’s part, for it was Crown who had always instituted the unorthodox moves without letting official channels know about them. Thus had the partners often been hampered by unwelcome interference from colleagues.
‘Lack of liaison causes a lot of trouble,’ Chang put in, and let it go at that.
The master put the junk into a course change, to head her due north and Crown lit his last but one cigarette. He had time to smoke it and consign its remains to the dark water of Mirs Bay before he and the other two members of the trio were asked to move aft into the cramped, spartanly-furnished cabin below the helm. Through ports they were able to watch as the crewmen transformed the junk into a working fishing-boat, breaking out nets and opening up the hold.
Forty-five minutes after starting out from the safe haven of Three Fathoms Cove, the junk’s engine was cut and her sea anchors were dropped over the side. The nets were spread and she began to fish on the very edge of Chinese territorial waters. From side ports in the tiny cabin, the detectives and the agent could see the humped hills which were in the Paoan district of Kwangtung Province. Far to the east there were a few dots of yellow light which showed the position of a coastal village. A cluster of lights to the west were much closer.
The junk fished for almost an hour and the nets were hauled in twice. The catch was small on both occasions but the fish which cascaded into the hold contributed to the façade of innocence. But, as the sea anchors were raised and the junk’s navigation lights were extinguished, the Australian detective remained as the obvious giveaway in the event that they were intercepted. Crown watched the hatch cover go on and grimaced as he lit his final cigarette. The smoke didn’t do much to mask the smell of fish: a smell that would become much worse if a Red Chinese patrol boat closed with the junk—for he would be put down into the hold and have to burrow beneath the cold, slippery catch.
Thirty minutes at the most,’ Kwan said as the engine burst into noisy life, then settled down into a steady, subdued rumble, urging the junk at half-speed towards the shore.
The moon remained completely obscured by the low cloud ceiling which continued to press down the humid heat against everything beneath it. There was no way to open the ports so not even a trace of the warm breeze penetrated into the cabin. Crown smoked the cigarette until the filter tip began to bum. He put it out and within moments the smell of tobacco vanished. Body odour from the three sweating men mixed with the dank mildew stench of the cabin and there was nothing with which to mask it.
‘Still glad you came along, Po?’ Kwan asked.
Chang’s boyish grin was hidden by the pitch darkness. ‘What would I be doing now?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘Wasting my time in a nice, clean, sweet-smelling, air-conditioned apartment. Sleeping, maybe. Or tossing and turning. Worrying about how Mr. Crown was making out without me to take care of him.’
Crown, at a side port, and peering out across the bay as the smooth-crested hills of China loomed larger, grunted. ‘Bloody hell,’ he rasped. ‘We forgot to bring my damn wheelchair.’
‘Private joke,’ Chang explained.
‘I’ve heard about it,’ Kwan replied. ‘Did you know that you two were once known as Batman and Robin?’
‘Jesus!’ Crown growled. ‘I bet I was Robin.’
The cabin door was swung open and the man who had rowed the dinghy stuck his head in. ‘Everything clear,’ he reported. ‘Let’s start.’
They went out on to the deck. There was no change in the temperature and all the breeze did was to stir up the overheated air a little. The junk was a half mile off shore and still closing at half speed. The lights to the west were hidden behind a rocky headland. Those to the east were a little brighter and closer than before, but at least two miles away.
‘Okay, Captain?’ Kwan called softly.
The man at the helm raised a hand, thumb up. ‘It’s never been quieter, Mr. Kwan.’
Both men sounded nonchalantly confident. Hoi-Kow was humming softly as he led the trio to where two men were waiting beside the rubber dinghy. One member of the crew was at the stern and another was in the bows. Both had binoculars and were scanning the unruffled smoothness of Mirs Bay and the brooding land mass of China. Crown and Chang made their own surveillance with their naked eyes.
‘Seems too quiet,’ Chang muttered.
‘It’s either that way or there are Reds all over the place,’ Kwan told him.
The open sea didn’t matter anymore. With no boats in sight nothing could reach them from that direction until the passengers were landed. So now all eyes concentrated on the coast as the junk nosed in close enough for features to be picked out –shadows against other shadows behind the line of white water which was formed by waves hitting the yellow strip of shingle beach under a cliff. Kwan from personal experience and Crown and Chang from coloured photographs and moving film, knew the cliffs were dark brown, formed of rugged rock with pockets of earth supporting evergreen vegetation. The cliff at the point where they were to be put ashore was a hundred feet high, curved to form a small bay. To the west—the way they would strike after the landing—the cliff fell away. Gradually at first, but then sharply in a steep grassy slope forming one side of a ravine along which a shallow river found an exit to the sea. The shingle beach was thirty yards broad at its widest point, scattered with fallen rocks, most of which were buried too deep to offer cover for anything other than a crab. But, once across the open beach, the men would be adequately veiled by the deep shadow at the base of the cliff.
