Wearing my blue suit made me basically unnoticeable once down into the elevator’s final ding-dong to exit. Business in Hong Kong was all suits and ties with mostly white shirts and red ties of one sort or another, plus Caucasians were anything but out of place. I walked toward the harbor knowing that I’d soon run into the appropriately, but boringly named, Lobby Lounge. Even before calling Herbert, I had to have Nguyen and Kingsley at my side, and I had to have some solid food inside me as well. The night had been taxing, and hard, and the pressure marks from the chain-link cage floor were pressed into my back like a knitwork of red impressions. I wondered how long it would take for them to fade. , I hoped before I was with my wife again. 

I stood overlooking the lounge, lining the solid glass wall, although the entire front and side of the lounge were actually not solid glass. It was made of hugely thick glass panels so tightly glued to one another that the lines where the panes were held against one another seemed all but invisible. I couldn’t see either of my friends in the mostly filled restaurant. I turned to face the open lobby once more. My men found me before I noticed them.
It was such a relief to see and have them with me, almost making the lobby of the Hong Kong Regent the ‘home’ the doormen always said it was upon entry.

Kingsley pointed at two couches that were pushed together at one end. I followed his lead and sat on the inside of one while they both sat angled but facing me on the other. Neither man said a word, but both stared at me expectantly. I had some explaining to do.

“I went to the staff car and bought into the driver’s act, took a drink intending to come back and get you both at the aircraft, but that’s the last thing I remember until becoming a penniless and watchless vagrant in downtown Hong Kong for the night.

I held up my empty wrist to prove that my Seiko was history. Neither man changed expression nor said a word after I was done.

“I intend to have you at my side from now on as there’s the mission ahead. We’ve got to go back up to the room after I get off the phone with Herbert down here. The owner of this place is coming back soon to meet me, and Herbert’s got to tell me what to do. There’s plenty of space inside the suite for all of us as it’s about three times the size of my entire home if we are staying over.”

“How’d you get into this hotel and this room?” Kingsley asked, looking around him to once again take it all in.

“I don’t know, but they have my passport so I must have been here, and I had enough of my memory left to recall the place,” I replied, thinking about what sequence of events had to have transpired to get me checked in, although I knew deep down I would never have checked into the suite I was in.

“You had to have given them your card,” Kingsley went on, “and that means you have credit here so we’re not likely without some means of getting money.”

I shuddered to think about the fact that I’d lost the Agency American Express card. I knew that would be considered about the same as a police officer losing his badge or his gun. It meant financially, however, if Kingsley was right, that I could make the call to Herbert and later to my wife once I learned what I was intended to do. I didn’t think the hotel would advance me cash, although anything might be possible depending on how badly Mr. Burns wanted or needed my services. He hadn’t even hesitated in the least about taking care of Wing, and I also knew I’d have to check later to see that he’d kept his word.

“Let’s get to it,” I said, getting up and walking toward the front desk counter, knowing that Nguyen and Kingsley would follow and feeling better knowing that.

“I’d like to place a call in one of the booths to the U.S.,” I said to the first clerk to break free. She asked for my name and room number, but I got no further than my name.

“Booth number three, a line will be opened. The international code is zero one.”

I thanked her, relieved. I had credit, at least for phone calls, and those to the U.S. were not cheap. I went to booth three while Kingsley and Nguyen counseled, and then spread themselves a distance away, providing the kind of flank security I should have had the good sense to enjoy the night before. I called the agency number, used my identification code, and was told I’d receive a return call almost immediately. In Seoul I would have known whether to approach the desk again to let them know I was waiting for a call that wouldn’t automatically come to my booth or merely wait, knowing they’d figure it out as the call came in. I decided to wait and see what happened at the Regent, hanging up the phone and then applying myself in the private silence of the booth to work at recovering as much of my memory from the night before as I could. I remembered meeting Wing. It was I who’d asked him for help, him being the youngest and cleanest of the nightmare collection of misfits inside the cage house. He was not a plant. He wasn’t part of either the Agency, embassy, or the Burns plan or operation. I felt relieved and glad about the apparent fact that at least my instincts, not backed by the memory, had been accurate.

The phone buzzed instead of ringing, and I picked up the receiver.

“Tony?” I asked without waiting.

“Yes, I’m here,” he answered, and then, as was his custom, waited.

“I presume you know where I am and what I am supposed to do,” I said, and then waited, inwardly seething that my own control officer had so deceived me. How could the Agency possibly trust me to perform in the field if I was not trusted in the home office with any of the information I might need to accomplish that mission?

“You landed on your feet,” as I knew you would,” Herbert replied, his tone soothing as he was no doubt gauging just how angry I was. “I presumed correctly. You know we must talk later but the diversion of your attention was absolutely required, as you’ll come to see as this all plays out. You must follow the man’s lead and trust that he’s trusted and that the need for this is of almost unimaginable importance. A reward is to be honored should all go as it should go and that is of his accepted and free return to his country and home without incident or memory of anything that might have transpired before. Do you understand?”

