“I take it you got what you wanted?” Mei Lin asked again as the Range Rover sped down the Eastern Harbour Expressway towards Quarry Bay.

“Yes. I was just checking the NEXT data traffic monitoring server for large data transfers to New China. You won’t believe this. Over the past month or so, one single institution has been responsible for more in-bound data than all the other NEXT customers combined.”

“Which institution?” Mei Lin asked, glancing sideways at him.

“Tsinghua University.”

“Tsinghua? In Beijing? My alma mater. New China’s leading academic institution. Interesting.”

“Yep. And NEXT manages mirror servers for them too. I created a new user on one of their mirror servers. Tsinghua as the source of all this makes a whole lot of sense doesn’t it?” Caldwell mused.

“You can say that again. Good stuff Caldwell. As you probably figured, the stakes just went sky high,” Mei Lin warned, with a serious look on her face that gave Caldwell second thoughts about what he was about to suggest.

“Things are about to get rough?”

“I guess that depends on your plans.”

“I see.”

“”Look, I am going to have this car fixed. It will save me a lot of explanation when De Witte comes back. He can be quite annoyingly pedantic.”

“I’m not surprised. He strikes me as the uptight old schoolboy type.”

“I guess.”

Mei Lin pulled the Range Rover off the Eastern Harbour Expressway on to a side ramp with a sign that said North Point. They drove up King’s Road past an old yellow building with a sign in English and Chinese that read: North Point Funeral Parlour & Cryogenics Center. Several stalls outside seemed to be doing a roaring trade in selling both holographic and natural funeral wreaths of various shapes and sizes.

“Cryogenics is big here?” Caldwell asked.

“A growing trend. The Chinese are very pragmatic. Now that there’s evidence that Cryogenics is going to work they are more receptive of the idea. A few decades ago the Chinese thought this was nonsense as did most people, actually.”

“I wonder if my parent’s ashes are still stored there.”

“Oh yeah, I remember that. That is very likely. They keep the ashes there for fifty years or something like that. It’s all government subsidized anyway.” Was that the pregnant pause of someone making up a story on the fly?

“I might take the ashes back with me to London.”

“Thinking of going back then?” she asked. There was a hint of disappointment in her voice.

“I think that’s the deal with Fouler.”

“You can always make another deal if you succeed,” she pointed out.

“Of course. We’ll have to see.”

“You will,” she said, as they pulled up to a garage round the back of King’s Road. Mei Lin typed in a code, disabled the Range Rover’s console system and removed it from its slot by the handle before they disembarked.

A couple of young Chinese apprentices in shorts and flip-fops with peroxide silver hair came out to look at the car. One of them whistled loudly. He had some kind of personal music implant in his ears. Caldwell could see the flesh-colored volume controls sticking out behind his ear lobes. As the youth leaned over the back of the car he revealed a giant tattoo of some kind of mystical serpent on his back. When he moved the tattoo flipped back and forth making it appear as though the snake was slithering up his back. The other boy had a similar tattoo of a dragon. When he moved, the dragon breathed fire up his neck into his silver shock of spiky hair.

A heavily tattooed half-naked middle-aged man with the most amazing potbelly Caldwell had seen in a long time rolled out from under a silver electric Mercedes. He shook Mei Lin’s hand and nodded hello to Caldwell.

“Young sister Mei, haven’t seen you in a long time,” the man said in Cantonese. He pulled a red pack of Marlboro Marijuana Lights out of the back pocket of his shorts and ceremoniously offered the pack to them before lighting one and taking a big puff.

“Been busy, Boss Tong,” she said.

“What do we have here?” the man asked, his beady eyes dancing over the Range Rover’s body.

“Got hit from behind by a car in traffic.”

“Interesting,” he said as he walked round the back of the Range Rover to survey the damage. The two teenage mechanics moved out of his way like tug boats vacating the path of an ocean liner.

“It appears you’ve been shot at too. Lot’s of accidents today,” Boss Tong observed slyly, crinkling his fleshy face and rubbing greasy fingers along small chips in the paintwork.

“Why do you say that?” asked Mei Lin.

