Typhoon

5

The House of a Thousand Arseholes

Waterfield wasn’t happy about it.

Closing the door of his office, eight floors above Joe’s in Jardine House, he turned to Kenneth Lenan and began to shout.

‘Who the fuck is Isabella Aubert and what the fuck is she doing flying eight thousand miles to play houses with RUN?’

‘RUN’ was the cryptonym the Office used for Joe to safeguard against Chinese eyes and ears. The House of a Thousand Arseholes was swept every fourteen days, but in a crowded little colony of over six million people you never knew who might be listening in.

‘The surname is French,’ Lenan replied, ‘but the passport is British.’

‘Is that right? Well, my mother had a cat once. Siamese, but it looked like Clive James. I want her checked out. I want to make sure one of our best men in Hong Kong isn’t about to chuck in his entire career because some agent of the DGSE flashed her knickers at him.’

The ever-dependable Lenan had anticipated such a reaction. As a young SIS officer in the sixties, David Waterfield had seen careers crippled by Blake and Philby. His point of vulnerability was the mole at the heart of the Service. Lenan consoled him.

‘I’ve already taken care of it.’

‘What do you mean, you’ve already taken care of it?’ He frowned. ‘Is she not coming? Have they split up?’

‘No, she’s coming, sir. But London have vetted. Not to the level of EPV, but the girl looks fine.’

Lenan removed a piece of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket, unfolded it and began to improvise from the text: ‘Isabella Aubert. Born Marseilles, February 1973. Roman Catholic. Father Eduard Aubert, French national, insurance broker in Kensington for most of his working life. Womanizer, inherited wealth, died of cancer ten years ago, aged sixty-eight. Mother English, Antonia Chapman. ‘‘Good stock’’, I think they call it. Worked as a model before marrying Aubert in 1971. Part-time artist now, never remarried, lives in Dorset, large house, two Labradors, Aga, etcetera. Isabella has a brother, Gavin, both of them privately educated, Gavin at Radley, Isabella at Downe House. The former lives in Seattle, gay, works in computer technology. Isabella spent a year between school and university volunteering at a Romanian orphanage. According to one friend the experience ‘‘completely changed her’’. We don’t exactly know how or why at this stage. She didn’t adopt one of the children, if that’s the point the friend was getting at. Then she matriculates at Trinity Dublin in the autumn of ’92, hates it, drops out after six weeks. According to the same friend she now goes ‘‘off the rails for a bit’’, heads out to Ibiza, works on the door at a nightclub for two summers, then meets Anthony Charles Ellroy, advertising creative, at a dinner party in London. Ellroy is forty-two, mid-life crisis, married with two kids. Leaves his wife for Isabella, who by now is working for a friend of her mother’s at an art gallery in Green Park. Would you like me to keep going?’

‘Ibiza,’ Waterfield muttered. ‘What’s that? Ecstasy? Rave scene? Have you checked if she’s run up a criminal record with the Guardia Civil?’

‘Clean as a whistle. A few parking tickets. Overdraft. That’s it.’

‘Nothing at all suspicious?’ Waterfield looked out of the window at the half-finished shell of IFC, the vast skyscraper, almost twice the height of the Bank of China, which would soon dominate the Hong Kong skyline. He held a particular affection for Joe and was concerned that, for all his undoubted qualities, he was still a young man possibly prone to making a young man’s mistakes. ‘No contact with liaison during this stint in Romania, for instance?’ he said. ‘No particular reason why she chucks in the degree?’

‘I could certainly have those things looked at in greater detail.’

‘Fine. Good.’ Waterfield waved a hand in the air. ‘And I’ll have a word with him when the dust has settled. Arrange to meet her in person. What does she look like?’

‘Pretty,’ Lenan said, with his typical gift for understatement. ‘Dark, French looks, splash of the English countryside. Good skin. Bit of mystery there, bit of poise. Pretty.’

6

Cousin Miles

It wasn’t a bad description, although it didn’t capture Isabella’s smile, which was often wry and mischievous, as if she had set herself from a young age to enjoy life, for fear that any alternative approach would leave her contemplating the source of the melancholy that ebbed in her soul like a tide. Nor did it suggest the enthusiasm with which she embraced life in those first few weeks in Hong Kong, aware that she could captivate both men and women as much with her personality as with her remarkable physical beauty. For such a young woman, Isabella was very sure of herself, perhaps overly so, and I certainly heard enough catty remarks down the years to suggest that her particular brand of self-confidence wasn’t to everyone’s taste. Lenan, for example, came to feel that she was ‘vain’ and ‘colossally pleased with herself’, although, like most of the stitched-up Brits in the colony, given half a chance he would have happily whisked her off to Thailand for a dirty weekend in Phuket.