I clutched the phone to my chest, breathing in and out to clear my head and think. It was like trying to take a New York Times puzzle apart and put it back together without the clues as to what the words filling the tiny squares might be.

Herbert couldn’t talk over such a non-secure line, that was obvious. He was trying to order me to follow Burn’s orders without so ordering while he was also offering me the reward to evidently give Erhard for doing whatever it was Burns wanted him to do or give him. None of the details were going to be revealed, I knew from the way Tony was talking. He was assuming that I was smart enough to figure it out and then do what he hadn’t been able to order me to do over the phone. There would be no going to the embassy to access a secure line, I knew, not after what the staff officer who’d handed me the doctored drink had done. I had all I was going to get. There wasn’t even enough, nor in clear enough, that I could possibly inform my wife and then get her studied and much more objective opinion about it.

I pulled the phone back up to my ear.

“Is the Starlifter fueled and ready to go?” I asked.

“It is,” Tony replied, nothing but analytical flatness in his voice now.

“Then prepare for liftoff,” I said and hung up the phone.

I would perform my role. There would be no tools or toys provided and also, most hopefully, not needed but I wanted that transport fired up and ready to go at an instant’s notice if I had to bail out of Hong Kong and then the entire Asian theater of any operations at all. The flight back, with the tradewinds at our back would be a long straight shot and I wanted to be on such a flight just as fast as I could get on. Seoul had been a red herring and there’d been no point going into it. I wasn’t even sure that Herbert thought or knew whether the hospitals in and around Korea might not accept direct payments from a U.S. insurer. The whole thing might have been concocted to simply get me to where I needed to be without my knowing why I needed to be there. And why that conclusion might be the truth was as disturbing as the rest. I wasn’t that important. Why not just tell me and then order me to do what was required? Another small factoid, like Burns knowing I’d lost cash when cash hadn’t been mentioned. Small tells in a con job series of stories but with no revelation of what the con really was.

I left the booth with Nguyen hanging behind me while Kingsley preceded me to the elevators, not having received any instructions from me whatever. I had no time, and I didn’t want to be late for Burns’s arrival as I presumed the man would be spot on time. Once up in the hallway my room attendant immediately spotted the three of us and opened the door to my suite.

I stopped before he could close the door behind us.

“Get room service to have a double cheeseburger delivered as soon as possible, along with mustard and ketchup.” I watched the man absorb the information, his forehead wrinkled and a strange expression on his face.

“I shall make it so,” he said suddenly, his British accent nearly impeccable. The door closed and I had to laugh out loud.

“Is anyone in this damned place who or what they say they are?” I said to the room, knowing that Kingsley and Nguyen, both now scouring the room to ensure that it was empty and secure, would ignore my frustrated little tirade.

I walked to one of the long tables that fronted the long line of windows before the corner where they extended back toward the hotel’s entrance.
Two boxes sat on the table. At first, I thought they might be decorative because of their obvious expensively made beauty but then atop the larger of the boxes was the crest and name printed in gold that read “ROLEX.”

I pushed the small button on the front of the box and opened it. A note sat atop a pile of hundred-dollar bills. I picked up the note and read what was printed. There was no name or signature.

“The cash and watch in the first box. The wallet in the second box along with a black Mont Blanc LeGrand to replace what was lost.”

I picked up the pack of hundred-dollar bills, banded with HSBC, which stood for Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation, holding them tightly together, with a tiny print indicating that the banded amount was $2000 US. I almost recoiled in looking at the watch. I pulled it out. It was a GMT Master, in gold and stainless. Obtrusive but not overly showy. It felt like it weighed almost a pound. I tried it on, and the escapement clasp clicked like a small version of a Mercedes limo door. I felt I could not possibly accept it. The only quality watch I’d ever worn had been for a few days in the A Shau Valley when I’d ‘inherited’ a wonderful lieutenant’s Omega Speedmaster after he was killed. This one wasn’t presented to me by the Gunny in memory of the lieutenant, but I knew I wasn’t going to take it off, even to shower.

I opened the second box. It was much smaller and had no button on the front of it, as it only contained a wallet, but what a class act the leather thing was. carved very lightly on the face of it was the single word “Ghurka,” which was so significant, given Kingsley’s history but why was it named that at all?

Kingsley appeared at my side.

“It is an American company that makes fine leather goods,” he said. They are made in the state of Connecticut. Like my unit and my men. Finely made of only the best materials.” We both laughed at his humor as I also considered just how much the man might know that I did not. I’d never heard of Ghurka leather, much less of it being made in America.

