THE MACHINE

A Novel by Tom Aston

THE MACHINE

ISBN of this ebook: 9780957175419

Published By Pigeon Park Press 2012

© Tom Aston

The Author asserts his moral right to be identified as the creator of this work.

Cover design by John Amy.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents herein are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author and publisher.

Acknowledgements

Many people have helped with the writing of The Machine. Particular thanks go to Camilla Wray for setting me off on the right track, and to Caroline Hardman for a lot of hard work and effort in the cause. I would like to thank all the early readers of The Machine, who contributed mightily with their reactions and feedback while it was still a work in progress. 

And first, last and always, thank you to Sally, who has been with me every step of the way.

For Sally

Chapter 1 - 4:04pm 21 March, San Jose, California

The conference hall was overflowing with journalists. Junko Terashima had covered some big stuff in her short time as a reporter with Global News Network, but she’d never known a press conference build so much excitement, so much buzz. All the big guys were here - MSNBC, Al Jazeera, Fox News, BBC, Washington Post. Junko felt like what she was – a rookie reporter, a small, willowy Japanese girl. But this was her moment. She was there to make the news, not just report it. Her stomach fluttered with nerves.

The VP of Communications for SearchIgnition Technologies looked tiny in her neat, grey suit as she rose to introduce The Man. Steven Semyonov, billionaire founder of SearchIgnition – loved, admired… revered. Four-metre TV screens stood at either side of her, carrying a huge close-up image of her as she read a short introduction.

‘Steven Semyonov is well known to everyone here...’

Not as well known as you think, Missy, thought Junko.

   ‘One of the three founders of SearchIgnition, Steven Semyonov is the brains behind the world’s most powerful search system, now used by all four major search engines in the US and countless others across the world. I’ll give you just one statistic today, ladies and gentlemen. Steven Semyonov’s technology is used daily by over ninety per cent of web users across the globe...’

The screens were now showing a close up of The Man, Semyonov, seated beside the diminutive VP. The intro was superfluous, of course. Semyonov’s face was known to everyone in the room and to billions more besides.

‘As Chief Software Architect of SearchIgnition,’ said the VP, reading from an autocue, ‘Steven has been a driving force in taking SI from start-up to a corporation valued at eighty billion dollars in just seven years...’

The big screen zoomed further in. Semyonov’s features were indeed familiar to everyone. Because they were unique – his face and head entirely smooth and hairless – like an overgrown baby. The hi-def screen showed his wide, fleshy face had no jowl or wrinkle. The word was “sleek”, thought Junko, forming her next chunk of copy in her mind. Like a sleek, overgrown piglet, babyish and pink, with intense, red eyes... There was no stubble on his chin, just pale, downy hair. His teeth looked small in his big face, but what caught the camera were his eyes. The TV screens zoomed in on his preternaturally red eyes intimidating the throng with his intelligence, like an inscrutable Buddha of white jade.

‘It is with great regret that I tell you…’ The spokeswoman’s voice was cracking with emotion, and it wasn’t an act. ‘That Steven Semyonov is stepping down from SearchIgnition, the business he did so much to create...’ She went on for a few more sentences, but she looked as thunderstruck as anyone in that room, and by the time she sat down, she was dabbing at the corner of her eye.

Before the words had sunk in, Semyonov himself stood up to speak, looking suddenly huge beside the tiny spokeswoman. Behind him the four-metre screens were filled again with his pink face and penetrating eyes. Not a wrinkle or stress line, thought Junko, for the second time. Half the world knew that face, but no one else knew what she did. She’d done nothing for three months but dig up details on Semyonov. She’d nearly lost her job over it. After today, she almost certainly would.

The predictable questions rolled in from the journalists. ‘What drove you to leave the firm you loved?’, ‘Does this signal the end for SearchIgnition?’, ‘Is this a new phase for the Web?’, ‘What new technologies excite you?’

Junko felt her heart beat faster as she raised her hand to ask a question. He’d see her and pick her out, she was sure of that. He had an eye for attractive women. He’d pick her out, but he’d never guess what she was going to ask. There was a prickle of sweat on the nape of her neck.

Semyonov’s answers to the journalists were smooth, articulate, delivered with a knowing smile in his relaxed baritone. Even predictable answers sounded surprising and witty. There was laughter, occasionally some applause. A bravura performance. Not for the first time, Semyonov had hardened journalists eating out of his hand.

What about the fights with his co-founders? The fundamental disagreements? Even with the most searching question, Semyonov seemed honest and disarming. The slender Japanese girl felt intimidated by his intelligence, even at this distance. Everyone believes him, Junko thought. Everyone believes him. But will anyone believe me?

Junko stood with a set smile and her hand raised. She’d never felt this nervous. It was the unknown that scared her. So much had been written about Semyonov, but so little was known. How had he done all these things? As well as SearchIgnition, he’d built his own super-efficient electric sports car. He was testing a high-altitude jet engine to fly planes into space. And the eyes – those eyes seemed to scan the room, systematically, like an alien intelligence.

Junko’s heart thumped hard as finally Semyonov’s red eyes found hers across the room. He nodded, expressionless, to take her question.

‘Junko Terashima, GNN News Network, Washington DC...’ she began, sounding breathless. Semyonov’s gaze lasered her as she spoke. But he had no idea what was coming. Her question was going to land in front of Steven Semyonov like a red-hot hand grenade.

Chapter 2 - 9:15 am 27 March, West Fleet, England

   The bodies lay in dappled sunlight under a low canopy of trees, out of sight of the NATO recon drones. Professor Ethan Stone stopped the video and counted fifty-five bodies in three orderly lines. Most looked unharmed – just dead - but the soldier’s helmet-cam rested on the broken capillaries on their faces. Even the children had them, like old men who’d been drinking for years. Stone noticed that all the corpses had fresh blood leaking from their ears. The bodies were all clothed, except for five, which had been stripped and evidently subjected to medical dissection. An old man, three women and a young boy lay naked in the spring sun, with long slices down their torsos from sternum to the pubic bone. On their foreheads there was writing in black marker pen. Numbers and the odd word in English.

    Stone paused the video again. He remembered the stench of bodies from his own army days. And the smell of military quicklime. Something he was glad he’d put behind him.

Hooper and three other soldiers had become separated from their patrol and followed tracks to the settlement. It was already light when they crept to within a hundred metres of the village before they saw the bodies. The squad had been patrolling undercover in the death zone of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, checking out targets for a seek-and-destroy operation against Taliban cells that was now running on an industrial scale, night after night. Wearing yellow-brown Afghan garb like the Taliban they’d been tracking. It was first light when they’d spotted the village – the usual collection of trees and three or four walled compounds, their walls burnt orange in the early morning sunlight.

The situation felt like a flashback to Ethan Stone’s days in Special Forces, years ago, except this time, he was back in his office watching the helmet cam-footage, stopping every minute or so to figure out what was happening. The picture twisted and turned around the scene, stalking slowly down the narrow streets, the camera flashing nervously into every doorway, with Hooper’s rasping, whispered orders punctuating the silence. Just like Stone remembered Hooper’s voice from their days in the Parachute Regiment – hoarse with stress at the first sign of combat.

As well it might be in this situation. Hooper must have been on edge. The Taliban don’t do autopsies on their victims, and they certainly don’t write on their victims’ bodies in English. Something else was lurking in that village.

The spring air was clear and cool. It looked beautiful. Too beautiful for the slaughterhouse someone had made of this place. It was worse than anything Stone had seen before from Afghanistan. He’d served there himself in the early days, not long after Nine-Eleven. And in his work of collecting data and facts about different conflicts around the world, Stone had seen so many photos of Iraqi villages hit by airstrikes, old men and women murdered by the Taliban, Afghan families mistakenly taken out by helicopters. Stone knew that photos of slaughtered Afghans were a depressingly cheap commodity – certainly not newsworthy. But this was different, eerie. This wasn’t the work of the Taliban. Yet here it was - clinical, scientific killing in the middle of Helmand. Like some kind of experiment.

To Stone’s trained eye, the pictures of those bodies were worth more than the last three years of videos of deadly firefights, misdirected airstrikes or friendly fire incidents. This was something different, and it gave Stone perverse satisfaction to see them. Hooper had caught them red-handed – whoever they were - and had somehow smuggled the pictures through to Stone’s whistle-blowing web site.

Stone knew Hooper.  He had recognised Hooper’s voice as soon as the video began. Stone and Hooper had enlisted in the Paras at the same time, and served together for three years until Stone moved on to Special Forces, and served a further four years there. Stone had left the army at that point – four years ago, after seven years. He’d had a bellyful of it by then, but yes, he knew Hooper.

On his screen, a silent atmosphere of death pervaded the village – no birds, or dogs or goats. No children. ‘Bastards,’ muttered Hooper behind the helmet cam. Stone had heard that tone in Hooper’s voice before, after some of the Taliban’s efforts back in 2004. Hooper’s mind would be swimming with images of dead children in each doorway. Stone knew Hooper. He would want to kill someone for this. Never a healthy emotion, but that was Hooper.

Stone had always liked Hooper. He had what Stone would call decent human feelings. Where some Special Forces jocks, Stone included, had stayed sharp-eyed and emotionless in contact, Hooper worked on stress and adrenaline, always looking out for his comrades. Hooper had the heart of a lion, and soldiers loved him for it. He’d risked his neck to save Stone a couple of times when probably he shouldn’t have. The real killers fought with their minds. It was when Stone realised he was one of the cold, clinical ones that he decided to get out.

Which was the reason why Stone was watching on a screen, while Hooper was still in that village. Hooper should have cleared out, coolly gathered intelligence and called in a larger team. Like Stone would have done.

Stone was sitting in his university office, five thousand miles away and a few weeks later – yet he could feel Hooper’s tension every time the helmet camera flicked with Hooper’s eyes into a doorway, every time he heard Hooper’s hoarse orders barked to his men. After all those bodies, the calm was unnerving. The sun and a warm breeze soughing through the narrow streets of this charnel house. The noise of Hooper’s ragged breathing, the hoarse orders to his men. Just like the old days. Tense as hell.

A couple of shouts, suddenly, from behind Hooper. ‘Man down, man down!’

The head-cam swivelled and jerked like an animal in a snare. A couple of shouts, suddenly, from behind him. ‘Man down, man down!’

‘Where?’ Hooper’s voice loud in the foreground. Two soldiers hauling a comrade into an alleyway. Loud cracks on the sound track. Rifle fire. The buzzing, hissing, venomous noise of rifle rounds passing close. You could feel them as much as hear them.

Then nothing, except for, ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Hooper’s tense, emotional voice. ‘Get him in here. Move it! Did you see ’em? I didn’t even see them.’

The helmet-cam rested on a bad chest wound and a boy’s face turning rapidly grey, then continued to buck and weave as the group retreated through a low door into one of the compounds.

Stone could see that the enemy were good - whoever they were. They were controlling their fire, pushing and probing, forcing Hooper’s men back. And Hooper still had no idea where they were. Stone winced as Hooper went back and crouched in the doorway for a few seconds, the head-cam flicking this way and that. He had no clue who he was even fighting. Stone felt he wanted to get in there, take control.

Still no sign of the enemy. More impressively, no sound either. It was looking ugly. Hooper and his men were up against real pros.

Hooper scrambled back into the compound. The kid was dying in front of them. One of the lads was pressing on his chest with both hands to stanch the bleeding, though he was clearly wasting his time. Stone guessed the lung was gone, and by the look of it the pulmonary artery too. Jesus! What a mess.

‘Shut the fuck up, you lot,’ whispered Hooper’s voice in desperation. Black blood was pumping out. Hooper had no idea what to do, Stone could tell. He was just trying to buy a few minutes, even a few seconds. The helmet cam scanned across around the bare earth of the courtyard. Those walls must be four metres high and vertical. No sight or sound from behind them.

‘Yep,’ muttered Stone, to himself. Hooper and his men were trapped. Stone could see it, watching through the helmet-cam. Hooper must have known it. It was peaceful - no sound but for the rustling of the trees. Hooper looked round to see one of his men was clamping a bloodied hand over the dying lad’s mouth to stop the groaning, though there was a kind of rattle from the hole in his chest.

Stone knew what was coming next, because in his own Special Forces days, he would have done the same. Seal the entrance to the compound, then take the zero-risk option – kill them with grenades, hurled over the walls.

The phone rang and Stone paused the video. It was Jayne, his boss’s secretary. She could wait. Stone hovered the cursor over the “play” button. It felt like watching a snuff movie, even for someone as hardened as him. But he had to go on. He clicked “play” once more. He was going to wish he hadn’t.

Chapter 3 - 9:35am 27 March, West Fleet, England

Professor of Peace Studies, Ethan Stone. He wasn’t a real professor – or at least that’s what he told himself. It was a label and he didn’t like to be labelled or categorised.

Stone had left the British army’s elite Special Forces after only four years. Stone had been forced to “retire” after one particular operation had gone badly wrong. But he’d had enough by then – sickened by what he’d seen, by what he’d had to do. Sickened above all by the realisation that he’d enjoyed it. Being good at it would have been fine. But Stone had enjoyed it, and that’s why he’d had to stop.

It was ironic, because Stone’s work nowadays consisted entirely of studying modern weapons and their nauseating effects on the feeble human frame.

    Stone sat at his desk and clicked the play button again. Hooper and his men were trapped in the compound, and Stone was wondering how the hell Hooper had got out of this one. Hooper’s helmet-cam flicked again and again between the high walls and the grey face of his comrade. That boy was dead. Surely Hooper could see that.

There was a shout from outside the compound. This was it. Stone had seen it coming. Two hand grenades arced gently over from opposite sides and rolled full of menace into the middle of the courtyard. The head-cam filled with dust, centimetres from the ground as Hooper dived for cover. Two loud bangs on the sound track. A scream.

‘I’m hit boss, I’m hit.’ More screaming. The head-cam flicked around at the two others in Hooper’s team. One was staring in dead astonishment. Shrapnel through the head – gone. Switched off. The other was screaming from a stomach wound. Was Hooper hit? It didn’t seem like it.

The helmet cam flicked up to the walls, back to the doorway. A few defiant rounds from Hooper’s MP5 blatted away pointlessly into the compound wall above. Then nothing. After the grenades and the gunfire, an enveloping silence, followed by the noise of two pairs of boots advancing towards Hooper.

The images flashed to the ground and back upwards. Hooper had dropped his weapon. He was standing up and his hands would be behind the helmet. Still no gunfire. Just the muzzle of an M16, centimetres from Hooper’s head-cam. Then the camera looked at another man, who was offering his hand in greeting, a tall, blond man. Hooper took the hand and lingered, as if unsure what to do. The guy had smart creases in his camouflage shirt.

They were mercenaries. Uniforms with no markings save for a tiny hammer on the lapel of that pressed shirt. Stone recognized the logo of SCC - Special Circumstances Corporation. It was all becoming clear.  Hooper had stumbled on private military contractors – mercenaries - undertaking weapons’ tests and autopsies in the Afghan Wild West. No wonder Hooper had sent the pictures to the NotFutile.com whistle-blowers web site. The only wonder was he'd come out of this alive.

The tall, blond man gave the boy’s body a casual kick, like it was a sick animal he’d found in the courtyard. The mercs cuffed Hooper’s hands behind him, as the tall officer with the short blond hair, still with that satisfied smile, addressed his captive.

‘My men wanted to kill you,’ he said affecting a bored tone and inspecting Hooper’s MP5 in his hands. ‘But I was curious. Who comes spying on the world’s best–paid soldiers? You got some nice pictures, I hope, to show your friends?’ he said, smiling finally at Hooper. He was enjoying this. ‘I wagered five dollars with my captain that we could take you alive.’

‘Five dollars? To keep it interesting?’ said Hooper, holding back his anger. ‘I guess you were bored with no more kids to kill.’

‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ said the mercenary. ‘This is not mercy. I do enjoy killing.’

You don’t say, thought Stone.

‘A job done efficiently, sometimes with a little panache. It gives me great satisfaction,’ the blond man continued. ‘But in this instance, you can be useful to me.’

Stone was evaluating it all. The guy’s English was precise and fluent. Moreover, the evidence said he was telling the truth. The bodies, the shooting of the children, the autopsies. The blond guy and his men were devout killers. They would switch off Hooper and his men without a thought. Yet Stone was watching Hooper's video after the fact. So Hooper couldn’t be dead. And yet if they hadn’t killed Hooper - why not?

The mercenaries bundled Hooper out through the doorway of the compound. He was led through calm sunlight under the trees and out into open ground. Under the trees were two vehicles. After four years in his current line of work, Stone’s knowledge of the arms business was encyclopaedic, and he recognized the vehicles straight off. The first was a Cougar. Mine-resistant - the Americans had hundreds of them in Afghanistan. But the second vehicle was more of a collectors' item - a low slung armoured personnel carrier. A Chinese Type 90. What the hell was a Chinese Type 90 doing in the middle of Helmand? It was towing something too. Hooper’s head-cam went around the back to see some kind of radar-dish apparatus. The tall, blond man stood on the wheel-fender, then jumped down, cat-like, and approached Hooper again.

‘Take a good look,’ said the blond soldier. ‘This is our secret weapon. We have been running some tests, and I believe you saw the results on your way into town,’ he declared, smiling proudly at the head cam. The camera strayed all over it. The dish was two metres or more in diameter. Stone could see the detail of the control panel, even the manufacturer’s nameplate. Which, bizarrely, was in Chinese.

Hooper’s anger boiled over. ‘You fucking murderer,’ he growled.

Ekström smiled back at Hooper. ‘Fucking… murder did you say?’ said the Swede, grinning. ‘Thank you for the compliment. In this job I get to do both. Fucking, and murder. But just one more thing...’ Ekström made an instant high kick, the sole of his boot flying up beside the camera into Hooper’s face. Stone was impressed in spite of himself. Athletic, precise, brutally fast. The picture flew upwards, to the sun-dappled trees above, and Stone could feel Hooper falling backwards to the ground. There was a blood fleck on the camera lens. No hands came to Hooper’s face. He was cuffed, defenceless.

Then the shock. The words that meant Hooper wasn’t going to escape at all. He was going to die, and Stone was about to watch it happen.

‘In case you are curious, Professor Stone,’ said the blond man, speaking directly at the camera. ‘My name is Ekström. Johan Ekström, from Sweden. I am a fan of your web site, and I guess this will make a nice story for you. No doubt you would like a little extra colour to your story – an execution or a rape maybe? But perhaps another time.’ Ekström smiled laconically and turned to one of his men.

‘Give me your .22. The little one.’

The man threw a small automatic to Ekström. Ekström looked down and aimed centimetres to the side of the head-cam, right at Hooper’s forehead. Another bang and a muzzle flash, Ekström’s hand jumped with slight recoil.

Stone had just watched Ekström shoot his old friend through the head. He’d asked for a .22 so as not to damage the camera at close range with a more powerful weapon.  

Ekström calmly bent down close to the camera on Hooper’s helmet.

‘And remember my name! I am Ekström!’ said the Swede, smiling at the camera. ‘Johan Ekström!’

    That grinning face. It was revolting, even for a man who’d seen what Stone had in his time.

   Stone’s head span, but it was becoming clear what had happened here. Ekström had a reason for all this. Publicity. He wanted to spread word of that weapon and how many people it killed. He had taken the video from Hooper’s head-cam and sent it to Stone. Stone with his anonymous whistle-blowers’ web site was the perfect way to gain publicity. He was a real piece of work, this Ekström.

    The telephone rang again. Extension 1311. Jayne again. Stone knew what she wanted, but she’d have to wait. Stone had just rewound, and frozen the video on the image of the weapon. He’d seen something. Yes, there was no mistake. It was a clear as day - for anyone who could read it.

   Ekström had made a mistake and Stone was going to exploit it. For Hooper’s sake, Stone would make sure Ekström and whoever was behind him paid a high price for what they’d done.

Chapter 4 - 11:24am 27 March, Faculty Building, West Fleet University, England

Stone was still at his desk when the phone rang again. He’d frozen the video clip on the image of the dish-shaped “weapon”, and was looking at the writing he saw there. The name of the manufacturer. After that it had taken a matter of minutes. A few searches online were all it took, and an email to a reporter in the US. It had been a childish error on Ekström’s part, but he could see how it had happened. Stone was going to take it and blow the whole sordid mercenary thing wide open.

The telephone rang and Stone tried to shake the memory of what he’d just seen from his head. Ethan Eric Stone, Professor of Peace Studies at West Fleet University, looked at the phone with exasperation as it carried on ringing. Finally he picked up.

‘Stone? It’s Jayne. The Vice Chancellor’s in a spin. You know what he gets like. It’s “a very serious matter” apparently. He wants you up here.’

Stone hung up the phone, stood up from his desk and looked distractedly through the window of the ugly 1960’s faculty building. A very serious matter. His boss, Vice Chancellor George Watts, was panicking about something again. That was fine. But for now, Stone thought what he’d just seen happen to Hooper might just be more serious.

Stone ran a hand through his thatch of wiry, sandy blond hair as he looked from the window.

   When Stone left the army four years ago, he had veered from the profession of soldier into that of peace campaigner. After the things he had seen in the army he had craved a detox from the violence. A deep cleanse of his psyche. The peace warrior thing was his way of doing it. He’d started his web site, called NotFutile.com, three years ago to expose the activities of the global arms industry. Ironically, the web site name itself had been Hooper’s idea – indirectly. It had been Hooper’s response to the whole idea of exposing the arms business, and the sordid commercial wars they encouraged. ‘Resistance is futile, Stone,’ Hooper would say, as if he were some kind of philosopher. ‘It’s fucking futile, mate. We’ve just got to get on with it.’

    That’s why Stone chose the name NotFutile.com. The site was a kind of blind drop box for tidbits of information about the arms industry. People could send documents and leaks anonymously and get them online. NotFutile.com was the proper name, but it quickly acquired a cult following and was known amongst the regulars as LeakCentral. Later it became almost a movement amongst the students. Someone designed a logo and even printed up some T-shirts.

     But really, it was only a web site.

     Stone had got lucky early when he pieced together a number of research papers and seemingly random press reports to uncover a highly secret UK government satellite surveillance system. Stone was arrested and held for a week under anti-terrorism legislation, but they’d had to release him because he’d broken no law. The story was picked up by mainstream media, and NotFutile.com took off from there.

In the early days, Stone was constantly under surveillance. He spent a year or so living out of one bag, alighting in one country after another. But then the bizarre offer of a professorship at West Fleet University had come along.

“Ethan Stone - Professor of Peace Studies.” He had to laugh. He wasn’t professor material, and he didn’t make much of a study of peace. More a personal war against the arms industry. Stone joked once that Professor of Sick and Unusual Weapons Systems would have been a better title, and that was the title Jayne stuck on his office door last Christmas. It made her laugh anyway, and since the Vice Chancellor  thought it “sent out the wrong message”, Stone had kept the laminated sign on his office door for the whole year.

The phone rang again.

‘George wants you as soon as possible, Stone. You’d better get your arse up here.’

‘Since you ask so nicely.’ Stone answered, ‘And can I just say I’ve always appreciated your professional manner?’

‘Just get up here!’ she laughed.

He hung up, but had no intention of leaving the room. He walked over and gazed out of the window again. He liked Jayne - she was fun, flirtatious. Much more his type than the hero-worshipping students who followed him around.

If Stone had ever had doubts why University Vice Chancellor George had impulsively hired him as the first Professor of Peace Studies at West Fleet, they didn’t last long. Stone’s NotFutile.com web site and his reputation had given West Fleet the image of being cool and radical. He’d attracted hordes of students. The whole university gained a higher profile. Journalists and camera crews were suddenly regular visitors. ‘Good for business!’ as Watts always said, sounding like a marketing man. Which was what he was, mostly. Not his fault.

Stone remembered the words of one cringe-making reporter:

‘No straggly beards and sandals here,’ she said. ‘Peace activist Ethan Stone combines Zen-like commitment to his research work with the looks of Keanu Reeves.’ Keanu Reeves? It took him months to live that one down.

But it was true that the unconventional new Professor had given the university an image of being modern, progressive, ground-breaking. Stone himself had gained a kind of rock star persona. The girls at the student newspaper made him look cultish and cool, and always printed pictures of him. They said he had managed to make the non-violence movement sexy. Which was an achievement in itself, considering Stone was an eco-ultra, and took a hard-line stance against consumerism. He took his salary in cash, refused a bank account, lived in one room like a student. They said he was a believer, a man without hypocrisy.

And they were right. Nothing “eccentric” in that as far as he was concerned. Stone hated the publicity nonetheless.

There was a scuffling noise outside the office door and Vice Chancellor Watts burst in, red-faced, just as Stone’s phone rang again with a call from Jayne.

‘With you in a second, George,’ said Stone glancing down at the screen in front of him.

     ‘I need to speak to you, Stone,’ he said, flustered.

  ‘You don’t say,’ said Stone without looking up. Whatever George Watts wanted to say would have to wait. ‘As it happens, I need to speak to you too,’ he said. ‘I’ve just discovered something. I received a particularly nasty video through the NotFutile.com site,’ said Stone. Watts was looking mystified. ‘Illegal weapons testing in Afghanistan.’ Stone didn’t elaborate. Watts would probably have thrown up if he’d seen that film-clip. ‘But it’s more interesting than I thought. If interesting’s the right word.’ Interesting was definitely not the right word.

    Watts looked nonplussed at being talked at by Stone, but Stone continued. ‘You see it seems the mercenaries, Special Circumstances, have been testing a weapon out there in Afghanistan, and sent the details to NotFutile.com to gain publicity. That’s bad enough,’ said Stone. Watts was still looking wary and confused. ‘But they made a mistake. The manufacturer of the weapon put a name plate on it. Only the mercenaries didn’t think to remove it, because they couldn’t read it.’

    ‘What do you mean they couldn’t read it?’ said Watts.

Stone’s eyes were cool, but behind them his mind was fixed on the image of Hooper, shot in cold blood by the mercenary. Stone was by nature dispassionate. He had a reputation for it, and it had made him a cool killer himself in his time.  Yet he was seething with anger after what he’d seen - a cold hard anger. Stone's jaw was fixed with gritted teeth as silently turned the computer screen to show Watts the frozen image of Ekström’s dish-shaped weapon. He stared at Watts, his eyes like chips of grey ice, unblinking. It always made Watts nervous when Stone did that. Watts went red in the face and played with his cuffs.

‘There was a manufacturer’s nameplate on that weapon, George,’ said Stone pointing at the screen with a pencil. ‘New Machine Technologies, Shanghai, China. The mercenaries didn’t notice, because it was written in Chinese, but it’s clear as day. I did a year of Chinese at Cambridge, remember?’

‘Before you dropped out, Stone,’ said Watts, tartly, but still playing with his cuffs. ‘But I don’t see where that gets us.’

‘I did an online search for this firm, George,’ said Stone. ‘New Machine Technologies is a Chinese company. It appears to be a subsidiary of ShinComm Corporation, also of Shanghai, although the ownership structure is a bit vague.’

‘ShinComm are huge,’ said Watts, trying to look knowledgeable. ‘They make smartphones, laptops that kind of thing. Mostly for the Western market.’

‘Sure. But I haven’t finished yet,’ said Stone, still pointing at the screen. ‘Take a look at this. This is a Youtube video clip which came up when I searched on New Machine Technologies.’ Stone began to play the clip on the screen while George Watts watched.

The Youtube clip showed a press conference with the search technology billionaire, Steven Semyonov. The video began as the camera alighted on a rookie reporter for GNN - Global News Network. An attractive young Japanese woman with the name Junko Terashima on her lapel badge. She looked nervous, almost guilty, like one of the quiet girls at school who'd landed herself in front of the principal. The camera flashed back to Semyonov’s face. He smiled like an all-knowing Buddha as she asked the question. Stone had watched this part maybe thirty times already.

‘Junko Terashima, GNN, Washington DC...’ the young reporter began, voice quavering. The whole room looked at her. Her face had a sheen of nervous perspiration as she read from a card.

‘Mr Semyonov, can you confirm you’ve taken a major shareholding in ShinComm and New Machine Technology Company, of Shanghai, China?’

The video flipped to a close-up of Semyonov. There was no reaction in Semyonov’s white face. The penetrating eyes betrayed nothing.

‘I have a great many investments, Junko,’ he said casually. ‘Your point?’

She cleared her throat again as if steeling herself, then read on. ‘As a major shareholder, Mr Semyonov, you must be aware that experimental weapons manufactured by ShinComm have killed hundreds of innocent civilians. How do you feel about that?’

Stone stared the close-up of Semyonov’s smooth face. It was the half smile that hooked him. A smile with the mouth and not the eyes, and it lasted a split-second too long. There was a hairline crack in his impenetrable intelligence.

‘You are mistaken, Miss Terashima,’ Semyonov said simply, but deliberately, and moved on to the next questioner. As the video clip finished, Terashima was being bundled out as a troublemaker.

Watts looked more uneasy than ever. ‘I don’t see the point,’ he said. But Watts saw the point very well. Semyonov was a very powerful man – intelligent, rich. Most of all he was popular. ‘I don’t know what you’re suggesting Stone. But you’ve already made too many enemies since you came here…’

‘Then another one won’t hurt. Let me explain,’ said Stone. He couldn’t let himself say Hooper’s name, couldn’t admit the personal connection. ‘I just received evidence to back up what this Japanese woman was saying. There was a manufacturer’s nameplate on that weapon. No one believed her when she confronted Semyonov, but here’s the evidence..’

Watts looked at Stone in sudden apprehension. ‘Whatever you’re up to, Stone, I forbid you to make an enemy of Steven Semyonov. For the university or for yourself.’

‘Semyonov is famous for his cool, and his intelligence,’ said Stone, ignoring the objection. ‘He’s never stuck for an answer. Yet here’s a rookie reporter and she’s caught him out. It’s there in his face. You can see it.’ Stone was talking Semyonov, but his mind was fixed on Hooper and the image of Ekström's face grinning from behind that gun barrel. ‘Why would this rookie reporter do this unless she had something? Semyonov is Mr Nice Guy. He’s worth billions and the media love him. Then suddenly – bang! This is not tax fiddling Semyonov’s involved in, George – this is evil, nasty weaponry,.’

‘We’ve just seen a young reporter end her career,’ said Watts. ‘Nothing more.’

‘”Reporter fired for challenging billionaire”. Since when did that mean she was wrong?’ said Stone. ‘The firm Terashima cites is New Machine Tech, George. And New Machine Technologies made the weapon in Afghanistan. The dead women and kids in that village connect directly back to Semyonov.’

‘‘I don’t care what you say,’ said Watts, shaking his head, more nervy than ever. ‘Semyonov’s a popular hero – a moral and intellectual hero. You can’t take him on.’

Stone persisted. ‘Junko Terashima knows about Semyonov, George, and I know about the weapons. Between us we have evidence.’

‘I forbid you to contact her.’

‘Chuck it, George. That’s weak, even for you. I’ve already been in touch with her.’ said Stone. ‘Terashima’s in Hong Kong. I’ve sent her photos of the weapon. This is bigger than Ekström and Special Circumstances. I’m going after Steven Semyonov.’

‘I forbid you to go to Hong Kong, Stone’

‘It’s a bit late for that, George. Jayne already booked me on tomorrow’s flight. Using your credit card, I should think.’

-oO0Oo-

Stone had got what he wanted from George Watts – just. Most importantly, though, he’d kept up his cool persona – his front. Watts hadn’t suspected Stone’s underlying motives. He took another look at the email from Junko Terashima.

Stone-san. I heard Semyonov has left US for good and gone to China. Anyway he is Hong Kong, I am sure of that. I have a contact in ShinComm factory who told me Semyonov has been many times in China before.

I’m in Hong Kong. Semyonov’s people agreed to meet if I came to Hong Kong. I had to take the chance.

One more thing. Although I was fired by GNN, someone is still blocking me, even in Hong Kong. If I meet Semyonov’s people I may get the story, but I’m scared something’s going to happen. I think someone is following me.

J x

Stone could see this Japanese girl had no clue what she was into. It was the tone of her email, and the way she looked on that Youtube clip. And that cringey J x at the end.  All of which begged the question: how on earth had she come by her information about Semyonov?

But it was academic. Stone wasn’t thinking about Terashima. His mind was imprinted with the image of Ekström’s gloating face as he put the bullet through Hooper’s brain. He was thinking of dissected bodies, of numbers in neat black marker pen on the foreheads, of the four dead soldiers. For once, emotion had got the better of him, even if he hadn’t shown it.

In his time with Hooper, Stone was supposed to be the cool, calm one. Yet here he was, doing a Hooper. Letting adrenaline and emotion tell him what to do. Stone’s rational mind knew this wasn’t about ShinComm, or Terashima, or weird weapons in Afghanistan. It was about Hooper.

Stone could easily convince George Watts – he always got the better of Watts. He could even convince a part of himself. Going after Semyonov was what NotFutile.com was all about, right? A technology genius like Semyonov building weapons? That was news. Oh yes, Stone could rationalize to whoever cared to listen.

But Stone had to be honest, to himself if no one else. This was about Hooper.

“Semyonov’s a popular hero – a moral and intellectual hero,” Watts had said. Stone smiled to himself, a genuine smile for the first time that day. He was going to get to Semyonov and his mercenaries, even if he had to swim to Hong Kong.

Chapter 5 - 28 March, Cathay Pacific Flight CX250, London to Hong Kong

Stone was sitting in coach, ten thousand metres over Central Asia. The seat-back TV was on in front of him, flickering away, but he was looking out of the window at the earth curving away beneath. Something was bothering him, like an itch at the back of his brain.

Stone hadn’t started NotFutile.com and his peace campaign immediately when he left the army. In fact he’d had “issues”. Some called it “post-traumatic stress”, but it wasn’t stress. It was more like “combat withdrawal”. 

He’d found himself looking for fights. He’d once put on a dress suit and ordered a sweet sherry at one of the hardest bars in Portsmouth, just to see what would happen. Nearly had his ear torn off in the struggle that followed, but he’d finished on top. Just.

To credit the army, they gave help for this kind of thing. The “stress” counsellor talked to Stone about anger management, and asked him about something called rules for living. Did Stone feel the need to prove himself by violence, over and over? Did he feel constantly threatened? Stone had answered yes, to keep the counsellor happy, but the real answer was no - in both cases. Stone hadn’t felt threatened. He didn't feel a need to prove himself.  The truth was, he enjoyed the violence. That was why he’d kept looking for trouble, looking for fights. It was also why he'd had to get out of the army. Over time he’d healed his mind, reduced his violent urges from an open wound to little more than an itch. But an itch that never went away. Right now that itch to harm someone was getting seriously irritating.

The Peace Campaigner thing was Stone’s way of cleansing his psyche of those feelings – but it only worked up to a point. It was displacement activity.  Deep down he knew he was simply looking for danger and confrontation in different ways. Repressing the feelings, but not getting rid of them. Was he motivated by anger about Hooper’s killing? Yes. Did he have an urge to get Semyonov? Yes. A long, long way back, Hooper had been his friend, the kind of deep comrade-friend that only soldiers can know about. And Stone owed him. Stone owed very few people anything at all in life. He liked it that way. But Hooper – he owed Hooper. So going after Semyonov - and whoever else was behind that charnel house in Afghanistan - was a way of scratching the itch.

Stone was snapped back to the present by the image of Semyonov on the seatback TV. He put on the headphones:

‘In a surprising development to the Semyonov story, advisers to SearchIgnition Corporation confirmed that they have already sold one hundred percent of the shares belonging to SIC founder and majority shareholder, Steven Semyonov. Semyonov’s holding netted the search genius a total of $25.9 billion in cash.

‘Meanwhile, Semyonov is said to have travelled to Hong Kong, where he’s set to make yet another “major announcement” tomorrow evening.’

Semyonov had taken his money, and himself, out of the US with indecent haste. It looked as guilty as hell. It looked like Terashima was right. But how had she known?

Chapter 6 - 9:30am 3 March, San Francisco, California

    Nine-thirty in the morning. Lawyer Abe Blackman of Blackman, Vascovitz Intellectual Property Law, rubbed his eyes with fatigue. He had worked late, and had made an early start once again.

    Blackman’s speciality was the law of patents, and he was the best. He had made hundreds of millions for his clients, working with some of the most creative minds from Silicon Valley. From his mahogany desk Blackman had seen all manner of ideas - most of which he turned down, saving himself for the “money-makers”. He was seldom surprised by the way things turned out.

But surprised he had been when a Chinese gentleman calling himself Shin arrived the previous afternoon, wearing an ill-fitting suit and cheap shoes. He said he was from Taiwan and he carried an outsized briefcase.

Blackman doubted Shin had anything of note in that bag of his, and he came to the point. ‘Why should I look at your work, Shin?’ Blackman asked, barely looking up from his desk.

    The first surprise came when Shin produced a banker’s draft. ‘I give you twenty thousand dollars to review these papers, Mr Blackman. On the condition you alone should examine them.’ Shin then produced a very professionally drafted non-disclosure form for Abe Blackman to sign.

Twenty grand? It wouldn’t hurt. Blackman took the cheque without speaking, and scribbled on the non-disclosure agreement.

Shin took the signed agreement and inspected it. Then he placed a number of thick files on the desk.

At this point, Blackman attempted to bid Mr Shin goodbye, but the Chinese insisted on sitting in the office while Blackman read the papers. Shin stood up and went to sit silently in a chair by the door. Blackman shook his head, took out his reading glasses, and began to work.

-oO0Oo-

As the antique clock ticked softly in his office, Blackman quickly realised Shin was no time-waster. These were fundamental technologies. There were nine or ten first rate patents that he could see at first glance.

The first file was an outline for a system of wirelessly-controlled industrial robots. Within that, there were patents in software, miniature engineering and nanotechnology. Then there was a quite incredible system of sensors, which would allow the tiny robots to hover and even fly at slow speeds. Blackman felt out of his depth momentarily – for the first time in twenty years.

After two hours of reading the details of the first file, Blackman realized his mouth was dry. This stuff would work, it would actually work. The sensors could be mass-produced – very cheaply. So, given the right equipment, could the nanotech parts. Yes, in theory this incredible technology looked not only viable, but cheap to make.

The Chinese man sitting in the corner of his office, his eyes half-closed, was a genius, sitting on an astonishing fund of technology worth billions of dollars. Either that or he was a lunatic, a maniac who had spent months forging research papers

Blackman made his decision. He left a voicemail for his secretary to cancel his morning meetings. He asked for coffee and caffeine tablets. He would be working through the night.

-oO0Oo-

Abe Blackman sat red-eyed at his desk again the next morning. The unreadable face of Mr Shin looked on from the side of the room, as it had done all night. Blackman was nowhere near a detailed assessment of the three files, but everything so far was in order. There were questions over the programming - the software as described looked, well, astonishing. But that was a minor detail.

Blackman felt lightheaded. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity. His every instinct told him to grab at the opportunity. But prudence dictated he know more about the mysterious Mr Shin. The third file in particular gave him pause. It was clearly a weapon - a device which generated and focused very low frequency sound waves. The waves affected the central nervous system of mammals to incapacitate. The idea had come from research work done on the roar of tigers. Crazy, but all backed up by research.

Abe Blackman eyed Mr Shin, then handed back the bundle of files.

‘I make it a rule not to sign in the heat of the moment,’ Blackman said finally. ‘But I’m sure we can work together. I’ll call you in a couple of days.’

Mr Shin showed no disappointment. ‘You have signed the confidentiality agreement,’ he said. ‘You are aware of the consequences if you break your promise?’

‘Naturally,’ Blackman replied, irritated. And then, ‘Forgive me. It is our practice nowadays to take copies of our clients’ passports...’

Shin took out his Taiwanese document. Blackman left the room to make a copy, and stared at the enigmatic face in the passport.

A minute later Shin was gone. Abe Blackman found himself looking  at the photo of Shin’s unreadable face once more. He realized he needed to take stock here. Real life did not proceed like this, and he needed to make some further enquiries on the enigmatic Chinese man.

The usual agencies wouldn’t cut it. Blackman picked up the phone.

‘FBI?’ he said in clipped Californian tones. ‘Give me Special Agent Carl Hackspill. No, I can’t say what it’s about. It’s a personal call.’

Chapter 7 - 12:15pm 29 March - Chep Lap Kok International Airport, Hong Kong

    ‘Professor Stone,’ said a polite female voice.

    Junko Terashima?

    Stone looked round. A uniformed Chinese girl was walking towards him in the crowded terminal. Stone had just emerged from passport control into a concourse filled with natural light. The Chinese certainly knew how to build things big. ‘Professor Stone!’ she repeated, simpering at him. She had on a headset, and was holding up a neatly printed sign with Stone’s name on it. ‘There’s someone who wants to meet...’

    Stone looked through her. He’d travelled on a false passport as usual. This shouldn’t be happening. But there she was.

    ‘No thanks,’ he said and walked on. People who made this kind of effort to meet Ethan Stone were usually hard-faced lawyers working for the arms companies. They’d given the girl a few dollars to look official, then someone nasty would be waiting in the wings. He wondered for a second if Terashima had been bait.

A taller, blonde woman swept in front of the uniformed girl.

‘Ethan Stone, The Man of Action!’ It was an American voice, female.  Relaxed and confident, and vaguely mocking. ‘So pleased to meet you! I’m a great fan of your web site,’ she said with another smile. Her face was familiar. She carried on, walking by his side. ‘It’s just a shame no one bothers to look at it.’

Stone recognized her immediately, as she knew he would. The voice, the film-star looks - Virginia Carlisle, top reporter for GNN. War zones, Wall Street crises, celebrity murders. This woman had dominated the eyeballs on GNN TV for the last five years. What was she doing here? Stone walked away, but she strode beside him wearing her TV smile. He didn’t need this.

She had the kind of flowing blonde mane you might see in a haircare advertisement. Undeniably beautiful - attractive, if he was honest. Perhaps a bit upperclass for him, he thought, as she walked beside him.

‘Thanks for your kind words, Ms Carlisle,’ said Stone walking along. She was the last person he should talk to right now. She’d got wind of his story, or Terashima’s, and if he told her anything more, Ekström and his weapons would be live on prime time. Stone made to move away from her in the crowd. There was a man at a discreet distance holding a big Sony TV camera. Ready to leap out when Carlisle gave the signal. Great.

Stone quickened his pace through the crowd, but Carlisle held him. She grabbed him not by his shoulder, or his arm, but his hand – her manicured fingers taking his. If she’d grabbed his sleeve Stone would have pulled away. As it was it surprised him. It was oddly intimate, flirtatious. He looked round at her instinctively. It was a good trick she had there. Where had she learned that?

‘Stone. We have to talk,’ she said. Her tone had changed, as if suddenly they were old friends. She was still holding his hand.

‘No, we don’t need to talk,’ he said, moving off again. In fact it would be a disaster if they did. She knew too much already.

   ‘Do you know who I am?’ she said, at last showing a flash of irritation. Stone saw what was happening. Virginia Carlisle was the big star at GNN, where Junko Terashima had been a rookie reporter. Junko’s words came to his mind:

   Someone at GNN is blocking me...

Interesting. GNN’s top reporter doorstepping him for information at Hong Kong Airport. And “someone” at GNN was blocking Junko’s investigation of Semyonov. No coincidence.

‘OK,’ he said, pulling his hand away from her. ‘Let’s talk. But not here.’

-oO0Oo-

Stone walked with her to her glossy Mercedes - idling in the no-park-zone for the last hour without compunction. No metro train or beat-up Hong Kong taxi for Virginia Carlisle. Stone held the door for her – he figured she was used to that - then stepped in beside her onto the cool leather seats of the limo.

‘I flew in on the red-eye myself,’ remarked Virginia Carlisle. Translation: I should look like shit after the flight - like you. But I look fantastic. ‘I showered in the Platinum Lounge,’ she explained and turned round  to Stone - looking the tall, slim Englishman up and down. Now she was in the car she dropped the flirtatious wheedling. ‘Don’t you need to collect your bags?’

Stone gestured to his small backpack. ‘I’ve got what I need.’

    Carlisle glanced at the bag with incomprehension. No doubt she had three jumbo cases in the trunk. 

    Stone felt Virginia checking him out, examining his appearance, making her mind up. The shock of dirty blond hair, the faded jeans and denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up in the tropical heat. She saw he was tall but wiry, and had intelligent grey eyes, which creased when he smiled. She picked out the green New Age tattoo, beneath the pale blond hairs of his right forearm.

‘Do I pass?’ he asked. In spite of himself, Stone had to admit Virginia Carlisle was an impressive woman. As attractive as on TV, if not more so, but not in the least like her onscreen persona. On GNN she appeared to wear no make-up, wore combat fatigues, and had that stunning blonde mane blowing in the Iraqi breeze or wherever she was. Inside the Mercedes, she was all Fifth Avenue, in a tailored skirt just above the knee, tasteful blouse, and with large diamond studs in her ears. Real diamonds. Her tanned legs were arranged for Stone to look at, like they’d been enhanced in Photoshop for a magazine cover, and ending in five-hundred-dollar shoes. A whole different look from the war zone shots on TV, but she still had that rangey, athletic appearance. She was a strong woman, with a New England edge to her voice – an upper class, Ivy League thing, which she suppressed on television.

The legs were on display, but her body language was different. Her torso was turned rigidly forward, and she turned her neck to talk to Stone over her shoulder. A sign of unease, or of caution at least.

‘You know why I’m here, don’t you?’ she said, finally.

‘You’re from GNN. You worked with Junko Terashima,’ said Stone. ‘You stole her story from her, then fired her. Am I right?’

Stone was glad to see her eyes blaze angrily for a second. Nothing like insulting a journo’s integrity.

‘What do you know about Junko, Stone?’ she snapped. ‘What is she up to?’

He’d guessed right. She was either trying to steal Junko’s story, or she was desperate to block it.

‘What is this?’ he chuckled. ‘A quiz show?’ Stone looked away. He wasn’t such a rookie as to sit there and let himself be questioned. Nonetheless, he felt a frisson of pleasure in sparring with this woman. He threw it back at her. ‘You’re a famous person, Virginia Carlisle. An investigative reporter. Suppose you tell me what you know about me before we go any further. I guess you’ve done your research – or had an underling do it for you.’

Virginia looked round at him in the back of the limo with that knowing smile again.

‘You sure you want to hear?’

‘Sure,’ said Stone. ‘Something tells me you’ll have an opinion.’

‘OK. You asked for it,’ she sat up as if before the camera. ‘Let’s say it’s a celebrity profile feature. What shall I call this piece? Let’s try - Ethan Stone: Where it all Went Wrong.’ She looked at him for signs of surprise. ‘Stone, you’re one of those clever kids from some crappy town, who gets a scholarship to a good high school. You went to study math at Cambridge. Which is almost like a good school in the US, but cheaper. You got the whole education without spending a dime.’

‘Very good,’ said Stone. She certainly had researched him. No doubt knew a lot more. ‘I’d say you went to a “good school” yourself. Ivy League?’

‘Sure,’ she said, scathingly. ‘Except unlike you, I wasn’t embarrassed by it, and I didn’t drop out. You did a year of math, then a year of Chinese, weirdly, then you flunked out and joined the army.’

Stone was impressed. Not many people knew about his time in the army. Doesn’t go down too well in the “peace community”.

After five minutes in the green hills of Lantau Island, the Limo was speeding down the highway into the city. ‘OK, you get the idea, Stone,’ she said. ‘I did my homework. I know about you. More than you know about me. You move around. You never use banks or credit cards. You’ve been spotted using at least five different identities. You’ve done some clever stuff, exposed some bad people. Especially the Al-Wahabi scandal, which just landed you in hot water. Which I guess is why you cleared out of Europe, hey?’ She smiled mischievously. ‘But, let’s cut the fluff-talk. What do you know about Junko Terashima?’

‘I’m not here for Junko,’ he replied. It was partially true.

‘So you’re telling me you don’t know her? You just happened to fly to Hong Kong?’ She’d changed tactic. Now she was the hectoring TV interviewer, hovering artfully between derision and sneer to make her “subject” look dishonest and shifty.

Stone wasn’t having it. ‘Very good Virginia, but you’ll have to save all that for the camera.’

    ‘Stone,’ she said seriously. ‘This is not about stealing your story, or stealing Junko Terashima’s story. Junko thinks she has something huge, and so do you. We checked her email.’

    This was meant to be the business end of the conversation. Virginia Carlisle was laying on the serious look, like she was interviewing a politician. A good look too. The sexy librarian on speed.

    ‘Let’s get this straight,’ said Stone, beginning to enjoy himself. ‘You fired Terashima, but you’re still hacking her email. That’s like the jealous wife who thinks her ex-husband’s still doing the secretary. It indicates an unnecessary level of interest on your part, wouldn’t you say?’ He looked coolly back into her eyes. ‘Like I said. You fired her, but now you wish you had her story. So you’re going to steal it.’

    ‘Junko’s in over her head,’ she said, disconcerted. ‘She’s in danger. She should have told me. Tell me what she told you.’

Terashima hadn’t told Stone much of anything. ‘You mean the Semyonov thing?’ he asked, fishing to get something out of her.

‘You really don’t know, do you?’ she said. ‘Junko disappeared in Hong Kong two days ago. And, yes, we’ve got to assume she’s looking for Semyonov. He travelled to Hong Kong, straight after his bombshell announcement in San Jose. He’s planning on some even bigger announcement at a party here in Hong Kong, apparently. Today, at the Zhonghua Hotel. It’s huge. If Junko’s got anything, I need it before that party.’

‘Too bad you fired her in that case,’ said Stone. ‘Maybe you should find her and ask her nicely.’

‘Look,’ said Carlisle. She looked a little desperate for a second, then tried another tack. Sanctimonious concern. Hilarious. ‘She’s a young reporter and she’s gone AWOL in Hong Kong, Stone,’ said Carlisle. She checked into her hotel, but since then - nothing.’ Virginia Carlisle, the caring employer. Love it. ‘Tell me what you know, Stone. For Junko’s sake.’

    Carlisle’s “concern” would make a strong man vomit. But sometimes you have to choke it back and focus on what’s important. What Carlisle was doing really didn’t add up. GNN had fired Junko Terashima just days ago. Yet now Virginia Carlisle - star reporter of GNN – is chasing around Hong Kong after her. 

     No. Junko hadn’t disappeared at all. She’d gone into hiding, and Carlisle, or GNN, wanted her badly. Which meant they realized after they fired her that Junko really did have that big story.

Whatever, this wasn’t just about Junko anymore. Stone could make use of this glamorous reporter. It made sense to keep her onside. But he too needed to find Junko, and he couldn’t do that with Virginia Carlisle around. Stone called for the driver to stop the car.

‘OK, Virginia,’ said Stone. ‘I’ll try to help you. Write down your cell phone number for me.’

‘I don’t give out my...’

‘Just write it down,’ he said. She looked surprised, but took out a card and scribbled her cell phone number, amazed at her own obedience. It was a trick which worked surprisingly often. Order them to give the information.

They were downtown already, on the Kowloon side of the harbour. The Mercedes pulled over to the teeming sidewalk of Nathan Road. Stone opened the door. In came the broiling, humid air of Mong Kok. He stepped out. Skyscrapers towered above dilapidated mid-rise blocks, crusted with layer upon layer of neon signs.

‘Here’s the deal, Virginia,’ he said, shouting through the window. She craned forward to hear him over the traffic noise. ‘You get on the phone to your Hong Kong news office. Tell them to get us into Semyonov’s party tonight. Both of us. Then we can talk, at the Zhonghua hotel.’

‘What about Junko?’ she said angrily. ‘Where are you going?’ Virginia didn’t like surprises.

‘I’ll call you,’ said Stone, and then strolled off into the mid-morning heat of Hong Kong.

Chapter 8 - 8:30pm 28 March - Special Circumstances Training Facility, Southern California

Johan Ekström looked in the mirror in his office.  He liked mirrors.  Ekström was a tall, slim man with the body of a natural athlete, and ten days on from his “research contract” in Afghanistan, he was back in his normal job.  His hair and skin were back in shape.  He wore his blond hair short, but not military short.  Rugged good looks, was the expression he would use to describe himself.  But not too rugged.

Ekström was a well-paid man by most people’s standards, but he often reflected that he should be paid more, for he regarded his qualities as unique.  He was a killer, and assassin – but he was an artist, and a very skilled artist at that.  Few soldiers enjoy killing at close quarters – they have to be drilled to do it, and they suffer trauma as a result.  Perhaps five per cent of soldiers realise they can kill easily, and what’s more they enjoy it.  Homicidal thugs, living the dream. 

Ekström was different.  He was in a very small percentage of his chosen profession.  He thought perhaps he was unique – for he enjoyed killing as an intellectual exercise, not just for the deed itself, the power thing, the visceral rush it gave him.  He got off on the planning of an operation - the preparation and (it was a pun he was fond of using) the execution.  True, his fast-twitch reflexes and fitness were outstanding, honed by training in yoga and martial arts.  True, he derived enjoyment from killing – that deep enjoyment in the pit of the belly that only devout killers ever know.  But Ekström was no thug.  He was a skilled professional, a seasoned practitioner.  He was also creative.  He got as much of a kick out of directing a team of field operatives as he did from pulling the trigger alone.  He loved everything about it. 

Ekström left the mirror and sat down once more at his desk.  Though he thought he deserved more money at Special Circumstances, he would never complain.  This job, well… he was living the dream.  Anyone can be a hitman for a few grand a time, but the creative planning of assassinations was Ekström’s thing, and this job gave him chance to indulge that impulse.  He sometimes got to make the hit himself, but mostly he was planning and scheduling things for his team of “assets”, his professional assassins placed strategically around the world.  What other job would give him this kind of opportunity?

His employer, Special Circumstances Corporation, was a private military contractor – and employer of mercenaries.  SCC was involved in all manner of work from protecting oil workers in Nigeria and Iraq, forming bodyguards for G20 summits or for African despots, and fighting as mercenaries in minor conflicts.  Ekström’s own unit was known as I & T - “Interdiction and Termination”.   I & T was described in the literature as “a professional, entirely anonymous, fixed-price service for dealing with troublesome individuals and groups”.   Corporate Contract Killers might have been a better name.  Ekström could never understand why marketing people used one name for something, when another name was more correct.

A job request had just landed on Ekström’s desk. The usual details: the name of the target individual, photographs, a brief biography and suspected location.  As leader of the I & T Unit, Ekström also had the name of the client, the people paying for the hit – although this information was never passed on to the “asset” who performed the job.  In case the asset loused up and was captured, or simply decided to make a double-turn on the job by selling the information.  This latest job looked rather dull and unchallenging to Ekström – a journalist, female.  The client name was interesting, though.  SearchIgnition Corporation.  Tut tut…

Dealing with a lone female like this was child’s play, but Ekström had thought of a way to make the contract more interesting.  He was going to indulge his taste for the extraordinary.  He checked the detailed instructions he’d written for a third time.  It was unusual, but it still shouldn’t present too much of a challenge to the operative.  And because his scheme was so exotic, Ekström had a mind to see the killing for himself.

He tabbed down on the screen to the field marked Special Instructions, and typed:

Operative to make SmoothVision video film of procedure…   

Chapter 9 - 2:25pm 29 March - Mong Kok, Hong Kong 

Stone sat at a trestle table set up under plastic sheeting.  He was at a café in a crowded side street behind Nathan Road.  The waiter slammed the plate of baozi steamed dumplings onto the table, along with soya milk in a white plastic cup.  Stone opened his tiny laptop. 

It had still been early when Stone stepped out of the limo on Nathan Road, but already the streets teemed with shoppers and street vendors.  This was a world away from the mirrored skyscrapers of Hong Kong’s postcard waterfront.  Strangely traditional.  Old-fashioned Chinese mingled with the trappings of the British colony – British buses, driving on the left, and the street signs could have been in London. The neon lights and the Japanese brand names were still there, but only as a veneer on a deep-rooted Chinese culture unchanged through the years of British, Japanese and Communist rule.

Stone looked at the laptop over a mouthful of the baozi.  His first job was to get to Junko Terashima before Virginia Carlisle did.  He’d been to a phone shop already, and bought a prepaid cell phone and 3G Internet access on a USB stick.  Paid cash and wrote a false name on the document.   An untraceable Internet connection.

Stone’s fingers moved rapidly over the keyboard as he logged into the triple encrypted server of his NotFutile web site – “leak central” they called it.  Still in business. 

 Stone used the anonymiser on the NotFutile.com server, and typed an email to Junko.  No mention of Virginia Carlisle – it would only freak her out.  He reread it before he hit send, then closed the computer.

Stone picked up the chopsticks and looked up the five-star Zhonghua Hotel, holding a pork dumpling in mid-air.  The Zhonghua, in the downtown Central district of Hong Kong Island, was a symbol of the new Hong Kong establishment – built with Chinese government money and a byword for opulence and service.  A telling venue for Semyonov’s big “announcement” that evening, since it appeared Semyonov was jilting the US and falling head over heels for China. 

Stone felt he knew Junko Terashima, but in reality knew very little about her.  He couldn’t assume that she would turn up at Semyonov’s party.   For one thing Carlisle would be there.  On the other hand Semyonov’s party was his chance to put the billionaire on the spot – Stone was definitely going to be there.  So if he could, he needed to find out what Junko knew before that time.  A tight schedule.  But not impossible.

Stone called the laoban, paid him, and made his way to the eighteenth floor of Chungking Mansions, a tower block about a kilometre away.  Stone needed to keep on the move, stay below the radar, like he had done when he started NotFutile.com three years ago.  Chungking Mansions was a place he’d been before – after he left the army, in the days when he moved around constantly.  A hostel with dormitory rooms for backpackers.  Stone wouldn’t look out of place, and there were no questions asked.  More his style than the opulent Zhonghua in any case.  Stone found himself a bunk, then checked his email.  Nothing yet from Junko Terashima.   

He was going to enjoy this - the game of bluff and wits that got you into places you shouldn’t be.  He was a past master of crashing press conferences, shareholder meetings, parties – weddings even, if it got him in front of the bad guy.  Anything in order to get up close and personal with the big boys of the global arms business.  Those guys, they were the real bringers of death, and Stone had found it much more productive to get in their faces than to simply “expose” them online.  And Semyonov – now there was a man worth going after.

Stone enjoyed the clandestine side of his work as much as he hated the publicity side of it.  He relished the idea of crashing Semyonov’s media party.  Virginia Carlisle certainly couldn’t be relied upon to procure the invite for him.  And it would be best to surprise her even if she had.  It would require a little nerve and a few acting skills, no more. 

Stone checked for email again.  Still nothing from Terashima.  It was no big deal.  Stone could go to the Zhonghua Hotel and Semyonov’s “party” alone.  Terashima ought to crash Semyonov’s event herself.  But something about Junko said to Stone that she wouldn’t.  He’d catch up with her when he could.

 Stone found himself deep in thought, wandering around the hostel for a few minutes.  He looked at the message board of the hostel, a forest of advertisements for cut-price Chinese visas, bogus student ID cards, twenty-four hour bespoke suits, and “massage services” priced for the backpacker market.  He realized he was on his guard, looking around, gathering intelligence.  It was a habit he’d acquired from the Special Forces days, of scoping out his surroundings for escape routes and possible sources of attack.  He knew by now that this was his subconscious, expecting something to happen.  It made his heart rate drop, and he felt calm.  As if his body and his mind were readying themselves for combat.

Stone looked at his watch.  Nearly time to go and meet Mr Semyonov.  Stone had one more thing to do before he left.  He was covered in the sheen of sweat that pervades South China, sweltering under the feeble rotations of the Chungking Mansions ceiling fan.  He’d take a cold shower and then leave. 

-oO0Oo-

Stone was on his way out when he checked his computer one last time for messages.  He might have expected it.  Junko Terashima.

Stone-san! Thank God it’s you.  I’m on my own, hiding out in Quarry Bay.  I’m nervous, Stone.  I wish I hadn’t come.  I think someone is following me, maybe GNN.  Someone at GNN has picked up my story, already, but it’s worse than that.  There’s something I need to tell you.  Can you get me on chat - here? 

His instinct told him to mistrust this, but then again he had no choice.  Stone clicked on the link to the Internet chat device and waited for Junko to come online. 

Chapter 10 - 6:14pm 29 March - Mong Kok, Hong Kong 

Junko Terashima was there in less than a minute.

 -  I came to Hong Kong because one of Semyonov’s men said he would talk to me.  One of his insiders. 

-  Who?  Are you sure you can you trust him?

-  He’s calling himself an insider at ShinComm.  A man called Oyang who works with Semyonov at ShinComm.  He wants to meet me at 7pm, but now I’m here, I’m nervous.  I think I’m being followed.  But I figured I had to see the ShinComm man, because that’s more important for my story.  

-  Junko.  7pm is the same time as Semyonov’s party.  They’re keeping you away from Semyonov.  They’re playing you, keeping you at a distance.

-  I know they’re keeping me away from Semyonov.  But that’s part of the deal.  I have to go with it to get the story.

-  Junko.  For god’s sake don’t be so trusting.

-  That’s what China21 said to me.

-  What the hell?  Who are China21?

-  They are my source about the weapons.  They know about the ShinComm factory.  They told me about that weapon you saw in Afghanistan.  If you use it long enough it stops the heart with low frequency vibration.

Stone’s fingers stopped on the keyboard.  He realised his jaw had just dropped, cartoon-style. The words repeated in his head.  “… it stops the heart with low frequency vibration.”  Who was this naïve, sappy Japanese girl to tell him that?  Who the hell was she to have those kind of contacts?

-  To hell with ShinComm, Junko. You were supposed to see Semyonov’s people, but now it turns out they work with him in China.  Sit tight, and give me the address.

-  They told me

-  Tell me the address Junko

-  Ming Dai Hotel, Quarry Bay. Malaya Street.  It’s at the Snake Market. 

Stone stuffed the little computer in his backpack and ran from the hostel.  Junko had every reason to be scared.  If anything she wasn’t scared enough.   Junko had no idea what she was into. 

Stone skipped down the escalator onto the concourse of the Hong Kong MTR subway station at Jordan, his mind working fast.  He’d come to Hong Kong because of Semyonov.  He’d formed an idea in his mind about Semyonov as an evil arms maker and poured into it all the anger he felt about Hooper and that bastard Ekström.  He’d been emotional.  He knew barely anything about Junko Terashima, about ShinComm Corporation or any of them.  And now there was a dissident group involved too, called China21.

To hell with Junko’s meeting with her insider from ShinComm – whatever he knew.  He’d find the girl, get her out of there and take her down to Semyonov’s big party at the Zhonghua to talk to the man himself.   Then he’d put this Junko on the plane back to Japan.  She was a danger to herself and others.   

Chapter 11 - 7:08pm 29 March - Quarry Bay, Hong Kong

The broiling Hong Kong day was turning into humid night.  The red sun of the tropics was melting into the harbour as Stone pushed through the sweltering crowds into the Malaya Street Market.  The Snake Market.  What was that girl Junko thinking of?

The “Market” was a narrow lane packed with stalls of snakes, reptiles and other creatures in buckets and cages, positioned next to a red light district.  The snakes hung in black, shining strips from wires, the stallholders steadily butchering them with scissors.  Men in undershirts sat on wooden crates, drinking snake bile and Mau Tai rice liquor to give them "virility" before their outings to the neighbouring whorehouses.  Mongooses prowled on chains around wire buckets writhing with the snakes.  Steam from vats of noodles mingled with the acrid smell of the Mau Tai.  Stone threaded his way through, looking up as he went for the Ming Dai Hotel.   There was a row of beheaded turtles, hanging by their tails, their green legs waving reflexively in the humidity. 

One thing was for sure – it hadn’t been Junko, aka Miss Hello Kitty,  who chose this place.  Some of the locals were pointing at Stone and shouting in Cantonese.  That didn’t make sense either.  White Westerners weren’t a rarity in Hong Kong, and they must have tourists down here, ogling the snakes and the bile-drinkers.  A bad atmosphere.  Stone’s threat-radar twitched like crazy.  He checked his watch.  Seven-ten.  Shit - already late for Junko’s meeting.

Stone shoved in between a pair of iron barrels - ovens, two metres high, forming a blackened gateway.  Their oily smoke drifted balefully over the market.  As he peered through the fumes his foreboding was replaced by dread.  A large painted sign for the Chinese character “Ming”.  This was the Ming Dai Hotel, and it was swarming with police.   A woman wailed hysterically in their midst.  Kids looked on, slack-jawed, and a solitary tart stood outside in a mini-skirt, holding a cigarette between her lips, texting, looking up occasionally. 

Stone was too late.  Whatever was going to happen had already happened.  He could go in the hotel and find out more, but he was too late.  He would be arrested and questioned just for looking around.  He’d have to regroup here.

Stone slipped back behind one of the tall iron ovens.  There was a stallholder, a skinny woman, fanning herself languidly as she stared at the police. 

‘What happened?’ asked Stone.

The ama didn’t look round at him. Carried on staring at the police operation.  ‘She dead.  Girl dead in hotel.’ 

Stone’s fists balled in anger behind his back.  ‘Murdered?’ he asked. 

The ama shrugged her shoulders and tapped her thumbs to her fingertips.  A Chinese gesture that meant she didn’t know. 

Stone face burned at the realization that his only option was to slink away like a thief and hope he hadn’t been noticed.  Anger pulsed through him.  He had an urge in the pit of his stomach to at least verify what had happened.  But looking at the dead woman, even if he got that far, would tell him nothing – other than confirm it was Junko Terashima.  Stone would be left with the same facts.  The ShinComm guy, or whoever he was, had arranged to meet Junko in this shithole of a hotel.  It was only too clear why.  A red light area, next to the Snake Market.  The Ming Dai Hotel was rented by the hour, occupied by prostitutes.  The police would assume that Junko was just another working girl who’d been unlucky.  Stone was seething as he shouldered his way through the crowds.  Stone had never met this girl, and there was nothing he could have done.   But coming after the business with Hooper...

Stone needed at least to check it was Junko who died.  He needed to hang around, ask some questions.  He shuffled over to one of the stalls.  A snake writhed and lashed as a stallholder clipped its snout to a wire, scissors in hand, ready to peel the reptile open.  A mongoose snapped at the writhing creature. Junko had been stupid.  Stone had had no chance to stop her.  He burned with guilt nonetheless, his guts twisted in determination to find her killer.  He could think only of revenge.  Revenge for Hooper, and revenge for Junko, the pretty Japanese girl he’d been speaking to only an hour before. 

But revenge is best served… 

Stone stopped and forced himself to think clearly.  He’d been repressing the anger about Hooper, and now this.  He had to force himself not to care, rediscover the old Stone, the cool killer.  He would check out as much as he could, then plan on revenge.  Revenge meant ruining Semyonov and exposing him, and anyone else who was behind this.  Anger is hot, indiscriminate, but revenge is cold, hard and refined.  It is focused.  Stone would have to be focused.  He would need to be at his very best.

The killer could be watching Stone right now.  Possibly following him.  All to the good.  He stopped and stood tall to show himself.  If someone was watching, Stone wanted to be seen.  And he wanted to be found. 

 Stone clenched his jaw to channel the anger.  Calmed his body and slowed his breathing.  Analyzing.  The primitive thirst for revenge was something he hadn’t felt for years, and he was going to use it.  Junko had been lured to that hotel.  Stone was going to lure the killer in turn.   For Hooper, for Junko - someone was going to pay an exorbitant price.   

His mind and senses switched to full alert in the crowd – cycling through motives, possibilities, methods.  One thing didn’t make sense for a start.  Why so crude?  It was crude for Semyonov’s SearchIgnition people, with their cool suits and master’s degrees.  It would take the police all of two hours to work out Junko wasn’t a prostitute, and find her real identity.  And yet the whole thing had been timed to draw Junko away from Semyonov, and give Semyonov’s people their alibis as they attended his “event” at the Zhonghua.  The killing had been contracted out for sure.  The couple of hours before identification would give time for a hitman to make his exit.  That’s all anyone needed in Hong Kong. 

Stone checked his watch.  He itched to go to that party, to confront Semyonov face to face, to drag him out from his pampered five-star hotel.  But this was a time for ruthlessness and cunning.  He would give it a few more minutes to gather what information he could, then he would have to give it up and go after Semyonov.  But he’d be coming back to this place.     

Stone walked out from the market into the main street, all traffic and noise.  He walked about 300 metres around three sides of a square, back round to a dark doorway where he could observe the police vans, by the entrance to the Snake Market, and check for anyone tailing him

Stone stood in the shadows as the police operation proceeded.  Amongst the Hong Kong Police were a number of tall Chinese men in olive uniforms.  They were speaking Mandarin, not the Cantonese language used in Hong Kong, and the heavy “R” sounds of their accents told Stone they were from Northern China.  Officers of the Gong An, the Public Security office from Beijing. 

This didn’t make any sense either.  Stone had spoken to Junko only an hour or so before.  She’d been murdered a matter of minutes ago, and yet the Beijing Public Security people had taken charge from the Hong Kong Police already.  Question mark.  How did the Beijing Gong An know Junko was here?  They’d followed her.  And who’s to say that they hadn’t followed Stone? 

Chapter 12 - 7:20pm 29 March - Quarry Bay, Hong Kong

Stone stayed hidden in the shop doorway for another ten minutes.  He saw the Gong An come out of the Snake Market with a body bag, and place it into their olive green truck.  No chance to identify the body.  Most of the police had gone away, though not all.  Things were getting back to normal and cars drove past once more.

It was dusk already.  The street was alive with neon, heavy with traffic again.  The Gong An’s truck finally pulled away, and the little crowd of onlookers from the Snake Market had finally dispersed.  Only the prostitute remained there, chain-smoking cigarettes in her cheap miniskirt and high-heeled ankle boots, arms crossed in boredom. 

Stone watched as a man approached her, a regular “john” by the look of him.  But what happened next was a surprise.  Stone saw the girl shake her head and turn away a few steps, looking back down at her phone.  Didn’t she want the business?  Who was he?  The man followed her and grabbed her shoulder.  Stone stepped instinctively forward, but the girl swivelled fast from her hips, eyes flashing.  The man stepped back.

Stone realised she’d just spit in the guy’s face.  The man raised his hand to slap her.  Again she was too quick.  Stubbed the cigarette on his arm and deftly flicked a foot behind his ankle.

The punter lay on his back with the spittle still on his cheek.  The woman flicked her cigarette down at him in an extravagant gesture of disgust, then stalked away, hips swinging on the high heels, through the traffic in Stone’s direction.  This was no tart after all.  She’d been observing the whole thing.  Police, Gong An, body bag.  Everything. 

Stone looked from the shadow as she stepped up onto the pavement in front of him.  She languidly lit up another cigarette, holding it in pouting lips.  Close-up, she looked too good to be a tart.  Her eyes were bright behind the smoky eyeliner, and her skin clear.  She leaned her hip against a lamppost and took out her phone once more, using her thumb to work the keys while her other arm trailed lazily behind her, holding the cigarette.  The smoke crept in blue tendrils into the still, hot air.

Stone could just about see her phone screen in the darkness.  This girl wasn’t texting.  She was looking through photos.  The hotel, the police, and then one picture after another of the Gong An.  Stone counted twenty at least, and then finally, the pictures he’d been expecting.  Three photos of Ethan Stone.

Well, well.  Time to tempt this woman into a quiet alleyway for a “conversation”.  

But at that moment a large motorcycle roared up to a stop beside the tart.  Stone saw her glance towards his way as the bike arrived.  A glimmer of a smile too.  She’d seen him all right.  Been watching him.  She swung her rear onto the seat of the motorbike, still holding the phone in one hand as she flicked another cigarette onto the sidewalk.  There was an unspoken insult in the ping of the cigarette towards Stone.   The bike’s engine burbled in readiness while she sat, sidesaddle, feet up on the rest.  Looking at the phone like she was on a barstool.

Change of plan.  It was too good to resist.  Stone stepped from the shadow and grabbed the phone from her hand as the bike pulled off.   A shout.  The bike jerked to a halt.  The rider in black leathers jumped off and faced up to Stone.  Gesturing, shouting.  But opening a knife in his palm. 

Stone didn’t look up.  He stood on the sidewalk, looking through the photos on the phone.  The blade in his peripheral vision stayed a safe two metres away.  He felt the smooth rush of adrenaline through his body, but let his heart rate drop.  This was the kind of confrontation he was good at.  The rider was screaming at him, but it was all bluff.  As long the knife stayed at that distance, it was cool.  Stone flicked through the photos some more, just to annoy the guy.

The guy was agitated, but he’d left it too long to be credible.  Stone goaded him.  Shot a cheeky glance, then looked back down.  ‘Nice photos.  The lady has a thing for men in uniform.’  He was acting cool, but his thumb was scrolling fast through the photos looking for confirmation.  And there it was.  The tart had been very scientific.  A close-up photo of Junko Terashima going into the hotel; then another shot, later, of a body covered in a blanket, but with a slender arm trailing from it, wearing Terashima’s watch and bracelets.  It was Junko all right.  Stone felt it like kick to the stomach.

The knife jabbed towards him.  Still a safe distance.  Stone didn’t move, but watched the guy’s feet with sly eyes, in case he was foolish enough to get closer.  Stone’s anger had just congealed into cold hatred and this guy with the bike leathers had picked the wrong time to look for trouble.

The girl’s heeled ankle boots came into view.  She stepped in front of the rider, put her hand on his chest.  A gesture of authority, that.  Almost ownership.  The rider palmed the knife.

‘You kill Junko,’ she said simply to Stone.  There was no anger in her voice, but Stone sensed it in her nonetheless.  She wanted to blame someone.

She was trying to make him angry, but it wouldn’t work.  Stone was back in business.  She’d be the one to get angry. 

Stone looked up from the phone finally, looked her in the eye, his eyes like chips of grey ice. ‘You know who killed her?’   He fixed her, but she simply looked back with the vacant eyes of an insolent teenager.  ‘Let me guess,' said Stone.  'China21, the “protest” group.  And you’re funded by Semyonov.’

That did it.

Hatred flashed across her face.  She spat viciously, a great gout of saliva landing on his chest.

Stone looked down in bemusement at his shirt, then smiled up at her.  ‘A simple “no” would have sufficed.’

She snatched at the phone but Stone pulled it away, teasingly holding it from her.  She glared, but stopped grabbing.  Stone responded by offering the phone to her with a mocking bow.  Resentfully she took it from him.

‘I warned Junko,’ she said.   She looked like she was carrying a similar set of emotions to Stone.  Anger, guilt, lust for revenge.  But suppressed.  She was suppressing it just like Stone had.  Like him, she’d been there to get Junko Terashima out of harm’s way.  They’d both failed.

Stone turned to go, but the woman spoke again.  ‘She told me about you, Mr Ethan Stone.  And your photographs from Afghanistan.’

Junko, Junko, Junko!   How could she be so casual with information?  She’d given away her sources to this dodgy Chinese protest group, who knew far more than seemed possible.   No wonder she got killed.

Stone watched the motorcycle move away into the traffic.  The tart glanced round at him in the traffic.  A smile and a nod - patronizing.  Or trying to be.

Hooper was dead.  Junko Terashima was dead.  Stone would quell the anger, like he had done in the old days when he’d lost a comrade.  He would crush and quell the emotions.  There was no other way.

He looked at himself in a shop window and wiped the spittle from his jacket.  That Chinese girl – he’d barely met her.  But he’d connected with her.  She’d been thinking like him and repressing the same feelings. 