At the restaurant that night I thought she looked a little tired and Joe and I did most of the talking until Miles arrived at about half-past eight. He was wearing chinos and flip-flops and carrying an umbrella; from a distance it looked as though his white linen shirt was soaked through with sweat. On closer inspection, once he’d shaken our hands and sat himself down next to Joe, it became clear that he had recently taken a shower and I laid a private bet with myself that he’d come direct from Lily’s, his favourite massage parlour on Jaffe Road.

‘So how’s everybody doing this evening?’

The presence of this tanned, skull-shaved Yank with his deep, imposing voice lifted our easygoing mood into something more dynamic. We were no longer three Brits enjoying a quiet beer before dinner, but acolytes at the court of Miles Coolidge of the CIA, waiting to see where he was going to take us.

‘Everybody is fine, Miles,’ Joe said. ‘Been swimming?’

‘You’re smelling that?’ he said, looking down at his shirt as a waft of shower gel made its way across the table. Isabella leaned over and did a comic sniff of his armpits. ‘Just came from the gym,’ he said. ‘Hot outside tonight.’

Joe stole a glance at me. He knew as well as I did of Miles’s bi-weekly predilection for hand jobs, although it was something that we kept from Isabella. None of us, where girls were concerned, wanted to say too much about the venality of male sexual behaviour in the fleshpots of Hong Kong. Even if you were innocent, you were guilty by association of gender.

Did it matter that Miles regarded Asia as his own personal playground? I have never known a man so rigorous in the satisfaction of his appetites, so comfortable in the brazenness of his behaviour and so contemptuous of the moral censure of others. He was the living, breathing antithesis of the Puritan streak in the American character. Miles Coolidge was thirty-seven, single, answerable to very few, the only child of divorced Irish-American parents, a brilliant student who had worked two jobs while studying at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, graduating summa cum laude in 1982 and applying almost immediately for a position with the Central Intelligence Agency. Most of his close friends in Hong Kong – including myself, Joe and Isabella – knew what he did for a living, though we were, of course, sworn to secrecy. He had worked, very hard and very effectively, in Angola, Berlin and Singapore before being posted to Hong Kong at almost the exact same time as Joe. He spoke fluent Mandarin, workable Cantonese, a dreadful, Americanized Spanish and decent German. He was tall and imposing and possessed that indefinable quality of self-assurance which draws beautiful women like moths to a flame. A steady procession of jaw-dropping girls – AP journalists, human rights lawyers, UN conference attendees – passed through the revolving door of his apartment in the Mid-Levels and I would be lying if I said that his success with women didn’t occasionally fill me with envy. Miles Coolidge was the Yank of your dreams and nightmares: he could be electrifying company; he could be obnoxious and vain. He could be subtle and perceptive; he could be crass and dumb. He was a friend and an enemy, an asset and a problem. He was an American.

‘You know what really pisses me off?’ The waitress had brought him a vodka and tonic and handed out four menus and a wine list. Joe was the only person to start looking at them while Miles began to vent his spleen.

‘Your guy Patten. I talked to some of his people today. You know what’s going on down there at Government House? Nothing. You’ve got three months left before this whole place gets passed over to the Chinese and all anybody can think about is removals trucks and air tickets home and how they can get to kiss ass with Prince Charles at the handover before he boards the good ship Rule Britannia.’

This was vintage Coolidge: a blend of conjecture, hard facts and nonsense, all designed to wind up the Brits. Dinner was never going to be a sedate affair. Miles lived for conflict and its resolution in his favour and took a particular joy in Joe’s inability fully to argue issues of state in the presence of Isabella. She knew absolutely nothing about his work as a spy. At the same time, Waterfield had made Miles conscious of RUN back in 1996 as a result of blowback on a joint SIS/CIA bugging operation into the four candidates who were standing for the post of Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. That had created a nasty vacuum in the relationship between the four of us, and Miles was constantly probing at the edges of Joe’s cover in a way that was both childish and very dangerous.

