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Anthony Cheong Kam-cheun, the grandson of Stephen Cheong Kam-chuen, president of the Legislative Council, watched impassively as the Chinese troops arrived on Shouson Hill, where he lived. The military was advancing rapidly through this neighborhood of luxurious residences surrounded by greenery, southwest of Parkview, on the heights of the city. This place of power and privilege meant nothing now that it was under the boot of the Jiaolong commandos.

In a few minutes, soldiers would surround his residence and accompany Anthony to the airport. He would be deported immediately. He was ready, the plane was waiting. Anthony's house had been emptied of its furniture, its archives. Anthony's family and associates had left. They were safe. The rental cars had been returned. Anthony had only a small suitcase with him, some clothes, a toiletry kit, the book "Notes on Tibet" by the poet Tsering Woeser, banned by Beijing, and a remote control button in his hand.

Decidedly, the CIA had never been able to work in Communist China. From the failed attempt to set up a Muslim rebellion around Lieutenant-General Ma Bufang in the 1950s, to the training of an illusory Tibetan guerrilla at Camp Hale military base in 1959, the Americans had always wallowed in the face of a reunified China.

In 1989, the CIA and the British MI6 had set up Operation Yellowbird from Hong Kong, as much to try to fan the flames of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations as to have to exfiltrate in haste, afterwards, its few Chinese agents from China. Tiananmen had only been a communication operation for the West, it had been anecdotal and painful for the Chinese.

Anthony, as well as all the heads of CIA agencies in Hong Kong before him, had never been able to convince the Chinese in Hong Kong or on the mainland to work with him. The Chinese despised foreigners, especially Europeans and Americans who let their cities be overrun by Arabs, Negroes or Latinos, all of whom they considered inferior races. "Your Westerners are always losing face," Anthony and his men were told repeatedly. Only women abused by their husbands or sexual deviants were still attracted to the West, the land of equalities.

Washington was unable to compete with Beijing in terms of undercover spies. The list was long: Larry Wu-tai Chin, Katrina Leung, Peter Lee, Chi Mak, Moo Ko-Suen, Wen Ho Lee, Fei Ye and Ming Zhong, Lan Lee and Yuefei Ge, Tai Shen Kuo, Fuping Liu, Bo Jiang, Hua Jun Zhao, Walter Liew, Guoqing Cao and Shuyu Li, Sherry Chen, Xiaoxing Xi, Szuhsiung Ho, Edward C. Lin, Kun Shan Chun, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, Xu Jiaqiang, Shuren Qin, Ji Chaoqun, Yanjun Xu, Xudong Yao, Yi-Chi Shih, Yu Zhou and Li Chen, Yujing Zhang, Zhongsan Liu, Xuehua Edward Peng... so many contemporary spies of Chinese origin had placed Beijing's interests far above those of Washington, even when they were born in the West.

Despite the millions of dollars spent by the NED (National Endowment for Democracy), a subsidiary of the CIA, or the maneuvers - not very discreet - of the American Consul Julie Eadeh and those who succeeded her, the city became Chinese again. The Chinese would not relive the humiliation of European "concessions" on their territory.

Anthony was born in Hong Kong, with dual American citizenship through his mother. He was quickly sent back to Hong Kong where he was to activate his contacts with the business community.

But the atmosphere of the 1980s, when his grandfather was in business, was gone. Many rich Hong Kongers had left. Schenzen had supplanted Hong Kong in the eyes of the business community. That had been Beijing's goal: to make Hong Kong empty of substance, of interest, to make it a second-class city.

Beijing had issued entry visas to tens of thousands of Chinese, selected for their sympathies with the Communist Party. The city's streets were now abuzz with the idea that the eternal China was coming back to life. The last university students who had protested against Beijing's decisions had been beaten up by their classmates.

More than ever, the Chinese were thinking of recreating their prosperity and claiming China's greatness. Democratic aspiration was not at all the problem of the majority of the Chinese population, who were hardly motivated to relive the trauma of the anarchic period of the "Warlords" of the 1920s by trying to overthrow the existing political regime.

The aspiration for freedom in China, which had been the work of a tiny minority of students, artists and intellectuals influenced by the mirages of Hollywood soft power, was no longer the dream of today's Chinese. America had lost its appeal. The ethnic uprisings in the big cities, which had punctuated the American news for decades, the abject spectacle of all kinds of moral corruption and the unemployment figures, did not inspire any Chinese candidate to betray his nation.

The security laws imposed by Beijing, the harassment work of the political police, and London's eagerness to issue visas, had deprived Anthony and his men of individuals who might collaborate with the antenna. Even before the Chinese troops officially entered, Hong Kong was finished. America could no longer afford to pursue a "Big Stick" policy, as in Roosevelt's time, to impose its worldview on China.

But it was not America that Anthony Cheong Kam-cheun was nostalgic about, it was Hong Kong, only Hong Kong. In 1997, the British had tried to make the wily Deng Xiaoping understand that the Hong Kongers were the third leg of the stool, between China and Britain. The Chinese did not want to hear about it.

Hong Kong had, it is true, been the bulwark of the Chinese who had fled the terror under Mao, Hong Kong had built its indefinable charm since the British took it over in 1842, after the end of the infamous first Opium War. Kowloon was added in 1860, then the New Territories in 1898. It was around this time that Chinese, like Anthony's ancestors, had taken part in the destiny of the City by joining the Legislative Council, the "Legco" as it was called.

But Hong Kong was neither China nor Britain. Anthony barely looked at the famous skyscrapers that had made the city famous. He only had eyes for the Supreme Court buildings, which had housed the Legco. He admired the red bricks of the French Mission, the Edwardian columns of the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Museum, built for the family of Ho Kum Tong, the brother of Sir Robert Ho Tung, the philanthropist who had been dubbed "the grand old man of Hong Kong." How could anyone forget the pristine whiteness of Flagstaff House or the towering arches of the old Central Police Station? All of this symbolized the unique genius of the city. All of this had built Anthony's world, a world that the brigands of Beijing now claimed to have their grubby paws on.

Anthony had been well placed to understand what was going to happen. He had, with the last of the faithful of the Hong Kong Foundation, founded by his grandfather, installed tons of explosives in all the sewers of the city.

The doorbell of the villa rang. Anthony pressed the remote control and threw it into a crusher. He checked that the object had been properly destroyed before getting up to open the door. A group of military men stood in front of him, with television cameras to film the event. The officer gave a grand speech about the honor of China, to which Anthony ostensibly paid no attention, smiling with amusement.

He was led, rather roughly, by the military to a car that took him to the airport. At no time did he stop smiling insolently at this childishness. They searched his little suitcase, undressed him and searched him intimately, against all diplomatic customs. He did not protest, he had his revenge.

His plane took off. About an hour after his plane landed in Washington, Hong Kong disappeared under a deluge of bombs. The explosive charges had been placed for decades under the foundations of the towers, under the main buildings, under the roads. The explosion interrupted official Chinese ceremonies. The Chinese television channels only filmed a huge massacre of officials, of crowds at the orders of Beijing suddenly sent to hell. To give the event a more joyful air. Fireworks were set off from the hills. Hong Kong was celebrating its return to the motherland with great fanfare, under the television cameras. Beijing swallowed its hat in rage.

Anthony Cheong Kam-cheun had thus avenged the murder of his grandfather, at the age of 51, by the Chinese secret service in 1993.