Stone checked the time.  He was hardly in party-mood, but Semyonov’s “event” was definitely one party he wasn’t going to miss. 

Chapter 13 - 8:12pm 29 March - Zhonghua Hotel, Central, Hong Kong

The magnificent Zhonghua Hotel.  Stone had made his way to a large lobby in front of one of the hotel’s ornate reception rooms: The Crabflower Club.  Stone walked in and picked up one of the house telephones at a distance from the entrance to the club.  He made like he was on the phone while he observed the entrance and figured out how he was going to crash the party.

A single hostess stood behind a counter at the entrance to the Crabflower Club, flanked by two tuxedo’d security men.  There were two obvious ways of getting in here.  A simple con – pretend to be someone else, bluff your way in, and be sure you get the body language right, and say the right things.  There was also “dumpster diving”.  The hostess was taking the tickets and letters of invitation from the guests and throwing them in some kind of waste bin behind the counter.  If Stone could make out he was a cleaner and swipe the bin, he’d be sure to find something to get him in. 

The problem was, the bin was hidden right behind there, beside one of the security meatheads.  Stone thought the simple con would be more fun in any case.  He observed the hostess and the two security men for a few more seconds.

Torso and arm movements are strong giveaways to activity in a person’s limbic brain, the body’s emotional centre.  The Chinese hostess was bending forward toward the guests, confident and friendly – but not subservient.  Every so often her body language would betray her and she leant back, or angled her torso defensively, side-on to one of the guests.  Someone she didn’t like.  She also subconsciously leaned or moved away from both the security guys whenever they stepped towards her. 

Stone had counted on searches, frisking, lynx-eyed detectives he’d have to make his way past.  But there was none of this.  It was all very low key - no doubt Semyonov wanted to look cool.  Getting in should be easy if Stone made the right impression on the hostess.  In the second he walked up, she had to trust him more than she trusted the security men beside her.  He put down the phone and approached the hostess, gaining eye contact for a second.   Warm smile.  Then he  flashed a look at the security boys.  They wore the lapel pin in the shape of a small, silver hammer.  The same silver hammer Stone had seen on Ekström in Afghanistan.  These were Special Circumstances men in tuxedos – and yet the atmosphere couldn’t be more different from what he’d expected.    

Stone looked again at the hostess.  She wore a Chinese silk dress, elegantly high up on the neck and with the leg slit from ankle to thigh.  Stone ran his eyes over her, from shapely hip to breasts.  The split-second examination that hints at interest and flattery.  So she knows she’s been noticed, but no more.  Helps build rapport with some women, and this lady was one of them. 

He glanced over the counter at the name badges for the guests.  Not many left.  He was late after his interlude at the Snake Market.  

‘There I am.  Armistead Harker,’ said Stone, glancing back up in her eyes. 

She returned the smile with a hint of flirtatiousness.  Leaned forward, looked Stone back in the eye and paused, like she was thinking about it.  The meathead to the right had angled his body.  Aggressive.  Not good.

‘Professor Stone,’ said the hostess, with a knowing smile.  ‘No need for that.’  She handed over a badge in the name Ethan Stone.  ‘We were expecting you.’ 

Well, well.  The woman had been told to look out for Stone, and she’d found him.  She was perfect hostess for Semyonov’s party - a good figure and “the smarts” as the Americans say.  Masters degree from one of Virginia Carlisle’s “good schools”.  Equally at ease in English and Mandarin.  All part of the carefully burnished image that surrounded everything to do with Semyonov – relaxed, cool, intelligent.  No one – least of all those Semyonov invited - would believe that he was anything other than the super-intelligent, cultured man.  A moral and intellectual hero, as George Watts put it.  Could it be that the naïve young reporter, Junko Terashima, was the only one to see through Semyonov’s facade?  Looking around at the cool intellectuals arriving at the Crabflower Club, Stone half-doubted Junko’s story himself.  But then there were still the men in tuxedos with a silver hammer on their lapels.  And Junko was dead.

 The hostess nodded imperceptibly to one of the guards as Stone walked past her into the club.  Stone half-expected to be followed inside.  He felt his mind calculating how to deal with the two guards.  They’d let him in quite deliberately – but why?    

The Crabflower Club was a different world from the teeming sweatshops and markets of Hong Kong only a couple of hundred metres away.  Stone had expected something of orgiastic extravagance, and indeed there was champagne, entertainers, and lavish food.  There were gorgeous models stalking around in revealing designer outfits.   But it was the omissions from the guest list which impressed Stone.  No politicians, racing drivers or fellow billionaires for Steven Semyonov.  Here were the up-coming futurologists, thinkers and entrepreneurs.  There were charity directors, architects and experts in little known technologies from the whole of the Pacific Rim.  Semyonov had handpicked the guest list, it appeared.  Semyonov’s parties in California were legendary, and it would be obligatory to have a good time, to get wild even.  Stone glanced around.  Certainly a buzz.  A room full of PhD’s had never partied so hard.

And it was a great party.  It was euphoric.  Because most people there couldn’t believe they were even invited to a party by Steven Semyonov.  Even Stone felt himself relax a little.  And if he was honest, Stone couldn’t believe himself that those SCC meatheads had let him in.  It was so relaxed.  He’d expected a truly fascistic security operation, but that was way wide of the mark.  The atmosphere at the Crabflower Club was open, welcoming.  The opposite of what he’d expected.

Steven Semyonov.  At twenty-two he had been the brains behind the start-up SearchIgnition Technology, whose technology powered the world’s top five search engines.  He’d just sold out at the age of twenty-nine for $25 billion.  Plenty of people want to meet a twenty-nine year old billionaire.  It’s only human.  But the nine zeros on his personal net worth weren’t the reason these people wanted to meet him.  Money, ultimately, is commonplace.   

The reason all these brilliant, clever, successful people had cleared their diaries and hot-footed to Hong Kong was clear.  It was written on their faces.  They were there for The Man.  For the chance to meet Semyonov, The Man himself.  For it was said that Semyonov was the cleverest man alive.

Stone was different.   Stone wanted to meet Semyonov to ask him, why, with all his money and intelligence, he was devoting his energies to designing his own exotic line of… weapons of mass destruction.  Why?  Because he could?  As a private joke?  For kicks?

But none of that fit in with what Stone saw around him.  The revelry was cranking up in the soft light of the Crabflower Club. Everyone was waiting for The Man.  To see him, speak to him, even touch him, like pilgrims touching a jade Buddha in a mountain temple.

  Vodka circulated, with caviar and Chinese dim sum of exquisite taste.   Champagne flowed amongst clever kids, and the designers and the IQ babes.  There was laughter, shouting, high spirits.  And then the buzz which it seemed could go no further, suddenly hit fever pitch.  The volume, the excitement went up a notch.  They could sense he was there, in their midst.  They felt his presence, his aura moving through the throng.  Stone stood alone, his champagne flute full in his hand.  He spotted Semyonov - his smooth, hairless head shining slightly with perspiration, his red eyes twinkling, but his face utterly impassive.  Thirty seconds here, a minute there, a smile.  Casting greetings and wisecracks around like candy to a crowd of kids.  They whispered, gossiped in excitement as he approached them in the crowd.  Star-struck.  

Stone looked with steely gaze across the press of tuxedos and cocktail dresses.  The guests were each shoving gently but insistently towards the spot in the crowd where Semyonov would move onto next.  Stone held his champagne glass lightly, maneuvered himself closer.  He tried to get Semyonov’s eyes.  To catch his gaze.  The man was shorter than Stone’s six-two, but not by much.  His smooth head – hairless but unshaven it seemed - and his chunky physique were distinctive.  Finally Semyonov’s impassive red eyes face turned towards him, just as a female hand grabbed Stone lightly on the bicep through his jacket.

‘Stone!’  An American voice.  Depressingly familiar.  ‘Stone!’  She said with false delight.  Upper class, North Eastern United States.  Self-consciously, intelligently deep for a woman.  The preppy, Vasser-educated woman from the airport.  Virginia Carlisle.

‘I knew it was you,’ she said.  ‘Did you find anything?’

‘I guess not,’ said Stone without looking at her.  He was holding Semyonov’s gaze still.  ‘You?’

‘Suuure,’ replied Virginia, immodestly.  ‘But you’ll have to wait to see it on GNN “Wake up World” in the morning.’ She had on a black silk dress and looked more glamorous than ever.  She moved up beside Stone and smiled at Semyonov five metres away through the crowd.  ‘I was gonna say it’s a surprise to see you, but I guess I knew you’d get in here.  Junko couldn’t make it, then?’

‘No, Virginia.  She couldn’t,’ Stone replied, his jaw clenched.  He couldn’t look at her, so he continued eyeballing Semyonov.  Virginia was trying to be genuinely friendly now, as if their meeting in the Limo never happened.  An actress.  On another day, at another party, he would like Virginia if he was honest.  She was sassy and upfront.  She was intelligent, attractive, driven.  Like him?  No.  Not like him.  But there was definitely something.

‘Steven just looked at you Stone,’ said Carlisle.  ‘He picked you out in the crowd.  Wow!’

‘I didn’t notice,’ Stone lied.

‘Don’t be modest, Stone.  Modesty’s a sin.  You’re a cult figure,’ commented Virginia.  ‘So act like it.  You could be just as famous as me in your own way, except that everyone knows me and no one knows you.  You just need more airtime on TV.  You could be someone.  A hero for the peaceniks and the anti-globalisation gang.’

‘Like you gave a shit about the “anti-globalisation gang”,’ he said.  

‘Like you give a shit about TV,’ she retorted.  ‘But you should.  Most people here don’t even know your face.  But it looks like Steven knows you.’

‘Maybe he was looking at you,’ Stone said, affecting boredom, still staring at Semyonov, who was now making an effort not to look at Stone.  That pleased Stone. Semyonov, who had everyone’s eyes on him, could feel Stone’s cool grey gaze on him.  Guilt?  Or was he about to ask some guy wearing a silver hammer to nestle an automatic into Stone's ribs and show him the door?

‘Semyonov likes guys like you,’ Virginia went on, flashing a smile at Stone.  Patronizing.  ‘Radicals, charity people, do-gooders.’

‘Suuuure,’ said Stone, aping her preppy American voice.  ‘Do-gooders.  Semyonov just loves us.  Sorry to disappoint you, Virginia, but I had to crash this party, remember?  Obviously not doing enough good.’   Stone was thinking of the Snake Market only minutes before.  He hadn’t done much good there either.

‘Anyhow, Virginia.  I guess you’ve done your research again?  What do you know about Semyonov?’ asked Stone.

‘I know plenty.  It’s my job,’ said Virginia.  Self-satisfied look again.

Stone still concentrated on Semyonov.  He was going to be in The Man’s face any minute. 

‘He was always a bright kid,’ said Virginia.  ‘Studied at Columbia, then a masters at MIT.  But he was no more than a bright kid.  There were others like him.  His search business was just the right thing at the right time.  The weird thing is he was a regular guy back then.  Averagely good looking, played a little basketball, brown hair.  He looked and acted normal.  Look at him now.’

Stone watched the beads of sweat on Semyonov’s smooth forehead.  What was Carlisle talking about?  The man’s skin was whitish-pink, and entirely hairless, and he had to be fifty, sixty pounds overweight. 

‘Maybe the exertion of acquiring those billions did something weird to him,’ said Virginia.  ‘Or maybe stress.’

 Semyonov didn’t look stressed.  The pinkish skin was completely without lines or dryness.  In fact he looked – well, just weird, like a plump, bouncing baby, inflated to adult size and given an IQ of 200. 

‘I have heard the whackos claim he’s an alien,’ said Virginia.   ‘That you can’t just gain fifty points in IQ in your twenties,’

I’m not surprised. 

‘Anyhow, he’s not average,’ she said.  ‘He’s not even an average geek.  And I guess looks don’t matter if you have the smarts.’

Stone felt a thrill of anger.  Junko Terashima killed, Hooper and fifty others dead in the Afghan village – did none of that matter if you “have the smarts”?  Maybe Semyonov’s mind had become morally addled by his money and his IQ.  

Virginia Carlisle’s face may be known on five continents, but Stone was barely listening to her.  He wanted to see The Man’s reaction.  To see that big, smooth, white face react when Stone asked about the weapons.  Guilt?  Pleasure?  Shock?   Relief even?  Semyonov was close now, and the crowd tighter than ever around him.  Two metres away.

Stone slipped away from Virginia, past a knot of three Australian programmers.  Stood in front of The Man.  His eyes smouldered.  A bodyguard noticed and slid in beside Semyonov, spoke in his master’s ear and then stared again at Stone.

Stone could handle that guy, if he came looking for it.   He kind of hoped he would.  Stone looked directly at Semyonov’s red eyes – something no one else in that place seemed to want to do.  But then he had a shock, like he’d been slapped across the face, or across the eyes to be precise.  Semyonov finally looked Stone back in the eye, and Stone could see where the talk about an alien intelligence had come from.  Up close, those eyes had an unknowable depth and intensity, even after a couple of seconds.

‘You’ve changed, Armistead,’ quipped Semyonov.  ‘You look as good as that well-known peacenik, Ethan Stone.  Still, it’s only fitting to have a Stone at the Crabflower Club, I guess.’  Semyonov’s shaven pate glistened slightly.  He’d just made a highbrow remark, a joke intelligible only to himself.  His face was expressionless, except for the depth in his eyes.  It wasn’t just an intensity either.  Stone held the eyes and wondered whether even one other person in there had seen what he saw in Semyonov’s eyes.  There was a weariness.  Semyonov was jaded.  All this stuff, the money, the adulation, the brains.  None of it was enough for Semyonov.

 ‘No.  You’ve changed, Mr Semyonov,’ said Stone after a pause.  ‘You surround yourself with all these clever, creative people.  Do they know your latest toy is a nasty line in Weapons of Mass Destruction?’

‘Do you?’ replied Semyonov, still expressionless.

‘How many do you think you’ve killed already, Semyonov?’ said Stone, undaunted.  ‘Keeping score?  Is that the big announcement everyone’s gossiping about?  The latest body-count?’

Stone looked back at Semyonov’s eyes to record the reaction, but a black-suited arm came between them. 

Chapter 14 - 8:55pm 29 March - Zhonghua Hotel, Central, Hong Kong

‘He’s not always this charming, Steven!’ said Virginia’s voice, heavy with irony.  A big security guy had stepped between Semyonov and Stone, and was standing with his back to Stone.

 ‘Peace Studies isn’t it?’ said Semyonov, easing aside the meathead security man.  ‘You’re doing great work in your campaigns against the arms trade.  I congratulate you, Stone.’  Did he actually mean this?  ‘But you need to work on the publicity.  Get on TV.  You should get Virginia here to help you.’

‘You deny New Machine Corporation is making weapons?’ shouted Stone, as The Man turned.

‘I deny nothing, Mr Stone,’ said Semyonov, and he walked off with the tuxedo’d security man.

Stone said nothing for a second.  That was a reaction he hadn’t expected. You’re doing great work.  I congratulate you.   Was Stone supposed to buy that?  And then there was, I deny nothing.  Questions raced through Stone’s mind.  Stone was an intelligent guy, but Semyonov had just confounded him.

Virginia moved up next to Stone again in the crowd.  Spotlights were on Semyonov as he walked up to a stage at the front and took his place alongside some frowning Chinese dignitaries.  The music stopped, the noise level was dropping.  The entertainers and the waitresses had disappeared

Everyone’s eyes were on Semyonov.  ‘What’s he doing?’ Stone asked.  The three Chinese dignitaries were dressed in the plain, button-fronted suits of the Chinese Communist Party.  This meant it was a serious occasion.  Semyonov and the three Chinese were on large TV screens positioned throughout the Crabflower Club.

‘You don’t know?’ smiled Virginia. 

‘I crashed the party.  Remember?’

The TV screens were showing an ornate document, one copy placed in front of each person on the dais.  It was written in English on one half and Chinese characters on the other.  A contract document in both languages.  The screen showed the title.

Investment Joint Venture - New Machine Research Corporation, Jiangsu Province, People’s Republic of China

The dignitaries, seated on either side of Semyonov, signed their names at the bottom of the deed and used their formal Chinese ink stamps to make it official.  There was polite applause.  Now it was Semyonov’s turn to sign.  The room was packed with witnesses.  Cameras were on him from five angles.  An awed silence descended. 

‘He’s actually going to do it, Stone,’ whispered Virginia.  Even as a hardened reporter, she was staggered.

‘He doesn’t even know what he’s investing in!’ whispered a voice next to them.

‘That’s not right,’ came another.  ‘He knows everything, remember?’  Joking, but with a grain of truth.

  ‘I guess he works in mysterious ways, huh?’

‘This is not a stunt, Stone,’ said Virginia solemnly, staring at the screen.  ‘He said he’d do it.  He’s giving them the whole lot.  He’s going to sign it all away.  Twenty-five billion dollars!’

Stone half-expected trumpets, some kind of fanfare.  What they got was even better.  On the screen, Semyonov picked up a gold fountain pen in his right hand, and a silver fountain pen in his left.  There was another gasp as he proceeded to sign both halves of the document, English and Chinese, simultaneously, one pen in each hand. With the left hand he wrote his American signature, at the same time as he was signing with his right in elegant Chinese script.

‘I heard he could do that,’ whispered Virginia.  She’d flushed red.

‘Have the Chinese brainwashed him, or what?’ asked a loud Australian voice behind them.  Fair question.  The camera panned over onto the Communist Party official next to Semyonov.  His flat, unreadable face showed only indifference.

The Australian voice was there again.  ‘Writing with two hands at once?  It’s not a normal thing, right?’

No, not a normal thing.  Definitely not normal.

‘I’ve seen him do that before,’ said another voice, ‘Semyonov can totally do that.’

‘Forget the writing,’ said Virginia.  ‘Signing away your whole fortune to the Chinese state is not a normal thing.’

   There followed not so much an excited buzz - more of an uproar, a chaotic scene, confusion.  There was shouting, cheering, hooting and surges through the crowd like it was a rock concert.  Stone began to push his way through the shell-shocked crowd in the Crabflower Club towards the table where, of all things, Semyonov was signing autographs.  With both hands.  Showing he could actually do it and it wasn’t a trick.  A different witty message with each hand.   It’s not a normal thing, right? 

Stone caught sight of one.  “and the barman says, this is some kinda joke, right?” was written with the left hand, while the right hand wrote, “A Californian, a blonde and a rabbi walk into a bar,”.  An old one.  And Stone was not in the mood for jokes.

Stone was three metres away.  The bodyguard spoke in Semyonov’s ear again.  The Man looked up to catch Stone’s eye.  It looked like Semyonov was going to speak to him, but then the Chinese Party dignitaries stood up to leave.  Stone was still eyeballing him, and it must have looked really intense.

Whatever the reason, Semyonov’s large white head and red eyes turned again toward Stone, and he made a tired gesture with his hand for Stone to approach.

‘Why did you do it?’ said Stone.  It was the only relevant question, the only thing he could think of, because nothing here made any sense.  But Semyonov was still impassive.  He scribbled again with both hands, and handed the two slips of paper to Stone.  The words weren’t even in English.

‘You didn’t get the Crabflower Club thing did you?’ said Semyonov, looking suddenly tired.  Must he explain everything to these pitiable fools?  ‘The Crabflower Club.  Remember?  It was the name of the poetry club in “The Story of the Stone”.  The classic Chinese novel.  I wrote you some verse, Stone.  Thought it was appropriate.’

There was a shout to Stone’s left.  ‘He can’t be leaving.   Semyonov’s the party dude, he’s gotta stay!’ 

But Semyonov was indeed leaving.  The Chinese VIPs made their way out through a rear door with the bodyguards.  Semyonov turned his huge head and neck away from Stone, impassive again, like a great white bull, and was ushered away behind the Chinese.  The SCC meatheads took him through the crowd at speed.  Stone tried to follow, but it was a few seconds before he got free of the crowd.  He gave one of the Crabflower staff an authoritative nod as he followed Semyonov’s party through the fire door.  It worked.  He sped up.  Suddenly he was outside in the darkness of the loading bay behind the Zhonghua.  There was a smell of fish and the harbour, the air sticky and hot again after the aircon inside.  But no sign of Semyonov.  

Stone looked around amongst the cars and trucks.  Semyonov could be anywhere.  He could have been whisked off already.  Stone felt stunned.  The two-handed writing, those intense red eyes, those mystical comments – Semyonov had completely outmaneuvered him.  If he was a killer, he was a cold, heartless bastard.

Stone became aware someone had followed him out.  A door closed behind him.  Stone’s ears pricked up for danger, but he was still scanning the yard for Semyonov.  There were footsteps.  The Communist Party men were being helped into a black Mercedes, surrounded by Chinese paramilitaries in olive dress uniforms, shiny black webbing and boots.  Soldiers of the Public Security again – the Gong An.    All unusually tall and even more unusually, holding European-made HK sub-machineguns.

Stone stood in the shadow – still no sign of Semyonov’s huge, white head.  Stone kept an eye on those tall guards.  Some kind of elite Chinese unit sent to guard Semyonov.  What the hell was that guy up to?

A sleek, white sports car flashed in front.  The soft whine of an electric motor, no other sound.  Semyonov.  It had to be, driving his electric sports car.  Driving himself.  There were steps behind him again, but Stone kept his eyes on the car high-tailing it out of the car park.  The brake lights flashed bright red in the darkness as the car paused before joining the traffic, then disappeared toward the Harbour Tunnel. 

Behind Stone, the footsteps sped up.  There was a shout from the black limo in front of him.  Two of the paramilitaries pointing their weapons his way.  The footsteps were right behind him now.  He spun, arm raised, ready to lean his weight into an elbow to the temple.  But then stopped himself as the assailant grabbed his sleeve and pulled him.

‘For Pete’s sake, Stone!  Make it look realistic!’ 

For Pete’s sake?  Virginia Carlisle, GNN.  She planted her lips on him, then dug her fingernails into his butt.  She’d followed behind, looking for Semyonov like him.  Now she’d seen the guns and she was pretending they were drunken lovers, sneaking out on the loading bay.

‘I didn’t know you cared.’

‘I care enough to stop from getting shot, Stone!’ she breathed, and dug her fingernails into him again. ‘C’mon, kiss me!  Before I get my ass blown off.’

She was an attractive woman.  He couldn’t help noticing.

‘Will this be on GNN “Wake up World”?’ asked Stone, looking sideways at the tall soldiers in green.  They were barking orders in Mandarin, but had lowered their weapons.  There was really no danger.

Still - no sense in turning down some free entertainment from Ms Carlisle.  Or was it acting lessons?

Stone gave in and ran his fingers up from her thighs to her butt to her back, then pulled her backwards into the shadows in a fair approximation of a drunken clinch. 

‘For God’s sake!  Get your hands on me, Stone!  You might get off on this guns and danger thing, but I’d rather live to tell the tale.’

What was her game?   

In any case – a good thing she was here.  Stone needed to have a talk with her about Junko Terashima.

-oO0Oo-

Virginia Carlisle took Junko’s death exactly as Stone expected.  Shock and grief – but controlled grief.  There was even a tear which may or may not have been real.   It wasn’t that Carlisle was as hardened to the nastiness of the world as he was.   Mercifully not.  It was just that she was one of those “well-balanced” people who have a mechanism for shutting out the misfortune of others.  Bad luck, unhappiness, depression – well-balanced people like Carlisle avoid it, like it’s a contagion.  Which is not a bad way to be.

Carlisle reminded him of the stuck-up babes from his university days.  Bright, attractive, always knew the right things to do and say.  They started their careers while still at high school.  They were building a career – a life.  People from Stone’s background go to school, university if they’re bright, they get a “job”.  Then they work, for a long time.  

People like Virginia Carlisle had realized years before Stone that the minute you got a “regular job”, you were hosed.  Finished.  People like Stone got a “regular job”.  People like Carlisle got a “life”.  At eighteen, Stone had a vague sense that he wanted a “life”and not a “job”, but unlike Virginia Carlisle, he had no idea what to do about it.   He did a year of maths at university, then decided it was boring.  He did a year of Chinese because it looked cool.  Turned out it wasn’t cool after all, so he dropped out.  Then it was the army.  All the while Virginia Carlisle and the boys and girls like her shook their beautifully coiffured heads and got on with their “lives”.  Just about the time Stone had been sent on his first Afghan tour.

In any case, Virginia had more than a “life”, she had an uber-life.   She was a socially ambitious Ivy League woman.  She gravitated straight to the in-crowd wherever she was.  In fact, she practically defined the in-crowd.   Stone had been one of the out-crowd all his life, and often an out-crowd of one.  He was always a force of one.  It suited him that way. 

Stone ought to be against someone like Carlisle on principle.  But he wasn’t against her.  They were just different.  All people have ways of living their lives.  Stone might look down on some of the things Virginia had done.  He despised her falseness, her play-acting, that she was always the “face that fits”.  He hated that she took the credit for everyone else’s work, that she would do that to Junko and she’d do it to him.  He should hate her.

But he didn’t hate her.  Why was that?

-oO0Oo-

At the backpackers’ hostel, Stone sat up looking at his laptop, and pulled out the two slips of paper Semyonov had given him.  Semyonov had stonewalled him better than he could have thought possible.  He’d got nothing but clever wordplay from the man.    He left with only the two slips of paper Semyonov had written on simultaneously.  Semyonov had said it was poetry.

The SearchIgnition search engine confirmed that it was indeed poetry.  From a Roman poet called Horace, who lived two thousand years ago.

exegi monumentum aere perennius

odi profanum vulgum

This was getting ridiculous.  He’d got nothing from Semyonov, and now he was reduced to looking for significance in Latin poetry.   The search engine duly gave translations, and Stone wrote them down.

I have created a monument more lasting than bronze

I hate the ignorant masses

Perhaps the second one was Semyonov’s weary, cynical answer.  “I hate the ignorant masses”.  Could be.  But Stone was clutching at straws.

Just then, an alert popped up on the laptop.   An incoming email via the NotFutile.com web site.  Stone had a bad feeling.  Ekström.

Last time, Ekström had sent a video of a slaughterhouse.  This time he’d gone one better.  He’d emailed video footage of the murder of Junko Terashima.  

Stone was dealing with an evil psychopath, but he was past the anger stage.  He climbed onto to his bunk, numbed by hatred, and forced himself to sleep.

Chapter 15 - 3:42am 30 March - Kowloon, Hong Kong

Stone woke up habitually at the least sound.  A habit from the days of undercover surveillance under the foliage in Kosovo or Afghanistan.  He instinctively lay perfectly still so as not to betray his position.  Listening for tiny rustlings or distant voices.  Only when he identified where the sound was coming from could he nod off back to sleep. 

Even so he woke with a start in his bunk, to the sound of the barking of attack dogs and a hoarse Scottish voice shouting over and over, ‘Stay where you are!  Don’t move.  DO NOT.  FUCKING.  MOVE!’

Stone was in the backpackers hostel.  Eighteenth floor of the Chungking Mansions.  A Kowloon tower block.  On the top bunk of three in a dorm of eighteen people.

‘I said, do not fucking move!’ bellowed the Scottish voice again.  A British officer of the Hong Kong Police, a hangover from the old days.  Three Chinese policemen behind him. 

Assorted backpackers and students from Canada, Malaysia, Japan, Mexico were scrambling for backpacks and money belts.  Girls covered themselves with the bed sheets, squinting into the strip lights.  Two lads dropped little bags of white powder behind the bunks.  They were thinking ‘drugs raid’.

Stone knew it wasn’t.  Amid the rustling and scrambling in bags, Stone sat up and dangled his legs over the side of the bunk and looked at the officer.  Then he slowly strayed an eye over the three Chinese policemen in blue shirts and cargo pants.  Probably fit enough, with decent martial arts.  All four had pistols, but still clipped into their belts.  An escape looked on for the moment. 

Then a scream.  A couple of tall Chinese men in those olive drab uniforms and shiny black boots had appeared in the brightly lit dorm.  More screams as the others saw the sub-machineguns pointed their way.  Dogs barking, girls screaming.  Boys shouting ‘Don’t shoot!’ and holding their hands in the air.

‘SHUT.  THE FUCK.  UP!’ bellowed the Scottish guy.  His was a limited but effective vocabulary.  A tense silence.  The Scot began eyeballing all the men in turn and pointing with a stick.

Enough of this.  Stone jumped softly down from the bunk.  The Scottish guy stepped back.  Too slow.  Stone could have leaned his weight into the cop.  Caught him a percussion blow on the temple before he’d even raised his hands.  The other three cops were distracted, their eyes flitting about the room at those hands in rucksacks and arms shooting in the air.  Stone could have had them too.  Maybe.  Would have been fun to try at any rate.

The two olive drab boys at the door were the problem.  They were pros all right.  The one was covering the room with his assault weapon, causing all the screaming.  The other fellow had crouched low to get a shot upwards at Stone’s head, at an angle where he could be sure not to hit anyone else.  Near enough to give no chance of missing, but far enough to be out of reach of an unarmed, but dangerous, man.  Such as Stone.  If the Scots policemen hadn’t recognised Stone, the Gong An boys certainly had.  They were pros.  And they knew all about him.

Stone offered his wrists to the Scottish officer.  His forearms were wiry, covered in light blonde hair.  The policeman looked in distaste at the green, homemade tattoo of new age design on Stone’s right forearm.

‘How did you know it was you we wanted?’ said the policeman, his tone triumphant but suspicious as he broke out the cuffs.  ‘Something to hide, have we?’

‘You are arresting me for the murder of Junko Terashima,’ said Stone. 

That video of the killing he’d received through the NotFutile.com anonymous electronic dropbox.  Completely untraceable.  But there on the hard drive of Stone's computer nonetheless.  Stone had just been framed.  

Chapter 16 - 4:05am 30 March - Hong Kong

Four a.m.  Stone was hooded and cuffed, riding in the back of a car.  He tried to remain alert and glean what was happening. 

Early mornings were a bad time for Stone.  Most people have that small ecstasy the start of a new day brings.  That tiny reminder of being alive.  For Stone, his days began with a reminder of people he’d seen killed.  Comrades, enemies, random bystanders.  They all looked the same dead.  Some call it post-traumatic stress.  It wasn’t.  It might be post-traumatic for all he knew, but it wasn’t stress.  

The peace activist thing was Stone’s way of dealing with it, but it was times like this, in the wee small hours, that he was honest enough with himself about how pathetically unsatisfying his new life was.  After the thrill of combat, nothing is the same again.  Hooded and cuffed in the back of the car, Stone felt a dim echo of the same thrill, reverberating in the pit of his stomach.  And he thought of that time with Hooper, trapped together in the dark cellar in Afghanistan.

Through the hood, Stone heard the noises change as they went under a tunnel.  They were passing back over to Hong Kong Island.  The car went round a series of bends.   They were in Mid-Levels, or maybe Happy Valley.  The upscale part of Hong Kong Island. 

Finally he was set down in a room.  There was a curt order in Chinese and his hood was removed.  Stone squinted into the bright lights.  Two of the olive drab and shiny boot team were in the room, at the back, with their guns.  Impassive, efficient, alert.  Then, facing Stone across a small melamine table was a solitary Chinese man in Communist Party garb – buttons right up the front of his jacket to the neck.  He even wore a Mao cap, like a stereotypical Communist Party man.  He was middle-aged and had that neutral look you often get with older Chinese people.  Neither smiling nor frowning.

The Chinese man’s eyes glittered with intelligence though.  Bright black eyes looked out from the slits in the wrinkled flesh of his flat Chinese face.  Stone stared back insolently.  He was beginning to enjoy this.

‘My name is Zhang, Englishman,’ he began in fluent English.  ‘You will address me as Professor Zhang.’

Stone knew all about what the word professor meant.  Or didn’t mean.  ‘I thought we called each other tongzhi in China?’ Stone used the Chinese word for comrade.  Old fashioned in the new China, but Zhang was definitely one of the old guard.

‘You are not my comrade, English,’ Zhang replied contemptuously.  ‘And you will call me professor.’  Zhang pulled himself up a little.  ‘It appears you know why you are here.’

‘No,’ Stone said.  It was the opposite of what he’d said when they arrested him.  Hopefully that would annoy Zhang.  His eyes stayed on Zhang – his hands, mannerisms, his eyes.  But the investigator was difficult to read.  His body language said nothing as yet.

‘You confessed at the time of your arrest,’ countered Zhang, as if already tired of the proceedings.

‘You choose your words with care, professor, so I shall do the same,’ said Stone.  Zhang nodded back to him, and Stone went on.  ‘I knew why I had been arrested.  And I can see from what you have said, that I am right.  I was arrested for the murder of Junko Terashima.  But your men have made a mistake.’

Stone might be manacled, but he had to make the most of his one advantage.  Stone knew he hadn’t killed anyone.  Though the fact that video evidence had just been placed on his computer was not going to help him any. 

Zhang nodded again, as if he didn’t believe a word.  Standard interrogation practice, in both East and West.

‘I have explained myself,’ Stone said, ‘Now it’s your turn.  What is the real reason you are talking to me, professor?  All this -  it’s very irregular.’  Trying to get Zhang to react.  It wasn’t going to be easy.  Zhang’s eyes were so narrow in his ancient, lined face they looked like they were nearly closed. 

‘Continue talking,’ said Zhang.  ‘If it pleases you to surprise me.’

Stone left a silence of at least a minute before he spoke.  No sense making it easy for the man.  ‘Firstly,’ he said.  ‘Neither you, nor your comrades here, are from Hong Kong.’  Zhang arched a questioning eyebrow.  A good sign.  Stone carried on.  ‘Your comrades in the car were speaking with a Beijing accent.   You are a visitor to Hong Kong, Professor.  Your skin betrays your years in the arid North of China.  The humidity down here in the South preserves the skin,’ Stone explained. 

Zhang’s dry, leathery face smiled mockingly.  ‘Is this a discussion about my complexion, English?’

Stone went on, ‘Since Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China, with its own police, it is highly irregular that you should take custody of me.  Professor.’

Zhang knew he was right.  It was a long shot, but Stone had the chance here to discover what the Gong An’s real interest was – in Terashima, in Semyonov, New Machine Technologies, or whoever.

‘Observant,’ said Zhang.  ‘But let me ask you.  Why did you murder Miss Terashima?’

It was time to bluff his way out of this.  ‘Professor Zhang,’ said Stone.  ‘You are an intelligent man.  So let’s cut out the chat, shall we?  Your Gong An people from Beijing were on the scene only minutes after the murder.  You must have had her followed.  You probably had me followed.  That means you know I didn’t kill Junko Terashima.’ 

Stone could see Zhang’s plan.  It followed a time-honoured sequence.  Threaten prisoner with bogus murder charge.  Prisoner denies charge.  Zhang tells prisoner it can be so much easier if prisoner tells everything he knows about third person.  In this case, Semyonov.

‘You were seen entering her room,’ continued Zhang.

‘You were there,’ repeated Zhang.  His heart wasn’t in it.  Zhang knew he wasn’t the murderer.  And Stone smelt Semyonov’s influence in this.

Zhang tried the silent thing again, but had already realised Stone could out-silence most people, so he restarted his volley of questions.  ‘What are you doing in Hong Kong, Stone?  What was your relationship with Terashima?’

  Better.  The more questions Zhang came out with, the more he would reveal what he was up to.  Stone lounged back and look insolently at him again, forcing Zhang to try something else. 

‘Why did you go illegally into the Zhonghua Hotel to harass Mr Semyonov?’

It was Zhang’s first mention of Semyonov.  Semyonov had basically defected to China the night before, and of course Beijing would protect him.     

Zhang realised he was talking too much and clammed up again.  Stone knew what was next, though.  Back to the threat.   

‘You should talk, English.  You are in trouble for this murder.  Tell me what happened.  Otherwise you face long years in my Chinese jail.  Or the firing squad in Guangdong.’

‘You are an investigator, Professor Zhang’ said Stone.  ‘Threats are unworthy of you.’ 

The smile had gone from Zhang.  His threat hadn’t worked the way it normally did with Westerners.  Stone hadn’t even asked for a lawyer.

‘Let me get to the point, Professor Zhang,’ said Stone leaning forward.  ‘You know I didn’t murder Junko Terashima.’

‘Supposition,’ said Zhang with very correct English pronunciation.

‘But true,’ said Stone, ‘You, Professor, are a Beijing intellectual.  You are not here for the murder of Japanese girl in a Hong Kong whorehouse.  You’re investigating something more complex,’ he said.  ‘You know I didn’t kill her.  You’re using the threat of a murder charge to discover what I know.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Zhang slowly.  ‘But this is no idle threat, English.  The man who went to Terashima’s room was on camera.  He hid his face from the camera, but it was a European man.  He looked like you.  The murder charge is real.  I suggest you begin talking, Stone.’

Finally Zhang was showing his hand. 

‘Who are you watching, Professor?  Who are you really investigating?’ asked Stone.  ‘Me?  Or Semyonov?’

‘Semyonov is a friend of The People’s Republic of China,’ Zhang said, flatly.  Too flatly.  So it was Semyonov – but was Zhang investigating, or protecting the man?  Whose side was Zhang on?

‘He’s a friend of China – but you don’t trust him, do you, professor?’ said Stone.  Trying to flush him out.  ‘What about the weapons trading?  Is that what this is about?’

Zhang began the neutral half smile again.  It looked inscrutable, but Stone was getting used to this.  The neutral thing meant Zhang was thinking what to say.  At length Zhang asked another question.  ‘Since you bring it up, do you believe the gossip about weapons trading which Miss Terashima talked about?’

‘Why should I know anything about it?’ replied Stone, deadpan.  Trying to irritate the Professor.  Let Zhang think he was onto to something and then cut him off.  Zhang had dropped his guard with that last question.  If Stone could get him ruffled again he would drop it again.   He threw one of the professor’s mocking half-smiles back at Zhang.

‘Let me remind you of the murder charge against you English!’ shouted Zhang, slapping the table. 

We’re in business.

‘I know all about you, Stone!’ continued Zhang, ranting.  ‘Dropped out of university,’ Zhang said this contemptuously, ‘Then you spent seven years in the British Army Special Forces.’  Zhang’s slit-like eyes tried to cut into Stone.  ‘You are a bourgeois troublemaker.  A self-publicist...’  And on it went.   At last Zhang had opened up about Stone.  He had a file many centimetres thick on him by the sound of it.

And “self-publicist”.  Stone loved that one.   There could be no stronger insult from Zhang.  He’d probably spent forty years fighting for his ideals, watching his country destroy itself through the Cultural Revolution, then rebuild, but Zhang was devoted through it all to the memory of Mao Zedong.  Equality.  The Communist system.  The Iron Rice Bowl.  Only to find that after Zhang's lifetime of loyalty, it was the regime itself which had abandoned Communist ideals.

‘I campaign against war, weapons trafficking and people who make fortunes from weapons,’ said Stone.  ‘I am still a soldier.  I am a soldier for peace; and you are a warrior of the mind, Professor Zhang.  We have much in common.’  He knew it would be irritating. 

‘Please, Mr Stone,’ spat Zhang contemptuously.  ‘You are SAS.  Your exploits may dazzle the young women who chase after you, but your soul is that of a killer.  The SAS kills people.  My file tells me you are a killer, Mr Ethan Eric Stone.  And you think you can carry on your filthy trade in China.’

Stone’s cool grey eyes looked back at the leathery face.  ‘No, Professor,’ he said.  ‘Your file tells you I gave up violence when I left the army.  My methods are unorthodox, but I am no killer.’  At least he was gaining some kind of engagement with Zhang now.  ‘Your intelligence tells you that I never got to Terashima’s room.  I’d be amazed if you hadn’t ID-ed Johan Ekström as the killer.  Also, your intelligence tells you that I went to Semyonov’s little “party” to confront him about his export of weapons from the People’s Republic of China.’

‘China does not need capitalist running dogs like Ekström to sell its goods,’ said Zhang.  The words were full of contempt again, but Zhang had shown he knew about Ekström too.  That was a guess on Stone’s part.

‘What about Semyonov?’ asked Stone, looking down.

‘He is a great friend of the Chinese people,’ observed Zhang again.  His stock phrase on the subject.

‘He’s just handed over his whole fortune - twenty-five billion dollars - to a Chinese state enterprise.  An enterprise with no sales or products supposedly.  Or is nice Mr Semyonov helping China with some new weapons?’

‘You think you are clever, English, but you are mistaken.  Semyonov laoshi is here to work on the Machine.  Nothing else.’

There.  Zhang had sprung a surprise of his own, and was looking suitably pleased with himself.  And it had worked.  Stone was surprised.  “The Machine”?  Also Zhang referred to Semyonov back there as “laoshi”.  Teacher.  Why would he do that?

‘You think you know it all, Stone.  But your understanding is that of an imbecile,’ Zhang continued.  ‘Twenty-five billion dollars is a small price to pay to work on the Machine.’ 

The Machine – Zhang had thrown that out there for a reason, had he?  He was fishing to assess what Stone knew about it.  The answer was nothing, but Stone had to keep him talking.

‘Semyonov is an exceptional man,’ said Stone.  Zhang nodded sagely.  ‘Is that why China has allowed him to collaborate on The Machine?’

Abruptly the grey steel door opened at the back of the room.  An officer strode over to Zhang, speaking to him in rapid Mandarin. 

Zhang’s eyebrows shot upward in consternation. Zhang jumped to his feet, anxiety on his face for the first time. 

‘Shi duide ma?  Ta si le?’  Stone got that bit at least.  Is it true?  He’s dead?  Who was Zhang referring to?  Or it could be “she’s dead”.  Junko?

Zhang was still standing, looking distracted, like he didn’t know what to do next.  He looked round at Stone, almost as an afterthought, as if what he’d just heard had made him forget everything.

 ‘Tell me truthfully.  Do you know how Miss Terashima died?’ Zhang asked.

Stone said nothing.  He’d seen the video clip of a girl’s death.  Zhang’s question meant they hadn’t even been through Stone’s laptop yet. 

‘An insect bite,’ Zhang said.  ‘Most unusual to die so quickly, even here in the tropics.  We tested the venom.  Japanese hornet, if you please,’ said Zhang in his deliberate English.  ‘Seven centimetres long and quite deadly.’

Stone stared insolently back.   ‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘It is of no consequence whether you believe it, English,’ sneered Zhang.  ‘I assure you the Japanese hornet’s eight different venoms in the bloodstream are unmistakable.  Besides.  My men found this in the hotel...’  Zhang took something from his pocket and tossed it on the table towards Stone. 

‘We will talk later,’ said Zhang.  ‘For now, I permit you to rest, English.  In your cell.  I thought it only right to reserve a special cell for you.  Built a century ago by the British Imperialists.  Very old and very small.  I think hot and dirty.  The insects also are quite disagreeable.’ 

Zhang’s eyes creased with a hint of pleasure as he strolled from the room.  Stone looked at the desk and examined the object Zhang had thrown to him.  It was the carcass of a huge, multicoloured bug, about seven centimetres long - the Japanese hornet.  Except it wasn’t a real insect at all.  It was man-made – a beautiful manufacture of metal and plastic.

Chapter 17 - 4:02pm 29 March - Special Circumstances Training Facility, Southern California

At four in the afternoon on 29th March, Ekström received another order from SearchIgnition Corp for an assassination in Hong Kong.  This time it looked more interesting, and the location suggested a very fitting method for the execution.

Ekström authorized deployment of the South East Asian regional asset based in Hong Kong for the procedure.  A text alert was sent, followed by an encrypted email with Ekström’s detailed instructions and photographs of the target.

Subject:  Ethan Eric Stone, United Kingdom National

Location:  Old Bailey Prison, Central, Hong Kong

Chapter 18 - 7:54am 30 March - Old Bailey Prison, Hong Kong Island

Stone was hooded again and taken down several flights of stairs. 

So.  Stone would have to pay a price for irritating the Gong An investigator.  Zhang wanted to punish him for his impudence.  The cell they found for him hadn’t been used for decades and was filthy.  It must have been an effort for the local police to find anything like that in their orderly detention centre.   

Stone sat on the cold brick floor and thought again of the video he’d seen the night before.  Could the violently coloured insects he’d seen crawling over the terrified girl’s body really have been man-made?  And if so, who the hell had made them purely for an assassination? 

There were other questions popping still, basic questions that wouldn’t go away.  First – why?  If Semyonov was doing all this – making weapons, testing weapons on live subjects, murdering journalists – then why?  Semyonov had everything, literally everything.  Yet he had sold it up and given away the money.  So why?  To go and work on the Machine, according to Zhang.  Could that possibly be true?

Stone was in a filthy prison cell in Hong Kong.  Things weren’t exactly going according to plan.  He’d come out here in a blaze of anger over the cold-blooded killing of Hooper.  That was the truth if he was honest.  He’d seen some of what Junko Terashima knew, and he had evidence that the weapons in Afghanistan came from Semyonov’s firm – New Machine Tech, or ShinComm or whatever.  It had looked like a clear case.  Tech genius is exposed for dabbling in exotic weapons, dozens of villagers dead.  Plus Hooper.  It looked even more obvious when Semyonov ran away from the US taking every cent with him. 

But things weren’t that simple.  Terashima was dead, and her information with her.  And now there was something called the Machine.  By rights Stone should go on home, do some research and figure it out.  But as of now, in a sweltering Hong Kong prison cell, that was not one of his options.

After a few hours in solitary, things took a still more sinister turn.  He heard a loud argument between the prison staff outside his cell.  Another hour, and the door opened. Stone was cuffed once more and taken back up into one the main wing of the prison.  No hood this time.  He’d become a regular prisoner, and that was not a good thing.

This was an institution built to intimidate, constructed by the British along the lines of the Victorian jails back home.  It was underground, with brick walls, apparently metres thick, painted over in shit brown and a nauseous, creamy yellow, and smelling of carbolic soap.  Even the hallway of this prison wing was claustrophobically narrow and low, with the heavy steel doors of the cells close together along the wall.  No natural light, and the air felt dead and sweaty.  Like an ancient, brick-built cave with striplights.  It was brutally clean, though, and the brickwork made smooth from a century and a half of repeated painting.  It had seen some misery, this place.  An airless hole, redolent of an age of judicial whippings and regular hangings.

The cell doors were of steel plate and bars, and as Stone was led along the hall, a hellish noise of banging grew up, the inmates hammering their tin plates and rice bowls against the bars, hollering in half a dozen tongues.  Chinese, Indian, Malay and then the odd African and European. 

Stone realised something.  They were staring and hollering at him.  He was shoved in a cell.   The warder unlocked his cuffs, then clanged steel door behind him, but the banging and shouting behind him scarcely abated. 

Stone looked around the small cell.  Like the rest of the place, it was small, old - but clean, painted over and over in the same sickly yellow.  No window of course.  Stone’s was the upper of two bunk beds.  For a second he thought he was alone in there, until he noticed a man in the shadows, scrunched into a ball on the lower bunk, his hands over his ears.  A white man, hunched and folded, like a frightened monkey.  Stone climbed up onto his bed and lay looking at the ceiling, forty centimetres or so from his face.

It was an hour later, long after the noise had calmed down, when the terrified man below him spoke. 

‘They’ll kill us, you know.’ It was a New Zealand accent.  ‘They said they’re going to kill us and they will.’  His voice was weak and trembling. Then he said, ‘Is it true?  Did you kill the whore in the Snake Market?  They say she was tortured and murdered.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Stone.  ‘This is place is OK.  It’s old, but it’s well run.  The guards here won’t let anything happen to you.  Neither will I.’

That didn’t cut any ice.  ‘It’s not me.  They’re going to kill you, because you killed the whore.  They’ve told me already.  But they’ll have to kill me too, I know they will.  To stop me talking.’

Stone looked down.  The guy’s eyes were tight shut.  Stone jumped down from his bunk and began to coax out of this shrivelled individual what he had heard.

It turned out the man’s name was Williams.  A businessman from New Zealand – a quiet husband and father by the look of it – who was tempted to the Ming Dai Hotel that day with a prostitute.  Williams didn’t know much more, but he’d been seen in the Ming Dai, and then a girl had been murdered - tortured and murdered.  By a white man.  Williams had been arrested and ended up in this Victorian hole deep below the streets of Hong Kong.

This kind of made sense as far as it went.  But what was wrong with this picture?  Why were Stone and Williams in the same cell?  They were held in connection with the same crime – the killing at the Snake Market.   Why put them in the same cell, where they could concoct stories and alibis?  Also, before Stone had even arrived on the wing, word had gone out that he’d tortured and murdered the girl.  Who would do that?

This was Zhang’s way of expressing displeasure with Stone.  Maybe even getting rid of him.  Stone asked Williams if he’d seen anyone resembling Ekström at the Ming Dai, or whether he’d actually seen Junko Terashima.  Williams was no help at all, had no information.  He was going to pieces, dissolving into guilt. 

‘I love my wife so much.  I’ve never been tempted to cheat before,’ said Williams, squeaking in his New Zealand accent.  ‘Now I’ve landed myself in this place, locked in a tiny cell with a murderer.  It’s God’s judgement on me.’ 

What a worm.  Williams stayed crushed up in the corner of the bunk like some kind of contortionist, whining over and over about how he loved his wife, and if only he hadn’t strayed, and this was God’s way of punishing him, yadda yadda.  He sounded more scared of his wife than anything that might happen to him in that hole in Hong Kong.

Williams wanted literally to hide – to curl into a ball in the shadows on the lower bunk.  But hiding isn’t easy in a prison, and if the other prisoners really wanted Williams, which Stone doubted, Stone didn’t rate the guy’s strategy too highly. 

But if they wanted Stone?  He couldn’t see why, but something was going down in that place.   If some prisoners did come looking for him, Stone would be ready when they found him.  He was better of out of the way of Williams though.  Stone would look weak merely by association with the man.  In a place like this, looking strong is nine parts of being strong.  Better to keep that pathetic creature Williams out of it.  Stone would leave the cell when he got the chance – and see who came looking for him.

Dinner was served in the cells.  Stone ate his rice at the bars of the cell, eye-balling the shouters and plate-clangers from his cell.  He wanted to see their eyes, to see who meant it.  There were a couple of big Malaysian guys who were looking at him silently.  They could mean trouble.  On the other hand it could be anyone.

A couple of hours after dinner, the cell doors were finally opened and prisoners escorted out in turn to make their ablutions.  This could be it. 

A clear head is the best weapon.  So many men, even big, strong, musclemen, feel stress going into a fight.  They start the fight on a ninety-five percent stress level, which creates negative thoughts of what might happen.  Unexpected stress points can cause a domino effect of negative thoughts.  Inarticulate, looping, draining thoughts.  Stress piles on stress, and each sight or sound can paralyse the mind.  In fact it certainly will paralyse the mind.  And if you’re not thinking, you’ve already lost.

The answer is obvious, but not easy to achieve.  Keep a calm clear head, and put the stress onto the other guy.

The cell door clunked open.  Stone turned to Williams and ordered him to stay in the cell.  No explanation.  As his cell door swung wide, Stone smiled at the warder and walked out.  The prison guard avoided his eye.  Did that mean anything?  The Malaysians were giving Stone the stare, trying to look wolfish and hard, laughing to each other.  But the laugh said they were nervous, distracting themselves.  As the time approaches stressful thoughts would be coursing through them, distracting, making it all happen too fast.  Ten, twenty, fifty stress impulses a second can cascade through the mind.  Only the highly trained and the bone stupid can avoid it, and these Malaysians weren’t stupid.  They’d likely been paid by one of Zhang's acolytes.  Were they up to their task?

The entrance to the shower room was a low hole in the nauseous cream and shit brown of the prison wall.  The prisoners had to stoop to get in and there was a press at the door.  The Malaysians jostled to stay behind him.  They would know the routine, the times when the warders weren’t looking.

Eight at a time went through to the showers and Stone found himself in the last bunch.  He stayed back to wait for the Malaysians.  Unfair not to give them an opportunity.   As they went through, the inmates began to undress and to use the toilet, pissing like horses, glad not to have to use the latrines in the cells.  Stone looked around.  There were three Chinese warders with batons.  The room was tiled white, floor to ceiling.  Easy to clean away the blood – the perfect location.  Stone began to undress, but stood tall, looking around, eyeing the Malaysians, keeping only the warders at his back. 

Stone bent to take off his trousers - a moment of danger when he couldn’t jump out of the way.  Here it came – Stone snatched the pants back up as one guy leaped for him.  Stone raised his hands, but the Malaysian backed off, looking at something behind Stone.  Stone’s head flicked round – too late.  His arms were grabbed from behind.  Two of them on him, behind his back.  He couldn’t see them.  He tried to kick out backwards, to trip them, up-end them on the wet tiled floor, but his trousers were round his thighs.  It was all he could do to stay upright and whoever it was back there was strong.  They had his upper arms pulled right back.  Nothing he could do about it. 

Was it Zhang who had planned this stunt?  Whatever.  Someone had definitely told the guards to disappear.  There were three of them a second ago.  Unless… 

He tried to shove them sideways, to get them to fall.  It would be a start.  But his feet barely gripped the floor at all.   The men behind held him up.  They had a plan, these guys.  He’d underestimated them, and it was about to get worse.

  Boom!  The first blow to his kidneys.  Then another.  Heavy blows, expertly applied.  A few more blows like that and he was dead.  Stone let himself vomit after the third, half-digested rice spilling down his chest to the tiles.  He’d have to play dead - pretend to be finished, out of it.  Not much of a plan, but…

Stone opened his eyes for a second.  The prisoners were all gone.  Whoever was left in that room was there to assist at an execution.  Stone had been wrong about the Malaysians.  They were nothing to do with it.  Probably they’d wanted to warn him.  Now they’d left him to his fate.  Once again Stone had gone looking for one fight too many.

He let himself hang limp, felt himself dragged backwards towards the showers.  He had to form a picture of what was happening before he could try anything.  There were definitely two of them on him.  A third would arrive any second.  The executioner.  Neither of these two was going release him.  Someone else was going arrive for the deed.  Shit.  Stone realised who it would be.

Stone cursed himself for being taken in.  Williams.  That bastard had been crouched in the corner, cowering and snivelling to hide his appearance.  Anyone who could contort himself like that must be seriously fit.  Williams was no whining businessman.  He was a trained hitman.

Stone made no move.  He let his hands trail limply over the faces and shoulders of the men behind him, made himself a dead-weight, to force them to hold him beneath the shoulders - they wanted him upright for some reason.  He looked through half-open eyes at his killer, and considered kicking out.  Williams was shorter than Stone – about 1.80m – and had the fit, spare look of an infantryman about him.  Short neat hair – he could just about pass as a civilian.   He was a professional, Stone would give that.  He wasted no time in gloating or taunting his victim.  Williams intended to be out of there in seconds.  He’d be ushered upstairs and a fast car to the airport.  With twenty thousand dollars earned undramatically for his few minutes work.

‘Let’s get it done,’ said the New Zealander.  He dragged Stone’s pants down.  ‘Turn him around!’  Stone was swivelled to face the white wall of the shower cubicle, his face slammed against the tiles.  Facial bruising to make it look realistic.  Prisoners the world over die from internal bleeding after brutal male rapes.  Stone was to be one small addition to that unhappy list.  Unremarked, unnoticed, forgotten after a perfunctory enquiry to determine cause of death.  What was Williams going to use, a mop or a broom handle?

Stone kept his nerve, stayed loose, his hands by the faces of his two assailants.  He could hear Williams crouch down behind him, and then the noise of a wooden mop handle clattering on the side of the shower cubicle.  ‘Go, go!’ shouted the one at his left shoulder to Williams.  His accent wasn’t Chinese, and he wasn’t a guard.  But he was nervous all right.  Four of them were crammed in a shower cubicle, and there were three of them who didn’t want blood on their clothes.  Stone had something else on his mind.  He had to do it now. 

Eyes or windpipe?  Or both?  His thumb was already jabbing hard into the eye of the man to his left.  He felt the side of the eyeball squash as his thumb slid into the socket.  A piercing shout, right by his ear.  The guy let go, yanking the thumb from his face.  Stone swivelled around, jabbing a short punch at the windpipe of the other, who collapsed, sliding down the tiles in a wheezing scream.

The crouching Williams had fallen over on his backside behind Stone.  Slithering backwards away across the floor and turning for the door.  Williams was aborting the mission, scrambling for the exit.  His plan had failed and he was about to walk away.  No twenty grand, but the fast car to the airport was still on offer.   He’d be on a plane in two hours wearing a business suit. 

Williams’ hand was almost on the steel door when the mop handle hit his skull.  Stone swung the wooden handle a second time, breaking the New Zealander's fingers as he tried to protect himself, and then connecting with another vicious blow to the skull.  The assassin went down, two ragged splits reddening on his short-cropped scalp.  Scarlet liquid ran across the tiles.  No point asking Williams who he was working for.  He wouldn’t even know.

Stone grabbed his clothes and walked out of the shower room, jamming the mop handle under the door behind him.  He went to the sink and washed before he went back to his cell.  None of the three guys in that room were real prisoners and they wouldn’t be missed.  There was silence as he strolled past the other cells, no warder in sight.  The two Malaysian men gave him a thumbs-up sign. 

Back in Stone’s cell, the bottom bed had been stripped.  There was no evidence Williams had ever been there. 

Chapter 19 - 5:02pm 30 March - San Francisco, California

Patent lawyer Abe Blackman had fixed another meeting with the Taiwanese gentleman, Mr Shin, in order to give his formal decision on whether he would accept him as a client.  It was not exactly a difficult decision, but he always tried to play hard to get.   

Blackman had drawn up the contracts ahead of time.  This time, he told himself, he had really hit the motherlode.  Shin was going to make him rich.  He’d even placed a bottle of champagne on ice in his personal refrigerator by his desk.  Blackman was an experienced lawyer, who’d pulled off a lot of sweet deals, but he found himself as excited as a ten-year-old.

As before, Shin insisted on their meeting alone.   Blackman had dismissed Rayanna, his secretary, early, and Shin arrived punctually at five-thirty.  Blackman ushered him in.

‘Before we begin, there is another file on which I would like your opinion, Lawyer Blackman,’ said Mr Shin stiffly. 

‘You got more?’ said Blackman.  This just got better.  ‘Sure.  Let’s take a look…’

Shin produced from his large briefcase another black plastic ring binder, similar to the three he’d given Blackman at their first meeting.  ‘You need only ... glance,’ said Shin.  Blackman flashed a smile at the lynx-eyed Mr Shin, and took the binder.  He opened it as he walked toward the table. 

Then something weird happened.  There was an odd rustling, a fluttering.  A large insect crawled from the papers of the binder.   Blackman threw the whole thing from him in horror.  ‘What in God’s name?’  He stood back, his eyes wide in shock as a large, multi-coloured bug crawled over the scattered papers.  It bore a hard, glossy shell, which shimmered with a poisonously bright pattern.  Yellow, red and black. 

Blackman stood back to keep the creature from his feet, looking round for something to kill it with.  The damned thing was three inches long at least, with vicious-looking, stag-like mouthparts.  ‘You got some god-awful bugs over in Taiwan, Mr Shin,’ he said. 

‘Harmless,’ said Shin.  He was smiling.  Blackman hadn’t seen him smile before.  Both men watched transfixed as the creature’s six legs stopped abruptly, and the coloured carapace on its back suddenly flicked open.  A pair of wings, iridescent and transparent, like the finest paper Blackman had ever seen, fluttered and then made an invisible, buzzing blur.  The bug rose into a smooth, noiseless hover above the table.

Blackman gaped, but Shin had come to life.  He was grinning broadly, standing there, in his cheap suit, arms apart like a magician who’s just completed his best trick.  ‘Be honest, Mr Blackman.  You doubted my designs for the hovering robots.  You supposed they were too small.’

‘I, I, I…’  Blackman realised he was stammering, gasping.  Like a kid at a circus. 

‘I can understand you were surprised, Mr Blackman, and curious,’ said Shin, looking up proudly at the hovering creature.  ‘But I thought I made it plain that confidentiality was important to me.'

Shin was still smiling.  He bent again and rummaged again in his oversized black case.   Then he looked back at the hovering bug and calmly held an aerosol at arms length. 

‘Insecticide?  So is it a real bug or what, Shin?  You just said it was a robot.’

‘It is much more than a robot,’ said Shin, holding out the aerosol.  But instead of spraying at the bug, he quite deliberately sprayed Blackman’s neck and shoulder with an odourless mist.  The flying bug turned and floated towards Blackman, and as it neared it sped up and made for his neck.  Blackman flapped desperately.  He knocked it away, and stepped right back against the wall, but it came back.  It had huge, devilish, insect eyes, and its back had a malign pattern of black, yellow and red.

‘OK, Shin.  Just get the damn thing off me will you?’

But Shin was smiling, watching the lawyer flap at the insect.  Back it came, inexorably hunting for Blackman’s neck where Shin had sprayed him.  Each time it came near, its vicious mouthparts suddenly flicked outwards – two mandibles which had the look of greyish steel, sharp as needles.  Blackman screamed and started to panic.  ‘Make it stop, you bastard, make it stop!’ Blackman shouted.  ‘What the fuck is it?  What do you want?’ 

The Taiwanese was back in the centre of the wide office, his shoulders shaking gently with laughter as Blackman panicked.  The bug was whirring round his neck, buzzing by his ear.

‘I’m gonna sue you, Shin.  I’m gonna sue you for every fucking cent you got!’  Shin still gave no assistance.  Finally Blackman clamped both hands on the back of his neck in blind panic.  A second later the whirring stopped and he felt the insect’s feet, strangely cold and heavy, on the back of his hand.  He screamed again.  Shin strolled up to watch the insect’s mouthparts open, as if he were watching the Discovery Channel.  A needle-like probe shot out to into Blackman’s hand. 

‘Holy shit!’  Blackman flung the hand from him, trying to crush the bug against the window, but the creature flipped out its wings and was hovering again, whirring around his head. 

‘What the hell?’  Blackman held his hand by the wrist.  It felt like it was twice the size.  A burning pain enveloped it, like it had been doused in acid, and the fingers stuck out rigid.  The whole hand was livid red, spasming uncontrollably.  Blackman screamed in pain.

‘My God!’ screamed Blackman, panting against the pain in his hand.  It was getting worse.  ‘Make it stop, make... it... stop!’ 

His strength was fading. He was struggling to breathe.  ‘What... the hell... do you want from me?’ he gasped.  But his legs were buckling and he gulped for air.  The bug was still hovering at head height three or four metres away.

Blackman was paralysed.  He’d stopped screaming, and he couldn’t move his arms or stand up.

‘You broke our agreement, Mr Blackman,’ said Shin finally, standing over his man.  ‘You signed my confidentiality agreement.  Yet you telephoned the FBI.’  The searing pain advanced up Blackman’s arm, yet he was unable to speak.  His jaw opened in a silent scream,  his eyes wide in terror, looking at Shin. 

‘This is working model of Japanese hornet,’ said Shin, as if he were a schoolteacher.  ‘Including the venom, which is quite deadly.  I regret this outcome.  The patents could be hundreds million.  Maybe one billion,’ Shin continued, scolding Blackman like a child.  But it was too late.  Blackman could hear nothing any more. 

Chapter 20 - 9:45am 31 March - Old Bailey Prison, Hong Kong Island

    Stone blinked in the harsh electric light of the interview room.  The formalities were over but his hands were still manacled, and a couple of the policemen had their batons drawn.   There was an atmosphere of residual fear in the room.  Stone stood, his cuffed hands in front of him, holding his possessions in the small backpack.  He’d been right; they’d had to release him.  They’d had no evidence at all, and Zhang was nowhere to be seen.  Evidently something had happened and maybe Zhang had been too busy to manufacture evidence against him. 

The officer spoke.  ‘Your visa is revoked.  You must leave Hong Kong Special Administrative Zone and People’s Republic of China in twenty-four hours.’

Twenty-four hours. 

Stone had no time to think.  He was led from the room and the heavy wooden door of Old Bailey Prison opened onto the steaming, honking traffic of Hong Kong, and immediately there was a volley of camera flashes.  Stone found himself on a busy sidewalk in Central district facing a fusillade of boom-microphones, flashguns and two GNN men with Sony TV cameras on their shoulders. 

And there she was in the midst of it all, full war zone garb replacing her preppy Fifth Avenue look.  Virginia Carlisle.  Drink her in.  Five feet ten inches of blond, windswept gorgeousness, ripe and ready for the camera.  Stone could be live on GNN this second.  She stepped forward with the microphone.  ‘Is it true you killed Junko Terashima, Mr Stone?’ shouted a voice.  ‘What about Semyonov?  Do you have any comment to make?’

No sense Stone hiding his face.  Always looks guilty.  But then so does saying nothing.  Stone loathed cameras and publicity, but this time he made straight for Virginia Carlisle.  He’d play her at her own game.  Stone dodged the microphone and took her hand, like she’d done to him in the airport. 

In the melee Stone kept hold of hand and spoke in the reporter’s ear, making it look like they were old friends.  Let her put that on TV.  It would look all wrong on camera and she’d never use the pictures. ‘You know I won’t talk to you, Virginia,’ he said in her ear.  ‘There’s nothing to say.’

‘You’re in a whole heap of trouble, Stone,’ she said back.  ‘But there’s something I can do for you.’

Translation: there was something he could do for her.  But worth a try.  ‘OK.  Let’s get in your car.’

-oO0Oo-

‘This time lock the damn doors!’ Virginia called to the driver.  ‘He’s not jumping out on me a second time.’

‘Oh dear.  That’s plan A out of the window,’ said Stone, only half-joking.  But something in Virginia’s demeanour had changed.  In contrast to the first ime they’d sat in that car, her shoulders were turned towards him, and she talked animatedly.  The body language towards him was positive, not at all defensive.

Stone and Virginia Carlisle sat in the back of the same black Mercedes they’d taken from the airport two days before.  He looked calmly out of the window as the driver dropped the deadlocks on the doors and pulled away. 

‘Well?’ he said.

‘Well what?’ said Virginia.  Oh yes.  She definitely wanted something.

‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’ said Stone.  ‘Zhang hears someone’s died, and suddenly he’s calling the media to the jail and releasing me into the mob.’

She said nothing.  ‘Zhang can’t spend any time on me,’ explained Stone. ‘But he doesn’t want me to talk to any other Chinese police investigators.’ Stone’s eyes interrogated her.  Someone else had died.  Logically there could be only one candidate.  This really was a surprise.  Stone was careful not to turn his body towards her.  His body remained “hard-to-get”.

‘You’re well informed, Stone.  Not bad for someone who’s been locked away below ground.’ said Virginia.  She took out an iPad from her purse and began to run the video of a news clip. 

‘It’s my new friend, Virginia Carlisle,’ said Stone, looking at the picture. 

‘Looks good on camera, doesn’t she?’ she said, preening as she watched herself.  Stone’s sarcasm was lost on her. 

The video was a GNN news report.  Virginia Carlisle was over the border in Mainland China.  Shenzhen, a hundred-odd kilometers from Hong Kong.  Stone had already worked out who died, but his eyes still widened in disbelief. 

Virginia Carlisle smiled at the TV image.  Her on-screen look - combining shock, intelligence and moral outrage - was pitch-perfect for what had happened.  ‘I know,’ she said.  ‘I couldn’t believe it either.  Most things I see coming.  I’ve got a talent for being in the right place at the right time,’ she said.

‘Talent for modesty too, I heard.’

‘But this one came completely out of left field,’ Virginia said.   

Chapter 21 - 10:20am 31 March - Zhonghua Hotel, Hong Kong

On the forty-third floor of the Zhonghua hotel, the Hong Kong Harbour spread below them in the heat haze.  Stone was in Virginia Carlisle’s hotel room.  She was changing from her “work” fatigues back into a black silk dress (stylish, yet professional) and heeled shoes which for some reason she called “pumps”.   She sat with her long legs artfully arranged, dangling one of the patent “pumps” from her toe.  Trying to distract him?  Stone gave her legs and hips the glance she was expecting, then watched the GNN news report through again. 

Less than seventy minutes after he shocked the world by signing away his whole fortune of some twenty-five BILLION dollars to the Chinese, the genius search engine entrepreneur, Steven Semyonov has been killed outright in an auto accident.  The fatal smash occurred just minutes after Semyonov drove his own car over the Lo Wu border crossing from Hong Kong into Mainland China.  The SearchIgnition founder, who only last week was at his desk in San Jose, drove head on into a coal truck as he traveled in the wrong direction down the off-ramp of the freeway.  He was alone in the vehicle.

‘Was he drunk?’ asked Stone. 

‘No chance.  Semyonov had the image of the party animal, but he didn’t drink a thing.  Ever.  He was weird about his health,’ she said. 

Despite all the acting and artifice – the sheer, upfront, in your face falseness of her professional persona – Virginia Carlisle knew her stuff.  She ought to.  She had a whole team of newshounds working for her.

‘Do you buy this tragic accident stuff?’ asked Stone.  ‘I mean: he’s dead less than two hours after signing his money away.  And aren’t head-on collisions always suicide?’

The TV Virginia Carlisle appeared to answer.

‘The Chinese authorities are saying that the body was positively identified at the scene, but it has now been flown directly to Beijing for a post mortem.  What we can say for certain is that Semyonov’s car – a revolutionary electric-powered sports car of his own design – is here, and it has been in collision with the coal truck.  CCTV at the Lo Wu border crossing just five minutes away shows clearly that Semyonov was at the wheel of the car.  The Chinese police won’t permit us to film blood or human remains.’

‘So we can’t be sure it’s him?’ said Stone.

‘Oh, it was him.  I saw the body myself,’ said Virginia.  ‘On a gurney in the back of an ambulance.  He’s pretty unmistakable.  But they wouldn’t let us film it.’

‘Something they don’t want you to see, maybe?  I’ll give that bastard Semyonov one thing,’ said Stone. ‘He keeps us guessing.  You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to ask a few questions here.  Semyonov cashes out, quits his company, and signs away his whole fortune in only a couple of weeks.  Making sure it’s all in front of witnesses, recorded on six cameras.  He’s learned Chinese.  Add to all that the business of the weapons dealing and the murder of Junko Terashima.  Finally, Professor Zhang drops into conversation that Semyonov had come to China to work on something called The Machine.  Then bang, Semyonov is dead.’

 Stone turned to face her.  ‘Let’s cut the crap,’ said Stone.  ‘You want me to go undercover and dig up the real story - discover what Semyonov was really up to.  And you think I’ll do it because I’ve no where else to go.’

She smiled in agreement.  She could be disarmingly naïve, this woman.  Perhaps it was her vanity.  ‘Face it, Stone.  I could put staffers from the Hong Kong office on this, but they can’t do a thing in China without being followed - but you’re perfect.  You’re happy to go undercover, for some reason you’re happy to avoid publicity – even though it would help your cause.’  Virginia looked at Stone with what was meant to be a knowing look  ‘But mostly because you like to make things difficult for yourself,’ she said.  ‘You’d be going into China after you’ve just been banned.  You can’t resist.’

‘You’re saying I can’t resist you, Miss Carlisle?’

She blushed just slightly.  ‘No.  You know what I mean.’

He was playing her along, but Stone himself was still mystified by the whole business.  Like who had killed Junko, and who had tried to kill him.  This Ekström character for sure.  But then who was Ekström working for?  Semyonov, who was now dead?  Virginia Carlisle saw a big shining mystery to be unraveled, but she was naïve.  This was the tip of the iceberg.  She knew nothing of Semyonov’s weapons, nothing of Ekström, certainly nothing of the Machine.

‘OK, Virginia.’  If Carlisle wanted him to do this, he’d make her work for it.  ‘I’ll need access to any notes that Junko kept, including anything she had on her contacts in China21,’ urged Stone, looking doubtful.  ‘You’ll also need to tell me everything you know about her.’

‘Is that a yes?’ said Virginia. 

She must really want this.  ‘It’s a maybe,’ he said, stringing her along.  ‘Now.  Junko Terashima.  Her files, her contacts.  You’ve been through them already.’

‘What makes you think..?’

‘Because I mentioned China21 back there, and you didn’t question it.  You’ve been through her stuff.  Or your flunkeys have.’

She was disconcerted.  ‘I’ll take it as a compliment, Stone.  Little Miss Junko was not all she appeared to be.  Contacts with Chinese dissidents.  Real extremists.  Also shadowy corporate figures from ShinComm…’

‘You mean she was a real journalist, who did her own work?  Whatever next?’

She ignored the jibe.  ‘Are you in?’

‘I’ll need cash, some false ID’s, some more cash, a Chinese visa,’ he said.  ‘The Hong Kong police took a liking to the last lot.’

‘Already done,’ she said, pointing to an envelope on the table.  Stone had seen the envelope as soon as they’d walked in.  A schoolgirl error on her part.  Stone looked inside.  There was even a GNN American Express card.  Fat lot of use that would be in China, but the cash and false passport would be fine.  GNN had come up trumps here.  ‘Now, are you in?’ she asked again.

She was keen.  And the keener she is, the longer she has to wait.  And so naïve.  Stone would take the envelope and then do exactly as he wanted. 

‘Just tell me about Junko Terashima’s contacts,’ he said, pushing her a little further.

‘There’s a scad of stuff in there,’ she said, ‘But there are two important contacts.  Someone called Ying Ning gave Junko all the info about ShinComm – working conditions, suicide rates – mostly boring stuff.  But she sounds dangerous.  Unstable – she’s part of an extremist dissident group called China21.  The other guy who only comes on the scene in the last two weeks is a man called Robert Oyang.’

Stone had what he wanted.  Without speaking, Stone took the envelope with the cash and false passports from the table.  Virginia smiled broadly, as if she’d won. 

‘Guys like you feel like trouble follows them around,’ she said.  ‘But the truth is, you make it a full time job to go looking for trouble.’

What was she?  His best friend?  Stone didn’t do “personal chats” with anyone, least of all stuck-up, millionaire journalists.

‘But you have to do one thing for me,’ said Stone, making it sound like an order.   He took the small computer from his backpack.  ‘I’m going to email to you a video clip which was sent to me.  I’m afraid it’s not very nice,’ he said, tapping in Virginia’s personal email address.  The one he’d memorized just to freak her out.  ‘I want you to get your techie TV people to look at it.  There's something weird about the video format.  Remember, it’s the format I’m interested in, not what you see in the video.'

'And what is the video?'

'It’s Junko Terashima’s murder.’

Chapter 22

http://dougcarslake.blogs.Notfutile.com

UFOWATCH BLOG

Billionaire genius Steven Semyonov may be DEAD, but the weird stories about him refuse to go away.  Since his death, the staff at his Marin County mansion has been speaking out about his extraordinary personal habits.

 Semyonov’s staffers say he never took a shower.  He had trusted servants rub down his white, hairless body with medical alcohol twice every day.  He also insisted on a whole-body massage with almond oil, sometimes twice a day.

That oil and alcohol gel sounds kinky, huh?  But the people at the mansion confirm they never knew Semyonov to have any relationship, sexual or otherwise.

Although Semyonov retired to his bedroom for many hours, staff suspect he never slept.  He often appeared to meditate, but for only a few minutes.

Semyonov is known to have learnt many languages, seemingly without effort.  Staff say he would sit in front of two or even three television shows at the same time, in different languages.  Recently he watched two or three channels at a time in Chinese.

Semyonov never allowed himself to be X-rayed, either at airports or hospitals.

