Ninety-nine years of colonial rule are ending as the British prepare to hand over Hong Kong to China. For Betty Mullard and her son, Bunt, it doesn't concern them - until the mysterious Mr. Hung from the mainland offers them a large sum for their family business. They refuse, yet fail to realize Mr. Hung is unlike the Chinese they've known: he will accept no refusals. When a young female employee whom Bunt has been dating vanishes, he is forced to make important decisions for the first time in his life - but his good intentions are pitted against the will of Mr. Hung and the threat of the ultimate betrayal. "A compact, provocative gem of a novel." Boston Globe "A moody thriller . . . cleverly, tightly constructed, fast-paced." The New York Times "A taunt, illuminating story that trancends it's timely subject . . . A bravura performance." The Washington Post Paul Theroux  is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include  Burma Sahib, The Bad Angel Brothers, The Lower River, Jungle Lovers,  and  The Mosquito Coast , and his renowned travel books include  Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, On the Plain of Snakes,  and  Dark Star Safari . He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod. Kowloon Tong By Paul Theroux Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company Copyright © 1997 Paul Theroux All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-395-90141-0 CHAPTER 1 Some days Hong Kong seemed no different from the London suburb she had lived in before the war. Today, for example, the cold early morning with fragments of fog at the windows, she was back in Balham. The gray sky was falling in big soft wisps of tumbled stuffing, like a cushion torn open — but not one of those stinky straw-filled Chinese cushions. When the wind gusted, the drops of rain, as though flushed from just above her, plopped harder on the roof, which was also the ceiling of the parlor at Albion Cottage. The sky, the roof, the ceiling — on a wet day like this they were one thing. Betty Mullard sat in what she called the lounge waiting for her son, Bunt, to come in to breakfast. "Fancy that," she said softly to the plip-plop of the rain. "Chinky-Chonks." And she went on thinking: Chinese relatives? What Chinese relatives? She had just put the phone down after speaking to Monty, who was Mr. Chuck's solicitor, and also hers — theirs, the firm's, everyone trusted Monty Brittain. He was a Londoner too, a lad, sported a bowler hat, and he just laughed and looked at her with dead eyes when she said, "I trust you because you're a Jewboy." Mr. Chuck had never mentioned Chinese relatives. The question was, How to tell Bunt? Hearing another sudden clatter of raindrops, she was back in Balham again. She looked up and saw the Queen, the portrait over the mahogany sideboard, a larger photograph than that of Betty's late husband, George, in his RAF uniform on the same wall. The portrait had been part of the room, as permanent a fixture as the lamps and candle brackets, but lately Betty had begun to look closely at the Queen's face, querying it. The Queen was practically a goddess, but she was also a mother, and a ruler. Her kingdom was established and serene and orderly. "She works so hard" was all Betty had ever said, a kind of benediction. The greatest change Betty had known in her life, keener than the death of her father, worse than the war but with the same unexpected surprises and hurts (all her sighs of "Whatever next!"), was the seismic shift in the domestic life of the royal family. Her father had been old and sick: his time had come. The war had been won. But in these past years Betty had felt a sense of overwhelming disillusionment — loss and grief and bewilderment of an almost blaspheming sort that had very nearly unhinged her — at the news of divorces and muddles and adulteries and scandals and secrets of the royal family. Her Majesty excepted, they were human and horrible, and they were naked, exposed for all the world to see. For the first time in her life she saw their flesh, the common freckles on Fergie's moo-cow face, Diana's skinny arms, even Charles, his white legs. To Bunt, who had no idea of the majesty of the Queen and how much had changed, his mother said, "And the youngest — just a shame — he's a nancy boy, no question." The rain shaken from the overhanging trees fell noisily on the cobbles out front and on the crazy paving that George and Wang had put in. Betty looked in that direction too when she heard the loud dribbling spatter of the drizzle, and she saw the lily cluster, big leaves hit by the falling rain, and, nodding, the blossoms seemed to grieve like girls in white bonnets, to share her sorrow. In her purple woolly sweater Betty matched the tea cozy that lay thick on the contours of the teapot before her, and the egg cozies, two of them, that sat on the soft-boiled eggs like bobble hats. On mornings like this Wang always fitted the items with these accessories that Betty had made. The color was unfortunate but the wool