The Fourth Watcher by Timothy Hallinan

Author:Timothy Hallinan [Hallinan, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780061983313
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

26

The Secret Map

You became their white man,” Rafferty says. It has dimmed outside, and Leung has gone out twice to make the circuit and come back in, wet enough to tell Rafferty it is raining again. The room is uncomfortably hot. Ming Li is stretched out on the opposite bed, an arm over her eyes, either asleep or pretending to be. Leung drips silently in the corner.

“Chu was right,” Frank says. “The world had changed. Assholes were still on top. But now they were Chinese assholes, vindicated after all those years, finally fulfilling their destiny as the only true humans in a world of apes. They had power at last. The problem was that white people still had most of the money.

“China was Opening Up,” he says, framing the last two words with his hands, as though they were on a marquee. “I always loved that phrase. It sounded like part of some master agenda, another damn five-year plan, when what really happened was one day they woke up and looked around and realized they’d built a new Great Wall, and all the money was on the other side. The government woke up, I mean. Colonel Chu and all the other Colonel Chus had always known where the money was, and they’d erected some amazing financial structures, cash siphons of staggering complexity, mostly through Hong Kong and a few million overseas Chinese who had thoughtlessly left their loved ones behind as collateral. Every time your mother bought dim sum at Choy’s Café in Lancaster, Colonel Chu, or someone like Colonel Chu, pocketed a dime.”

“Was that why you never ate there?”

“You know,” Frank says wearily, “one of the three or four million things I regret is that I never got all dressed up and took your mother there. Not that it was the kind of place you dressed up for, but…” His voice trails off, his gaze on Poke.

“I know what you mean,” Rafferty says.

Frank lets his eyes roam the room. “I didn’t understand anything then, not how anything worked, or…I just knew that it hurt to eat Chinese food. It might as well have been glass. Even the smell of it made me hate myself. I read the papers every day. I knew what was happening there. You have to understand, Poke, that none of it made me love your mother any less. I loved her every day I was with her. I still love her.”

After a moment Poke says, “Fine.”

Frank lowers his head, looking down at his lap. “Thanks,” he says.

“China was opening up,” Poke prompts, more at ease with the past.

“They needed me. Well, they needed somebody, and I was there, and they knew I’d do anything to protect Wang. They could have told me to walk on coals, and I would have asked which shoe to take off first. But they didn’t want me to walk on coals. It was my face they needed. They knew that white people were more comfortable dealing with white people. I was the front.

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