Does something strike you about all this?  Is it just me?  This guy was NOT FUCKING HUMAN!!!!!!!!

No wonder the Chinks killed him off.  Coal truck my ass.

But supposing Semyonov was killed in that “tragic accident”? OK.  I’ve got one question for you guys in Beijing: how’s that autopsy going, boys?  Notice anything, shall we say, different?

Chapter 23 - 12:10pm 30 March – Zhonghua Hotel, Hong Kong

Stone left Virginia Carlisle’s sumptuous rooms on the forty-third floor and took the elevator down.  Interesting what Virginia had said back there about Stone always looking for trouble.  Stone had started this because someone had goaded him with the video of Hooper’s death.  He’d been determined to avenge him by nailing Semyonov.

Perhaps Virginia had a point.   What Virginia didn’t get, however, was Stone’s need to understand – to figure out what was happening.  Semyonov might be dead, but Stone felt farther than ever from figuring out what had gone on in the whole business.

Ground floor.  Stone stepped out of the hotel elevator and strode over to the reception desk.  He was now persona non grata in Hong Kong and China, or would be by the following morning.  If he was going to stick around, it was only polite to stay beneath the radar.  Going back to the hostel was out of the question.  But there was somewhere else to stay where they wouldn’t think to look for him.

 ‘I’d like a room please.  Not sure how many nights,’ he said, offering the passport straight from Carlisle’s large envelope.  He also waved the Amex card at clerk.  ‘I’m with GNN,’ he said.  ‘You can charge the room to the same account as Ms Carlisle.  Room 4314.’

That GNN credit card she had given him was solely for the sole purpose of keeping tabs on him.  Did she really think he’d be stupid enough to use it?  Even here? 

Stone went up to the room, ordered room service and took a shower.  It felt good, it really did.  Stone was almost surprised.  He tried to think when he’d last indulged himself like this.  Like… never. 

--o0o0o--

After a lunch of lobster at Ms Carlisle’s expense, Stone felt like a different man.  In fact he could see how the pampered international traveler like Carlisle came to feel so self-important.  Imagine all that obsequious attention, all that servility, day after day.  Over time, it would do something to a man.  Perhaps even to him.  Stone had often felt that soft luxury was a kind of vice which could ensnare people.  It ought to bring out the puritan curmudgeon in him.  It ought to but... but he’d leave the puritanism for another day.  The fact that Virginia Carlisle was paying for it all made ordering lobster on room service just about acceptable.  And it did taste good.

Finally he got down to business.  Carlisle thought she’d just hired Stone to do a job for her.  All she’d done in reality was give him some cash, a passport, and a charge card he wouldn’t use.  First of all he sent off a little research project to a couple of his students back in England.  Find out the real ownership structure of New Machine Technology Corporation.

Then, Stone had to figure out where he was going next.  He’d come here to link up with Junko Terashima and build the story that would destroy Semyonov.  But not only was Terashima dead, Semyonov was gone too.  So maybe Stone should slope off back to Europe with the bits of Terashima’s files that Virginia had given him.  That would put him on the right side of Zhang’s twenty-four deadline to leave Hong Kong.  He could take himself off and continue his research into the part the Special Circumstances and SearchIgnition were playing in all this.

On the other hand, Hooper had recently had an executioner’s bullet drilled through his skull, and Junko Terashima had been killed in a way that would have won a nod of approval from Charles Manson.  Stone felt in no mood to meekly obey the deadline set by Zhang, or anyone else.  He wasn’t about to go home, just as things were getting interesting.  

As for the option of staying put and doing some more “research” … who was he kidding?  Staying in one place was the riskiest thing he could do.  And there were the questions, sprouting and spawning almost by the hour - where were the weapons coming from?  What was Semyonov doing in China?  And what hell was the Machine, that Semyonov had spent twenty-five billion to get his hands on it?  Those questions were luring him on into Mainland China.  In Hong Kong he faced arrest and possibly another “chat” with Professor Zhang.  In China, on a false passport, Stone could be shot as a spy. 

But then, there had been many times when Stone could have been shot.  It was not the kind of thing that had ever bothered him that much.  Stone took out his laptop, logged into the anonymized NotFutile web site, and began to type. 

http://stone.blogs.notfutile.com

RIP  Junko Terashima

Amid the press ballyhoo surrounding the death of Steven Semyonov, the murder of the young journalist Junko Terashima has barely been mentioned.

Terashima was the reporter who confronted Semyonov about his weapons activities a couple of weeks ago.  She was fired as a troublemaker by GNN, but was so convinced of Semyonov’s guilt that she went off to Hong Kong to confront him.  Lured away from Semyonov’s announcement event, she was murdered in the backstreets of Hong Kong just minutes before Semyonov declared he was giving all his money to the Chinese.

Now Terashima’s files have been leaked to NotFutile.com.  They include two very significant contacts in Mainland China.  To protect the safety of these Chinese citizens, NotFutile cannot reveal their identities.  Nonetheless, we intend to pursue the story Terashima was working on.

It should at least be possible to smoke out Ying Ning using the posting on the NotFutile.com web site.  But it was this Robert Oyang that Stone really wanted – the man Terashima had gone to meet in Hong Kong.  According to Junko's files, Oyang had been Steven Semyonov's closest associate in China.

 Chapter 24 - 10:15am 30 March - Los Angeles, California

Chris Ostrovich had hooked up his laptop to the fifty-inch high definition screen in the office meeting room.  He had on screen the grisly video Stone had sent to Virginia Carlisle.  He was forcing himself to examine it, stopping and running and replaying, and at the same time talking to Virginia on a Skype link.

‘I know, Chris,’ she said, ‘It’s a real video nasty.  Stone sent it this morning, through his anonymized email server.’ 

Ostrovich was a vision technician at the GNN Online web site.  He was watching the footage in Los Angeles.  ‘I’m not sure what’s going on, Ms Carlisle.  I’ve watched parts of it fifty times.  Gonna give me nightmares.’ He flinched as the video began again, and the camera settled on the girl in that crummy hotel room. 

The question was all about the video file format, but it was impossible not to get distracted by the pictures.  The young woman was seen against the grey wall of the hotel room, standing on her toes and stripped naked, hands tied to the light fitting.  That was bad enough, but there was terror in her eyes.  Ostrovich still had to look away when it zoomed onto her face.  The pretty eyes disfigured by pain and fear, staring at someone or something.  And then the ululation and writhing of the poor woman as the man came to her and sprayed her naked body with that weird aerosol – her neck, her breasts, between her legs.  She screamed as he did it.  What was it?  Acid?

‘Try to be forensic about it,’ Stone had said in his email.  ‘Turn off the sound.  Use the zoom function to look at the details in the room.  Don’t look at her face.  It won’t be as bad and you’ll learn more.  There must be some clue as to who, or what...’ 

It sounded a good plan.  Except for the person who had to do it.  Ostrovich had zoomed in, turned off the sound, frozen the frames.  He done all he could to avoid looking at the perverted spectacle.  He zoomed in on the bedside table.  There could be a card or a matchbook he could focus in on.  Something that could give him a clue about the killer maybe.  He zoomed in on the bedside table.  Still quite clear – high res.  Ostrovich zoomed in further.  Now this was strange.  His brow creased in bewilderment and he zoomed in further still.  What the hell? 

Ostrovich finally saw what this Stone fellow had meant.

‘Any ideas Chris?’ Virginia Carlisle said again into the headset.  ‘Stone said there was something weird about the file format or something.’  Ostrovich was barely listening, and he certainly wasn’t looking at the girl’s eyes any more.

‘OK, Ms Carlisle,’ said Ostrovich at length.  ‘Er…  How do I say this?’  He didn’t want to sound stupid in front of a star reporter.  ‘I’ve a video clip here, which plays on some kind of Internet browser-based video player.  Works on any computer in fact.  The file he sent you looks way too small for a clip of around two minutes.  It’s a little over a meg.  Yet I can zoom in, and in, and in...  It seems like I can zoom in as far as I want, and the image is still razor sharp.  Never gets grainy or blocky.  I’ve filled the whole of the fifty-inch monitor here with a close-up image of the ashtray on the table, and it’s still crystal.’

 He felt a little stupid.  ‘I know a few things about online video and television, Ms Carlisle, and aah… you just can’t do that.  I feel like I’m standing in front of a crime scene with a full-size TV camera, looking at whatever I want, in realtime.  Yet all I have is a tiny file sent by email.  This isn’t just a better system than we’re using.  It’s like nothing I’ve seen before.  I’m gonna have to study the file programming format and call you back, Ms Carlisle.’

-oO0Oo-

Ostrovich rang back after two hours.

‘It took me about an hour, but I managed to break into the programming code,’ said Ostrovich.  ‘It’s just that...’ and his voice paused.

‘That what?  What is it?’ asked Carlisle.

 ‘I’ve no idea,’ said the technician, embarrassed. ‘Virginia, this could be a computer program from Mars.  It’s full of advanced mathematics – fractals, I think - but like nothing I’ve ever seen.  It’s not a big program – in fact it’s incredibly compact.  I just... don’t understand it.  I feel like a five-year-old trying to decipher Ancient Greek.  It’s like no programming language, no software I’ve ever seen.  Someone has decided to tear up every programming method, every software architecture that has been used for the last fifty years.’

‘OK, Chris.  Thanks,’ said Virginia Carlisle, with a note of exasperation.   ‘Can’t you even tell where it came from?  If the technology is so unusual, that  at least should give us a clue.’

‘That’s the point,’ said Ostrovich.  ‘It’s not unusual.  At least not in China.  It’s called SmoothVision.  “Grainless, HD video on the Internet with no delays” according to their web site.  Turns out there are over twenty million copies of this program in use, mainly in South China.  The technology tells us nothing whatever about the murder, Virginia.  Except that some programmer in China is way, way ahead of us.  This could revolutionize the whole of television, and it’s made by a firm I never heard of...’

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Carlisle, ‘A Chinese company called New Machine Technology.’

 Chapter 25 - 8:02am 1 April - Hung Hom, Hong Kong

The door to the apartment was open, and Stone pushed his way in.  Light flooded the room, showing off a selection of brutal modern art prints on the wall.  There was the smell of strong coffee.  A Chinese woman was sprawled across the solitary armchair with one leg hanging over the arm.  Skinny black jeans and a black singlet, pulled tight over her breasts.  No Asian subservience from this woman, that was for sure.

She wore a laconic smile, but said nothing, looking at Stone while chewing on crackers from a box, one after the other. Her eyes ran over his tall body like a thirsty woman looking at a long, cold drink.  A smile played around her lips and she made sure her eyes stayed on Stone until he could be in absolutely no doubt that he’d been checked out. 

‘A simple handshake would have sufficed,’ Stone said without looking, and walked over to pour a coffee for himself.  ‘Do I pass inspection?’ 

He glanced at her again.  Yep.  That arrogant smile was unmistakable.

-oO0Oo-

It’s not so difficult to find people if they want to be found.  The signal came from Ying Ning not long after Stone’s posting on the NotFutile.com blog; Stone noticed a new blog entry on the web site.

http://yingning.blogs.notfutile.com

Capitalist plutocrat Steven Semyonov got what he was asking for, and much quicker than he thought.  He was doing deals with the rightist clique that has taken over in Beijing, but they saw him coming.  Took his money like the bourgeois bankers they are, then killed him as soon as he crossed the border

China21 continues to fight the capitalist billionaire clique which has seized control of China.  The struggle goes on until the Revolution is restored. 文化革命万岁! 

No one else would take notice of this post.  China21’s bland language of “struggle”, “bourgeois” and “revolution” meant nothing.  And how retarded would any Chinese have to be in the 21st Century to sign off with “Long Live the Cultural Revolution”?

No.  It wasn’t supposed to mean anything.  Ying Ning had posted on Stone's site to make contact.  After that it was simple to get in touch through the anonymized email server.

Ying Ning.  The woman dressed as a tart when Junko was murdered in the Snake Market.  That arrogant laconic smile was her trade mark.  But she looked better without the lipstick and red wig for sure.  So this was Ying Ning, with the spiky hair and the slim, angular body.  The source of Junko’s information on ShinComm Corporation and New Machine Technologies.

Stone stood while he poured himself a coffee.  Did she think he was going to blush or something?  Her eyes stayed on him, drinking him in, and who knows what she was thinking.

 ‘Did you learn about Semyonov by sipping wine with his capitalist cronies?’ she asked.  ‘Did he explain about his weapons factories?  No?  Or did you learn more from your visit with Professor Zhang?’

‘I found out more than you think,’ he said.  ‘But Junko’s file tells me you’re the expert.  So you can tell me, since you bought me here.’ 

‘OK.  I tell you one thing.  They will execute you, Stone,’ she said, coolly.  ‘Zhang gave you one day to leave Hong Kong, but you are still here.  If Gong An finds you in China, you will be a spy and you will be shot.  Again.  But this time it will be the last.’

She’d spotted the bullet wound scar just above his elbow, then.  ‘What about you?’ said Stone.  ‘They shoot subversives like you, don’t they?  Or is it a prison camp in Qinghai?’

 ‘Could be.’ She shrugged.  ‘But I know what I’m doing.  I have the contacts, and I am Chinese.  For yellow-haired yang guizi like you,’ she used a racist term for a foreigner, ‘A man of a metre eighty-eight – not so easy to hide in China.’

‘Cool,’ said Stone.  His calm, grey eyes searched into her.  ‘Sounds like you’re the person I need to get me into China.  Help me blend in.’

Ying Ning was still lounging back, one leg over the arm of the chair.  She chose that point to take out a carton of cigarettes and tap it on the arm of the chair, then carefully take a cigarette and begin to smoke.  It was like Ying Ning was marking her territory.  ‘I’m the right girl for a lot of things,’ she replied.  Stone could see she was thinking.  Making a decision in her mind.  ‘You ready for a holiday in Jiangsu province, Mr Shi-tou?’

Shi-tou?   What did that mean?  Stone already knew his Chinese wasn’t up to much.  Shi-tou?   It meant a stone, or a piece of stone.  Something like that.

 She helped him out, smiling with disdain. ‘It means Rock-head,’ she said, and breathed out a cloud of cigarette smoke.  ‘I heard you learned some Chinese, Rockhead.  But you didn’t study hard, I guess.  Shi-tou sounds funny in English also, no?’

Stone laughed back into her black eyes.  He liked her already.  He ran his gaze for a second over her hips.  The ones he remembered from the leather miniskirt in the Snake Market.  ‘Come on then, Cat-Woman,’ he said.  ‘I may just let you come along.  We’re going to China to meet a man called Robert Oyang.  But first you need to tell me all you know about Semyonov and ShinComm Corporation.’

He turned to get more coffee.  Ying Ning lounged in the chair and checked him out from behind, then stubbed out her cigarette in deliberate fashion and walked up behind him.  Pulled at his shirt to turn him around to face her.

‘You haven’t explained why you came here, Rockhead,’ she said.  ‘You have not been honest before we go any further.’

‘I told you.  I want to find out about what Semyonov was doing at ShinComm.’

‘You lie,’ she said.  ‘You are looking for the Machine.  Everybody is looking for the Machine.’ 

She was right of course.

Chapter 26 - 9:40am 1 April - Hung Hom, Hong Kong

As soon as Ying Ning contacted Stone through NotFutile.com, the question had come into Stone’s mind.  Why was Ying Ning happy to have Stone alongside her in her campaigns against “China’s billionaire clique”?  Why should she even trust him?

So Stone had done some background work on Ying Ning before he went to find her in that apartment.  Even he would have to say what he found out was fascinating.  

Ying Ning was an enigma.  It wasn’t Ying Ning’s clever arrogance, her sarcasm, her plume of spiky black hair, her sexy angular body or that trademark crooked smile that made her mysterious.  It wasn’t just her background story of bad-luck, suffering and violence.  Or where on earth she found the information she used to expose and ridicule all those newly-rich businessmen and factory owners she was at war with.  All that was understandable.  It was just her.  Her closedness.  Stone sensed Ying Ning had hidden depths, but no one was going to see them.

After a couple of web searches, Stone had realised that Ying Ning was quite a famous individual  - in fact she was a cult figure in China.  China lacks a “free” press in the Western sense, but has a thriving scene of micro-bloggers.  Literally millions of them, and millions more who read the blogs.  Ying Ning and her banned protest organization, China21, were very well known, in an electronic-word-of-mouth way that can’t be replicated in the West.  For the simple reason that they were banned. 

Ying Ning was not a real name of course.  As soon as she posted it on the NotFutile.com site, that was obvious.  But this wasn’t just any made-up name.  Ying Ning was a girl in a Chinese fairy tale. The Fox Girl.   The fictional Ying Ning was a shape-changer girl who alternates between being a fox and a beautiful girl.   Apparently, Fox Girls are not uncommon in Chinese and Japanese fairytales, and Ying Ning was one of the best known.   She was not only beautiful.  She used her powers, magical and sexual, to entrance and deceive.  This Fox Girl name of Ying Ning, it turned out, was instantly memorable in China.  Almost as if Stone had called himself “Robin Hood”.  No one would forget it.  The modern Ying Ning was known across China on blogs and forums, and she was already a myth in her own right.

The Chinese authorities took a less charitable view of the name Ying Ning, however.  The official Chinese news site Xinhua stated that Ying Ning was “one of the criminal class”.  In China “criminal” does not mean what it does in the West.  China is a harsh country, where social control is tight, and resort to the firing squad commonplace.  The Chinese “criminal class” aren’t the same as the lesser enemies of the state such as “dissidents” or “intellectuals”.  Certainly not Robin Hood types.  They’re desperate thugs with a life expectancy measured in weeks. 

So Stone was impressed by Ying Ning, coming and going, travelling around China like a will-o-the-wisp.  Ying Ning had long since discarded her real name and ran with a bunch of false identities.  That was her real achievement and she wouldn’t tell anyone how she’d done it.  No one knew her real name.  In a country of over a billion, the ID card number is the bedrock of control.  In China you can’t fart without an ID card number, but she had cheated that.  She’d turned up all over China in the last two years, making her blogs and videos about billionaires and plutocrats, confronting corrupt officials online, and holding up China’s new class of super-rich to ridicule.  Her campaign about the suicide rates amongst the workers at ShinComm had even made it through to the New York Times.

It wasn’t just satire, either.  There was a hard edge to what Ying Ning did.   A number of people had been arrested on the back of her anti-corruption campaigns.  One had been shot.

Yet it was the Fox Girl name that created the Ying Ning aura more than anything.  She was her own woman, a force of one – similar to Stone in the way she operated – and she liked to keep people guessing.

Why she might want to have Stone on her side was anyone’s guess.  Ying Ning must think he was “useful”.  She would have researched Stone since she met him in the Snake Market.  Even before that.  She must think he would be useful to her, just like Junko Terashima had been useful to her.  She might want to use him and the NotFutile.com site for publicity.  After all she had no chance whatsoever of putting up web pages in China that weren’t liable to be taken down just hours after they’d gone live.  Then there was the weapons aspect.  Through NotFutile.com, Stone himself showed a macabre level of understanding of weapons systems.   It took an oddly perverted mindset to understand the people who had dreamed these weapons up, and Stone had that.  Perhaps that’s why she needed him.

Stone’s cool rational core knew he’d have to be wary of Ying Ning.  Stone always worked better alone, relying on himself, shunning the limelight.  But Stone couldn’t fail to be impressed by Ying Ning.  All she’d done and the way she’d done it.  She was like an opposite version of him.  Female and Chinese, where he was European and male.  And where Stone used Western laws on openness and free speech to evade his enemies, Ying Ning did her stuff in spite of the laws in China. 

Stone’s rational mind urged caution, but he wanted to learn more.

-oO0Oo-

Stone had been surprised that Ying Ning had arranged to meet in her own apartment – and of course she hadn’t.  Ying Ning had Stone walk separately to another tower block ten minutes away, no doubt having him followed as she did so.  It was broiling mid-morning in Kowloon, and it ought to be quiet.  Nonetheless there must be two hundred Chinese people on each hundred metre stretch of sidewalk.  More on the backstreets in the shade.  Street vendors, awnings, hawkers, desultory market stalls.  There was no chance of Stone spotting his follower here, and he gave up the effort.  Stone made it to the tower block as arranged and walked up an airless stairwell for eight stories. 

Ying Ning opened the door.  This must be her real place, entirely different from the place where they’d met.  The apartment was empty, save some bare sticks of furniture and two of Ying Ning’s comrades from China21.  There were introduced as Bao An, the tall biker in the shades, and Lin Xiaohong, shorter, with a shaven head.  There really was nothing in that place.  Kept that way no doubt so that Ying Ning could move on and there would be no evidence of what she was up to.

The room stank of stale smoke, and the two men had on the usual Hong Kong garb of trouser-legs turned up from the ankle, flip-flops and undershirts.  They sat around looking at the ceiling.  It smelt like a surfeit of Chinese-brand whiskey the night before had dulled their senses. 

Ying Ning had wasted no time setting up a laptop to do whatever it was she was going to do.  It looked like some kind of presentation.   

So this was it?  China21?  Four people to protest the exploitation the Chinese workers, the illegal sale weapons and “Semyonov’s capitalist dogs”.  Ying Ning stood in the middle, hand on hip.  She pulled another cigarette from her bag, and a lighter decorated with an image of Mao Zedong.  Then she got on with it, referring occasionally to the laptop and to a file marked “ShinComm” on the table.  Stone was barely listening to her at first.  He was checking out his situation.

Four people?  And that was including Stone.  In truth, Ying Ning was China21.  The two guys were her lapdogs, in it for whatever reasons.   Idealistic or more likely  bewitched by Ying Ning.   

Ying Ning looked every inch an arrogant, opinionated, intellectual bitch, in her tight-fitted top and her black jeans.  Stone let his eyes flit over her once more.    A slight ripple of muscle in her legs.  She sensed him looking, but made no reaction at all. 

Ying Ning talked on, but Stone interrupted. ‘We need to talk about the weapons production at ShinComm,’ he said bluntly.  ‘ShinComm is a maker of Western products, yes?  Mostly designed in USA and Japan.  Smartphones, notebook computers, MP3, electronics, semi-conductor.  ShinComm has quarter of a million workers in a city called Dongguan in the South, and as many at a place called Factory City in Shanghai.  Work is hard, the pay not bad…now.’

That last remark was for Ying Ning.  It had been her campaign that had embarrassed ShinComm in the Western media and forced a forty percent pay increase.

She was immune to flattery however.  ‘You miss the point,’ said Ying Ning. ‘ShinComm is not typical Chinese factory.  Chinese factory works to plans.  Chinese factory does not have ideas.  ShinComm was founded only five years ago, and subsidiary New Machine Technology only one year ago.  Already New Machine makes its own products.  In one year, it made applications for thirty-five patents in the United States.  Also other technology come from ShinComm and New Machine, without even bother to patent.  Including many weapon technology.  This is real mystery about ShinComm.’

Stone picked up the file.  Ying Ning was talking up the weapons angle – and that was probably why she wanted Stone’s help.  But already it was plain to Stone that Ying Ning was right.  ShinComm was a lot more interesting than just the weapons angle.  It was no ordinary Chinese firm.  In fact it was no ordinary firm at all.  Ying Ning’s file detailed one amazing technology after another.  New Machine and ShinComm were a conveyor belt of new technology.  And Chinese firms just weren’t like that.

Another odd thing in the file was the randomness of it all.  Innovations in so many different areas.  Some stuff went to patent, some didn’t.  The SmoothVision video software, with its seemingly limitless resolution – there was no patent, no copyright for that.  It had practically been given away.  Yet Virginia Carlisle’s man had said it was based on fractal mathematics, with no similarities whatever to any other software.  A fundamental innovation.

‘Take this example,’ Ying Ning went on, and she produced a baggie containing what appeared to be about fifty grams of sugar.  She poured a little pile out onto the table.  She licked the tip of her finger, dipped it in the sugar, then tasted it.  ‘Go ahead.  Try,’ she said.

Stone tasted it.  Sure enough, the sweet, bland taste of refined sugar.   

Bao An appeared with a spoon.  Ying Ning crushed the little pile of sugar granules with the back of the spoon, turning them into a thin white powder, then licked her finger once more, looking at Stone in an oddly provocative way.  She gestured him to taste it again. 

‘Cocaine?’ said Stone.  Stone licked his finger and tasted once more.  ‘I got a bitter aftertaste on my teeth back there, after the sugar.  But no odour or taste.  Cocaine, yes?’ 

‘Not bad, Rockhead.’  Ying Ning was impressed  ‘Yes.  Cocaine – high quality too.  Another ShinComm idea.  But how do they do it?’

‘The real question is why,’ said Stone interrupting.  ‘Why do they do it?  This technology is used to smuggle cocaine to China,’ he said.  ‘It says here in the file they use a nanotech system to coat the drug with a layer of sugar only one molecule thick.’  The significance was just sinking in with Stone as he spoke.  This was an incredible process, and light years ahead of the big food companies.  Worth billions.  Food companies could coat healthy food in a nanotech layer of sugar, and they would have the perfect low calorie foods.  But here it was, and not even patented.  All that work to disguise cocaine for smugglers?  Made no sense.  This technology was being given away, just like the SmoothVision digital video. 

Stone flipped though the file on the table.  Full of this stuff.  His favourite was the car – like the one he had seen driven by Semyonov, gliding past with preternatural acceleration as Semyonov left the party.  Another piece of outrageous technology.  The news clipping made out that Semyonov had driven from Beijing to Shanghai in that electric sports car.  A thousand miles, without charging it once.  Stone had assumed it was bullshit when he first read it.  But maybe it wasn’t.  It could revolutionize the car industry, yet Semyonov was just driving around in a prototype, and doing nothing with the technology. 

‘Do you see what this means?’ Stone said.  ‘All of this work has been traced to New Machine and ShinComm, the corporation which worked with Steven Semyonov in China.  But where is the innovation coming from?  Where are the labs?’

Ying Ning flicked on the computer.    She pointed to the screen, and zoomed in on a photo of a factory unit.  Perfect resolution, Stone noticed.  SmoothVision again.

‘This is ShinComm at Dongguan,’ explained Ying Ning.  ‘Less than three hundred kilometres from here.  Giant facility, two hundred fifty thousand workers, but…’  Ying Ning paused.  ‘But nothing is happening in Dongguan.  I have local people watching this place.  I have contacts in factory.  They make only phones, computers and semiconductors, All design in America.  Same thing at ShinComm Factory City in Shanghai.’  Ying Ning flicked through images of the two giant factory sites.  ‘No research workers, no labs.  The ideas are coming from a secret facility.  Semyonov and his capitalist whores at ShinComm are selling Chinese secrets for quick money.’

‘Sorry to spoil your story,’ said Stone.  ‘But why would Semyonov do it for the money?  He just committed twenty-five billion to the corporation.  And he’s also dead.’  Ying Ning looked at him.  ‘Bank of China confirmed they received every penny of Semyonov’s money.  They said so in public.  So the question is: why?  Why did Semyonov pay that money?’

‘And where does the technology come from?’ said Ying Ning.  ‘Including weapons?’

 Ying Ning paused, as if she were unsure whether to say something.  Then she took out her Mao Zedong lighter and lit another cigarette, again looking perplexed. 

‘You want to tell us something?’ asked Stone.

Another slide came up on the screen.  ‘This photo was sent to Junko Terashima,’ she said.  ‘From a contact high up in ShinComm, called Oyang.  But we don’t know where this place is.  Junko said she didn’t know.  But Oyang claimed that’s where the technology is coming from.’  It was a photo of a high electric fence, with seemingly nothing behind it.  Stone leaned forward to the screen and zoomed in once more.  No lab or factory, just a few small huts in the distance, with rolling, parched landscape behind, and a clear blue sky, like it was in a desert.  The fence was four metres high, electrified, with cameras.   It was meant to look menacing.

‘Junko received this photo in USA from Oyang.  That is why she comes to Hong Kong.’ said Ying Ning, playing with her Communist cigarette lighter.  ‘And Junko say this place is the reason why Semyonov came to China.’

‘This is the Machine?’ asked Stone.

Ying Ning nodded.  ‘Oyang sent her this photo,’ she said.  ‘He said it was the reason Semyonov came to China.’

‘And it was the reason Junko came to Hong Kong.  But now she’s dead, and so is Semyonov,’ said Stone.

Ying Ning nodded.

‘Sounds like we need to have a chat with your Mr Oyang,’ said Stone.

Ying Ning laughed and shook her head.  ‘Oyang?  And finish up like Junko?  Maybe you are stupid, Rockhead.  But I take you to Shanghai to show you something.  You will be surprised.’ 

 Chapter 27 - 7:05pm 31 March Special Circumstances Training Facility, Southern California

Ekström froze the video clip on his widescreen monitor at two minutes thirty-three seconds, and scribbled some notes on his iPad.  He hated deskwork as a rule – but this wasn’t so bad.  He zoomed with the SmoothVision slider, and looked at the range indicator on the weapon.  780 meters to the wall of the Afghan compound.  The infrasound weapon was run at 95 per cent power with focused beam for 85 seconds.

He resumed the video and slid forward to eleven minutes on the clip, to see the first results of the firing.  Two kids lying prone in a dusty lane, a woman in her twenties and a young girl in a doorway, an old man with a donkey collapsed on top of him.  Then a video of the inside one of the “dwellings”, as he was meant to call them.  Shitholes more like. The video showed a woman lying half-naked in a scuzzy bedroom with clay walls. 

And so on.  In the eight and a half minutes between the weapon discharge at a range of nearly half a mile, and his men reaching the site, the whole village had stayed incapacitated.  Four had been killed by the eighty-five second burst.  Three children under five, including one breast-feeding baby lying with his inert mother, and an elderly man.  These small children had suffered major hemorrhage in the ears and lungs.  They had died from inhalation of blood, with no one able to help them.

Ekström had ordered the bodies brought from the village and laid out together under the trees.  The first sign of recovery from the villagers was at twelve minutes, and the last at twenty-two.

Forty-four adult villagers and adolescents had been used for the second phase of the work.  They had been tied in pairs to trees, and exposed to the weapon at a range of 250 metres through a one metre thick compound wall.  Varying power discharges and exposure times were tested, with the figures written neatly on their foreheads in black marker pen.  Those who survived the test, by reason of having a lower dose of the sound weapon, Ekström personally dispatched them with a single shot of his .22 automatic to the forehead, after ensuring their heart function and blood pressure had been recorded, along with their time of exposure, in black permanent marker on their chests.

The mean exposure of the infrasound weapon required for human adult death was 113 seconds, with a standard deviation of 25 seconds

Details of non-human deaths were not recorded, which in hindsight had been an error.  The men responsible for letting the two Afghan boys escape were docked two days pay each.  The village was declared sterile of native Afghans at 13:34 in the afternoon and the airstrike to dispose of the collateral bodies called at 14:13.  Ekström ordered his men to move out 14:07, returning with three men on foot at 14:33 to verify that the bodies had been destroyed.

Though he enjoyed the detail and neatness of a job well done, Ekström would be lying if he said he enjoyed anything more than the incendiary weapon striking at the bodies through the line of trees.  He watched it a dozen times, zooming in and out.  In real time and in slow motion, Ekström watched the trees waving gracefully in the firestorm, and the skin peeling back from the faces of his victims.  Most gratifying.

   Sometimes he had to pinch himself.  Did he really get paid to do this?  It was his dream job.

Chapter 28 - 12:40pm 1 April - Hung Hom, Hong Kong

Ying Ning sat astride Stone’s lap, her face centimetres from his. ‘Try not to become excited,’ she said with casual irony, massaging her butt into his groin. It was another of her "tests".  Stone was sitting in a chair with Ying Ning facing him, holding a hypodermic syringe.  He closed his eyes once more as the Chinese girl rubbed his brow with alcohol gel, and then jabbed the needle in.

‘You nice and still, Rockhead,’ she said.  ‘Bao An wriggles like a girl!’

‘I bet you do too,’ said Stone.

Ying Ning didn’t respond to this kind of thing.  She held her hand steady with the needle.   Considering she was smoking at the same time.  The injections were to create swelling under the eyebrows, lips and chin.  Just enough to fool the facial recognition systems they would encounter at all points of entry to the People’s Republic.  Ying Ning, Stone and the two Chinese lads would all travel on false ID’s. 

Ying Ning was a hard-bitten operator.  Difficult for Stone to read, with a flint-hard exterior.  She said nothing about herself, and made no attempt to establish a connection with Stone.  Sure, she used her sexuality, and she tried to ridicule him.  But that was just an attempt to unsettle him – a defence mechanism.  At best she flirted – but then so do lots of insecure people.  Stone had no human connection with Ying Ning at all, whereas with Carlisle, who he despised, that connection was instant. 

And it had to be like that.  What Ying Ning was doing was dangerous.  China21 was illegal, and Ying Ning would be executed, probably in public, if she was caught breaking the rules.  China is a tough country, run from the top.    Everyone knows the rules, and individuals don’t matter that much.  The greater good always comes first.  People know the penalties for stepping out of line, and mostly they don’t do it. 

Stone was getting the measure of Ying Ning, and could only guess she had some kind of death wish.  Mere idealism wasn’t enough for what she was doing.  She was now taking a further step, beyond her tirades against capitalists and profiteers, to challenge the very core of what ShinComm and the Chinese state were up to.  It was dangerous stuff.

As for Stone.  He’d supposedly been deported, back to England.  Now he was using a false ID and setting out into Mainland China in search of Oyang – whose last friendship group, comprising Semyonov and Terashima, had not exactly fared too well. 

There was also the issue of Professor Zhang and the Gong An.  Stone could find himself “disappeared” if they caught up with him in China.

As Ying Ning sat on his knee, flirting and making the injections, it was clear that Ying Ning enjoyed the danger.  She was doing this for the same reason as Stone.  For all the repressed anger, even guilt, Stone felt about Hooper, he was now being swept along by the desire to find out about Semyonov, to find out about the Machine.  Because Stone got off on this stuff in the same way that Ying Ning did.

Ying Ning explained the first part of the plan as she worked.  ‘You will travel to Shanghai, by ship this evening from Hong Kong direct to Shanghai.  Takes thirty-six hours.  You will be my boyfriend - Jonah Edward Richards, from Chicago.’ That was the name in the passport Carlisle had given him. 

Ying Ning stung another injection into Stone’s upper lip, while playfully blowing smoke rings above his head.  Yep.  Definitely enjoying this.  

‘In Shanghai I need to show you something,’ said Ying Ning.

‘Show me what?’

‘I can’t say.  But you’ll see why I need your help.’

That was interesting.  Ying Ning never asked for help.  She was the one with a plan, telling her lapdogs what to do.

‘What about Oyang?’ asked Stone.  ‘He’s the only one we can get to who knows about the Machine, and…’ 

Ying Ning practically snorted.  ‘You trust Oyang?’

‘Of course I don’t trust him,’ said Stone.  ‘But he’s a senior director of ShinComm, and he was the closest person to Semyonov.   We can use him for information.  Junko’s file says he trained as a Chinese diplomat.  He opened Semyonov’s first business contacts in China and became Semyonov’s righthand man in China with ShinComm.’

‘Oyang’s the worst kind of Chinese,’ Ying Ning spat back.  ‘Will do anything for money.’

‘We’ve got to try him,’ said Stone.  ‘Oyang was Semyonov’s best friend.  And since Semyonov was killed, my bet is he’ll talk.’

Ying Ning was still sitting in Stone’s lap.  She looked directly into Stone’s cool grey eyes for a second, her face screwed up and skeptical.  ‘Oyang is a “naked official”,’ she said.  ‘That means a corrupt Chinese official who has moved his family to another country.  He moved his family to Switzerland, so he can escape at any time.’

‘So you think Oyang is a filthy, capitalist running dog,’ said Stone.  ‘You say that about everyone with money.  Not a reason to ignore him.’

‘We talk about it in Shanghai.  Like I said, I have something to show you.’  She tapped her finger lightly on the tip of his nose.  The kind of thing a love-struck girl would do, but entirely bogus. 

Fascinating.  Stone could see Ying Ning loved the danger just as much as he did.  That was why, behind all Ying Ning’s bogus flirting, there was a vibe of attraction resonating between them.

-oO0Oo-

When Stone got back to the pleasant surroundings of the Zhonghua Hotel that evening, the game suddenly changed.  There was a message on the NotFutile.com anonymized email server. 

Meet me tomorrow.  ShinComm Tower, fifty-sixth floor.

It was Oyang.  Forget Ying Ning’s plan of thirty-six hours on a boat.  The next morning Stone went to the airport and paid cash for a flight to Shanghai.  He’d catch up with Ying Ning if and when.

Chapter 29 - 10:50pm 2 April – Pudong International Airport, Shanghai, China

Walking away out of the airport terminal, it felt like Hong Kong again - sticky, hazy heat but none of the greenery.  In the distance stood the skyscrapers of Shanghai.  Seventy or eighty stories in novel but uninspiring shapes.  The hot breeze tugged at Stone’s shirt and his unruly hair. 

Stone instinctively looked around to see if he was being followed.  His calm eyes flicked and scanned, as they had a hundred times before.  But just like Hong Kong, with crowds and teeming traffic on all sides, it was impossible.  He joined the line for a cab.  If someone followed him in a car it would be easier to spot.

‘Zhongxin,’ he said to the driver.  The centre.  Deliberately vague.  It would take a while in this traffic and the driver was happy enough.  Stone looked from the window at the shops and the signage – some neon and glitzy, some shabby and hand-painted.  The Chinese characters were communist simplified versions, easier to understand than in Hong Kong.  24 Hour Printing/Copying.  Ten Thousand Miles of Cloud – Hunan Restaurant.  Learn English – Guaranteed Good Job.  Learn Computers - Guaranteed Good Job.  1 Minute Pregnancy test, 1 Hour Abortion, Ultrasound for Sex of Baby.

Stone used the time to look again through Junko Terashima’s notes about Oyang.

It seemed Robert Oyang had contacted Terashima, the day after her ill-starred attempt to confront Semyonov at the press conference back in San Jose.  She’d obviously made an impression, and Oyang had sent her the photo of “the Machine”, the photo Ying Ning had showed him that looked like a patch of bare desert.  The photo that had made Junko come over to Hong Kong.

It was after that “ShinComm people” lured Junko to her death in the Snake Market.  Oyang could have been complicit in that.  On the other hand, the bad guys who’d done away with Semyonov could have done it to keep Terashima from talking to Oyang.  Stone needed to get a handle on the kind of guy Oyang was.  Firstly Oyang hadn’t done anything shifty with Stone.  He wanted to meet at his office.  ShinComm Tower, fifty-sixth floor.  The meeting itself looked OK.  Stone was feeling good about it.  The meeting with Robert Oyang was his kind of thing.  He loved confronting corporate suits, and this time there was a danger element thrown in. 

Stone looked around out of the car windows.  They were still there.   Two people on scooters behind the car, both wearing full-face helmets.  No one wears those helmets in sweltering Shanghai.  No one at all.  They could be tailing him.

It could be professor Zhang’s Gong An which was tracking him – or it could be ShinComm themselves.  It was an enormous corporation with huge reach, especially in Shanghai.  Either way, ShinComm would know about Stone – his web site, his campaigns, his pursuit of Semyonov, the business in Afghanistan.  And so would Oyang.

The taxi stopped again.  Another set of lights in the smoggy humidity.  There were at least two, possibly three men back there following him.  Stone looked to the side, to another shop window full of job ads.  Wanted female under 21 – must know computers.  Wanted male over 1.70 m – must be able to accept hardship, work long hours.  Stone wound up the windows and asked the driver to start the aircon.  The guy did nothing but Stone kept the windows shut in any case.  The backseat was covered in thick, protective plastic, burning hot.  Stone positioned himself to see through the rear-view mirror.

Stone looked again at the facts about Oyang.  Thirty-four.  Highly intelligent.  Educated at the elite Beijing Foreign Language Institute.  He worked as a diplomat first in Nigeria, then he went to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco.

Chinese diplomats are high achievers.  Their education system is one round after another of competitive exams to reach the next level – from middle school onwards.  Oyang must have a first-class brain to go as far as he had done.

According to Ying Ning, Oyang’s career stalled in the US, because he was too westernised, not a real communist.  From Junko’s file, however, Stone could see no evidence of career problems.  Maybe Ying Ning just didn’t like him.

Certainly Oyang was westernised, though.  By the look of it, during his time in San Francisco, he craved recognition as some kind of Bay Area intellectual.   Oyang spoke French and Italian, fluently it was said.  He affected to like expensive wine, and also art.  He was popular in San Francisco for his liberal views on democracy and politics.  Not your average Chinese guy.

Stone’s mind wandered to the image of Zhang – also a Chinese official, but the very antithesis of this Oyang. 

Stone read on in Junko’s notes.  Oyang may speak Italian and buy expensive wine, but it could be just a front, a means to an end.  He was a charmer, and he was doing all those things as part of his job.

Oyang had been wasted in Nigeria, but he was the perfect man for the Chinese to send to Silicon Valley and charm Californian technologists into joining China’s research projects.  According to Junko’s notes, he soon became known to the leading lights in Silicon Valley.  He must have thought he’d hit the motherlode when he got to meet Semyonov.

It was fun to look at Junko’s neatly written notes, and the comments Ying Ning had scrawled over them in a purple pen.  Junko obviously thought Oyang was “a good man”.  It was like he’d managed to charm Junko too.  She noted that Oyang “spoke out in favour of workers’ rights in ShinComm”. 

Ying Ning scribbled over this in English, “Oyang = director ShinComm.  Oyang talk worker rights = hypocrite bullshit.”

Ying Ning took everyone for a hypocrite.  But then, Oyang seemed like a master at telling people what they wanted to hear.  Talks human rights in California.  In Beijing – nada.  Meanwhile he’s shipping his family off to Switzerland. The phrase “hypocrite bullshit” sounded right on the money in this instance.

They cab sped up, down the tunnel under the river.  This was a danger area, the most likely site of  “Tragic Accident Kills Tourist”.  Stone craned his neck around.  The two scooters were definitely there, one carrying a passenger.  The danger would come if a scooter passed them.  Someone could blind the driver with a laser.  Like all Chinese cabs, this one had no seat belts, and the driver was doing sixty or seventy now they were out of the traffic.

They emerged from the tunnel into the open spaces and seventy storey buildings of the Pudong district.  A stark contrast to the organic clog across the river.  Nearly there. 

Anyhow, what did Oyang want with Stone?  Oyang had been Semyonov’s man, and now Semyonov was dead.  Oyang might simply want to find out what Stone knew, and leave it at that.  Or he might want to throw out information about Semyonov’s death, using Stone and his anonymous site.  This was the kind of thing Stone loved.  And since Oyang was known to be highly charming and intelligent, Stone would need to be on his mettle.

  The taxi slowed up at the side of the road.  The driver said nothing, but looked sourly out of the window at the crowds of the unemployed hanging around.  Unmistakably country folk, from their walnut brown faces and their clothes.  Men in ancient suits, women in coolie hats and paddy field rubber boots.  Behind them was a shiny sign with the ShinComm logo, and the sixty stories of the ShinComm Tower.  They’d arrived.

‘Farmers, look for work,’ said the driver.

Stone looked again.  Farmers?  They were desperate peasants, migrants hustling for work in the towering offices.  The well-dressed office workers paid them no attention whatsoever.  Like they didn’t exist.

‘Watch out for farmers,’ repeated the driver, eyeing the crowd with contempt from the side window.   ‘No stop here.’

There must be five hundred peasants out there.  Some kind of gangmaster had appeared by the tower.  The crowd were shouting, shoving, begging for work.  Stone made the driver stop and paid him.  He wasn’t going to let the man’s distaste for this mob delay him.  He got out, then began to push round the back of the car.  Then he began to move with difficulty through the crowd toward the front door of the tower.  It was slow going.  The farther he got the more peasants there were. 

Stone became aware of someone moving in the crowd behind him.  Not one of the “farmers” – he was wearing a black T-shirt.  Stone skirted the toward the side of the mob, his senses on full alert. Definitely someone moving fast behind him, too – perhaps two of them.  He should confront them, they were close, he wanted to… 

He span, catching one guy an elbow in the temple.  The bone-on-bone impact shakes the brain in the skull and stuns.  The chaos was such that no one even looked round in the crowd.  Someone grabbed at his bag behind him.  Stone swivelled back.  A woman was screaming, her hair flailing above the crowd.  What the hell?  She screamed again, hysterically, as Stone reached her. 

Too late he realised.  He half-turned.  There was a gun, its muzzle suddenly nestling in his spine.  The woman looked straight at him, suddenly calm.  A set-up.  The taxi had driven away.   Stone was shoved along at gunpoint through the crowd.  It had all taken only a few seconds.  A black van appeared in the heart of the mob.  Stone was forced in. 

The peasant mob banged on the side panels of the van as it moved off. 

Chapter 30 - 12:04pm 2 April - Shanghai, China

    ‘Strip!’ he barked.  ‘I say all the clothes off!’

The Chinese guy in the black T-shirt had exchanged the small handgun he used to capture Stone in the crowd of peasants.  He was now holding an AK47, as were the other two Chinese in the back of the van.  It seemed like overkill at a range of two and a half metres.

The van had pulled away from the ShinComm Tower and driven for five minutes.  Now it had stopped and Stone was being made to strip.   

‘I say all the clothes!’ he shouted again.  ‘And stand up!’

There are ways of doing these things.  This was the wrong way.  OK - they were checking for RFID chips, which could be tracked.  fair enough, but one of the Chinese lads was filming it on his phone, his tongue sticking gleefully in his cheek.  Stone kicked his clothes across the van.  Accidentally smashing the phone against the side of the van in the process.

‘Sorry.’

As Stone expected, the boss-man of the three scanned the pile of clothes with the RFID detector, rummaging through a couple of times.  Nothing.  The boss-man shrugged.  He banged a couple of times on the side of the van, and they moved off again, Stone sitting unclothed on the floor of the van. 

‘Is this what they mean by “coming naked to the conference table”?’ said Stone to the boss-man.  Smart words, but he felt pretty stupid.

An hour and twenty minutes later he was at a large villa, by the look of it well outside the city of Shanghai.  The boss-man threw him something to wear.  Swim shorts.  The shorts were the right size.  Oyang had done his homework on Stone.

The sky was clear and hot.  Stone was led through two sets of gates and around the back of the house, where there was a large swimming pool, two tennis courts and huge garden secluded by high stands of trees and bamboo.  There were changing rooms and what looked like an outdoor kitchen.  Just your regular Chinese family home then. 

A Chinese man lay on a lounger reading the Wall Street Journal in English.  There was a young woman by him in the tiniest of bikinis.

‘Oyang,’ said Stone, strolling up to him.  ‘So kind of your men to collect me.  As you can see, I found the time to change en route.’

‘After what has happened to my good friend Semyonov, Mr Stone, I have to take precautions,’ said Oyang, putting down his Wall Street Journal.  ‘It is so easy to plant tracking or bugging devices and,’ said Oyang with a sickly smile, ‘My men wanted to body search you also, but…’

‘But they valued their front teeth,’ said Stone, staring Oyang in the eye.  Stone had thought Oyang would be charming but steely, making veiled threats in order to keep the upper hand in the conversation.  Instead, on first impressions, he was simply a creep.  He kept glancing at that tiny bikini, though the girl didn’t seem to mind.

Oyang asked a flunkey for drinks, and made small talk until they arrived.  At one point he turned to the shapely girl beside him, and muttered, ‘Daijobu?’

Stone’s swiveled towards the girl – it couldn’t be, could it?  Oyang had just spoken Japanese to her.  Stone thought of Junko at the press conference, and in Ekström’s sick video.

It wasn’t Junko, of course it wasn’t, but it was creepy nonetheless.  After what had happened Oyang had a half-naked Japanese girl with him.  She didn’t look up - seemed unaware of it.  And as Oyang chatted in fluent English, and occasionally Japanese, it was clear he had the natural manners of a diplomat.  He looked a little older than thirty-four, tall and thin, with sparse hair that had been dyed a greasy black.  One of those men who looks elegant in a suit, but scrawny and out of shape in a bathing suit.  At the moment he had on tennis gear.  Shorts, shirt, tennis shoes – all the best brands, the highest quality, but the clothes hung off him untidily. 

Oyang had a definite sparkle of intelligence though, and the self-confidence that flows from a first class brain, skill with languages and the knowledge that he’d clawed his way to the top in the most populous country on earth.  He was no faker, Robert Oyang. 

Stone could see why Junko had liked Oyang - believed every word he said.  And the fact that he was credible was no reason to assume he was phony, as Ying Ning had done.

Oyang explained that the Chinese government had tasked him, as a bright young diplomat in California, to make friends with influential young figures in Silicon Valley and make assessments of them and their technology.  At that time, though barely in his twenties, Semyonov was already one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, rising to pretty much the top of the tree.

‘And what was your assessment of Semyonov?’ asked Stone.  ‘You must have got close to him?’

‘As close as anyone, yes.  But it is not possible to fly too close to the sun,’ said Oyang wistfully.    ‘Semyonov was not like the others.  The others were very intelligent people who were driven, worked hard and had some luck.  Semyonov was different.  A quite extraordinary man.’

‘In what way extraordinary?  More intelligent?’

‘Certainly he was more intelligent.  And the others had luck, sometimes a lot of luck.  It would surprise a lot of people to learn that Semyonov had no luck at all, but he couldn’t fail.  You see there was a depth to his intelligence, he was not like other men,’ said Oyang.  ‘Firstly, it was like talking to a man of great age, who had learned so many things.  But not only facts and languages and technology.  It was understanding.  To be with Semyonov was to see only the surface of a deep ocean of understanding.  How far can a man see into the ocean?  Five or six metres, even in the clearest water.  Yet when he looked at other people, Semyonov was able to divine everything in their minds.  Our motivations, our worries, what made us happy.’

Oyang kept glancing at the Japanese girl’s almost naked body.  She hadn’t said much, but she was charmed by Oyang for sure.  Not just by his money, by his confidence, relaxed demeanour, and his florid but fabulous command of English.  Oh yes, Junko would have believed this guy.

‘That could be intimidating,’ said Stone.  It would have made Stone clam right up, for a start.  But it kind of explained the feeling Stone had had at the party in Hong Kong that Semyonov was one step ahead of him.  ‘Did that make you keep a distance from Semyonov?’ asked Stone.  ‘Were you worried he would see your motives?  What your government had asked you to do?’

‘Perhaps,’ Oyang replied.  ‘But Semyonov saw everything in any case, from the very first time I met him.  One did not analyse Semyonov.  One stood before him as if naked, and divined the truth from what he said.’

Oyang’s English had a slight accent, but otherwise was better than perfect.  It was easy to forget that he was Chinese at all.

‘Nonetheless you got him interested him in China,’ asked Stone.  ‘In working and investing in China?’

‘You could say so, Mr Stone, but I never persuaded Semyonov of anything.  It was his idea to work in China, and I followed him like a disciple,’ explained Oyang.  ‘In Beijing, I took the credit of course.  I told them that I had Semyonov interested in China, and as you know, things worked out that way.  It was a great success for me.  I was richly rewarded, let me tell you.  I asked to leave the Chinese Foreign Service and take a job with ShinComm.  I helped Semyonov set up New Machine Technology as a subsidiary of ShinComm.  The money… well.  The money with ShinComm is beyond  my wildest dreams.’

‘And I’m guessing your dreams were fairly ambitious.’

‘Naturally.  And the power, Mr Stone.  Until you have power over hundreds of thousands of people, you cannot know…   But I digress.  None of this was my doing.  I have done no more than follow Steven Semyonov.  I would have done the same, even had the pay been modest.’

‘Hold on,’ said Stone, fighting through Oyang’s elaborate words.  ‘You’re saying it was Semyonov’s idea to come to China?  Not yours?  He was never persuaded, still less blackmailed or brainwashed?’

‘Of course not.’  Oyang looked surprised that Stone had even asked.  ‘From the very beginning, it was his idea.  In fact, it seemed to me that Semyonov had chosen me, and not the other way around.  He wanted to come to China, and he was using me to communicate.’

‘He trusted you?’

‘Yes.  He had every reason to.’

‘And now what?  What do you think happened to Steven Semyonov?’ asked Stone.  There had to be a reason why Oyang had contacted Stone now. 

Oyang paused while a servant served a Bellini cocktail.  The girl sipped it wrapped in a peach-coloured towel.

‘Who knows?’ said Oyang holding his hands out wide.  ‘He was killed by the truck, and all the evidence – his body and the car – was shipped off to Beijing.’

‘He was murdered?’

‘Of course.  Steven was killed for a reason.  And since I was closer to Steven than anyone else in China, the dark forces that killed him think I know too much.  They want me dead too.  I am sure of it.’

Here was the whole point of the meeting.

‘And do you know “too much”?’ asked Stone.  ‘You said you didn’t know Semyonov well, but do you know why they killed him?  What could be the reason?  He could hardly have been better friends with China.’

‘I don’t know the reason,’ said Oyang.  ‘I wish I did.’  Stone saw there was a “but” coming here.  Oyang got up and strolled distractedly around the side of the pool in his tennis whites.  Stone observed.  Not a drop of sweat on him.  He hadn’t played a single point in those pristine clothes.  Pure show for Stone’s benefit.  ‘But I will say this,’ said Oyang, finally.  ‘Steven Semyonov was not forced, or persuaded, or even asked to come to China.  He requested it himself.’

‘So you said.’  Stone tried to coax Oyang along.  He sensed the man was stalling, but wanted to talk.  ‘So when he gave them his fortune - the twenty-five billion dollars - that was all genuine?’ asked Stone.  ‘Did he discuss it with you before hand?’

‘Yes, we discussed it, and yes, it was genuine.  They took his money, and he was happy with that.  A “gesture of good will”, that’s what he told me it was,’ said Oyang.  ‘He said it was a small price to pay.  You see, Steven had discovered something in China, and it was something he wanted.  He wanted to be part of it.’

‘The Machine?’ asked Stone.

Oyang nodded.  ‘Yes.  That is what he called it.’

‘And what is the Machine?  Where is it?’

Oyang shrugged and looked over at the girl’s brown legs again, as if reflexively.  ‘I don’t know.  And if I make too many enquiries, I’m afraid I will be killed just as Steven was killed.  I’m afraid I know too much already.’

‘But you must have asked him about the Machine – privately.’

‘Surely.  But Steven was cagey.  He said he couldn’t say anything, because the Machine was too dangerous to talk about.  It could make people powerful.  Whoever could use it – the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese - would dominate.’

This was the point where Stone was supposed to jump in and offer to help Oyang discover the Machine.  That was where Oyang had steered the conversation.  Stone decided to keep him guessing.  He made sure there was there was silence for a minute, while Oyang glanced furtively at him a couple of times over the top of his Ray Bans.  Then Stone changed the subject.  ‘Do you think he was a good man – Semyonov?  You must have heard the rumours about weapons manufacturing.  ShinComm is making very nasty weapons.  Why would Semyonov do such a thing?’

‘Do you think he would tell a man like me?’ asked Oyang, placing a hand on his chest.

‘You suspected then?’ asked Stone.  You’d better believe Oyang suspected.  That theatrical hand on the chest as good as confirmed it.  ‘Why would Semyonov do that?’

‘I don’t know.  As I said, Stone.  You can’t analyse Semyonov.  You can only listen and learn,’ said Oyang.  Again, he definitely had an opinion than this.  And here it came.  ‘All I can say, Stone, is that once I read a story.  Science fiction.  The people built a giant computer, a thinking machine, and asked it to rule over them.  The computer’s intelligence was so deep, so subtle, that it solved all their problems within a few years.  No more war, no more famine.  The economy was fixed, the people were happier than they had ever been,’ said Oyang.  ‘It was an idea which appealed to Chinese people.  All our problems can be solved by intelligence and logic.  No needed for contending visions or ideas, or checks and balances.  No need for democracy, Stone.  Like the rule of the Mandarins in old China.  Only the people with the highest degrees and intelligence were allowed in government.’

 ‘Is that the Machine?  A computer that mends everything, that solves all the problems?’

‘I told you,’ said Oyang, with a glance at the girl both wistful and vulpine.  ‘I don’t know what the Machine is.’

Stone could see where Oyang was going with this.  ‘That’s not much of a story is it, if the Machine makes everything all right?   Something went wrong with the computer, didn’t it?  It got bored and turned bad.  It destroyed the people, who’d lost the capacity to think for themselves.’

‘Very good, Mr Stone.  Do you know the story?’

Stone didn’t know that story, but stories are like that.  Because Life is like that.  ‘Somewhere in the deep ocean of Semyonov’s soul,’ said Stone, ‘Something turned wicked.  He turned his intelligence to projects that would create misery and destruction.’

‘Perhaps,’ replied Oyang.  ‘But I have no evidence.  It’s just an idea.’

That was a lie.  That was exactly what Oyang thought. 

‘Come on, Oyang.  That’s what happened, isn’t it?  The Chinese discovered what Semyonov was doing and lost their nerve,’ said Stone.  ‘They waited till Semyonov transferred the money to China, and crossed the border, then the authorities got rid of him.’

Oyang gave Stone a meaningful look.

Stone sat back and made a show of enjoying his drink.  He made a show of looking satisfied, but he was unconvinced.  It was too neat by half, and Oyang had given it up too easily.  He knew much more.  The girl had escaped by swimming in the pool.  Oyang pretended to be distracted by her, and clammed up for a while. 

Perhaps Oyang had said obliquely what he wanted to say to Stone, and he’d stopped talking.  Perhaps he was nervous he’d said too much already.  Lunch was served, with the woman sitting with Oyang, touching his arm, smiling at his jokes.  Oyang was back in his element, entrancing, holding forth in English and Japanese, calling for cocktails, and talking his guests through the fine cuisine.

-o0o0o-

 After lunch, however, Oyang got back to business.  He beckoned to Stone to follow him, and walked out past the pool and away from the servants.  Oyang had something he wanted to say to Stone.

Chapter 31 - 3:14pm 2 April - Shanghai, China

Stone and Oyang stood at the end of the long garden, by a thick stand of green bamboo.  It was hot in the sun, and the cicadas sang loudly in the bamboo.  There were tiny green snakes the size of pencils wrapped round the bamboo stems – dozens of them. 

The time had come for Oyang to say his piece.

 ‘My little green sentinels,’ said Oyang.  ‘If anyone tries to climb in over the fence, these snakes are poisonous.  A fine deterrent, I think.  I am a careful man, and you should be too.’

Stone turned to Oyang.  ‘You didn’t bring me here just to look at the bamboo and the snakes.’

Oyang didn’t miss a beat.  ‘I want you to find the Machine, Stone.  Find the Machine and tell the world all about it.  Where is Miss Ying Ning?’

‘Forget Ying Ning,’ said Stone.  He knew Oyang had only asked about Ying Ning because he wanted her kept out of the picture.  ‘No one listens to her and China21.  Communists like Ying Ning have about as much credibility as the Easter Bunny these days.  If you know something, you need to tell me.  What did Semyonov discover in China that brought him here?’

‘I have been through Semyonov’s papers,’ said Oyang.  ‘Of the Machine, all I can give you is this.  I think it refers to the location.’  Oyang passed over a single sheet of paper.  ‘There’s nothing I can do with this information myself.  They’re watching me, and if I get too close, there will be another “accident” with another coal truck.  Don’t let anyone see this, Stone.  And don’t make any Internet searches, at least until you are outside of China.  They are watching you.  You can be sure of it.’

Stone glanced at the slip of paper. 

Stone Forest 328 19.2 9.8179

Field Well 15 8.3 9.8827

Silvermine Mountain 169 15.9 9.8457

2 Trees 3 Trees 97 6.7 9.8837

Sitong  44 0.7 9.8249

It made no sense.  Perhaps it wasn’t meant to.  But Stone recognised the distinctive writing, and the fountain pen.  It was written by Semyonov all right.

‘Why should I do it, Oyang?’ asked Stone.  ‘If it’s too dangerous for you, with all your connections, your protection, your money.  Why should I decipher it and go looking for the Machine?

Oyang paused, giving Stone another of his meaningful looks.  ‘Let me show you something,’ he said eventually.  He look a small device from his pocket, the kind of device he might use to open the doors of his car.  He pointed the little grey fob at the stand of bamboo and pressed it with his thumb.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Stone.

‘Be patient,’ said Oyang.  ‘You’ll find it interesting.  It will explain a lot.’

Oyang stood for a few seconds looking at the bamboo, while one by one, the tiny green snakes began to uncoil from the bamboo and fall lifeless to the ground.  Stone had already guessed what was happening.  He stepped over and picked up one of the snakes, his thumb and forefinger behind its head for safety - but he needn't have bothered.  It wasn't a real snake at all.

‘What is it?’ said Stone.  ‘Metal and plastic?’ 

‘Yes, but the teeth are stainless steel,’ said Oyang.

Stone lay the snake along his palm and forearm.  It was no more than twenty centimeters long, and barely thicker than a pencil.  Another remarkable manufacture, with a slight iridescence in the green of its scales – light, and very life-like.

‘More amazing technology, Oyang,’ said Stone.  ‘But you said it would explain something.  About the Machine.’

‘No.  I said you should be patient, Stone.’

Stone’s tongue almost froze.  A stupid mistake, a crass error.  Curiosity and over-confidence had undone him.  For a split-second, his brain was shouting at his arm to shake, to cast the snake away.  But Oyang had already hit the remote control.  A tiny click with his thumb.  The snake was alive again, and striking.  Its tiny fangs sank like needle pricks into Stone’s forearm.

Stone’s arm shook, he pulled it loose, threw the snake into the bamboo.  Too late.  His vision was already blurred, his legs wobbling.  He collapsed to his knees.  He couldn’t see, and fell face first to the ground. 

‘Patience,’ said Oyang once more.

Chapter 32 - 7:43pm 2 April - ShinComm Factory City, Shanghai, China

Stone came to inside the van.  The van he’d arrived in a few hours before.  He was hooded, but not handcuffed.  A while later the door opened, and Stone smelled the warm, humid air of Shanghai again through the black cotton of the hood.  There was a distant noise of a factory – whirring and grinding – but not loud.  Stone felt it was cooler.  No heat from the sun.  It was already dark, or at least dusk, and Stone must have been out for hours in that van.

‘I am sorry for it, Stone,’ said Oyang’s voice.  ‘But I couldn’t let you know where you were coming.’  Stone listened for the footsteps.  Oyang was alone.  Oyang had brought Stone here alone, and was leading him, tugging him by the sleeve toward the noise of whirring and humming.

‘This is the ShinComm Factory, Stone,’ said Oyang, ‘Or at least one of them.  A half million people work for ShinComm, mainly at Dongguan and at Factory City next to this facility,’ he said as Stone heard himself led through a doorway.  ‘But not a soul works in this facility.  Even I was impressed when Semyonov first showed it to me.’  The humming and whirring and the occasional clanking and banging were louder.  Stone could hear the echoes.  They were inside a large shed or a hangar.  Oyang removed the hood from Stone’s head.

It was not as Stone had expected.  Electric motors whirred, machine tool robots hissed and whined.  But entirely in darkness.  The only light was the flash of welding sparks every few seconds. A hundred metres distant across the crowded shop floor, as the industrial robots, metres high, nodded, turned and clamped their beaks onto more metalwork.  Welding and clamping, screwing and soldering.  All happened in complete darkness.  After a few seconds, Oyang flicked some switches, and a battery of arc lights buzzed and flickered into dazzling light.  Robert Oyang had not been exaggerating.  Stone was in a huge factory shed, but there was no human present.

There were no machine guards, no yellow lines, no warning signs or stop buttons.  Stone looked on in wonderment at a large manufacturing shed, run entirely by robots. 

There was an array of different robots.  In that sense it was no different from many modern factories.  There were high-standing robots in the concrete, nodding and twisting with staccato movements.  There were small platforms gliding around carrying materials.  These weren’t unusual.  Then there were grey, cone-shaped things about a metre high, which seemed to glide slowly over the white painted floor, but had no arms or pincers.  What were they?  Above all there was the constant buzzing hiss of  MAV’s.  Micro Air Vehicles, the insect-like robots Stone had seen before.  Except these were smaller, about three centimeters long and a shiny indigo in colour.  They appeared harmless – they were workers, hovering on gossamer wings, cleaning, polishing, cutting and carrying.  More interestingly they were working together, carrying components in groups of exactly ten or twenty.  Stone looked around and calculated there must be a hundred thousand of them in this one factory shed.

Stone’s favourite was what appeared to be a troop of monkeys swinging and jumping around a kind of turbine-less jet engine.  Twenty monkey-robots, each thirty centimeters high, with legs and arms but no head - their sensors and hydraulics being packed into the mid-chest area.  They had tiny hands with three fingers and an opposable thumb, and climbed and swung like silver-alloy simians, their movements rapid, staccato and precise.  Most astonishingly, they moved in complete co-ordination, only millimeters apart but never colliding, and always pulling or placing at exactly the same time, or jumping or walking in perfect rhythm, like a tiny dancing troupe.

Stone realised his heart was racing.  This was staggering technology.  Corporations had spent tens of millions on robots which could barely cross a room without falling over a chair, yet here were a hundred thousand of them, working in intelligent unison. 

Another thing.  A workplace designed by humans bears signs of human thinking, even if the work is left to robots.  It has a linear production track running through it.  In this place, it was all going on at once, like the random access mind of a computer.  Stone was reminded of what people said about Semyonov.  An alien intelligence.  Was this the Machine?  The thing that had drawn Semyonov to China?

It wasn’t easy see what it was being manufactured, such was the profusion of machinery and activity.  One item was certainly a small jet engine without turbines - a ram-jet for use in a missile, Stone thought.    Over towards the other side of the shed there was the chassis of some kind of vehicle where the welding sparks flashed every few seconds.  Electric motors in each wheel.  There were also some tubes that looked like gun barrels, three metres long and made from a weird, blue alloy of cobalt. 

Stone’s mind raced.  He was looking at the mind of a computer, with programs and data spread at random across its hard disk, capable of performing hundreds of tasks at once. 

‘This is very impressive, Oyang,’ said Stone.  ‘You didn’t mention you were an engineer.’

‘Indeed I am no engineer, Mr Stone,’ with a small laugh of self-deprecation.  ‘I am an old-style Chinese intellectual, a Confucian,’ said Oyang.    ‘I labour with my mind and not my hands.’

A Confucian who likes Japanese girls in bikinis.  ‘In that case,’ asked Stone.  ‘Where does it come from?  All this technology?’

Oyang looked almost embarrassed to talk about it, but continued, ‘These developments are  - incredible.  Even more incredible than they look to you.  The true value of Semyonov’s facility here is its flexibility.  The ideas we create on computer design systems can be made reality by the robot workforce.  Otherwise we would need thousands of highly skilled engineers just to design the process…  But here, inspiration goes to idea, to design, to reality.  All in record time.’

‘And the workforce builds you more workers if you need them,’ added Stone.

‘Up to a point, yes,’ nodded Oyang.  ‘It’s a good system.’

A good system?  That was an understatement.  The implications would make an economist’s head spin.

‘ShinComm has five hundred thousand workers between Shanghai and our plant at Dongguan, yet the Development Center makes more money.  That's because it creates high value goods.’

‘Tell me more, Oyang, I’m fascinated,’ said Stone to distract him.  Oyang was so cultured, so image-conscious, almost a parody of himself.  But intelligent nonetheless.  ‘How many people know about this place?’ 

‘A few senior managers in ShinComm.  Semyonov needed a few people to work with him, and he showed it to me only once.  I didn’t see at first how important it was.  The key to the system,’ explained Oyang.  ‘Lies in massively parallel computing software.  Each of the machines and robots is connected in a huge wireless system.’

 Stone thought of Semyonov, with his intelligent search systems built from thousands of machines hooked together.

‘And all of the computing power – every chip in every robot and every flying bug - can be used at once,’ said Stone.  He was beginning to get his head round it.  The theory was one thing – but as a practical achievement, it was preternaturally impressive.  Whole research labs, universities – whole industry sectors had worked on this kind of thing for years and made only baby steps forward.  Yet here was the future - fully realised. 

‘So this is the Machine, Oyang?’ asked Stone.  ‘This is why Semyonov came to China?’

Oyang looked mystified.  ‘No.  This is not the Machine.  Just a manufacturing facility.  But I can tell you all the innovations you see here were Semyonov’s ideas.  All his doing.  He was a remarkable man, Professor Stone.  We shall miss him a great deal.’  Oyang gave the impression that he missed Semyonov personally.  Although anyone would miss a human money-tree, which was what Semyonov had been to him.  ‘Everything here came from Semyonov xiansheng.  But now he’s dead.’   

‘So now Semyonov is dead, all this technology just – stops?’ asked Stone.

‘Possibly.  Where can you find a person to understand it all?’ said Oyang, looking to left and right.  ‘You can’t.  So perhaps it is finished.’

‘What about the Machine?  Is that finished too?’

‘The Machine, I believe is different.  Steven Semyonov told me they had discovered something very important, and that was why he wanted to invest in China.  And the Chinese scientists needed Semyonov.’

‘They needed him?  Or his money?’

‘Money?’  Oyang laughed.  ‘The money was simply evidence of his good faith.  Nothing more.  No one needed money.’

‘Twenty-five billion.  That’s a lot of good faith.’

‘One, five, twenty-five…  The amount was not important.   The important thing was that it was all he had.  And he was forbidden to leave China.  That was the second condition that China imposed.’

‘It must have been a hell of a discovery they’d made to tempt him here,’ said Stone.  ‘So what is this thing – the Machine?’ asked Stone.

‘I do not know.  Like you, I would like to know,’ he said.  ‘But let me tell you something, Stone.   Semyonov said none of this would be possible without the Machine.  That is why it matters so much.  Especially now Semyonov is dead.  We have to find it.’

It was like Oyang wanted to unburden himself.  He’d already said that the Machine was extraordinarily powerful, and that the Americans and Russians and Chinese would fight to get it.  But the Machine was already here in China.  The Chinese leadership knew that, and that made it an extremely dangerous topic of discussion for Oyang, or anyone else.

Now, with the information he’d given to Stone back at his house, Oyang had just handed Stone the job of finding the Machine.  A job which, rightly or wrongly, he thought was too dangerous to take on himself.

 Chapter 33 - 9:26pm 2 April - Shanghai, China

Oyang’s men dropped Stone near the Pujiang Hotel on the river.  It was the only one he could remember from his backpacking days.  He had no intention of staying there of course.  He waited till they’d gone and then made his way across the city in the darkness.  The Shanghai evening took him into its dark, humid bosom.  The warm breeze, the roar of traffic, the ambient smells of car exhaust and fried noodles from a thousand eateries open to the streets.  Like Hong Kong, Shanghai teemed with even more people after dark.

For Stone it was the best time.  He could go about as just another person in the hoards, rather than a “yellow-haired Ouzhouren” - a European, as Ying Ning termed him.  He made for Xizang Street.  The apartment block where Ying Ning had told him to stay. 

The apartment was bare – just a single room and tiny bathroom.  Stone checked it for bugs or hidden cameras as best he could.  Found nothing – not that it mattered.  He was hardly going to be chattering to anyone in there.  For Stone this kind of lonely paranoia was normal life. 

He took out Semyonov’s cryptic writings and connected his laptop to the Internet.  Stone wasn’t about to take any notice of Robert Oyang’s injunction against making Internet searches.  Especially not now. 

Ironstone Forest 328 19.2 9.8229

Field Well 15 8.3 9.8218

Silvermine Field 169 15.9 9.8229

2 Trees 3 Trees 97 6.7 9.8219

Sitong  44 0.7 9.8249

It looked easy – so easy in fact that Stone wondered why Oyang hadn’t figured it for himself. 

But it turned out it wasn’t easy.  Stone tried sections large and small, and found, amongst other things, information on the Silvermine Bay Hotel, in Hong Kong, the fossilised trees in the Isle of Wight, and the web site of an Australian rugby league player named Malcom Twotrees.  In other words, nothing.

-oO0Oo-

In the end Stone went out to eat.  He went across some grass, picked his way through the cars and scooters across a snarled-up four-track road, and made for a cluster of street traders, stir-frying under the elevated highway.  He ordered squid with chilli, noodles and beer and sat down at a trestle table.  The cook shot oil into the pan from a squeezy bottle, and flames from the wok flashed in the darkness, half shutting his eyes against the smoke. 

Stone’s watch said ten-thirty.  He took out Semyonov’s hand-written note again, and looked at it, the light of the fire flickering on the paper. Something about the numbers had been playing with his subconscious.  All the 9.8 figures on Semyonov’s scribblings.  The values were almost the same but not quite.  The differences were counted in ten thousandths of the total.  A millimetre in a metre, or less than a metre in a kilometre.  There must be significance in these tiny variations.

What was almost exactly 9.8?  And why would it be a big deal if there were tiny variations?  Stone ate the food, but found himself still looking at the figures when he’d finished.

It felt like the answer was lying just under the surface of his mind.  He knew this.  He knew the answer.  Something was distracting him from it.  It felt like someone was shouting at him from his subconscious.  Stone tried to concentrate, to let it come to the surface.  He realised he’d been staring into the darkness.  He’d finished the noodles, but his beer was untouched.

Something was wrong.  It was shouting at him.  Not the number.  Something else was wrong.  The rider on the scooter with the full-face helmet.  Stone was sure it was the same bike and the same helmet he’d seen following the taxi earlier, as the taxi had raced through the tunnel.

Stone tucked Semyonov’s figures back into his pocket, his senses suddenly alert, his mind clear.  He made a few remarks to the laoban, and took another five minutes to finish his beer from the plastic glass, while keeping tabs on his follower.  The guy was coming and going, flitting about, but finally disappearing from view.  Stone drained his glass, paid and shook the hand of the laoban. 

Stone walked back to Xizang Street, talking care to stay in the shadows.  No sign of the rider now.

 Stone took care to lock up and search the apartment again.  Not much to check of course.  One room, plus bathroom and bare at that.  Not much scope for ninja-warriors to leap out from behind the sofa, but his senses were still on high alert.

He took a shower, his mind still whirring.  Old “sticketh closer than a brother” out there on the motor scooter was going to be a big problem.  Assuming it was the Gong An following Stone, he could be picked up at anytime.  And even if he wasn't picked up, what could he do under such tight surveillance?  It was also bad for Oyang.  Oyang had gone to great lengths to hide Stone’s visit to his place, and ensure he hadn’t been tracked.  Yet the rider must have followed that panel van up to Oyang’s place too.

Stone washed himself, wondering how he was going to shake off his tail.  The more he thought of it, the worse it was.  If it was bad news for Stone and Oyang, it was even worse for Ying Ning.  If Ying Ning made contact as planned she could end up before a people’s court in days.  After drying himself with a diminutive towel and spraying on a particularly ineffective brand of Chinese deodorant, Stone lay down and pulled the sheet over himself.

It was only then, half-waking and half-sleeping, that something flitted across Stone’s mind, something that had bubbled around his subconscious all evening.  Behind all the distractions, below the surface.  9.8 metres per second per second.  The constant of gravity.

 Chapter 34

http://dougcarslake.blog.notfutile.com

UFOWATCH BLOG

We’d expect news outlets to be full of rumors from “friends” of billionaire genius Steven Semyonov, speculating on why his new “friends” from Beijing decided to send a coal truck to welcome him to China.  But it turns out Semyonov had no “friends”.  Boring huh?

Luckily for your correspondent, the rumor mill just cranked up big time around San Jose.  Sources calling themselves “friends of Antonio Alban” are claiming that Semyonov was isolated within SearchIgnition.  They also claim:

Semyonov and Alban together had “irreconcilable differences” with other board members over their vision for the future of SearchIgnition.

Other shareholders had already tried to oust Semyonov and Alban.  They demanded access to all Semyonov’s “Blackbox”. The Blackbox is the name given to the search algorithms at the heart of the SI system.  They demanded access to the Blackbox, and offered to buy Semyonov out.

So far so good.  But according to "friends of Alban", Semyonov’s Blackbox was no longer kept secret.  Semyonov had already turned the programming source code over to the others.  Didn’t even object.  But here’s the thing: the team of programmers brought in to figure out the Blackbox is yet to decipher even one line of Semyonov’s code.  Full of weird symbols and little else.  The stories about the Blackbox being Semyonov’s jealously guarded secret are just BS.  He didn't restrict access at all.  For the new bosses at SearchIgnition Corp it's worse than that: no one but Semyonov could understand even one line of the programming.

Semyonov may have taken the cash and left SearchIgnition, but the firm was still heavily reliant on him.  And now he’s dead.  So they’re hosed.  Shares in SearchIgnition have tanked in after-hours trading on NASDAQ.

The blame game at post-Semyonov SearchIgnition is only just beginning.  Keep checking this blog for more juicy gossip to come from “friends of Antonio Alban”.

BTW – Kudos to Alban, who is a board member of SearchIgnition, for leaking all this stuff for the benefit of NotFutile.com readers.  That man has cojones if nothing else.

Chapter 35 - 3:56am 3 April - Shanghai, China

Stone was woken by an odd sensation under the bed sheet.  A light fluttering.  A breeze from an open window?  No.  There was no breeze.

Instinct told him to lie perfectly still.

It stopped again.  No fluttering.  Then there was a barely-audible click somewhere by his knee.  Was he hearing things?  He lay motionless in the darkness. 

There it was again, the fluttering.  Definitely beneath the bed sheet.  It stopped again.  Stone felt something on his thigh.   Then another click, soft, metallic like before.  His subconscious already knew, well before he was awake.  The image of the colourful metal bug which Zhang had shown him, stole across his mind.  The fine shell in poisonous yellow, black and red, seven centimeters long.  The spiked, black mandibles like miniature antlers.  And the two stainless steel injector needles, which must now be millimeters from his thigh.

The creature was light and noiseless.   It was moving, feeling its way - a tickling sensation moving up the inside of his left thigh towards his groin.  Were its sensors seeking the heat of his body?   Or following his pulse?  Or the scent of his sweat?  Shit.  The aerosol from the bogus deodorant, sprayed liberally under his arms. 

His mind raced ahead.  If it worked by smell, and it had found him, it must know it was near its target.  Almost certainly it would attack if he tried to grab or brush it off.  It would latch onto his hand with the spiked mandibles, shoot in venom through the needles. 

It reached the top of his thigh and stopped.  Possibly confused by the hair.  Was it detecting his pulse, seeking blood below the skin?  It had stopped above the femoral artery in his groin.  Stone made his breathing shallow to reduce his pulse strength.  He willed his skin to be cold and inert.  Not an easy thing in sweltering Shanghai. 

The sharp mandibles grazed the hair of his groin.  Where were the bug’s sensors housed?  In the feet?  The bug’s feet were warm and slightly tacky, six insect feet sticking lightly to his body hair as it moved, like lightly drumming fingers.  It must have detected the bogus deodorant he had sprayed under his arms.  It could have chemical sensors in those mandibles, seeking his under-arms.  If he hadn’t been covered by the sheet he would be dead by now.

It stuck for an eternity near his groin.  How long could Stone lie perfectly still like this?

The six feet moved off again.  The tiny rhythmic crawling reached his abdomen, fluttering past his navel.  Stone stilled his breathing again so as not to move his diaphragm.  He held his stomach flat and hard.  Maybe it had sensed his heart from the pulsing of the blood.  It had felt the deep pulse from within his femoral artery, now it was following it, seeking the heart.  Was it possible in that dark little world, that the device carried a knowledge of human anatomy?  Stone knew that it was.  It would be a trivial thing next to all the other programming which went into this thing.  Even now those padded feet were feeling their way to the pulsing aorta and his heart.  If it stopped near his heart he would have to make a grab for it.  No other way.

The creature wandered diagonally across his chest, stopping for a few seconds to graze his nipple, as if to smell it with the mandibles.  Was it confused? It could have jabbed in its death venom by now.  He held his nerve.

Much good it did him.  The bug was still on his chest, confused by the aerosol scent under his arms, to either side of it.  It didn’t know which way to go.  It backtracked slower than ever over to the left side of his chest and if it stayed there…

He had only one idea.  He had to try it now.  The was no time…

Stone threw back the sheet.  The click.  The shell flipped open and the gossamer wings sprang out momentarily, hovering.  Stone’s body jackknifed.  He caught the bug in the sheet and threw it to the floor, looking around for something to kill it with.  Stone heard the door to the apartment slam. 

Pulling on his jeans and boots, he stamped hard onto the fluttering device beneath the sheet, felt it crack open beneath his heel, then flipped on the light and scanned the place for more insects as he made for the door.   

Stone slipped out of the apartment door and down the corridor and looked up.  The elevator was descending past the fourth floor.  Stone took the stairway, leaping down a flight at a time. 

He’d missed the elevator by a few seconds.  Darted outside, looking left and right.  A figure walking away, fifty metres from him.  Stone began to jog.  The man glanced round and broke into a run, making for the shadows underneath the elevated highway again.  He was fast, this guy, but Stone was faster.  He was gaining.  He could have him by the time they went under the highway – possibly sooner. 

Stone closed to within twenty metres of him, then dropped his pace.  Using his fitness. He would keep the guy an even twenty metres in front and run him until he was exhausted.   When the fellow turned to fight, Stone would have him retching from exhaustion.

Stone ran on bare-chested through the hot night air of Shanghai.  There was no traffic.  They ran back across a dual track road, then into side streets.  The man was turning, doubling back, trying to lose him.  But Stone was too close for that.  This guy was not getting away. 

Onto the riverfront, the Bund.  Again the man turned back.  It was that or jump in the river.  Stone followed into a side street.  A dead end.  This was it.  There’d be a weapon, of course.  Stone would have to strike fast and hard.

The fellow jogged to a stop and turned.  Exhausted, feeling for the knife in his back pocket.  Stone kept momentum.  His foot landed a high, flying kick in the man’s chest, thumping him to the ground.  Stone grabbed the knife.   Then took him by the collar.  Not much of a hit man, this guy.  But then all he’d done was to bribe the superintendent into giving him a key and shove the robot bug inside.

Stone shouted questions at him in his crude Chinese, but got nothing.   ‘Ni wei shenme?  Shei yao mousha..?’   The bastard was gasping for air.  Probably couldn’t understand Stone’s ragged Chinese anyhow.  Stone dragged him over to the wall in frustration and slammed him up against it.  Let’s see if he understood a blade in his throat.

Something stepped between them, shoved Stone backwards.  Then fetched the gasping man a wide, swinging blow with the back of the hand.  There was a torrent of words in violent Chinese, like a ten second interrogation.  The voice was Ying Ning’s.  The guy didn’t answer.  He looked suddenly furious and threw a fist at her.  Not so exhausted that he wanted to take this from a woman.  Only to be kicked hard between his legs and take another contemptuous blow from the back of her hand.

Stone stood back to enjoy the show.  Incensed at being struck by a woman, the guy lashed out again.  Again, his blows were parried and his feet taken from under him by a very neat martial art move, so fast Stone could barely see it in the dark.  Ying Ning was hot-shit at Kung Fu or whatever she was using.  She stood over the man and spat hard in his face. 

Perhaps the spitting and the back-handed slaps were part of her own brand of martial art.  The art of Ying Ning.  It was effective, anyway, Stone would give her that.

Ying Ning fired more questions at the man, but got no answers.  After a minute or so she stood back, hand on jutting hip and spat copiously at the man’s face once more.  Suddenly like the whore in the Snake Market again.  She lit a cigarette and turned round to Stone. 

‘Come, Rockhead,’ she said, and strolled back to the motor scooter, rolling with her trademark insolent swagger.   She threw Stone her helmet to hold, gestured to him to get on the back.  ‘We go to your apartment.’

‘Who was he?’ asked Stone.

‘Too scared to speak,’ she said over her shoulder.  She was holding the cigarette, glowing red in the fingers of her throttle hand as she went along.  It was an electric motor, almost silent, and they could speak easily.  Finally she spoke, ‘He try to kill you, Rockhead?’

‘Yes.’

‘Maybe you should kill him.  He was weak.  Should be safer, I think.’

‘Maybe I don’t want to kill people,’ he said.

Stone’s mind went bizarrely to the therapist and his “rules for living” after leaving the army.  Don’t kill any more people was one of his rules, though it wasn’t one the therapist was expecting. 

Ying Ning snorted.  ‘You killed plenty people, Rockhead,’ she said.  ‘I see in your eyes.  You should kill him, before he back next time and kill you.’

There was a lot more to this girl than over-active saliva glands and a talent for social networking.

At the apartment block, the night porter nodded politely to Stone, showing no surprise that he was returning with a woman.  Like he’d shown no surprise when Stone chased an assassin from the building.  On second thoughts it was understandable since the guy had given the assassin a key in the first place.

 In the elevator Stone turned to Ying Ning.

‘Who is trying to kill us?’ asked Stone.  ‘This wasn’t a professional.  It wasn’t the Chinese government, and it wasn’t Special Circumstances this time.  And yet he used the robot bug, just like the one in Hong Kong.’

Ying Ning shrugged.  She had a look as if to say the threat of death for her was an every day thing, and she was OK with that.  She'd take things as they came.  Stone had seen that look before a few years ago.  In the mirror.

‘When did you first kill someone?’ he asked.

 ‘I was seventeen, a factory girl,’ said Ying Ning.  Didn’t miss a beat.  'My boss said I had to work late.  Told me to come to his office, and then he raped me.  I cried for days, but I had to work, and he was laughing.  It took him a month to try it again.  I killed him with a screwdriver.’

She had a look on her face as if to say and I never looked back…

-oO0Oo-

Stone checked the apartment again.  He had no intention of going to sleep and risking another exotic adventure with a Japanese hornet.  He took out the computer and placed it on the table.  He’d use the time to figure out what Semyonov’s riddles and rhymes had meant.  He had a sudden desire to research variations in the earth’s gravitational field on the Internet. 

Only a couple of minutes later, the door opened from the bathroom and a figure emerged into the half-light.  Stone continued at the computer, but felt the cat-like, velvet steps coming towards him.  Ying Ning.  She was standing behind him, silent.

‘Worried I’ll kick you out for snoring?’ he said, still looking at the screen.  ‘Go ahead and get some sleep.  You’ve had a long day following me around Shanghai.  I promise I’ll stay handy with the fly swat.’

A slender arm appeared past his right shoulder.  The long, black nail of Ying Ning’s index finger rested on the power button on the laptop and then pressed.  The screen went black, and the same index finger had found its way under his shirt and was running up his breastbone.

‘You should take a break, Rockhead.’  She slid round to sit on his knee, pulling the shirt off over his head.  Her thighs felt light on his.  ‘You need to take it easy.  Let me help you…’  Ying Ning’s fingers were gently massaging his neck, the nails trailing seductively over his shoulders.  Her eyes looking into his.  Her hand reached up to his hair.  Her head leaned to one side, and she kissed him with melting lips.

She knew what she was doing, this girl.  And Stone would be lying if he said he wasn’t tempted.  

Chapter 36 - 10:45am 3 April - Shanghai, China

No woman enjoys rejection.  Even if she is a manipulative person with unknown motives.   Like Ying Ning.  She especially dislikes it if she is a strong-willed person used to getting her own way.  Like Ying Ning.  Yet Ying Ning had accepted rejection from Stone as if he’d turned down a drink at the bar or a game of Scrabble, rather than the offer of sex.

Stone sat at the table explaining the scribbled note in Semyonov’s writing to Ying Ning.  She was sceptical, unco-operative, difficult – but no more than usual.  Stone was being careful because of what happened when they arrived back at the apartment.  Maybe that was her plan.

 Stone had a theory that the numbers near to 9.8 could only refer to the constant of gravity.  They were variations in the earth’s gravity which could help him find the Machine, maybe even explain what the Machine was.  ‘There are two questions here,’ Stone explained to Ying Ning.  ‘First – where is this place?  And second, why is the gravity field different at this one spot?’

Ying Ning was looking through maps of Western China online, trying not to look like she was listening.  But she was listening.  She was listening intently.

‘We think of the earth as a ball-shape, a sphere,’ said Stone.  ‘The earth’s gravity should be the same at any point on the sphere.  But it isn’t.  Gravity varies slightly between the equator and the poles. That’s because the earth is not an exact sphere.  It’s slightly fatter around the middle at the equator, and that means the force of gravity at the equator is a little stronger.  The force is on average 9.8 metres per second per second, but at the equator it’s roughly 9.83, whereas at the poles it’s 9.79.’

Ying Ning was looking at a gravity map of the world, with a look as if to say, ‘You expect to believe this stuff.’  But she was listening intently.  ‘What else causes the variation?’ she asked finally.  ‘There are tiny variations all over this map.’

It was true.  Stone had seen this the night before.  There were areas of red all over the map where gravity is stronger, and blue where it’s weaker.  The red ones were the mountain ranges where there was more “stuff” in the earth.  It was very clear with the Andes mountains.  Other places, typically the deep oceans, had lower gravity. 

‘Many variations are caused by what is under the surface, said Stone pointing at the map. ‘See here.  India is an area of low gravity.  So is much of China.  Only the Himalayas and Tibet in between have higher than average gravity.’  Most of China was colured in blue.

‘So what does it all mean?’ asked Ying Ning, looking again at her online maps.  She was already looking intently at a map of Western Sichuan Province.  She’d already spotted what he’d seen.  ‘If Semyonov’s figures, the one’s that Oyang gave you, are something to do with gravity, why are they important?’

He didn’t know, and neither did she.  But they could still find the location.

‘If you look at this gravity map of China,’ he said, ‘You’ll see that most of China is blue, meaning slightly lower than average gravity – apart from the Himalayan mountain range.  And apart from this one spot.’  Stone pointed to a pin-prick sized red spot on the map.  It was so small it looked like a mistake, or one bad pixel on the screen.  But it wasn’t.  It was a small spot of higher than normal gravity.

Ying Ning had an atlas of China open at the same region as the red dot, and she was circling place names.

‘This tiny anomaly in the gravity field,’ Stone went on, ‘Was picked up by a satellite.   There’s nothing above the surface there, no mountain.  So there must be something under the surface at that spot, something very large and very dense.’

The Machine?

Ying Ning said nothing.  She didn’t need to.  She’d already written down Chinese characters alongside Semyonov’s numbers.   Looking sure of herself.

铁 石 林  Tieshi Lin  328 19.2 9.8229

田 井  Field Well 15 8.3 9.8218

银 矿 田  Silvermine Field 169 15.9 9.8229

林 森  2 Trees 3 Trees 97 6.7 9.8219

死 洞  Sitong  44 0.7 9.8249

Stone would have done the same if his Chinese had been up to it.  If these figures were correct, she’d got the precise location.  The centre of the “gravity bulge” was located near to these villages.  Just how near was provided by the figures.  They were the bearings and distances of the anomaly from each of the place names Semyonov had written down.

 Ironstone Forest was just an English way of saying the village of Tieshi Lin.  The characters were iron, stone and forest.  Two trees three trees was a way of saying Lin Sen, whose name contained the character for tree – twice, then three times.  The anomaly was 19.2 kilometres from the Tieshi Lin at a bearing of 328 degrees, and it was at 6.7 kilometres from Lin Sen, bearing 97 degrees.  The other bearings and distances were written in the same way.  Semyonov had made a very accurate pinpoint of the location in the far West of Sichuan Province, near the border with Tibet. 

The last name on the list was virtually on top of the gravitational bulge, only 700 metres away.  Stone took the map from Ying Ning and placed his finger on the map.  ‘That’s where we’re going.’

Oddly, Ying Ning didn’t look too sure about it.  She changed the subject.  ‘This place too dangerous,’  She said, then she paused and came to the point.  ‘We go to Sichuan, yes?’

‘To find the Machine?’

She shrugged as usual.  ‘Could be.’ 

-oO0Oo-

An hour later, Stone sent a message via the secure NotFutile.com email server.

Found the Machine.  Bear 128 degrees, 43 km from village of Tieshi Lin, Western Sichuan.  See what you can discover re gravitational/magnetic anomaly nearby. 

Fancy a trip to China?

Meanwhile, Ying Ning was still looking at the map.  She had circled a location in the map heavily in black pen. It was the last name on the list. Stone asked her what the characters meant.  死 洞 Sitong. 

'The name means Death Hole,' she said.

Chapter 37 - 7:05pm 2 April - Mountain View, California

Jessica sipped at her twenty-eight-dollar glass of Pinot Noir and made eyes at him.  Ekström hadn’t expected a law firm partner would be so obvious.  If this woman didn’t put out tonight he’d feel compelled report her to the Trade Commission for false advertising.

Ekström had met Jessica three days before.  This was their first dinner, in a party of ten at the upscale French restaurant, L’Eventail.  Jessica wasn’t bad looking.  Not up to Ekström’s usual standard, but not bad.  About five-seven, good body.  Signs of cellulite beginning on upper-thighs.  A few grey roots on the day he’d met her - since dealt with. All in all a good average.  Whatever.  She was a lawyer.  She was single.  But most of all she was a friend of Antonio Alban.  No one would look twice at Ekström while he was with Jessica.

‘Your friend looks familiar’ said Ekström, making conversation. 

‘Antonio Alban,’ she replied.  ‘He’s been on TV a lot lately.’

Ekström raised an interested eyebrow.

‘SearchIgnition,’ she explained.  ‘He’s VP of Vision at SearchIgnition.’

Ekström did the smile again.  Glanced up from his menu cheekily.  Women loved it when he did that.  At least Jessica did.

Her blouse was open a button lower than usual, her eyes smouldering.  And this was before the entrée.  A man with Ekström’s looks and physique shouldn’t need to work on his “game”, but the “S and A” (Seduction and Attraction) program at Special Circumstances' academy was the real deal.  Ekström had refused to use the “S and A” program before now - as if learning seduction techniques somehow demeaned his masculinity.  But this was business, and for Jessica he had deployed the full three-day program of dates, calls and text messages.  It worked like a dream – before they even met.  Ekström wondered what she would be like in bed.  Grateful, was his guess.  

He was interrupted by a movement on the other end of their table of ten, near the window.  Alban.  He had got up.  Ekström glanced at his watch.  He gave it forty-five seconds then stood up himself.

‘Excuse me,’ said Ekström, and made for the restroom.  On the staircase he checked round one last time for cameras, though he knew there were none.  Just ambient music, which sounded vaguely French.   Pretentious crap.  In the bathroom, Antonio Alban was just doing up his zipper.  He was five-ten, and a moderately fit 168 pounds, according to the Special Circumstances file.  Ekström loitered as Alban turned to the washbasin, then stepped up and took the VP of Vision’s neck from behind.  Ekström stared intently into Alban’s terrified eyes in the mirror.  His long, powerful fingers pressed into the carotid arteries, steadily increasing in pressure.  Alban grabbed at his throat, his face contorted.  Ekström smiled at him in the mirror.  The smile he’d just used on Jessica.  ‘Mr Alban.  Your employers said I should persuade you to be quiet about Mr Semyonov.  I can be very persuasive.’

Ekström pushed Alban’s face into the wall.  The strength drained from the man.  This Alban had nothing, no fight at all.  Ekström had killed women and children with more spirit.  His forearm pressed on the back of Alban’s neck, squeezing him against the wall.  The body collapsed.  Ekström was supporting the whole of Alban’s weight on his left elbow, pinned against the back of the man’s neck.  With his right hand Ekström felt in his own coat pocket and produced the hypodermic.  He pulled Alban’s shirt up and felt for the profile of the ribs.  He pushed the hair-like needle in between the third and fourth rib, five centimetres to the left of the spine.

Sodium tripentol, used in some states for lethal injections.  Death comes quickly when the heart stops.  Ekström carried Alban into one of the cubicles and sat him on the can, locking the door behind him.  He pulled down Alban’s pants and leaned him forward.  That was the most difficult part of the whole operation – to balance a deadman on the toilet. 

Ekström vaulted back out over top of the cubicle and smoothed himself down.  Checked his watch.  One minute forty-five seconds in all.  Ekström relieved himself in the urinal, washed his hands, then walked back to join his date.

It was over forty minutes later when Alban was discovered, dead from an apparent heart attack.  An ambulance came and went.  The staff at L’Eventail were as discreet as one would hope at such an upscale venue, and there was little to disturb the other diners.  Jessica was less bothered than she might have been.  She’d left early with Ekström, well before the body was found.  She had something else on her mind.

-oO0Oo-

The sodium tripentol would be discovered at the routine autopsy.  But by that time, Ekström would be long gone.  Of course, it was risky to get involved personally in a hit so close to home.  There was even the possibility that Ekström himself would be recognized, and the finger of suspicion would point at him.  However, as the paymaster for Alban’s death had again had been SearchIgnition Corporation, Ekström was sure that more than enough money and influence could be called on upon to hush the thing up.

As he drove away from Jessica’s apartment later that night, a question flitted through Ekström’s mind.  SearchIgnition was paying good money to silence individuals who might squeal about whatever Semyonov had been doing.  But who was it who had dealt with Semyonov himself?  And what had Semyonov been doing to deserve this kind of attention? 

 Chapter 38 -  1:15pm 6 April - Shuangliu International Airport, Chengdu, China

The Road to Sichuan is Hard.  That was the title of a poem Ying Ning’s father had taught her as a child, and she had told Stone all about it on the flight from Shanghai.  Not quite the thing a girl should be learning in the years just after the Cultural Revolution, apparently.  Far too civilized and classical.  ut with Ying Ning, there could be no better spur to study the classics than to tell her it was forbidden.  For Ying Ning, even her knowledge of Tang Dynasty poetry was an act of rebellion.  As a daughter in a rural village, she was expected to finish school at fifteen and “go out”.  Go out was shorthand for becoming a migrant worker.  Travelling to the city and taking to some shitty job so she could send cash home to her parents.

So learning Tang poetry was rebellious – different, intellectual.  Didn’t rank alongside killing her boss with a screwdriver maybe, but…  To a factory girl like Ying Ning, born dirt-poor, it was probably one step above throwing away a university career like Stone had. 

Du Fu was Ying Ning’s favourite - a dissident poet, an anti-war free thinker in the harsh militarism of the Tang Empire.  He was a proto-feminist, a lover of women who rhapsodized their beauty and dress, but lamented too their frustrated intellects. 

Ying Ning’s views were strongly held – violent even.  She used them as a suit of armour, as a way to deflect any questions about herself.  And now she’d started to open up, her views could be entertaining:

“Fuck Oyang… Oyang is a liar and a thief… the Machine belongs to Chinese people and Oyang is trying to steal it…”  OK. Got the picture about Oyang.  Then it was Carlisle (“Barbie Doll Bitch”) or even Professor Zhang (“Part of hypocrite clique”).  So talking Tang poetry on the plane with her was a kind of progress.  If the way to relate to the spiky haired, hard-faced, spitting refusenik was through her intellectual side, that worked for Stone.  And though he was hardly a fan of poems, he could see they fitted well with the Fox Girl part of Ying Ning’s image too. 

Stone saw that in her closed, defensive way Ying Ning was a talented self-publicist – although the polar opposite of someone like Carlisle.  There was nothing real about Ying Ning’s image, anymore than there was about Carlisle’s.  The just went about things differently.

What about Stone’s image?  Stone despised himself for even having an image.  The student papers had once called him “a true believer”, “a man without hypocrisy”.  All that because he lived in a student room, had no car, no bank account, no possessions, all that crap.  The image was mostly true – Stone just hated the idea of it.  Being a soldier – now that was real.  You follow orders, you fight, you kill.  Or get killed.  Anyone can respect that.  Except, it would seem, for Stone himself.

Stone respected Ying Ning’s brutal, in your face honesty.  And considering she used the word “hypocrite” more than Jesus, she hadn’t said it to him yet, which was praise indeed.  It would have hurt coming from her.  The most she said was that his title of “Peace Professor” was “decadent Western bullshit”, and Stone wasn’t going to argue with that.

As the plane began to descend, Ying Ning explained that Sichuan was one of the cradles of Chinese civilization, now a province of one hundred fifteen million people, sandwiched between the Kunlun Mountains in the East and the Tibetan Plateau in the West.  Cut off in ancient times, because the road over high mountain passes and treacherous river gorges was so difficult.  Hence the famous line from the poem – The Road to Sichuan is Hard. 

Despite its remoteness, Sichuan is no backwater.  Its hot, wet climate makes it outstandingly fertile.   Travellers who braved the mountains were astonished to find the rich and leafy metropolis of Chengdu at the end of their journey – the “Brocade City” of Du Fu’s poem.

Modern Chengdu is no longer the green Brocade City of even twenty years ago.  Its avenues are choked with traffic and the relentless tread of the concrete and the skyscrapers keeps the greenery to a minimum.  Nevertheless, Chengdu still has the feel of a city of twenty million placed absent-mindedly into a subtropical forest.  Trees grow everywhere, on the smallest patch of earth, and its markets still carry under their awnings the tang of its green humidity and the aroma of the Mapo tofu, the chili-laden local dish.  

-oO0Oo-

The flight from Shanghai had taken them seventeen hundred kilometres west into the deep hinterland of China.  By Stone’s reckoning, the Machine was located another five hundred kilometres West at least, in the deserted foothills of the Himalayas, close to Tibet, in the very centre of the Chinese landmass.

Stone’s plan to get near the site of the Machine had annoyed Ying Ning initially.  The idea was to get them very close to the mine workings called Death Hole in the high plateau of Western Sichuan, and let them stay there unnoticed.  He made Ying Ning contact the monks of a Tibetan Buddhist temple saying they were tourists, requesting lodgings for a few days.  It put them outside of the system of hotels, passports and ID cards, and the Tibetan monks would be the last people to talk to the Gong An. 

Stone would be a Western Tourist with Ying Ning his girlfriend.  Ying Ning had bristled at this.  Was it because she had to be girlfriend?  More likely on account of her typically Chinese prejudice against Tibetans.  She wasn’t above a bit of casual racism, despite her progressive image.

‘Act nice.  You’re supposed to be my girlfriend,’ Stone teased as they walked through the arrivals hall at Chengdu airport. 

‘Bull.  Shit,’ she replied in careful English.  He knew it would annoy her.  Sex was fine in Ying Ning’s worldview.  Boyfriends certainly were not.  There were a few women back in England who would accuse Stone of having the same issue with girlfriends.  He didn’t.  At least he thought he didn’t.

The terminal was cavernous in the usual Chinese fashion, and not busy.  Built for the hordes who would be using it in future years.  As they walked on, Ying Ning pointed to one of the large TV screens showing Global News Network.   ‘Your friend,’ she said and stopped to look.  Virginia Carlisle was up there, talking in English, with Chinese subtitles streaming across the bottom of the screen.  It seemed Virginia had a young guy with an electric fan who followed her, so she could always get that breeze-blown effect with the hair.  Looked good though.

‘Billionaire founder of SearchIgnition, Steven Semyonov was tragically killed in an auto accident a week ago.   Conspiracy theorists in the blogosphere in the US remain convinced of foul play on the part of the Chinese authorities.  A recent online poll for MSNBC revealed that eighty-nine per cent of respondents thought Semyonov had been lured into giving up his fortune to China and then crudely assassinated after he arrived in the People’s Republic.

Despite public doubts over his death, any evidence that this was anything other than a tragic accident remain elusive.  Hundreds of the world’s media have descended on the intersection in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, bringing with them retired investigators from the LAPD and forensics experts posing as cameramen.  Not a shred of evidence has been found to suggest that the super-intelligent billionaire was the victim of anything other than driving on the wrong side of the road.  Psychologists have also put in their two cents, pointing out that deaths from head-on collisions are usually the result of suicide bids.  But again, there is no hard evidence to back up this theory.

The investigative frenzy has been turbocharged by the revelation about the death of Antonio Alban, a fellow member on the board of SearchIgnition Corporation with Semyonov until little over a week ago.  Rumors are emerging from senior staffers at SearchIgnition, who refuse to be named, of continual fights and disagreements over the direction the corporation was taking.  Semyonov, the rumors say, was supported by Alban in pushing for a different vision for the corporation, based on completely new technology.  He was opposed by other board members who simply wanted to leverage the stranglehold SearchIgnition already enjoys in the market for Internet search systems.

Boardroom battles are not unusual in Fortune 500 firms, but it appears Antonio Alban, VP of Vision and Semyonov’s only ally on the ten man board of SearchIgnition Corp, may have been murdered.  Alban was discovered with coronary heart failure in the restroom at Mountain View’s exclusive French restaurant, L’Eventail.  The death showed every sign of natural causes, but the autopsy findings at three separate labs now reveal traces of sodium tripentol in the tissues of the Alban’s heart muscle.  The chemical agent, used in coronary surgery and in lethal injections to stop the heart, can only have gotten there by foul means.

Stone felt like laughing.  Bloggers had picked up like lightning on the speculation Stone had begun about the Machine, but Virginia Carlisle was still lagging behind, dumbly following the narrative she’d probably agreed on at a news meeting a week ago.  Meanwhile the bloggers and Internet sleuths were going after the real story.  At least one blogger known to Stone had repeated the location in Western Sichuan Stone had posted online for the Machine.  Was Carlisle even in China anymore?

With Alban known to have been murdered, the speculation over Semyonov’s death will only increase.  The attention of the Internet’s community of amateur sleuths has now turned to the real reason for Semyonov’s defection to China.  Did Semyonov simply want to build another business empire in China based on search technology?  Or, as Chinese officials have been briefing in private, have Chinese scientists made a discovery of such importance that Semyonov simply had to become involved?  At any rate, with the Mountain View PD expected to open a homicide investigation on Antonio Alban, the attention has shifted from the examination of tire marks at an intersection in China, back across the Pacific to California, only a few miles away from where Steven Semyonov held his final press conference just days ago.

Something to be thankful for, at least.  Virginia Carlisle and her cohorts would indeed be heading back East across the Pacific and the spotlight should be off for a few days. 

‘Why she doesn’t tell us about Semyonov?’ said Ying Ning.  Perceptive.  Right on the money as usual.  The whole thing was more confused than ever after that news report.  It made no mention of the Machine, Semyonov’s weapons trading, or even the death of Junko Terashima, who had been one of GNN’s own staffers. 

Carlisle and the mainstream media couldn’t grasp that the whole enigma revolved around Semyonov himself.  They should be looking at the kind of person he was, his motivations.  GNN must at least have some kind of obituary file on the man, but they had barely even shown that.  There had been no information about Semyonov the man at all.  Instead the mainstream media, TV and newspapers, were obsessing with the idea of foul play by the Chinese, even though by Carlisle’s own admission, they’d analysed tire marks and angles for days and come up with nothing.  Carlisle had admitted to Stone herself that she’d seen the body.  Why no interviews with people who knew Semyonov, building up a picture of where the great brain was heading?   

To make it worse, Antonio Alban, the man who could shed most light on what Semyonov had wanted to do with SearchIgnition, was dead too.  Silenced by a hired hitman.

Stone shook his head and set off towards the exit, but Ying Ning stopped once more.  Pulled him back.  She was pointing at the TV screen.  Virginia Carlisle was still there with that gorgeous mane of hair.

 Stone was happy to watch, but why had Ying Ning stopped?  Why was she so concerned with Carlisle?  

Then Stone saw what Ying Ning had been pointing at.

Virginia Carlisle reporting from Chengdu, China

Chengdu.  She was there already.  Carlisle was right there, in Sichuan, and she had arrived before them.  Stone had underestimated her. 

Fascinating.  Stone already had an idea what had brought her here, but he’d find out soon enough.

-o0o0o-

On the bus into town from the airport, Ying Ning started talking Tang Dynasty poetry again. 

 ‘Your friend Ms Carlisle reminds me of another poem.  Called Song of the Lovely Women, also Du Fu.  Du Fu is watching the women of the super-rich of those days.  It’s like a party for Berlusconi, or Trump, or some billionaire.  There are fine women bearing noble names.  Du Fu is star-struck by the women.  The clothes, the hair, their confidence.  Du Fu’s description of them in the poem is almost erotic.  But all that money wasted on clothes and fine scent – it disgusts him too.  He hates the lovely women, and he envies them.  But mostly he desires them.’

‘How does that remind you of Carlisle?’

‘Not her,’ said Ying Ning with her trademark wry smile.  ‘You.  It reminds me of you.  You talk about her.  Your feelings to Carlisle are like Du Fu’s for the lovely women in the poem.  You are jealous of her, and you’re disgusted by her money and clothes.  But mostly you desire.  Like Du Fu - you say you despise, but really you desire.’

So you’re jealous of Virginia, Miss Ying Ning? thought Stone.  It was unusual for Ying Ning to express any emotion, even in such an indirect manner as this.  Nonetheless her description of Stone’s feelings about Virginia Carlisle was creepily accurate.  For Stone had already decided himself to track down Virginia Carlisle in Chengdu.

‘Ying, that reminds me,’ he said, after a pause.  ‘There’s someone I want you to meet.’

A wicked smile spread across the Chinese girl’s features. 

Chapter 39 -  3:18pm 6 April Chengdu, China

Stone approached the desk in the knowledge that the average Chinese hotel clerk believes implicitly what a European person is saying.  Even better if the tone is Hong Kong Officers’ Club circa 1950, and no attempt is made to speak in Chinese.

Stone spelled out his name as if to an idiot child.  ‘My wife has checked in already and I need a room key,’ he said.  The clerk offered the key card with a pleasant smile.  ‘Oh, and what room is that?’ asked Stone.  It disturbed him how well the arrogant foreigner voice worked. And how easy it was to slip into the role.

Virginia Carlisle was not a difficult woman to track down.  First look for the most expensive hotel in town.   Second, get Ying Ning to ask around about a woman followed by an entourage of cameramen, makeup artists and flunkeys.  Stone needn’t, either, have bothered to enquire about her room number.  Just ask for the largest suite in the hotel.

Inside her room, Stone went straight for her MacBook – super-slim, ultra lightweight.  Like its owner?  He uploaded a password-hack program from a memory stick, and used it to copy her docs and emails for the last seven days.  Then skimmed through her schedule for the day.  Also lightweight.  She was a canny operator, Carlisle.  Saved herself for those ten minutes of airtime.

Then there was the sheer weight of luggage in that room.  She’d divided her clothes into work and non-work.  The fatigues, jeans and rugged shirts she used for her GNN reports on TV were on one side, together with appropriately battered running shoes and hiking boots, discreet makeup and sunglasses.  These clothes were replicated, to make it look as if she was wearing only a couple of items again and again.  These were “work” clothes.  The wardrobe of a performer.  On the other side of the large closet was a kaleidoscope of designer clothing, suited to an upper class woman of leisure, with copious jewelry and twenty-odd pairs of shoes.  She had a couple of power-dressing business suits, which occupied the leisure side of the closet.

To read there were the usual “professional” magazines – Forbes, The Economist and Harvard Business Review looked unread.  China Quarterly still in a cellophane wrapper.  Vogue and Cosmopolitan, by contrast, creased and well-thumbed by the bed.  The books were pure chicklit and there was a plastic wallet containing DVDs.  Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Sleepless in Seattle, Meet Joe Black, The Devil Wears Prada.  You could say a pattern was emerging.  A good thing Ying Ning wasn’t there to give her strictures on this woman.

Some reporters in Virginia Carlisle’s position are driven.  Committed, humourless newshounds with PhD’s in International Relations, who collect their visits to the benighted troublespots of the world like so many picture postcards, reeling off stats about infant mortality and female circumcision as they go.  Not our Virginia.  She talked like a hard-nosed investigator, but she was a true professional - a professional actress.

Stone wondered for a second who would do better at changing the world – hard-as-nails Ying Ning with her Tang dynasty war poetry and her stats on ShinComm suicide rates?  Or Virginia Carlisle, with her Vogue magazine and an audience in the hundreds of millions?

Stone checked his battered LCD watch.  Three forty-seven pm.  She’d be back any minute.  He lounged back with his boots on the sofa and opened up the MacBook once more.  He made a search with the words “Steven Semyonov Life Story”.

There are no results for this search string.  Please try another search.

Typo?  Stone tried the search again.   

Again no result.  This time he typed the words “Steven Semyonov Search Ignition”

There are no results for this search string.  Please try another search.

Finally he tried simply typing the words “Steven Semyonov”.  Same result.  The same thing happened on two other search engines.  No wonder the news outlets weren’t discussing Semyonov’s motives and background.  They were flying blind without the Internet.  SearchIgnition’s technology was used by all the major news archives too. 

Semyonov hadn’t been erased from history, but he may as well have been.  He’d been erased from the world’s search engines.  In an age of instant access to information, no one would bother to discover anything about him.  No wonder there was no talk of motives and background for the man.

And who would be able to manipulate the world’s search engines to do this?  Only one person, and that was Semyonov himself, before he died.  Stone was reminded of the note Semyonov had given him.  “Odi profanum vulgum.”  I hate the ignorant masses.  Semyonov’s scorn for the world had extended to forbidding research into himself.

Stone looked again at the watch and took at look at the recent web site in Virginia Carlisle’s history.  One caught his eye.  It confirmed his theory as to why Virginia Carlisle had come to Sichuan.  The page was just coming up on the screen as the door handle clicked and the door opened.

-oO0Oo-

Carlisle didn’t handle it too badly in the circumstances.  After a few seconds of shock and some harsh Anglo-Saxon language, the actress in her took over again.  Her eyes looked at the open closet doors, then at her books and magazines on the table, then ran along Stone’s long legs, stretched out on the sofa on the other side of the room.  Stone glanced up and then back down at the screen of her MacBook.  That was a delightfully complex look she’d come up with after the initial shock.  Anger, contempt, and a subtext of sexual interest all at the same time.  

‘Now.  I know you’re pleased to see me, Virginia,’ said Stone looking at the laptop.  ‘But aren’t you supposed to know a man better before you use words like that with him?’

‘This CANNOT be happening!’ she hissed, grabbing at the telephone by the door.  ‘This is Miss Carlisle.  GNN.  Give me hotel security!’  The hotel’s Chinese receptionist was going to need a few minutes to get to grips with Virginia in this mood.  There was stammering on the other end of the phone.  ‘SECURITY!’ she sang down the phone, then covered the receiver and turned on Stone.  ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ she yelled, her anger ramping up now she knew she wasn’t in danger.  Stone had taken a tiny peek behind her façade.  An unforgivable crime to actress Virginia.  ‘You arrogant son of a…’

Stone got up from the sofa and walked over the walnut-covered floor of the suite, smiling.  ‘Put down the phone, Virginia.  If that security guy comes up here, I might have to deal with him.  Neither he nor I would feel good about ourselves afterwards.’  He took her hand and moved it calmly to hang up the receiver. 

Carlisle stood open-mouthed at her own acquiescence for a few seconds, but then got a hold of herself and turned up the volume again.  ‘How dare you break into my room and go through my things?  The closet, the computer…’

‘Does that mean there’s something interesting I missed?’ he said.  ‘Tush, Virginia.  I’m too much of a gentleman.’

‘You lousy…’ she repeated.  ‘I got you out of that hole of a jail in Hong Kong so you could find out some stuff.  You’ve done nothing but follow me to Sichuan.  Pathetic.’

This was more like it – goading him to say what he’d been up to.

‘What brings you to Chengdu, Virginia?  I didn’t see any sign of a brutal civil war breaking out on my way to the hotel,’ said Stone.  ‘Or will you just use some old footage of carnage and mayhem in the background?  That’s the way it’s done, isn’t it?  Your news reports sound like they were made a week ago in a job lot.’

‘You’ve got nothing.’  She glowered at him.

‘Oh, hold on!  I forgot.  You’ve been looking at the Internet.’  He picked up the MacBook and showed her the web page he’d seen she’d been looking at.  ‘Perhaps this explains what brought you to Sichuan.’

http://dougcarslake.blog.Notfutile.com

UFOWATCH BLOG

Could this be the reason everyone’s favorite extraterrestrial, AKA Steven Semyonov, suddenly found a taste for the Orient?  Looks like it wasn’t Semyonov’s love of braised camel’s hump that gave him those generous proportions after all.  Something lies deep under the mountains of Western China which reminded him of home.

At this point there was a small line drawing of China.  A single red dot indicated a spot in the West of China, and there was a reference to the place in latitude and longitude.

Satellite measurements of gravity and magnetic fields show that something BIG is hiding in them thar hills.  The Chinese have known about this for years, but Semyonov could resist it no longer.  He sold up and beat a path over there.  But the “Boys from Beijing” aren’t the type to give a sucker an even break.  They took his cash, and he was given the “coal truck welcome” within minutes of clearing immigration.

Seems like the Chinese take a less broadminded view of illegal immigrants than our own authorities, even if he did arrive from Alpha Centauri.

‘It’s not like you to read this kind of crap,’ said Stone.  ‘In fact it’s not like you to read very much at all,’ he said, glancing at the unread pile of worthy journals.  He was busting on her, but he was still annoyed with Carslake for publicizing the info he’d sent him.  But why was he surprised?  Few people were as fastidious about publicity and self-promotion as Stone – even Doug Carslake.

‘OK.  So you’re here for the same reason, Stone,’ said Carlisle.  She was calm suddenly, satisfied now that she’d got something out of him.  ‘You’ve come because you think the Machine is only a few hundred miles from here.  Or maybe you’re just following me in case you get lucky.  Whatever.  You’re too late.  You probably think I spend my days in the gym and the beauty parlor,’ she said, with some satisfaction.  ‘And you’d be right.  I put on my work clothes and do my thing for about twenty minutes a day.  I spend five times that long on makeup and wardrobe.  But unlike you, I do not crawl in the dirt looking for the stories.  GNN has an army of guys doing that.  I’m the one who tells the story to the world.  That’s why a billion people know my face, and no one knows you.’

‘It’s why a billion people aspire to nothing more than repeating the crap you tell them on TV, so long as they retain veneer of bullshit.  Ignorance is Joy, yeah?  It’s like something out of fucking George Orwell.’

She sneered gorgeously.  ‘Cut out the professor stuff, Stone.  It doesn’t suit you.  You’re just another person I paid on the off chance you’d dig up a story,’ she laughed.  ‘You failed, but that’s life.  The money I gave you back in Hong Kong wouldn’t keep me in pantyhose.’

Stone thought about what he’d seen with Oyang in Shanghai.  Maybe not the right time to bring it up with Carlisle.  Also, that crazy UFO blogger Carslake had dutifully repeated the location of the Machine Stone had sent him.  Stone had given a wrong location, and Carslake had made it even more wrong.  Now it was out by hundreds of kilometres.  Carslake was just seeking publicity, but it also served Stone's purpose of smoking out the bigger players who were interested in the Machine.  He never thought Carlisle would be among them.

Stone turned to go, but she caught him by the hand.  Her trick again.  ‘Just a second,’ she said.  ‘I’ve just figured it out.’  Stone looked at her again, and she held his eyes this time, and came up very close, still holding his shirt, looking deep into his green eyes.  Smiling and knowing all of a sudden.  ‘I have an idea why you came here, Professor Stone.  You didn’t think you were going to get anything out of me.  And you can’t be that interested why I came to Sichuan.  You can watch the TV for that.’

‘So what’s your theory, Miss Nancy Drew?’

‘You’re here because you want to be.’

‘Er…  I guess that makes sense.’

She pulled him closer.  ‘You’re here because you like me.’

This was getting interesting.  ‘Now, Virginia.  What could you possibly have that I would like?’  Apart from the body and the hair, he thought.    And the brains?  ‘You should know me better.’

‘Uh huh…’ she said, nodding semi-sarcastically, but still gazing into his eyes.  ‘Well, maybe I know you better than you think.  Something tells me you’ll turn up again.  And again, until you get what you want.’  She had sidled up against him.  He could smell her hair and the Chanel.  You don’t get this on TV.

‘Don’t tell me.  You’ll be ready for me next time,’ he said.  ‘Perhaps I should take what I want now, Miss Carlisle.  Save us both the trouble,’ he said.  'Unless you like the idea of again and again...'

‘Maybe,’ she said. 

Stone had kind of expected something like this.  Maybe not so soon, but he was OK with it.  He was definitely OK with it.  He glanced around her suite, then looked back and met her gaze with his cool grey eyes.  Her eyes were kind of melting.  He had a decision to make in the next two seconds.  She already had her fingers on his shirt button.  It wasn’t a difficult decision.

Stone could see Virginia’s back in the mirror behind her.  His fingertips were on her waist beneath the silk blouse she had on. 

He inhaled her hair close-up, ran a fingertip ran along her spine beneath the shirt.  ‘You have fine vertebrae,’ he said.   

‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ she said. 

‘It’s good.’

She felt his fingers lightly on her sides.  His thumbs on her back.  ‘Mmm hmm,’ she said again, arching her back as he kissed her.  She had a very stylish body, he thought, as he glanced at her as and her back in the mirror.   You don’t get one of these in the make-up department.  Her arms reached gracefully upward, like a cat stretching as Stone took the olive blouse by the hem.  Over her head in one slow movement, sweeping the hair up with it for a moment, and then letting it fall again onto the bare skin of her back, like a curtain of blond silk.

-o0o0o-

Lying on Virginia Carlisle’s bed in the afternoon, Stone weirdly thought of Ying Ning and the poem again, on the plane.  The Ballad of the Lovely Women.  Du Fu, her Eighth Century intellectual rebel.  The feminist, the anti-war guy.  Du Fu loved those upper class women in spite of himself.  “Peerless women, with the names of Northern lands”.  Did she know something?  On second thoughts, Ying Ning had probably never heard of a place called Carlisle.  

Ying Ning was more his type in a way.  Edgy, moody, difficult.  Darkly attractive.  Yet here he was with Virginia Carlisle.  Funny that.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said to Virginia.  ‘A nap in the afternoon gives you added sparkle in front of the camera.  Energy.’

‘Honey.  I already got the sparkle,’ she said.  ‘And it seems you have plenty of energy too, Stone.  We must be good for each other.’  She winked.

Lovely manners, this Vassar girl.  In many ways, the perfect hostess.

-oO0Oo-

Thirty seconds after Stone left, Virginia Carlisle was on her cell phone.  ‘Jim.  There’s a guy just left my room.  Tall.  Kinda handsome, slim.  Blondish hair - could use a cut.  Have him followed by some of the Chinese guys when he leaves the hotel.’

Chapter 40 -  3:55pm 6 April Chengdu, China

Ying Ning had been followed before of course – often in fact.  She sometimes wondered why she hadn’t been picked off by an over-enthusiastic young Communist cadre with a gun, given her notoriety.  Still, China had laws.  The Gong An would catch her and put her on trial one day. It wouldn't last long, but yes, she would get her day in court. 

Today it was different.  Usually they worked in teams of three – two men and one woman, all in their late twenties, all average-looking.  Average height, average build, all fit from their training in the Gong An’s schools of martial arts.  Today it was just one guy.  He was much taller than average and easy to spot.  She led him through the crowds into the Du Fu Park, where Sichuan’s humidity and greenery still held the upper hand over Chengdu’s concrete.  The park was like a jungle, peppered with old-style Chinese pavilions, picturesque bridges and ponds of koi carp, their well-fed muzzles plopping lazily in and out of the water.  There are worse places to be followed.

At first she’d thought it might be Stone tracking her through the streets, given his height, but now she could turn and peer at a distance through the trees, she could see it was not.  It was a white Western man, but if anything taller still than Stone.   He loped through the forest like the yeti, with long brown hair in a ponytail and a scruffy red bandana around his head. 

Ying Ning walked off down one of the forest paths and stopped once more, checking behind her.  He was coming the same way for sure.  What did he want?  Ying Ning was used to the attentions of the Gong An.  It was sufficient with the Gong An just to get away.  In China there were plenty of crowds to blend into, plenty of scooters and bikes to “borrow” if she needed to.  This was different, because she needed to know what this guy behind her was up to.  She needed to ID him as Stone had asked her.  She retraced her steps while he was out of view for a few seconds, then cut off into the trees, her staccato tip-toe steps making barely a rustle in the undergrowth.  She crouched on her haunches, still on tiptoe, then rose to pass silently out onto the tiled path only twenty metres behind the man. 

Now she could see him.  Five centimeters taller than Stone, she guessed, and bigger in the shoulders, just as Stone had said he would be.  He was wearing heavy boots, which scraped on the path as he ambled along untidily.  He also had on a heavy leather jacket, like he was some kind of biker.  It must be killing him in this humidity.  She followed him with silent, velvet steps for another fifty metres, before the big lunk realised he’d lost her.  He stood there, his long arms dangling in simian fashion, and looked around him, peering obviously through the trees for Ying Ning’s spiky hair and fox-like face.

Inevitably he turned, and when he did, Ying Ning was standing behind him in her skinny black jeans and black T-shirt, a hand placed questioningly on an angular hip.  She was looking directly into his Aviator sunglasses. 

Chapter 41 -  5:35pm 6 April Chengdu, China

Carslake, he was called.  Stone had told him to meet up with Ying Ning, and finally he’d found her.  She’d brought him back to her place.  Stone had never met Carslake in person, but he’d met men like him.  He’d suggested Carslake grab a flight to China to be on the spot when he discovered the location of the Machine.  He knew the American wouldn’t pass up chance to find a real UFO.  Carslake might look like a nutjob – a madcap UFO blogger - but Stone knew people like Carslake can be useful.

Big, clumsy, slightly dirty looking:  everything about Carslake said lazy.  He took long loping strides, and somehow still dragged his boots on the ground.  He spoke with a slow drawl, as if he couldn’t be bothered to speak any faster.  The unkempt stubble on his face was because he couldn’t be bothered shaving rather than any fashion statement.  And that black leather jacket – well, Stone liked  the jacket.  It was a cool jacket.  Heavy, old, very good quality.  But in the sauna of Chengdu?  And Carslake wore it all the time.  As in all the time.  Probably wore it bed.

‘Being in China is kinda like camping,’ said Carslake, conspiratorially to Stone.  ‘You never get properly clean.  You take a shower, but as soon as you put your clothes on, you feel dirty again.’

Coming from him, it made Stone smile.  Ying Ning merely took another drag on her cigarette and shook her head.  ‘Yang guizi make excuse to be dirty,’ she said, paying Carslake’s casual racism back in kind.

Carslake helped himself to another of her cigarettes and lit up using her red star Chairman Mao cigarette lighter.  ‘I don’t know how you smoke this Chinese shit,’ he said, examining the characters on the carton.  ‘You ain’t got any American smokes?  What the hell brand is it anyway?’

Ying Ning had brought Carslake back into a house she was using on the outskirts of the sprawling city.  It was one of a few hundred small houses built by a main highway, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.  No streets had been laid, however.  They walked from the roaring four-track highway through clouds of dust, or through mud if the rain had just fallen.  It being Sichuan, trees and weeds were rapidly gaining a hold in the brown, rutted mud of the “streets”.

How did Ying find these places?  The house was small, with two tiny bedrooms.  It was newly built, unpainted and unfurnished.  But clean.  Stone had returned there from Virginia Carlisle’s place to find their old friends Bao An and Lin Xiaohong infesting the place.  Then Ying Ning arrived with the tall American.  Stone had been feeding tidbits of information to his blog, and finally, Carslake had been interested enough to get off his sofa in LA and fly to Chengdu.  Which was good, because Stone had asked him to bring something very useful with him.

This guy was more than a courier though.  Despite appearances, Carslake’s type can be very useful.  Because although people like Carslake might look lazy, it was often because they were obsessional and independent-minded.  They focused on one thing, and the rest of life could go hang.  That was Carslake.  Stone had seen his blog - UFOWatch.  Crazy, perhaps delusional, but Carslake had obviously done very little for the past few weeks but research the private life of Steven Semyonov.  Carslake’s earlier blogs made out that Semyonov was an alien.  Now he seemed to have gone back that on that opinion.  Or maybe he was just embarrassed to come out with it face to face in front of Stone.  Whatever.  It made no difference since the guy was dead.

When it came to personal skills, however, Carslake might struggle.  He had lived his life on the Net, and the transition to real life was proving a challenge.  It was easy to state wild opinions, and come out with wild theories and sexist insults online.  But he wasn’t on the Net anymore, and Carslake’s casual contempt for both women and the Chinese was experiencing a rude awakening in the face of Ying Ning’s scathing wit and derision.  Bao An and Lin Xiaohong did little other than snigger when Carslake was around, with Ying Ning feeding them with a succession of one-liners in Chinese.  They laughed at him at odd moments.  He must have felt like an overgrown circus freak within twenty-four hours of arriving.

There was something fascinating in the dynamic with Carslake and Ying Ning. True to type, Carslake was too thick skinned to be bothered by them busting on him in Chinese.  He ignored Bao An altogether, and with Ying Ning he adopted a new policy of appearing intelligent, while cranking up the slow-witted, derogatory comments in her direction. 

Stone wondered if Carslake “liked her”.  Good luck with that.  If Carslake ever came on to Ying Ning, she’d eat him alive.

‘I’m talking about research, Miss Ying-Tong-Bing-Bong,’ Carslake would say.  ‘Which is more than any of you motherfuckers has done.’  He claimed he had researched Semyonov’s background, and that the man was human after all, although he didn’t elaborate.  Stone parked that one.  If Carslake knew about Semyonov’s background, Stone would find a way of making him talk about it.  A bottle of Chinese vodka would probably do the trick.  Or even a carton of Marlboro.

‘Anyhow, Cutie Pie, are you going to tell us how we’re gonna find Semyonov’s Machine?  I gotta get home for the basketball playoffs.’

Cutie Pie?  Cutie Pie? Carslake was trying too hard now.  But what the hell?  It was free entertainment while it lasted.   And he wasn’t a bad man.  For all his front, and lazy arrogance, Carslake had had the presence of mind to list an even more incorrect location for the Machine on that blog of his.  With any luck, Virginia Carlisle and her cohorts from GNN would be scouring barren forests in the wrong end of Sichuan by now.

-oO0Oo-

The chance to quiz Carslake about Semyonov arose in the evening.  Carslake suggested he and Stone should “grab a beer”.  His bottle of whiskey bought on the plane was finished and maybe the energy he needed to carry on insulting Ying Ning was flagging.  The two of them left the house, and Stone started out towards the bus stop.

Carslake looked round as they tramped across the dirt in the darkness towards the streaming lights on the highway.  ‘Fuck these Chinese chicks, man,’ he said.  It made Stone smile.  He wondered if Carslake ever got out enough to do that in the US, let alone here.  Then he saw what Carslake had seen.  Ying Ning shooting pool at a table, under a tree outside yet another cell phone store.  She was surrounded by a cluster of lads, all smoking and wearing factory uniforms with the logo “YunDong Shoe Co”, laughing and joshing with her.  A typical Chinese scene.  For all China’s Olympics prowess, the only sport you saw in China was pool – snooker and pool everywhere.  By the roadside, on the grass – on shagged-out tables in every town and tiny village.

And there was Ying Ning in the half-light, downing another pool ball, cigarette in mouth.  Stone had asked himself a few times what Ying Ning was thinking.  About him, about Carslake, about the Machine.  Ying Ning gave him nothing, nothing of herself.  He could only guess how she was thinking from her actions.  Why was she hanging out with Stone?  Why was she happy to hang out with Carslake?  Stone might as well ask a tree.  He only knew that she tolerated them, from the fact that she was still there.  She tolerated them because she too wanted to find the Machine, and find out what they’d all been up to.  Semyonov, the Communist Party, the “billionaire clique” Ying Ning always talked about – she wanted to find them out in some appalling conspiracy.  And as soon as Stone or Carslake ceased to be useful, she’d be gone.  She’d evaporate into thin air.

Ying Ning played on as a couple of local girls came past – single, factory girls too by the look of them, wearing shorts and flip-flops and carrying pails of washing.  The lads at the pool table concentrated on Ying Ning.  Didn’t even glance at the other girls. 

The tall American shook his head as if in despair and made for the four track highway.  He loped out in front of the headlights, yelling for a taxi in English, and waving both his arms around like a demented windmill.

‘And fuck these Chinese buses.  I’m gonna get us a cab into town,’ said Carslake.  ‘We got to go to the Fedex office en route, my friend.’

Which was good news.  Stone had enticed Carslake to Sichuan with a promise of a look at a UFO site.  But his main purpose in luring Carslake there was to get hold of a device and bring it with him to China.  A device which was going to show Stone exactly what was under that mountain in Western Sichuan.

 Chapter 42 -  8:42pm 6 April - Chengdu, China

‘Time to come clean, Stone,’ declared Carslake.  He’d barely closed the door of the cab.  ‘What’s all this socialist brotherhood shit with you and Ying Ning?  You’re no more an international revolutionary than I am.’

Stone met this with a blank look.  It did its job.  Carslake was quickly obliged to show his hand.  ‘Your interest is weapons,’ said Carslake.  ‘Which makes me think your interest out here is the same as mine.’

‘Which is what?’ asked Stone, deadpan again.  Carslake had done his research.  He was an interesting guy, this Carslake.

‘Come on, man,’ Carslake sneered.  ‘These aren’t regular weapons.  I’ve been digging around.  You saw that horror show in Afghanistan.  It’s the tip of the iceberg.  There’s a freakin’ conveyor belt of technology coming out of ShinComm, and some of it ain’t for boy scouts.   Technology like no one’s seen before, like it landed from Mars.’ 

Mars?  Here we go.  Stone readied himself for the alien speech.  But Carslake had clearly started his work on ShinComm a long time ago.  Even before Junko had confronted Semyonov at that press conference.  ‘And where are they doing the work?  The research?’ asked Carslake, his gravelly drawl suddenly gone.  ‘Answer me that?  Where are the labs?  You told me you went to the Factory City.  No labs there.’

Carslake was asking the same questions as Stone had back in Hong Kong.  No wonder he’d jumped at the chance to come along.

‘Perhaps the labs are out there in Sichuan, in the hills,’ said Stone.  Deliberately lame.

‘Yeah.  And what do you see there?  Nothing.  Because it’s underground.’  Carslake was talking a mile a minute.  ‘And then there’s Semyonov – I mean, question mark.  Have you seen that guy?  He learns fluent Chinese in three months, completely fluent.  Then he writes with both hands at the same time.’

‘It’s a trick.  So what?’ said Stone.

Carslake’s eyebrows shot upwards.  ‘A trick?  It’s not normal, man.  You know it and I know it.’

‘No I don’t “know it”,’ said Stone, lying.  ‘But what do you think?  He’s on holiday from Venus or something?’

‘How should I know?’ shouted Carslake, looking suddenly affronted.  He could see Stone was trying to draw him out.  ‘I’m just saying.  There are some non-human characteristics there.  Remember what the chess champion said when the computer beat him for the first time?’

‘Gary Kasparov?’ said Stone.  ‘He said it felt like playing against an “alien intelligence”.’

‘That’s right.  And that’s what it feels like with Semyonov.  Alien.  Admit it, Stone.  The guy’s a freakin’ billionaire.  Twenty-nine years old.  So where are the girls, where’s the yacht?  And then to cap it all he gives away all his money.’  Carslake made hand gestures for emphasis, like he was handing out hundred dollar bills with a mad look in his eyes.  ‘I tell you, Stone.  It’s not human.’

‘Is that why they killed him?’ asked Stone.   Carslake didn’t know, but Stone bet his ass the American would have a theory.

‘I didn’t say he was killed.  I didn’t say he was alien either…’

‘You said both those things in your blog.’

‘Sure.  But you can say all sortsa shit online,’ said Carslake.  It was a good answer.  ‘Let’s just say there was something alien about him.  Maybe the Chinese thought the same and they killed him.   That’s what we all think, isn’t it?  They took his money and killed him.  But, whatever.  The cool thing is, the Machine is still there, and only Semyonov knew anything about it.’

‘So you think the Machine is real?’

‘Why else was Semyonov in China – at all?  Semyonov was a very smart guy.  He was looking for new things.  Maybe China has made a discovery so gigantic, and they wanted Semyonov to help make sense of it. To exploit what’s there, to get at the technology and make it work.  I get the feeling... we ain’t seen nothing yet.’

Stone looked back at the American, who stopped talking for the first time in twenty minutes.  The driver glanced at them in his rear view mirror.   You had to hope the guy didn’t speak English.  ‘The Machine.  What do you think it is?’ asked Stone, playing him along.

The wild look in Carslake’s eye came back.   ‘I don’t know.  That’s why I’m here in China.  And that’s the reason you’re here too,’ said Carslake, but he couldn’t help blurting his opinion.  ‘OK.  Something is found buried in a remote part of China.  Something ancient and weird.’  Stone thought of the gravitational anomaly.  ‘The Chinese, being the people they are,’ said Carslake, ‘Want to take advantage of the discovery.  They don’t bother about making an announcement.   After all, they've been working at that site since the Sixties.’

 ‘That was the middle of the Cultural Revolution,’ said Stone.

‘When all kinds of crazy shit were happening.  If you were a Chinese scientist here in 1968, you’d keep your mouth shut.  You’d probably seal up what you’d found to protect it from the mob.  Anyhow,’ said Carslake.  ‘Thirty years later, China becomes a peaceful and prosperous place, and someone reopens the cave or whatever. They work away to understand what they’ve discovered, possibly for years.  And what do they get?’  Carslake looked at Stone rhetorically.  ‘They get nada.  Finally someone…’

 ‘You mean Robert Oyang?’

‘…Brings in Semyonov,’ said Carslake.  ‘A man of unique intelligence and creativity, to help crack the writing, or the technology, or whatever.  Semyonov sees straightaway that this is mankind’s biggest ever discovery.  Sells up everything, putting his whole fortune into the project.  The Chinese regime insists he lives in China, and he has to give up his money…’

Those were exactly the two conditions Oyang had described.  The “down payment”.

  ‘But someone in power loses his nerve,’ Carslake said.  ‘They should never have told Semyonov about the Machine, and they kill him.’

Give Carslake credit.  He’d tried hard not to mention the extra-terrestrial element, and apart from that, his theories had a certain logic.  Stone knew they also had a lot of holes. 

As the car pulled up, Carslake said,  ‘This is the Fedex office, my friend.  There’s some stuff waiting for me that we’re gonna need when we leave for the monastery.  It’s going to show exactly what they have hidden under that mountain.  Then we’ll know for sure.’

Perfect.  Carslake had hired the equipment in LA and had it sent over.  Was even talking like it was his own idea.

Stone stayed back while the figure in leather jacket and bandana disappeared into the office.  Let Carslake go into the Fedex office alone.  The Chinese customs could well have taken a special interest in that package, and if Carslake was going to be arrested picking it up, he may as well be alone.

Chapter 43 - 1:05am 7 April Chengdu, China

Ying Ning had done this kind of thing before.  Had to have. She’d shaved the hair from around the wound on Bao An’s head and sewn back the flap of skin with neat quick movements of the hands.  Bao An had cursed with pain all the way.  Cursed Ying Ning, cursed the Chinese men who’d attacked him, cursed Stone and Carslake.  At the end of it all Ying Ning doused the wound with iodine and started on the gash across his cheek.  Stone was reminded of the way she’d done the collagen injections for him back in Hong Kong. 

Carslake was nervous that some one was onto them now.  Bao An had been attacked not far from the little house, in the darkness.  Ying Ning knew better.

‘Those Chinese boys fight over me,’ she said, somewhat callously in front of Bao An.  ‘Bao An make mistake to fight back.  Maybe he run next time.’  Ying Ning was smiling a little too harshly.  Stone could see what she was up to already.  That was Bao An out of the picture then.  Had she been testing Bao An?  Flirting with those guys at the pool table to test him?  Bao An should have ignored it.  As it was, he was history, Stone guessed, and the other guy Lin Xiaohong with him.  Stone saw it was Ying Ning’s way of winnowing out her followers before they went West to find the Machine.  She could be a callous bitch, Ying Ning.  Stone thought back to when she’d tried to seduce him in Shanghai.  Maybe that was a test too.  Stone could only assume he’d passed the test by turning her down.

While Ying Ning cleaned out the gash on the side of Bao An’s head, Carslake stood fascinated.  The shaven patch on Bao An’s head was like a monk’s tonsure slipped over to the side, stained with purple-brown iodine.  He’d be wearing a bandana like Carslake after this.  That wouldn’t please him much.

Carslake’s eyes showed his mounting surprise as he watched Ying Ning work.  Finally he spoke under his breath to Stone.  ‘What is this girl, a fucking surgeon?’ he said, with genuine appreciation for once.  Then he spoke loudly to Ying Ning, the booming, patronizing voice he always used to her.  ‘You should leave this Commie wasteland behind, honey, forget about this dissident crap.  You could get a real job back in the States.’

Ying Ning’s glance at Carslake was predictably contemptuous.  ‘Sure,’ she said, her calm fingers laying butterfly crosses onto Bao An’s cheek.  ‘I could be a good little Western slave girl, with biiig mortgage loan and credit cards,’ she said with the wry, dismissive smile.  ‘I could spend all my money on fashion and swallow all that shit they feed you on TV.’

‘We don’t have to watch TV, honey.  We don’t have to do anything.  No one tells me how to think.  Can you say that in China?’

‘They can tell me what to think,’ she said.  ‘I don’t have to listen.  They can tell me what they want.  I don’t listen.’

That was true.  Ying Ning wouldn’t listen.  Whether she lived in China, the US or in the middle of Antarctica, she wouldn’t listen.  She was supposed to be a Marxist, but unlike so many dissidents, Ying Ning wasn’t out there parroting anyone’s philosophy.  It was the world according to Ying Ning, and it was a tough place for anyone who got close to her.

Ying Ning concentrated on repairing Bao An’s face, but when she finished, she turned to Carslake and stood, with one hand on her hip and the other holding a cigarette.  Bao An silently stood up to light the cigarette for her, then sat back down.  He was her bitch, this Bao An, and about to be dismissed from service.

‘It’s true.  Your country is freer than mine,’ she said.  ‘For now.  But my country is getting freer.  What about yours?  Americans so worried how free are the other countries, what about yours?’

Carslake snorted at her and dismissed the offer of a cigarette for once.  ‘Chinese shit,’ he muttered under his breath, and stalked off into the other room.

Ying Ning the dissident, political activist.  That was the image.  But an image created by her loyal followers in the Chinese blogosphere.  The Fox Girl, hunted and hounded, making her way by cunning alone.  She was always on the edge, but she would not stay quiet and she would not betray her cause.  That was the image.

The reality was different.  Ying Ning did fight for a cause, but the cause was Ying Ning.  She was not part of a bigger movement.  Those two Chinese guys – Lin Xiaohong and Bao An – they were lapdogs.  She was using them, in the same way as she’d use any of her followers.   

Ying Ning was OK, Stone reflected, so long as you happened to be useful to her.  To have any relationship, you had to be useful to her.  It wasn’t enough to agree with her.  Very many did agree.  She’d achieved much with her exposés of low wages, suicides and bad conditions.  She’d achieved far more at any rate than all those dissident intellectuals and artists, shut up in their studios in Beijing, blogging about “civic society” and “democratic institutions” till their readers’ eyes bled with boredom.   Ying Ning wanted to fight things, and she’d do the same whatever country it was.  She’d do it in the US, or Switzerland or Sweden.

The good thing about Ying Ning was, she made you think about yourself – your motives, your honesty.  What about Stone?  What was he fighting for?  To expose, to embarrass, to change – like Ying Ning?  Stone had achieved some things, he’d give himself that.  And he’d achieved them without shooting people, which he was proud of.  But like Ying Ning, he was on his own side, and that was all.  He had more people to help him than she did.  His life was more of a compromise.  All that business of no possessions, no bank account, no car.  It was a public image and Ying Ning had seen through that immediately.  It was a public image for a man who claimed to have no public image.  It was also tactic, a way of staying below the radar, although everyone assumed it was some kind of personal political statement.  Stone didn’t like that.  Because political statements are simply justifications for what you want do with your life. 

And Stone knew perfectly well that “justification” is another word for “lie”.  As Ying Ning pointed out, Stone was paid by a university, even if it was in cash.  Where Ying Ning ignored rules and laws entirely, Stone used the rule of law.  He relied on it.  He used the laws of England, of America, of Sweden to get his message out.  True, the more of a problem he became to the authorities, the more their commitment to the rule of law was strained, and the slanders, smears and bogus charges had started to come out.  But all in all, Stone was less of an outsider than he cared to admit in public.

Contrast Ying Ning.  Right now, Ying Ning was an outlaw in China – but even that was a sideshow.  Her life was more like performance art - a living act of dissidence and rebellion – occasionally poetry.  She did everything for herself, and that explained her lack of morals.  If it was useful to Ying Ning, it was OK.  That was her moral code.

Ying Ning was an artist, Stone was a “warrior for peace”, but both had plenty in common with that screwball UFO-hound Carslake.  It was the need to discover, the need to know which drove them, the thing they had in common.  When they found the Machine, and uncovered what made Semyonov flee to China, all three would be happy for knowing and for the act of finding out.  Not one of them expected fame or fortune out of it.

Stone followed noises into the tiny bathroom, and found Carslake, lovingly unwrapping the long rectangular box he’d collected from the Fedex office in Chengdu. 

‘This baby,’ said Carslake, with a voice of hushed awe, ‘This baby’s going to tell us everything when we get up there in the hills.  Ground penetrating radar.  This will give us 3D images to a depth of five kilometers underground.  If anything’s hiding down there, this thing is going to find it.’  He spoke as if it had been his idea to bring the equipment, whereas he’d been following Stone’s specific instructions.  Which was all to the good.

After what had happened earlier, Stone insisted they would leave first thing in the morning.  They would travel towards the Tibetan border by bus at first light. 

Chapter 44 - 8 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Stone realised early on in the journey that things weren’t going to come up to expectations.  He’d seen Ying Ning’s photograph which purported to be the site of the Machine - a barren mountainside, devoid of life, with a high electric fence.  But the landscape up to  now didn’t look too promising.  First of all they passed a town in the foothills which was billed as Shang-ri La in the tourist guides, but was in fact called Shang Li.  Shang Li was a fairy tale vision of old China.  Enchanting wooden buildings, temples and pagodas, and a nice line in covered bridges over a babbling river to frame the photo opps. 

And the scenery got better, if less Disney-fied.  When the bus halted at the town of Tieshi Lin, the Ironstone Forest of Semyonov’s scribbled notes, Stone had expected the blasted scrubland from the photograph.  But Tieshi Lin was lush and forested.  Ying Ning pointed like a botanist to the silver Yunnan pine, and Sichuan pepper plants with fuchsia-pink blooms twenty centimeters across standing out in the profusion of spring flowers. 

They travelled the last fifteen kilometres in an ancient bus, painted in faded yellows, reds and blues, with large Buddhist swastikas.  It reminded Stone of his time undercover in Pashtun tribal dress, riding the beaten-up trucks from Kandahar up into the thin air of the Pamir Plateau.  The Afghan Death Zone, thousands of kilometres away on the other side of the Himalayas 

By contrast, the colourful swastikas painted on its side marked this wagon out as the bus from the Buddhist monastery at Shanglan.

-oO0Oo-

Stone stepped out and breathed in cool, fresh air.  The monastery stood at the head of a forest valley with the Great Snow mountains rising behind to 7500 metres, way higher than McKinley, or even Aconcagua.  A view so clear it made him pity the rest of humanity.  A river burbled and sploshed down the hillside a hundred metres away. 

At the Shanglan monastery was a Buddhist temple, surprisingly large, its frontage dominated by a red-painted wooden portal, seven metres high.  In front stood a courtyard where a trio of teenage monks played and chased, and the open entrance to the temple.  Wisps of incense smoke trailed amid a tinkling of bells and some chanting.  The three boy-monks stopped dead as they spotted Stone and Carslake, dumbfounded to see Westerners.  They stared at first, then chattered, edged forward and finally reached out their fingers to touch the white skin and Stone’s unruly, light brown hair.

Inside the temple was a group of monks at prayer.  Three of the older monks looked lost in contemplation, eyes closed, lips moving in quiet incantation.  But the younger monks looked out at the foreigners in excitement.  They forgot their incantations, and their smiling eyes peered out through the incense smoke and tinkling of brass bells.  A lone, aged monk caught Stone’s attention.  He was outside the doorway in his robes, crouching on the steps and twirling a scripture reel as if oblivious, his face lined and wizened by the years, muttering his incantations.

Stone scanned the faces inside the temple.  One monk looked different.  In his mid-twenties, tall and muscular, the same height as Stone.  The robes and the shaven head were the same, but there were no smiling eyes, no childish curiosity.  His face and head had a muscular self-confidence, and he was staring at Ying Ning aggressively. 

For while Stone and Carslake stood respectfully before the mesmerizing spectacle, Ying Ning was hand-on-hip, standing right over the crouching monk on the steps with a scornful pout.  Stone saw her quite deliberately pull a cigarette carton from her bag, tap against it, then light up and smoke.  Ash fell from her cigarette onto the old monk’s saffron robes.   She made loud remarks to no one in particular, pointing at the monks with her cigarette.   The boy-monks shrank away, but the old gentleman beneath her sat unmoved, eyes closed, spinning his scripture reel.  Finally, getting no reaction, Ying Ning threw down the cigarette butt, and stalked off around the back of the temple.

Hilarious. 

‘She has no right to do that, even if she has no respect,’ muttered Carslake. 

‘She’s consistent at least,’ said Stone.  ‘I didn’t exactly expect her to bake a tray of cookies for them.’

‘Bitch,’ said Carslake.

Someone else thought so, too.  The strong, aggressive-looking monk had been staring at Ying Ning all along, and after seeing her little performance with the cigarette ash, he left his place and strode after her round the back of the temple.

Stone made a show of bowing in front of the temple, then walked off in silence. 

Behind the temple in the trees were two long, low buildings, not ornate like the temple, but equally old.  A couple of hundred years, Stone guessed.  In the Manchu dynasty of three hundred years up to 1911, the Tibetans had enjoyed a privileged status in China.  Most of their lovely temples were built at that time, many outside of Tibet in China proper.  The two buildings were the living quarters for the monks.  One comprised a dining hall, kitchens and workshops, and the other had tiny wooden cells for the monks - austere and windowless.

Stone oriented himself, and looked around at the lush hills and the valley.  Could it really be the right place?  It seemed preposterous that the barren landscape and the old mine workings where the Machine was hidden should be here.

‘Stone!’  The American voice of Carslake.  He emerged through the trees with another monk, an intelligent-looking gentleman wearing glasses called Giyenchen.  He spoke English, and invited Stone and Carslake to take tea with him. A novice monk materialized with a teapot and some cinnamon cakes for them.

