FEARLESS FINN'S MURDEROUS ADVENTURE (9 page)

Mac answered after two rings. “By Jaysus you’d better be good looking or someone important ta be ringing at this unholy hour….Oh, is it yourself? Hang on until I get some fresh coffee on the go, right!” I can hear muffled words in the background. “Get your knickers on, there’s a good girl. And stick on coffee. The kitchen’s through there.” Obviously, Mac has some new girl with him – unfamiliar with the surroundings and his phone manner.

“I hear you’ve been put on a diet Finny boy…plenty of fish, fruit and vegetables, and those funny spidery yokes. What’s that ya call them? Noodles, that’s it. Oodles of noodles,” laughed Mac.

“No way Mac…a sausage and mash man me, always was. You should know that. I couldn’t ask for better. Not sure about your man, the top fellah. Inscrutable, yeah, that’s the word for him. Met a limp-wristed gofer and a wooden plank…he’s to babysit me. Could be one of our own, we’ll see. Do me a favour Mac, check if the Ice Maiden’s back in her nest. I’ll send a note to Kemptown in a day or two. Will you have someone collect it?”

“I’ll do that meself. I won’t go inta it now, but I’ve a bitta bad and bitta good news for ya. It’ll be in the note I send back ta ya. Take it handy now, ya hear.…
Slán
!”

Now, that will give the MI6 listening post in Cheltenham, England something to think about. Giving an Irish farewell is our way of sticking two fingers up to the security services who spend their days and nights checking for key words in millions of telephone conversations between Irish men and women. Mac and myself make it so easy to identify us that we reckon they’ll not bother themselves too much trying to unravel our deliberately mundane conversations. For example, could they work out that Mac just warned me that the Gardaí have requested help from the RUC, and that they may already know I’m in Asia, if not Hong Kong? I don’t think so. They haven’t managed to work anything out in all the years we’ve been using our
amadán
code.

My Ice Maiden should be back from America by now, and I hope the Swedish police aren’t knocking on her door. Jaysus, I won’t forget the day I explained to Anna that
amadán
is the Irish Gaelic word for idiot. She loves the sound of the word, and she uses it all the time. When anyone was a bit slow bringing our coffee or serving a sandwich, anything at all, she’d say
amadán
in her singsong Swedish accent. Thank Christ there weren’t too many Irish speakers loitering around the residential district of Helsingborg.

I decided to wander around for a while, to get my bearings in Central Hong Kong. I crossed over Statue Square, walked down Des Voeux Road to Queensway, turned towards Harcourt House and passed the Bull and Bear Pub. Then I made my way across – according to the Lancashire couple I bumped into – the world’s shortest suspension bridge. It overlooks HMS Tamar, the headquarters of British Navy and Military Intelligence in Hong Kong.

I followed the waterfront as far as Queen’s Pier. I bought an ice cream and watched wooden junks and glossy-white, multi-decked cruisers collect their privileged passengers. This is done in full view of haggard old women crushing discarded soft drink cans – with their bare feet – and dropping them into black plastic sacks.

Walking a little farther along the waterfront, I came to the Star Ferry pier. There are gaunt Chinese men in dirty singlet vests lounging on rickshaws, demanding money from anyone trying to take their photographs. I can see that it’s an easier way to make money than pulling fat tourists around the traffic-jammed Hong Kong streets…or flattening drink cans to sell to a recycling plant.

These sights send a clear message about life in Hong Kong – do something, anything, to make money…or starve. There’s no social welfare safety net here.

My hangover hit me again. I feel so woolly headed I have to take a taxi back to the hotel even though it’s only a hundred metres away. I just barely made it back to my suite and flopped on the bed.

Why do the guards back home suspect I’m in Hong Kong? Who’s talking? Not my so-called
protectors
, I hope. Even though I have a lot on my mind to ponder, I fell asleep.

———

Feck me! I slept for nineteen hours, I can’t believe it.

I need to pick up a mobile phone. I slipped out the back of the hotel and walked the short distance to Pedder Street. When the shop assistant asked for identification to open the account I gave her my fake passport….You can never be too cautious.

Now I have to get the number to Mac, but I can’t risk being overheard on a call. If MI6 gets the number of my Motorola mobile I’ll be arrested, nothing surer. I went back to my suite, wrote a note to Mac including my new mobile number, and bought two airmail stamps from the front desk. I’m not going to post the note from here; I’ll drop it in a postbox at the GPO in Connaught Place. There’s no harm in a touch of paranoia when you’re on the run…and there’s no point in letting anyone in the hotel catch a glimpse of the address of a safe house if I don’t have to.

