Typhoon (51 page)

What happened that day forced some questions into my mind which have never really gone away. What would have happened if SIS hadn’t become involved with Miles back in Hong Kong? How would things have been different, for example, if Joe Lennox and Kenneth Lenan and David Waterfield had simply stayed out of his way? Without American interference, would Wang Kaixuan and Ablimit Celil and Josh Pinnegar and all the hundreds of other victims of TYPHOON still be alive today? Almost certainly. And would a small band of Uighur radicals have conceived, let alone executed, an attack on the scale of 6/11 without outside interference? I very much doubt it.

From time to time, during the long, complex process of researching and writing the book, I put these questions to its principal players. Had the security and wellbeing of British and American citizens been improved one iota by the activities of their respective governments in China? Who had really benefited from this new version of the Great Game, besides a few shareholders in the Macklinson Corporation?

Nobody, not even Joe Lennox himself, was ever able to give me a satisfactory answer.

Once upon a time, a man called Wang did emerge from the still waters of the South China Sea, but he was not a Chinese academic, nor did he encounter Lance Corporal Angus Anderson on the beach at Dapeng Bay. It was the mid-1970s. A young Gurkha patrolling Starling Inlet took him to see his commanding officer, General Sir Peter Duffell, who promptly sent him back to China. It is no exaggeration to say that Peter’s riveting description of his brief encounter with Wang inspired
Typhoon
.

Many others played a part in bringing the book to fruition. A conversation beside a lake in Beijing with Oliver August led me to Xinjiang. I would urge you to read Oliver’s excellent book
Inside the Red Mansion: On the Trail of China’s Most Wanted Man
. Sebastian Lewis’s knowledge of all things Chinese was as impressive as it was invaluable. Jeremy Goldkorn, Mark Kitto and Lisa Cooper gave up their time to show a stranger around Beijing. I would have got nowhere in Shanghai without the tireless efforts of Toby Collins. Christian Giannini, Richard Turner, Amina Belouizdad, Lina Ly, Zhuang Hao, Michelle and Bruno at M on the Bund and Josephine at Glamour Bar were also extremely helpful. Alex Bonsor, Ben and Katy Chandler, Dominic Grant and Ken Leung were first-class guides in Hong Kong. Captain John Newington showed me both sides of the Chinese economic miracle in Shenzhen. My thanks also to the mysterious Mr. Ignatius, who bought me dinner on the night train from Beijing.

Back in the UK, I was lucky enough to find a Uighur living in London. Enver Bugda was forced to leave his wife and children in Urumqi in 1998 after co-operating on an undercover Channel Four documentary about the impact of nuclear testing at Lop Nur. Enver was of great assistance to me and it has been a privilege to get to know him. I am also very grateful to Sacha Bonsor, William Good-lad, Belle Newbigging, Rupert Mitchell and James Minter, Simon Davis, Marcus Cooper and Davy Dewar at BP, Jemima Lewis, Jonathan and Anna Hanbury, Simon and Caroline Pilkington, Carolyn Hanbury, Ian Cumming, Milly Jones, Ed King, Trevor Horwood and Keith Taylor, Otto Bathurst, Mark and Gaynor Pilkington, James Loughran and Siobhan Loughran-Mareuse, Iona Hamilton, Bruce Palling, Simon Heppner, Xiaoqing Zhang, Katy Nicholson, Angus and Ali McGougan, Ian Frankish, David Jenkins and Kate Knowles, Richard Spencer, Mary Target, Rowland White, Tom Weldon, Carly Cook, Sophie Mitchell, Tif Loehnis and everyone at Janklow & Nesbitt in London, Theo Tait, Luke Janklow, Claire Dippel, Boris Starling, and the ruthless—but invaluable—Samuel Loewenberg. I’d also like to thank Keith Kahla, Kathleen Conn, and Rafal Gibek at St. Martin’s Press. My wife, Melissa, knows how much I owe her. My children, Iris and Stanley, know how much time Daddy spent in his office.

Professor Wang Kaixuan’s testimony in the safe house is based on documents assembled by Amnesty International. For further information, see:
Gross Violations of Human Rights in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region
at
http://www.amnesty.org
.

The following books, articles and websites were indispensable:

The Last Governor
by Jonathan Dimbleby (Warner Books, 1997)

Black Watch, Red Dawn
by Neil and Jo Craig (Brassey’s, 1998)

The Dragon Syndicates: The Global Phenomenon of the Triads
by Martin Booth (Carroll and Graf, 1999)

The China Dream
by Joe Studwell (Profile Books, 2003)

The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia
by Lutz Kleveman (Atlantic Books, 2003)

Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang
by Christian Tyler (John Murray, 2003)

The Cox Report
at
http://www.house.gov/coxreport

Beijing vs Islam
by Michael Winchester at
http://www.asiaweek.com

Wild Grass
by Ian Johnson (Penguin, 2004)

Murder in Samarkand
by Craig Murray (Mainstream Publishing, 2006)

Islamic Unrest in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region
by Dr. Paul George (Canadian Security Intelligence, Unclassified) at
http://www.fas.org

Hong Kong Diary
by Simon Winchester at
http://www.salon.com

Shanghai Baby
by Wei Hui (Robinson, 2002)

Kowloon Tong
by Paul Theroux (Penguin, 1997)

La Mortola: In the footsteps of Sir Thomas Hanbury
by Alasdair Moore (Cadogan, 2004)

C.C.

London 2009

TYPHOONCOVER

TITLE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

PROLOGUE

PART ONE: Hong Kong 1997

1 ON THE BEACH

2 BLACK WATCH

3 LENNOX

4 ISABELLA

5 THE HOUSE OF A THOUSAND ARSEHOLES

6 COUSIN MILES

7 WANG

8 XINJIANG

9 CLUB 64

10 ABLIMIT CELIL

11 TIANANMEN

12 A GOOD WALK SPOILED

13 THE DOUBLE

14 SAMBA’S

15 UNDER GROUND

16 TWILIGHT

17 QUID PRO QUO

18 MARYLAND

19 THE ENGAGEMENT

20 CHINESE WHISPERS

21 CHEN

22 DINNER FOR TWO

23 WUI GWAI

24 HANDOVER

PART TWO: London 2004

25 NOT QUITE THE DIPLOMAT

26 CHINATOWN

27 WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE

28 RETREAD

29 THE BACKSTOP

PART THREE: Shanghai 2005

30 THE PARIS OF ASIA

31 TOURISM

32 SLEEPER

33 STARBUCKS

34 NIGHT CRAWLING

35 THE MORNING AFTER

36 THE DIPLOMATIC BAG

37 AN OLD FRIEND

38 MON THE BUND

39 PERSUASION

40 BEIJING

41 HUTONG

42 PARADISE CITY

43 THE FRENCH CONCESSION

44 SCREEN FOUR

45 BORNE BACK

46 THE LAST SUPPER

47 PRODUCT

48 CLOSING IN

49 CHATTER

50 6 / 1 1

51 BEIJING RED

52 BOB

53 THE TESTIMONY OF JOE LENNOX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS