Daylight on Iron Mountain (20 page)

It was a setback, true enough, but it was not a defeat.

That said, it was a shame about Reed. He had genuinely liked the man. But it was no good being sentimental. To let Reed live – to leave any loose ends – would be merely careless now, and he was not known as a careless man.

Intrigues. The world was a web of intrigues.

He smiled, hearing the AI’s voice in memory.

As good as done
.

Jiang Lei had just bathed and dressed for dinner when word came through from Pei Ching.

It was his old friend, Hsü Jung.

‘Cousin Lei!’ Hsü said breathlessly. ‘I have urgent news!’

Jiang waved his hand to dismiss the two servants who hovered nearby, then settled before the screen.

‘Speak, dear friend. What could possibly have made you so flushed?’

‘It is Reed, Jiang Lei.’

‘I heard. The accident.’

‘Yes, but…’

Jiang frowned. Why did Hsü Jung hesitate? It wasn’t like him. He usually came straight out with things.

Hsü Jung bowed low, then, ‘I fear to say this, Jiang… this being an open channel and therefore accessible to certain eyes and ears… only I must take the risk this once or see a good man die.’

‘A good man?’

Hsü nodded. ‘You asked me to keep an eye, remember?’

‘Ah…’ And now Jiang saw. ‘Reed is in danger?’

‘Of the worst kind. They have sent out a squad from the Thousand Eyes.’

‘An execution squad?’

‘The same, friend Jiang… the order was given ten minutes back.’

Jiang Lei grimaced. ‘To have Reed
killed
? Who would do so?’

Again Hsü Jung hesitated. Again he took the risk.

‘It was Lahm.’

‘
Lahm?
’ That in itself surprised him. He hadn’t even known that Lahm had any interest in Reed. To instruct his men to have Reed killed – that puzzled Jiang.

Jiang Lei knew Lahm of old. Lahm had made his reputation as Director of the IHA, the Institute for Historical Accuracy – rewriting history for his Han masters. Now that he was a great man, he had made a new reputation enforcing that same history. But what had he to do with Reed?

‘Are you sure of this, Hsü Jung?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Then I must act at once.’ Jiang smiled tightly. ‘Thank you, old friend. Oh, and let me say this, for the benefit any listening ears. I, Tsao Chun’s marshal, guarantee your protection. If anyone should dare touch a single hair on your head, I’ll hunt them down. Is that clear?’

Hsü Jung bowed, smiling his gratitude. ‘Marshal…’

As the screen blanked, Jiang Lei considered. Lahm, eh? How strange. He
would not have thought Lahm interested in Reed, let alone stirred up enough to have him killed.

He clicked his fingers in the air. At once his aide appeared, bowing low in the doorway.

‘Yes, Marshal Jiang?’

‘I want a squad sent at once, to GenSyn’s facility in Bremen. Specifically to the medical unit. They are to protect a man named Jake Reed who is a patient there.’

‘He is in danger, Marshal?’

‘In very great danger. The Ministry has sent a squad of their finest to eliminate him.’

‘Ah…’ The young man hesitated, then ran off to do the marshal’s bidding.

Alone again, Jiang sat, steepling his hands together, as he often did when he was thoughtful.

Lahm. No. It made no sense. Why would Lahm be interested in Reed?

The truth was, he didn’t know. But he would find out, now that he’d been alerted to the fact.

He stood, then walked through into Amos’s suite.

Amos looked up at him from where he was seated in the corner, playing the three-dimensional
wei ch’i
game he had been sent only the day before.

‘What is it, Jiang? You look troubled.’

Jiang quickly explained.

Shepherd nodded. ‘I see… and you don’t know why, neh?’

Jiang frowned. ‘Should I?’

‘Not at all, dear friend. Only… well, it pays sometimes to know a little of what’s going on behind the scenes. Lahm… he’s a major player. A very ambitious man. Pretends to be German in origin, but his father was a Pole. A devious sort. But then, aren’t they all?’

Jiang stared at Shepherd a moment. ‘When I went home that first time… before Tsao Ch’un appointed me… it was like that. A viper’s nest, one of my friends called it.’

‘And so it is. But Lahm… he was Reed’s sponsor. It was his influence that got Reed the job at GenSyn.’

‘Ah… but then why…?’ Jiang paused. ‘Ah, I see. And now he has no use for Reed… now that Gustav Ebert’s dead.’ He blew out a breath. ‘But why not leave Reed be?’

‘And have him fall into other hands? No. Lahm’s a tidy man. He doesn’t like loose ends. Besides, I think he enjoys it. Likes to think he has the power of life or death over men. I hear he watches tapes of his “executions”. And he doesn’t want to risk having anyone he’s discarded fall into the wrong hands.’

‘Then he is going to be disappointed this once.’

Amos stared at his friend a moment, then smiled. ‘I guess he is. This once.’

Lahm touched his head to the floor for the third time, then raised himself to his feet, brushing down his dark grey cloak with his right hand.

‘Master…’

‘This business with GenSyn,’ the First Dragon said, almost scowling as he said it. ‘What has it cost us?’

Lahm had received the summons while he was still in the air. He’d had to turn right around and fly back to the First Dragon’s palace. There, alone with the great man, he waited to learn his fate. But first these questions.