I unfolded the small wallet, which was made to have a divided large pocket when opened but also held at least ten cards in slots. There was a card in one of the slots. I pulled it out. It was my Agency’s American Express card. I stopped laughing and the smile fell from my facial features. It came over me that I was playing with forces that were powerful and arcanely complex, well beyond anything I’d been involved with in my life before. The Mont Blanc was the larger LeGrand, like the one I’d lost. It was in black and not Maroon, like the one I’d lost. It was filled with a blue ink cartridge, like the one I’d lost. The Amex card I’d lost. The amount of money Burns had known about and now the return of that in new bills, and then the statement of a four thousand dollar watch to replace a Seiko that could not have been worth twenty bucks after I abused it over the years.

I looked at the time on my watch. I knew it was correct, just like I knew the watch wasn’t really a watch. It was a chronometer, certified on its back by the Swiss company that certified watches that were between four and five seconds accurate per twenty-four-hour period.

There was a knock at the door and with only a slight delay with no one answering it, my attendant entered, pushing a small cart. Atop the cart was a single plate with a half-shell aluminum cover. The attendant pushed the cart to the table and placed the plate, with a cloth napkin atop it, turned smoothly, and then pushed the cart back out through the door and closed it. The entire thing event of delivering the cheeseburger had been almost a ballet in movements.

I walked over and lifted the lid. I immediately smiled. I was looking at a beautifully perfect cheeseburger with a small note on the plate. I read the note but didn’t understand right away. The note read “is big enough.” I pulled the bun back and observed that the burger patty was very thick, and then understood the note. A double patty wasn’t necessary as the patty inside the cheeseburger was plenty thick.

Once again, I had to smile in observance of how different cultures handled different truths and then expressed them in sometimes straight-from-the-shoulder but bizarre ways. I picked up the burger in both hands, ignored the accompanying ketchup and mustard, neither of them real red Heinz or real yellow mustard, and wolfed the thing down in a matter of a couple of minutes. I needed the energy in calories to impact as quickly and powerfully as possible.

I motioned for Nguyen and Kingsley to join me at the table, and when they were seated and looking at me expectantly, I clued them in about the fact that the Starlifter would be ready to go at a moment’s notice, that it was sitting on the tarmac at the airport waiting like as the hulking stoop-shouldered flying predator it fully resembled. The plane could leave and would leave with me or without me. If the mission brought violence, then it would be the responsibility of the ambulatory to get the survivors aboard and out of Asia. No medical care received in Hong Kong would be safe with the forces I now understood were in play.

There was a faint knock at the door, and it opened, again without anyone giving permission. I thought Burns was early in his return but it wasn’t him at all. It was Wing, but not the Wing who’d slunk out with Burns when he left less than an hour earlier. This Wing was dressed in expensive clothes, his hair was cut and styled, and he carried himself fully erect and now slumped down as I’d known him. It was a stunning transformation.

The door closed once more, and Wing stepped forward as I extended my right hand to welcome him. Instead of taking my hand, he clutched me in a tight hug before quickly letting go and stepping back.

“Taipan,” he said, but with a great smile. “I am to be a cutter, in training to be a tailor in Mr. Kim’s Regent Tailor Shop on the promenade,” he said, mispronouncing the last word.

“Congratulations,” I said, “And now these are my friends and Mr. Burns has something in mind for us in a few minutes so you might want to go to that shop. I opened the Rolex box and pulled out the banded stack of hundreds. I slid five hundred dollar bills out and held them out toward Wing.

“Seed money, for when I return.”

There was no hesitation in Wing as he grabbed the first US hundreds, he’d probably ever held or possibly seen.

“I thank you Taipan. I will await your return. I will build a family and then set about honoring what you have done for us.”

I noticed that Wing’s language had suddenly gotten a whole lot better which bothered me a bit. I wondered if such a modification of the presentation was truly possible in such short order or whether there was more about Wing I needed to study and think about.

“I will accompany you if you allow,” he then said, which surprised me.

“I looked back at Nguyen and Kingsley but got nothing from either of them. They were fully in with whatever I decided to do. To them, the mission had already begun and there was only one commanding officer. I pondered the value that Wing might add. He knew Hong Kong, the underbelly, the languages, and the customs and we did not but he in no way was combat capable in any way that I could ascertain. I pondered for almost a full minute. Time was running out.

“Stand over there in that corner,” I said, pointing. Mr. Burns will be returning in a few minutes. When we hear what it is he wants then we’ll decide to include you or not. This could be dangerous work.”

“More dangerous than the streets, alleys, and cage rooms of Hong Kong?” Wing asked, his voice low and quiet.

Nguyen remained impassive but Kingsley began to smile more to himself than to me. Wing was likely in with both Nguyen and Kingsley but there was the mission to consider, and we hadn’t heard what it was yet and none of the three had been on a mission before…no matter how experienced they might be in other potentially related areas. Burns appeared to be doing a lot more than keeping his word, as with the new Wing Wong and the abundance of not only resupply of what I’d lost but by going way beyond that.

The door opened once again with no notification that someone wanted entry. Robert Burns walked through. There was no point in schooling my room attendant since Burns could probably enter any room he felt like on a whim or even less. We were a long way from the USA’s freedoms and privacy rights.
There were no greetings this time, no handshake nor even smiling on his part at this meeting. I didn’t look at my new Rolex, but I was willing to bet he had arrived on the minute if not the second of the hour he’d promised.

Nguyen faded into the corner of the room up-harbor while Wing moved quickly to the opposite corner where the giant windows joined together.

Only Kingsley remained, sitting passively and inexpressively at the table, with his back to the grand view of the harbor. He made no move to rise as Burns approached and then took a seat directly across from him. I eased into the chair on the end, looked Burns in the eyes, and then waited.

“I had nothing to do with your welcome to Hong Kong and did not know who they might send. You have already encountered some of the applied power the man named Erhard possesses. I believe the Amex card return is his form of offering goodwill, although he remains in possession of the photos of your wife and children of which he compliments you on their appearance. I do not believe in the use of violence unless it is necessary and it’s my opinion that the treatment of your entry to Hong Kong was gratuitous.” He stopped talking and waited.

I didn’t know whether to thank him for the return of the money, the sumptuous quarters, the credit, the improved gift selection, or inform him that although Erhard might be playing his hand everyone’s hands were on the poker table of life because Burns had put them there.

“The mission,” was all I chose to say. Burns had gone as far as he was willing to go with his minimal version of an apology.

“Yes, they said you would be coming from a mission orientation. I like and understand that. Erhard is a brilliant man, but your superiors believe you are every bit his equal.”

Werner Erhard had built an empire in very short order by doing nothing more than taking philosophies long left by the scholastic wayside and using them to change almost everything around him on the planet. I had so far in life become only a damaged servant, albeit a servant now working for masters bigger and more powerful than Erhard could ever hope to be.

“The mission,” I repeated, staring into the man’s eyes without blinking.

“Mr. Erhard has somehow amassed all the financial records of the five hugely successful gambling casinos located sixty-six point seven kilometers from here and intends to sell that information to the Chinese, as they seek to have control of Hong Kong returned to them. The Chinese want to buy this debt information, which identifies a great number of its citizens of importance, so the United States cannot acquire it and then use it to leverage these authorities and thereby reveal China’s deepest secrets. The U.S. hopes to keep Hong Kong independent and use that information.”

Burns had stopped talking but my mind was churning away, repeating every word and trying to understand what was wanted to make the mission a success. There was one thing that would not leave my mind, however.

“Excuse me for one moment, Mr Burns?” I asked, rising to my feet and walking, without waiting for his approval, to the glass corner where Wing stood.

“You heard the conversation I know. Erhard has the photos of my family I kept in my wallet. Is there a significance to his doing that in the Asian belief systems you might know of?”

“He holds your family hostage in your mind,” Wing replied, after a few seconds.

“Is that a threat against my family?” I asked, not surprised at all.

“No, it is a threat only of the importance he knows you place in your family members.”

“I don’t understand,” I said after a few seconds, knowing I had to get back to the table right away.

“No, it is not truly understandable. It can only be felt.”

I stepped back, taking the new Wing in and re-evaluating the much more significant worth of the man than I’d originally thought.

I walked back to the table. My conversation with Wing had been in whispers that none of the other three in the room could have heard.

Burns looked across the wooden tabletop in question but not saying anything, so I answered the question I thought he might need to answer.

“We’re going to need some heavy firepower, of my selection, and a comprehensive guide and maps of the target area. If there are limits on what physical results you might find acceptable, I need to hear them now. Given that Mr. Erhard is nearby, and I presume he is, then this mission is entirely within the scope of what you and my superiors would find possible and highly likely to be a complete success, depending upon your perspective.

Burns leaned back in his chair and stared back at me, furrows that weren’t there before forming across his brow.

“That sounds like a ‘waking the sleeping giant sort of thing,” he finally said as I waited to give him my mental list of weaponry, pyrotechnics, and kind of location information I was going to need most immediately. I came to my feet. The mission was afoot, and time was going to be precious as mentally I already held a timetable in my head that would place us out of the country and Asia itself by just after midnight.

“Okay,” Burns replied, coming to his own feet. Stand by here and I’ll have a special man stop by the room and acquire what you need. That’s about it for me. Do you have anything else?

“Mr. Erhard took a piece of this animal’s liver…I wonder if he knows the taste of bitter bile?” was the only thing I left the powerful man with, thinking as he walked through the already opened door that I hoped an ‘incident’ to be prevented, as Herbert had instructed, didn’t mean that Erhard had to keep on breathing.

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