It is worth saying something more about the relationship between the two of them, which became so central to events over the course of the next eight years. In spite of all that he had achieved, there is no question in my mind that Miles was jealous of Joe: jealous of his youth, his background as a privileged son of England, of the apparent ease with which he had earned a reputation as a first-rate undercover officer after just two years in the job. Everything that was appealing about Joe – his decency, his intelligence, his loyalty and charm – was taken as a personal affront by the always competitive Coolidge, who saw himself as a working-class boy made good whose progress through life had been stymied at every turn by an Ivy League/WASP conspiracy of which Joe would one day almost certainly become a part. This was nonsense, of course – Miles had risen far and fast, in many cases further and faster than Agency graduates of Princeton, Yale and Harvard – but it suited him to bear a grudge and the prejudice gave his relationship with Joe a precariousness which ultimately proved destructive.

Of course there was also Isabella. In cities awash with gorgeous, ego-flattering local girls, it is difficult to overstate the impact that a beautiful Caucasian woman can have on the hearts and souls of Western men in Asia. In her case, however, it was more than just rarity value; all of us, I think, were a little in love with Isabella Aubert. Miles concealed his obsession for a long time, in aggression towards her as well as wild promiscuity, but he was always, in one way or another, pursuing her. Joe’s possession of Isabella was the perpetual insult of Miles’s time in Hong Kong. That she was Joe’s girl, the lover of an Englishman whom he admired and despised in almost equal measure, only made the situation worse.

‘When you say ‘‘Patten’s people’’,’ I asked, ‘who exactly do you mean?’

Miles rubbed his neck and ignored my question. He was usually wary of me. He knew that I was smart and independent-minded but he needed my connections as a journalist and therefore kept me at the sort of length which hacks find irresistible: expensive lunches, covered bar bills, tidbits of sensitive information exchanged in the usual quid pro quo. We were, at best, very good professional friends, but I suspected – wrongly, as it turned out – that the minute I left Hong Kong I would probably never hear another word from Miles Coolidge ever again.

‘I mean, what exactly has that guy done in five years as governor?’

‘You’re talking about Patten now?’ Joe’s head was still in the menu, his voice uninflected to the point of seeming bored.

‘Yeah, I’m talking about Patten. Here’s my theory. He comes here in ’92, failed politician, can’t even hold down a job as a member of parliament; his ego must be going crazy. He thinks, ‘‘I have to do something, I have to make my mark. The mansion and the private yacht and the gubernatorial Rolls-Royce aren’t doing it for me. I have to be The Man.’’’

Isabella was laughing.

‘What’s funny?’ Joe asked her, but he was smiling too.

‘Guber what?’ she said.

‘‘‘Gubernatorial’’. It means ‘‘of the government’’. A gift of office. Jesus. I thought your parents gave you guys an expensive education?’

‘Anyway…’ Joe said, encouraging Miles to continue.

‘Anyway, so Chris is sitting there in Government House watching TV, maybe he’s arguing with Lavender over the remote control, Whisky and Soda are licking their balls’ – Lavender was Patten’s wife, Whisky and Soda their dogs. Miles got a good laugh for this – ‘and he says to himself, ‘‘How can I really mess this thing up? How can I make the British government’s handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China the biggest political and diplomatic shitstorm of modern times? I know. I’ll introduce democracy. After ninety years of colonial rule in which none of my predecessors have given a monkey’s ass about the six million people who live here, I’m gonna make sure China gives them a vote.’’ ’

‘Haven’t we heard this before?’ I said.

‘I’m not finished.’ There was just enough time for us to order some food and wine before Miles started up again. ‘What’s always really riled me about that guy is the hypocrisy, you know? He’s presented himself as this Man of the People, a stand-up guy from the sole remaining civilized nation on the face of the earth, but you really think he wanted democracy for humanitarian reasons?’

‘Yes I do.’ The firmness of Joe’s interjection took us all by surprise. To be honest, I had assumed he wasn’t listening. ‘And not because he enjoyed making waves, not because he enjoyed thumbing his nose at Beijing, but because he was doing his job. Nobody is saying that Chris Patten is a saint, Miles. He has his vanities, he has his ego, we all do. But in this instance he was brave and true to his principles. In fact it amazes me that people still question what he tried to do. Making sure that the people of Hong Kong enjoy the same quality of life under the Chinese government that they’ve enjoyed under British rule for the past ninety-nine years wasn’t a particularly bold strategy. It was just common sense. It wasn’t just the right thing to do morally; it was the only thing to do, politically and economically. Imagine the alternative.’

