Tempest Read online

  TEMPEST

  A Beatrix Rose Novel

  Mark Dawson

  Contents

  Prologue

  I. Hong Kong

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  II. Miami

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  III. Havana

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  IV. Santiago de Cuba

  Chapter 108

  V. Cienfuegos

  Chapter 109

  Get Exclusive John Milton Material

  Also By Mark Dawson

  In the John Milton Series

  In the Beatrix Rose Series

  In the Isabella Rose Series

  About the Author

  Prologue

  The Consulate General of the United States for Hong Kong and Macau was on Garden Road in Central. It was an ugly four-storey concrete box with neatly regulated rows of windows, small and mean, all of them obscured by privacy glass. The building was shielded behind a wall and a metal fence, with additional bollards and barriers separating it from the street in an attempt to offer additional protection from anyone of a mind to drive a vehicle at those queuing to go inside.

  Danny Wu approached the guard post, which was staffed by two Marines. The men were dressed in khaki shirts and neckties, the caps of their dress shoes were polished to a high sheen, and both of them had holstered pistols attached to their belts. Danny stepped through the X-ray scanner and then allowed himself to be quickly and expertly frisked.

  “Thank you, sir,” the man said. “Over there, please.”

  Danny moved forward, taking his place in the line of people who were waiting to speak to the stony-eyed clerks behind glass screens. The couple at the window moved away with a sheaf of freshly issued paperwork, and the elderly man in front of Danny stepped up and exchanged a few sentences with the clerk. Danny overheard the gist of it: he needed a visa to visit his family, and what did he have to do to get one?

  Danny smiled. Family. That was the reason for his visit, too. He was making preparations to go home. It would be the first time that he had left Hong Kong in forty years. He had long since assumed that he would never leave, that he would pass the rest of his days here. That was before the nonsense with Michael and before he had discovered that he had family, when, for so long, he had assumed that he did not. And now, to his surprise and pleasure, he was making arrangements to go and see them.

  The elderly man left the window and walked over to a nearby counter to fill out his forms.

  “Next.”

  The clerk did not make eye contact as Danny approached the window. She just tapped the scooped metal tray beneath the bulletproof glass.

  “Passport, please,” she said, her voice tinny and artificial through the speaker.

  “I need to talk to somebody about—”

  The clerk cut him off. “May I see your passport, please?”

  Danny shook his head. “I don’t have one. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Your expired passport, then?”

  Danny sighed. “I’m sorry, it’s all a bit… complicated.”

  She stared at him.

  “I’m an American citizen,” he explained. “I’ve been here for a long time. My passport expired years ago, and then I lost it.”

  “You’ll need to speak to someone in American Citizen Services.” There was a keyboard on the desk, and she tapped one of the keys and glanced up at her screen. “I can make you an appointment. Your name, please?”

  “Daniel Nakamura,” he said. The name was unfamiliar on his tongue.

  “And your city of birth, Mr. Nakamura?”

  “Los Angeles, California.”

  “Date of birth?”

  He told her.

  The clerk handed him a slip of paper. “You’re on the list, but there are a few in front of you. There’s a waiting room down there.” She pointed down a long hallway. “Go take a seat. Someone will see you as soon as they can.”

  Danny turned away from the counter, then moved awkwardly aside as the woman who had been waiting behind him made her way to the window.

  Danny stood at the entrance to the waiting area and stared down it. He saw the neat rows of chairs arranged on either side; he saw the people sitting and waiting; he saw the glare of artificial light from the rectangular panels in the ceiling and the glare of the reflections on the polished floor. There were six others waiting for their appointments: the elderly couple from before, a mother with a young baby, and a man in a green and khaki Marine Corps battle dress uniform. There was an empty seat next to the Marine. Danny took it.

  The Marine looked over at Danny. “Good afternoon.”

  Danny looked at the name tape above the man’s breast pocket and the insignia on his shoulder. His name was Martinez and he was a sergeant.

  “Pacific Fleet?” Danny asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Pendleton or Okinawa?”

  “Pendleton,” Martinez said, “but I’ve spent plenty of time in Japan.”

  “Thank you for your service,” Danny said.r />
  Martinez smiled and nodded. “Thank you. You serve, too?”

  “Is it that obvious?” Danny said.

  “There’s a look, right? You can never wash it off.”

  “I guess you can’t,” Danny said. “Long time ago for me, though.”

  “Vietnam?”

  “That’s right.”

  A woman emerged from a side room. She was holding a piece of paper and, as she looked down at it, she called out a name. The mother got up, hoisted her child into her arms, and went over to the woman. They went into the room and the door was closed after them.

  Martinez crossed his legs and brushed a spot of fluff from his tan suede boots.

  “What are you doing here?” Danny asked him.

  “Came to collect a deserter.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s right. It’s a crazy one. This guy—I won’t name him, but he made corporal before he bugged out—he had a cushy job at Pendleton, fixing broken vehicles in the motor pool they got there. He got married, had a kid, and decided that he wasn’t making the money that he thought he ought to be making. So he hauled ass. Probably thought that’d be the end of it.”

  “When was this?”

  “That’s the thing of it. He deserted in eighty-five. He disappeared—no one had the first clue where he was. Turns out the woman he married was Chinese and she had the urge to come back home to Hong Kong. He went with her. Thing is, the two of them got divorced last year and, from what I can make out, it was messy. She called the consulate and snitched him off. They found he had a warrant out for unauthorised absence and sent a couple of men to pick him up. He’s been in confinement for five days. I’m here to take him back for his court martial.”

  Danny felt cold. “Eighty-five,” he said. “They still chase guys from that far back?”

