Pinnacle Event by Richard A. Clarke

Author:Richard A. Clarke
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466848283
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

24

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 30

HONG KONG GOLF CLUB FANLING

NEW TERRITORIES, HONG KONG

“You should let me win once in a while. Maybe you would get promoted, Richard,” Stephen Cheung joked as they walked toward the clubhouse.

“I don’t think I am ever being promoted again, Commissioner,” Richard Taylor laughed. “There is a glass ceiling for people with English surnames and I have hit it. So, after thirty years on the force here, I take my little satisfactions where I can.”

“You must be our guest for drinks,” Commissioner Cheung said, looking up at Raymond Bowman, standing on the steps of the clubhouse. “This is Assistant Commissioner Richard Taylor, Crime and Security. We have reserved a private room. Follow me, if you would.” The threesome walked past portraits of English military officers and colonial officials from earlier centuries, up a narrow back stair to a perch atop the clubhouse, looking out and down on a city in the distance, in the smog.

“We know who you are Mr. Bowman. The American Consulate has explained who you report to,” Commissioner Cheung began. “My predecessor, Peter Wong, recalls you fondly from his year at the Kennedy School. He sends you his best. I did not get to go to Harvard. My year it was the Royal College of Defense Studies, which made my wife happy. You see we met twenty-two years ago when I was a bobby for two years in Scotland Yard. She still loves London.”

The Assistant Commissioner was mixing two gin and tonics at a drinks dolly. “Will you join us in a G and T?” Taylor asked. “Can I make a third?” Bowman nodded agreement.

The Commissioner waved Bowman out on to the small balcony. “Don’t let all this British atmosphere fool you, Mr. Bowman. We are ruled by Beijing. Our semiautonomous stature goes only so far. That city in the distance is in China.”

“You seem rather unlike the People’s Armed Police,” Bowman replied.

“Very unlike them, yes,” Richard Taylor agreed, joining them on the balcony. “Hong Kong Police are independent. We get no help from the mainland. We have to have our own little navy of boats and our own little air force of helicopters to secure one of the most densely populated cities in the world and its many islands. But the Ministry of State Security and the People’s Liberation Army stay in their compound in Central, where the British Army used to be. Beijing knows what goes on here, although not always in real time.”

“So it is I who will decide whether to assist you, not Beijing,” the Commissioner asserted. “Tell me why I should.”

“No city anywhere in the world has been destroyed by a nuclear weapon in over seventy years. That may be about to change,” Bowman began. He told the two Hong Kong policemen most of what he knew. “What I am asking your help with is surveilling the new Trustees and their meeting.”

The two Hong Kong officers looked at each other in a way that said they were used to being told bizarre stories that were unfortunately true.

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