“Well, you see that Mercedes there? It looks like nothing’s wrong with it from the back. We just towed it in about an hour ago. It was involved in an accident in the Chai Wan area. The stupid guys crashed into a Park N Shop lorry. Free toilet paper for everyone. The front of the vehicle is completely mangled. It’s going to be one hell of a job putting it back together. Not that I am complaining. Tong Motor Repairs Ltd. should make some good money out of it.” He laughed at his little joke.

Mei Lin and Caldwell looked at each other.

“For you though Sister Mei, we only charge cost plus five percent,” he added, misconstruing the way Mei Lin and Caldwell had looked at each other when they realized that the car belonged to the Japanese.”

“Of course, of course. Who does the car belong to? Hope nobody was seriously hurt,” Mei Lin said, affecting sympathy for the occupants.

“Oh, it only belongs to the Japanese consulate. They’ve got many where this came from. And the two consulate guys who were driving only sustained minor cuts and bruises. They refused to go to the Pamela Youde Hospital, which is just nearby. They were very lucky, I think. Although, one of them looked like he’s been in a few accidents of his own. Got a face like the devil’s backside.” Boss Tong broke out into thunderous laughter, his huge belly shaking violently.

“Interesting. I have a journalist friend at the Xinhua News Agency who would pay a lot of money to find out the names and phone numbers of the two involved in the accident. Big story you know: Japanese diplomats involved in car accident.”

“Oh really? How much would your friend be willing to pay?” Boss Tong’s alcohol-dulled eyes lit up at the prospect of a quick buck.

“I’ll have to check. I’d say about twenty thousand Hong Kong dollars.”

“Hey, hang on a minute.” Boss Tong rushed into the back of the garage and returned with a photocopy of a Hong Kong Police Accident Report form.

“Everything’s on here. Maybe you can pay me for your friend,” the portly mechanic said slyly.

Mei Lin reached out for the form but Brother Tong pulled it back like a cobra rearing back to spray venom in its victim’s eyes.

“Money in advance, young sister Mei.”

“OK. Not a word though or my friend gets in trouble. I can only pay you in cash. I am sure you have ways of converting that into credit at reasonable rates, right?” Mei Lin fished a wad of clipped notes out of her shirt pocket and handed Bother Tong twenty thousand dollar notes.

“Even better,” Boss Tong said. “Some of my business associates prefer not to leave an electronic trail. Of course not a word Sister Mei, you know me.”

“Yeah I do.” Mei Lin moved towards the Range Rover and opened the door.

“I thought you wanted your bumper fixed,” Boss Tong protested. The two young apprentices had lost interest in the Range Rover and were busy looking Mei Lin up and down. One of them was scratching his scrotum.

“I need to get this to my friend, I’ll bring the car over later,” Mei Lin explained waving the accident report in the air.

Caldwell got in the car and watched the fold of Hong Kong dollars disappear down the back of Boss Tong’s shorts. The portly mechanic dismissed them with a wave of his hand. Mei Lin started the engine and handed Caldwell the accident report. The report showed the time, place, occupants, vehicle type registration, contact numbers and the address of the parties involved in the accident. Mr. Hideo Sato and Mr. Junichiro Miyagi were listed as living at a residential address in the nearby Kornhill area of Hong Kong Island. Mei Lin explained that it was a residential development favored by middle-ranking Japanese diplomats and attaches.

***

When they arrived back at No. 10 Shek O, there were two HYDRA agents Caldwell hadn’t met before in attendance. They’d recently flown down from Shanghai. Mei Lin made introductions and exchanged pleasantries before disappearing into her office while Caldwell reluctantly made small talk with the agents. Both agents seemed to be flirting with Mei Lin. Anthony Ma was about thirty-five years old, well-built and good-looking in a sporty kind of way. He had a friendly smile that he made use of frequently. He was a bit too friendly for Caldwell’s liking. Victor Cheng was taller and more intellectual looking. He had the confident look of someone from a family with a long history of business success.

They were sitting in the lounge with the plasma screen, watching the news and nursing whiskeys on the rocks. The agents asked several questions about London and the Union. They were particularly interested in knowing why HYDRA had sent him to Hong Kong. Caldwell made a story up on the spot. The agents’ apparent ignorance suggested that only Mei Lin and De Witte were privy to the real reasons for his presence in Hong Kong.