I’ve heard all the expats hang out at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, or the FCC as the members, taxi drivers and everyone else calls it. From the GPO I walked back up to Des Voeux Road Central, and I can see it’ll be a sharp climb up to the FCC. Sure enough, it’s on an even steeper hill than the first one I climbed. The FCC is in a wedge-shaped building between Wyndham Street and Albert Road. The old red-brick building was an urban dairy at one time, and it was built to fit in the steep apex of the adjoining roads.

Pushing through the swing-doors I entered a large, airy, wedge-shaped room evenly dissected by sunlight streaming in through tall windows running down one side of the building. An oval-shaped bar occupies most of the room.

“Good morning sir, what can I get you to drink?” a steward asked, looking up from his newspaper spread out on the bar.

“I’m not a member, just looking around,” I mumbled.

I’d not spotted the grey-bearded man with a gold earring and grubby safari jacket sitting hidden behind a potted fern right beside me. He looked up at me with watery eyes and signalled the steward to refill his glass.

“Give him whatever he wants to drink as well,” he said.

“A small, fresh orange juice please.”

“Mind if I join you?” I asked the member who’d bought a drink for me.

“Sure, why not! And tell me big guy, where the hell do you hail from? Somewhere the mummies and daddies are made from giant trees, ya?!”

I had a little trouble placing his accent up to the
ya
– that’s a remnant of a native Dutch speaker.

“I was born in Nottingham, England. I don’t know about the wooden mamas and papas, but there’s no shortage of trees around Wollaton, which is where I crept in to the world,” I replied, as I dumped myself alongside him on the surprisingly comfortable wooden stool.

“And work?” he enquired, resting his bearded chin on his khaki sleeve.

“Banking I hope…something in financial services anyway. And you?”

I thought for a minute that he’d fallen asleep – with his whiskey glass gripped precariously in his trembling, misshapen fist. He came to life again after a few moments.

“I’m retired now. I was a staff photographer with
Life
magazine.” He offhandedly pointed to a photograph hanging on the white-brick pillar behind the bar. It’s one of the most iconic photographs ever published. The shot is of the last USAF helicopter lifting off the roof of the American Embassy in Hanoi, just hours before the end of the Vietnam War. He shrugged off my mention of fame and fortune.

“Ya, it got me a few dollars…still does. It pays for this and that,” he said, pointing to his whiskey and my half-empty glass of orange juice.

The comment confirmed to me that he’s a Dutchman. I feel guilty not being able to return his hospitality and buy him a drink, but only members can buy drinks in Hong Kong clubs.

“I’m hoping to meet Fran Cooke. Do you know him?” I asked.

“He’s the reporter from the SCMT. Has a wife with enormous tits, ya?”

“Yes, he’s with the
South China Morning Times
, but I’ve never met him or his wife. What’s her name?”

“Ya, I see. She’s called Susie. Got big tits!”

Now I’m wrestling betwixt two competing thought processes: 1) because I am a breast man – and always have been – I’m thinking that I’d love to see Susie Cooke and her breasts, and the sooner the better; and 2) it occurs to me that if he was on the roof taking photographs of the helicopter taking off, he must’ve still been there when the Viet Cong stormed the US Embassy. It had to have been a hell of a hairy time. Looking at his gnarled hands, wrapped tightly around his glass, it’s hard not to see in your mind's eye what he’d gone through to get that photograph – the poor bastard.

Reluctantly, I stood up from my stool, lifted up the old man’s hand, wrapped it in my two rather larger mitts and shook it. “Next time, God willing, the drinks will be on me. And if you don’t mind an Irish blessing from an Englishman…
Go gcumhdaigh na Naoimh thú le beannachtaí inniú agus go dtiúrfaidh na trioblóidí neamh-shuim duit gach céim den tslí
.”

He looks bemused, so I’ll translate. “May the Saints protect you with blessings today and may the troubles ignore you every step of the way.”

Promising myself I’ll buy him a return drink whenever next we meet, I left the FCC and made my way down the hill towards the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong. I stopped at a telephone kiosk in Pedder Street and rang the
South China Morning Times
to check if Fran Cooke works there.