Giyenchen’s face was one that stays in the mind.  It had an aura of the saintly.  A benign smile, an unknowable contentment.  Giyenchen was in his mid-forties, Stone guessed, and his skin was brown and smooth, with small crow’s feet around the eyes from smiling.  Neither young nor old.  His head was shaven, of course, with signs of grey stubble by the ears, and he wore black-rimmed spectacles.  It was a face which carried its own peace, as if the decades of incantations and meditation had been absorbed into the skin.  Giyenchen looked kindly, benign, and also wise.  His movements were slow and precise, as was his spoken English.   Giyenchen gave the impression that words were moving through him from somewhere else, so impassive was his expression. 

  Stone took the opportunity to steer the talk in a suitable direction.  ‘You are very lucky to live in this place.  A heaven on earth.’

Giyenchen nodded and smiled.

‘I heard there were mine workings here,’ Stone continued.  ‘But I cannot see any sign.’

‘You are most well informed,’ said Giyenchen.  He showed some surprise but smiled through it.    ‘There were indeed mines in this area, some years ago,’ he said, his words pouring in a smooth rhythm.  ‘It was known as an area for rare minerals.  For silver, gold and lead also.’  Stone was reminded of the place names on Semyonov’s scribblings: Silvermine Field, Ironstone Forest.   ‘However, the mines themselves are long closed, and have not been on any map for forty years.  It is good for us.  But I ask myself how you knew this.’

‘I haven’t seen a map,’ said Stone.  It was true.  There were no decent maps, but Ying Ning had pieced together a map of the area from older ones.  ‘Where are the mines?  Are they covered over by the forest?’

‘Seven kilometres from here, over the hill to the Northwest,’ he said, smoothly once more.  ‘But.  It is forbidden to go there.’

‘Forbidden?’ said Carslake.  ‘How come?’

‘Karma,’ said the monk.  He didn’t hesitate, this guy.  There was something robotic in his lack of reaction, his smoothness.  ‘It is forbidden to the monks.  We try hard, Mr Carslake, to keep our good karma.  We pray, we recite the mantras, we read the sutras.  We live with our minds pure and our bodies cleansed,’ he said, and his eyes closed.  ‘I myself have not eaten meat for thirty-four years.  Why should we make such efforts to be clean, only to pollute ourselves  at the scene of such evil?’

‘Evil?’ asked Carslake, his eyebrows raised.  ‘What evil?’

Giyenchen shrugged.  ‘Is it evil, or poison or simply death?  It does not concern us, and it pollutes us to think of it.  If you saw that place, it would be clear to you.  This place, this valley, gentlemen, is a sea of beauty and fertility.  That is why the monastery is here.  It is a place of abundance and joy, far, far from the samsara of the world, far from the cities and their cycle of birth and death and want and suffering.  Our task as monks is to live in ignorance of this samsara.’

‘In ignorance of suffering, you mean?’ asked Stone.  ‘That’s what samsara means, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.  Suffering and the bad things of the world.  If we stay ignorant of suffering, if we avoid it, we may find enlightenment,’ said the monk, nodding benignly.  ‘Nirvana is of this kind.’  There was silence again.  Giyenchen sipped some tea and closed his eyes, as if looking at nirvana itself. 

Sometimes, Stone wanted to close his own eyes.  His life was the opposite of Giyenchen.  It was about escaping one conflict by looking for another, escaping his own guilt by finding even greater guilt in others.  Everywhere he saw suffering, because everywhere he looked for suffering.  It wasn’t nirvana, or enlightenment.  But in that second he felt he wanted to copy Giyenchen, and close his eyes on the conflict and suffering.  It wouldn’t need a monastery.  Just a regular job, a woman, a few friends.   Close your eyes and it can happen, the monk seemed to say. 

Stone looked at the smooth skin of Giyenchen’s closed eyelids behind the glasses.  The closed eyes of the monk burned into him, more than the staring, glittering eyes of any assassin or terrorist.  It felt like the monk had looked for a second on Stone’s guilt-scarred, wounded soul, just for an instant.  And Stone hated it.

‘And that is why you will not talk of that place?’ asked Stone, glad to shake off the feeling.  ‘The place which is forbidden?’

The monk nodded slowly.  ‘If I tell you what I know of the place,’ he said.  ‘The words pollute me, but they pollute you also.  It is the place of samsara.’ 

‘Try us,’ said Carslake, ‘We’re polluted already.  Trust me.’

In Stone’s case, Carslake could have no idea how true that was.

Giyenchen stood, and pottered about the room in silence, lighting more incense and candles as the darkness gathered outside.  In the end he began to speak through the wisps of smoke, the glow of the candles on his smooth brow.

‘I can say these things,’ he said.  ‘But I must beg you not to interrupt.’

Chapter 45 - 5:36pm 8 April - Shanglan Monastery, Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

The head monk Giyenchen sat meditating for a couple of minutes, eyes closed behind his glasses.  He made a faint humming sound.  Stone and Carslake looked at each other, but neither spoke.  Dusk was closing in outside, and the tiny room was dark save for the glow of the incense and the guttering flames of the candles.

 ‘In 1966,’ said the monk, breaking suddenly into speech, ‘China was not the peaceful place it is today.  It was the Cultural Revolution.  A madness of suffering.  Workers were turned on their managers, pupils denounced their teachers, people of learning were sent to labour camps.  Religion was proscribed.  Temples were closed, Christians and Muslims could no longer worship, and vulgar mobs came to drive the monks from the temples.  Our temple here at Shanglan was abandoned and the monks sent to work in the fields.  For ten years Shanglan lay empty.

‘When the monks returned, they discovered the place the Chinese called the Death Hole had expanded from a few disused mine buildings.  For many hectares nothing grew.  As nothing grows there now.  Whether for reason of poison or evil, we don’t know, but this place is very near to the Shanglan itself…’

‘But what..?’ began Carslake.

Giyenchen held up a palm to silence the American.  ‘Please,’ he said.  ‘Do not interrupt.  There were mines here, it’s true, since the Manchu times.  But not this.  Some say they tested their atomic weapon there.’

‘A nuclear test?’ asked Carslake.

 ‘Others said it was to create a hole for mining, still others said it was an explosion to destroy the mine, to seal the mine forever.  However, the hole is still there, and nothing grows.  One of the Communist leaders, Lin Biao, it is said, ordered the mine dug out again.  He had deep shelters and bunkers dug all over China, convinced the Americans or Soviets would attack with their missiles.  That at least is true.  Lin Biao had the mine begun again in 1969.  Hundreds of miners lost their lives,’ said Giyenchen,  ‘But deep workings were created.  Lin Biao, of course, was an evil creature, swept away in the disturbances of those times.  The popular politician Zhou Enlai ended the work at the mine in 1970.  He ordered it to be fenced and guarded, and so it remains to this day.’

‘It has stayed that way since… 1976, when the monks returned?’ asked Stone.

Giyenchen nodded.

‘No activity in recent times?’

The monk said nothing, but he opened his eyes and looked accusingly.  ‘Let us speak no more of it.  And you must not speak of it to your Chinese companion.’

Giyenchen got up and left.  Stone and Carslake looked at each other in the candlelight.   

‘He said nothing,’ said Carslake.

‘Not true,’ said Stone.  ‘He confirmed the mine is there.  So we know our next move.’

‘No.  I don’t know.’ said Carslake, mystified.

‘We take the radar set you picked up at the Fedex office in Chengdu.  And we use it.’ 

‘Tonight?’ shouted Carslake.  ‘Do we go and do it right now or what?  Why tonight?’ 

‘Not right now,’ said Stone.  ‘We’ll be missed.  Giyenchen may look like a saint.  But he’d be mad not to have us watched.’

‘He’ll be watching Ying Ning more,’ said Carslake.  ‘He doesn’t trust her.  And I don’t blame him.’

Carslake professed to hate Ying Ning.  But he liked her, in spite of himself.  Stone noticed that she did weird things to Carslake, had this strange hold on him.  Carslake hated himself for it.

-oO0Oo-

Which made what Carslake saw at dinner all the more galling.  Ying Ning didn’t only do weird things to Carslake.  She did it to most men.  Now she was getting friendly with none other than the tall muscular-looking monk who’d followed her from the temple.  Name of Panchen.  It all looked like trouble. 

Tibetans are generally much bigger and taller than the Chinese, and Panchen towered over Ying Ning.  Tall, with a wiry muscularity, looking as aggressive and suspicious as he had before.   Veins stood out on the brown skin of his temples, tense and moody, and his jaw muscles worked with some unknown frustration.

 Stone stayed quiet while Carslake talked with Giyenchen.  He wanted to observe this Panchen guy at dinner.  He acted like he was some kind of unofficial leader of the younger monks.  He moved around calmly and slowly, and kind of held court.  He also showed a particular arrogance around Ying Ning.  Having her next to him give him kudos with the other monks.   

The community of monks here had the same dynamic as any human group of males.  Stone saw a relaxed, older leader, and then young, thrusting pretenders to the throne.  The scene at dinner just dripped with testosterone, but there was more to it than that.  Giyenchen and the older monks were Tibetan monks in the sense that people in the West might imagine.  Careful, intellectual, spiritual, determined – but above all spiritual. 

Panchen, it seemed, had taken up the religion of his forefathers as political rebellion.  He was a Tibetan Nationalist who hated the Chinese.  That was his thing.  The Buddhism, prayers and contemplation must bore him rigid.  He’d probably seen the arrival of three visitors with an interest in the Death Hole as an opportunity to cause trouble. 

All of which meant Panchen was a dangerous individual.  Liable to get all three of them in hot water. 

‘At least you know what kind of guy Ying goes for,’ Stone muttered to Carslake, watching how Ying Ning behaved around the young Tibetan.

‘Fuck him,’ said Carslake.  ‘And fuck her.  What’s she hanging out with an ape like that for?’

Ying Ning could handle Panchen.  She could handle most people.  Stone was expecting a spitting episode sooner or later, but was for now it was OK.   She was sitting with Panchen at dinner with a little smile which Stone knew was as insincere as any harlot’s.  What was she up to now?

Panchen resembled the young lion, gathering support, getting ready to challenge the king of the pride - the calm, lazy old lion, Giyenchen.  Panchen was using Ying Ning to enhance his image.  Ying Ning would see that and exploit it ruthlessly.  The only question was how.

Was Stone the only man who could see this with Ying Ning?  

-oO0Oo-

Stone’s suspicion was confirmed way sooner than he expected.  ‘Let’s go and check on Ying Ning,’ said Carslake as they returned to the dormitory cells after dinner. 

‘Don’t do it, Doug,’ called Stone as Carslake strode off.  Stone should have stopped him.  But what the hell?  Carslake had to know what he was dealing with.

Carslake knocked on Ying Ning’s door.  No reply.  He knocked again.  No answer.  Stone leant forward from behind Carslake and gently pushed the door open.

Carslake’s eyes told the story.  ‘Oh man,’ he said.  ‘You have got to be kidding me.’  Stone could just make out the naked form of Ying Ning’s legs stretched out on the floor.  ‘You have got to be fucking kidding me.’

Stone pulled the door closed.  Not even he had expected that.  Not so soon anyway.  Ying Ning’s naked body lay on a sheet on the floor.  Beside her, the muscular form of Panchen, looking somehow even more naked with his shaven head beside the spiky red-black hair of the Fox Girl.

  A man can befriend a fox.  She will let herself be touched and stroked and treated for a time.  But a fox’s nature is wild.  She cannot be tamed.  

Chapter 46 - 9:54am 9 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

The next morning Ying Ning introduced Stone and Carslake to Panchen.  To Stone, Panchen looked like typical peacock alpha male in some nightclub in London or Portsmouth, who took harsh satisfaction from his night’s work of despoiling a Chinese woman. 

Carslake looked at Panchen with mute loathing.  They were in a clearing a few hundred metres from the monastery. 

‘Panchen can find a way to the Death Hole,’ said Ying Ning.  ‘He go there before.’

It sounded dubious to Stone.  He turned to Panchen, speaking slowly.  ‘It is forbidden to the monks.  But you’ve been there?’ 

Panchen held Stone’s eye at first then glanced away as he nodded.  He was bullshitting.  Ying Ning had made a mistake with this guy. He was all talk.

‘Whatever.  You can count me out,’ said Stone.

‘Fuck you, brother.  If this guy knows how to get there, I’m in,’ said Carslake.

Stone rolled his eyes.  The idea of getting into a real UFO site had just trumped sexual jealousy for Carslake.  Carslake would be there, whatever crazy idea the Tibetan had.

 ‘You too?’ asked Stone, looking at Ying Ning.

Panchen shook his head.

Ying Ning spoke for him.  ‘I’m a woman,’ she said with a straight face.  ‘You should go, not me.’

There was a pause.  Stone caught Carslake’s eye to stop him laughing.  This was getting silly.  Ying Ning had far too much savvy to go along with this guy, Panchen.  She’d let him get in her pants, but following him to the Death Hole?  Well.  A girl has her limits.  Yet she was happy to manoeuvre Stone into going along with Panchen.

Perhaps she’d seen through Panchen’s braggadocio – only a few hours too late.  The reason hardly mattered.

‘Why you looking at me?’ said Carslake, looking at Stone with mock sincerity.  ‘I can see the guy’s point.   Going into a mine with a woman, that is some seriously bad-shit samsara.’

Panchen disappeared, his new best friend Carslake with him, clapping him on the back in bogus solidarity.  Stone looked at Ying Ning and raised an eyebrow.

‘Did you have to?  Seriously?’

 ‘You need to go.  You have to go with Carslake,’ she said.  ‘He bound to do something stupid.  And anyhow – you come all this way to find the Machine, no?’  A wry smile was finally playing on her lips.  ‘And you shouldn’t worry of Panchen.’  She came up and pinched Stone’s butt hard.  ‘He fucks like a gorilla.’

Stone was unconcerned about Panchen’s sexual technique.  However, he realised he did care about finding the Machine.  When the opportunity arose to use the ground penetrating radar, he was going to take it.  Hopefully without Panchen in the vicinity.

-o0o0o-

The best Carslake could say of Panchen’s plan to get inside the Death Hole was that, “it’s so stupid it might work”.  That was optimistic.  Ying Ning was not exactly “risk averse” as a person, but even she was avoiding the action this time.

‘Rockhead,’ she said.  ‘You should go to drag Carslake and the monks out of there if there’s big trouble.’  Her bogus “concern” reminded Stone of Virginia Carlisle.  It was a poor reason to get involved, but depressingly, a valid one.  Stone would have to go.

And just how many people was Ying Ning manipulating at this point?

The monks knew their way through the forest well enough at night.  The route to the old mine workings was evidently well known.  Panchen led on in determined silence, ready to do battle with the might of the Chinese State, but the gaggle of teenage monks following him resembled a Sunday afternoon picnic.  Mercifully, they were carrying nothing more than a wooden stick or club each and a couple of ten litre drums of oil.  Carslake, on whose credit card the radar set was still secured, sensibly lagged behind with the equipment.  Stone walked with him, trying to enjoy the cold spring air and another night under the stunning Tibetan starscape.  Shooting stars flitted thick and fast above the tree-line and the pale, white banner of the Milky Way was as clear as he’d ever seen it, clearer even than those nights in the high Pamirs.  At least it felt that way.

It took an hour and a half for them to reach the end of the track.  Which might have been a pleasant walk, without Carslake talking constantly. 

‘I asked Ying Ning about this Lin Biao guy the monk was talking about, and the other one…’

‘Zhou Enlai,’ said Stone.  ‘Zhou Enlai was Chairman Mao’s righthand man, his faithful deputy.  One of the good guys.’

‘That’s what she said,’ said Carslake.  ‘How did you know?  Anyhow, Lin Biao is the guy who opened this mine up and started digging into what was going on here after all the monks were kicked out,’ said Carslake.  ‘The thing is, not long after, Lin Biao had gone from nowhere to be the biggest man in China, taking over from Mao.  Remind you of anyone?’

Carslake was speculating wildly here, but Stone let him talk. 

‘Someone who came from obscurity to become the cleverest guy in his country?  But Mao and his men had this Lin Biao dude figured, and got him rubbed out.  So - when Semyonov turns up in China, the top guys know the score, and they rub him out too.’

‘For what it’s worth, Doug, no, I don’t see a similarity between Semyonov and a 1960’s Chinese politician,’ said Stone. 

Ahead of then, the monks had finally halted, and were beckoning to them.  The moon stood big and copper above the horizon as they reached the main highway up to the mine workings.  It wasn’t looking too good.  If the site had been left since the Seventies it would surely be overgrown by now. 

By way of Panchen’s halting English and Stone’s poor Chinese, Panchen explained his plan again.  A truck came up most nights at this time.  They would hi-jack the truck at send it down the road to crash into the fence which apparently surrounded the whole site.  Stone and Carslake could go through in the confusion, he said.  There.  Simple.

‘What about you?’ said Stone to Panchen.

‘I take guns from this truck.  Send them to Lhasa for rebellion against Chinese,’ said Panchen.

‘Great,’ said Stone.  At least Panchen had come clean finally.  It really was a mad scheme.  ‘That should mean a few more deaths for the Western newspapers to report on then.’

‘What say?’

‘Never mind.’  A good thing those bleeding hearts Stone knew back at the university weren’t here to witness this particular version of Tibetan Buddhism.  Tibetans were regarded back home as uniform clones of the Dalai Lama – or Giyenchen for that matter.  The truth was somewhat different.

Panchen stopped them on an asphalt road, a couple of hundred metres below a rise where the road entered the crater.  They could see the glow of the moonlight fading up to the black velvet and the stars above.  Before them was a wide patch of mud and stones where a stream crossed the road.  The monks poured oil over the mud and water.  Some kind of cunning trap for the truck when it appeared. 

Stone was almost relieved.  It really was a mad scheme.  The truck would likely drive on through without noticing the monks at all.  At which point they could all go home and no harm done.   No guns, no riots in Lhasa. 

Panchen tested the mud and oil with his foot.  Incredibly, he was still wearing the sandals.  Was it slippery?  Stone tried it himself.  Possibly, but surely it wouldn’t work. 

Even Carslake was dubious.  ‘Of all the dumb-assed things…’   He stood with Stone, the ridiculous bandana still round his head.  Stone wondered if the more impressionable monks would be sporting bandanas before long.

Presently, the distant noise of a diesel engine was heard.  An orgy 0f shhh noises, and finally silence.   Panchen addressed the youngsters, his voice deliberately deep and masculine, before they all shrank back into the trees.

The truck engine was high-pitched, struggling up the hill in low gear, the differential whining through the corners.  The monks were back in the trees, Stone and Carslake with them.  Stone moved up to be near Panchen.  In case he did anything really stupid.  The truck struggled into view, over a rise, whereupon the driver threw it into neutral to coast down the hundred metres into the dip where the stream crossed.  A standard practice.   Chinese learn their road craft on bicycles and habitually freewheel downhill.  The truck would roll over Panchen’s mud patch and engage the gears at the bottom, right on the patch of mud and oil.  Panchen smiled.  He shouted at a kid next to him, and gave the lad a kick forward.  The novice ran into the headlights, robes flowing, just metres in front of the truck.

It worked.  The driver stood on the brake, shouted a volley of abuse through the window, then stuck it into first gear, and the engine howled as the rear wheels spun satisfyingly in the oil and mud. 

Panchen gripped his club.  Bad things were about to happen.  Stone found himself willing the tyres to grip again on the asphalt.  Panchen took a couple of others and jogged up to the side of the truck.  The driver wasn’t looking.  A smash to the side window.  Panchen grabbed the door, hauling the driver out.  The engine had stalled.  The driver’s mate made a lunge for the club of a monk at the other side, but Panchen went round there too.  Dragged him through the broken glass of the window, lacerating his cheek and half pulling his ear off. 

It was getting serious.  Stone flew forward, but Panchen had swung his club twice at the man’s head.  Stone was on Panchen, pulling him back, but the driver’s mate had gone down like a felled animal.  Panchen bellowed in rage and smashed another completely pointless blow into the back of the man’s skull.  Stone bent to the Chinese man, trying to cradle his head, but his fingers slipped into the bone at the back.  Blood flowed into the mud, litres of it. 

Jesus, what was he doing here?  Stone stood back. 

Carslake’s bandana appeared beside him.  ‘I can see the fence from here, in the headlights.  I’m going up there.’

‘Don’t do it, Carslake.  After this they’ll shoot you.’

Stone was appalled that Panchen’s plan looked like it would work after all.  The big Tibetan was up in the cab, ready to drive the truck away.  The engine started up and screamed as Panchen struggled with the shift stick.  Finally a crunching noise as Panchen found first gear, and there was another roar of the diesel motor as the monk stood on the accelerator.  The rear wheels spun, drifting to the right.  Panchen was shouting through the windows, but still had his foot jammed down.  Stone was waving both arms at him.  Panchen had evidently never driven before.

Stone looked round for Carslake.  It was dark save for the headlights of the truck on the road, but he saw the bandana slipping away, back into the trees with the radar set.  Arsehole.

Then from behind the truck, the familiar, savage banging of an AK47.  Chinese-made, of course, like the ones in Afghanistan.  Its jagged muzzle flash lit the little scene like a strobe light, with freeze-frame images of the monks shifting into the trees or airborne, throwing themselves to the ground.  Stone lay behind the canvas of the truck, holding a large stick.  Shout, fire, shout, fire.  The weapon hammered and reverberated, alternating with silence.  Bark splintered away from the trees.  

What an unholy mess.  The Chinese guy with that gun had no idea what he was doing either.  Only he had an assault weapon, and that meant he was calling the shots for now. 

Stone kept the gun out of view, and waited for the sound.  It stands to reason that a man should not run in front of a machinegun.  Yet soldiers do it.  Some are killed, some get away with it.  Yet still they run in front of automatic weapons.  Stone thought he’d learned that lesson.  But he hadn’t.

Then a pause.  Silence.  The forest had taken over once more.  Still as a forest should be at midnight.  The Milky Way arced above them and there might even have been a shooting star above the trees.  Stone was ready for it.  Here it came.  Click.  The magazine being changed.  Stone stepped out, brought the club down on the guy’s hand.  Broke the wrist, hopefully. 

A curtain of blue light had appeared from the direction of the mine workings, above the rise.  The searchlight was dazzling all of a sudden, from over the rise, two hundred metres ahead.  Game over.  Panchen turned for trees with his handgun.  Monks were running, scattering - out of the trees, back into the trees.  And Carslake?

Stone knew what was happening with Carslake.

-oO0Oo-

Stone crouched behind a tree for a minute or so – maybe two.  The blue light was still there, eerie, washing over everything from over the rise ahead.  Stone had assumed it was a searchlight, but it was not – it was just a huge eruption of milky, blue light, suffusing everything – the road, the truck on its side, and penetrating right into the trees behind him.  The blue suddenly dominated the whole horizon to one side of him.  He lay flat to the forest floor and made his way forward on his elbows towards the eerie blue light.  It was brighter and brighter the nearer he got.

Chapter 47 - 11:56pm 9 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

It took Stone about ten minutes edging forward on his elbows before he crested the ridge.  There were no more trees, no more forest.  Stone was looking over the edge of a crater, stretching away in front of him.  One, maybe one and a half kilometres across.  Bare, flat, dry earth.  An unnatural barren circle in the verdant landscape. 

The road dipped down into the barren crater, and there were high gates and a fence about a hundred metres in.  Exactly as depicted in Ying Ning’s photo back in Hong Kong.  The one Oyang had sent them.  But the fence itself was somehow superfluous.  There was something so unnatural about the place that no one was stepping in there by accident.

Stone was still lying in the last scraps of undergrowth.  He needn’t have bothered.  About twenty metres away, Carslake stood, staring wide-eyed into the crater.  Like a conquistador looking out at the Pacific.  Like he’d finally found what he’d been looking for all his life.   He turned around to Stone.  ‘Man, you cannot tell me that extraterrestrials have not been here.’

Stone could tell him that.  But it wouldn’t have done any good. 

People see what they want to see.  In reality, there was nothing – nothing at all.  The arc lights were bright – like stadium lights at night – and no doubt the alarm had been raised after the attack on the truck.  But there was nothing to see, except to some tiny huts in the distance.  It was the nothingness itself that was eerie.  The unearthly light washing it milky blue.  The silence of the crater, next to the cicadas, the bugs and the odd creak of the Sichuan pines behind. 

Carslake had put down the radar set at the edge of the trees.  Stone worked quickly on it, his fingers working the dials and switches of the radar.  There was a high-pitched whine as the power supply was switched on.  Stone smoothed out a flat patch of earth to bed the machine in, while Carslake plugged in the data collection unit and checked the connection.  No warning lights.  They were in business.  He set the radar to run, taking its pictures of what lay beneath. 

One thing was for sure.  There may be nothing here on the surface, but if the gravity anomaly figures were correct, there was most definitely something beneath the surface.

The scan was done in under a minute.  Carslake looked pleased with himself.  This piece of kit was exactly the right thing, used to take pictures of underground workings, aquifers, rock formations.  The software built a 3D image of what was below.

Carslake looked at the tiny screen on the data collection set, and as soon as it was finished, went back to staring, looking out over the crater.  This was his Nirvana.  Stone was glad of the quiet.  He made a note to come back in the light, handed Carslake the data unit to carry, and led on through the trees to find  the forest track back toward the monastery. 

By the time they’d walked the seven kilometres back to Shanglan, there was a sign of dawn, perhaps an hour away in the East.  The gathering blue light was beginning to dim the stars in the impossibly clear sky above.  The band of the Milky Way was fading, but Venus stood laser bright on the horizon. 

Perhaps Carslake had never heard of the words “stealthy” or “careful”.  He strode along in the undergrowth, thrashing at the spring flowers with a branch.  Stone breathed in the cool night air, soughing over from the Great Snow Mountains and the Himalaya.  By the time they came in sight of the temple’s gold and red portal, Carslake was talking wildly again.   Stone had to virtually gag the man as they made for the living quarters. 

Early prayers had already begun.  The smell of incense had met them hundreds of metres from the temple, and Stone could hear the soft chanting from the monks within.  The eerie calm of the blue night air above the crater was still with him.   He walked around to the temple and stood in silence to drink in the quiet chanting of the older monks, all inside the warm glow of the temple.  Giyenchen was in their midst, shaven-headed and ecstatic, eyes closed to the world and cleansing his mind with nothingness.  The solitary monk stayed without on the steps of the temple, the old guy with the lined face, spinning scripture reel in hand, humming his omm noises. 

No sign of Panchen.  That guy was going to need double helpings of cymbals and chanting to cleanse himself after what he’d done. 

Stone stood tall and walked through shadow, as if from the front of the temple, and then straight inside the sleeping block at the back of the temple.  Carslake pushed ahead of him.  The blackened, wooden floor creaked, and a single oil lamp burned at the end of the corridor.  Silent, undisturbed. 

Then there was another creak in the floor ahead of them.  Carslake’s tall figure shoved back past him, scrambling to get out.  Idiot. 

Stone span round like a top.  It was all over.  In the lamplight, the muzzle of an assault rifle peered malignantly round the door where he had just come in with Carslake.  There was a determined Chinese eye looking at them over the barrel.  Carslake changed tack.  He walked straight up on impulse, as if oblivious of the gun.  He certainly had some nerve.  Or was it stupidity?

It could have been worse.  The soldier smashed the butt of the rifle into Carslake’s solar plexus.  He went down gasping in pain, like he couldn’t breathe. 

Stone walked up slowly, and the gun was turned on him.  Let’s see what he’s made of.  Stone made eye contact with the soldier, and held it.  Didn’t raise his arms.  The soldier glanced down, and stepped nimbly over Carslake, keeping his weapon on Stone.  He was tall, as tall as Stone.  He didn’t break the stare, just advanced steadily, till the muzzle of the gun was a few centimetres in front of Stone’s cool, grey eyes.  See you and raise you. 

It’s difficult to stare down a bullet.  Stone put his hands up. 

  Chapter 48 - 3:11am 10 April - Shanglan Monastery, Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Ying Ning came in view with her arms bound tight and high behind her, like a wild animal.  She was kicked and force-marched across in front of Stone and Carslake, who were kneeling on the ground outside the accommodation block, cuffed, with their hands on their heads.  One guy held the arms high behind Ying Ning’s shoulders, on the point of dislocation, and another was pulling her head back by the hair.  A strip of her black T-shirt was tied in a vicious ligature across her mouth.  Lips pulled back, red and bleeding at the side.   Her teeth protruded around the tight gag, preternaturally white and vulpine despite the darkness.  They were ordering her to kneel, pulling the spiky hair back in their fists and shoving her shoulders down.  She looked suddenly small and slight with the soldiers towering over her, but still refused to kneel for them.  Finally an officer came round and kicked her knees viciously at the back until her legs buckled and her kneecaps thumped into the ground.  Stone turned his eyes to her slowly.  She stared ahead, a bloody contusion above her left eye.  She looked tiny, a thin, bloodied wraith.  But undiminished.

One of Ying Ning’s captors walked in front.  He looked shaken.  Blood on his face and a long fleck of saliva on the shiny, black webbing across his chest.  Ying Ning’s eyes followed him, burning.  Behind the gag, she was smiling.  She was actually trying to taunt him.

An engine revved harshly and a dark green jeep pulled round in front.  Then with another whine of the gearbox, it lurched back towards them and stopped, rear tow bar a metre from their faces, exhaust fumes belching at them.  Carslake closed his eyes and coughed fastidiously.  There was a bark of command from within and the Gong An officers hauled first Stone, then Carslake in through the tailgate of the jeep.  Ying Ning struggled again, trying to kick out, until they lifted her bound shoulders to breaking point and she uttered an animal scream from behind the gag.  An officer removed his shiny black belt, tied it hard around her knees, then threw her in.  The back door slammed and they were away, bumping and bouncing over the rough ground and then away onto the road.

Not one of them spoke, but the questions passed through Stone’s mind like a funeral procession.  How many monks arrested?  Was it possible they’d all escaped through the woods?  Possible.  Also very unlikely.  And what would become of Giyenchen and the others, who were completely blameless?

The mystery of what was happening in the crater behind that fence, the gravity anomaly, the darkened, unmanned factory in Shanghai for that matter – it was all so fanciful, a world away from the harsh reality of the back of a Chinese truck.  They could hardly even complain.  Stone had tried to stop Panchen when he killed that truck driver, but not tried hard enough.  

Carslake, meanwhile, had stood by, dreaming of spaceships.

Stone thought again of his therapist, the psych he’d seen after the army.  The one with the “rules for living”.  Stone had never told the guy the truth, or anything approaching it, but he had come out with what he said were his own rules – “avoid hypocrisy”, “be judged on your actions, not your words”, “don’t shrink from a fight”, “confront people who are doing wrong”.  Had he believed that, even then?  Kind of.  But his real opinion was that he had a need for confrontation, that he was still seeking the thrill of combat, that his peace campaigns were just a way of seeking danger without a gun in his hand.

Now cuffed and bound of the floor of that Chinese jeep he could see the therapist had a point.  The therapist had claimed Stone was driven by comradeship, even though he was a loner.  In some twisted way, the guy said that Stone put himself into danger and got into fights to “win approval”. 

Stone had despised all that stuff at the time.  It had been years later before he realised that looking for trouble wins you very few friends, even if you’re a “Peace Professor”.  And here’s another “rule for living”.  For most people over thirty, “brave” means the same as “stupid”.

The jeep drove for no more than a few kilometres before it lurched to a stop once more.  The engine cut out.  They heard steps walking round from the front of the vehicle, and the tailgate door opened once more onto the mountains.  The Tibetan star field above once more, fading slightly in the gathering dawn.  Mocking them.  

A figure appeared, red-faced in the taillights.  His face was wizened and lined with age.  He chuckled slightly at them; then, to make his point he pulled out the scripture reel and began to twirl, grating and rattling in the silent forest.  He took off his over-sized Gong An peaked hat to reveal his monk’s shaven head, and made a small bow of greeting.

-oO0Oo-

Venching was the monk’s name.  He wasn’t much of a driver, but that was unlikely to bother Stone, Ying Ning or Carslake.  He said they would make for the town of Garzê and then on to Chengdu. 

There weren’t many roads in this half of Sichuan, and though the area was vast, even rudimentary roadblocks would catch them.  Venching acknowledged this.

‘Even worse to head West for Batang,’ he said.  Batang was the one border crossing with Tibet over the mountains.   ‘Many police and Gong An at Batang.’

This was true.  Once they were missed, the Gong An would expect them to head for Tibet.  Heading back into the teeming cities of Sichuan was safer.  China has far fewer police per head than most countries.  If they had a head start on the Gong An troops behind them, they had a chance of getting as far as Garzê.  After that, the police would have to spread themselves extremely thinly if they were going to find them amongst the hundred million people in the lowlands of Sichuan.

The old monk’s English was surprisingly good, with something of an American accent.  He said had he spent time with American journalists in Tibet back in the 1950’s, and still listened to some BBC radio.  His speech was peppered by erudite-sounding journalistic clichés.

‘You have been at the monastery for a long time?’ asked Stone.

‘Since it was re-opened.  1977.’

‘What about Lin Biao?’ asked Carslake.  Back on his favourite topic.  ‘What was he doing up here in 1969?’

The old monk laughed gently.  ‘You heard the story of Lin Biao too?’ he said.  ‘I have no idea.  It is true that he had deep shelters built here.  Luxury apartments with swimming pools underground.  Food and water to last for years.  But Lin Biao did many strange things.’

‘Strange?  Like Steven Semyonov?’ asked Carslake again.  Had he never heard of the term “leading question”?

Venching was bemused.  ‘I have no idea who is this Steven.  Lin Biao was brilliant, charming.  But he did nothing for Chinese people.  He was obsessed.  This is no secret.  He was obsessed to be the ruler of China.  He said he knew how to make China strong.’

‘And they believed he could do what he said?’

‘He used fear.  Fear of outsiders, fear of technology,’ said Venching.  ‘Lin Biao stoked up the fear that the Americans could destroy China with their computers and missiles.  If only he were in charge of China, said Lin Biao in 1969, they would have the technology to beat the Americans.  Historians pay no attention to this boast by Lin Biao.  But perhaps Lin Biao really believed what he said,’ said Venching.  ‘In any case, you have visited the place yourself, have you not?’

Nothing got past this guy.

‘What have you discovered?’ asked Venching driving on into the dawn.

‘Nothing,’ said Stone, reflexively.

‘Something’s down there,’ said Carslake, proudly.  ‘I’ve seen it.’

‘You seem very certain.  But what is it?’ asked Venching.

Stone was surprised for a second, if he was honest.  ‘Is this it then?’ he said. ‘Radar images finally prove Doug Carslake right about his alien theories?’

‘Clear as day, man,’ said Carslake, looking smug.  ‘Incontrovertible.  It’s right there on those 3D images of the site.’

Venching didn’t seem surprised.  ‘Shi zheiyangzi?’ he muttered to himself.  Is that so? 

‘A large metal object,’ said Carslake out of the blue.  ‘Almost one kilometre in diameter and lying two thousand feet beneath the surface of that crater.’

‘Interesting,’ said Venching, mildly. No surprise in his voice. Either he didn’t believe a word, or he knew all about the Death Hole already.

Chapter 49 - 8:04pm 10 April - Chengdu, Sichuan, China

It was after dark when they made it back to Chengdu.  Ying Ning had the old monk pull up at the side of the gaosu expressway, and then stepped out with the headlights flying past and the sound of horns honking from the other vehicles.  They climbed over a fence and began to walk back to Ying Ning’s place which they’d left a couple of days before.

It had been a good opportunity for Stone to talk to Carslake.  He was knowledgeable, especially about Semyonov, and especially about his background.  What little Carlisle had told Stone about Semyonov’s past turned out to be wrong – according to Carslake at any rate.  Semyonov must have hidden his real background, while feeding a narrative to Carlisle and the others in the media.  For one thing, his real name was not Semyonov.  It was Starkfield - Steven Starkfield.  

‘You never wrote about that on your blog,’ said Stone. 

‘Like I said,’ said Carslake.  ‘You can say all sortsa shit online.  But it’s gotta be interesting.  The Semyonov name I thought was kinda cool.  Like he was Russian, all intellectual and mysterious, fat, with this smooth, white skin and those crazy red eyes.  Then I find out his name is Starkfield, and he’s a regular American guy.  People don’t read my blog to learn he’s a regular American guy.’

‘Sorry he’s such a disappointment to you,’ said Stone.  ‘You’re going to tell me his IQ was average as well.’

‘Nooooooo sir,’ said Carslake, shaking his head enthusiastically.  ‘He’s not a disappointment.  In fact, I think it makes him more interesting.  He was in jail, for one thing, and he never got a college degree.  I guess that’s why he changed his name.’

‘He was an ex-con?  What did he do?’

‘Nothing bad.  Nothing you or I would call bad, anyhow.  You can guess.’

‘Hacking?  Starkfield was a hacker?’

‘You got it.  Doesn’t change much, does it?’

‘No,’ said Stone.  But it gave him plenty to think about – the name change thing especially.  If Carslake had Semyonov’s real name, and Semyonov was a regular American person, Carslake would have been  able to research him properly.  Family, high school yearbook– the whole nine yards.  But if Carslake had already looked at those things, he wasn’t letting on.  Why not?

-oO0Oo-

When they made it back to the little house on the outskirts of Chengdu, Carslake finally asked Stone outright.

‘Come on, Stone.  You were surprised, weren’t you?’

‘Surprised about what?’

‘The thing underneath the crater,’ said Carslake.  ‘The large metal object down there.  You asked me to bring the radar set with me, because you thought there was something down there.  But still you’re surprised.’

‘I guess I was,’ said Stone. 

‘But why?’ asked Carslake.  ‘You knew there was something down there.  You knew about the gravity anomaly.  And you said those figures and names were in Semyonov’s handwriting.’

‘I know,’ said Stone.  ‘It was Oyang.’

‘What about him?’

‘The more I think about him, the more I think he’s pulling the strings.  I got the idea in my head that Oyang was sending us up there to Sichuan to get us out of the way.  Get us off the scent.’

‘He gave you details of where to find the Machine, showed you where to go – how can that be putting us off the scent?’

 ‘Oyang would assume we wouldn’t find anything.  He knew about the anomaly.  Must have done.  He knew it would be intriguing for me, that it would look like something.  He knew it would be interesting enough for me to go looking for.  But it could be nothing, Doug.  Just some natural phenomenon.  We still have no idea whatsoever what this mysterious Machine is.  Or if it exists at all.’

‘All that time you thought Oyang’s fucking with us?  You even got me over from the US?’

‘Thought you might enjoy it,’ said Stone, flashing a smile.  ‘No seriously.  I’ve only really thought about it since you told me what you saw down there.  Besides, going to Sichuan was only one part of the research plan.  I also sent off to my students in England to look into some stuff.  Not quite as exciting as what we’ve been doing, but that research was just as important.’

Carslake was half-angry, half-intrigued.  He didn’t mind being used by Stone.  But he hated feeling he was out of the loop.  On the other hand, after Carslake had posted online about the Machine before he even arrived in China, what the hell did he expect?

‘Research about what?’ asked Carslake, guardedly.  ‘What did you get your students to look at?’

‘The true ownership of New Machine Technology - the people who are making the weapons, filing all the patents, and making all the money.  It’s the number one unanswered question.’

‘But it’s owned by the Chinese – the Chinese government.’

‘Yeah, I’ve heard that.  But that’s just an assumption – as if everything is state-owned in China.  I also heard it’s owned by ShinComm, and ShinComm has regular shareholders – one of whom was Semyonov.  Semyonov put in the money for sure, but like all Chinese joint ventures, New Machine must be at least fifty-one percent owned by a Chinese person or company.’ 

‘OK.  So ShinComm owned fifty-one percent.  Even though Semyonov supplied all the cash and the ideas.’

‘So you’d think,’ said Stone.  ‘But I don’t think it’s as simple as that.  Oyang knows the answer.  He was in there when New Machine was set up, and he told me it’s a subsidiary of ShinComm - but he also likes to tell stories.  He makes things up.  Tells us what we want to hear.  So we can’t rely on him.  What I do know is that that none of the shares are owned simply by Semyonov or ShinComm.  They’re held through mysterious nominee companies.’ 

Carslake looked confused, but Stone was busy.  He had already retrieved his laptop from the closet at the house and was logging into the NotFutile.com system.

‘You left your computer here?’ cried Carslake.  ‘What if the house got raided?’

‘It’s all online,’ said Stone.  ‘On the secure server.  They’d get the hardware, but  nothing else.’

‘So what’s the answer?  Your team in England found who owns New Machine yet?’

Stone opened his email and scanned over it.  ‘No,’ said Stone, looking intently at the screen.  ‘I didn’t think they would.  Someone has been hiding his tracks too well for us to find the ownerships that easily.  It’s one of those complex web of ownerships that investigators take months to uncover.  It just means someone's hiding something.’

Stone’s fingers rippled across the keyboard as he began to write a blog post on the site.  ‘My students had a couple of days and got nowhere.  We’re not going to do any better.  I’m going to try something else.  I’m going to experiment with Oyang.  I’m going to do things to him, and see how he reacts.’

Carslake watched the words as Stone typed the blog post for the NotFutile.com web site.

Semyonov Case – The Switzerland Connection

Anonymous sources in the Swiss Finance Ministry have contacted NotFutile.com to reveal that Swiss tax investigators, under pressure from the US and the EU to root out tax evasion and money laundering, have been following a mysterious trail of money all the way back to China.  Very large deposits in Swiss banks, received through a complex web of financial intermediaries, have been found to originate with New Machine Technology Corporation, of which SearchIgnition billionaire Steven Semyonov was a major shareholder and investor.

The Swiss authorities of course made no comment, and our anonymous source in the Switzerland refuses to specify the size of the deposits – although we can assume they must have been huge to attract the attention of the Swiss.  In the absence of further information, people will assume that the $25 billion fortune of Steven Semyonov, recently invested in New Machine Technology, has already been laundered and found its way to mysterious accounts in Switzerland.  The hunt is on for Chinese officials with Swiss bank accounts.

‘Anonymous sources in the Swiss Finance Ministry.  Are you shitting me?  How did you figure all that out?’ asked Carslake as the words spread across the page and Stone finally hit submit.

‘I didn’t.  I made it up,’ said Stone.

‘Yes, but it’s bullshit right?’

 ‘Your idea, Doug.  Remember?  You can post all kinds of shit on the Internet, right?’

‘Sure.  But it is still bullshit.’

‘And so was your idea of a UFO hidden under the hills of Sichuan,’ said Stone.  ‘This Swiss connection makes as much sense as anything else we’ve come up with.  Oyang's a Chinese official with accounts in Switzerland, so let's call it an educated guess.  Anyhow, so long as it gets a reaction, who cares?’

 Chapter 50 - 4:34pm 10 April – United Flight 857, San Francisco to Shanghai

Ekström insisted on first class for this kind of flight.  The client was paying of course, but the reason was that he needed a little privacy when he was planning his work and thinking things through.  And, of course, it was way beneath a man of his standing to sit cheek by jowl with all those snotty kids, backpackers and college lecturers behind the curtain.

Ekström had been requested to personally perform a “hit” in mainland China.   The assassination itself was not at all difficult.  The target would not present any problem and for that matter even the location looked tailor-made.  On the other hand, performing a hit in Mainland China would always present certain risks.

Thankfully, the order had come from the Chinese Public Security Bureau – which is why his corporate bosses at SCC had been so excited.  It was a way-in to the Chinese market, and his bosses were seeing dollar signs.  Ekström had agreed, but had asked some stiff questions before he left for the airport.  If he was going personally to do a job where he risked the firing squad because some minor Chinese official screwed up, he demanded to know more about who was behind it.  Whoever was hiring him, Gong An Public Security Bureau or not, he had better be able to protect him if the shit hit the fan.

Q Y Zhang was the client’s name.  A full colonel in the Gong An Beijing Public Security Bureau.  He was a big cheese all right – impeccable credentials – and it appeared he operated with impunity throughout China.

But as Ekström sat flying high over the Pacific, the natural question was – why?  What need had the Gong An for a foreign assassin to do a job they themselves could have accomplished with impunity in China?  An even bigger question – why Ekström in person?

As he sat in first class, twelve kilometers above the Pacific, Ekström was beginning to work it out.  It gave a perverse thrill.  The Chinese were all over the Semyonov-SearchIgnition affair.  They must have been watching Alban and they knew it was Ekström who had killed him.  Now they wanted the same man to carry out the hit in China.  Everyone who was anyone in a US corporation knew that it was the SearchIgnition board who ordered Alban killed.  Who else would it be?  The Chinese knew it too.  And by using the same assassin in China, they wanted suspicion for the next killing to fall on SearchIgnition also.

This Zhang was a clever guy.

Chapter 51 - 9:04am 12 April - Hongqiao International Airport, Shanghai, China

Du Fu’s Road to Sichuan may have been hard, but getting back to Shanghai was not.  The following day, Oyang emailed Stone asking to meet urgently.  Stone played it cool, didn’t say where he was.  Meanwhile, the messages from Oyang became more and more desperate.  Stone had certainly hit a nerve with that blog posting.  He’d as good as accused Oyang of taking ShinComm’s money and salting it away in Switzerland.   Evidently it was too close to the bone, too near the truth.  Oyang had panicked, and his messages were increasingly urgent.  Stone would leave it a few hours longer before replying.  Let’s make the bastard sweat.

By the following morning Oyang had offered to send a ShinComm private jet to wherever Stone was in China.  Late in the day, Stone decided to put him out of his misery, and the following morning boarded the plane at Chengdu with Ying Ning and Carslake.

Oyang’s personal assistant from ShinComm was sent to meet them in Shanghai.  She wore a business suit and carried a briefcase.  Oyang, she informed them, was at a place called Balong.  A car would take them there from Shanghai.

Balong, it turned out, was not some new, guarded hideaway of Oyang’s.   There would be no guns or strip searches this time.  Oyang was at was a country club called Balong, which was, bizarrely, the venue, of the Shanghai International Polo Tournament for the next few days.  Evidently a must for the likes of Oyang and the Shanghai super-rich.  But not exactly the natural habitat of Stone and Carslake.  Still less Ying Ning. 

-o0o0o-

‘And then there were eight,’ said Stone as he shook hands.  His trip had begun in Kowloon – Cantonese for “Nine Dragons”.  Now they had arrived at Balong, which means eight dragons in Mandarin.

‘Eight?’ said Rupert Rowley-Phipps, the Englishman who ran the Balong Resort.  ‘No idea what you’re talking about, old man.’  Rupert had spent five years living in China, but had not a word of the language to show for it.  Rowley-Phipps was little sniffy about Stone, Carslake and Ying Ning.  Not the “quality” of guest he was looking for at the Country Club.

The feeling was mutual.  When Rupert shook Ying Ning’s hand she looked down as if she’d just had dogshit pressed into her palm.

Rupert may not have gone native, but you couldn’t fault the man’s ambition.  He’d arrived from England with no money, armed only with the vague knowledge that China was the “land of opportunity”.  Where others wanted to get toys manufactured or buy a couple of container-loads of bikes, Rupert’s dream was to introduce the game of polo to a fifth of the world’s population. 

With the help of some old friends in the Hong Kong banks, he’d leased twenty square kilometres of land from the Chinese Navy and built a golf course, a yachting marina, a country club of Babylonian luxury, and of course, the polo fields. 

There were two hotels.  The Seasons - merely five-star and luxurious, and then the Shui Hu, which ached with sensuous, deep wealth, and where every spacious suite came with its own servants.   As if that wasn’t enough, there was a small island, a few hundred metres off shore, on which was a single villa.  The pinnacle of exclusivity, even here.

‘The business plan,’ said Rupert as he showed Stone and the others round, ‘is based on the extraordinary number of new millionaires in China.  We’re not catering to a middle class,’ he said.  ‘We’re catering to the rich.  The super-rich, in fact.  And I have to give them what they want.’  Rupert waved his arm at the seeming acres of marble and the uber-expensive boutiques in the atrium of the club.  Bulgari.  Louis Vuitton.  Hermes.  And many more, selling Italian jewelry and French handbags at eye-watering prices. 

Carslake strolled up, gawping at the watches.  Ying Ning stood there in stony-faced contempt, itching with disgust.  As if it soiled her somehow to even stand on the marble floor.

‘Five thousand bucks?  For a watch?’ Carslake exclaimed.

‘One of the cheaper ones.  The sports model,’ said Rupert without irony, but he eyed Carslake with concern.  He turned to look at Stone.  ‘Can’t you tell him to lose that jacket?  And the bandana.  Please?’ 

Ying Ning spoke finally.  ‘If he was Chinese, you’d throw him out,’ she said.

Rupert grinned.  ‘Of course I would,’ he said.  ‘I’d have all three of you thrown out if you weren’t friends of Robert Oyang.  It’s a wild guess, but I’d say you’re a few million short of financial qualification for this place,’ he said smoothly.  ‘I’m also under no illusions about what you think.  It’s vulgar, it’s over the top.  The paintings on the wall are crass  - look at that one over there – a pastiche of an eighteenth century Fragonard.  Disgusting.’

Stone hadn’t noticed this artistic faux pas.  And beneath this unprepossessing Fragonard or whatever it was, there was a cluster of polo players in white jeans and coloured shirts, playing video games.  They’d pulled their Eighteenth century reproduction chairs up under a logo’d black canopy, incongruously playing motor racing games on wide screens.

 ‘The more money your guests have, the more tasteless it has to be?’ asked Stone. 

‘Something like that,’ said Rupert, turning to go.  ‘Anyhow, gentleman and lady.  I must leave you.  You’ll be sharing a room in The Seasons, with the TV crews.’

‘How come he spend so much time with us?’ asked Ying Ning.

‘Checking us out,’ said Stone. 

Rupert called to them over his shoulder, ‘Mr Oyang has a large suite at the Shui Hu.  Quite unusual.  You should take a look if you get the chance!’

Stone would be doing just that.  In the next half-hour if possible.  The less time he spent at the Country Club the better – for whole host of reasons. 

-oO0Oo-

Rupert had said that Oyang’s suite in the Shui Hu Hotel was “unusual”.  He wasn’t kidding.  The room felt about as big as a tennis court, and the décor was half Jane Austen movie and half Santa’s grotto.  It had an effeminate languor about it, that lazy feeling unique to very expensive places.  Perfect for Oyang, in fact.

Stone was shown in by a fellow dressed up like a butler, who was very obviously carrying a handgun beneath his jacket.  Oyang looked at Stone for a good minute when he walked in, but he didn’t show any surprise.  In fact he didn’t show any emotion at all.  Just sat there on the furry white sofa.  It might have been real fur, too.

‘We went there, to the Machine,’ said Stone. 

Oyang seemed distracted, compared to last time.  Something on his mind.  ‘You did?  It was fascinating I suppose,’ he said.    

Fascinating?  Stone’s mind filled with the image of the monks, and the truck, and the driver getting his head stoved in.  ‘Fascinating’s not quite the word.  We didn’t discover what the Machine is.  But there’s definitely something out there, a thousand metres below the surface.  Is that what you flew me here to talk about?’

‘Yes.  No.  You know it isn’t,’ said Oyang.

Of course it wasn’t.  He had a guilty conscience, Oyang, and was suddenly feeling very threatened by what Stone had posted on the NotFutile.com site.  But Oyang didn’t look worried.  He looked distracted if anything.  Like he’d taken one too many valium.

‘Semyonov said it was somewhere out there,’ said Oyang.  ‘It is quite fascinating.’  Oyang looked anything but fascinated.  ‘I suppose I knew there was something,’ he said.  ‘Semyonov went out there to Sichuan twice in the last year, to the Machine.  He always came back with something exciting.’ 

‘What do you mean, “exciting”?’ asked Stone.  Oyang had just repeated that the Machine was out there in Sichuan, and he didn’t look like he was lying.

Oyang was playing with an ivory chess set, turning the pieces around in his fingers.  ‘Do you think they will kill me?’ he asked.

‘Who would want to kill you?’ asked Stone.  ‘The people who killed Semyonov?’

‘Yes.  The Gong An,’ said Oyang. His hands were shaking slightly.  ‘It was the Gong An who sent that Switzerland story to your web site.  No one in Switzerland would leak information in such a way.’  He’d still barely looked up at Stone.  ‘And besides, it’s completely false.  None of Steven’s money was sent to Switzerland.’

 ‘Then you’ve nothing to worry about,’ said Stone.  He’d actually found himself comforting Oyang.  As though he should put his arm around the man or something.

Oyang turned the chess piece in his long, feminine fingers.  ‘The Gong An knows about the Machine,’ he said.  ‘Of course they do.  I knew as soon as they killed Steven.  Steven said the Machine was so powerful, it would change the world.  But the Machine destroyed him, and now it will destroy me.’

Oh dear.  It was even worse than it looked.  Stone allowed a suitable pause. 

‘Be sensible Oyang.’

‘I knew as soon as I saw the Japanese woman at the press conference.  In San Jose.  I knew it would go this way.’

‘What is the Machine, Oyang?’

Oyang’s face was blank and resigned.  He wasn’t listening.  Just shaking his head.

‘The Machine, Oyang?  Don’t you want to know what’s going on there?  What Semyonov was doing there?’

‘How should I know?  Semyonov told me nothing but stories.  Anyway, it’s over.  I know what the Gong An sent to NotFutile.com, Stone.  They told you that I had to stop taking from the Machine, or it would destroy me in the same way it destroyed Semyonov.  Isn’t that true?’  

He was a clever guy, Oyang.  But right now he was gibbering, confused.  ‘I think maybe the Machine is just a story, Stone, just a kind of a legend Semyonov made up to confuse me about what he was doing.’

‘You don’t really think that.’

‘Why shouldn’t I?  I don’t know whether the Machine exists or not, and neither do you.  But I can see what comes out of it.  For over a year, the Machine gave and gave and gave.  Maybe it did the same with Lin Biao in 1969.  Now Lin Biao is dead, and Steven Semyonov came to China for it, and he is dead too.   Now they’re after me.  How much more of a warning do you need?’

‘You’re saying the Machine gave and gave,’ said Stone.  ‘What did it give you?’

‘Power, money.  You know what it gave me, Stone,’ said Oyang.  ‘You’ve seen it.  Do you think technology like that came from nowhere?  That it grew like bean sprouts out in Sichuan?  Be serious.  Anyway, I don’t care anymore.  Sometimes I think that Steven was using all those visits to Sichuan as a smokescreen.  That there is no Machine, that everything came from his imagination.  Nothing has come from the Machine since he died.’ 

Oyang was a bright fellow, and he’d worked with Semyonov closely.  He said he didn’t care, but he cared more than anyone.  Like half the world, he had been in awe of Semyonov.  Semyonov’s intelligence engendered a kind of dumb hero worship.  Admiration without understanding.  An intellectual crush.  Stone had seen it at that party in Hong Kong – both women and men with that dreamy look in their eyes.  Like dogs looking up at their master. 

Oyang, because he was closer to Semyonov, had had it worse than most.  To Oyang, Semyonov was still the untouchable white Buddha.  Unknowable.

Now, however, with Semyonov gone, Oyang was lost.  His power had gone, and with it his nerve.  He was terrified the Gong An would kill him, and Stone’s bogus post on NotFutile.com had sent him into a tailspin.  Which meant Stone had been right, at least partially.  Maybe Oyang was telling the truth when he said that Semyonov’s money had not been transferred to Switzerland.  But Stone would bet that plenty of other money had found its way into Oyang’s private accounts in Lausanne.  No wonder Oyang was paranoid.

‘Oyang,’ said Stone, taking a calm tone again.  ‘Can I ask you a question?’

Oyang said nothing.

‘Have you been a naughty boy?  Have you been ripping off all those ideas and technology, wherever they’re coming from?  Have you just been taking the ideas, from the Machine or ShinComm or wherever, and selling them?  Making some fast money?’

Oh dear.  That one hit a nerve.  Oyang stood bolt upright, energized for the first time. ‘Get out of my room before I call security.  My man is armed, you know.’

‘Get a grip Oyang,’ said Stone.  ‘It was always going to come out.  Some stuff has been patented, some not.  Nanotech processes used for crude drug smuggling, beautiful technology diverted to grubby weapons sales.  You’ve been creaming millions off from Semyonov’s technology, haven’t you, Oyang?  And sending the money to Switzerland.  Now Semyonov is dead, and it’s all starting to unravel on you.’ 

Stone watched Oyang, sitting on the edge of the white fur sofa, twirling the chess pieces in his fingers.  Stone was right.  Which meant Oyang was a dead man walking.  And Stone’s post on NotFutile.com, which had been as near to the truth as he’d hoped, had made it all a hundred times worse for Oyang.  No wonder Oyang was falling apart.

‘They’ll kill you, Oyang.  Like they killed Semyonov.  Whatever Semyonov did, he managed to get on the wrong side of the Chinese and the Americans at the same time.  So he fled from the US, but still got nailed in China.  Quite an achievement, I’d say.  Semyonov was hot property, Oyang.  Toxic.  And you’re shaping up to be even worse.’  Stone went to sit beside Oyang on the sofa.  Oyang was rubbing his hands, picking at the nails.  ‘Go now, Oyang.  Go to your wife in Switzerland, live a quiet life.  It’s your only chance.’

‘How can I?’ said Oyang.  ‘It’s an admission of guilt.  If I went to the airport it would be obvious and they could shoot me down.’

‘Oyang.  THEY’LL FUCKING KILL YOU.  Stop all this crap go.  You’re in deep, and you know it.  I don’t believe in the death penalty, and that’s what’s coming your way if you don’t do something.’

Stone shut the door, leaving Oyang sat on the white fur sofa, looking at the chessboard.  He walked down the softly lit corridor.  It was like a dreamy Aladdin’s cave - and somehow fitting.  It fitted perfectly with the Disneyland going on in Oyang’s mind.  Oyang had lost it well before now.  Back in Shanghai he’d given Stone the information about the Machine, even showed him Semyonov’s robot manufacturing plant – but then lost his nerve and tried to have Stone killed the day after.  He’d probably been talking to Terashima after her question in San Jose, trying to find out how much she knew.  All the while knowing she was at risk of being killed.  He was highly intelligent, Oyang, making money on a massive scale.  He had planned an epic financial swindle to make money out of Semyonov.  Yet his nerve failed him all the time.  He was completely lacking in physical courage – and now he was scared even to leave his hotel room.

Stone was also aware that Oyang was in far more danger in that Polo club than he would be in Shanghai.  For Zhang and his Gong An henchmen, that Polo Club was the perfect place to kill him.  Far better than arrest, or assassination.  Throwing a Chinese dissident or intellectual in jail is one thing.  Doing it to a millionaire businessman with all those friends in California needs more care.  The Chinese like to meet out swift justice, but they also like to avoid all those smug feature pieces in the Wall Street Journal about human rights.  Quite convenient then that Oyang should die in some ludicrous millionaires’ binge at the Polo Club.  And for the strait-laced communist Zhang and his Gong An buddies, much more fitting.

  That led Stone to another conclusion.  Balong was also the perfect place for him to die for the same reason.

 Chapter 52 - 1:07pm 12 April – Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

Ekström sat at the controls of the Porsche Turbo S which had been set up in the Atrium of the Balong Country Club.  He checked himself in the reflection.  Eyes a pleasant, smiling blue underneath the neatly styled hair.  There was just a hint of steel under the blond.  Perfect.  He threw the stick smoothly into first gear, left foot poised to drop the clutch. 

Ekström was no poser.  He looked good, but his look, his apparel - it all had a point.  Take those shoes.  Looked like tennis shoes, but to people who knew, the difference was obvious.  They were designed specifically for driving high performance cars, and Ekström kept them for that purpose only. 

Three – two – one.  High up to his left the light went green, and Ekström pulled away in a surge of smooth power from the 430 horsepower unit behind his head.  Gear changes - fast and clean.  He kept the revs in the powerband, 3500 – 4500, and twisted easily around the hills on the asphalt road, and then through onto the dirt section of the track.  The noise was incredible – so realistic.

The red brown dust of the Balong estate enveloped the windows of the car.  Ekström’s cool concentration was total.  He braked hard, shifted to second for the hairpin, powered out.   Seven thousand revs.  Beautiful.  His favourite part of the course, and the Porsche handled it fabulously.  Better than the Maserati he’d tried earlier.

The Maserati dealer behind him was unconcerned.  From his concession stand at the Balong Club, he’d already sold seven cars to rich Chinese on the first day of the polo weekend.  Maserati was a more exclusive brand.  The Porsche was almost commonplace.

Ekström checked his time on the competition board and stepped out of the simulator booth in the atrium of the Country Club to a ripple of jockish applause from the polo boys.  Ekström was impressed.  It was a staggering piece of simulator technology from ShinComm Corporation.  The car dealers used it so more people could test drive the cars, but the controls were so realistic they could also be switched to “live” mode, and drive a real car remotely around the estate. 

He turned to the Porsche dealer behind him.  ‘The controls were just like the real thing,’ he called.  ‘And the graphics – wow!’

The dealer made a polite bow.  ‘It’s a new system.  Smoothvision live video combined with amazing RC software from ShinComm.  My customers can drive a car through Shanghai, London, or the French Alps from these controls – a real car.  Anywhere we have a Porsche dealership.  Helps to sell the cars.  And if someone takes a car for a test drive and gets too aggressive, we can take control from here and bring them back safely.’

Ekström felt his smartphone vibrate and turned to walk away from the hubbub in the marble atrium.  Well, well – another message.  Two in just a few days.  Where was he going next, after the hit at the Country Club?  Ekström entered his password to decrypt the message. 

His eyebrows raised slightly in surprise.  Two targets now – and both here in Balong, at the same place. Unconventional.

And the second target – Ethan Stone.  Ekström had been expecting that one, ever since Williams loused up in Hong Kong.  But it was a much more interesting challenge than his first assignment.  And the car dealer had just given him an idea.

 -oO0Oo-

This was just getting worse.  Stone came out of the luxurious Shui Hu Hotel and walked back up from the yachting marina when it hit him.  Huge, shiny, dark blue in front of him.  A dark blue truck in front of him with a satellite dish deployed on its roof, and a familiar logo on the side panel.  GNN Worldwide News.  Virginia Carlisle was here again.  What was she doing?  Did she know Stone was here?  Or Oyang?  Was she really extrapolating from that post Stone had made on the NotFutile.com web site?

Impossible.  There was only one person who could have told her to come here to Balong.  Carslake.  But why would she listen to Carslake anyway?  Stone needed another chat with Virginia Carlisle.

Chapter 53 - 1:19pm 12 April - Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

The Polo Tournament was a big event, but it still shouldn’t be that difficult to find Virginia Carlisle.  Stone strolled out to a tented village on the edge of the polo fields.  Which were in themselves vast.  Each field roughly four times the size of a football field. 

The scene was nauseatingly reminiscent of Hello magazine, but with a Chinese twist.  Argentinian polo players mingled with electronics and textile barons from China’s Gold Coast.  Exquisite dim sum and fragrant rice alongside the canapés and caviar.  And the ever-present champagne.  Stone thought of Ying Ning telling him about that poem on the plane.  The Lovely Women, by Du Fu.  A party for the super-rich in Tang Dynasty China.  Ying Ning was amused by Du Fu’s feelings.  Admiration, envy, disgust, desire.  Bourgeois feelings she called them, whatever that meant.  And in amongst it all was the brooding presence of the super-rich men.  Super-powerful, surrounded by flunkeys, dawdling through the crowds, fawned over.  Did Ying Ning really think that about Stone?  That he was somehow attracted by all this stuff?  Stone shook his head.

It wasn’t quite like Du Fu’s poem, this.  Photographers bobbed about among the crowds, searching for the quintessential image for Rupert’s press release.  Glamorous and rich.  They were rich all right.  Not so sure about glamorous.  Chinese millionaires, plus Shanghai expatriate wives lusting over South American lads in tight trousers.  At least Virginia Carlisle had real glamour on her side.  Should make her easy to spot.

And so it proved.  She’d had a GNN studio set up in the Country Club.  Stone flashed a confident smile at the security guy and walked into the studio.

And there she was on all the live TV monitors, just about to begin a piece in front of the cameras.  She had stayed in her regular TV character.  US army combat trousers, olive drab T-shirt.  Tailored for a thousand dollars on Fifth Avenue, naturally.

The energy coursed through Virginia as soon as she stepped in front of the bluescreen.  An amazing sight.  She bounded on there like a cheerleader.  Stone watched her do her stuff through the monitors.  The picture showed her back in Sichuan, in the village Stone recognised as Shang-ri La.  He’d passed it on the bus.  Virginia’s crew had obviously given up on the search and taken some footage of the picture postcard Chinese town for later use.  Risible.  Crass.  But absolutely effective.  Half of Asia looked like Shanghai - but Shangri La?  Shangri-La was definitely China.  So why not use it?

And if you have Virginia in the foreground, well…  She had been placed into a scene, standing on a stone-built traditional bridge over the river.  Her face breathed honesty, credibility, gravitas, and just a tiny bit of passion.  She spoke to you through the camera like she’d known you for twenty years.  Animated, engaging, beautiful.  There were some ducks and a couple of pagodas behind.   There were two guys in front, out of camera shot, with a silver foil board to get the lighting right, and a wind machine purring quietly to the side.  Stone’s favourite was the hair lighting consultant, because “filming great hair is never easy”.

GNN’s commitment to authenticity knew no bounds.

Virginia had seen Stone, too, flashed him one of her thousand-watt smiles.  Then she looked back to the camera and made the finger signals for three-two-one.  Winked to Stone on two.  She was off and running, taking it from the autocue in one smooth take.

'The story of Steven Semyonov just keeps giving and giving.  The search technology billionaire who disappeared in China over a week ago had recently run out on his position at the top of one of America’s fastest growing corporations.  Behind him lies a trail of murder and mystery, with executives at SearchIgnition Technology still refusing to comment on persistent rumours of bad blood between Semyonov, director of corporate Vision, Antonio Alban and the other board members.  With Alban known to have been murdered in a James Bond-style hit, and Semyonov’s death still shrouded in mystery, speculation has reached fever pitch in Silicon Valley. 

'But it gets better.  The incredible story of Steven Semyonov has led me to the beautiful mountains close to Tibet in the far west of China.  One of the most intriguing questions is why Semyonov left the US and came to China at all.  Technology expert Doug Carslake has tracked Semyonov’s career since the early days, including his investments in China, which began over a year ago.  Doug thinks he may have found something...’  

So that was Carslake’s game, Stone thought as he watched.  Carslake wanted his fifteen minutes of fame on TV with Virginia Carlisle.  He was going to tell the world that he discovered this weird object under the mountains.  He’d get the GNN technicians to mock up bogus radar pictures of an object underground, make it look convincing.

‘Cut,’ shouted a producer, and Virginia stepped away from the screen. 

‘Well, lookee here,’ she said as Stone approached her.  ‘It’s my old friend, Ethan Stone.  How much time d’ya waste in Sichuan, honey?  Feeling pretty silly that I scooped your stuff?’  Even her voice was in TV mode.  No upper class Vassar girl tones now.

‘You seem pleased to see me,’ said Stone.  She did, in her usual confrontational way.  ‘What brings you to the Polo Tournament?’

‘What the heck?  Everyone’s here aren’t they?’ she said.  A great reply, it really was.  Conveyed no information whatsoever.  She spent the day with make-up girls and chick-lit, but Virginia was razor-sharp.  And always good value in a confrontation.  Which Stone was about to provide her with.

‘Come on!’ she said.  ‘Lighten up.  It’s a bit of fun.  I can be anywhere while I’m here!’  Her arc-light TV smile had just switched on again.  With a flick of the head her hair rippled and fell, a curtain of blonde silk over that army T-shirt.  ‘It’s disgustingly easy to report from anywhere in the world.  At least, you’ll be disgusted, Mr Moral Highground.’

‘So do you buy it?’ asked Stone.  ‘Carslake’s story?’

‘Of course not,’ said Virginia.  ‘It’s all crap.  You know it and I know it.’  She turned to the producer.  ‘Let’s take a break.  I need to have a chat with Professor Stone here.  I think he’s got something he wants to tell me.’ 

Translation: there’s something she wants to tell me.

Stone left the clubhouse with Virginia, and they were immediately surrounded by a group of polo players who evidently fancied their chances with the TV star.  The supply of willing Shanghai wives must be running low.

Stone was genuinely mystified.  Virginia was still smiling, charming, flicking the hair around.  But he felt she was acting more than ever - stretching every sinew to keep a brave face.  Why was she was putting out news stories she didn’t believe?  Why come to Balong to put out Carslake’s story, which she thought was “crap”. 

Virginia Carlisle strode past the crowds and on toward her hotel.  ‘OK, Stone.  You’re a clever boy,’ she said finally.  ‘How much d’you know?’ 

‘You can stop fishing, Virginia,’ he said, ‘I know you’ve been speaking to Carslake.’ 

‘It doesn’t mean I believe what he says,’ said Virginia, but her guard was already dropping.

‘Of course you do,’ said Stone.  ‘Because you knew all that stuff about Semyonov already.  You always do your research on people – or get your lackeys to do it for you.  And now you’re worried because Carslake knows more than you would like.   Carslake knows more, hard, unexciting facts about Semyonov than anyone, and you don’t like that.  Because you’re worried that guys like Carslake and me are starting to put two and two together.  You know that stuff.  Where Semyonov grew up, near Manchester New Hampshire.  Where he went to school.  His real name.  Pictures from his school yearbook.  His relationships, or the lack of them.  His bizarre series of illnesses.  The time he spent in jail…’

At this last point about Semyonov being in jail, Virginia looked at Stone, not with her superior, knowing glance any more, but with something akin to despair.  Stone had caught her out there, and she knew it.  A week ago in Hong Kong, she’d told Stone that Semyonov had studied at Columbia and MIT, when in fact he’d been in jail.  She wasn’t even fighting this any more.  Her eyes were saying that the game was up.  Except Stone wasn’t quite sure which game it was.

They’d reached the door of her hotel room.  Virginia stood at the threshold.  Didn’t even take out her key.  ‘I’m so tired of this whole story,’ she said.  ‘Trying to control it.’  Her guard had finally come down, and she knew it.  That frightened her.  She was the big star who showed herself to the world every day, but right now she wanted to be alone, to hide in her room, until she could find a way to reconstruct her public image for the world.

‘You’re going to have to give me some space, Stone.  I really can’t deal with all this right now.’

And that was it.  She went in the door and closed it behind her.  It was going wrong for Virginia.  She’d been peddling garbage stories on GNN primetime, and now she was getting caught out.  She’d spoken to Carslake, and she hadn’t liked what she heard.  Then she’d spoken to Stone and that hadn’t helped either.  She’d obviously realized she’d have to start her whole Semyonov narrative from scratch.

Stone walked away from Virginia’s room.  The question was, why had she done it?  Stone was still mystified with her behaviour.  He needed to find Carslake, and see exactly what that nutjob had said to Virginia Carlisle.

Chapter 54 - 3:17pm 12 April - Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

For an operator such as Johan Ekström, making a hit at a place like this was child’s play.  The resort was spacious, full of people, with every reason for strangers such as him to be seen coming and going.  People were arriving, and leaving, by car, by light aircraft and by yacht.

You plan, you kill a man, you leave.  It was simple.  Best of all, he had the advantage that the place was full of white Europeans, Russians, South Americans, you name it.  Was there anywhere else in China where he would find an assassination easier?

Lucky for him, then, that last job spec had come through when it did.  Because two assassinations – unconnected – were a different proposition.  The second must be completed before the first has been discovered.  Or while the hunt is on for the killer from the first hit.  Then there’s the likelihood of being spotted near the two events, and being the obvious suspect.  The risks are infinitely greater.

The second target would be the more challenging.  Ethan Stone.  It was tempting to wrap that one up, leave, then deal with Oyang elsewhere.  But this Zhang from the Gong An had insisted Oyang be dealt with before he left the Country Club.  It was exactly the kind of challenge that made it all worthwhile for Ekström.  He had to come up with a way of killing Oyang (which was trivial), and dealing with Ethan Stone at the same time.

Ekström was wearing polo gear of white trousers and polo shirt of crimson and white quarters.  The colours of the Royal Bengal Club, Buenos Aires.  He had on riding boots and was carrying the thick leather leg guards of a polo player, concealing the Glock handgun in his waistband.  Seventeen round magazine, with suppressor.  Is that a silencer in your pants, or are you pleased to see me?

And of course the polo helmet with face guard.  No point taking unnecessary risks with security cameras.  Ekström walked down the corridor to Oyang’s suite at four fifteen.  Two minutes max.  No need to spin it out.  He hadn’t been paid to do that.  He’d found out that Oyang had given the butler time off until six.  Idiot.  By the time the butler discovered Oyang, Ekström would be watching the main event: the last moments of Ethan Stone.

Ekström stood outside the door of Oyang’s suite, and shielded his hands from view of the security camera with his body.  He snapped on the latex gloves, swiped the master key through the door lock, and slipped inside.  No alarm.  No guard.  Oyang was making this all too easy.

-oO0Oo-

Johan Ekström hated surprises.  At least he hated this kind of surprise.  He’d just been cheated out of what was rightfully his, and he’d had to change his plans.  Worse still, a clean, simple job had just turned into a messy one.

No wonder he hadn’t needed to deal with any security or Oyang’s “butler”.  Oyang had sent them away deliberately.  Ekström picked up the dining chair that was lying on its side on the thick carpet, stood up on it and took out his trusty Swedish Army knife.  He sliced though the white rope.  As it sprang back, he realised Oyang had used the belt from a white cashmere bathrobe to hang himself. 

Oyang’s body collapsed lethargically to the floor.  This was no good.  In order for Ekström to frame Ethan Stone for a murder, Oyang had to have been murdered.  Now he had to make a suicide look like murder.

After the business with Alban, Ekström would have guessed it would be difficult to get a cadaver to sit up properly.  But not this difficult.  Ekström put the chair on its side, and managed to balance Oyang’s back up against it fairly straight.  But then the head lolled back badly.  Hardly surprising given that the neck was broken.  The eyes were still staring, bulging slightly, and the mouth hung open obscenely.

Ekström got there in the end.  He couldn’t shoot the body on the ground.  For one thing the round would come out the other side and damage the floor.  For another, ballistics tests would show how near he had been.  Ekström stood back to take the shot from ten paces as planned.  He took twelve for good measure, then placed a .22 round in the centre of Oyang’s forehead, execution-style.  Reminded him of that idiot soldier he’d executed on camera in Afghanistan.

Chapter 55 - 3:17pm 12 April - Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

Stone tracked Carslake down to his room in the Seasons hotel.  He was lying on a sofa, watching TV. 

‘You been here all the time, Carslake?’

‘Sure.  I gotta save some money, man.  It’s gonna cost me if I even breathe outside this room.  Those people out there.  Designer clothes, cocktails, goddamned Maseratis.  They look at me like I’m a piece a shit.’  Carslake’s eyes stayed doggedly at the TV as he spoke to Stone.  He was lying of course.

‘Did you notice Virginia Carlisle’s here?’  said Stone.

‘The babe-licious Virginia Carlisle?  No.  Why should I?  You really think she wants to hang out with me?’  He laughed. 

Stone cut him off.  ‘You contacted her didn’t you?  You called Carlisle and told her to come here.’    

‘You think she takes notice of me?  After I sent her to the wrong end of Sichuan looking for the Machine?’ he said. 