  “Buddy, we got names going all the way back to World War Two. Korea, Vietnam—there’s still plenty of guys who owe the military. Why—you think the charges just go away?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Never really crossed my mind. I guess I thought that they’d become less important.”

  “It’s the example it sets,” Martinez said. “We’re fighting in some shitty places right now. The last thing we need is for soldiers to think walking away is an option. They got to know there’ll be consequences, that they’ll always have to be looking over their shoulders for guys like me. Last year, one of my buddies went to Seoul and picked up this sergeant who’d deserted in fifty-two. They brought him back to the States in chains and he got eighteen months in the brig.”

  Danny’s mouth was dry.

  “You see any action?” Martinez asked him.

  Danny had not thought of Vietnam for years, but now the memories came back in a flood. He thought of what he had done, and knew, with horrible certainty, that he couldn’t go through with what he had planned. Eighteen months in the brig? He didn’t have eighteen months to spare.

  “Sir?”

  “Sorry,” Danny said. “Million miles away.”

  The Marine smiled indulgently. “I was asking if you saw any action.”

  “It was Vietnam,” Danny said. “I saw plenty.”

  “Look at me, rambling on. All I do is chase down cowards. You did it for real. It’s me who ought to be thanking you.”

  The man reached out his hand and Danny took it, aware that his fingers were trembling.

  He got up.

  “Daniel Nakamura?”

  Danny looked up and saw that a member of the consulate staff had emerged from a side room. The woman had a clipboard; she looked down at the sheet of paper that was attached to it and called his name again.

  “Nice to meet you,” Danny said to Martinez. “Good luck with… you know.”

  The Marine looked at the staffer, then back to Danny, but didn’t say anything. Danny turned away from him and set off back to the lobby. The guards watched him as he retraced his steps, pushing through the heavy steel-and-glass door and back out into the Hong Kong sunshine beyond.

  Part I

  Hong Kong

  1

  “Wake up.”

  Beatrix Rose squeezed her eyes tight. The world was still swaying, rocking back and forth.

  “Wake up.”

  Someone was leaning over her. She thought she could hear a voice. She felt a moment of hope, the suggestion that the last year and a half had been a cruel dream.

  Lucas?

  There was something… She tried to reach back into the fog. There was something she had to ask him about.

  She remembered.

  Where is Isabella?

  She reached up for her husband and laid her hand against his cheek. He smiled at her; she saw the single bullet wound in his forehead.

  “It’s me, Beatrix.”

  The voice did not belong to Lucas. He was dead and Isabella was gone, taken from her by the people who had murdered him. The dream disappeared, tendrils of smoke blown apart by the wind. The vision disappeared, leaving a ghostly after-image that flickered against her eyelids before even that, too, was gone.

  She opened her eyes and squinted. Danny Wu came into focus. The lined face that looked down upon her was elderly, but he was strong and wiry, his skin weathered from years of living in the harbour under the hot sun. Her hand rested against his withered cheek. He was smiling down at her.

  She brought her hand back down and exhaled, concentrating on bringing her breath under control. She glanced around and saw mahogany and teak and brass. She knew where she was: they were in the cabin of Danny’s motor junk, the Constance. He kept the boat at anchor in the floating village, the community of sampans, junks, barges and fishing boats that was found in the Aberdeen South Typhoon Shelter.

  Beatrix tried to sit. That was a bad idea. Waves of nausea hit her again and she put her head back down onto the pillow.

  “Take it easy.”

  Danny reached a hand beneath her head and raised it up just enough so that she could drink from the glass of water that he held to her lips. She sipped. The water was warm, with just a touch of saltiness.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Awful.”

  “You’re on the boat,” he said.

  “I can see that.”

  “You’re safe.”

  “Feel like shit.”

  “Look like shit, too. No idea why that could be.”

  She raised her head a little more so that she could look down her body. She was slender, thinner than she had been for a while, and she felt weak.

  “Drink,” he said, pressing the glass to her lips again. “Get it out of your system.”

  She drank again, a careful sip, not too much.

  “How did I get here?”

  “Drink,” he said.

  She sipped at the liquid again. “There,” she said. “Happy? How did I get here?”

  “I got a call.”

  “The Indian?”

  He nodded.

  “Again? Why can’t he just let me get on with it?”

  “He doesn’t want anyone dying.”

  “Doesn’t strike me as the compassionate type.”

  “He’s not. It’s bad for business.”

  “In there?” she said sourly. “I doubt anyone would notice.”

  “I pay him to let me know if you need help. And you definitely did.”

  “Not that I’d want you to think that I care, but do you think he would’ve told Michael?”

  “I pay him not to do that, too,” Danny said. “But you know how it is. Everything gets to Michael in the end.”

  Beatrix had been going to the same den for months now, ever since she had started with opium. The place was owned by the Wo Shun Wo and run for them by a wizened old man from Kerala. He allocated the spaces on the floor and, for a little extra, would prepare the pipes for the smokers who came inside to lose their minds for a day or two. Danny had found her there the first time, sent as Michael Yeung’s emissary to make her an offer of employment. Since then, he had r
eturned on subsequent occasions to pick her up and take her away, to do what she could not and save her from herself. This was not the first time that she had woken up on his boat.

  Beatrix forced herself to focus enough so that she could read Danny’s face. “How long?”

  “Two days this time.”

  “Two days?”

  He nodded.

  “What day is it?”

  “Saturday. What’s the last thing you remember?”

  She closed her eyes. The memory was instant and intense: the fetid room at the bottom of the steep, dark steps; the carpet of torpid bodies; the red glow from the pipe bowls. She remembered the sweet spiced smell of the opium fog and then… nothing, just the blank oblivion that she cherished.