Isabella did a comic beam of pride and grabbed Joe’s hand, muttering, ‘Join us after this break, when Joe Lennox tackles world poverty…’

‘Oh come on.’ Miles drained his vodka and tonic as if it were a glass of water. ‘I love you, man, but you’re so fucking naïve. Chris Patten is a politician. No politician ever did anything except for his own personal gain.’

‘Are all Americans this cynical?’ Isabella asked. ‘This deranged?’

‘Only the stupid ones,’ I replied, and Miles threw a chewed olive stone at me. Then Joe came back at him.

‘You know what, Miles?’ He lit a cigarette and pointed it like a dart across the table. ‘Ever since I’ve known you you’ve been delivering this same old monologue about Patten and the Brits and how we’re all in it for the money or the personal gain or whatever argument you’ve concocted to make yourself feel better about the compromises you make every day down at the American embassy. Well call me naïve, but I believe there is such a thing as a decent man and Patten is the closest thing you’re going to get to it in public life.’ The arrival of our starters did nothing to deflect Joe from the task he had set himself. Miles pretended to be enthralled by his grilled prawns, but all of us knew he was about to get pummelled. ‘It’s time I put you out of your misery. I don’t want to come off sounding like a PR man for Chris Patten, but pretty much all of the commitments made to the people of Hong Kong five years ago have been fulfilled by his administration. There are more teachers in schools, more doctors and nurses in hospitals, thousands of new beds for the elderly. When Patten got here in ’92 there were sixty-five thousand Cantonese living in slum housing. Now there are something like fifteen thousand. You should read the papers, Miles, it’s all in there. Crime is down, pollution is down, economic growth up. In fact the only thing that hasn’t changed is people like you bitching about Patten because he got in the way of you making a lot of money. I mean isn’t that the argument? Appeasement? Isn’t that the standard Sinologist line on China? Don’t upset the suits in Beijing. In the next twenty years they’ll be in charge of the second biggest economy in the world. We need them onside so we can build General Motors factories in Guangdong, investment banks in Shenzhen, sell Coca-Cola and cigarettes to the biggest market the world has ever known. What’s a few votes in Hong Kong or a guy getting his fingernails ripped out by the PLA if we can get rich in the process? Isn’t that the problem? Patten has given you a conscience.’

Joe gave this last word real spit and venom and all of us were a little taken aback. It wasn’t the first time that I had seen him really go at Miles for the lack of support towards Patten shown by Washington, but he had never done so in front of Isabella and it felt as though two or three tables were listening in. For a while we just picked at our food until the argument regained its momentum.

‘Spoken like a true patriot,’ Miles said. ‘Maybe you’re too good for freight forwarding, Joe. Ever thought about applying for a job with the Foreign Office?’

This was water off a duck’s back. ‘What are you trying to say, Miles?’ Joe said. ‘What’s that chip telling you on your shoulder?’

This was one of the reasons Miles liked Joe: because he took him on; because he bullied the bully. He was smart enough to pick apart his arguments and not be daunted by the fact that Miles’s age and experience vastly outweighed his own.

‘I’ll tell you what it’s telling me. It’s telling me that you’re confusing a lot of different issues.’ Things were a little calmer now and we were able to eat while Miles held forth. ‘Patten pissed off a lot of people in the business community, here and on both sides of the Atlantic. This is not just an American phenomenon, Joe, and you know it. Everybody wants to take advantage of the Chinese market – the British, the French, the Germans, the fuckin’ Eskimos – because, guess what, we’re all capitalists and that’s what capitalists do. Capitalism drove you here in your cab tonight. Capitalism is going to pay for your dinner. Christ, Hong Kong is the last outpost of the British Empire, an empire whose sole purpose was to spread capitalism around the globe. And having a governor of Hong Kong with no experience of the Orient parachuting in at the last minute trying to lecture a country of 1.3 billion people about democracy and human rights – a country, don’t forget, that could have had this colony shut down in a weekend at any point over the past hundred years – well, that isn’t the ideal way of doing business. If you want to promote democracy, the best way is to open up markets and engage with politically repressed countries at first hand so that they have the opportunity to see how Western societies operate. What you don’t do is lock the stable door after the horse has not only bolted, but found itself another stable, redecorated, and settled down with a really fuckin’ hot filly in a meaningful relationship.’ Joe shook his head but we were all laughing. ‘And to answer your accusation that my government didn’t have a conscience until Chris Patten came along, all I can say is last time I checked we weren’t the ones willingly handing over six million of our own citizens to a repressive communist regime twenty miles away.’