The Last Six Million Seconds Read Online Free

smell on himself and everyone near him the musty odor of tropical damp as it cooled.
    In their rush to escape the wet and hurry home, people pressed against him and closed off all movement to the left or right. If he had wished to enter one of the shops, it would have required an extreme and antisocial effort of will. There was a hard knot of people who weren’t moving, though, immediately in front of Wong’s Watches. Chan allowed himself to be deposited on the outside of this crowd, where he paused for a moment. The fashion for countdowns had started in Beijing some years before; now almost every street in the territory had at least one large digital clock recording how many days, hours, seconds until midnight June 30, 1997. Wong’s was extralarge, filling half his shopwindow. Chan realized why everyone had stopped when he saw the “seconds” panel: six million and twenty seconds. The woman next to Chan started counting down in Cantonese: nineteen, eighteen, seventeen. When the panel registered a clear six million, a small cheer wentup, and the woman turned to Chan: “One second for each of us—and disappearing.” Chan broke away as the crowd dispersed.
    On the other side of the twin office towers called United Center the walkway toward Arsenal Street lost a little of its human density. Chan thought about how to handle the chief superintendent, who would surely be alarmed by the problem with the coastguards. Riley? Chan had known him on and off for ten years, had watched him grow and change in the manner of gweilos since he first stepped off the plane at Kai Tak. His nickname in Cantonese could be translated as “rubber spine.” A permanent condition of self-doubt made him especially sensitive to political sea changes, which was why he was appointed to supervise delicate investigations. Not so much a willow bending in the breeze, this Riley, as an artifact of empire broken by the storms of change. Chan didn’t hold it against him; there was a disease that went with expatriation and grew worse as the years passed: schizophrenia.
    “You went into Chinese waters?” Riley said when Chan had finished.
    “It was a mistake.”
    Chan watched the Englishman try out various responses: a blink; a frown; a sedate placing of the hands together in prayer; a muted thump on the table.
    Finally Riley bit his lower lip. “But they were expecting you, you’re sure?”
    “Someone must have been listening in to our ship-to-shore and given orders to those coastguards to take the bag from us. I told you, this isn’t an ordinary investigation. Last week someone bugged my phone, and they’ve been in my files; today they listened to the ship-to-shore. As it happened, the coastguards were just dumb thugs.”
    “But they didn’t seem to know what was in the bag?”
    Chan shook his head. “They asked me several times. When I told them, they laughed as if I was joking.”
    Riley stared at the wall, then back to Chan, then back to the wall. Chan watched Riley. Taoism posited a center of energy in the human body called chi. Riley’s chi was like a Ping-Pong ball bouncing between two identities: master race/indentured servant.
    “You were incredibly brave. Or incredibly stupid. Time will tell.” He drummed on his desk. “I have to say it does make my blood boil, though. What business do those Communist bastards have interfering in my investigation? Excuse me, our investigation—well, yours really. Five years ago I would have been behind you all the way. Even twelve months ago I would have supported you.” Riley’s eyes were more pleading than annoyed. “But we’ve only got two months left, Charlie. The Commies practically run the place already! Now they could have my arse for this—well, yours really. I’ll have to see the commissioner. Please stay home tonight, in case someone wants to see you.”
    When Chan had gone, Riley sought and obtained an immediate interview with Ronald Tsui, Hong Kong’s first Chinese commissioner