‘Chuck it, Carslake.  You couldn’t resist getting yourself on TV.’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’  Carslake snorted, coming clean.  ‘If I were you I’d find out what Carlisle knows.  She’s made the weather on this story and she knows a lot more than she’s letting on.  And FYI, I didn’t bring her here.  I contacted her with some ideas to get my name on TV, and next thing she’s following me.  In fact she was here before us.’  Carslake was still looking at the TV.  ‘What puzzles me is: why?  Why was she so keen to come down here and talk to me, Doug Carslake?  Have you any idea, Stone?  Because it beats the hell outta me.’

It was sinking in that Carslake had just hit the nail on the head.  Virginia really did have hidden depths, and Stone had just distracted himself from them.  He’d been looking everywhere, but some of the answers had been right in front of him.  Stone went over to the computer.  It was time to do a little extra checking up on Virginia Carlisle herself, rather than Semyonov. 

The word “Semyonov” may have been embargoed from the search engines, but Virginia Carlisle was most emphatically not.  Stone found articles of every shape size and colour on Virginia Carlisle.  Youtube clips by the hundred.  Fan clubs, Facebook groups.  Profiles of her in every magazine from The Economist, through Vogue, Psychology, Forbes and a Virginia Carlisle lookalike posing in Playboy for the real fantasists.  Not a bad likeness either.

Stone soon found the details he was looking for.  He realized he was staring at the screen, at the same thing for a good thirty seconds.  The game had suddenly changed.  The key person in the story about Semyonov and the Machine, was not Oyang, or Junko Terashima, or Ying Ning.  It was Virginia Carlisle.  He got up and walked to the door.

‘Where are you going, Stone?’

‘I’m going back to find Carlisle,’ he said.  ‘I just realised why Virginia Carlisle hightailed it here to join us.  She wants to stop the truth leaking out.’

Chapter 56 - 5:17pm 12 April - Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

Back outside the Country Club, questions slid around Stone’s mind in geometric patterns, like pieces on a chessboard.   He had to find Carlisle.  He was sure now what she was up to.  He also had to find Ying Ning.  She’d disappeared and he didn’t trust her any more.  The last time she’d disappeared like this she’d been with Panchen, and things had not turned out too well.  Ying Ning could be decorating Rupert’s silk shirt with angry saliva at this very moment.  Or going after Oyang with a kitchen knife.    

Stone walked back in front of the glitzy concession stores in the atrium of the clubhouse, making his way toward the GNN studio.   Super-rich Chinese textile barons circulated with Western bankers from Shanghai and Hong Kong.  Not often those bankers found their chargecards so completely outgunned like this.  Stone quickened his pace as he approached the car dealers’ concessions.

Outside, a scrum of polo players was waiting to test drive the Porsche and Maserati cars.  Before textile exporters from Ningbo and Hangzhou bought them for cash to drive home.  Stone saw her in their midst, in the middle of the crowd.  Virginia, with the polo lads fawning over her still.  Two cars were brought up.   A well-heeled lad stepped up to take the first.  Latino.  Argentinian, possibly, or Uruguayan.  The Italian salesman wasn’t looking at the polo guy.  He’d seen Virginia, and was beckoning her forward to ignore the line and try the car straightaway.  She had this effect on people.

The next few seconds passed in slow-mo.  Stone was trying to make his way towards Virginia.  Her saw her give a flick of the hair to the Maserati salesman - which had the Italian guy practically genuflecting.  All very amusing for her.  Stone waved toward her, but she didn’t see.  Stone saw the Italian bow and open the door for her.  But the passenger door for some reason.  A polo player politely shut the door of the Maserati for her and made another gallant bow before taking his place as her driver.  But then Stone saw a blond haired polo player moved right up behind the first one before he could get in the driver’s seat.  Caught him a punch in the kidneys.  Precise and discreet, two knuckles.  And completely brutal.  The first player’s legs buckled beneath him.  The blond polo player walked round to the driver’s side.  Smiling.  White jeans.  The same dark blue shirt with a red dragon on the breast.  The shirt of the Shanghai Polo Club.  The bastard shot a look of triumph towards Stone as he bent to get in the car beside Virginia Carlisle.  That look from the head-cam video.  Ekström. 

Stone bolted after them through the crowd of polo boys, but the Maserati’s tyres had already spun in the gravel and pulled off.    A Latino kid was feeling for the seatbelt of the second car when Stone hauled him out onto the ground. 

‘Sorry.’

Stone landed low in the bucket seat, hit the accelerator and the engine erupted behind his head.  Blue and red polo shirts scattered in front of him as the Porsche took off with preternatural acceleration.  The needle stood at one hundred by the time he hit the asphalt, but still, the Maserati was already a distant blur of dust disappearing up the hillside.  Maserati, Porsche.  Porsche, Maserati.  Stone backed himself to catch the Maserati, however good a driver Ekström was. 

And for a simple reason.  It was a trap.

Ekström had set some kind of trap for Stone.  What it was, was anyone’s guess.  He’d have to deal with that when he caught up with him.  Always supposing he didn’t hit a tree beforehand, of course. 

Rupert said there were over fifty kilometres of roads on the Balong Estate.  Ekström could be leading him anywhere – even off the Estate and back to Shanghai on the gaosu expressway.  Stone wound the car up cleanly, and it held the road gloriously, the backend drifting predictably on the corners, and then gripping positively again to accelerate.

Stone looked ahead to guess at Ekström’s plan.  Realistically, Ekström had to be the better driver.  Stone wasn’t bad, but he hadn’t owned a car for four years and in any case, Ekström wouldn’t try this unless he were confident.  The plan may well be simple.  Draw Stone into a maneuver he couldn’t handle at high speed.  

In that case Ekström shouldn’t have given him the Porsche.  The thing could practically drive itself, and cornered like it was on rails.

He thought of Virginia.  She’d got in the car voluntarily.  She hadn’t even seen him when she got in that car.  She would be completely unaware.  She’d never seen Ekström in her life.  Just another handsome polo player.  Was he going to stop the car in some remote spot and coolly shoot Stone in front of the doyenne of the world’s media?  Unlikely.  And if he killed Virginia, it would cause a stir.  To say the very least.

The Maserati thundered down a hill toward a blind left hand bend and disappeared.  Dust billowed at the corner.  Stone’s mind said caution but he couldn’t let Ekström get away.  He sped up down the hill.  There was a stream flowing away to the right.  Water in the road?  And a stand of trees for the Porsche to skid into?  He thought of Panchen’s primitive ambush just days ago. 

It hadn’t been dust behind the Maserati.  It was smoke.  Ekström had hit the brake hard just before the bend.  Stone stood on the brake in the last fifty metres with the car still straight, lurching forward in the seat.  Just enough, too.  The car aquaplaned in the water as it hit the bend.  The front-left wheel gripped just in time to pull the backend clear of a heavy stone wall on the shoulder. 

So that was Ekström’s game.  Crude but effective. 

Well then.  Stone could be crude but effective too.  He floored the car again and closed up to 200 metres from the Maserati, then kept it there, turning sharply with Ekström through a succession of bends.  The Porsche handled like a dream.  It wasn’t even that difficult. 

The road ran straight again and Stone saw his chance.  A fork.  Ekström was letting up on the gas, allowing Stone to close up on the Maserati.  Stone played ball.  Flipped back on the gear paddle and the Porsche eased up closer.  One hundred metres.  Ekström would give him to have no time to react next time.  As the Maserati curved off to the right, Stone hit the anchors and flipped down into the second gear.   With shriek of the engine and a judder of the anti-lock, the Porsche slowed to a crawl.  No hint of a skid.  He turned off to the right and let the Maserati disappear.

Stone had given up the chase.  He’d drive back to the clubhouse, and leave Virginia to her afternoon’s drive with Ekström.  There was a woman the Swede couldn’t harm without attracting some attention.  Make that a lot of attention.  It would make the evening news if he so much as farted in her presence.  Virginia’s fame would protect her.  In fact Ekström was probably using her as the perfect alibi.  The bastard thought he had it all worked out.

  Stone drove along past another fork and a sign in Chinese and English, which read Balong Polo Resort and Country Club in one direction and Gaosu Expressway, Shanghai, Ningbo in the other.  He followed the road back to the club.  Perhaps Virginia would be there when he got back, having a cocktail with her new friend.

After what he’d seen in that Atrium building, and after what he’d seen in Oyang’s factory, Stone should have been ready for what happened next.  The Porsche appeared to lose power, but in fact the accelerator pedal was pushing back against the sole of his foot.  The car slowed to a roll.  Then the steering wheel spun in front of him and the car made a handbrake turn on the gravelly surface.  Which took some doing with a four-wheel drive Porsche.  Whoever – whatever – was driving this thing, knew what he was doing.

Stone sat in the stationary car in the middle of the road.  He tried the door.  Locked.  The engine burbled at rest behind his head.  Stone’s seat belt released itself, and a warning light came on in front of him.  Then another, indicating the airbags had been disabled.  Naturally.  And here it comes.  Two more lights to go.  The traction control and anti-lock braking were switched off.  Stone was already searching for the remote control box.  Under the steering wheel, in the glove box?  It must be accessible…

An angry, bloodthirsty roar behind Stone’s head from the engine, and the tachometer needle swung way up into the red.   The Porsche took off with a wild power that forced him almost into the back seat.  Stone braced himself against the racing bucket-seat and began to kick with his heel at the dash and the front fascia of the car to find the remote box that was driving this thing.

Never say those Germans don’t make a solid piece of equipment.  It took Stone over a minute to completely smash in the radio and SatNav, and then lever off the top of the dash, pulling off a large sheet of plastic over a metre in length.  Stone was pulling out leads and wires wherever he could.  It made no difference.  And the remote driver knew his stuff.  Without the seat belt, Stone was thrown across the car about every ten seconds. 

The odd tree and a wall flashed by, but Stone knew where he was going.  Ekström has taken him round that blind bend earlier to show him where he was going to die.  Not good enough to do the job.  Ekström had to be sure Stone knew what was coming, and who was doing this to him.  The car was swerving, slaloming down the straight.  It was all Stone could do to stay in one place on the smooth leather.

He slithered into the back of the car and tried to pull the seats out.  The engine was rear-mounted.  It could be the remote control box had been placed back there.   Maybe it had, but it made no odds.  Stone made no impression on the back seats at all by hammering away at them with the heel of his boot.  He was bent over, hunched, no room to move or brace himself.  The car swerving and turning like a demented teenager on a skidpan.  He felt like a contestant in a Japanese game show – decidedly unfunny and slightly pathetic for even being there.

The car went into a kind of power slide onto the grass at the top of the hill, the kind of thing you only see on TV.  Then he was back on the road.  Whoever was driving had a swagger about them.  A perverted élan.  After the slaloming and sliding, Stone was set for the main event.  The car accelerated down a long straight incline, back towards the blind bend and the stream he’d passed earlier.

Stone squeezed out of the backseat, having barely scuffed the leather with his efforts.  Plan B.  He wrenched the long hunk of plastic from above the dash, then squeezed to fold it lengthways.  The car fell into top gear as it neared the bottom of the hill.  200 km/h.  Not a hope of making that corner, stream or no stream. 

But something told him the driver would give it a try.  And send him slamming like a hockey puck into that stone wall - suitably spectacular for the headlines.  Wild man Ethan Stone steals car and dies taking corner at ludicrous speed.  What crime was Stone running away from?

The car swung slightly outwards to take the bend.  Stone shoved the plastic dashboard down through the steering wheel, jamming it hard.  The wheel tried to turn back, but too late.  The car held its trajectory, beyond the outside of the bend.  Stone braced himself, arms and head against the steering wheel.  The wheels left the edge of the road, with the engine shrieking in the second or so the car was airborne. 

The Porsche slammed into the bed of the stream.  Not quite what the engineers had in mind when they designed it.  The car slid and rolled on for another seventy metres, then thunked into the rocks in the water. 

The remote driver had been trying to regain control throughout.  The brake pedal was still flattened as the car sat immobile in the riverbed.  As he sat in the stationary car, Stone saw the gearshift move optimistically into reverse and the engine screamed in frustration.  No chance.  The transmission was probably about fifty metres back up the hill.  This piece of German engineering had lived fast.  But sadly, died young.   Stone lay back on the seat again, shielded his eyes, and kicked out the remainder of the broken windscreen.

If Stone was right about what had just happened, some young man in the Atrium of the club had been taking him for that little test drive, but he wasn’t going to find out who.  For now, what he needed to watch out for were the tender ministrations of a certain Swedish gentleman, got up like a Chinese paramedic.

Dusk was half an hour away.  He could run back to the club and arrive unseen.  There was a Swedish gentleman he needed to pay a visit to, unannounced.  But first, Virginia needed to tell him the truth about Semyonov. 

Chapter 57 - 9:19pm 12 April - Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

The labels were written in English, in Roman letters.  But by a Chinese hand.  It was evidently beneath the High Mistress of GNN to write them out for herself.  She’d tipped some hotel functionary to scribe out the baggage labels.  Fedex papers for all ten bags, trunks and parcels, neatly packed in the corridor outside Virginia Carlisle’s suite. 

VJF Carlisle

GNN Worldwide Television News

293 W 43rd Street

New York NY

The bird was about to fly – or had she already flown?  And who could blame her after her little joyride with Ekström, and Stone’s own motoring mishap for that matter?  Stone gently put an ear to the door.  She hadn’t left yet.  The noise of urgent activity inside attested to the fact.  So did the voices.  He would wait outside for a few seconds.  Adds to the surprise. 

He pondered for a second on what Oyang had said.  Sometimes it suits people to make up stories and legends.  These things could be true.  Or they could be false.  The real questions were about who was creating the stories.  And there were a lot of stories about Semyonov, told and retold.  Oyang, certainly, had come up with all kinds of stuff to put Stone off the scent.  Oyang had tried to have Stone killed, and looked the other way when someone had gone after Junko Terashima.   Ying Ning – most of what she had said had turned out to be true.  The only worrying thing about her was that she had disappeared.  Carslake knew more about Semyonov than anyone.  Where he’d grown up, near Manchester, New Hampshire.  His school.  His real name, Steven Starkfield.  His conviction for hacking, who he’d met in prison, his series of illnesses.

 Add what Carslake knew about Semyonov to what Stone had just discovered about Virginia Carlisle, and the picture became a whole lot clearer.   Carlisle herself was the key.

Stone finally knocked on the door.

‘The car is waiting,’ he said in a Chinese accent.  ‘The car take baggage to Shanghai Pudong Airport.’

‘I didn’t ask for a goddamned car!’ shouted Virginia from inside.

‘What?’ Stone called through the door. 

The door was flung open and there she was, standing in front of him.  Hands on hips.  It was her what the fuck? look, and she was good at it.

‘Be honest,’ said Stone.  ‘You practised years to get that right.’  He smiled into her frown.   

‘What the hell are you doing here?  This place is too dangerous,’ she said.  ‘There’s a lunatic who just killed Robert Oyang.’

‘I know.  His name is Johan Ekström.  He’s a paid assassin,’ said Stone, strolling into the room and taking a beer from Virginia Carlisle’s fridge.  ‘He was paid to kill me too.  In fact he was paid to kill Oyang and make it look like it was me.  But don’t worry, since you survived that little drive around the estate with him, I think we can assume he means you no harm.  He had plenty of opportunity…’ 

Virginia’s mouth gaped.  Stone tried hard not to smirk at her TV-style indignation.  ‘Don’t worry?  DON’T WORRY?’ she screamed.  I could have been…’

‘Seriously, it’s fine.  Ekström’s an evil killer, but he’s a professional.  He’ll only harm you if he’s paid to do it, or if he absolutely has to.’

‘Very reassuring, I don’t think.  I need to get out, Stone.  And so do you,’ she said. 

‘And Carslake, I’m guessing,’ said Stone.  ‘He’s in there and going with you.’

‘How did you know?’

‘It’s a long story, but I figured it out,’ said Stone.  Carslake had just appeared behind her, also looking surprised.  ‘I heard his voice through the door.   You’ve got a car?’ 

She nodded.  ‘Kind of.’

‘Then let’s go,’ said Stone.

With that the three of them walked away from the hotel room down the corridor.  Carlisle was shaking her head.

‘This is not my scene.  I didn’t expect all this,’ she said.

‘All what?’

‘All this danger, getting-shot-at stuff…’ she said. She sounded disapproving, as if what Stone did was akin to whoring or gambling.  ‘…you can keep it.  It’s…’

‘Strictly for the war reporters, that kind of person?  They get paid for it, and hey, they should do it.’

‘Very funny.’

‘Not half so funny as what I’ve discovered about you, Virginia,’ he said.  They had stepped out into the warm night air, under a row of Chinese lanterns. ‘You’ve been making up stories about our friend Semyonov, haven’t you?  All sorts of wild inventions.  When were you going to tell me?’  She stopped.  His cool grey eyes looked into hers.

‘Semyonov’s an interesting guy,’ she said.  ‘People are interested.’  She acted unfazed.  Expecting it.

‘And you should know.  You were at grade school with him,’ said Stone.  ‘Then at junior high.  In a little town called Coldbury, New Hampshire.’

‘Everyone knows that.’  Defensive for once. 

‘Everyone knows it about you, if they want to look it up,’ said Stone.  ‘They don’t know it about Semyonov.  Back then his name was Steven Starkfield.  You knew that, but you never said a thing.’

She flicked a look at him.  ‘Again.  Anyone could find that out,’ she said.  ‘People are just too lazy.’

‘It wasn’t that easy,’ said Stone.  ‘But it’s true.  People are lazy.  If they can’t research something online, it’s always put off till next week or next month.’  Unless you’re Doug Carslake.   ‘And people are intellectually lazy too.  If a trusted source like Virginia Carlisle of GNN gives them the outline of a story, they run with it.  And if it makes no sense, like the Semyonov story, people compensate by generating all sorts of conspiracy theories and imaginary motivations to justify that story.’

‘If you say so,’ she said. 

‘You were old, old friends with Semyonov, weren’t you, Virginia?  You were best friends when you were kids.  Then something happened and he disappeared off the face of the earth.’

‘He got ill.  That’s all.’

‘I guess that’s how he got to look so weird.  Hairless, pink skinned.’

‘You’re forgetting “fat”,’ said Virginia.  ‘The papers always mention “fat”.  He was fat.  And those crazy eyes, don’t forget them.’  All her frustration and irritation was suddenly pouring out.  ‘Why is it – if you look weird, people think you are weird?  If that’s what you mean, then say it, Stone.  People do make up all kindsa stuff to justify what they’re thinking about a person.  Everyone thinks Steven Semyonov was weird.  And weird equals bad.  It doesn’t matter what he’s achieved, what benefits he brought to the world.  Let me tell you.  Steven was a normal guy.  He was the nicest person I ever met.’

She was so good at this.  She throws in the details, the personal testimony.  Anyone would believe her.  Stone had believed her.  Not any more.

‘He’s the nicest.  Not the cleverest?’

‘Maybe.  But not back then.  All that came later.  As a kid he was a geek, sure.  He was interested in computers.  His hero was Mark Andreessen.’

‘The guy who invented the first Internet browser?’

‘Sure.  But Andreessen launched the first search engine too.  That search engine was the big deal for Steve.  That was the game changer.  He became determined to be like Andreessen.’

They were out on the pathway from the hotel down to the marina and the other hotel.  The Shui Hu.  The name for “The Water Margin” in Chinese.  The epic novel of adventure and brutality.  It was a corny name for a hotel next to a marina.  The clear air over the sea was filling with stars.  So many stars it looked almost grey.  Carslake was behind them, listening in intently.

‘He was determined?  Determined to do what?’ asked Stone.

She looked back at him and shrugged.  ‘He got ill.  We lost touch,’ she said.  She looked ahead.  There was a world of guilt in the six words she’d just uttered.

She and Semyonov would have been soul mates in a place like Coldbury.  They were the clever kids, both of them so far above the normal plane in that one-horse town, they must have been good friends.  But then Virginia Carlisle had turned out the special one.  She’d won the scholarship to Vassar – the Ivy League women’s university, where they had the bluest of the blue blood.  Carlisle had transformed herself from small town girl to upper-class woman in the twinkling of an eye.  Then on into the stratosphere at GNN. 

‘No reason to feel guilty about it,’ Stone said.  He recalled what Virginia said to him, in the limo in Hong Kong.  I went to a good school.  But I wasn’t ashamed of it.  ‘You lost touch with Steven, Virginia.  It’s no big deal.  You were at Vassar and the world was at your feet.  It’s not your fault he got ill.’

‘Ill?  He wasn’t just ill.  Steven was practically living in hospitals.  Steroids, depression, liver failure, getting fat, losing his hair.  Can you imagine how that feels?  What that does to a kid of fifteen?  But he was determined.  He must have been.  He didn’t do anything the easy way.’

‘He even designed his own programming language.’

‘How did you know that?’ asked Virginia, her head swiveling toward Stone.  She knew a whole lot more than she’d said to anyone, and her news reports - full of puzzles and maybes - were a smokescreen to hide the real Semyonov.  Very effective when combined with Semyonov’s self-imposed search engine embargo.  Carlisle and Semyonov had been working as a team.

 They were walking on past the Marina and onto a path by the shore.  The lights of the Polo Resort were behind them, on the other side of a small hill.  It was darker.  The moon stood thin, like a silver razor above the horizon, and above it, Venus, as bright as Stone had ever seen it.

‘He must have devised his own programming language,’ said Stone.  ‘No one has a clue how his software works.  It’s unique.  And it seems to do what it does with a fraction of the programming code anyone else is using.  At SearchIgnition they call it the Blackbox.  They say that no one outside of SearchIgnition knows what’s in there.  But that’s not the half of it.  Only Semyonov knows how it works.  He wrote it in his own language, but he used codes, and keys and encryptions all over the place.’

Virginia sounded almost glad to be able to talk about it.  ‘Even if they hacked it all,’ said Carlisle.  ‘They still wouldn’t have a clue how it worked.’ 

They were on a small cliff top maybe twenty metres above the beach.  It would be a perfect view in the daylight.  The South China Sea stood warm and clear in the moonlight. 

‘Why are you telling me all this now?’ said Stone.  ‘How do you know I won’t just blab this?’

‘Carslake blabs things already.  Carslake blogs all this stuff.  But thankfully, no one believes him.  They won’t believe you either.  So long as I contradict you.  Besides,’ she said, ‘You don’t have to come with me, either of you.  You know I’m bringing you along so I can control the news story, so I can close it down.  But that’s fine, because you just can’t resist what I’ve got to show you.’

That, at least, was true.  Stone and Carslake followed Virginia down onto the beach under the starlight.  She flipped off her shoes and threw them into a row boat.  Stone too felt the warm sand in his toes  and breathed in the sub-tropical air.

‘We’re going for a boat trip’ she said.  ‘But when we get there, let me go in front and do the talking.’

 Chapter 58 - 10:03pm 12 April - Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

Virginia had asked to go in front and do the talking.  Perhaps Stone should have been less of an alpha male and just let her do it.  When they got there, he found himself forced out of the boat and up the beach onto the island with an AK47 practically up his nose, and two more behind his head.  It seemed only polite to raise his hands.  They had him spread-eagled against a tree by the time he spotted Virginia, who was most definitely not spread-eagled, with her head tilted elegantly to one side, brushing her hair as if ready to meet someone.

‘I told you to let me go first,’ she said.   Perhaps a little too smug, that. 

One of the Chinese guards was searching Stone through his clothing.  What they call a “finger tip search”.  Who were these guys?  Security guards - or doctors?  It was like they were studying for an anatomy exam: part twenty-four - the colorectal region.

Stone and Carslake were finally let go and walked up some steps behind Virginia, the guns still on them.  She led on through half-lit trees and gardens.   She’d been this way before, and Stone knew why.  It explained why she was hanging around the Polo Club when she should have been driving the “in-depth investigation” into Semyonov’s death.  Virginia Carlisle was nowhere near the lazy actress she’d painted herself to be.  She knew all about Semyonov.  Knew more than anyone.  And she was keeping the story alive, without asking the one obvious question.  Because she knew the answer already.

‘You told everyone he was dead.  You told me you’d seen the body,’ said Stone.  ‘Why would you do that?’

‘Because she was an old and loyal friend,’ said an American voice through the trees.  ‘The only one I ever had.’

Unmistakable, that baritone voice.  Semyonov sat like a ghost in the half-light, wearing a white silk robe and with his whitish pink skin glistening.  He rose and made to kiss Virginia on both cheeks, then sat back clumsily on the white plastic chair.  His movements were old, even though his skin was smooth and hairless, and young-looking.  He sat breathing heavily from the exertion of standing to greet Virginia.  And Stone noticed he hadn’t actually touched Virginia.  They’d kind of mimed the kisses. 

On one wrist he had two open sores.  The fattened skin had split open, and someone had been working hard to deal with the wound.  In all, here in the warm evening, Semyonov resembled more than anything, an old white beluga whale.  Corpulent with blubber, his skin fat, white and shiny, its intelligent, bird-eyes darting around the scene.  But the beluga was painfully out of its element.  On land it was heavy, its breathing laboured, and its skin would dry and split, however much water was thrown on it.  Somewhere, Semyonov’s mind could swim free in a dark, rich ocean, with a freedom and grace no human could emulate.  But not here.  Right now, only Semyonov’s red eyes gave any idea of his true nature.

‘Is this what a man looks like when he makes a pact with the devil?’ asked Carslake.

‘Perhaps it is,’ said Semyonov.  He tried to smile.  Quite a kind smile, but only his lips moved.  His lips were pink, cracking red on the inside.  The rest of his face didn’t move.  ‘Perhaps that’s my problem.  I’ve over-reached myself.  It’s made me sick and fat and ill.’

Stone said nothing.

‘But it’s a pathology I never heard about, Mr Carslake.  I’ve been sick since I was fourteen, before I started any of this.  I must have indulged in the Devil-worship back then in a fit of absent-mindedness.’

‘Fine words, Semyonov,’ said Stone, walking up to him.  He was about to confront him about the weapons he’d created, but something stopped him.

Semyonov’s tired red eyes stared, piercing, out from under the smooth white flesh.  He knew exactly what accusation Stone was going to throw his way, but it didn’t bother him.  He just opened his hands, with the palms upwards, as if to say, whatever.  Semyonov might be brilliant - the alien intelligence Carslake talked about.  But did he really think he’d get Stone on his side and get him to cover for him like Carlisle had?  Was that was this was all about? 

The truth was slithering into Stone’s consciousness.

‘It was Oyang, wasn’t it?’ said Stone.  ‘All that stuff with the weapons.  You never even knew about it.’

‘Not until Miss Terashima brought it to my attention,’ he said.

‘Junko Terashima?  Is she why you did all this?  Faked your death?  You got Virginia Carlisle to cover for you in the media.  No one ever asked whether you were really dead, because Virginia said she saw the wrecked car, the tyre marks.  And she’s an utterly credible source.  Privately, she even told people she’d seen the body, as it was spirited away to Beijing.’

Semyonov didn’t smile.  Or frown.  He just stared, blinking slowly with the red eyes, his face immutable, like the worst case of botox you’ve ever seen.

‘She didn’t mention that the body was alive when she saw it,’ said Stone, thinking aloud.  ‘And someone else was in on this.  The Chinese authorities, who must have known at the highest level that the death was a hoax.  But it was a very high level, because not even Oyang, with all his contacts, had suspected.’ 

Oyang?  Oyang and his stories about the giant intelligence that went bad, the computer that was so bored it turned to mayhem and evil.  That’s all it was – a story.  Oyang had made that elaborate story about Semyonov going mad and going bad, “just because he could.”  Stories from Virginia, narratives from Oyang.  All garbage.  Oyang had done it all alone – the weapons, the patents, the drug smuggling.  Not Semyonov, not the Chinese.  There was no evidence that the People’s Liberation Army were using any of these new weapons.  Oyang made them because he could, and because he wanted to turn some coin.

‘So why am I here?’  Stone asked Virginia Carlisle in front of Semyonov.  Maybe Semyonov would answer why he hadn’t had him shot.

‘Virginia said it was getting kinda hot over there.  Dangerous.  Some guy wanted to kill Oyang.  Then he wanted to kill you.  Frame you, then kill you.’

‘I noticed.  It’s nothing I can’t deal with.’ 

‘You didn’t need to.  Oyang left a suicide note written in Chinese.  Suicide.  He was already dead with a broken neck when the guy shot him.’

‘Oyang was selling weapons,’ said Stone, getting Semyonov back on topic. ‘Creaming off the technology.’

‘He was.  Yes.’

‘You didn’t notice?’

‘It was pretty half-assed stuff, Stone,’ said Semyonov.  ‘Nickel and dime stuff.  So, no, I didn’t notice.  No one noticed till he sold the patent for an oil refining process for five hundred million.’

Perhaps Semyonov would have raised an ironic eyebrow.  If he could.  Instead his eyes remained laser-red on Stone, his face uncreased and expressionless.  ‘One question,’ said Stone.  ‘Why have we been let into the big secret?  You’re going to say you have to kill us before you let me go.  Lame, don’t you think?’

‘You flatter yourself.  Virginia’s a control freak – you must have realized by now.’  That’s what passed for an answer from Semyonov.  Things seem obvious when you have an IQ of 200.  Semyonov was expressionless, but his movements and the odd mannerism spoke of great weariness.  ‘What do I care?  I’m dying in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘You’re not dying!’ cried Virginia.

‘Virginia.  Please.’  Semyonov tried to throw her a reproachful look, but only his eyes said anything.   His facial muscles were swollen – shot.  ‘Not long for this world, Stone.  I don’t care what secrets come out.  Why would I?  I’m not working for SearchIgnition anymore.  I don’t have a hundred lawyers analyzing my words like I had a couple of weeks ago.  I say what I like.  Why would I give a shit?  Come on.’ he said.  

Semyonov's eyes wore a sheen of inexpressible fatigue and resignation as he looked into the trees.  ‘It’s the little things of life, you know.  The little things.  Because you’re rich and you have a brain, doesn’t mean it isn’t a hassle.  I just can’t deal with all the fuss that goes with my life, and my body.  I give my life savings to research in China, and what’s my reward?  I gotta host a party.  Can you imagine how hard that was?  I had a bunch of Communist Party make-up artists spend four hours on me before we even started.  A party.  It’s like my un-favorite thing, and they make me do it all the time.  And to cap it all, Robert Oyang tries to siphon off all the cash to Switzerland.  What a pain in the ass.’ 

Stone loved some of the words Semyonov used: have a brain, life savings, rich, pain in the ass.  Words ordinary people would use.  It made him sound ordinary.  It wasn’t the real Semyonov.  Ordinary?  Semyonov was possibly the least ordinary person in the world.  For him, someone trying to steal twenty-five billion dollars was “a pain in the ass”.  Stone recalled one of the notes Semyonov wrote for him at that same party.  Odi profanum vulgum.  I hate the vulgar masses.  Words written in the middle of a party.  That was the real Semyonov.

‘You ask why you’re here, you and Carslake,’ said Semyonov, wearily, finally explaining.  ‘It’s simply because you figured it all out.  Virginia’s a control freak, remember?  She thought we should get you onside, because there’s something I need to do before the story breaks.  The story about Oyang, and the faked death.  ’

‘Steven wants some help,’ said Virginia, continuing for him.  The mistress of spin.  A clear statement, saying virtually nothing.  Just like her news reports.  ‘I said you could help him.  We could help him, the three of us, before the story gets out.’

‘What kind of help?  Looks like you’ve got quite a few helpers here.’  Stone gestured to the number of guards in the shadows.

‘It’s a simple thing, but in my condition I’m really no use at all,’ said Semyonov.

‘You’ve achieved a lot for someone who’s no use, Semyonov.  Even in the last few months, the amount of technology…’ said Stone.  The flood, the absolute cataract of new technology in the last six months alone.  Didn’t look like the work of a man who’s sick and dying.

‘It all came from the Machine,’ said the big white man, waving his hand like a useless white fin.  ‘I did nothing,’

‘Steve, come on!’ said Virginia, like she was a teacher giving a pep talk to a kid.  ‘You’ve done so much.  You should be proud.’  The bright kid who got a B in maths when he should have got an A. 

‘It’s all going to shit, Virginia.  We both know it.  I  haven’t done any decent work in months.  And I haven’t got long now.’  Semyonov stuck out his fat white hand for her to help him up.  There was bleeding around the fingernails.  Painful, irritating.  His eyes were red and bloodshot, red to their core.  Stone noticed that Semyonov’s robe was not silk, but hypoallergenic plastic. 

Virginia slipped on latex gloves before she touched him.  Then took his hand and leaned back, heaving Semyonov’s bulk from the chair.  ‘I’m going for my alcohol rub, Virginia.  I’ve had enough.  You tell this guy what he has to do.  If he won’t do it – well, shit, what the hell…  Somehow, I have to get it out of the ground in Sichuan, and I’ve no time left.  We should go there tomorrow and just do it.  If these guys won’t help us, then we’ll think of something else.’

Semyonov tried to get up, but couldn’t manage it.  He flopped back to the plastic seat to recover his breath, then made a wheezing rant at Virginia.  ‘Look at this guy,’ he said, jutting his chin towards Stone.  ‘He thinks I’m a freak.  For your information, it was the bleach I used in prison that made my skin like this.  I was desperate.  Most of my problems are allergies – allergies to bacteria, and I fucked myself up trying to get clean.  I didn’t realized back then that all that itching was liver failure.  By the time I had the money to do something about it was too late.  I’ve had my bowel removed and two liver transplants, but I still can’t eat anything but over-cooked boiled rice.  My body is constantly attacking itself.  Every three days they inject me with a biological culture to ease it off.  Costs ten thousand bucks a shot, takes half the day, and leaves me wide open to infection and cancer.’

Semyonov was overtaken by a coughing fit.  He collapsed to the chair, wracked with pain, shouting for help.  A jagged, helpless roar of pain.

A couple of Chinese medical men materialised in white clothing and led him away.  Virginia explained that Semyonov was prey to so many allergies, and his skin suffered so from any bacteria, that he had to be rubbed down three times a day with anti-bacterial gel.  Then came sterile lotion in a losing battle to hydrate his cracking skin.  Steroids, cortisone injections.  And at some stage the guy had obviously been depilated in a bid to control bacteria on his skin.  On top of that was the asthma that made it so difficult for him to breath.

‘Poor guy,’ said Virginia.  There was a wistful look about her.  She’d seen all that too many times.  ‘Looks like a freak, but he was my first boyfriend, would you believe?  Fourteen years old.  Quite a good-looking dude back then.’

So many stories.  Semyonov a good-looking dude?  Could be true, could be bullshit.  It was getting out of hand.  Stone waited for her to finish, then asked again.

‘What does he want us to do?’

‘You have to go down there and bring it out.’ She said it quite directly.  Blurting it, but vague again, and with no eye contact.  And no mention of what “it” was, although it was plainly the “Machine” that Semyonov was obsessing about.  Virginia was reluctant to mention its name.

‘Down where?’ said Stone.  She didn’t want to say it, but it was down there, down that mine in Sichuan.  Something Virginia didn’t want to talk about.

‘Do you know the worst thing?’ she said, changing the subject.  ‘They insisted on giving him an X-ray when he arrived in Beijing.  To see if he was for real.  Can you imagine?  I mean – how humiliating.’

Stone realised he believed Virginia and Semyonov and their narrative.  It said “Semyonov is the victim,” yet Stone was beginning to buy it.  Finally it seemed she was genuine – a real woman.

Stone realised he liked that about her.  He liked her fluff talk.  He who had always to be so authentic.  He liked Virginia for her changeability, her persuasiveness, her sheer falseness.  Except that false wasn’t the real word.  It was the artifice, the glorious construct of her public image.  And the fact that she had let him behind that façade, and let him see the real woman.  There were layers to Virginia.  You may like some layers more than others, but they were each beautifully constructed in their own way.  A living work of art as much as any performance artist.

Ying Ning was a work of art too, but she had only one layer.  A hard, flinty exterior.  If any part was injured or broken, and you saw the layer beneath – you realised it was the same all through.  Hard, sharp, impenetrable.  Was the real Ying Ning hiding within, all soft and emotional?  Seemed unlikely.

What about Stone himself?  How many layers did Stone have?  A few, certainly.  Some were hard.  There was damage below the surface.  Deep down, some of those layers were very ugly indeed. 

Here it came again.  Another jagged roar of pain from Semyonov ripping through the warm, evening air.  Virginia grabbed out for Stone, held his hand.  Her eyes were screwed tight with anguish.  ‘I’ve never seen him as bad as this,’ she said.  ‘We don’t have long.’

She stood up, and Stone put an arm round her.  She was taking deep breaths to calm herself.  ‘I’ll go and see what I can do for him.  He needs to go to hospital – but where can he go?’  She looked exhausted.  She’d been keeping up such a front for so long.  ‘You and Carslake will have to stay here,’ she said.  ‘There’s an empty room in back.  You can sleep in there.’

She walked off inside the villa, wiping a tear from her eye.  One hundred percent genuine for once.

Carslake watched her go.  ‘So that was Semyonov?’ he said, looking around as if unimpressed.  ‘Do you think one of these guards has a cigarette?’

Stone sat with Carslake on the deck in front of Semyonov’s luxury villa.  It was an idyllic setting – warm air, tropical plants, a Spanish-style fountain playing a few metres away and a cicada singing at a distance.  Then there was an overpowering smell of citronella, lest any insect inflict any more suffering on Semyonov’s skin.  Stone noticed that the guards were all still there, armed with AK 47s, at a discreet distance.  At this stage they appeared to be taking orders from Virginia Carlisle.  It was control-freak Virginia who had made Stone and Carslake prisoners on the tiny island, for no other reason than to control the news.

Chapter 59 - 11:57pm 12 April - Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

Stone and Carslake were told to “get some sleep” in a bedroom at the back of the building.  Virginia Carlisle was taking no chances.  She was locking them up for the night.  The gunmen were still on them, there were no windows and the door was locked from the outside.  Virginia may be upset but she was in deadly earnest about protecting Semyonov and his story.

Who could blame her?  Carslake’s blog had made Semyonov out to be a lunatic, and alien, an evil genius and whatever else seemed a good idea at the time.

‘I could use a cigarette,’ said Carslake, as the door shut behind them.  Evidently he wasn’t keen on confined spaces.  Neither was Stone, though he kept the fact to himself.  He’d tried to block it from his mind.

-oO0Oo-

Stone slept for a while.  Difficult to say how long in that windowless room.  He came to with the sound of helicopter rotors thok-thokking above the house.  His semi-conscious mind slid back to his former life in the army. 

Narrow cellars, low ceilings, now this “cell”.  Claustrophobia.  Kalai Kumza, Afghanistan, 2002.  Not a happy memory.  At least this time he didn’t have a B52 about to drop thirty tons of ordnance right above his head.  And this cell was about one thousand times more luxurious.

  A loud yelling, panicked shouting in Chinese and English outside the door.  Woke him from his half-sleeping state.  Screams from Virginia, bellows of pain and rage from Semyonov.  What the hell was going on?

‘They shot him,’ said Carslake.  ‘Listen!  They fucking shot him, dragged him down here, now they’re taking him away.’  Despite jumping to conclusions, Carslake didn’t look worried.  He looked like he’d expected it.  ‘Hear that?  That’s not a human sound he’s making, Stone.  The Chinese have had enough.  They came in that helicopter, shot him or hit him or something and now they’re taking him some place.  How the hell did we get stuck in here?  God I could use a cigarette.’

Carslake had a point.  Semyonov screamed like an animal about every thirty seconds.  Stone could hear Virginia was weeping too, and retching.  Carslake really didn’t like it in that little room.  His face was green and sweating. 

‘Take it easy,’ said Stone.  ‘We’re all still alive.  If they wanted to kill us they had about fifteen opportunities.  We’re cool.’

The screaming redoubled.  Carslake gave Stone a snake-like glance through the corner of his eye.  ‘Still think we’re going back to Sichuan?  More like a fucking interrogation centre in Mongolia.’

OK.  Take it easy hadn’t been the right choice of words just then.  No wonder Carslake was freaking out  The noise went on, on a loop.  Semyonov, or someone, or something, was screaming like wild-eyed bullock in the abattoir.  Like someone who knows what’s coming but is powerless to stop it. 

-oO0Oo-

The screaming and panic outside Stone’s room had finally abated.  About seven hours it had been on Stone’s watch since the screaming started.  It felt like double.  It was seven in the morning and a second helicopter could be heard overhead.  Was Semyonov dead or had they sedated him?   The helicopter sound receded after about another ten minutes.

Virginia had talked about going to recover “it” - the Machine.  It seemed like a bad joke now. 

By this stage Carslake was tired with worrying – worrying whether Semyonov had been shot, worrying that the room could be bugged, or worrying that the room would stink if he used the toilet.  He was lying on his back, looking at the lightbulb and refusing to speak.  Stone thought through what was happening again.

 So what had happened to Semyonov and Virginia?  Something had gone horribly wrong.  It hadn’t sounded like they were captives or had been taken away, but Stone could be wrong.  The helicopter had arrived at three in the morning – the prime time for taking prisoners. The “shock of capture” – it was an elementary discipline in the questioning of captives.  Get them while they’re still disoriented.  Hungry and confused.   Was that what had happened?

It was hours later when Stone managed to get Carslake’s attention again.   Worn down by either boredom or exhaustion, Carslake began to speak this time.

‘Tell me, Carslake, about Semyonov,’ said Stone, looking at the American’s downcast face across the room.  ‘You’ve spent so long researching the guy.’

‘He got ill,’ said Carslake.  ‘Then he met some Chinese guy in prison, ten years ago.  Maybe that’s where all this stuff started.’

Carslake wearily started to speak, and Stone asked him question after question.  In the next hour, using what Carslake knew, and what Semyonov and Virginia had already told him, Stone pieced together the story of Steven Starkfield, aka Semyonov.

Chapter 60 - 9:15am 13 April - Balong Polo and Country Club Resort, Zhejiang Province, China

Unusually for him, Ekström was happy to use the phone in the hotel room.  It was a better bet than his cell phone at any rate, which in China would be intercepted and recorded.  There was probably an office in Beijing where a red light flashed every time he used it.

Ekström sat on the bed and glanced at himself in the mirror as he unscrewed the telephone handset to check inside.  He had on the snug white jeans and a blue polo shirt tight around his wiry biceps.  He’d kept on the leather leg guards, which came up above the knee.  An overtly sexual look for a man.  He smiled to himself in the mirror as he took the back off the phone handset.  He’d earlier seduced the wife of a German reinsurance executive wearing that very outfit.  He could see why she’d gone for him.  Ekström often found himself attractive.  It wasn’t a gay thing - just objective fact.

The tiresome unscrewing of hotel phones was now the norm for Special Circumstances – since the Israeli secret service, Mossad, had perfected the “telephone hit”.  A Mossad agent would enter the room posing as a maid or maintenance staff.  A tiny charge would be inserted into the ear-speaker, set to explode four seconds after the phone was answered.  The explosion was tiny, but since it was held against the ear of the target, it was almost always fatal.

Ekström had even used the technique himself once, in Abu Dhabi.  It was ideal anywhere in the Arab world, since Mossad was always blamed for the hit.

With the phone reassembled, Ekström dialed the number.  No one spoke as the phone was picked up, but Ekström spoke in English.

‘Half the job was done,’ Ekström said.  ‘The Englishman is slippery.  He seems to know what’s coming.’

‘You mean he outwitted you,’ came the gravelly voice. ‘You were too elaborate.’

‘Planning, preparation, subtlety.  I make no apologies for the elegance of my methods.’

There was a harsh edge to the reply.  ‘Elegance is for the decadent, Swedish.  And I do not want your apologies.  I want a job completed.  A bullet to the back of the head is effective, I hear.’

‘No doubt,’ said Ekström, controlling his anger.  ‘A Chinese firing squad is also effective.  But I do not intend to verify the fact in person.’

‘I will protect you.  You may count on it,’ said the Chinese voice in careful English.

Ekström’s silence showed he had no intention of counting on Zhang’s “protection”.   When he spoke his tone was businesslike.  ‘The target has flown.  Do you know where he is?  I need to be right behind him.’

‘I can do better than that,’ said Zhang.  ‘I can put you ahead of him.  You will leave in thirty minutes.’

Ekström hung up.  He’d planned the hits on Oyang and Stone such that even with the double hit, he would be beyond suspicion.  It had worked out fine with Oyang.  But Stone was still out there.  And Ekström was a professional.  He had to finish the job. 

There was too much self-assurance in Zhang’s voice for Ekström’s liking.  Zhang wanted to take control.  But Ekström hated relying on others.  He felt uncomfortable.  Bad things happened when he relied on others.  

On the other hand, the job must be completed.  The reputation of Johan Ekström and Special Circumstances depended on it.  He would take Zhang’s car when it arrived in thirty minutes.

Chapter 61 - 11:10am 13 April - Balong Polo and Country Club Resort, Zhejiang Province, China

Carslake knew plenty about Steven Semyonov, going right back to the photos in his highschool yearbook, then his conviction and his time in prison.  He knew less about the man’s illnesses, which Stone had learned about from Virginia, and for that matter, pretty much seen for himself.

One of the difficult things in the story was grasping that the regular, skinny thirteen year-old in the high school yearbook, with hair and clear skin, was the same person as Semyonov.  At first glance, no one would believe they were the same person, and Stone could see why Semyonov, the person, had seemed to appear from nowhere.  It was a key to the person he was, and what had happened to him. 

When Carslake finished talking again, and lay back in that stifling bedroom to gaze once more at the ceiling lightbulb, Stone rehearsed the story of Semyonov through in his mind.

It seemed that until the age of thirteen, the boy called Steven Starkfield was a normal, happy teenager.   He also had a beautiful, clever sweetheart called Virginia Kocszelny.  The two were inseparable, both clever and so different from anyone else at the small community school, in Coldbury, New Hampshire.  However, at the age of fourteen, Steven became ill.  For whatever reason – hormone changes maybe, or some mystery virus – he became afflicted by the most acute eczema and asthma.  He later discovered they were caused by allergic reactions to normally harmless bacteria.  Sores covered his body and his face.  It must have felt like he was breathing through a straw.  The doctors treated with heavy doses of steroids for the asthma, which explains why the school photo at age fourteen shows a boy forty pounds heavier than the year before, and covered in acne and sores. 

At that time of life, any kid would be sensitive of his appearance.  Steven found his body bloated by steroids and his face covered with zits and acne right down to his chest.   Stone could guess how it panned out next.  Kids can be cruel to one who looks different.  But Steven never gave them chance.  He hid himself away.  Depression, isolation – a very common thing with teenagers who are long-term sick.  He even stopped seeing his best friend Virginia, which is why she felt so eternally guilty about it all.  Virginia was intelligent, blossoming, beautiful.  She would soon escape to a top university, call herself Virginia Carlisle, and never look back. 

Meanwhile, young Steven Starkfield turned in on himself.  The computer and the Internet became his world.  He applied himself for days on end to programming and hacking, and he was good at it.  Virginia said he was inspired by Marc Andreessen, a college kid who wrote the software for the first web browser.

Carslake pointed out that Andreessen didn’t invent the Web, but it seemed like it at the time.  His web browser was the first software you could use to access the Web easily.  It was world-changing, but in fact it had been put together in a few weeks by a college kid.

Young Starkfield suddenly knew what he wanted in life.  He wanted to write software that would change the world.  According to Carslake, Starkfield would have seen through Andreessen in a few weeks.  Because Andreessen’s genius was in the idea, not the programming.  Steven would have realized very soon that he could do better than Andreessen, which must be a weird feeling if you’re fourteen.

Whatever the exact sequence was, Andreessen was key to Steven, because it was Andreessen’s next venture that really lit the touch paper for Semyonov’s life work.  Andreessen’s next venture was Infoseek, the first major search engine on the Internet.  Semyonov’s career had been about search ever since, and the Machine was just an extension of that.

But back then, Steven Starkfield was into hacking and programming.  This was where Carslake’s knowledge had been so useful, because he’d looked up the court case against Starkfield, and found out a ton of stuff.  It was used in court evidence against the young Steven.  Semyonov couldn’t go to school, so he programmed, twelve, fourteen hours a day.  He must have hated everyone back then.  Thought everyone was an idiot, even Andreessen.  Even Virginia.

Steven Starkfield, sick and reclusive, was arrested for hacking Defense Department servers when he was eighteen.  And the computers seized by the FBI showed a remarkable level of programming.  He’d made his own operating system, like Bill Gates did at that age.  It was simpler than Gates’, but more powerful.  Also code-generators, programs to write programs.  And the programming code showed that he was obsessed with concision.   Making his programs as short, but as powerful as possible.

Prison was the key event in Semyonov’s life.  He would have hated the fact that the FBI took all his work and analysed it, and he resolved that no one would be able to figure out his programs again.  You didn’t have to be a genius to work out that prison would have been disastrous for his health too.  The weight, the eczema, the sores – it all went out of control.

He was lucky to get away with a year in jail, according to Carslake.  The US can be very hard on hackers, especially if they target the Defense Department.  And Starkfield was banned from the Internet for two years when he got out.    It was when he did his best work.  Away from the Internet, entirely on his own.

As for the Chinese: Carslake knew for certain Semyonov shared a cell for a while with a Chinese guy.  Maybe it gave him the idea.  Maybe he learned a few Chinese characters.  Who was to say?

However it happened, Virginia’s tech guy, a man called Ostrovich, had analyzed Semyonov’s video technology.  He said he could begin to work out the programming, but it looked like whoever wrote it redesigned the whole system to use a few hundred Chinese characters as short cuts.  The character for gold would be for the function “print”, for example.  But it went much further.  Semyonov used a single Chinese character as a short cut for a whole complex algorithm.  It was ultra-concise.  For Semyonov, who had it all memorized, it would be ultra-quick to write his programs.  Which is why he’d achieved so much, working entirely alone.

Best of all, his own system, full of Chinese characters, was private to Semyonov.  No one looking at it would have a clue how it was done.  Including the FBI, if they ever seized his computer again.  Semyonov was determined that if anyone ever saw his work again, it would be impossible to decipher.  Which was something the guys at SearchIgnition had found to their cost.

 The next part of the story was fairly well known.  Steven Semyonov founded SearchIgnition with a lawyer and an accountant whom he’d never met, and with whom he shared as little as he could.   Neither had an interest in technology.  His search programs, his algorithms, his indexes were all held in the “black box” of his own programs.  He started the SearchIgnition Corporation in a basement filled with a hundred-odd old machines, bought for scrap, loaded with his own software.  He hooked them together and made them act as a single computer.  Soon he had thousands of machines in a warehouse, again acting as a single computer.  He’d built the world’s dominant search engine for virtually nothing.  The rest was history.

Stone lay back too, like Carslake, looking at the ceiling in the bedroom, watching the moths flutter round and round the bulb.

‘I think I’ve figured it out,’ said Stone finally.

‘Figured what out?’ asked Carslake.

‘The Machine,’ said Stone.  ‘What it is, what makes it so powerful, and why so few people know about it.  I think I’ve figured it.  If I’m right, the whole world will want a piece of it and Oyang was right.  Twenty-five billion was a small price to pay.’

 Chapter 62 - 5:06pm 13 April - Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

Seventeen hours by Stone’s cracked digital watch in that one bedroom in the villa.  They had been given neither food nor water.  This was, of course, a good thing.  It meant that whoever was holding them had meant to bring them out sooner.  And still meant to bring them out.  Carslake added that the lack of food or water meant that neither of them had to use the toilet, and that was a good thing for him.

In the end, something else good happened.  The door swung open and two Chinese men came back in with AK 47s.  Carslake looked at the weapons wistfully.  As if he would have a clue what to do with one.  Carslake and Stone were led out together.  Out of the villa and into the daylight, into the warm, humid fresh air, and across the decking.  Now they were in some kind of tent, which must have been constructed there while they'd been locked away.  There were noises and voices and the hum of machinery, and it was air conditioned.  They came to a plastic curtain of thick plastic – so thick that it was impossible to see through it clearly.

A figure appeared behind the plastic sheet, a tall figure in a white suit.  Even the face was covered with white.

Virginia’s voice came through the plastic curtain.  Her hair must be covered, and her face also with a mask of some sort.

‘I’m sorry we had to keep you in the dark,’ she said.  ‘But you’ll need to wait a while yet.’

 ‘Yeah.  Like, literally,’ said Carslake drily.  ‘But don’t worry, the room was peaceful.  What happened?  So busy you forgot about us?’ 

‘Come on, Carslake,’ said Stone.  ‘As if she could forget those legs.  And that ass of yours.’

‘None of this is remotely funny,’ she said, developing that weary tone once more.  It was light years from her TV voice.  ‘It’s been a disaster.  Like I told him it would be.  We sat Steven outside because that’s what he wanted.  To sit out in the open air, just for a few hours.  We blasted the hell out of the whole island to get rid of the bugs – but it was a stupid idea.  He has half a dozen bites and nearly died twice from the reactions.  Steven was already suffering.  He’s got open sores and wounds all over by now and they just attracted the insects.  You can imagine the pain.’

‘We heard,’ said Carslake.

‘And he’s covered with god-knows-what bacteria.  We have to wash him with distilled water.  Sterile.’  She sounded worn out beneath that naturally bright voice.  ‘You heard what kind of a night we had.   A medical crew came by helicopter and we created a mobile cleanroom for him on the island.  We cleaned him and gave him the interferon straight into his bloodstream.  It worked, but it took too long.  We should have left on the first helicopter.’

‘So what now?’

‘Steven’s adamant,’ she said.  ‘He’s over-ruled me.  You two can go.  He doesn’t care anymore who knows what.’

‘Neither do you, Virginia.  Right?’ said Stone.  ‘Whatever stories we put out will be trashed by you in the mainstream media anyhow.’

She didn’t deny it.  Stone had to love this girl.  She’d planned it all out before she let them out of that room.  ‘You can go wherever you want,’ she said.  ‘Steven asks only that you leave the country and not return.  He’ll summon his private jet to Ningbo, which is near here, and tell the pilot to take you where you wish to go.  London.  LA.  Tokyo.’

Stone couldn’t possibly trust this.  And in any case, there was the matter of the Machine to think of.  He wasn't going to give it up at this stage.

‘Is it you or Semyonov who’s given up on getting the Machine, Virginia?’ said Stone.  ‘We know more than you think,’ he said.  ‘I know about The Machine.  I know what it is, and I know what happened with Semyonov and SearchIgnition, and why he ran away to China.  I know where all this new technology is pouring out from.  You won’t be able to keep that quiet.  Especially when they go back to that crater in Sichuan, and it all starts again.  You can’t keep that kind of thing quiet.  Every government and corporation in the world will want a piece of it.’

Bravado from Stone.  It sometimes works.  But a silent stand off is more difficult than you’d think when you can’t see the person you’re talking to.  A person naturally fills the silence in conversation by speaking, and Stone was adept at using silence to make people say more than they should.  But he couldn’t see her.  She could be smiling derisively.  Or just rolling her eyes in exasperation.  Maybe there was no “Machine”, maybe everything was just as it seemed, just as she’d said.  A mess, a big disaster.  A dying billionaire and his childhood sweetheart had been playing silly games, and now she was behind a plastic sheet, dressed up like a space alien to confuse him.  Stone forced himself to say nothing till she responded.

‘Does Carslake know too?’ she said, warily.

‘Sure,’ said Stone.  Even lying isn’t easy when she can’t see you.  No facial tells or body language to reinforce.  He was feigning eye contact with her.  Pointless.  Mercifully, Carslake didn’t contradict him.

‘You’d better come and talk to Steven,’ she said, finally.  'I guess it's his decision.'

-oO0Oo-

Stone had to take it slowly for hygiene reasons.  He was inside a large plastic tent, placed on the decking of the villa, two hundred metres from the beach at Balong.  Stone went through two sets of translucent white plastic doors, stripped completely and showered.  He was told to clean himself all over with anti-bacterial wash.  He emerged in white cotton medical pajamas.  Virginia was wearing the same, her hair tied up in a plastic cap, with a white mask over her face.

Another two sets of plastic tent doors and Stone realised he was in the presence once more of The Man.  A white beached whale, pained and bleeding.  Semyonov’s pale bulk was lying pitifully on its side on a gurney, three or four metres away, blurred behind yet another plastic sheet in a “cleanroom”, resembling an oxygen tent, to keep the air sterile.  It was quiet save for the hum of the air conditioning plant.  Stone sat down.  He could feel Semyonov’s tortured red eyes burning into him through the sheeting.

‘It’s not as bad as it looks, Stone,’ said Semyonov.  His voice was still strong and intelligent in between asthmatic gasps.  Virginia was biting her knuckle again, weeping silently.

‘We’re coming with you,’ said Stone, after a delay.  ‘The Death Hole, the crater in Sichuan.  You know the place.  That’s where you’re going.  And since you offer, that is where we choose to go.’

‘We?’ asked Semyonov meaningfully.  ‘Does that mean Carslake too?

‘Virginia’s idea.  She seems to think two pairs of hands will be better than one for this little job.’ said Stone. 

‘She could be right,‘ said Semyonov, ‘But more likely she wants Carslake where she can see him.  She doesn’t want him posting it all over his blog the minute he leaves her sight.  She likes to be in control.  You probably noticed.  But I’m not sure I agree with her.’

‘Tush,’ said Stone.  ‘Carslake wouldn’t miss it for the world,’’

‘Sarcasm, Stone,’ said Semyonov.  ‘Is beneath you.’  Stone felt the blur of the red eyes boring into him again through the translucent plastic.  Semyonov made stiff, pained movements behind the sheet.  ‘I guess the lady gets her way as usual,’ said Semyonov, almost resignedly.  ‘But I warn you - it will be dangerous and I can’t exactly help you.  And what makes you think there’s anything to see down there?  Robert Oyang is an unreliable witness, let me assure you.’

‘Come on, Semyonov,’ said Stone.  ‘The Chinese have done everything possible for you.  Including airlifting a mobile operating theatre onto this island by the look of it.  They don’t do that for nothing.  There’s something very interesting down there, and we all know it.  A few hours ago you wanted my help.’

‘That was Virginia.’

‘Are you sure about that?  You could get a legion of Chinese to help you, but you didn’t.  There’s something you want to get for yourself.  You need our help, or you can’t do it.  Let me and Carslake help you.’

Semyonov said nothing for a few seconds.  There was a rustling of plastic as he shifted painfully around on the gurney.  ‘I could be blowing smoke up their asses, too, the Chinese,’ he said groaning.  ‘Like I did with you and Oyang and the rest of the world.’

‘The Chinese aren’t that gullible, Semyonov,’ said Stone.  ‘And I’m sorry to break it to you, but it was Oyang who was blowing smoke up your backside.  All he wanted, in all the time he was buttering you up and kissing your arse, was money.’

There was wry laughter from behind the sheeting.  ‘Why can’t the Chinese go down the mine and get whatever it is themselves?’ asked Semyonov.

Testing him.  Probing Stone’s knowledge.  Constantly playing his intellectual games.

‘Oh, they could do that,’ said Stone.  ‘But it would go wrong.  They need you to do it, Semyonov.  Besides they trust you.  You offered them something very big, and the Machine, whatever it is, has already made a down-payment of billions of dollars worth of technology.  Why would they louse that up?’

Semyonov was right – he could very well be blowing smoke up their asses too.  But it hardly mattered.

‘You know why.  And I know why,’ repeated Stone.  ‘You asked me to help you get something out of that hole, the mine or whatever it is…’

‘And you know,’ intoned Semyonov’s wheezing voice from with the tent, ‘That you’ll have to tell me what you know about the Machine.  You can’t bluff me any longer.’  A doctor or orderly had gone behind the sheeting, covered from head to toe in a plastic jumpsuit and wearing a breathing mask.  Semyonov was trying to get up, lumbering around, blowing heavy asthmatic breaths, trying to swing himself from the gurney and onto his feet.  ‘I’m going to get dressed for the journey,’ he said, between breaths.  ‘I can assure you it’s not only inconvenient.  It’s excruciating.  You’ll have to tell me what you know about the Machine to distract me.’

Stone let the silence hang for a while, then when Semyonov had stopped groaning and wincing, it was his turn to tell a story.  He was going to tell a dying man in an oxygen tent about the Machine.

Chapter 63 - 5:14pm 13 April - Balong Polo and Country Club Resort, Zhejiang Province, China

Jean Luc Bisson, a French polo player, had found a Chinese girl.  She was sassy, sexy.  Spiky hair and spiky heels, skinny in black jeans and black silk camisole.

A hot breeze soughed over from the South China Sea, fluttering the advertising banners for Patek Philippe and Louis Vuitton, and tousling Jean Luc’s hair.  It was the People’s Republic of China, but it could have been a humid version of Hurlingham near London, or maybe the Hamptons.  Designer sun dresses and hats, flags of all nations, the smell of ponies.  Most of all the turbo-charged testosterone of eight whole teams of polo players.  Super-rich men, young women and lean men in tight white jeans.  The atmosphere crackled with sexuality.

Three quarters of a bottle of Mumm champagne and two hours of weapons-grade flirtation with the Chinese girl had left Jean Luc thinking of only one thing.   When she offered to entertain him in her apartment in Shanghai for the weekend, Jean Luc hadn’t bothered to weigh his options.  He summoned a car and they drove off, to censorious glances in the mirror from the driver.

Ying Ning gave directions in Chinese, of course.  They arrived at Hongqiao airport in Shanghai. 

‘You must give the driver four hundred kwai,’ she told him sexily.  Stroked his bicep under his pink polo shirt for good measure.

Jean Luc was confused, but gave her the money.  It didn’t seem bad.  About forty euros.  Then watched in frustration as she stepped out.

‘Where you going?’ he asked.

‘Sichuan!’ she shouted over her shoulder and walked off into the terminal.

 Chapter 64 - 6:07pm 13 April - Balong Polo and Country Club Resort, Zhejiang Province, China

Stone looked through the translucent plastic sheeting of Semyonov’s “cleantent”.  He could see blood from the sores around Semyonov’s legs and butt forming scarlet patches inside the white plastic trousers.  He would have had a blood transfusion in the past few hours, followed by the Interferon infusion to damp down his immune system.

‘What about the Machine, Stone?  Do your powers of imagination stretch that far?  Or was Robert Oyang pulling your leg,’ said Semyonov, using a Brit English phrase.  Goading.  ‘According to your story, when did I first go to Sichuan to seek enlightenment?  Or dig the spaceship out of the ground if you believe your friend Carslake?’

‘I don’t know when you did it,’ said Stone.  ‘And I don’t really know why.  Maybe you did it as a gift to the human race.  Maybe you did it to find a cure for your health problems.  Maybe you did it just because you could.  I don’t know when or how,’ said Stone.  He could feel Semyonov growing in confidence behind the plastic covers, his red eyes staring, his struggling lungs laughing gently.  If only his face could move, Semyonov would be laughing in Stone’s face already.  Stone’s theory had better be right.  ‘But I can tell you what you did,’ said Stone.  ‘What you made.  And why you ran away from the US and faked your death.’

‘There was nothing clever in faking my death, nothing underhand.  I just wanted a little peace.’  There was quiet, but for the hum of the air receivers and the sucking half-snore of Semyonov’s asthmatic lungs.  ‘Can you imagine how hard it was to do those press conferences and parties?’ 

Was Semyonov looking for sympathy?  Stone said nothing.

‘I was also out of my mind on steroids, Professor Stone,’ Semyonov said, quietly.  ‘And it nearly fucking killed me.’ 

Odi profanum vulgum.  I hate the vulgar masses.  It was a big part of Semyonov.  Steroids have a very depressive effect, even to the point of inducing paranoia.

Stone believed him.  But there was more to it.  ‘You would have been arrested if you stayed in the US,’ he said.  ‘You had to flee the US, because you’d built the Machine, and you tried hard, but failed to persuade SearchIgnition to switch it on.  The lawyers wouldn’t allow it, because what the Machine does is illegal in the US, isn’t it?  Or maybe they found out that you’d buried another copy of the Machine deep under the mountains in China as an insurance policy?  Uncle Sam was never going to be happy about that.  It it’s been working for months already, hasn’t it?  Where’s the other one?  Snuggled up in amongst your SearchIgnition servers in Colorado?  Did you ever even switch it on?’

‘Fucking lawyers wouldn’t allow me to switch it on in the US,’ said Semyonov dismissively.  ‘It’s a world-changing development.  Historic.  Yet all those guys can think of is their “corporate liabilities”.  Protecting their sorry, Harvard-educated asses.’

‘Come on, Semyonov.  If you run away to China, Uncle Sam wants to know what you’ve been up to.  Your government was never going to sit idly by.  The FBI and SearchIgnition have over a hundred software analysts trying to figure out the code and algorithms running your search engines.’

‘They haven’t even cracked the encryption,’ said Semyonov with a sneer.  ‘And when they do they’re in for a whole new world of pain trying to figure out how the programs work.’

‘Like a crossword puzzle in a language you can’t even imagine?’ said Stone.

‘Worse.  Things have moved on, Stone.  This isn’t the kiddie programs I wrote in prison. No more Chinese characters.  This is many levels above that.  They may as well try to analyse a rock.’

‘The Machine is even worse than the search engine technology, I’m guessing.’

‘Much worse,’ said Semyonov, croaking.  ‘Last time I looked, it had been upgrading itself.  I could barely figure it out myself, and I built it.  That was weeks ago.’

‘It’s bringing itself up to sentience?’

‘Possibly,’ said Semyonov.  No wonder he wanted to get his hands back on it.

‘But I still don’t get how it works,’ said Virginia, almost to herself.  ‘I get that it’s a computer that comes up with these ideas.’

‘More than ideas.  Breakthroughs, my dear – detailed plans and blueprints.  It comes up with new devices, new chemicals, new processes to make them, new alloys, materials…  It’s simply sweats great ideas.  They’re coming out every few seconds.  Even Oyang couldn’t use more than a fraction of them.’

‘I still don’t get it,’ said Virginia.  ‘How does it know anything to start with?  How is the Machine producing all this technology just by sitting there in a hole in the ground, thinking to itself?  How does it even know what people want?’

Semyonov was sitting in the sterile plastic underclothes.  The blood was slick and damp on the inside, the red clearly visible through the blurred sheeting.  Then he began to put on light cotton shirt and trousers with the male nurse.

‘Virginia,’ said Stone.  ‘Your friend Steven here pretty much invented Internet search technology.  Semyonov’s search engine technology basically sucks up the whole of the Internet and indexes it, so that people can find things.  Semyonov took all that information – the whole of the Internet – and packed in into the Machine.  That Machine was loaded up with a copy of every page, of every web site, every research paper, every engineering textbook, every marketing blurb, idea, and sci-fi story in existence.  It takes all that and munches through it, making connections.  The Machine has one purpose: to take that planet-full of information and ideas, fit it all together, and come up with new ideas,’ said Stone, still staring through the plastic at Semyonov.  ‘It looks like it worked pretty well.’

‘And Oyang?’ asked Virginia. 

‘Oyang was on the take,’ said Stone.  ‘He blew the whole thing wide open by cherry picking ideas, getting patents and selling them.  Some of the weapons he manufactured in that place in Shanghai.  It was never going to go unnoticed.  Now thanks to Oyang, everyone who has any notion of what the Machine can do, wants to get their hands on it.  China, the US, Russia…’

‘But without me, they’re wasting their time,’ said Semyonov.  ‘I’m impressed, though.  That you figured it out.’   Behind the curtain, he was weakly trying to clap his bleeding hands together.

Stone was impressed too.  He was astonished.  He wouldn’t have managed it without Carslake - he was a dark horse. 

The big white man was suffering, forced to wear clothes and make-up for the trip.  It was irritating, painful.  He seemed buoyed nonetheless.  Perhaps he felt unburdened.   ‘For your information,’ said Semyonov after a while, ‘There is nothing down there in that mine that is new or special to me.  Just something I want to get out.  There are problems down that hole which I never suspected.  But congratulations.  You have just volunteered to help me go to the Machine and bring it out.’  Semyonov struggled to his feet and stood gasping for breath.  ‘I suppose I should feel gratitude.  But these days, that emotion does not come easily to me.  We must go,’ he said.  ‘The clothes and make-up are itching and irritating.  But not yet excruciating as they will be in a couple of hours.  When we arrive at the crater, Virginia will explain what must be done.  We may as well get on with it.  Time is not exactly on my side.’

-oO0Oo-

Finally, finally, Stone was beginning to see where Semyonov was coming from.  He wasn’t an evil man – just obsessed.  There are people who start a business, or take up a sport.  They start off by giving it their all.  Some people’s commitment tails off, but others plunge in and give it more than their all.  There are millions of people who neglect their partners and kids for their work  – not because they are bad people, but because their work takes over.  It defines them, and they love it.  They spend less and less time with their families and even when they do see their kids they’re thinking of their work.  If things get in the way of that one thing in their lives, it frustrates them like hell.

Semyonov’s frustration must be a thousand times greater.  For outside of his work, his programming, his achievements – he had nothing.  No woman, no child, nothing to enjoy.  He was in constant pain and he was going to die.  He’d neglected everything – friends, relationships, now even his business empire at SearchIgnition.  He'd let it all go.  All he wanted was the Machine – to give it to the world and show how brilliant he was.  He’d tried to do it in the US, but SearchIgnition’s lawyers had stopped him.  So now he’d placed a copy deep below ground in China.  And if he couldn’t get it out of there, everything his brilliant mind had ever done would have been for nothing.

Chapter 65 - 10:54pm 13 April - Flight, Ningbo to Sichuan, China

They had flown by helicopter to Ningbo, to be met by Semyonov’s personal airliner.

Semyonov’s Chinese-made MA600 airliner was painted matte black.  Which suggested he only travelled at night.  The plane had followed the silver banner of the Yangze westwards, past the brightly lit cities and towns, on past the Brocade City, and now they were over the black wilderness of Western Sichuan.

Stone, Virginia and Carslake sat up front, while Semyonov was on a gurney to the rear with a small medical team.

‘Underground nuclear tests?  Shoot!  I hope not,’ said Virginia.  She was trying to explain the layout of the crater, without even having seen it herself.  She’d listened to Semyonov and made notes on lined paper in her All-A student’s handwriting.  Now she was relaying the information to Stone and Carslake.

  ‘The monks said there’d been nuclear tests,’ said Stone.  ‘Why else would that huge circle of ground be barren?’

‘That would mean it’s dangerous, right?’ she said.

‘Er… yes,’ said Stone.  Carslake rolled his eyes.  He had to stop doing that with women.

‘I don’t think so.  Steven would have told me,’ she said.  ‘Let me tell you what Steven said, ‘The “anomaly”, he calls it.’  Then she read from the notes in front of her.  ‘The anomaly is the result of an asteroid strike from seventy million years ago.  The reason there were mines here, for iron and all manner of unusual metals, is that they were present in the asteroid.  This asteroid created a gravitational and magnetic anomaly.’

Carslake’s eyebrows had shot up his forehead.  It made Stone want to laugh.  Virginia had just explained Carslake’s precious underground radar pictures.  The whole mystery.

Virginia read on, ‘”Chinese miners discovered three percent fissile uranium isotopes deep underground during the Nineteen Sixties.”’  She stopped herself.  ‘What the heck does that mean?’

‘It’s like finding enriched, reactor-grade uranium lying around in the ground’ said Stone.  He wondered himself how he knew some of these things.  A macabre interest in the technology of death, if he was honest.  He went on, ‘What I think Semyonov means, is that three percent of the uranium they found was of the fissile isotope, Uranium 235.’  Stone felt his ears register a pressure increase.  They would be landing soon.  In the crater.

‘Fissile?  As opposed to what?’ she asked.

‘The decayed Uranium 238,’ said Stone.  ‘The Uranium 235 decays much more quickly, and that means it’s rare.  In the four billion years the earth has been around, wherever you look on earth, the uranium had decayed to where it’s only 0.7 percent fissile.  That’s why you have to enrich it to 2.7 percent to make nuclear fuel, and even more to make a weapon.  I guess the three percent concentration here was because the uranium landed in the meteor.’

Virginia looked at him suspiciously.  ‘Sometimes you sound like a real professor.  It’s not a great look, Stone.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ he said.  There was renewed activity at the back of the cabin, where the medical team in white suits and masks were preparing Semyonov for the landing with padded plastic straps.

Virginia continued, ‘You could be right though.  This is what I wrote when Steven was telling me.  I have to read Steven’s words verbatim, because I’ve no idea what it all means.’  She began to read.  ‘“It was known that at three percent uranium 235, a natural nuclear reaction could occur in the ground.  French scientists had identified the phenomenon at a site in Gabon, West Africa in the early Sixties.  All that was needed was ground water, which would act as a neutron moderator.”  I mean, what the hell? “It would also naturally control the reaction.  As the water boiled off in the heat, and pressure increased, the fission would stop, and begin again when water re-entered the deposit.”’

Stone was gently clapping his hands.  You had to hand it to Semyonov.  ‘How fascinating is that?  They discovered the reactor grade uranium, and realised that all they had to do was to force water into the ground, and they would have a permanent supply of nuclear energy, self-regulating, spouting right out of the ground.  No wonder Lin Biao was interested.’

‘So what difference does any of this make?’ asked Carslake.  ‘I mean, did they build the reactor or what?’

‘It looks like the discovery was reported to Lin Biao, and nothing was pursued after his death,’ said Stone.  ‘Meanwhile, the spoil from the mine threw poisonous heavy metals around the crater and killed off all the trees and plants.  That explains the barren crater.  There was no nuclear test.’

‘Jeez,’ said Virginia.  ‘No wonder they closed the place up.  Anyhow, they blew up the workings in 1980 when they saw what damage the pollution had done.

‘What about the Machine?’ said Carslake.  ‘Where is it?  We have to go into a poisoned fucking mine?’

A grave, strained voice spoke from behind them.  ‘The Machine is held in a cylinder, twenty inches in diameter.’  It was Semyonov.  ‘As Virginia said, the mine is closed, the workings were blown in 1980.  But the Machine and all its data are held in that cylinder.  It’s five feet long and twenty inches in diameter.  Half a mile below the ground.’

‘If the mine is blocked, how did it get in there?’

‘A shaft,’ said Semyonov.  ‘We drilled a service shaft a half a mile deep and lowered the Machine into the deepest of the old workings.  The shaft is barely twenty-two inches wide.  That’s why the cylinder had to be so small.’

‘Hold on,’ said Carslake.  ‘You’re talking about the whole of the information from the whole of the Internet here.  Plus some incredible level of processing power to analyse it.  How does it fit it something barely bigger than an office file server?’

‘Supercooled to minus two hundred.   The most efficient, densest database ever built.’

‘It must eat the power,’ said Carslake.  ‘How the hell do you supply that much power half a mile below ground?  I didn’t see any power lines around the crater.’

‘I think we know the answer to that,’ said Stone. ‘There’s plenty of power down there already.  It’s the reason he chose this mine, with it’s own nuke power source.  Did you design all this, Semyonov?  Or did…’

‘Correct,’ said Semyonov, voice still straining.  They were coming in to land.  ‘It designed itself.  Even chose the location.  Who knows what else it’s done in the weeks its been down there.’  There was a roar of the cool night air outside as the undercarriage deployed.  ‘Carslake was right all along,’ said Semyonov.  ‘There is an alien intelligence at the bottom of that hole.  But I created it.’