“Yes sir. Fran Cooke works here, but he isn’t in. Can I have your name and telephone number please, and I’ll pass it on?” said the receptionist.

I tried explaining, several times, that he already has that information as I’d put it in a letter addressed to his home. But she isn’t getting it.

“My name is Finn Flynn. I’m staying at the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong. I don’t know Fran himself…his brother Gary told me to look him up.”

“I didn’t know he has a brother.”

“There you go…you learn something new every day! Isn’t that right?” I didn’t wait for an answer before I hung up.

As I passed through the foyer of the hotel I picked up a complimentary copy of the
South China Morning Times
and began looking for a Fran Cooke byline. I found a five-column piece on the business page about a company called Clarrion, run by a Mister George Han. What the article boils down to is that Fran Cooke claims that George Han’s Clarrion empire is nothing but smoke and mirrors.

I saw the Clarrion building on my way in from the airport, and the Clarrion name is everywhere – on lorries, delivery vans, advertising posters, and on the white Toyota taxi cabs running all over Central. Now I’m even keener to meet Fran Cooke. If he can uncover stuff about a company as big as Clarrion, he has serious connections around Hong Kong. And who knows…they could be useful to me.

Mister Ling emerged from his butler’s pantry as I walked into my suite. He’s wearing a green apron over an old-fashioned wing-collar shirt and striped morning dress trousers, and he has a small silver tray in his hand. Apologising for his appearance – which I think is fine – he handed me a telephone message torn from a pad, a sealed white envelope, and an ivory letter opener.

Leaving the telephone message aside, I slit open the envelope. Inside there’s a page of handmade writing paper, with the words ‘
Island Shangri-La Hotel, 8:00 p.m. tonight
’ written in violet ink with a broad-nibbed pen.

“Where’s the Island Shangri-La Hotel Mister Ling, and how long will it take me to get there?” I asked, returning the letter opener.

“Pacific Place, sir. About ten minutes from here,” he replied. “What time do you need to be there, sir?”

“I’m expected there at eight o’clock.”

“There will be a car waiting outside the front entrance of the hotel for you from seven thirty. I’ll have your clothes laid out in time for your departure.”

“Right, thanks Mister Ling. I’d appreciate that,” I replied, as I read the telephone message.

The phone message is from the receptionist at the SCMT; she’s spoken to Fran Cooke in Kuala Lumpur. He’s suggested that I meet his wife Susie at the FCC for drinks on Wednesday, at about six thirty p.m. So…I’m going to meet Susie with the big breasts in three days – great!

In the meantime, I have the meeting in the Island Shangri-La to think about. It’s with someone who obviously knows where I’m staying, and who, for some unknown reason, writes cryptic italic notes in violet ink on handmade paper. They’ve a touch of style about them, that’s obvious.

It crossed my mind that my guardian, Uncle Sui, might be behind the meeting I’ve been summoned to. Assuming it is a meeting of course….I’ve only been told to be there. It reminds me of my early training with PIRA – no explanations, just orders. Fulfil them to the letter, or get a serious kicking from the rest of the lads, or worse. Could be the same kind of shite again, just a different shovel. Or is it a spade in China?

———

Stepping into the sweeping lobby of the Island Shangri-La Hotel, I did a quick recce of the room. I recognise Gerry from the Mandarin lunch, sitting in the far corner. There’s a tall, heavily built guy in a loud print shirt with an enormous gold Cartier Tank watch on his thick, hairy wrist sitting beside Gerry.

Gerry introduced me to his companion. Earl ordered bourbon for himself and Gerry, and an orange juice for me. He seems the type who likes to take charge. I wonder what part, if any, he’s going to play in getting my heroin to Europe – which, I suppose, is why I’m meeting him.

After ten minutes of what I’m sure passes as polite chit-chat in America, I decided to show these Yanks what a pissed-off Irishman sounds like.

“What the fuck did you drag me all the way up here for Gerry? Was it just to meet your overweight pal here, with the attitude and the loud outfit?”

My phony outburst got their attention. Gerry got up from the couch and pulled a chair alongside mine.

“Uncle Sui told me all about your missing order, and he suggested I help you out. My ‘overweight pal’ here, as you call him, is going to show us how to make a truckload of money Finn. And with your share you’ll be able to retrieve your mislaid merchandise and send it on to wherever it’s got to go. Earl wanted to take a look at you before we get down to business. OK?”