Ghosts

Milton thought of Pope in the basement of Shcherbatov’s dacha. He was done for unless he went after him. Milton tried to live his life by the Steps. They had saved his life, he was quite sure about that, and he believed that if he observed them faithfully, they would keep him safe.

The Eighth Step injuncted him to make a list of the people that he had harmed.

The Ninth Step required him to make amends to all of them.

He couldn’t make amends to the people who he had harmed through his work for the Group: one hundred and thirty nine of them were already dead. He chose to interpret those two Steps to mean that he should use his skills to help others. That was how he would make things right. Tonight, as he walked through the busy streets of Hong Kong, the monsoon rains starting to fall again, he knew that he had no choice but to do whatever it took to help his friend, even if doing so would lead to his own death.

He was alright with that.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Milton grabbed a couple of hours of sleep, rose quietly at seven and worked out in the hotel gym for a couple of hours before getting breakfast. It was just before eleven when he returned to the room. A

“Letting the colonel know I’m still here?”

“Where have you been?”

“The gym,” he said. “I like to run. It helps me focus.”

“And last night?”

“Never mind.”

“I’m afraid I do…”

“Are you ready to go?”

She dropped it as a lost cause and said that she was ready. They found a taxi in the rank outside and Milton asked the driver to take them to Nathan Road. The rain had continued to fall overnight and through the early morning and, even though the temperature was much less oppressive than it would have been during the summer months, it was still warm enough to render the city’s streets cloyingly humid. The driver followed Kimberley Road and then Nathan Road; when they emerged it was midday and the dampness seemed to wash over them. A

Calling the place Chungking Mansion was misleading. That made it sound grand and opulent and it most certainly was not that. It was large, though: a sprawling collection of shops, takeaways, restaurants and hundreds of hostels with everything from two to twenty rooms spread over five 17-storey tower blocks. Five thousand people lived here, with another ten thousand coming to visit every day. Interpol countries were legally obliged to register foreign nationals when they checked in to hotels but that requirement was flouted here. The hostels could claim that they were distinct from hotels and, in many ways, they were. There were small businesses with a couple of rooms to large dormitories with a dozen beds to more traditionally arranged establishments with single rooms and shared bathrooms. They were cheap, occasionally cheerful, and you got what you paid for in all of them: a night’s sleep, if you were lucky, and not much else besides.

It was a sprawling place, choked with crowds. If you were going to submerge yourself anywhere in Hong Kong you would do it here. You could just sink into the sprawl of humanity. You could do everything you needed to do without ever having to leave.

Milton crossed the traffic with A

Milton pressed through the crowd, bumping against a pair of pasty-ski

The Russians had provided them with the name of the hostel where they believed Beatrix had been staying. “Do you know the Golden Guest House?” he asked the man.

The man shrugged.

“It’s a hostel.”

The man shrugged again, the corner of his mouth curling up in a suggestive smile.

“Here,” A

He folded the note once, then twice, and slipped it into the breast pocket of his shirt. “Other side of building,” he said. He gave them directions and left them to find it.

* * *

The hostel was on the third floor at the end of a maze of windowless corridors that Milton found intensely claustrophobic. He had completely lost his sense of direction and, the deeper they penetrated the warren of rooms, the more vulnerable he felt. An ambush here would be difficult to escape. The Golden Guest House was a

“I’m looking for a woman,” Milton said.

“We all look for woman,” the man said with a lewd smirk at A

“A friend of mine. I think she’s staying here.”

“Can’t talk about guest. Confidential.”

Milton had a photograph of Beatrix that the Russians had provided. It was old, from before the time of the hit on Shcherbatov, and she was dressed in what Milton thought was a police uniform. The likeness was good from what he could remember but it was nearly ten years out of date; time would have aged her, surely, not to mention the changes she would have effected herself. He laid it flat on the counter and left a hundred dollar bill on top of it. The clerk sucked the grease from his fingers and then wiped them on his shirt, pocketed the bill and turned the photograph around so that he could look at it properly. He put a finger up his nostril and turned it around absently. “I don’t know. Maybe I know her, maybe I don’t. Hard to be sure.”

Milton dropped another hundred on the counter and, as the man reached for it, Milton caught his hand and squeezed.

“Ow!” he said. “That hurts!”