-oO0Oo-

It was still three hours before morning prayers when the black turboprop droned over the monastery.   Panchen stirred, half-awake on the wood floor of his cell.  There was a creak from the wooden boards of the corridor.  A small creak, from a light body.  Velvet steps.  Panchen sat bold upright, his neck and shoulder muscles taught in the perfumed darkness.  That tiny creak from the floorboards.  He’d heard it before. 

She slid past the door, and he smelt her soft musk.  She spoke in Chinese.

Chapter 66 - 12:54am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Lin Biao may be a footnote in history, but his many palatial bomb shelters and bunkers are dotted all over China.  Some were let to ruin, some are museums, some curios, and one or two have even been turned into hotels.  Lin Biao’s legacy.  Now, there was one guy who was prepared for when the thermonuclear shit hit the fan.

Lin Biao’s fantastical apartments a few metres below the rocky surface had something of the Robert Oyang about them, except they were forty years old and very damp.  Weird, impossibly ornate, and with a feeling that time had stopped. 

Each chamber was hewn straight from the dark grey rock, including the enormous, high-ceilinged living area.  Besides the living rooms there was a true warren of passages and tunnels down there, quite separate from where the mine workings would have been.  It was like living in a movie set from Journey to the Centre of the Earth, except the lighting was worse.  Much worse.  And above all it was damp.  Warm air space-heaters crouched like small jet engines in every room, droning away.  It seemed to have no effect.  Stone could see his breath in the large room, and rivulets of damp water ran down the walls.  Whether it was condensation, or natural groundwater – it didn’t matter. 

There were ancient, uncomfortable-looking sofas and easy chairs with lace and chintz.  It had the feel of Beijing Fordidden City meets miner’s cottage, and it reminded Stone of his grandmother and her cold, unwelcoming “frontroom”.  The one she “kept for best”.  Which meant she never went in, and never lit the fire in there.  “Kept for best” meant cold, musty and damp.  Lin Biao’s underground palazzo had been “kept for best” for nearly forty years.  The “bedrooms” were stone cells.  Nicely furnished with high ceilings and narrow but comfy-looking beds.  But damp, stone cells nonetheless.  It must have been the height of luxury in the China of the Cultural Revolution.  But now, above all, it was simply “kept for best”. 

Stone joined Virginia in the vast main “reception” hall of Lin Biao’s underground apartments.  ‘Let’s get that supercooled trashcan out of the ground and get out of here,’ said Virginia.  ‘Steven’s not going to last much longer if we stay here.’ 

That was wishful thinking from Virginia.  Semyonov wasn’t going to last much longer - period.  Which was why they were all here.  If Semyonov died without downloading and unlocking what was inside the Machine, it would be lost forever.  Pioneering whole new fields of technology, but cut off, half a mile below the ground, thinking its great thoughts century after century. 

Semyonov’s “cleantent” had been installed down there, underground, in the middle of Lin Biao’s apartments.  It was in the cavernous reception room – a kind of hallway and living room combined, with high ceiling cut out of the rock, tens of metres below the surface.

Stone had to talk to Semyonov through the sheeting again.  ‘What’s the score with the Machine down there?  Do I just attach the cable and hoist it to the surface?  It can’t be that simple.’

‘No,’ said Semyonov, panting.  ‘It can’t.’  He had to breathe heavily, like an athlete before a race, desperately oxygenating his blood for the supreme effort.  Except for Semyonov the supreme effort was a short conversation with Stone.  Semyonov spoke quickly, as if to get it out before he tired again.  ‘The Machine is just over 100 kilograms, Stone, although it looks heavier.  The meat of it is in a stack of fifty-three disks of gallium arsenide substrate.  The processor is a hemispherical array of  2,048 synapse points, triggered by a high powered laser.  That’s why we need the superconductor, and the cooling system.  We finally got away from binary computing.  There’s a small battery, mainly just to smooth the power supply.  It’ll give us a few hours in hibernate mode once you’ve powered down.’  Semyonov paused breathing heavily once more from an oxygen mask to prime his lungs.

‘Down there, there are three elements to the equipment,’ said Semyonov.  ‘First the cylinder of the Machine.  Then, a heavy UPS unit.  Uninterruptible power supply, like a huge stack of batteries.  It takes the power from the nuke turbines, smooths it and feeds it into the Machine.  Once you’ve powered down, it will have enough charge to bring it up the shaft to the surface, so long as you leave the power connected until the last minute.’

‘What’s the third part?’

Semyonov pump-primed his lungs again to reply.  ‘The cooler.  It’s a large unit producing liquid nitrogen to cool the Machine.  Again, it’s powered by the nuke plant.  You’ll see the power lines: all three parts are mounted on a kind of wheeled platform, so you can move them around together, though you’ll have to disconnect the main power from the reactor before you do.’

‘But I only need get the cylinder itself out of there?’

‘Yes.  The rest won’t fit in the cage in any case.  Not without disassembly.’

 ‘The cage?  That’s like an elevator car that goes up the shaft.’

‘It’s a cage,’ said, Semyonov, sounding as if he were hyperventilating.   ‘It’s built for the Machine, so it’s twenty-two inches diameter, a cylinder, and shorter than you are.  Maybe uncomfortable.  You’ll travel down in the cage, about ten to fifteen minutes.  The Machine fits snugly inside the cage and you can send it back to the surface while you wait at the bottom.’  Semyonov paused for breath.  ‘You’ll have to do it all in two stages.  Go down there.  Initiate the powerdown, and move the Machine to the cage, then bring it up.  Best if Carslake works with you.’

Stone made some notes, then turned to go.

‘One more thing,’ said Semyonov.  ‘In operation, that thing uses a superconductor in a coil inside the cylinder.  It creates a magnetic field.  Very powerful.  There must be no steel or iron on you.  It will rip a screwdriver or a wrench from your clothes.  Even a phone or a credit card in your pocket will mean you’re dragged toward the Machine. ’

Stone couldn’t wait for the daybreak, though he wouldn’t see anything of it down below ground.  He’d already seen far more than he cared for of underground living.  In any case, if they waited much longer Semyonov wouldn’t be around to commune with his Machine, and unburden it of its treasure trove of technology.  Semyonov had changed, even in the weeks since he saw him at the Crabflower Club in Hong Kong.  Back then, only two weeks ago, he’d seemed like a high-powered artificial intelligence.  Quick, sharp, unknowable.  Flourishing his fountain pens in both hands.  Now he was more like a clapped out steam engine, panting out its days below ground.  The change, of course, was superficial.  Semyonov had been dying for some time.  That was what this was all about.  He knew he was dying last week, last month, last year.  That was the real significance of the Machine.  He knew he was brilliant, Semyonov.  But by his mid-twenties he also knew he would die young.  Semyonov had become obsessed by legacy.  He built his Machine to change the world.  He wanted to be remembered like Newton or Galileo.  The Machine was his legacy, his monument.  That’s what the words had meant when Sphinx-like, Semyonov wrote them for Stone on the table back at the Crabflower Club.  exegi monumentum aere perennius.   I have created a monument more lasting than bronze.

They were the words of a Roman, called Horace, two thousand years before.   Horace had been right.  His achievement had lasted.  Semyonov wanted to be right too.  The Machine would be his monument.

Behind that fixed expression and the wheezing speech, Semyonov was a young man.   Just twenty-nine, dreaming of cancer cures, rocket engines and cars that ran on water.  Except that if he died, anything the Machine had produced would be buried with him in his own impenetrable programming code.  All that would remain would be an assortment of technologies and Robert Oyang’s money-grubbing schemes.

That was why the Chinese had left the Machine in place.  If they took it, they would have nothing more than a shiny, supercooled black trashcan filled with rather expensive gallium arsenide wafer.  And Semyonov would be just another human, who despite all his brains and his money would have lived a life which was nasty, painful and short.  He’d be forgotten within a year.

 Chapter 67 - 3:34am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Like a dream, but not a dream.  Some people dream like it’s real.  Others know they are in a dream, and a small number even become other people in a dream.  They travel, feel they are floating, and appear in the dreams of other people.  They speak to them, commune.  A very intimate experience.

He’d heard all this, but never experienced it.  It was like a dream, but not a dream.  She was there, right there with him, in the dark.  A soft, sensual touch of her hands on his bare shoulder, her fingers sliding over his neck and throat.  Her fingers caressing the neck, by the pulsing veins and arteries.  Could she tell that he dreamed about her, just by touching, by feeling his pulsing neck? 

It had to be her, didn’t it?  The one who came in the night, the one who’d filled his nighttime thoughts since he’d first seen her.  The Chinese girl.  The wry, cheeky, arrogant bitch who tormented him.  She made him angry, frustrated.  Tied him in knots.  He ignored her, tried to keep it “normal”.  But at night, he couldn’t get her out of his head.  That was it, she was in his head, the Fox Girl, the supernatural woman, the seductive, animal spirit.  You can’t relate to a fox.  Its face doesn’t change.  Its eyes don’t move.  It hasn’t got the facial muscles.  It just is.  Beautiful, elegant, impenetrable.

He felt Ying Ning’s fingers move across his chest, a light grazing round his neck, his throat.  Then her fingers were gone.  Nothing.  The wraith of the fox had gone.

Then a shock, a sting.  All the way around, from his nape and right round across his windpipe.  He jerked, bolt-upright.  Grabbed at his neck, then relaxed.  It was a dream.  But there it was again.  Splitting, cutting, stinging.  Right into his neck.  He grabbed, but there was nothing there.  It was behind him, whatever it was, was behind him, pulling and tightening.  Blood streamed down his chest.  All over his hands, he could feel it.  His head was going to explode.  Tightening – a wire, a ligature, something.  Coming from behind him.  His eyes were bulging in the blackness.  He screamed, but it was silent.  Like shouting in a dream, when no one can hear.  Like opening your eyes in a dream, but you can’t see a thing.  His eyes are wide open, bulging.  His tongue is right out of his mouth.  Scream.  But no one hears.  It’s black, completely dark.  And it’s getting darker.

Chapter 68 - 6:54am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

The sun rose blood-red over the trees at the crater rim.  To the West the mountains of Tibet stood out burnt orange above the dark foothills.

The idea of a stroll above ground in the spoil heaps of toxic waste had not exactly appealed to Virginia, but Stone knew the reality would be different, and dragged her up there.  He’d seen these mountains before, and tasted the air.  He took her up there at first light.  No time to waste in any case, looking at Semyonov.  Carslake was still asleep.

Above ground, everything seemed better.  Virginia’s mane of hair flowed again in the cool breeze.  There were goose bumps on her arms in the chill, and a warm smile glowing in her eyes.  Maybe she wasn’t all artifice.  She done it all for a reason, even if that reason was guilt.  It must have killed Semyonov at sixteen, when she disappeared out of his life.  As it must kill Virginia to see him now. 

After the night in Lin Biao’s Chamber of Secrets, Stone felt a small wave of ecstasy flood through him.  Impossibly clear mountain air, and the vision of the virgin forest against the deep blue sky of the Tibetan daybreak.  Stone inhaled lustily and walked to the steel tower which held the winding gear at the head of the shaft.  He thought again of Semyonov, his lungs scrabbling for oxygen in the damp pit below them. 

‘You should get Semyonov brought out here,’ he shouted to Virginia. 'It would do him good.'  The fresh air was all the sweeter for knowing he was about to go nearly a kilometre underground, down a hole not much wider than his shoulders.

The winding gear was pretty simple.  Up.  Down.  And a speed regulator.  Some Chinese guys were on hand, and they showed Virginia how to use the gear, but Semyonov insisted they had to it themselves.  He didn’t want the Chinese trying anything the minute he’d brought the Machine out of the mine.  After the briefing, the engineers were packed off in a truck, and driven out beyond the fence.  Stone and Virginia were on their own. 

Where the hell was Carslake?

Stone opened the door to the steel cage.  He had on a white overall and a hardhat with a flashlight.  The cage was a cylinder about 170 centimetres tall.  Made to fit the Machine.  It was pointed at either end with cones, and painted with the ShinComm logo.  Twenty-two inches seems a lot, but inside it was less, and when your knees are bent and your neck is crooked to fit inside, it feels pretty small.  The ride down would feel like a long fifteen minutes in the pitch dark. 

‘Steven says he’ll supervise by the phone link,’ called Virginia.

‘Sure,’ Stone smiled at her.  To encourage her.  She was looking more nervous than he was.  And for once, he was nervous.  ‘Let’s get on with it,’ he shouted back.  ‘And get that lazy bastard Carslake out of bed when I’m down there.

‘He’s not going to like it,’ she said.

‘No.  He’s going to love it!’ 

Stone slammed the steel cage door shut on himself and rattled to check it was secure.  There was a hum on of electric motors above him in the winding tower, and Stone slipped smoothly down into the Death Hole. 

Chapter 69 - 7:44am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

‘He’s going to love it!’ Stone repeated to himself.

Bravado.  Ridiculous bravado.  Stone started slipping away into the Death Hole, wondering if Virginia had guessed what was bothering him, or even if she had noticed. 

Stone closed his eyes to shut out the blackness, and the rattling of the cage against the tube of hard rock.  Ten minutes to the bottom.  Maybe fifteen.  Up to now, there’d been only one Death Hole in Stone’s life.    He would be thinking of it all the way down as he dropped into the hole.  He would be thinking of the real Death Hole.

Kalai Kumza, March 2002, Balkh Province, Afghanistan.  When the Al-Qaeda Arabs and Chechens were still around in Afghanistan.  Before the Americans started bombing in earnest.  Before they took control.  Four hundred Taliban and Al-Qaeda gave themselves up to the Uzbek forces of General Dostum of the Northern Alliance.  Dostum later said it was a trick to capture the fort of Kalai Kumza from the inside.  The Taliban prisoners smuggled guns and grenades under their ragged clothes, and once inside the fort, they revolted.  Against the two hundred Uzbeks and twelve NATO Special Forces.  The Americans wore military fleeces and fatigues - Stone and the others in his squad were in plain clothes.  Running shoes and HK machine guns. 

The Uzbeks said it was the white faces which did it.  It was the Red Cross workers whose insignia and white faces inflamed the Taliban – or so the story went.  Not Special Forces, who were looking as rough as the Taliban by now.  Stone knew it would have kicked off anyway.  Why else smuggle grenades in? 

A CIA interrogator was dead already.  Twenty Uzbeks dead.  Dozens of Taliban and Al-Qaeda were down.   It was a suicide job.  They knew they were going to die.  The Uzbek tanks were waiting outside.  The Americans would start with the gunships within minutes.  No civilians here to worry about – they were all Taliban and therefore bad guys.  Dostum and the Allies would wipe out the lot.

Stone forced the Red Cross guys to climb out over the walls, practically at gunpoint.  Twenty metres high, but scalable.  Then word came there were US and Brit interrogators stuck in cellars of the fort.  Trapped with the bodies of twenty more Uzbeks and Taliban after a grenade blast.    Stone and Hooper went down to bring them out.  Another stupid thing Hooper had agreed to.  That guy needed to choose his friends better.  Thirty-four steps below ground.

Stone’s cage rattled downwards.  Strangely muffled, like there was no echo at all.  Like he was sealed in the middle of the earth, where sound and light don’t exist anymore, where his own existence had become entirely theoretical.  Theoretically possible to be in that cage.  But a very foolish place to find yourself. 

Like the place he’d found himself when Hooper had risked his neck to go with him.  Thirty-four steps below Kalai Kumza.  Stone killed seven Taliban who’d been occupying steps twenty-nine to thirty-four at the bottom, the last two with face shots as they turned back up the steps.  The first took it in the upper lip and the second directly in the right eye.  Their heads exploded like coconuts filled with raw meat, all shell and blood and weird white stuff.   A CIA guy in the chamber below, an ex-Marine, had been holding them off with an empty pistol.  A fine effort.  He’d used every round in every weapon he could find.  When they got to him, he wanted to run right out up the steps.  Stone knew better.  The C130’s were already outside, pouring fire from their .50 calibre Gatling guns into the Taliban in the compound.  The B52’s would be overhead soon.  It would be an extinction-level event if they went up those steps.  Thirty-four steps down, below many metres of mud baked two centuries ago.  They might have a chance.  Just might.  But it was a very foolish place to find yourself.

Stone, Hooper and the three Americans were dragged from the wreckage fourteen hours after the B52 strike.  Stone had thought he was dead, and had plenty of time to dwell on the fact.  Hope, despair, panic, delusion, hallucination.  Pain.  Pain was the least of it.  Pain lasts only so long, and Stone had long ago learnt to deal with pain.

The claustrophobia hadn’t started straightaway for Stone.  It had come with the dreams of being stuck under the mud and clay.  Dreams, recurring for years, again and again.  Dreams can be really bad for you.

Now he was heading down another hole, much deeper this time.  In a tin cage he could barely squeeze into.  The rattling began to slow.  There was a faint glow, a centimetre of light around the edges of the cage.  This was it.   The cage flopped slowly out from the ceiling of a low tunnel, not quite high enough to stand up in.

 Chapter 70 - 8:06am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Sheeee-Hshawww.

Sheeee-Hshawww.

Stone put on the hat and now the breathing mask.  He felt like a diver in an underground river, walking carefully along the tunnel.  There were telephone points every hundred metres or so, and one by the shaft so he could speak to Virginia.  With so many heavy metals around Semyonov had advised the breathing gear, but the air looked clear.  The tunnel was dimly lit by strip lights, and held up by steel pit props.  It wasn’t quite high enough for him to walk upright, but not far off.   Not as bad as he’d expected.  He walked up an incline.  This was it, he could sense it.  There was something ahead.  He could even hear it.

Stone pulled down the mask for a moment to listen.  An electric humming, a low buzzing, like a large transformer.  He walked up a little further.  He was now maybe four hundred metres from the shaft where he’d come down from the surface.  Up here the pit props were made of wood. 

Round a left hand bend.  The buzzing was louder, and there was an eerie glow of blue light in the tunnel, about thirty metres off, brighter than the strip lights.  Wispy clouds of fog hung in the dead, dank air, the blue light glowing through them.  So this was it - Semyonov’s masterwork.  The alien intelligence, shrouded in mysterious blue clouds.  Stone walked up slowly and felt the chill as he entered the cloud.  He thought it might be dry ice.  More like the vapour of liquid nitrogen from the chiller Semyonov had told him about, stingingly cold on the exposed skin of his face.  He wafted at it, and it dissipated.  Cold as death, but ultimately harmless.  It was just condensation from the intense cold of the liquid nitrogen in the cooling unit.  Perhaps it was leaking.  He made towards the blue light through the mist.

Thump!  What the hell?  Something flew past his head, into the cloud.  Stone turned, crouching into the wall, a soldier looking instinctively for cover.  There was nothing there.  No sound.  Nothing to be seen.  Only a man-sized tunnel where he’d walked through the still, dead cloud of the mist.  He wasn’t dreaming though, he’d heard that dull thump as it flew past and hit something.  Someone had thrown a rock, or maybe a clod of earth from behind him, but it had flown past and landed harmlessly.  What the hell was it?  He turned again and edged further into the cloud.

What had he expected?  Some malign black tube, whose blue lights flickered as it talked to him in staccato English?  It was a black cylinder, granite-like, standing upright on a concrete plinth, almost reaching to the top of the tunnel.  Blue halogen lamps lit it from four sides.  The electrical and cooling plant were behind it in a tunnel, just as Semyonov described, and beyond it a huge yellow-black warning sign in Chinese, as big as Stone himself. 

非 请 勿 进

核 能 源

FEI QING WU JIN

Stone loved the way they put in the Roman letters.  As if it would help anyone, Chinese or not.  The first bit was something like Strictly No Entry.  The symbol for radioactivity said the rest.  Huge power lines lay in coils behind the sign, then snaked away to the reactor somewhere beyond in the darkness of the tunnels. 

Hope they’ve done their risk assessment. 

The really strange bit was that the black cylinder, squatting there on the concrete plinth, was not clear of obstruction, clean and looking well kept.  It was surrounded by debris, covered with rock and dirt, stuck to its sides. 

Stone could hazard a guess here.  The rocks contained a large percentage of iron.  He was in a tunnel, actually bored within an ancient meteorite.  There was a large percentage of iron in the meteor, iron being the commonest element in the universe aside from hydrogen itself.  Space is full of the stuff.  Stone stepped up and tried to pull away one of the shards of rock stuck to the side of the cylinder.  It was stuck fast, held tight by the superconducting magnets.  He’d seen one of these things once, in a lab at university.  They’ll rip a credit card out of your pocket and send it flying across the room.  The cylinder had dragged in loose rocks from many metres around.  One had just gone whistling past his head.  It was another reason to power the thing down to hibernation.  Impossible to move it otherwise.  Certainly impossible to get it in the cage.

Stone stumbled around, wafting the mist aside.   It wasn’t a concrete plinth the Machine was sitting on, but a large flat truck.  The Machine, the powerpack and the cooler were all on the flat truck, as Semyonov had described.  The powerdown controls were on the large square slab of batteries nearby, according to Semyonov.  They were there to smooth the power supply and protect from outages.  They’d been humming constantly.  He found them easily enough, but the powerdown controls were harder to find.

Wuuuuurg.  Wuuuuurg.  A noise behind him.  Loud.  Like an alarm, an urgent klaxon behind in the tunnel.  Stone went back, half running, half walking.  What on earth was going on?  He made it through the mist, waving his arms like a lunatic. 

‘It’s me, Stone,’ he shouted English.  ‘It’s OK.  Semyonov sent me!’  Shouting into the mist of the tunnel.  At what?  Who?  Were there cameras on him?  If there were he hadn’t s seen them.  Maybe he’d hit an alarm by touching the power system over there. 

Stone changed tack, crouched right in by the wall.  The thing could have it’s own defence system Semyonov had forgotten about.  Guns, gases, lasers?  It could be absolutely anything down there.

Wuuuuurg.  Wuuuuurg.  The alarm continued.  He needed to be on his mettle.  His heart rate had slowed.  He was ready for it, whatever it was.  Immediate, maximum violence if he needed to.  He had to take it slowly.  If he came out of the mist and just showed himself…  But what, or who, was it?  If it was a radiation leak he needed to run.  Stone flattened himself to the rocky floor of the tunnel and eased forward.  He came gently, slowly out of the freezing mist.  Warmth suddenly on his face – he was sweating hot after coming out of the Nitrogen mist.

Sheeee-Hshawww. 

He breathed slowly, steadily into the apparatus.  No way you could get over-excited with this thing on your face in any case.  There it was, ahead in the half-light.  A tiny red light ahead of him, flashing in time with the klaxon.  Stone stood up and walked over.

It was a telephone.  He picked up.

‘Stone?’ said a crackly American voice.  ‘It’s Virginia.  Something’s happened.  You’d better come back up.’

Chapter 71 - 9:23am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Carslake’s stone cell was like the others.  Square, high ceiling, stone walls.  Grey and bare.  Damp.  There was an easy chair from about 1965 - Cultural Revolution red of course.

The bed was too small for Carslake, and narrow.  There was a nice red pattern to that too.  It was Carslake’s blood.  Virginia had come to find him and wake him up, but had to leave to throw up. 

Now Semyonov was in there, in an electric wheel chair, health improving all the time.  His unmoving face gazed down on the scene.  Stone wondered if Virginia knew what The Man was thinking, because nobody else did.

Carslake had been killed wearing only his shorts.  It would have been dark in that room while he slept - dark as a sealed, stone tomb.  There was one bright light on the ceiling, and when that was out, no chink from any other source.  The body lay beside the bed.  His chest hairs were graying, and though he’d seemed lazy, Carslake’s body was fit.  Built, in fact.  There were traces of grey roots in his hair, and unbelievably, his moustache.  This man had dyed his hair.  He was older than he looked. 

Carslake, evidently, had been a man who looked after himself.  Dyed his hair, trimmed his fingernails – but cultivated the straggly hair and moustache.  Not all he seemed then.  Maybe Semyonov had noticed that, like he noticed everything else. 

Determining cause of death didn’t exactly require the services of a path-lab.  A deep cut across the front of his neck, five centimeters deep, through the windpipe and carotid arteries.  It does the trick in most cases.  Carslake’s fingernails were neatly trimmed though.

Stone disgusted himself when he looked at these things so dispassionately.  He was already going over unarmed combat and assassination manuals in his mind.  Some of those methods were as old as the hills, and this was one of them.  The manuals he himself had used were written for SOE in World War Two.  Only the photos were updated. 

Despite the litres of Carslake’s blood around the place, this had been no fight with blades.  The cutting mark extended full circle around the man’s neck.  The tongue stuck out, and the eyes bulged wide in silent shock.  Strangulation.  Garrotting – that was the technical term used in the books.  Valued as an assassination method because it was silent.  There were two variants.  The “compression”, and the “cutter”.  As Carslake’s head was half-severed, so it could be safely said this was the “cutter”.  The assassin would have woken Carslake somehow.  Carslake stands bolt upright, half-asleep.  The killer flips the wire over his head from behind.  The classic method is to stamp hard on the back of the right knee to unbalance, crossing the wire at the back and tightening.  In this case, the killer had been behind Carslake, flipped the wire over his head, then turned himself back to back with him.  The assassin’s arms would cross above their head in the turn, and then push outwards.  The wire would squeeze and cut round Carslake’s neck.

Stone guessed that the killer went back to back with Carslake, then bent over forward, right over so that Carslake was yanked off his feet by the wire.  Only that kind of pressure could have cut so deeply.  Also, there was some dried blood under his fingernails, but not much.  You’d expect a man to scrabble at the wire, but Carslake had had no chance, it had been too quick.  Someone here was an operator, a trained killer.

All this Stone explained to Semyonov, who may well have figured it for himself, depending which trio of TV channels he’d been watching recently.  Was he an expert on assassination as well as everything else?  Semyonov had never trusted Carslake in any case, and didn’t look sad to see him gone.

‘Carslake was a big guy,’ said Semyonov.  ‘Strong too.  Look at the muscle tone.  I guess whoever did this was worried about that strength.  That’s why they chose the back-to-back thing, to gain extra leverage on a big man, and for surprise.  There was some planning involved I think.’  Semyonov’s red eyes and expressionless moon-face turned ominously at Stone.  ‘You are the obvious candidate of course, Stone.  A trained killer.’

Why say that?  Semyonov knew Stone had been with Virginia all night.  Maybe it was just resentment.  More likely he was testing Stone’s reaction.  More intellectual games.

‘Could have.  But didn’t,.’ said Stone, still looking at the body.

‘And did you see the deliberate mistake, Stone?’ said Semyonov, turning his wheelchair to leave.  Testing him again.  ‘Your problem is that you have the mind of a killer.  You’re too busy admiring the methods.  Take another look at his chest if you want some real evidence.’

This bastard Semyonov knew him too, too well.  Stone looked down once more amongst the blood-matted hair of Carslake’s chest.  

‘It occurs to me that your friend Carslake was with the CIA,’ said Semyonov.  ‘As you pointed out yesterday, the CIA is very interested in me.  Especially after Oyang’s antics in releasing all that technology onto the market,’ said Semyonov.  ‘But it appears that someone took exception to the CIA’s intrusion into Chinese territory.  An agent of the Chinese state killed this man.’

‘Doesn’t that bother you?’ asked Stone.

‘Why should it?’ said Semyonov.  His swollen, flipper-like hand moved over the controls of the wheelchair and he hummed toward the door.  ‘The killer is here to protect me.  Perhaps it should bother you, though, Stone.’

The wheelchair stopped at the door, as if a tinge of regret had hit him.

‘Like I said,’ he said.  ‘It’s all going to shit.  Let’s get the Machine out of the mine, and get out of this craphole.’  Semyonov’s voice trailed off as he rolled away down the stone corridor.

Carslake from the CIA.  It explained why Carslake had known so much about Semyonov.  Which in turn explained why Semyonov had been so wary of Carslake.

Stone hadn’t expected this.  Clearly, neither had Carslake.  Poor guy.  Stone stared down at Carslake’s chest once more.  Amongst the darkening blood and the hair was a large gout of saliva.  The killer had finished up, then calmly, spitefully, spat onto Carslake’s chest. 

That cold spittle in the middle of Carslake’s chest meant only one thing – something Semyonov wasn’t aware of for once.  Ying Ning.  She’d made her way here somehow and she’d killed Carslake because he was a CIA agent.  Ying Ning was no rebel, no dissident fighting for workers’ rights.  She was no Fox Girl, will-o-the-wisp continually slipping through the net of the Gong An.  She was a Chinese agent, an agent provocateur who’d manipulated just about everyone she’d ever come into contact with.  All to protect Semyonov?  More likely to protect the Machine.

Whatever.  It was no time to play Sherlock Holmes.  Stone had to get back down there.  He would have to bring the Machine out alone.

Chapter 72 - 10:57am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

The half-mile of hole drilled through the rock seemed to pass quicker this time.  Perhaps Stone had more on his mind.  He’d left Virginia at the top of the shaft operating the winding gear.  Semyonov was out there too in his wheelchair, plastic oxygen tubes peeking into his nostrils.  In truth he was looking better than he had since Stone had met him on the island.  Probably the mountain air. 

It was a calculated risk to leave them up there.  If Ying Ning was the killer on the loose, she was working for the Chinese government, who’d done everything up to now to look after Semyonov as a strategic investment.  In theory she should be no threat – to Semyonov at least.  Ethan Eric Stone, however, could well be alongside Doug Carslake on her wanted list.  Not a lot he could do about that right now, short of telling Virginia to look out for Chinese girls carrying cheese wires.  As for protecting himself, Stone couldn’t go near the Machine with anything like a blade or a gun, even if he chose to.

 Stone turned off his helmet flashlight and crept first in the opposite way down the tunnel away from the Machine.  Semyonov had said there was a network of old tunnels down there, and it was as well to look for a refuge, or an escape route.  Also to check there was no one lurking in his rear as he went towards the Machine.  He came upon two forks in the first two hundred metres, then thought better of it.  He couldn’t risk getting lost.  He walked back along, past the cage waiting for him at the same point in the tunnel, then crept on silently in the direction of the Machine. 

It seemed quicker this time.  He’d only just arrived at the incline and the electrical humming was quite loud already.  There was the familiar freezing mist on the slope already.  Something wasn’t right.  It was like the Machine had been moved nearer to the shaft. 

Stone edged up the side of the incline, stooping, hugging the ironstone side of the tunnel, feel the bubbles and nobbles in the meteorite rock.  The freezing mist, vapour wisps of liquid nitrogen flicked his skin, like an arrogant icy finger drawn down the nape of his neck.  He hadn’t had this earlier, not on the slope.  Now it was as if the clouds and tendrils of vapour were tumbling slowly downwards to enfold him, to surround him and suck him in.  It was deathly cold once more.

 Sheeeeeeee-Hshaaaaawww. 

Stone heard his own breathing in the mask.  Slowing down.  His heart was a slow steady bass line.  Stone’s subconscious mind was readying him for action once more.  Probably nothing again, like the telephone.

Then a short, sharp, slithering sound a few metres away – the thick power cable, as thick as a man’s arm, sliding across the ground.  Followed by a lurching sound.  Someone was moving the Machine - toward the slope.  Stone slipped faster up the side of the slope.  He’d get up there, get level with it.  But he must stay hidden in the mist. 

Sheeeeeeee-Hshaaaaawww.

The buzzing was louder, and the blue lights were there on the Machine, but still shrouded in mist.  It hadn’t been powered down.  Whoever was moving it must be dragging the heavy power cable too.  Stone edged forward, almost abreast of the Machine.  He could make out the shape of the cylinder, and the fragments of ironstone covering it.  There was something else stuck to the side.  He leaned forward slightly into the mist.

 Sheeeeeeee-Hshaaaaawww.

Thump!   On the back of the helmet.  A roundhouse kick had just removed his hard hat.  He knew what was next, and crouched forward and down.  Two lightning high kicks went over his head, swirling the mist into tiny eddies.  But Stone was low.  The dark figure emerged, as Stone pushed from his haunches and hit him in the midriff to put him on his back. 

It didn’t work out.  The man had crashed backwards into something, and managed to regain his footing.

Stone stayed low and wrenched off the breathing mask.  The man had grabbed Stone’s hair and was trying to dash his head against a bony knee, but he’d have to do better than that. 

‘Surprised to see me, Ethan Stone?’  Stone knew those high kicks, and that lean, hard midriff.  The voice confirmed it.  Ekström.

‘You’re losing your touch Ekström,’ said Stone.  ‘What’s the matter?  Don’t like surprises?’  Stone again used his legs.  Grabbed Ekström by the thighs and pushed up, hoisting him into the air, crashing his head into the rock of the ceiling.  Rocky flakes came away and thwacked onto the side of the Machine.  Ekström crashed down onto the cylinder, knocking it backwards.  It fell onto the low-loading platform of its transporter truck.  Rolled forwards, but then stuck in place. 

‘That’ll be your gun, Ekström, stuck to the side of the thing, stopping it rolling away.  There.  You knew it would come in useful.’

‘Not my weapon, Stone.  Do you think I'd use that Chinese piece of shit,’ replied Ekström.  Cool, in spite of everything.

Stone was above Ekström.  He still had hold of him.  Had him on his back.  He was close to Ekström’s face, holding his arms back.  It was close-in wrestling, ju-jitsu style.  Ekström couldn’t strike, could barely move.  Stone couldn’t strike either, but most opponents panic in this situation.  They try to break out, or strike back.  Usually they move their arms or twist their heads.  It opens the neck to a choke position where they can be subdued.  Even an attempt to get up would show the back of Ekström’s neck to Stone, and invite an arm bar across the throat.

But Ekström was not usual.  He was no panicker.  He talked.  He liked to talk, Ekström.  Usually about himself.

‘I heard the whole thing, Stone.  Back in the hangar on the island, when I was helping Semyonov into those plastic underpants.  I got your whole story about the Machine.  It’s quite an invention isn’t it?’ he said with his accented English.  ‘See what you can get by being nice to people?  Zhang sent me in there to tend to the sick.  Very useful being on Semyonov’s medical team.’ 

‘You got to wear a mask and a hairnet.  You’d like that.’

Ekström was talking for a reason, not just to taunt.  What was he up to?  ‘Amazing what you get to hear, when you’re tending to Mr Semyonov.  Quite an invention, that Machine,’ said Ekström with some relish.  ‘How much do you think it will fetch to the highest bidder?  America, China, Russia – they’ll all be ready to talk.’

What was he doing, spouting this bullshit?  They were face-to-face, breath-to-breath, Stone with his arms pinning Ekström’s to his sides and his elbow poised over Ekström’s throat for when his chance came.

‘The Machine’s locked, Ekström.  You won’t get a thing out of it.’

‘Of course.  But the key is sitting in a wheelchair right above us.  He’s an interesting man, Semyonov.  Very motivated by one thing.  He’ll do anything to see that his invention doesn’t go to waste.  He’s already defected once.  I don’t think loyalty is his strong point, Stone.  Do you?’

Stone saw too late what Ekström was doing.  He was distracting Stone while he edged into a stronger position.  Stone tried to pull him back, but Ekström edged his shoulders over once more.  He was almost there.  Stone tried to pull Ekström’s whole body over with his knee, but he was too late.  He was a good fighter, Ekström.  Intelligent, completely cool.  And a nice use of distraction.  Ekström was nudging his shoulder under the cylinder of the Machine, lying on its side.  Its weight of a hundred kilos was jammed only against Ekström’s gun.  If the cylinder bumped over the gun it would roll away.  Ekström’s shoulder nudged again.  Stone’s arms were on Ekström’s.  He was powerless to stop it.  There it went.  A hundred kilograms of cylinder rolled over the gun, and jumped off the end of the transporter, gathering speed, bumping over the gun as it rolled.  The power cable ran after it and then - slam!

Pain screamed through Stone’s ankle as the transformer fell forward onto it, yanked over by the power cable.  The ankle was broken for sure.

Ekström was out, standing right above Stone, half-visible in the freezing mist.  Stone turned onto his back.  It was a poor option, but the only option.  Ekström had no weapon, and he would find it tough to engage a man lying horizontal.  Broken ankle or not. 

If he bent to try and throttle him, Stone would drag him back into the ju-jitsu, and Ekström had already lost out on that one.  If Ekström tried to kick, Stone could grab him or throw him.

The Swede prowled around above him.  ‘If you won’t fight, I guess I leave you here.  I think I’ll win the race back to the shaft,’ he said.  Which was true.  It’s exactly what Ekström ought to do.

‘Without the Machine?  OK.  Good luck,’ said Stone.  ‘Think about it Ekström.  You need to power it down.  Otherwise how do you get it in the cage? Or out?  The magnets are too strong.’  Ekström said nothing.  That only happened when he was nervous.  ‘And forgive me for stating the obvious, but the power line ain’t gonna reach all the way to the surface.  You need to power down, and you need t he sequence from me.’

‘OK,’ said Ekström, tensely.  ‘A deal.  You tell me how to power down, and I let you live.’

‘Come on, Ekström.  That’s lame even for you.’ said Stone, smiling into the swelling, piercing pain of his ankle.  He wondered if it was dislocated.  ‘You’ll have to send me up in the cage.  Then I’ll tell you how to do it by phone.  After all, I’m not much use with this ankle.’

Stone didn’t expect that to work, but it might provoke some anger, which was a start.

‘I have a better idea,’ shouted Ekström, standing over him.  ‘You like to get me angry.  But you won’t like me when I’m angry!’  He wasn’t angry.  He was still thinking, and he wanted to give Stone something to think about too.  Ekström grabbed Stone by both ankles and dragged him from under the gear and off the transporter.  Stone roared in pain.  He wondered if he’d pass out.  Stone needed to be cool, to think.  But he couldn’t think, he couldn’t hear.  He felt himself hauled through waves of pain towards the bottom of the slope.  Ekström, stopped, smiled at him, and callously twisted the broken ankle over. 

‘This is the point of most pain, I think.  Anatomy 101.’

Stone roared again as the pain overwhelmed him.  He knew what Ekström was doing, but couldn’t fight back.  Ekström twisted him so Stone was lying on his front, then took a strap from his breathing set, tied Stone’s hands and left him lying on his back. 

‘A good place I think,’ said Ekström.  ‘Now, you will tell me how to power down the Machine.  Otherwise I go up the hill, and I take the brake from the transport truck, which will roll down the hill, with all its load, and collide with the crown of your head.’  He tapped Stone on the top of the head.  ‘Your skull is thick, for sure, Stone.  But not thick enough.  You are killed in a tragic accident.  You see, Stone.  I like accidents.  Even Semyonov can’t object to accidents.  He’s an honest man, Semyonov, but he is desperate for his Machine.  He will work with anyone to get it out.  Even you.  And if you have an accident, he works with me.  He won’t ask too many questions.  About as many questions as he asked about Carslake’s death, I should think.’ 

Ekström was far too near to the truth for Stone’s liking.  Semyonov was too sick for the luxury of a conscience.  His Machine, his legacy, his monument – were all that mattered to him.  Semyonov had discovered Oyang’s money grubbing and weapons trading.  But done nothing, just escaped the hassle.  He hadn’t given a crap about Carslake either.

‘Last chance, Stone,’ called Ekström calmly from the top of the slope.  ‘You will be killed in an accident, and I will ask Semyonov how to proceed.  He will tell me.  You know he will.’  Stone was lying face down, looking straight up the slope.  He could hear Ekström shoving the Machine upright, back up onto the truck, and pulling the transformer back into place next to the liquid nitrogen chiller unit.  Any second now, the truck would come speeding out of the mist.  Stone’s only hope was to some how slither out of the way using his good leg.

Ekström’s face appeared grinning out of the mist.  He was bent over, like some kid on a home-made go-kart, trundling, whirring down the hill, picking up speed.  The whirr became a deafening rattle of rimless wheels on the rocky tunnel floor.  Stone was scrabbling on knee and chest to his right.  Hands still tied behind his back.  No hope.  Pathetic.  Ekström would just steer the truck at him, wherever he went.   Stone looked at his short blond hair, and those white Swedish teeth in a childish grin of satisfaction.

The dead boom of a handgun.  Shocking and familiar.  A red gash appeared on Ekström’s head.  About the length of a ball pen.  Blood spattered over the roof of the tunnel and arced over Stone’s back.  Ekström’s body tumbled limp over the front of the truck.  Jamming the wheels of the truck.  The truck slewed off, slammed into the wall.   Ekström came to and slithered down the slope, shaking his head like he was concussed.

Semyonov’s Machine slid off the truck again, and the alien intelligence rolled pathetically past Stone to the bottom of the slope, like a trashcan falling from a dumpster.  It stopped with a jerk, held again by the power line from the battery unit.  It nestled by the first of the steel pit props.  Ekström reached out his hands and crawled down towards it.

Chapter 73 - 11:31am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

The pain, the ankle, still welling up, throwing stars into his eyes.  Then a creaking, pulling, crumbling sound behind Stone.  Shit.  What now?

‘You should stay home, Rockhead, and leave to me,’ she said scampering past him down the slope with a handgun.  ‘Trouble is following you.  Don’t need go looking for more.’

Black jeans, spiky hair, those black cotton pumps on her feet.  Velvet steps along the tunnel.  No suit, no helmet, no mask.  Ying Ning.  Trouble didn’t need to follow her.  She had her own personal supply.   And if she got any closer to the Machine that gun was going to fly right out of her hand.

 She walked straight up to Ekström, four metres from him, and four metres from the Machine.  The gun was still in her hand.  Ekström was below the Machine on the slope, trying to escape.  He was getting to his feet, blood running from his head.  That was no more than a bullet graze on his skull. 

‘Stop! Stop there, Ekström,’ she called.  The gun was still there.  In her hand.

‘You won’t do it, little lady,’ Ekström sneered. 

You bet your arse she will.   Our Swedish friend obviously hadn’t heard she’d done for Carslake.  But Stone wasn’t going to disabuse him.  Ying Ning held the gun trained on Ekström.

‘You can’t shoot straight, honey,’ goaded Ekström.  ‘Missed last time.  You need to get nearer if you want to kill me.’

‘Stay back!’ called Stone.  ‘It’s magnetized!’

Ying Ning advanced two steps.  ‘Nearer,’ said Ekström.  ‘You don’t want to miss, do you?  Closer.’

‘Stay back, Ying.’

‘Why you want this Machine, Swedish?’ she said.  ‘What can you do?  It belongs to Chinese people.’

‘I was helping Mr Semyonov,’ said Ekström.  ‘He’s sick.  I wanted to bring the Machine out for him.’

Some hope.  Ekström was a snake, but not as clever as he thought.  He was the killer who won by being cooler, harder.  By caring less.  But he’d just met his match.  She was a real killer, this woman.  Stone watched her calm the situation, get the man at his ease.  A static target.  Then execution.  Cold-hearted.  Saving Stone’s life back there had been pure accident.  Stone was absolutely expendable to Ying Ning.  So, even, was Semyonov.  Ying Ning was here for the Machine.

The handgun clicked.  Misfired – as Stone half expected.  Ying Ning must have figured it too.  That’s why she’d delayed, and why she’d come so near.  The gun was some novel plastic weapon.  One of Oyang’s less successful ventures. 

But Ekström wasn’t figuring.  He was looking at the steel pit prop coming away from the rock wall, dragged in by the Machine.  He risked it.  Turned around and ran down the tunnel.  Ying Ning’s gun clicked a second time, as a slab of ironstone bigger than a man fell from the tunnel ceiling.

‘Ta ma de ShinComm!’  Cursing in Chinese, Ying Ning threw the gun down the tunnel after Ekström.  She turned back to Stone.  ‘You know how to power down?  This Machine will trap by falling rocks.  We need to power down.’

Ying Ning didn’t waste time with people.  Forget injuries and near death, she was worried about the Machine.  Stone’s broken ankle and hog-tied arms were beside the point.

‘Untie me and I’ll tell you,’ shouted Stone.  ‘And pull me away from those rocks before we both get crushed.’

She untied him and dragged him back up the hill.  There was another catastrophic fall of rock.  She limped him over to the massive battery unit and they both hauled on the power cable, which led from the battery, to pull the Machine free.  No use.  The black cylinder was buried under the ironstone which was still falling, its magnets sucking the rocks towards it.  The tunnel would be blocked any minute.

‘There’s no point powering down,’ said Stone.  ‘We can’t get near and it takes too long.  We need to reconnect the nuke power to the battery unit, otherwise the whole thing’s going to die.’

Stone limped back up the slope with Ying Ning, dragging his useless right foot, and holding onto the wall.  Ying Ning had already found the thick power cable which snaked away to the reactor, who knows how far away beneath them down the warren of tunnels.  It was fifty metres back, wound up on a metre-wide wooden drum.  Between them, Stone and Ying Ning managed to drag it down to the battery stack of the UPS and get it connected again.  Someone would have to come back and dig the thing out, but for now the Machine was definitely staying put.  Connected to the power source, it would carry on down there, thinking its great thoughts indefinitely.

Another cloud of freezing mist had already formed around the nitrogen-cooling unit on the slope.  The fumes rolled imperceptibly downhill.  Ying Ning was in the there, wafting at the mist and kicking her foot out, Kung Fu style, to find a way through the rock fall, but there was another baleful creaking and thumping noise.

‘We’re blocked in,’ said Stone.  ‘Even if we could scrabble through some how, we’ll be crushed in another collapse if we try it.’

‘We can’t stay here.’  Ying Ning was pulling away at the piles of ironstone. But more was falling.

‘There could be another way.  Which way did you get in here?’

‘This way.’  She pointed at the rock fall.

‘There could be another tunnel that loops back round, behind where we found the Machine.’

She was still digging.  Like a caricature of a dutiful communist miner, tirelessly hurling the rocks behind her.  ‘Dangerous back there,’ she shouted.  ‘Radiation.  Uranium.’

‘I know. But we have to give it a try,’ said Stone.  ‘The rock’s coming down here faster than you can dig it out.’  The cloud of mist was thickening, too.  It wasn’t seeping away through the rock fall.  ‘You’re wasting your time.’

Stone watched on for another minute, until another two metre slab of rock came down.  He grabbed Ying Ning’s leg to pull her out, but she kicked back fiercely at him, and continued digging. 

Stone gave it up.  He was in no state to help her, or even stop her.  He began to hobble back up the slope away from the rock fall, balancing once more on the wall.  His ankle was swelling badly after Ekström gave it a thorough twisting.  He couldn’t put any weight at all on it.  It seemed an age just to get back to the top of the slope.

  Stone ripped a strip of wood from the wooden drum to use as a stick, and found the helmet Ekström had kicked so elegantly from his head.  He’d need that flashlight.  There was no light at all past the sign.  He looked once again before he stepped through into the blackness.

核 能 源

放 射 性!

  The characters had a macabre look about them this time.  He went on into the mine.

-oO0Oo-

Each step gave a shooting pain.  Stone was breathing heavily.  It was surprising how much effort it was to walk with this foot.  And how easy to stumble in the darkness.  Stone was losing track of time, of up and down.  He was disoriented - had no idea whether he’d been curving left or right.   And he’d imagined a dozen times that he could see smaller passageways leading away through the rock – and every time he’d hobbled over to check, there were none.  Just shadows in the rock.

With the broken ankle and the slight bend in the tunnel, it was impossible for Stone to say how far he’d come.  It was blackness behind him, and blackness in front.  No sign of Ying Ning either.  Maybe she’d broken through the rock fall.  More likely she’d been crushed.  Whatever.  There was no way he could have pulled her out of there in the state he was. 

He knew if he was going to get back to the shaft to the surface, he would have to go left and left, or right and right.  But up to now there had been no fork, no turns, no branches at all.  This was bad.  The other way, where he’d reconnoitered beyond the cage and the shaft, there had been a network of passages.  Here there was only one tunnel.  It did not bode well.  The other thing he realized was – it was getting hotter.  It wasn’t just the effort of walking with that shattered ankle.  The rocks themselves were getting hotter.

At last he came to a fork, a split in the tunnel.  Stone eased himself down into a sitting position on the warm rocks, exhausted by the pain.  He forced himself to stop and think.  He had to make the right decision here.  He was in no position to use “trial and error” with that ankle.  He had to evaluate.  Look for any kind of clue.

But there were two tunnels, hewn into the rock, looking just the same the same.  Stone flicked his head from side to side to examine the scene with his head torch.  The tunnels were the same.

 It was then he heard the breathing, shallow and calm, from the darkness of the left hand tunnel.

Chapter 74 - 12:36pm 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

The correct path was obvious.  At least on the balance of probabilities.  The thick power cable snaked off in one direction.  It would go down to the toward the reactor turbines.   Not much point going that way.

From the other fork came the breathing.  Stone cut his helmet light.  The feet were stealthy, deliberate.  He kept his position on the floor of the tunnel by the wall.  Stilled his breathing as best he could.  A dim light approached.  The stranger came alongside.

‘Ying Ning,’ he said quietly as she came abreast. 

She jumped half a metre.  The first time Stone had managed to surprise her with anything.

-o0o0o-

Ying had managed to crawl through the rock fall after all, and she’d made her way to the shaft and the cage.  But when she got there, the cage wasn’t there.  It had gone.  Ekström must have taken it.  ‘This is bad without cage,’ she said.  Something of an understatement.

She planted herself under Stone’s shoulder and he was able to move at three times the speed.  She knew the way back as well.  It was a matter of only a few hundred metres.  Not that it made much difference to two people who were stuck at the end of an overgrown drinking straw eight hundred metres under a Sichuanese hillside called The Death Hole.  You could say they had time on their hands.

   Worse was to come when they finally reached the shaft to the surface.  The cage had returned.  It could scarcely be more obvious.  Black humour assailed Stone’s senses.

‘Virginia’s disabled Ekström with a neat karate chop,’ joked Stone, deadpan.  ‘She’s come down to render assistance, possibly in the form of a two minute video piece in front of the Machine.  Hope you told her there’s no hair consultant down here.’

‘Huh?’ said Ying Ning.  As well she might.

‘Either Ekström sent this cage down as some kind of trap,’ said Stone, ‘Or he’s still lurking down here with a nine millimeter pistol.’

‘I think trap,’ said the slim Chinese girl.  There was, bizarrely, a gleam in her eye.  ‘I like traps.  We can get out.’  Stone simply had to admire her nerve.  But she was right.  It wasn’t exactly a plan, but something might come up, some slim chance, and it was better than sitting down here waiting to die.  It was the old maxim.  If you want something to happen, make something happen.  An argument, a fight, anything.  Then, if you're lucky, you'll see an opportunity.

They had to think ahead here.  Get themselves ready, then go for it.  Stone took a toolbox from the nearby engineers’ station and began to remove the cone-shaped fairing from the top of the cage.  It would give a means of escape if the cage were stopped mid-transit.  As Stone had to assume it would be.  He tried not to think of the being trapped alive in utter darkness, in a tube five hundred metres into the rock.

They unbolted the fairing from the cage, no problem.  That left three steel tubes of the frame at the top of the cage.  Stone thought he might be able to squeeze through the gap, and Ying Ning certainly could. 

‘Ready?’

She nodded.

Stone took a deep breath and picked up the phone.  An American voice answered, but this time it was Semyonov.  Which was a surprise, and not altogether a pleasant one.  What had happened to Virginia?  Was Semyonov now co-operating with Ekström just as the Swede had said he would, to get his precious Machine out of the hole?  It looked like it.

‘Stone,’ said Semyonov’s flat New England voice.  ‘Is that you?  Are you there?’

‘It’s Stone.  Can you wind us up?’

‘Sure.’

‘Give me two minutes,’ said Stone and hung up, his mind racing.  He’d agreed with Ying Ning they’d squeeze into the cage together.  It gave them both a chance at least.  And two people in the cage would probably die sooner than one if it came to it. 

Stone climbed in first and tried to hook his bad ankle behind him.  It was excruciating again.  Then it was Ying Ning’s turn to somehow squeeze in with him.  In she came, slinky as ever, somehow fitting in around him.  He thought of the time she’d sat athwart his lap to seduce him in Shanghai.

Stone remembered for a second of the prisoner of war stories he’d read as a child, where the prisoners stripped naked - to create the extra millimetres of space they needed to escape the prison camp through a tight bend in a culvert pipe.  Was it weird to think like of being naked with Ying right now?  He should have succumbed to Ying Ning's seduction in Shanghai.  What the hell had he been thinking?

Stone and Ying Ning were locked into the cage, unmoving for about thirty seconds before the cage slid smoothly upwards and the utter darkness of the half-mile tube began.  Stone was willing the cage up every single metre of its progress.  He hoped Ying Ning was too, but it didn’t look like it.  She was either meditating, or sleeping.  More likely she was scared shitless, but she was incapable of showing any emotion.  Any genuine emotion at any rate.  The cage rattled slowly upwards, at what seemed like about half the speed it had done before.  Was it the extra weight?  Unlikely.  Stone feared the worst.

Which was borne out after what Stone reckoned was about half the ascent.  In fact, knowing Ekström it would halfway to the exact metre.  Anyhow, the cage slowed to a crawl, then finally stopped altogether, with four hundred metres of solid rock above and below.  Stone had half expected it, but had shut his mind to the possibility.  Ekström was torturing them.  He was going for mental torment, and Stone would be lying if he said it wasn’t working.  Even Ying Ning’s eyes were screwed tight.

Ekström could have walked away off the site and left them stranded for a slow death.  That might appeal to him.  He would really get a hard on about that.  But it wouldn’t work.  If Ekström left them there stranded for a slow death, there was a decent chance they would be discovered and rescued.  Stone weirdly found himself hoping that they would be stranded there for a few hours or days. 

But such feelings pass, when you’re stuck in cage hundreds of metres into the rock.  He tried to take refuge in analysis again,

Rationally, there were two things which could come next: either they would continue upwards, or the cage would go into freefall, and they would have a mercifully quick death as the cage hit the bottom.  If the cage went upwards, it would probably stop again and again, to torment them. 

Sure enough, after who knows how many minutes, the cage began to move slowly upward once more, resuming its painful crawl.  Ying Ning’s eyes screwed even tighter.  She wriggled imperceptibly for space.  It was getting to her.  There was a danger one of them was going to freak out in there and it could be her.  Stone was almost glad of the exquisite pain in his ankle to take his mind off it.

The cage stopped again.  Not for as long this time, but at least a few minutes.  Ekström must find it less satisfying – he’d done it once, and anyway he couldn’t see what was happening.  The cage started up again, and they climbed much quicker.  Stone actually shook his head at the crass, twisted feelings which must be driving Ekström’s sadism.  He actually knew what was going to happen next - not that it would help him or Ying Ning.  Ekström actually wanted the pleasure of seeing them stuck in that cage.  What that it?  He wanted them to beg or something?  The cage, after progressing so slowly, was now going up the tube like a rifle bullet, spinning and rattling.  Ekström couldn’t wait for his fix of sadism.  He was interested only in indulging his crude, atavistic urges.

Then, as Stone expected, the cage slowed up to a stop a few metres below the surface.  Maybe ten metres.  So it was still very dark.  Both Stone and Ying Ning stared upwards through the three-way frame of the cage at the small disc of light ten metres above them, Stone full of anger and Ying Ning with her little pointed face: cute but expressionless, supplicating, like a fox staring upwards out of a snare.  Ekström’s face was there in the distance, laughing wildly, his tongue sticking out and swirling lasciviously over his lips.  Stone imagined the man might masturbate over such things. 

Then Ekström’s face disappeared.

‘Go!’ rasped Stone. 

Ying Ning slithered upwards in the cage, angled her shoulders between the bars of the frame and she was off.  Fast. Out through the gap and climbing up the wire in the narrow shaft.  Shit, she was fast, feet on the side of the tunnel and hands pistoning up on the wire. 

There was a sudden sound of sawing, resonating deeply in the wire and the cage.  What the fuck?  Ekström was making to saw off the wire!  It was pure theatre.  He’d never cut through that steel wire.  The grating continued, but Ying Ning was still climbing.  She was going to get out.

Abruptly the sawing stopped and seconds later, the cage jerked upwards, accelerating up the shaft and out into the air.  Still going.  Stone’s cage shot up out of the shaft.  It slammed into the winding wheel and swung Stone wildly round in the air, like a demented fairground ride, five metres above the ground.  Stone scrabbled for the door latch of the cage, but was thrown back and forth.  A loud, single gun shot below him.

Below him, Ying Ning had jumped aside as she came out of the shaft.  She was on the ground making for the controls, where Semyonov was slumped lifeless.  The Great Man had somehow made it to the control desk while Ekström was playing his sadistic games, and brought the cage sharply out of the hole.  Saving Stone’s life.

Ekström had turned and shot Semyonov through the forehead for his troubles, using only one bullet to snuff out all two hundred IQ points.  Now the Swede was lounging there, half-sitting on the control desk next to Semyonov’s inert bulk, smiling pityingly over his shoulder at Ying Ning.  Unable to credit that the little woman would take him on, but happy to kill her anyway.  Ekström leveled the gun at Ying Ning, grinning, just as he had done with Hooper. 

Stone’s fingers groped blindly for the door latch down the outside of the swinging cage.  The latch, where was the latch? 

‘Up here,’ Stone yelled, five metres above them.  He meant to distract, but Ekström was too sharp.  The Swede kept his eyes on Ying Ning.  Cocked the handgun.  Stone still couldn’t get his fingers on the latch. 

Ying Ning ducked and scampered forward at Ekström.  Stone’s fingers hit the latch and his body hurled itself from the cage.  He landed on Ekström’s shoulder, putting him down.  But the killer still had the gun.   Ekström rose to one knee, swinging the weapon round at Stone. 

But Stone had bought enough time.  Ying Ning skipped side-on toward them and made a perfect, iron-hard heel kick to the side of Ekström’s head.  A neck-breaker.  Ekström toppled over like a sickening horse, blood coming from his mouth and ears. 

Stone hobbled to his feet, and hopped over to where Semyonov’s high-tech wheelchair was on its side, and the smooth, white bulk of the alien intelligence was lying over the control desk.  Stone checked his pulse, his breathing.  No sign of that asthmatic wheezing anymore.  But for Semyonov, Stone and Ying Ning would have died in that shaft.  Semyonov had just given his life to save them.  It was the final, human act of an alien intelligence. 

Stone looked round to see Ying Ning, the hundred-twenty pound Chinese woman, hauling an insensible Ekström across the dust to the small, round hole in the ground.  She tied the Swede’s hands behind his back with his belt, then shoved him head first down the shaft.  Unceremoniously, like a sack of coal down a chute.

Chapter 75 - 11:34am 15 April - Shanglan Monastery, Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Stone sat with Virginia Carlisle in the incense-heavy room where he’d taken tea with Giyenchen a few days before. 

It turned out Ekström had been inserted into Semyonov’s medical team by Zhang, and offered to help Semyonov by going down the shaft.  Ekström had gone down there unseen, while Stone and Virginia were still wondering what to do with Carslake. 

‘I recognised Ekström when he came back up, as soon as he stepped back out of the cage at the surface,’ said Virginia. 

‘When he’d left us down there for dead?’

‘I guess,’ said Virginia.  ‘Semyonov asked him where you were, and Ekström said you’d been trapped in a rock fall underground.  Steven believed it, but I thought he’d killed you.  That’s when I ran.’

‘You ran?’ 

‘When it comes to “fight or flight”, I’m a flight girl every time,’ said Virginia.  ‘You should try it. Good for your health.’  She was a smart woman.  She’d known when to run from an impossible situation and regroup.  A skill Stone had yet to master.

‘But what about Semyonov?’ asked Stone.  ‘After all you’ve done for him.  You just abandoned him.’

‘Come on, Stone.  Steven had lost it, even I could see that.  He wanted to believe Ekström’s story,’ said Virginia.  ‘He didn’t even try to get away from him.  Steven wanted to believe anyone who said they could get the Machine out of there.  Semyonov knew it was Ekström coming up that shaft, even though he’d told me it was you.  He didn’t care about you.  He didn’t even care about me.  He would happily have seen me killed.  Steven knew he was dying and all he cared about was his Machine.  He stayed there at the top of the shaft.  At the controls – ready to help anyone who could bring it out.  You, me, Ekström, Ying Ning – it didn’t matter who,’ said Virginia. 

‘It might have worked out for him too,’ said Stone.  ‘Only Semyonov weakened.  He took pity on us and pulled us up out of the shaft.  He struggled from his wheelchair and got to the controls when Ekström wasn’t looking, and pulled us out.  Cost him his life.  He could have let Ekström kill us, then go back down and get the Machine’

‘I guess.’

‘Semyonov must have already had second thoughts, though, Virginia,’ said Stone.  ‘Probably when he realised you’d walked out on him.  Semyonov started bringing us up, remember.’

‘Probably Ekström had a gun to his head,’ said Virginia. 

‘No wonder he sounded weird,’ said Stone.  ‘He would have been thinking how he could get out of there.’  

It was all academic now.  Stone looked out of the window again at the deep blue mountain sky, then looked back at Carlisle.  ‘Where were you, Virginia?  How did you know to come up here to the monastery?’

‘I didn’t.  I had no idea where I was, but one of the monks was there,’ said Virginia.  ‘Up by the fence.  A guy called Panchen.  He led me back through the forest to the monastery.  What was I going to do?  There was nothing else around, nothing at all.  The head guy, the head monk…’

‘Giyenchen.’

‘Yes.  He told me that a Chinese woman had persuaded Panchen to bring her to the crater and get her inside.’ 

So Panchen did know how to get inside the fence.  And Ying Ning had persuaded him to take her back there.

‘You knew the Chinese girl didn’t you?’ asked Virginia.  ‘The killer?  She killed Carslake, didn’t she?’

‘Ying Ning?  Yes.  You could say I knew her, but you don’t get to “know” Ying Ning.  I knew when Ying Ning disappeared at the Polo Club that something was wrong, that she wasn’t all she seemed.  I’d no idea she’d kill Carslake though.  At any rate, she’s disappeared again, and that tells its own story.’

‘The old monk’s looking pretty smug at any rate.’  Virginia said, and cast her eyes through the window as Giyenchen floated serenely by.  She was right there.  The head monk was looking like a burnished, brown Buddha, with a look of Yoda about him.  The head monk had seen everything coming, and now was in a position to explain everything.

After a while, Giyenchen materialised quietly at the back of the little chamber, and lit a few more incense sticks in silence.  For once something more than a benign half-smile played on his lips.

‘It seems your friend Ying Ning was with the Gong An, Mr Stone,’ said Giyenchen.  ‘The one who called herself the Fox Girl, the dissident, was an agent of the Chinese.’  

Virginia looked shocked, but Stone had guessed it already, when he’d seen what she did to Carslake.  What Stone hadn’t done yet was to think through the implications.

‘It seems Ying Ning was using everyone,’ said Stone finally.  ‘Including you, and me and Carslake, who led her to the find the Machine in these mountains.  And the Japanese woman, whom she used to plant stories in the Western press.  Junko had been passing Ying Ning’s stories to the world -  through Carslake, through Terashima's Japanese blog, even through GNN. ’

‘What was Ying Ning doing though?  What was her plan?’ asked Virginia.

‘She was trying to secure the Machine for China,’ said Stone.  ‘That is all.’

-0000-

The clear air of the mountains, the Yunnan pine and the pink Sichuan pepper flowers in the background.  The cameras were there, and the make-up team.  For once Virginia Carlisle was really on location.  Not just acting in front of a green screen, with a guy in front of her wielding a reflector-board covered in silver foil.

‘Stories and myths and conspiracy theories seemed to follow Steven Semyonov wherever he went,’ said Virginia to the camera.  She loved that camera.  And the camera loved her.  ‘And since his death in an auto accident just over a week ago, the rumor-mill producing Semyonov stories has been working even more feverishly.  Sometimes, however, the truth is less exciting than all the stories.  Semyonov knew he was dying, and was coming to spend his last days in seclusion in this Buddhist monastery in Western Sichuan – a place he had visited a number of times in the last year and where his funeral takes place today.  So this was the reason billionaire SearchIgnition founder came to China.  He came here to die, but in the end he was cheated even of his last wish.  In Hong Kong, cars drive on the left.  In China, straight after the border crossing at Lo Wu, they drive on the right.  Steven Semyonov insisted on driving himself that night, and a simple mistake on the ramp of the freeway has cost him his last few days or weeks on earth…’

 THE END

Clovenhoof by Heide Goody and Iain Grant

Coming in Autumn 2012...

Charged with gross incompetence, Satan is fired from his job as Prince of Hell and exiled to that most terrible of places: English suburbia. Forced to live as human under the name of Jeremy Clovenhoof, the dark lord not only has to contend with the fact that no one recognises him or gives him the credit he deserves but also has to put up with the bookish wargamer next door and the voracious man-eater upstairs.

Heaven, Hell and the city of Birmingham collide in a story that features murder, heavy metal, cannibalism, armed robbers, devious old ladies, Satanists who live with their mums, gentlemen of limited stature, dead vicars, petty archangels, flamethrowers, sex dolls, a blood-soaked school assembly and way too much alcohol.

Clovenhoof is outrageous and irreverent (and laugh out loud funny!) but it is also filled with huge warmth and humanity. Written by first-time collaborators Heide Goody and Iain Grant, Clovenhoof will have you rooting for the bad guy like never before.

Read the opening chapters here and then go to www.pigeonparkpress.com for details on how to get the complete novel.

Clovenhoof - Prologue

“We’re a little disappointed,” said Saint Peter. “Let’s take the measure of suffering. This was very straightforward. All suffering should be graded as good or higher.”

“And we’re certainly getting those grades in a lot of the suffering that we deliver,” said Satan.

“A lot. Not all.”

“Yes, but it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect it for everything,” Satan argued. “We get some clients who simply enjoy it too much, and then there are those who lie about the experience because they can’t help themselves.”

“All suffering means all suffering,” Peter said, “and some has been assessed as merely satisfactory. It’s not good enough.”

“Surely satisfactory means that it is good enough,” said Satan.

“Not anymore,” said Peter, “the measure is very clear. All right, let’s move on to the measure where I think we’ve seen no progress at all. To consider opportunities for outsourcing the work of Hell to private contractors.”

Satan rolled his eyes and blew a deep breath through his teeth.

“To be honest with you, I never really had any idea what that one meant.”

“Well clearly, there is the possibility -”

“No!” snapped Satan. “Don’t start yapping on about it now. Enough of this charade. I let you give me those targets because everyone has targets, and I’m meant to lead by example. But really. I’m in charge here, and I think you’ll find I’ve been running my ass off making things better, and answering questions and generally keeping all the new plates spinning as well as the old plates. Surely these things were set to give me something to do in the quiet times. Not that I get quiet times anymore.”

“Your response distresses me deeply,” Peter said, reaching for his glasses. “We, your assessment board have taken this process very seriously. You give me no choice but to recommend your immediate removal from the post.”

“Are you kidding?” yelled Satan. “Are you fucking kidding? I’m the Prince of Darkness! You can’t just sack me! What kind of puffed-up, pompous twat are you anyway?”

“I,” said Peter heavily, “am the Rock, you inefficient, flabby, has-been angel. I am the man that has a completed process and an airtight paper trail proving that you are not fit to do your role. I’m sorry that we’re not in agreement about this, but it’s not up for debate.”

“How can it not be up for debate? I’d like to take it up with the Other Guy. Bring him along to back up this little kangaroo court you’ve got here.”

There was a moment when the board seemed to glance at one another without actually moving, but it soon passed.

“We’ll pass your request on, of course,” said Peter smoothly, “but don’t expect anything to change. This is a tried and tested process.”

Satan turned on his heel and marched from the room, looking for something, anything to smash.

Chapter 1 - Clovenhoof meets the locals

Ben liked routine.

He got twitchy when confronted with the unusual.

He’d been extremely twitchy all morning.

When he left his flat, a small but weighty package that had been propped up against the door fell in on the carpet with a slap. Wrapped in brown parcel paper, it had a pink post-it note attached to it which read:

What do you think?

Nerys (upstairs)

X

That was a little unusual, since Nerys Thomas, who lived in flat 3, along with her elderly aunt and a rat-like Yorkshire terrier called Twinkle hadn’t said more than a dozen words to him in the two years they had been neighbours.

Ben put the parcel on his kitchen table next to a line of war-gaming miniatures and went out. As he locked up, he looked across to the door of flat 2a. It had now been unoccupied for over a year, since the unfortunate departure of Mr Dewsbury. The thought of Mr Dewsbury made Ben twitchy for entirely different reasons.

Once out of the flats, which were all neatly contained within a large pre-war house, he headed towards Boldmere high street. He began to realise that he had seriously overdressed for the weather. Autumn was an unpredictable season with rain varying from violent torrents to half-hearted drizzle and wind that covered the spectrum from irritating gusts to full-on slap-a-wad-of-wet-leaves-in-your-face gales. But today was more like summer. Not that it was warm and sunny. Sutton Coldfield did a nice line in grey skies and rarely experimented with much else but there was a closeness in the air that was decidedly unseasonal and an indefinable electric crackle that spoke of a storm about to break.

This was unusual too.

And yet, though each of these things was unusual, none of these strange occurrences could quite compare to what happened shortly after eleven o’clock. Having restocked the shelves of the Thriller section with a newly arrived box of Deightons and Le Carrés and settled down to a mid-morning cup of tea, Ben heard a muffled roll of thunder, looked up and saw that a naked man had appeared on the pavement outside the shop.

The naked man was turning on the spot, looking furiously in all directions and making theatrical and vulgar gestures with his hands. Ben did not have much experience of nudity, male or female, and was so mortified by the prospect of seeing naked men in public changing rooms that he had never learned to swim. However, with the window as a screen between them, a social divider, once it became reasonably clear that the man was probably not going to come into the shop for a browse, Ben found himself interested rather than worried and so had a sip of tea and watched to see what would happen next.

What did happen was that two old ladies came along the pavement and stopped in front of the naked man. They were the kind of old ladies - puffy blue-rinses and thick knitted coats, one with a tartan shopping bag on wheels, one with a wooden-handled knitting bag in one hand and a brolly in the other - who were probably called something like Betty and Doris. They were also probably the kind who, having lived through a world war, weren’t going to be put off their shopping trip by a naked man.

One of the old women used her brolly to point out the man’s hairy genitalia just in case her friend had failed to notice it. Apparently she had failed to notice it, because she now looked down and immediately burst out laughing. The naked man did not take well to this and began bellowing at the old dears.

Ben had an underdeveloped social conscience and knew himself to be a physical coward but, fearing civil unrest and the bad press that might come from having old ladies assaulted outside his shop, he put down his cuppa and left the safety of Books ‘n’ Bobs to remonstrate with the man.

The man, red in the face from shouting at the old ladies, wheeled on Ben instantly.

“Kneel before me, human!” he commanded.

Ben looked down and pictured where his face would end up if he complied.

“Ah, It’s not that I’m not flattered by the offer,” he heard his own mouth say without any input from his brain. “And I’ve got nothing against that kind of thing. In the privacy of one’s home, you understand but, um...”

His mouth having got so far by itself, ran out of steam and looked to his brain for instructions and found none forthcoming.

The man’s face creased with bitter fury.

“Don’t any of you worms know who I am? What I am?”

Ben took in the man’s life-worn face, his neatly trimmed beard, his slight paunch, his precise but profane English and his general lack of care regarding his own nakedness.

“Are you Swedish?”

The man groaned and spun round, seemingly in search of someone or something else to latch onto.

“What is this place?” he asked, straining as though the very thoughts in his head were excruciating pain.

“Sutton Coldfield.”

“Where’s that?”

“Birmingham. England.”

“Earth?”

Ah, thought Ben. And now he’ll ask us to take him to our leader.

“Where are my halls?” the man wailed. “My flesh pots? My pleasure pits?”

Ben’s thoughts shifted again. His suspicions had travelled from shameless nudist, to care in the community victim, to middle-aged hippy (perhaps one suffering an inconvenient acid flashback). But now he found himself wondering if the fellow was the victim of a stag-do prank and perhaps still inebriated from the night before. Admittedly, today was Monday and Sutton Coldfield was hardly a Mecca for hen and stag parties particularly on Sunday nights but maybe he had been wandering drunk, drugged and naked since the weekend. Yes, a man could walk out this far from Birmingham’s numerous ‘flesh pots’ in that time...

“Do you need me to call someone?” said Ben.

“Who are you going to call?” shrieked the man and with a bizarre cry of “Dung beetles!” ran off down the road in the vague direction of Birmingham city centre.

Ben looked at the old ladies.

“Are you two all right?”

They both smiled at him but said nothing. He looked past them down the road.

The naked guy was capering in the middle of the road outside the Greggs bakery. A post van had pipped its horn at him and now the man was doing his best to kick the van’s lights in and doing a surprisingly good job considering he had no shoes.

Ben sighed and shook his head.

“People, eh?” he said and then saw that the two old ladies had gone. Vanished without a trace.

Shortly, after the naked man had attacked the post van, a number 66A bus and a lamppost, the police turned up and took him away.

“People,” Ben said to himself again quietly and went back inside the shop.

They put him in a cell, which was small and clean and too bright for his liking.

The arresting officer, a lean moustachioed man, had given him a blanket to cover his nakedness and, after a length of time that suggested they had to root around in dusty cupboards or foetid lockers to find them, they gave him a pair of black police trousers, a white police shirt and a pair of heavy boots. He put on the trousers and the shirt but, of course, not the boots.

Later still they brought him a cup of tea and a plate of baked beans. He put them on the cushioned bench next to him and ignored them.

Much later, the cell door opened and the archangel Michael walked in.

He looked up at Michael and said, “What are you wearing?”

“Armani.”

“And your wings?”

“Would ruin the cut of the suit. Both fashion and faith have moved on since my last apparition.” He looked at his watch. “You’ve been on Earth for just over four hours. And already you’ve roused the ire of local law enforcement.”

“What did you expect?”

“I expected better.” He tapped his breast pocket. “Fortunately, I have a court order here demanding your immediate release.”

“I’m not going out there!” He flung out his arms, knocking the polystyrene cup of tea off the bench. The cold tea splashed around the archangel’s expensively shoed feet but did not touch them. It was not a coincidence. “Earth. It’s an anthill. It’s a cess pit. It’s an anthill in a cess pit.”

“Earth is lovely,” said Michael. “It is His perfect creation.”

“Have you looked at it recently?”

Michael smiled sympathetically.

“It’s going to be your home.”

“Balls it is!”

“It was all clearly laid out in the terms of the final agreement.”

“I’m not staying.”

Michael shook his head gently, his beautiful blond curls shining like gold in the cell’s strip lighting, and produced a wallet from his pocket.

“Your documents.”

He handed them over and watched as each plastic card was inspected and discarded.

“Who is Nicholas Clovenhoof?”

“You,” said Michael. “It’s your nom de voyage. I think people might raise eyebrows at someone signing his name Satan or the Angel of the Bottomless Pit.”

“Nicholas Clovenhoof.”

“That’s right.”

“Nicholas Clovenhoof?”

“Yes.”

“Nicholas... Clovenhoof?”

“Yes? Something wrong with that?”

“Are you kidding me? Isn’t this a blatant giveaway? You might as well call me Lou Cyphre or Mr DeVille. Nicholas Clovenhoof?”

“You want to change it?” said Michael.

“Yes, please.”

“What to?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Bernard or Jeremy or Colin or something, a bit more, you know...”

“Very well,” sighed the archangel and waved his hand as though driving a fly away.

The words on a dozen cards writhed and shifted.

The former Angel of the Bottomless Pit tried out his new name.

“Jeremy Clovenhoof.”