The master gave an order in Cantonese. Chang and Kwan understood it, but the dialect was one that defeated Crown’s knowledge of the spoken language. The two crewmen who had been checking over the dinghy now moved forward, and prised up two lengths of deck timber. From the secret compartment beneath, they pulled out two automatic rifles and three revolvers. Russian-made AK47 assault weapons and .357 Combat Magnums. Crown and Chang each received a rifle and a revolver. Kwan just a revolver.
‘Cleared, checked and fully loaded,’ one of the men said in the kind of Hong Kong Cantonese Crown could understand.
There were no holsters and the revolvers were pushed into trousers waistbands. The engine was cut and the abrupt absence of its sound made the men realize how loud it had been. Water slapped against the hull as the junk continued to slide forward with slackening momentum. From further away came the regular beat and hiss of waves attacking the beach and retreating. A whispered order came from the helm and the dinghy was man-handled over the side and lowered by lines. The two men held the lines while Hoi-Kow dropped a rope ladder back across the rail and clambered down it with great agility. The bundles and rifles were passed down to him and the junk wallowed to a stop as Kwan climbed down into the dinghy. Crown went next and Chang brought up the rear. The lines were dropped and Hoi-Kow started to row. The impetus of the incoming tide assisted the slightly-built Chinese to pull the clumsy dinghy across the thirty yards of shallow water towards the white line of breaking waves.
There had been no words of farewell from the junk and the four men in the dinghy said nothing. Sweat beads stood out against the smooth face of Hoi-Kow and he was breathing more rapidly than the exertion of the rowing chore made necessary. The junk swung around on the tide and the vast flatness of Mirs Bay beyond it remained unscarred by other boats. The cliffs looked a lot higher than they had in the films and photographs. The sky above seemed low enough to scrape the top. The oars dug into the seabed and a moment later the bottom of the dinghy grounded.
‘All ashore that’s going ashore,’ Hoi-Kow muttered tensely as he shipped his oars and scrambled over the side. For the first time, his grin had a strained quality. But then his face was hidden as he picked up the bow line, turned, and began to wade through the shallow water for five feet to drag the dinghy even closer to the beach.
Crown, Chang and Kwan remained seated, gripping the bundles and the rifles tightly and tensing themselves to leap ashore and run for the deep shadow under the cliff. The dinghy made a harsh sound against the shingle, as if its bottom was being ripped open.
‘You’re early, but we are all here.’
‘What the…’ Kwan started.
Hoi-Kow froze and stared towards the cliff. The men in the dinghy peered around him. They all saw movement in the shadows. One human form emerged, then another, then four more. Slow moving at first, as they rose from where they had been sitting among the rocks. But then coming forward fast, feet crunching on the shingle. The paleness of their faces showed against the dark of their clothes and the cliff behind them. Two carried suitcases and two more had bundles slung over their shoulders. Two others, much smaller than the rest, held hands and had to half-run to match the pace of the taller ones. Children.
‘Refugees!’ Kwan rasped with low anger, answering his own still-born question. ‘What a bastard!’
Crown and Chang clicked on the safety catches of the rifles. Hoi-Kow shot a glance over his shoulder, eyes wide with a mixture of fear and confusion.
‘What now?’
‘Take them back with you!’ Crown answered at once.
‘It’s the only thing to do,’ Kwan agreed.
‘It’s not part of the operation,’ Hoi-Kow argued.
The exchange was in English. The six refugees had halted ten feet from the beached dinghy. Already afraid, the use of a foreign language drove them to a deeper fear. The two women just stared in terror at the dinghy and its occupants. The two men leaned their heads together and spoke in hissing whispers.
‘There’s no time to start over and plan for them!’ Crown growled, and began to rise, ready to step from the dinghy.
Hoi-Kow stared helplessly towards the junk. But it was too far off-shore to shout and even though the men aboard had to be aware of the unexpected event, the junk’s master wouldn’t risk using a lantern signal.
‘Please, it was arranged and we have paid our money,’ the elder of the two male refugees said shakily. ‘We would like to go before the patrols come near.’
‘Join the club, sport,’ Crown rasped, and swung a foot over the side.
‘Okay!’ Hoi-Kow muttered, not liking it. Then he snapped his head around to look at the terrified refugees and launched into harsh Cantonese. ‘We’re not the ones you were expecting but we’ll take you.’
The adults began to give voluble thanks as the two women swept up the children in their arms and started across the final few feet to the dinghy. Chang and Kwan stepped ‘into the gently breaking waves.
‘Never again!’ Hoi-Kow growled, eyeing the two detectives and the agent balefully. ‘I’m giving up this crazy business before the strain kills me.’
But he didn’t have the chance. For Hoi-Kow was the first man to die when the PSB unit sent a hail of bullets across the beach.