Ivory Nation by Andy Maslen (free children's ebooks online txt) 📕

Michael’s grave, Gabriel stepped off the path, releasing Mei’s arm, and stood, head bowed.

The grass here was cut just as neatly as elsewhere in the vast, stone-filled field. Gabriel looked at the grass under his feet. It was pale, the vibrant green changed to a dull grey. Who turned the colour down? He shook his head. The vibrancy returned.

A few dried-out sprigs of pink magnolia sat in a glass vase before the gravestone. He read again the sparse, gold-filled phrases carved into the small slab of polished black granite.

Michael Francis Wolfe.

Nineteen eighty-five to nineteen ninety.

Beloved son and brother.

Taken from us too soon.

‘Master Zhao used to bring those,’ he said, pointing at the flowers. ‘They’re the last bunch he brought here. I’m never going to move them.’

‘Do you remember him?’ Mei asked. ‘Michael.’

‘Now I do. It took a while. For years I believed I was an only child. I told you before, right?’

‘Some, yes. I don’t remember all of it. What was he like?’

Gabriel closed his eyes, inhaled and exhaled in a soft sigh. He felt neither pain nor grief. Something had broken inside of him during the two weeks when he’d retreated from reality in the aftermath of Michael’s death. But he missed him. Missed the idea of him.

‘He was funny. Mischievous. A proper little brother. Always getting into trouble. His school uniform always looked like he’d been in a scrap. He used to love playing rugby. That’s how he died. He went in after a ball I kicked into the harbour. He drowned.’

‘You’re OK talking about it now?’

Mei phrased it as a statement, not a question.

‘Yes. For so long, I thought it was my fault. It was mixed up in my head with stuff that happened just before I left the army. Then Kenneth Lao told me the truth.’

‘Mum?’

‘Yes. Mum. She was drunk when she should have been watching us. It wasn’t her fault. Not really. She went to pieces after Fang kidnapped you.’

Mei nodded. She stepped forward and placed a hand on the gravestone’s curved top. She knelt, placed her lips against the stone and closed her eyes. Gabriel watched as she communed with the soul of their dead brother. After a minute, she straightened in a single, flowing movement and rejoined Gabriel.

She took his arm again.

‘I want to see their graves, too, BB.’

‘Mum and Dad’s? They’re in England.’

‘I know. I want to see them.’

‘I’ll take you as soon as this operation is over.’

‘Pinky promise?’ she said, holding out her right little finger.

Amused at his sister’s childlike gesture, Gabriel nevertheless hooked her finger with his and squeezed.

Back in the car, Gabriel started the engine, then turned to face Mei.

‘What about the people you said you could introduce me to?’

‘I’ll make some calls. Things are changing in my world. Now I’m taking WK in a different direction, I can talk to some of Fang’s old rivals. They want what we have so they’re keen to do deals. All kinds.’

‘I need to be back in Botswana by Friday.’

‘It’s Monday today. You’ll have plenty of time. Anyway, if you’re a couple of days late, Eli can cope, can’t she? After all, isn’t your girlfriend a, what did you call her, “a real badass”?’

Gabriel smiled because Mei had slipped into American-accented English to utter this last, pungent phrase.

‘Let’s make sure she doesn’t need to be this time.’

Back once more in the bar of the Golden Dragon, Gabriel felt an entirely justifiable sense of déjà vu. Only this time, the boss wasn’t a gangster plotting his murder with a corrupt Chinese Communist Party high-up. It was his little sister.

The barman recognised Gabriel and came over with a smile. He held a sweating martini glass by the stem and placed it in front of Gabriel on one of the casino’s trademark gold cocktail napkins with a black-scalloped edge.

‘Tanqueray Number Ten, not too dry, three olives,’ he said.

‘Thanks, Tony.’ Gabriel sipped the ice-cold drink and smiled. ‘Perfect.’

Gabriel picked up the glass and threaded his way through the crowd of well-dressed gamblers to the door leading to the private offices.

Mei had redecorated Fang’s office. Gone was the heavy Chinese rug with its deep- plum-red stain where its owner had bled to death. Gone was the gold-painted antique furniture. Gone were the gold dragon lamps, each snarling reptile clamping a light-globe in its slavering jaws.

In their place, polished wooden floorboards, a white carpet, modern steel-and-glass desk, blond wood filing cabinets and a half-dozen contemporary light fittings that Mei told him she’d commissioned from a rising glass artist on the mainland.

She came round from behind the desk and hugged him. In her working dress of tailored western-style suit and heels, she could have passed for a business executive rather than a triad boss. But then, as she’d explained, that was the plan.

‘The Mafia did it. People go legit all the time,’ she’d said to him on his previous visit.

‘Your guest not here yet?’ Gabriel asked, taking a seat.

‘He’ll be here shortly. He just texted me. Stuck in traffic.’

Gabriel had to smile. Even top-level gangsters weren’t immune from Hong Kong’s notorious jams.

Five minutes later, the office door swung inwards to reveal the Golden Dragon’s security manager. He extended his free arm and in walked a very short, very thin man who, Gabriel judged, had to be in his eighties.

Mei rounded the desk for a second time and crossed the expanse of white carpet. She bowed and extended her right hand, which the old man took, executing his own, smaller bow.

‘Mister Cho, I’d like you to meet my brother, Gabriel,’ she said, leading the old man over to Gabriel, who had stood in anticipation. He bowed as the man closed the four-foot gap between them.

‘Mr Cho runs the Four-Point Star triad,’ Mei said over the old man’s shoulder.

Cho barely came up to Gabriel’s shoulder. He raised his chin and scrutinised Gabriel’s face, his deep-brown eyes moving restlessly over each feature.

‘Your sister is a tigress. Very powerful lady now,’ he said in English. ‘You are lucky. I do not come