“Yes. Are you happy now?” asked Michael.

“Of course I’m sodding not. Look at this.”

Clovenhoof held up his driving licence.

“What about it?” asked Michael.

“The picture!”

“I think it’s a good likeness.”

“Exactly! Look at the horns. The red skin. No one’s said anything!”

“They’re English. They’re probably just too polite.”

Clovenhoof kicked at the police boots on the floor with his goaty hooves.

“Look!” he squeaked. “Are they all morons?”

“Would you rather they saw you as you really are?”

“It might get me a bit of respect.”

Michael sighed kindly and sat down on the bench, the plate of cold beans between them.

“You are not here as conqueror, my friend. You are now a resident.”

“No way.”

Michael gathered Clovenhoof’s cards and paper and tucked them back into the wallet.

“We’ve given you an identity. We will provide you a modest but favourable pension. This is an opportunity, Jeremy.”

Clovenhoof sneered in wilful ignorance and disgust at the items in his hands. All little plastic rectangles and strings of numbers.

“But what is this stuff? It’s all crap. I don’t know the first thing about life on Earth.”

“Then learn,” said Michael. “And live.”

The unusualness factor eased off through the afternoon. No more naked men appeared outside the shop and the peculiar pre-storm atmosphere had dissipated. Ben went home to a Pot Noodle for tea and an evening of wargaming miniature painting to look forward to with an option on polishing his replica Seleucid shield and a documentary about gladiators on the History Channel.

And the parcel on his kitchen table.

In all the nakedness-related excitement earlier he had completely forgotten about it. As he forked sweet and sour chicken noodles into his mouth, he opened the package with his free hand. It was a book, or at least a manuscript, printed on A4 but professionally bound.

YOU Can Be My Perfect Man

By

Nerys Thomas

A nugget of rehydrated chicken suddenly went down the wrong way and Ben coughed noodles across the table. He fetched a dishcloth and mopped up the mess before re-reading the title and discovering to his horror that he had read it correctly the first time.

He reeled in panic.

Him? The perfect man? He liked to think he was a little bit mysterious and definitely underrated, but he wasn’t comfortable with other people thinking the same.

He tried to reflect on it rationally. He had many things going for him. He was young, single and disease-free. He had all his own teeth, his own flat and his own second hand bookshop.

And, thought Ben, wading purposefully into the matter rather than panicking at its edges, Nerys was not an unattractive woman. She was young. At least he assumed so. She wore make-up as though it was war paint and that made proper age analysis difficult. But she was attractive. Well, more striking than beautiful. And she certainly wore clothing that showed off the best of her... attributes.

She was quite clearly interested in men. He had heard her in company, giggling and stumbling past his door on more than one Saturday night. And she must have quite high standards because it was rare for her to invite the same man back more than once even though it was true that Ben was often woken on Sunday mornings by the words, “Call me!” shouted down the stairs or, less frequently, yelled out of an upstairs window.

Yes, he decided, she was a fine specimen of a woman and, although he hadn’t even thought about her in those terms before, if she thought he could be her perfect man then he was willing to give it a go. It wasn’t as though he wasn’t interested in that world of romance, of intimacy, of sex. Of course he was. It was just that, in his reckoning, sex was a bit like skiing. It was something other people did, something that, in a perfect world, he would like to try but he hadn’t had the training and wasn’t even sure he had the correct equipment.

Well, perhaps now was the time to hit the piste, metaphorically speaking.

He opened the book and began to read.

Clovenhoof woke up cold, damp and miserable.

He had stormed away from Michael the moment they had stepped outside the police station and spent the afternoon and evening constantly walking, constantly fuming at his situation. He walked nowhere in particular. There was nowhere he wanted to go that could be reached by walking. He wanted to go up and punch the smug smiles off a few faces. He wanted to go down and do pretty much the same thing. But the signposts in this dump pointed to Lichfield and Birmingham and Kingstanding. The Celestial City and Pandemonium didn’t figure.

The night was cold and lit by yellow sodium streetlights that merely made him homesick for the fiery orange glow of the Old Place. He found a real fire in a derelict warehouse behind the train station and two figures hunched over it. He approached and they didn’t turn him away and he warmed his hand by the fire. One of them offered him swigs from a bottle of something called Scrumpy Thunder and in that fizzy chemical concoction found his first pleasurable experience since his arrival.

When Dan and Quentin had curled up amongst their sleeping bags and blankets to sleep, Clovenhoof sat close to the fire and stared into its heart. When the fire began to die down he looked around for something to burn. There wasn’t much to be found although there was a fat sheaf of papers in his wallet, red and purple portraits of some woman in a crown, and he burned most of those to keep the flames alive.

The fire was a tiny thing. Pitiful. Nothing like the great roaring furnaces of the Old Place.

He sighed as he remembered how his favourite vantage point high above the fires of Hell. When exactly was it that he began to see his kingdom slide away from him?

Satan shook his head at the carnage on the Plains of Hell below him. Carnage was supposed to be part of the package in Hell, there was beauty in chaos, but this was just a mess.

The entrance gate was clogged again. Built centuries ago for a more modest rate of influx, the constant press of humans coming through in the twenty first century was greater than anyone had ever anticipated. It was now the norm to see crushed bodies oozing through, like meat from a mincer. Other times, like now, the weight of traffic was just too much and blockages occurred. Demons wielded pitchforks and gouged at the writhing mass to try and dislodge the bodies.

“Mulciber,” Satan sighed, “how did this ever get so bad?”

“Who could have anticipated the numbers, my lord?” replied his chief architect defensively. “The number of deaths each day is higher than ever, nearly a hundred and fifty thousand. We could maybe cope with that if so many of them weren’t coming our way. Two thirds of them by my reckoning.”

Satan nodded. “People are turning their backs on religion.”

“It’s not so much that,” Mulciber said, “but it seems more acceptable than ever now to be religious and to treat people badly. You’ve got crazy fundamentalists in every religion. They hate gays, foreigners, women. You name it, they’ll find you a reason in the bible or whatever to hate it.”

“Hmmm,” said Satan, indicating the wailing, gnashing wall of bodies, tangled in the agonising crush. “What worries me is that we might have a whole load of low-grade sinners being pulled apart by those pitchforks. We’d normally reserve that for the more serious offenders.”

“There have been some complaints, sir.”

“Yeah, I bet there have. How are things at the Lake of Fire?”

“Same as before, I’m afraid,” said Mulciber. “It’s full, completely full. A mild scorching is all we can achieve in a lot of cases. I’ve seen people walk across it, barely noticing that they’re not on solid ground.”

Satan paused for a moment to remember the lake as it was. A wild and glorious place where a body could flail and roast in blissful isolation. Now he couldn’t even paddle in the shallows. If he tried, it was likely that some hand would claw at his ankle, accompanied by whining about the overcrowding.

“I’m going to take a look up at the end of the line, Mulciber,” said Satan. “In the meantime, draft in some more demons.”

“To help with their pitchforks, sir?”

“No, to whip the ones that are working there now. Make them go faster.”

“Very good sir.”

Satan walked towards the gates. In ordinary times, the sound of so many souls in torment would please him greatly, but this just angered him. The torment was all wrong. Some of these souls had been sent to him for minor transgressions like bigamy or getting babies’ ears pierced. They were only supposed to experience eternal dullness, and maybe the kind of minor discomfort one would get from a mildly disappointing camping holiday.

The smell was all wrong too. Instead of the overpowering sulphurous reek of brimstone, there was something else. He paused for a moment to sniff the air. It was human sweat.

He went through the side entrance, emerged onto the road before the gate, and saw a different kind of horror. The road was long and all he could see was bodies packed impossibly together, seething forwards. No wonder the demons were having trouble clearing the blockage, there was no way to reduce the pressure from the other side, even for a moment.

And how was he, master of this domain, going to get through against the flow of the traffic?

“You and you, come here.” A pair of demons leapt to attention.“I want you to clear me a way through this.”

“Er, how?” rasped one of them.

“You’ve got a pitchfork, haven’t you? Well use it. Pile them on top of each other if you need to, but I want to go that way.”

The two demons soon formed an efficient tag team. They bullied and prodded the crowd so that people tried to press away, and hefted the bodies over the heads of the others if they couldn’t move fast enough. Progress was still agonisingly slow, and Satan had to endure the incessant grumbling from all he passed.

“What are you all in such a hurry for?” he yelled irritably, “’Are we there yet?’ Do you people not know what eternity means?”

“But we’ve been waiting for hours!” moaned one of the yet-to-be-damned.

“Waiting for what?” Satan asked her.

“Well, you know,” she said. “To get in.”

“Don’t you know where it is you’re going? You must have seen enough clues by now, hmmm?”

He indicated his horns and hooves. One of the demons stabbed her arm with his pitchfork for good measure.

“Course I know,” she said. “I just think it’s disgusting that you make people queue like this.”

Satan rolled his eyes and pressed on, tuning out the mutterings of the crowd. At the Styx, Satan had them find Charon’s old boat and they made a private crossing, avoiding the overcrowded ferries. On the other side, they plunged back into the impossible crush and then, after several hours, the demons broke through the back of the queue and Satan staggered out into open space.

As Satan walked on, he waved the demons to stay behind.

“I’ll need you to get me back through when I’m done here, boys.”

They scowled at each other and settled to wait, poking passing humans with their pitchforks, competing to see who was quickest on the draw.

Clovenhoof awoke, slumped beside the still glowing embers with dew clinging to his trousers and shirt. He was on Earth and it was still shit. Quentin and Dan were already awake, sitting upright in their sleeping bags.

Dan offered him the Scrumpy Thunder bottle.

“Morning mouthwash?” said Dan.

Clovenhoof took it without a word and drank.

“I can’t live in a place like this,” he said, passing it back.

Dan lit a cigarette.

“We all got to live somewhere,” he said.

Quentin nodded in agreement.

“But the people here,” said Clovenhoof. “The way they look at me. No recognition.”

“No respect, I know.”

“It’s unbearable,” said Clovenhoof.

Dan grinned.

“We’re like something they found on the bottom of their shoe.”

“Right. Smarmy bastards, going about their pointless little lives.”

“Too true.”

“It’s like they think they’re living in the bloody centre of the universe. But what is this place? I’ve walked its length. It’s some nowhere town, all shop windows and rows of identical houses.”

“That’s about the measure of the place,” agreed Dan and offered Clovenhoof a drag of his cigarette.

Clovenhoof inhaled deeply and looked at the cigarette wistfully.

“God, that reminds me of the Old Place,” he said.

“Yeah?” said Dan.

“The smoke from the furnaces. Those Satanic mills turning. It’s a sight to behold. And the city. Not like this place. We’ve got beautiful ruins and towers that stretch up beyond sight. And my people knew exactly where they were, a real sense of place. Wailing and writhing. Acreages of human flesh.”

“Sounds nice,” said Dan uncertainly. “Can’t you go back?”

“No,” said Clovenhoof bitterly, handing the cigarette back.

“Well, then you’d best make the most of it. Wherever you are.” Dan wriggled out of his sleeping bag and began to roll it up. “What other choice do you have? It’s either this or make an end of it and top yourself.”

Clovenhoof blinked.

“You’re right,” he said quietly.

“Of course I am,” said Dan.

Clovenhoof jumped to his feet.

“Dan,” he said, grabbing the man’s ears and planting a kiss on the top of his knitted hat, “you are a bloody genius.”

“Am I?”

Clovenhoof ran off into the grey light.

The two men watched him go.

“Where do you reckon he was from?” asked Dan eventually.

Quentin stroked his stubble thoughtfully.

“Coventry, I think.”

Nerys later reflected that, all told, Tuesday had started out so very promisingly.

She woke to find a text from a Trevor (or was it a Stephen?) who had been on her ‘second date material’ list but who had been in danger of being moved to her ‘mysteriously disappeared’ list. These were not imaginary lists but scrupulously kept documents in the back of her diary. A lot of ‘second date material’ moved to ‘mysteriously disappeared’ rather than the hoped for ‘successful second date’ list so she was cheered by the message.

Then, on her way out to work, she met that man from flat 2b on the stairs, the one she had heard the neighbours say worked in the book industry. He was a shifty looking man with low standards of dress but, since she had asked him to look at her manuscript, she made the effort to be polite.

“Good morning,” she said brightly.

“Er, er, morning,” said Ben and gave her a rictus-like grin. “Do you need a handkerchief?”

“What?” she said, wondering if she had something smeared on her face.

Ben pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket with a magician’s flourish.

“’A fine gentleman always carries a handkerchief,’” he said and she realised he was quoting from her book.

She blushed.

“You read it?”

“I did.”

“And what do you think?”

“Um,” he said and then, “Yes. Yes, it’s a really good idea.”

“You think it has potential?”

“Well, er, we can only give it a go, can’t we?”

She beamed.

“That’s great news. Wow. Thanks.”

She trotted merrily down the stairs with a sudden song in her heart and thoughts of her imminent publication.

Her buoyant mood carried her through an otherwise humdrum day at the Helping Hand Job Agency in Sutton Coldfield town centre. It was the usual round of HGV drivers and office temps in search of the next contract. She despaired at how they all conformed to the stereotypes of their trade. Fat with sagging waistline: HGV driver. Cheap ugly shoes and poorly co-ordinated make-up: office temp. It would have been so simple to sort each of them out, a belt and a low-carb diet for one lot, a ten-minute tutorial in fashion and make-up for the others. She had in fact produced a leaflet with those very guidelines, but the regional manager hadn’t approved.

Her colleague Dave, technically on the same rung of company ladder but in so many ways her underling was out on a training course that day so she had to get her own coffee. At least that meant she wasn’t plied with so many cuppas that she spent the whole afternoon busting for a pee. It also meant she didn’t have anyone to brag to about her future publishing success. The rest of the people in the office were either gormless idiots or strangely uninterested in her personal news and views, frequently both.

She left the office at four, collected her dinky car from the shopping centre multi-storey fighting Christmas shoppers at every turn, and set off for home. As she pulled out of the car park exit, something flashed downward through her vision and landed with a thump. Even before the man had rolled off the dumpster and onto the pavement, Nerys was unclicking her seatbelt and getting out of the car.

She didn’t stop to think about what she had seen in that second before she had leapt from her car but if someone had asked her what she had thought she had seen, she would have said she had seen a man fall from the roof of the multi-storey car park and smash into one of the dumpsters outside the service doors. But, of course, that couldn’t be what had happened because no one who had fallen six storeys onto unyielding steel would be rolling around, clutching their elbow and swearing viciously to themselves.

As she ran towards him, remembered diagrams of how to make a tourniquet from a belt, of the recovery position, of how to perform an emergency tracheotomy with a disposable biro, flashed through her mind in vibrant Technicolor. Heroic first aid related glory was within her reach.

And then something terrible happened. Out of nowhere, a woman had appeared and was crouching over the man, professional care oozing from her outstretched hands. Nerys put in a final spurt and cried out, “Don’t touch him!”

The woman looked up.

“I’ll deal with this!” Nerys shouted. “Stand back!”

“Are you a paramedic?” asked the woman.

“Pretty much,” said Nerys.

She knelt down next to the man. He wore a shirt and trousers and a sleek goatee beard. His face was screwed up in pain, adding extra lines to his already deeply lined face. He had the leathery skin of an ageing rock-star and, Nerys noted, had quite probably been a sexy-looking feller in his youth although time had not necessarily been kind.

“My name’s Nerys,” she said. “I’m here to help.”

The man blinked tears and looked up at her.

“Am I dead?”

“No,” said Nerys with a comforting smile.

“Shit,” said the man. “Shit shit shittity shit!”

That was an unexpected response.

“What do you mean, pretty much a paramedic?” asked the woman standing above them.

“I’m first aid trained,” said Nerys. “Can you feel your legs, sir?”

“I’m first aid trained too,” said the woman.

Nerys stood.

“Listen, sweet-cheeks. I don’t mean I’ve just watched a few episodes of Casualty. I am first aid trained. I’ve helped out during several medical emergencies.” She pulled out her phone, flipped to her photo library and passed it to the woman. “Look. Here’s me helping a boy who was choking on a mint imperial.”

Nerys knelt down again and began feeling the man’s arms for fractures. The woman looked at the photograph.

“How many emergencies?”

“Several,” said Nerys.

“How many?”

“Two,” said Nerys. “Including this one.”

“Two is not several.”

“Two is more than one and therefore is several.” She put her arms under the man’s shoulder and began to turn him over. “Sir, I’m just going to put you in the recovery position.”

“Oh, what’s the point?” he said, producing fresh tears.

“To stop you swallowing your tongue, I think.”

“Hang on,” said the woman. “Did you ask someone to take a picture of you giving this boy the Heimlich Manoeuvre?”

“Yes,” said Nerys irritably, getting the man onto his side.

“He was choking but you stopped to get out your phone so someone could take a photo before you stopped him choking?”

“Who wants to see a photograph of someone who is no longer choking?” She raised her eyebrows to her patient. She was sure he understood that the woman was some sort of imbecile.

“Suicides go straight to hell,” the man was muttering unhappily. “Straight to hell.”

“You’re all right, now,” she said soothingly.

She felt his legs for signs of injury. There was something odd about his legs. His knees seemed to be in the wrong place, his leg going backwards when it should be going forward.It was as though he had one too many joints in each leg. That, or he had the legs of an animal...

Nerys shook her head to herself, looked up and was irritated to see the woman still there. “Do you plan to stand there all day?” she said.

“I don’t think you have a clue what you’re doing,” said the woman.

Nerys snorted.

“Well, at least make yourself useful. You’ve got my phone.”

“Of course. Do you think he needs an ambulance?”

“I mean, take some pictures. Make sure you get both of us in them.”

“Where are you taking me?” asked Clovenhoof.

Nerys put her shoulder under his armpit and helped him out of her car.

 “You don’t have to do this,” he said.

“You just need somewhere to sit down. Maybe a cup of tea, yes?”

“Don’t take me to a hospital.”

“You said that before. Here we are.”

He raised his head. They were approaching the door of a tall old house on a long road of other tall old houses.

“This is your house?” he said.

“I have a flat here,” said Nerys. “Well, it’s technically my Aunt Molly’s flat but I live with her and pay her bills and she’s an old lady so, you know, fingers crossed, it’ll be mine soon enough. Do you live nearby?”

He looked up at a sign in a first floor window that read “Flat to Let”.

“Er, no,” he said. “I’ve recently been relocated.”

She stopped at the door and fished for a key in her coat pocket.

“Where are you from? Originally?”

He raised his eyes to the heavens. “Here. There. Nowhere.”

“You’re not an illegal immigrant, are you?” she asked.

He frowned.

“I couldn’t even begin to answer that question.”

“Not that I’m judging,” she said hurriedly. “I know that I’m a lucky woman to have been born in this country. Who can blame people for wanting to come here?”

“I was hoping to go back home.”

“Maybe you will one day.”

Nerys unlocked the door and then half-led half-dragged him up several flights of stairs.

Ten minutes later, he found himself sat in a high-backed armchair, nursing a cup of strong sweet tea whilst the weird young woman quietly argued with her shrill-voiced but otherwise invisible aunt in another room. A dog no larger than a gerbil was staring with what seemed to be intense fury at the new houseguest’s feet.

“What?” said Clovenhoof.

The terrier leapt forward and gripped the edge of his hooves with its tiny sharp teeth.

“Get off,” he hissed and shook his foot but the dog seemed to think it was now a game and with a pitiful growl, gnawed at the hard keratin.

“My foot is not a chew toy,” said Clovenhoof and was considering giving the creature a terminal kick in the ribs when Nerys re-entered.

“Twinkle,” she admonished without rancour, “leave the nice man’s... shoes alone.”

She smiled at Clovenhoof.

“You’re very kind,” she said, “but you shouldn’t let him do that. It will lead him to bad habits.”

The corner of Clovenhoof’s mouth twitched.

“This is... all very nice, but I must be going,” he said.

He placed his cup of tea on the table beside the chair, deliberately avoiding the doily coaster. He had stopped drinking it after discovering it had none of the potent qualities of Scrumpy Thunder.

“No,” said Nerys, holding out her hands to keep him sat. “Not until you’re better.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’ve spent long enough here already.”

 “You might have concussion. Do you feel nauseous?”

“Constantly.”

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Three.”

“What day is it?”

“Friday?”

“What’s your name?”

He paused to remember.

 “Jeremy Clovenhoof,” he said.

“Really?” she said. “I once had a boyfriend called Jeremy. I say boyfriend. It was a brief – but passionate! – affair. You know what I mean?”

“No,” he said, bored.

“Well, we split up. We had to. He told me, ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ And I thought about that for a long time and you know what?”

“What?”

“He was right. It was him. It was all him.”

“Yes?”

“But for the record, today’s Tuesday and I was holding up two fingers; the thumb doesn’t count.”

She put a hand on his head.

“And you have a nasty bump on your head here,” she said.

He moved her hand across his scalp.

“I have two,” he said. “You might have noticed.”

“So you do,” she said.

“And, for the record,” he said, “two is not several.”

Ben stopped outside the door to flat 3, checked his breath against his palm, smoothed down his hair and then did a whole body shake as he tried to build up the courage to knock.

He had read YOU Can Be My Perfect Man in a single sitting and had spent much of the day at the shop re-reading key chapters and making notes. He had memorised the entirety of the ‘How to be spontaneous’ chapter and planned to follow its instructions to the letter. He had also committed to memory her hundred and thirty-seven rules for being the perfect gentleman. He had his handkerchief, wore a tie with his shirt, carried a hat in his hand (to show he had taken it off indoors) and was prepared to open as many doors and draw in as many dining chairs as his lady required.

He knocked in a manner he hoped was manly yet polite and greeted Nerys with his best smile.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s Ben, isn’t it?”

“Good evening, Miss Thomas,” he said in the most refined tones. “Your hair does look lovely tonight.”

 “Er,” she said. “Thanks?”

“I wasn’t planning to say that. It was just, you know... I just thought I’d say it.”

“Right. Um.”

She looked at him. Apparently it was his turn to say something again. So soon? He had used up his opening lines and realised he hadn’t planned anything beyond this. The silence stretched out and sagged between them.

She jerked a thumb over her shoulder.

“I’ve, er, got company.”

“We spoke earlier. On the stairs. I just came up, spontaneously like, and thought we could...”

“You want to talk about-“

“I mean if it’s inconvenient-“

“I’m really thrilled you think-“

“I don’t want to intrude.”

“No,” she said, stepping back. “Come in, do.”

Ben stepped into her flat, wondering if this was the moment when he should kiss her on the back of the hand. The opportunity hadn’t seemed to present itself.

Her flat wasn’t as he had imagined it. From the tone of her book, he had imagined something like the parlour of an Edwardian lady but this room was more like a battle between old lady clichés and brash IKEA-bought accessories: antimacassars versus pink scatter cushions, toby jugs pitted against cheap turquoise copies of Henry Moore sculptures. He had expected to see Twinkle, the Yorkshire Terrier. He had not expected to see the terrier growling at the feet of a man who seemed awfully familiar.

“Ben,” said Nerys, “this is Jeremy Clovenhoof.”

Ben found he couldn’t stop his gaze from fixing on the man’s crotch as though his eyeballs had some muscle memory of the man’s previous nakedness.

“We’ve met,” said Ben.

“Have we?” said Clovenhoof.

Ben suddenly remembered rule twenty-nine for being a perfect gentleman: the firm handshake.

He stepped forward, hand outstretched.

“Kitchen. Ben Kitchen.”

Clovenhoof shook his hand. Ben applied a gentle but decisive pressure. Clovenhoof returned it. Ben squeezed tighter and turned his hand over, placing it on top of Clovenhoof’s. Clovenhoof squeezed harder and pushed back in the other direction.

And, at some point, it magically transformed from a handshake to a silent arm wrestle. Clovenhoof gritted his teeth. Ben dropped his hat and gripped his wrist with his free hand to support it. Clovenhoof bent his elbow, drawing Ben in, so he could use his whole upper body strength. Ben dug his nails into the back of Clovenhoof’s hand. There was the machine-gun crack of several finger joints popping, Ben whimpered in pain and dropped to his knees.

“Nice to meet you, Kitchen,” said Clovenhoof, shaking the life back into his hand. “Now you’re kneeling before me.”

“Are you all right, Ben?” said Nerys, apparently oblivious to the alpha male struggle that had just taken place.

Ben, on one knee, stared at his white almost crippled hand and then saw that Nerys and her own hands were very close by.

Deciding that this was the ideal time and a great cover for his submission before Clovenhoof, Ben took Nerys’ hand in his and planted a light tender kiss on the back of it.

Nerys snatched her hand away.

“What are you doing?” she said in disgust.

Ben looked up.

“I thought I was being a gentleman.”

“What?”

“You want me to be your perfect man, don’t you?”

“You?”

“You gave me your book. It was an unusual proposal but I read it and –“

“You’re not my perfect man,” said Nerys.

“I’m not?” said Ben.

“I wanted you to publish my book.”

“Publish?”

“You said it was a really good idea and we ought to give it a go.”

“I thought you meant... us.”

She stared, open mouthed for several seconds.

“What on earth made you think I was interested in you?”

Ben’s planet-sized embarrassment formed a mote of high-density anger at its heart.

“What on earth made you think I could publish your book?” he retorted.

“You’re a publisher!”

“I am not!”

“Mrs Astrakhan in 1a said you worked in the book industry!”

“I own a bookshop!”

“Oh!” shouted Nerys furiously and then, much quieter, added, “Poo.”

The silence that followed was long and eventually broken by Clovenhoof.

“You, Nerys-woman, do you have any Scrumpy Thunder?”

“Scrumpy?” she said. “Cider?”

“It’s very nice.”

A slightly hysterical yet almost silent laugh escaped her lips.

“I could murder a drink,” she said.

“Me too,” said Ben, sullenly.

“I think you owe me one,” said Nerys.

“Me?” said Ben.

“Raising false hopes in a woman.”

“Think how I feel.”

“Scrumpy Thunder?” said Clovenhoof.

“Pub,” said Nerys and pointed at Ben. “You’re buying.”

“What’s a pub?” said Clovenhoof.

A pub, it turned out, was an establishment called the Boldmere Oak, a sort of tavern or coaching inn but without the silly fripperies such as rooms or wenches-for-hire. It was filled with people who seemed to be enjoying themselves, in spite of the fact that someone was loudly singing that they wished it could be Christmas every day.

Ben put a pint down in front of Clovenhoof.

“There you go,” he said.

Clovenhoof took a big gulp. It certainly tasted similar to Scrumpy Thunder but it seemed to lack the chemical bite and there was a strange additional taste.

“Is there fruit in this?” said Clovenhoof warily.

“It is made from apples,” said Ben.

“Really?” He put the pint down. “Not sure I approve.”

“Of apples?”

“Apples are fine. One of my first jobs was dishing out apples to young naked couples. I’m not sure if I approve of them in drinks.”

He gave another experimental sip.

“What have you got?”

“Cider and black,” said Ben.

“Chardonnay,” said Nerys.

Without further word, Clovenhoof picked up each of their drinks in turn and took a swig. He mulled over Nerys’ for a few seconds thoughtfully. Ben’s he spat out on the floor the moment he tasted it.

“Apples and blackcurrant?”

“I like it,” said Ben.

Clovenhoof got to his foot and looked about the saloon bar and the knots of drinkers about the room. So many different shaped glasses. So many differently coloured drinks. He strode over to the nearest table, took a man’s pint of brown flat beer and supped at it thoughtfully.

“Hey,” said the man.

“Tastes of socks,” said Clovenhoof and gave it back to him.

He moved on, sampling from unguarded glasses and bottles.

“Oi,” said a woman wearing reindeer horns.

“What is this?”

“It’s my bloody gin and tonic.”

“I don’t like bloody gin and tonic,” he declared. “Why is there a lime in it?”

“Piss off.”

Ben and Nerys watched him circulate around the room.

“I swear he’s concussed,” said Nerys.

“I think he’s Swedish,” said Ben.

“His English is flawless.”

“That’s the Swedes for you. Natural linguists.”

Nerys watched Clovenhoof receive a slap in the face and move on unfazed to the next table.

“So, you’d met him before,” said Nerys.

“Briefly,” said Ben. “Yesterday. He appeared outside my shop.”

“You’ve not known him a long time then?”

“He left a lasting impression.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was.... Well, it happened like this...”

Clovenhoof was taking an experimental sip of a drink called ‘lager’ when a hand slapped on his shoulder and turned him round. Clovenhoof looked up at the barman, a tall man with fat muscly arms and a genial but not pretty face.

“Are you drunk?” said the barman.

“I intend to be when I’ve found the right drink,” said Clovenhoof.

“You having a laugh?”

“Not yet,” said Clovenhoof.

“Don’t think that because you’re Old Nick you can just upset my customers.”

“Old...? How did you know?”

The barman looked him up and down.

“The horns and the hooves were clues.”

“You can see them?” said Clovenhoof, amazed and thrilled.

“A barman sees many things. Fact is though, way I see it, you need to buy a lot of people fresh drinks.”

“Buy?”

“Cash. Money.”

Clovenhoof shrugged.

“I don’t have any money.”

“You’d better have.”

The barman saw the bulge in Clovenhoof’s pocket and clicked his fingers for him to hand the wallet over. He opened it and looked at the contents.

“Bugger me. Do you know how much you have in here?”

“I burned most of it,” Clovenhoof admitted. “Is it enough to buy people drinks?”

“It’s enough to buy everyone here the worst hangover in history.”

“Excellent. Drinks for everyone!” he declared loudly.

“He was stark bollock naked?” said Nerys, laughing.

“Like a newborn baby. And there were these two old ladies just staring at him, goggle-eyed.”

“I’m surprised one of them didn’t have a stroke,” said Nerys.

“Couldn’t reach,” said Ben, because he felt he had to.

“Was he...? Is he...?” Nerys raised her eyebrows.

“What?” said Ben.

“Well-endowed?”

 “I wasn’t exactly looking.”

“But you saw.”

“Unfortunately.”

“So, was he?”

Ben blanched.

“That would depend on what you regard as well-endowed or, you know, an average endowment.”

Nerys put her hand a distance apart on the table. She knew the measurements. She had conducted studies.

Ben took a long long sip of cider and black and wondered what the hell to say.

“I,” said Clovenhoof once the barman had poured fresh drinks for those he had offended, “will have one of everything.”

“What do you mean?” said the barman.

“What I mean, mortal man, is – what’s your name?”

“Lennox.”

“Lennox, what I mean is that, all those drinks there, the pint pulling things –“

“Taps.”

“All the beer taps, all the bottles in your fridge, all those upside drinks behind the bar. I would like one of every one of them.”

“Are you sure?”

Clovenhoof nodded.

“And then we will move onto” – he savoured a new word he had learned – “cocktails.”

“He’s kind of rugged, don’t you think?” said Nerys, watching Clovenhoof work his way along a row of bitters, lagers, stouts and ciders, dwelling on some, shaking his head instantly at others.

“You mean weatherworn,” said Ben.

“How old do you think he is?”

“Sixty.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“You’re not... interested in him, are you?”

She gently swirled her glass.

“I don’t know,” she said playfully.

Ben sighed.

“So that’s your perfect gentleman, is it?”

“Hardly.”

“Right,” said Ben in disbelief.

Nerys downed the remains of her drink.

“Hercule Poirot.”

“What?”

“The perfect gentleman. No, the perfect man.”

“Fat Belgian detective Poirot?”

“Suave, mannered, precise and intelligent. And that little waxed moustache!”

She gave a little shudder of pleasure.

“Each to their own,” said Ben.

“When I was a little girl, I wrote to David Suchet and asked him for a signed photograph of him as Poirot.”

“Did he send one?”

“No.”

“That’s not very nice. I think famous people should always be good to their fans.”

“I mean I did ask for a photograph of him naked but, still, you’re right.”

Clovenhoof lurched against their table.

“I’ve done it!” he declared.

“Done what?” said Nerys.

“Found the perfect drink,” he said and placed a wine glass reverently in the middle of the table where its contents gently fizzed.

“Champagne?” said Ben.

Clovenhoof shook his head. “It’s called...” – he licked his lips – “Lambrini.”

Ben looked at it.

“As drinks go, isn’t it a bit... girly?”

“It looks like fizzy piss,” said Nerys.

“I know!” said Clovenhoof in ecstasy. “And it tastes great too!”

In the corner of the pub, unnoticed by everyone were two old ladies. With theirpuffy blue-rinses and thick knitted coats, they were of the type that were often called something like Betty and Doris. The one who might have been called Betty was sipping a small sherry. The one who might have been called Doris had a glass of tap water, untouched, on the table in front of her.

“It’s man again,” said possibly-called-Doris.

 “Well,” said possibly-called-Betty. “At least he’s wearing clothes now.”

Details on buying Clovenhoof from: www.pigeonparkpress.com

A Gateway Made Of Bone by Iain Grant

Coming in late 2012...

The Seelie Court controls an empire of a thousand suns, each world linked to the next by the black oneirium gateways of the Sacred Guild of Gatemakers. While the empire plunders the conquered worlds to stave off its own destruction, Edenist rebels fight for independence. Caught somewhere in between is Celandine Brey, orphan, apprentice gatemaker and key to a treasure of untold wealth.

Chased by imperial agents and corrupt soldiers, Celandine is aided in her quest by Mr Sukh, mute veteran of the Engine Wars, Orlando Swaan, Edenist and naïve schemer, and Ana Zanbir, a clone on the run who has made an unbreakable vow to protect Celandine.

From the narcotic grasslands of Aphid to the ancient temples of Nachista, from the high-rise cityscape of Termagore to the junk world of Immonda, A Gateway Made Of Bone is a fantastic journey through the conflict and chaos of a civilisation on the verge of collapse.

Read the opening chapter here and then go to www.pigeonparkpress.com for details on how to get the complete novel.

A Gateway Made Of Bone

IDIX

Celandine Brey, Disciple Cleric of the Course of Divine Liminis sat alone in the café at Bayan Street Station and waited for Barbegris’ guests to arrive. A can of Sula Soda, half-drunk and now flat, sat on the table before her, next to it a small stone statuette of a squirrel, carved from glassy black oneirium. A fan turned sluggishly above her head, too slowly to do anything about the stiflingly hot air.

Out on the platform, people fought each other for a seat on the last train out of Idix. Even before the steam locomotive had come to a halt, the crowd surged towards the doors, hands outstretched and shoulders hunched. Young men climbed onto the roof or attempted to squeeze through the small sash windows. Children were held aloft, either to be offered to those closer to the train or to protect them from the suffocating press of bodies. The weak, the elderly and the simply polite were pushed aside or trampled underfoot.

Suitcases became shields. Trunks became barricades. Elbows and feet became weapons. People cried, shouted, screamed and bled.

The window pane between Celandine and the platform muffled the noise of the crowd and made their frantic struggles seem less real, less tragic. She watched the people with as much concern as she showed for the Seelie soap opera playing silently on the teleoptic screen on the corner of the bar. It had no more meaning than a dream.

She wasn’t a heartless or unfeeling person but in Idix, in recent times, everyone had to find a means of coping with the hardships of life or else simply break down in despair. When the gatemakers diverted the Largesse River into Agrium, the people coped. When the floodwaters did not come and the crops failed, the people coped. When the gatemakers began closing the gateways between Idix and the rest of the empire claiming that Idix was no longer a profitable enterprise and the rare oneirium gateways were needed elsewhere, still most people coped.

Most people. The people on the platform were trying to escape the dying world. Few of them would make it. Those who did probably wouldn’t get any further than Junction or Facto.

Celandine put her hand in her pinafore pocket, withdrew the crumpled note that Father Aldiss Barbegris had given her and read it again.

1230. 3 Rectors. Bayan St Station from Junction. Bring to Dv Azerro’s ASAP.

There was no sign of the men yet. Barbegris had given Celandine five rouples to pay for a motorcab for the journey back to the church. Celandine had already spent one of them on the Sula Soda. The waiter had given her change in Idixian cents. The worthless coins clinked as she stuffed the note back into her pocket.

The waiter came by her table for the third time in ten minutes and tutted openly when he saw that she still had not finished her drink.

“You can’t sit there forever,” he remarked.

Celandine took a tiny sip of her drink to show that she was at least drinking it and gave the waiter a dirty look.

“What’s that thing?” said the waiter, nodding at the oneirium statuette.

Despite his smart uniform and carefully waxed hair, the waiter was probably no more than a year or two older than Celandine, eighteen at most.

“Do you talk to all your customers like that?” she said, raising her head so that he could clearly see the blue tilak powder on her forehead, the tilak mark of a Cleric.

“Just asking,” replied the waiter tartly. He wore no tilak mark, had not been to church recently, but he was probably a member of the esclave class, a merciant at best. “So what is it?” he said.

“He’s called Ardilla,” she replied. “And he’s mine before you ask.”

She held her hand out flat and the stone squirrel twitched into life, coming down onto all fours and crawling across the table top and into Celandine’s palm.

The waiter pulled a face and shuddered.

“You’re a gatemaker?”

“Apprenticed to one. Can’t actually make gateways yet myself but…”

Celandine concentrated and Ardilla ran up her arm, down onto her lap and snuggled into the folds of her dress. The waiter was torn between amazement and revulsion. He raised his chin haughtily.

“Well, gatemakers aren’t so popular around here anymore,” he said and he strode swiftly away to rearranged the cruet sets on the other tables and stare at Celandine from a distance.

“Yeah,” she muttered. “You’d know all about popularity.”

Eventually, unhurriedly, the train pulled out of the station once more. The carriages were filled far beyond capacity. Other people sat on the roofs, hung on the outside of doors and even balanced precariously on the buffers between carriages. There were tears and howls amongst those left behind as hopes were dashed and families were neatly ripped apart.

Some stumbled after the train but were very quickly left far behind. Ultimately, those left at the platform or standing bewildered on the tracks had nowhere to go but back into the crumbling and dusty city of Casario. The crowd slowly dispersed. Many items of luggage had been left behind by those lucky few on the train. A few opportunists scavenged for valuables amongst the baggage, hoping to recoup some small amount from the disappointing day. But even they departed eventually.

Celandine looked at the clock on the café wall. It was two minutes after half past twelve. She finished her soda and went out onto the platform.

Three men stood around a fourth fallen figure at the end of the platform. A third of a mile beyond them was the gateway to Junction. The gateway was a tall, pointed arch of black oneirium through which the gatemakers had punched a hole between this world and the next. It was nighttime in Junction and through the gateway, Celandine could just make out the blue and orange twinkle of electric street lighting.

As Celandine walked down towards the gathered men, she could see the gatemakers in Junction swiftly closing the gateway to Idix for good. The aperture of the gateway gradually folded in on itself, the streetlights going out one by one. Then the arch itself caved in too, shrinking down, losing its shape until finally the last of the oneirium was pulled back into Junction and the gateway had vanished completely, the only evidence that it had ever existed being a set of railway lines that now came to an abrupt end in front of the twisted sticks of a dried up mangrove swamp. It hadn’t been the last gateway in Idix. The last was now the gateway to Scylla, a seagate beyond the harbour wall of Muchmiel and over three hundred miles away.

The three men stood at the platform end were identically dressed, shining black boots, dark frock coats with twin rows of polished gold buttons worn open on account of the heat. Celandine saw the sabres and pistols that hung at each of their belts. The man lying unconscious on the ground was a local. He had a deep gash in his forehead and one of his arms hung awkwardly over the platform edge. His shirt was ripped open and one of his shoes was missing.

“Fell from the train as it set off,” said one of the uniformed men.

“And then someone stole his wallet, sir,” said a second, a swarthy man with a poorly shaved, bristle covered chin and teeth the colour of ripe Idixian bananas.

“And one shoe,” said the first, finally turning to face Celandine. She immediately noted the tattoo on the back of his hand, a shield design executed in Rector red and depicting a serpent impaled upon a lance. He was a slim man, maybe thirty-something, maybe forty-something but with the white skin and milk blonde hair of a child. Intelligent looking and quite handsome, Celandine decided.

“You’re Barbegris’ lackey?” he asked.

“I was sent to fetch you,” she conceded. “And I’m a disciple cleric, not a lackey.”

“My apologies, madam cleric,” he said sarcastically.

The third man, the tallest of the three, giggled at this, his ice blue eyes dancing with laughter.

“Shouldn’t we do something for him?” said Celandine, indicating the comatose man.

“With pleasure,” said the third man, drawing his pistol and aiming it at the fallen man’s head, his hips thrust forward in an aggressively brash stance.

“Wait!” cried Celandine. “I didn’t mean…”

“Didn’t you?” said the tattooed man. “Then I’m not sure what else we can do for him.”

“Perhaps we should just go.”

Tattoo indulged in a self-satisfied smile.

“Indeed. Do lead on.”

They did not tell her their names. They did not talk to her. Sitting in the back of the wagon they spoke freely to one another, mostly to make disparaging remarks about what had become of the once green and fertile world of Idix but they did not talk to Celandine.

Divine Azerro’s church was some miles from Casario, in an abandoned town on the other side of the Largesse. They crossed over via the Marquez Bridge. In the middle of the wide, dry riverbed beneath them sat the beached paddle steamer Missy Lou, its hull and paddles buried deeply into the rock hard earth like the foundations of a small wooden castle. It was currently home to dozens of displaced plantation workers and their families. Children played on its upper deck. Men dismantled its railings to sell for scrap. Women hung washing on lines that ran from the ship’s prow up to its single smokestack.

On the far side of the river, the roads were uneven and potholed and the wagon shook fiercely as it rolled along. Celandine wished she had been able to locate a better vehicle for Barbegris’ guests, something with an engine at least, but the best she could find was an open top wagon, pulled by a tired old nag and driven by a young esclave boy in a straw hat and no shoes. The boy, who was more accustomed to transporting bananas than people, had demanded six rouples for his services but Celandine had bullied him down to three.

The journey lasted more than an hour and took them out into the newly formed desert. The sun beat down on them from an utterly blue sky. The wagon was uncovered and there was not the slightest shade for the travellers. Nonetheless, there were no grumbles from the men and when they reached their destination, they climbed down carefully, stretching aching limbs, brushing dust and creases from their uniforms and surveyed the place they had been brought to.

“Where the divinities are we?” said the yellow-toothed one.

“A ghost town,” replied Tattoo.

The place had been deserted for some time. The main street, which had never been overly prosperous or charming, was now reduced to a series of smashed windows, rotting timbers and fallen shop signs. Wind, dust and time had faded everything to the same earthy colour as the surrounding desert, as though the town through sheer embarrassment was attempting to become invisible.

After the river dried up and the crops failed, the town’s population had, in the space of a year, dwindled from over a thousand to zero, a level at which it had remained until three months ago when it rose sharply again to two.

“You live here?” said the tall one, Blue Eyes.

“Just about,” Celandine replied. “Over this way.”

Celandine led them through the town towards the church as the boy turned his wagon round and set off back towards Casario.

“There’d better be something to drink,” said Yellow Teeth, hawking up phlegm from the back of his throat.

“Altar wine,” chuckled Blue Eyes to himself.

“Cheap grog, if I know Aldiss,” said Tattoo.

Dv Azerro’s church was a small sandstone building that squatted like a toad at the edge of the town square. It was an unexceptional church with a dome that rose no more than forty feet above street level. The three soldiers had to duck down to get through the doorway as they followed Celandine into the porch and then had to wait some time for their eyes to adjust to the dim candlelit interior.

“Oi! Father,” Celandine called out. “Your guests are here.”

There was a mumble and clatter from behind the screen and Father Aldiss Barbegris Venerable Cleric of the Course of Divine Liminis emerged. Celandine had faintly hoped that he would have made an effort to tidy the place before his guests arrived but, of course, he hadn’t. The floor was still strewn with the scrolls, church records and smashed reliquary chests that he had been rummaging aimlessly amongst for the past week or more. His one concession to his visitors was to clear a table and put four chairs, all different, around it. Celandine saw that he had unwisely decided to use a mouldy, moth-eaten drape as a tablecloth.

At least she had assumed he would make himself look presentable for his visitors but he had done nothing of the sort. He was still wearing the same brown robes he had worn all summer. His grey beard was still untrimmed and, on close inspection, seen to be dotted with crumbs of food. The band of his ragged eyepatch still cut awkwardly across the top of his head, making half of his hair stand upright like a hedgehog’s spines. And, naturally, his manner had improved none since that morning.

“What took you so long?” he demanded, hobbling forward, a pot of red tilak in his hand.

Tattoo smiled.

“Father,” he said, touching his head in obeisance but twisting the word to make it an insult rather than an honorific. “How pleasant to see you.”

Barbegris gave each man the briefest, most cursory blessing and anointed each of their foreheads with the red powder. Tattoo raised his eyes to inspect the building. He was understandably unimpressed.

“And what a fine hole you’ve hidden yourself in this time.”

“Homph,” Barbegris grunted graciously, either failing to spot the sarcasm or choosing to ignore it. “I was stationed in this town when we built the rivergate from here to Agrium.”

“Mmmm,” Tattoo nodded. “Yes, we saw the wonders your gateway had wrought on our way here. You must be very proud.”

“Homph. Haven’t you heard? This in the end of days, when worlds fail. You thirsty?”

“Parched.”

“Drinks then.”

Barbegris, wiped the red tilak from his hands onto his robes, clicked his fingers at Celandine and gestured to the balcony above. Celandine dutifully climbed the stairs and set about finding food and drink that she would not be embarrassed to serve to others.

The wide upper level balcony ran around the entire wall of the church building. In the days when it was a functioning church, the balcony was used to house any members of the congregation who could find no space below. Now, it was Celandine and Barbegris’ living space. Barbegris had built himself a bed out of pew seats with a mattress formed from hundreds of hymn books, topped with an altar cloth blanket. Celandine slept on a pile of old cleric vestments round the other side, far from Barbegris’ snores. Between the two sleeping spaces was their meagre store of provisions and what Barbegris laughably referred to as the kitchen.

There, Celandine picked out the four cleanest cups, filled a tin coffee pot with water and granules, put it on their portable stove to boil and listened idly to the conversation that drifted up from below though there was much of it she did not understand.

Barbegris had explained earlier that the men were coming to buy something from him. He wouldn’t be drawn on what he was going to sell them, possibly one of the church ‘relics’ he had palmed off on the unwary in half a dozen worlds but he had hinted that, if the sale went through, all their money worries would be over. Celandine knew better than to pry further and was content to listen and let the truth be revealed in its own time.

“The last set of purges took us to Maykland,” Tattoo was saying.

“A bloody breeding ground for wretched Edenists,” said Yellow Teeth.

“They even say John-a-Weeping has been seen there,” Blue Eyes added.

“Homph. He seems to be everywhere.”

“Maybe he is,” said Tattoo darkly. “He has become… numerous.”

Celandine, wondered what that last remark could possibly mean but the conversation had descended into hushed whispers and so she sat back on an old orange crate (now filled with salted pork) and gazed up at the church dome.

Dv Azerro’s church was less than grand but the amateur artist who had painted the ceiling had created a work of awe and wonder. The dome was supported by seventy-seven pillars, as the worlds were supported by the souls of the seventy-seven divinities. The edges of the dome were illustrated with the Hell of Fire on one side and the Hell of Ice on the other and, in between, the Waters of Heaven. Here, the artist had chosen to depict scenes from the war between the divinities and titans. She was able recognise some of the divinities – Dv Magortam with his keys of office, Dv Kinneal with his tear-streaked face, Dv Bunuel with her doctor’s staff – but most of them were unknown to her. She knew the names of all the divinities - she had learnt her scripture well – but that did not mean she could put names to faces. Perhaps that was as well; it reflected the holy truth that the living incarnations of the divinities, who walked the worlds, life after life, usually went entirely unrecognised.

Far more fascinating was the artist’s portrayal of the enormous titans, the children of the dark god, Entropy. They were a fearsome blend of crab, spider and reptile with spindly legs of bone, curved black teeth and bulging, glistening shells. At the altar end of the dome, the fate of the titans was shown, as one of the divinities (that would be Dv Javester, the warrior) hacked apart one of the vile monsters and, from its oneirium body, another divinity (Dv Liminis no doubt) formed the very first gateway: a light filled doorway to Seelie.

The coffee pot rattled to a boil. Celandine set the pot and the cups on a tray and carried them downstairs.

“So how much do you want?” the Rector soldier was saying.

“Make it a round number,” said the cleric gatemaker. “A million rouples.”

Tattoo laughed. Blue Eyes and Yellow Teeth loyally joined in. “I don’t know how much you think the Order pays its soldiers but we don’t have that kind of money.”

Barbegris spread his hands wide, the epitome of reasonableness.

“I’m sure your master could conjure a million rouples without even blinking.”

“But he’s not here and even he wouldn’t pay such a ludicrous price for what, all told, is merely a piece of information.”

Celandine frowned. So, it wasn’t a relic offered for sale here. She slid the tray onto the table and began to pour.

“Not just a piece of information,” said Barbegris. “There’s a key you need to unlock this treasure. I’m prepared to lend it to you.”

“What key?” said Tattoo.

“The girl.”

“The girl. What girl?”

Barbegris nodded towards Celandine.

“What?” she exclaimed, spilling coffee on the floor.

“Why? Who is she anyway?” asked Tattoo.

“My apprentice,” Barbegris replied.

Tattoo laughed.

“And, leaving aside the question of why she’s so important, why would the Sacred Guild give an apprentice to a thief and a scoundrel like you?”

“Who said the Sacred Guild sent her to me?”

“Oh, you found her, did you?”

“I found her,” Barbegris agreed. “She’s Maria Brey’s daughter.”

Five sets of eyes were suddenly and firmly fastened on Celandine. Blue Eyes breathed an oath of disbelief.

“What are you gawping at?” she said, unnerved by the sudden attention, and thoroughly bewildered by the turn of conversation. She put the coffee pot down and stood back.

Tattoo laughed and turned back to Barbegris.

“Maria Brey’s daughter,” he said sarcastically. “Of course she is.”

“Can you afford not to believe?” said Barbegris.

Tattoo fell silent and was no longer smiling.

“Make your offer, then,” said Barbegris.

Tattoo puffed out his cheeks as he decided on a figure.

“A hundred thousand.”

“Homph. I wouldn’t even tell you the name of my mother for that much. I’ll meet you half way; eight hundred thousand.”

“Your arithmetic is worse than your manners, father,” retorted Tattoo. “Two hundred thousand.”

“Five hundred thousand then. That’s less than half what I wanted and a cheap price for the greatest find in centuries.”

“True. But it was Maria Brey’s find, not yours. I would have paid her five hundred thousand gladly but you… you I will pay two and a half.”

“Then pay me four. The lion’s share of it is for Brey’s daughter. I have made a personal pledge to raise her as my own, in accordance with Maria’s wishes.”

“If Maria Brey wished for you to raise her only child then she must have been mad. I will give you and her daughter three hundred thousand.”

Barbegris considered the offer and then spat, actually spat a fat glob of phlegm on the floor.

“You would deprive an old man of financial security in his twilight years. Homph! I will take your three hundred thousand and may Brey’s find be the death of you.”

The price agreed – for what Celandine still did not know – the four men picked up their coffees and drank.

Tattoo smacked his lips and set his cup down.

“Now tell us. Where can we find Gibberdog?”

The name meant nothing to Celandine.

“Money first,” said Barbegris.

“Oh no, not a chance,” said Tattoo. “You tell us, father, and when Gibberdog is ours, we will pay you in full. I may do business with you but don’t expect me to trust you, you old fraud.”

“What?” blustered Barbegris hoarsely. “You call me a fraud? Me, a father of the Sacred Guild? My word is an unbreakable bond.” He tapped a finger beside his eyepatch. “I didn’t lose my eye to the demon Otokuma so that jumped up militiamen like you could call me a fraud! You will pay me now or you will leave.”

“Blather all you like,” said Tattoo calmly. “I haven’t got the money with me.”

“What?”

“Haven’t got it. Didn’t bring it.”

Barbegris gagged speechlessly and, before Celandine’s eyes, his face turned a violent shade of red. He got to his feet.

“Get out, you swine! All of you! How dare you waste my time!”

“Now, be sensible, father,” said Tattoo also rising. “I can give you maybe a hundred now and when we have Gibberdog the rest will –“

“A hundred?” Barbegris screamed. “Entropy take you, man!”

Barbegris took up his coffee cup and flung it inexpertly across the table. Yellow Teeth and Blue Eyes leapt away from the spray of hot drink. Celandine saw Yellow Teeth’s hand go for his pistol and was about to shout out a warning when Blue Eyes grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her against his body. She struggled momentarily but then something hard and cold was pressed against her throat.

“Be still,” whispered Blue Eyes.

Celandine swallowed hard and felt the skin of her neck ripple along the edge of Blue Eyes’ sabre.

Barbegris still stood at his end of the table, silently facing the three soldiers: Yellow Teeth with his pistol trained on Barbegris, Blue Eyes holding Celandine at sabre’s edge and Tattoo stood patiently between them, his weapons undrawn.

Celandine couldn’t see Tattoo’s face from where she was but she could hear his smile as he talked.

“Oh my. What a situation we find ourselves in. I feel this calls for fresh negotiations.” He threw a few crumpled notes down on the table. “There’s your hundred, father. You’ve already made it perfectly clear how much this girl means to you. Tell us where Gibberdog can be found and she’ll remain unharmed.”

Barbegris hesitated long enough for Celandine to realise that, whatever happened next, it wasn’t going to end happily.

“Quickly, father,” said Tattoo. “His hands shake when he’s had caffeine.”

Celandine quelled her rising panic and mentally reached out to Ardilla, who was still resting in her pinafore pocket.

“You wouldn’t kill a child,” said Barbegris. “You’re soldiers.”

Tattoo remained unmoved.

“Our master has asked far worse of the faithful.”

“Far worse,” agreed Yellow Teeth cheerfully.

To make the point clear, Blue Eyes pressed the sabre blade tighter against Celandine’s throat. She was sure he had already cut her, could swear she felt blood trickling down her neck.

Celandine called Ardilla to climb swiftly up her dress and then, without thinking beyond the next few moments, directed him onto Blue Eyes’ sabre hand. Feeling the cold claws latch onto him, Blue Eyes gave an involuntary cry of surprise and flung out his arm in an attempt to shake the little creature off.

Celandine slipped free of his grip and bolted for the nearest hiding place, the rows of dusty pews arranged before the altar. She did not look back and only heard the chaos that unfolded in her wake.

Blue Eyes was spitting curses, having hurled Ardilla away into some corner and convinced that the oneirium critter had been something genuinely alive and probably venomous.

“Damned creepy-crawly nearly got its fangs in me!”

Tattoo was telling him to shut up but then Yellow Teeth gave a shout and shots were fired, huge blasts of thunder that echoed off the stone walls and temporarily blocked out all other sound. Celandine’s shrieks were lost in the succession of booms as she threw herself down between two rows of seats.

“Stop firing, you idiot!” yelled Tattoo. “He’s no use to us dead. You, get after him. You, holster your weapon and bring me the girl. Alive. If the old fart wasn’t lying, she’s just as important.”

‘I’m not important,’ thought Celandine. ‘I know nothing. I don’t know where Gibberdog is. I don’t even know what Gibberdog is’.

She wanted to shout as much to the soldiers, to explain that whatever business had suddenly soured between them and Barbegris was between them and Barbegris alone. But that was selfish thinking and it probably wouldn’t matter one jot what she told the soldiers.

“Look at this,” called out Yellow Teeth. “Is this what attacked you? It’s a flaming ornament. A piece of animal pottery. Here.”

“I don’t care what it was,” replied Blue Eyes loudly from the balcony above. “It went for – Hey! There he is!”

Thumps, clangs and shouts ensued in the balcony. Tattoo, still down in the chapel, demanded to know where Barbegris was.

Celandine quickly assessed her position amongst the pews. The problem, she realised, was that it was a temporary hiding place and one she could not leave without being seen by anyone standing in the chapel. Furthermore, the only exit from the church was through the porch and, as long as one of the soldiers stood guard there, neither she nor Barbegris could escape the building. The only other door leading from the chapel was much nearer to her but it led to the crypt and, though the crypt door could be bolted from the inside, she would then be quite securely trapped.

Still, she decided, better to be trapped than captured. She crawled to the end of the pews and was considering when to make a dash for the crypt when Blue Eyes stepped out in front of her, filling the gap between the benches and barring her way.

“Found you,” he grinned.

Celandine saw that he now held Ardilla in his fist and reacted instantly, turning the stone squirrel into a ball of razor-edged spikes. Her skill with the oneirium was faster than his pain reflexes and, before he could drop the thing, the needles had penetrated his flesh, running through him and thrusting out of the back of his hand like a sudden growth of bloody black hair.

Pain robbed Blue Eyes of his voice. He fell back against the wall, wide-eyed and horrified and silent.

Celandine leapt forward and over him and sprinted for the crypt door. Tattoo shouted out a warning but there was no one to stop her. Through the door she ran, down the steps and into the unlit spaces of the crypt.

She lingered there for a few seconds, panting hard and then, with a lurching stomach, remembered the bolts on the inside of the crypt door, the ones she had entirely forgotten to throw across.

“Numbskull,” she wailed softly and ran back.

A figure loomed in the doorway as she neared and she stopped dead. The man grabbed at the door and swung it shut, plunging the crypt into total dark. There was the grating sound of one, then two bolts being dragged across, followed by a barraged of thumps on the other side of the door and then silence.

Celandine stayed as she was, unsure as to exactly who was inside the crypt and who was outside it. A hand took hold of her wrist. She tried to pull away.

“It’s me, stupid girl.”

Celandine sighed enormously at the sound of that coarse, petulant voice.

“Father.”

“Homph. At least you waited for me.”

The soldiers took up banging at the door again.

“We’re trapped,” said Celandine.

“Homph. Would be if I hadn’t picked up your discarded plaything.”

“Ardilla?”

Barbegris didn’t reply. He let go of Celandine’s arm so that he could work on the oneirium with both hands free. Celandine knew what he was doing; he was using Ardilla to build a gateway, a skill that she was far from attaining. The gateway would be a temporary one and a small one at that, but permanent and large enough for them to escape through. The only real question was whether he could build it before the crypt door was broken down.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Far away,” said Barbegris and his bitterness was unmistakable.

Barbegris worked as the hammering continued.

“Nowhere to run,” came Tattoo’s muffled shout. “We’ll get you both in the end.”

Barbegris chuckled dryly.

“Homph. We’ll have a month’s head start on them. It’ll take them a week just to get to the seagate at Muchmiel.”

There were gunshots. The soldiers had changed tactics and were trying to shoot their way through.

“Father!”

“Shhh! Almost there.”

A pinprick of light, so bright in the utter darkness of the crypt, appeared on the nearest wall. By its tiny starshine gleam, Celandine could see Barbegris’ hands enticing the gateway into a larger shape. The pinprick expanded smoothly until the gateway was a rough circle, two feet across. The oneirium was stretched to a wire-thin band around the circle’s edge but it held.

Through the gateway, Celandine could see tall grass and low cloud. A cool wind blew slowly but steadily in from the new world.

“Pressure differential,” noted Barbegris. “Never mind.”

The door to the crypt gave an ominous crack and Barbegris pushed Celandine through the gateway. She tumbled forward and onto soft earth. Tough blades of tall grass crinkled underneath her.

Barbegris was through too and rapidly closing the gateway, which on this side hung in the air, seemingly unsupported.

Celandine stood up and regarded the world they had landed in. They were on a slight hillock that, in every direction, overlooked a vast grassy plain which stretched to the unbroken horizon. There were no trees, no buildings. There was nothing but grass, tall, thick and rippling in the breeze.

“Where are we?” she said.

Barbegris didn’t reply for some time.

“I had such plans for that money,” he said softly and there was a quality of regret in his voice that Celandine had never heard before and she turned to look at him.

Barbegris stood unsteadily at the very summit of the hillock. The gateway was closed. The oneirium was a formless lump in his hand. The front of his robes was soaked from stomach to thigh with blood and it was quite clearly his.

Barbegris fell down, very slowly. Celandine dashed forward to hold him as he finally collapsed onto a bed of grass. She helped him straighten his bent legs. He clutched his stomach and gazed up at the sky.

“This is Aphid,” he said faintly. “Mount Tepper. Highest point in the whole world. Not been here since…” He trailed off into silence.

Celandine tried to lift his hands away from his bloodied robes so that she could perhaps get a look at the wound but the old man resisted.

“Divinities! He wasn’t even aiming properly. Why does nothing ever go right for me?”

“I…”

Celandine could feel panic starting to rise within her. There were things she knew she should be doing. She told herself she needed bandages, a medicine chest but she knew what she really needed was a hospital and someone else to take charge. Panic swiftly soured into frustration and anger.

“I’m going to kill them.”

“No. No profit in revenge. You not learnt anything from me?”

She cast about her again but the landscape hadn’t miraculously changed in the past minute.

“Why did you bring us here?” she asked desperately.

“Such plans,” Barbegris groaned. “I didn’t want to die poor. I wanted to make it up to you, to your mother. I let her die. Didn’t tell you that.”

He had never mentioned Celandine’s mother’s death before. He never spoke of it. She had never asked.

“I fought against the demon Otokuma in Immonda,” he said. “I drove him away but your mother…” He shook his head and smacked his lips dryly. “You got any drink?”

Celandine shook her head. Barbegris tutted.

“Then your father…”

“You knew my father?”

“Homph.”

“Is he alive?”

“Yes.” He paused for breath. “No. Your father…” He raised one hand and laid it over his eyepatch. “All messed up now. They found Gibberdog together and Maria left a gateway, hidden away.”

“What is Gibberdog?” asked Celandine. “What was that about me being the key to it?”

“The last great treasure,” he managed to whisper. “Maria hid the gateway so I … We couldn’t find it.” The effort of speaking was becoming too much for him.

“Hush, father,” said Celandine gently.

“Don’t hush me, girl!” he replied firmly, with a smidgeon of his old fire. “Homph. I’ll have an eternity of hush soon enough. You’ve got to go to Library of Souls in Nachista.” He fought for breath and coughed weakly. “Repeat it.”

“The Library of Souls,” said Celandine obediently.

“Where?”

“Nachista.”

“Good. Find your book. That’s the key. Gibberdog will be the making of you.” He relaxed visibly, exhaling hard. “Now, pray for me. I’m going to need it.”

“No, father. You can’t die.”

Maybe he grinned or maybe it was a grimace of pain.

“Of course I bloody can.”

He closed his one eye and almost immediately slipped into sleep. Celandine moved his pale hand aside and inspected his injury but it was just a mass of dark red stickiness across his scrawny torso and she had no idea what she could do for him.

So she prayed. She took the sealed pot of blue tilak from the pouch at his belt, daubed the powder on his forehead and prayed. As afternoon tumbled into evening, she prayed to Dv Bunuel, the Lady of Thorns, who heals the sick. She prayed to Dv Pantaleon, the patron of doctors, to Dv Cascia who looks after those who are alone and to Dv Liminis the gatemaker, whose course Barbegris had tried and failed to follow.

The red sky of evening deepened into the purple black of night, the grasses came alive with the rustling sounds of a billion insects and Celandine continued her vigil by dim starlight but now she invoked different divinities. She prayed to Dv Madron who eases pain and to Dv Nicholas of Tolentino who comforts the dying, and when she could no longer see Father Barbegris’ breath misting in the air, she prayed to Dv Kinneal who pleads for the souls of the faithful, to Dv Constant who weighs the hearts of men and to Dv Magortam who holds the keys to the Waters of Heaven.

The Million Dollar Dress by Heide Goody 

In this modern-day Cinderella story, cutting edge technology gives Justine the body of a supermodel at the flick of a switch. She uses her new-found confidence and sex appeal to snare her ideal man. But hot on her heels are the police and the inventor. Can she avoid jail and humiliation? Can she keep hold of her ideal man once he discovers her secret? Most importantly of all, has she really found what she’s looking for?

The Million Dollar Dress - Chapter 1 

Justine pushed the vacuum cleaner across the floor, strutting to Slam Dunk’s newest hit. For the evening shift cleaning the studio, she rocked and shimmied her way from one task to the next.  

She was usually alone in the evenings, unless Serge stayed late. Their routines could overlap easily, and they worked around each other like a carefully tuned machine.

The studio was near to Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, and Serge had said that he chose it because it used to be a ribbon-maker’s workshop, years ago, which was why it had such huge windows. Justine had tried to picture how you’d weave a ribbon and decided that it didn’t sound like a rewarding job. She reminded herself of the ribbon weavers when she grumbled at cleaning the large windows. There were definitely worse jobs. Occasionally Serge asked her to help him which Justine loved, it made her feel part of something important. Serge was a fashion designer. She didn’t think he was the rich, internationally famous kind, but she was confident that he was up and coming, so being his model was a huge treat. Serge didn’t mind that she was a bit lumpy in places, as most of his clients wore larger sizes.

“Justine, would you mind slipping the dress on for me?”

Serge had his head round the door and she smiled at him. He even looked like a fashion designer. Skinnier than most people thought was healthy, punky hair that steered just clear of being a mullet and he always wore stripes. Stripes were Serge’s signature and he combined them in ways that flattered and deceived the eye when designing for his ladies. For himself he used them to more attention-seeking effect and sometimes Justine thought he looked as if he needed tuning in properly.

Serge put his arm round her shoulder and whispered in her ear.

“I have a visitor tonight – we must impress him, he’s the money!”

Justine gave him a look.

“Money? You’re not hard up, surely? You’ve got loads of clients.”

“I have big plans, Justine, and he is a potential investor. Smile for the man Sweetie!”

She rolled her eyes and followed him into the workshop. She looked at The Money, who acknowledged her with a curt flip of his hand. She went to the dress stand with Serge who handed her the dress. She took it behind the screen and put it on. 

This was different to Serge’s usual style of clothing; the dress was almost drab. It was a plain beige dress with a high neckline and a very low hemline. She had asked him on a previous occasion if he was making a sideline for nuns. She stepped out from behind the screen and did a twirl for them.

“Keep walking around, Justine,” said Serge.

He went to his desk and opened up a laptop. The Money looked rather bored.

“So tell me, did you see the James Bond film, “Die Another Day”?” Serge asked.

The Money shook his head.

“That’s a shame, because it might have helped. He had a car that could become invisible. It had tiny cameras along each side, with a corresponding projector on the opposite side of the car. So when James Bond hit the switch, the image from behind the car was projected forward, making it invisible.”

The Money shrugged and looked confused.

Serge pressed some buttons on the laptop and the Money gasped. It was the first time Justine had heard him make a noise. He was staring at her. She looked down at the dress and saw why – her body had disappeared. 

The Money recovered his cynical snarl.

“So you made an invisibility cloak. But I can still see her head.”

Serge pressed some more buttons on the laptop.

“Well that is just one thing that this dress can do, but it’s not the real selling point. If I can make you see nothing then I can make you see anything!”

The Money rolled his eyes impatiently.

“If I choose to project Justine’s body as that of Angelina Jolie, then I can do that.”

He pressed a button with a flourish.

This time Justine gasped. She looked down to see the kind of body that she had always dreamed of. It wasn’t hers of course, but just for a moment she was prepared to believe that it might be. Hello-boys breasts that pushed out over a tiny waist. Hips that flared provocatively. And the dress that she was wearing, where had that come from? It was a shimmer fabric that hugged the curves as if she’d been misted with water. She looked up and saw the Money ogling her. She blushed. Even though she knew he wasn’t ogling her own body it was impossible not to feel that he was.

Serge cleared his throat gently.

“So, you see what it is I have done? I can give to women what they most desire. I can let them change their body as they want to. I am in the course of plotting Marilyn Monroe’s vital statistics into the computer, but they can be as curvy or as skinny as they want to be. They can also change their outfits to be anything that they can think of.”

Serge clicked his mouse and Justine was wearing a wedding dress. He clicked again and she was wearing a demure trouser suit. He clicked a third time and she was wearing the skimpiest bikini she had ever seen.

“Hey!” she shouted, seeing the lecherous smile on the Money’s face.

Serge clicked hurriedly and changed Justine into a 1960’s Austin Powers mini dress with platform boots.

As she looked at herself and walked slowly around the room, Serge put his arm around the Money’s shoulders and led him gently away, seeing that he was going to get no reaction while he was transfixed by Justine’s curves. Serge indicated the view from the window where the sun was setting across the city.

“Do you see what we have here? This is so huge that I can barely imagine it myself. No woman will ever want to wear normal clothes when she has seen what this can do. I have never met a woman who is happy with her body. Even the ones that look great to me have some tiny thing that they worry about. So we sell them the dress, and we sell them the service of programming the changes that they want.”

Justine was grateful that the two of them were distracted. She studied herself in the mirror. Her haircut suited the style of the dress. She would never have even looked at clothes like this, but here she was wearing them! She felt as though her life had been changed in the last five minutes. She walked over to see what was on the laptop. There were icons showing the different outfits. It looked so easy to use.

Serge was still talking.

“And it doesn’t end there! Fashions change all the time. Women crave variety and individuality in their attire. We can release software for a ready to wear line. They can download those from the internet and we won’t even need a point of sale. And maybe we can even return to the golden days of couture. It can be more attainable because the work will be done by computer programmers instead of seamstresses, and the client doesn’t even need have to have fittings! There are so many ways that we can sell this to the world.”

The Money was nodding and looking slightly animated. Justine imagined he didn’t often get that way. Serge seemed to be encouraged by his response.

“The technology is fairly expensive right now, but I know we can drive down the costs with the sort of demand that we’re going to get. This prototype here is the only one I have at the moment, and it cost me as much as a semi in Solihull.”

Justine sighed at that. The chances of her owning a dress like this were nil. She really wanted to enjoy it for a little while longer.

But this was the only one. She looked down at it again, and considered the laptop in front of her. She could borrow it for a little while and then give it back. It would be helpful research for Serge. She quietly closed the laptop and picked it up. Serge was still making expansive gestures over the rooftops.  It had to be now. Justine padded quietly from the room and then scuttled down the stairs without looking back.

To continue reading The Million Dollar Dress, please go to Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Million-Dollar-Dress-ebook/dp/B008GE3KRW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341127522&sr=8-1

Contents

Chapter 1 - 4:04pm 21 March, San Jose, California

Chapter 2 - 9:15 am 27 March, West Fleet, England

Chapter 3 - 9:35am 27 March, West Fleet, England

Chapter 4 - 11:24am 27 March, Faculty Building, West Fleet University, England

Chapter 5 - 28 March, Cathay Pacific Flight CX250, London to Hong Kong

Chapter 6 - 9:30am 3 March, San Francisco, California

Chapter 7 - 12:15pm 29 March - Chep Lap Kok International Airport, Hong Kong

Chapter 8 - 8:30pm 28 March - Special Circumstances Training Facility, Southern California

Chapter 9 - 2:25pm 29 March - Mong Kok, Hong Kong

Chapter 10 - 6:14pm 29 March - Mong Kok, Hong Kong

Chapter 11 - 7:08pm 29 March - Quarry Bay, Hong Kong

Chapter 12 - 7:20pm 29 March - Quarry Bay, Hong Kong

Chapter 13 - 8:12pm 29 March - Zhonghua Hotel, Central, Hong Kong

Chapter 14 - 8:55pm 29 March - Zhonghua Hotel, Central, Hong Kong

Chapter 15 - 3:42am 30 March - Kowloon, Hong Kong

Chapter 16 - 4:05am 30 March - Hong Kong

Chapter 17 - 4:02pm 29 March - Special Circumstances Training Facility, Southern California

Chapter 18 - 7:54am 30 March - Old Bailey Prison, Hong Kong Island

Chapter 19 - 5:02pm 30 March - San Francisco, California

Chapter 20 - 9:45am 31 March - Old Bailey Prison, Hong Kong Island

Chapter 21 - 10:20am 31 March - Zhonghua Hotel, Hong Kong

Chapter 22

Chapter 23 - 12:10pm 30 March – Zhonghua Hotel, Hong Kong

Chapter 24 - 10:15am 30 March - Los Angeles, California

Chapter 25 - 8:02am 1 April - Hung Hom, Hong Kong

Chapter 26 - 9:40am 1 April - Hung Hom, Hong Kong

Chapter 27 - 7:05pm 31 March Special Circumstances Training Facility, Southern California

Chapter 28 - 12:40pm 1 April - Hung Hom, Hong Kong

Chapter 29 - 10:50pm 2 April – Pudong International Airport, Shanghai, China

Chapter 30 - 12:04pm 2 April - Shanghai, China

Chapter 31 - 3:14pm 2 April - Shanghai, China

Chapter 32 - 7:43pm 2 April - ShinComm Factory City, Shanghai, China

Chapter 33 - 9:26pm 2 April - Shanghai, China

Chapter 34

Chapter 35 - 3:56am 3 April - Shanghai, China

Chapter 36 - 10:45am 3 April - Shanghai, China

Chapter 37 - 7:05pm 2 April - Mountain View, California

Chapter 38 - 1:15pm 6 April - Shuangliu International Airport, Chengdu, China

Chapter 39 - 3:18pm 6 April Chengdu, China

Chapter 40 - 3:55pm 6 April Chengdu, China

Chapter 41 - 5:35pm 6 April Chengdu, China

Chapter 42 - 8:42pm 6 April - Chengdu, China

Chapter 43 - 1:05am 7 April Chengdu, China

Chapter 44 - 8 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Chapter 45 - 5:36pm 8 April - Shanglan Monastery, Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Chapter 46 - 9:54am 9 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Chapter 47 - 11:56pm 9 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Chapter 48 - 3:11am 10 April - Shanglan Monastery, Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Chapter 49 - 8:04pm 10 April - Chengdu, Sichuan, China

Chapter 50 - 4:34pm 10 April – United Flight 857, San Francisco to Shanghai

Chapter 51 - 9:04am 12 April - Hongqiao International Airport, Shanghai, China

Chapter 52 - 1:07pm 12 April – Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

Chapter 53 - 1:19pm 12 April - Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

Chapter 54 - 3:17pm 12 April - Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

Chapter 55 - 3:17pm 12 April - Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

Chapter 56 - 5:17pm 12 April - Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

Chapter 57 - 9:19pm 12 April - Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

Chapter 58 - 10:03pm 12 April - Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

Chapter 59 - 11:57pm 12 April - Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

Chapter 60 - 9:15am 13 April - Balong Polo and Country Club Resort, Zhejiang Province, China

Chapter 61 - 11:10am 13 April - Balong Polo and Country Club Resort, Zhejiang Province, China

Chapter 62 - 5:06pm 13 April - Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

Chapter 63 - 5:14pm 13 April - Balong Polo and Country Club Resort, Zhejiang Province, China

Chapter 64 - 6:07pm 13 April - Balong Polo and Country Club Resort, Zhejiang Province, China

Chapter 66 - 12:54am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Chapter 67 - 3:34am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Chapter 68 - 6:54am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Chapter 69 - 7:44am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Chapter 70 - 8:06am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Chapter 71 - 9:23am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Chapter 72 - 10:57am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Chapter 73 - 11:31am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Chapter 74 - 12:36pm 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Chapter 75 - 11:34am 15 April - Shanglan Monastery, Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Clovenhoof by Heide Goody and Iain Grant

Clovenhoof - Prologue

Chapter 1 - Clovenhoof meets the locals

A Gateway Made Of Bone by Iain Grant

A Gateway Made Of Bone

IDIX

The Million Dollar Dress by Heide Goody

The Million Dollar Dress - Chapter 1