“Fouler feels that we are a bit out of touch with what’s going on in New China and wanted me to come down for a couple of weeks and get up to speed with what’s happening here.”

“Good old Fouler. Always out of touch but seems to know what’s going on all the same. The Union authorities though, are living in some kind of bubble,” exclaimed Victor Cheng, with some bitterness.

“Very much so. That’s why I am here. To burst the burble, give them a dose of reality.” The two agents eyed him suspiciously, not believing a word he was saying. They had their own theories as to why he was in Hong Kong.

“Well when you return to the Union just tell Fouler, if you have that kind of clearance, that it is getting harder and harder to get intelligence in New China. I think HYDRA is way behind agencies from Japan and the United States in this regard. We need more resources. Just having two guys in Shanghai does not cut it,” Cheng complained.

“Just you two?”

“Yeah, and we are not even there all the time. We fly up once a month for two weeks. The next two weeks we spend here at our desks writing reports that result in nothing. Occasionally we get to go up to Beijing which is where the action is but not nearly often enough,” Ma chipped in.

“So what’s happening in Shanghai these days?” Caldwell asked, figuring that they were in a good mood to spill. They might let out something useful.

“Same old Shanghai. Center of the universe,” said Anthony matter-of-factly.

“So what’s new technology-wise?” Caldwell insisted.

“Not a lot, except there are rumors of a breakthrough of some kind.”

“What kind of breakthrough, we don’t know. Some people say its AI, others say neural networks VR, AR. Difficult to know who to believe or what to believe. That’s why we need to be up there investigating instead of pushing paper down here,” Victor Cheng added.

“True,” Caldwell said absent-mindedly. Something on the TV had caught his attention.

News Bulletin:

A fire ravaged the 28th floor of NEXT Tower in Central this afternoon at 2.03PM. The blaze came just after the NewChina Electronic Xchange & Telecommunications company reported to police that they had discovered an intruder in the data center control room. The control room is also located on the 28th floor. A company spokesman said the two incidents were not related and that the cause of the fire is being investigated with the help of the Fire Services Department. Arson has not been ruled out. The fire started out at the terminal of one of the company’s employees. Nobody was hurt.

NewChina Electronic Xchange & Telecommunications is one of the largest providers of data connectivity and data center services in Hong Kong and Greater China. The company has direct data links to major cities in New China and provides data services to some of the largest companies and institutions in both Hong Kong and New China. A spokesman for the company said that customer data and information systems were not affected as only a single internal terminal was destroyed in the fire.

NewChina Electronic Xchange & Telecommunications, also known as NEXT, is owned by Hong Kong’s powerful Lee family.

“Bloody hell, can you believe that?” exclaimed Anthony Ma.

“Mr. Lee is going to be really pissed,” Victor Cheng observed.

“Yeah and so are his customers,” Anthony Ma retorted, laughing.

Caldwell was too stunned to say anything. He stood up, walked out of the lounge and headed to the office area. He knocked on Mei Lin’s door. She was sitting at her desk looking incredulously at her computer terminal. Her office window looked out on to endless expanses of greenery and a hill at the back of the house.

“I guess you saw the news?” Caldwell asked.

“Yes. I take it that wasn’t you?”

“Of course not. Why would I do that?”

“Just checking. A bit of a coincidence. Don’t you think?”

“Yeah, it can’t have anything to do with me accessing the data traffic monitoring server can it? That’s impossible. Intrusion detection AIs can’t start a fire.”

Mei Lin looked at him as though mentally trying to figure out how she thought an AI could go about starting a fire. She shook her head.

“Impossible.”

“Exactly.”

“I think our visit to NEXT and the explosion are related somehow. We better get to work,” she suggested.

“Doing what?”

“You are going to hack Tsinghua University’s systems right?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t I take you down to the Operations Room and I’ll see you down there later.”

“Why, where are you going?”

“I’ve got an appointment in Kornhill.”

“Kornhill?”

“I think it’s about time we found out exactly what your Japanese friends are up to.”