‘The cost…?’ Lahm totted things up in his head and almost shrugged. ‘Fifty million
yuan
. Sixty tops.’

‘Good,’ the old man said, his voice a growl. ‘Not too much wasted then. And the man? The web-dancer?’

‘Dead, Master.’

This time the First Dragon smiled. A sickly, death’s head of a smile. ‘Not so. At least, not at this moment, anyway.’

Behind the First Dragon a screen lit up. On it, in clear view of the camera, was Reed, secure in his web-like hammock, a tangle of drips snaking down from the ceiling and entering his body at a dozen separate points.

As the camera drew back, Lahm could see soldiers, standing in a half circle about the room, facing the doors. Proper soldiers, not Ministry assassins.

‘What the…? Where are
our
men?’

‘Dead.’

‘
Dead?
’ Lahm could not believe it. ‘Who would dare?’

‘Marshal Jiang.’

‘Marshal Jiang?’ Lahm laughed. But the laughter died in his throat as he saw the First Dragon’s face. He wasn’t joking.

‘But…’

The First Dragon nodded. ‘It surprised me too, Tobias. Who could have done this? I wondered. Who would be interested in protecting such an insubstantial fellow? And then, when I learned it was Jiang Lei, I asked, what kind of hold has this man over the marshal?’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. It seems Jiang Lei intervened once before, when Reed was in the camps. Saved him then.’

‘Ah…’ And now that he thought of it, he remembered. ‘But how did he find out?’

The First Dragon leaned forward. ‘That I don’t know. Yet. But I shall. And when I do…’

‘Can’t we send in another squad?’

‘And fight our own army? You think Tsao Ch’un would sanction that?’

Lahm lowered his head. Perhaps not. But why had Jiang intervened? What did he stand to gain through his actions? Was he, perhaps, in P’eng Chuan’s pay?

He looked up again, pretending to be humble before the old man.

‘What should we do, Master?’

‘Do? We do nothing, Tobias. We let the man live. Chances are he knows nothing about the project anyway. And that’s all that matters,
isn’t it
?’

It was. But, travelling back once more, Lahm could not work it out. Why
had
the marshal intervened? Why had he sent his troops against the Ministry’s? Was it old-fashioned spite? Or something else? For the truth was, no man acted in a purely altruistic fashion. Not at the level on which they both functioned.

Leave it now
, part of him insisted.
You did what you should and, even if you failed, it was through no fault of your own. Besides, your Master does not blame you for that failure.

It ought to have been enough. Only this once it wasn’t. Being outmanoeuvred by P’eng Chuan was one thing – and he would have his revenge for it – but this second, more trivial matter…

Lahm hated being robbed of his satisfaction. Hated even the slightest hint that he had lost his touch. It did not matter that his special relationship with the First Dragon protected him from criticism. He was his own worst critic. And to be outflanked by Jiang Lei of all people. It was unthinkable.

He would have the man, hero or not. He would fucking have him, see if
he didn’t. Once all of this bullshit had finished in North America.

He let out a long, shivering breath, unclenching his hands and letting the tension drain from him.

He could wait. Wasn’t patience his byword, after all?

Lahm smiled. And he would have Reed too while he was at it. Reed and all his precious fucking family!

There, where the Great Wall ended and the sea began, Tsao Ch’un had his palace – the Black Tower as it was known, an impregnable fortress built from black marble. It was a massive building, dominating the landscape for miles about, like a vast outcrop of basalt jutting out into the sea.

Right now, Tsao Ch’un sat in the uppermost level, leaning back in his chair, his left hand stroking his chin.

Outside, beyond the thick glass of the wall-length viewing windows, the night was dark, the merest fingernail of moon poised above the placid surface of the Po-hai Sea.

Facing the great man, surrounded by the eight huge marble pillars that supported the roof of the tower, was a bank of screens, six long and four deep, each one five
ch’i
to a side.

Each showed a different image.

Here one might see how Chung Kuo functioned. For here, and nowhere else, one might watch the great and the good in all their devious glory.

Long ago, in a moment of utter clarity (one might say of brilliant anticipation), Chao Ni Tsu had come up with this. He had provided his Master with the means of spying upon his inner circle, his so-called ‘trusted men’, using the very best in ADT – ‘Anti-Detection Technology’ – to achieve it. Clever stuff which, if anyone sought to detect it, would switch itself off, becoming unimportant to any probe. Cutting technology which, once it was put in place, was then ‘forgotten’ – its creators murdered in their beds to prevent even the vaguest hint of its existence from leaking out.

Tsao Ch’un smiled. The screens comforted him. Made him feel safe. In a world of endless betrayals, this much at least he could trust.

He eased forward a little, pressing the touch-sensitive pads on the arm rest. With a tap he could change images, or focus in on one of the massive screens, dimming the rest while one stood out clear and sharp. Just now,
however, he was content to let his gaze roam from one screen to another, seeing with his own eyes how Ebert’s assassination had stirred things up.

He laughed quietly. It was a regular hornet’s nest tonight. Why, he had not seen so much activity for a long, long while.

Ebert’s death had come completely out of the blue. Not a single one of them had known it was coming. Now they were trying to find out just what was going on, calling in their spies and consulting their advisors, anxious, in varying degrees, not to be overtaken by events.

Tsao Ch’un smiled. Let them try. They were chasing shadows. Not even the great Lord of Intrigue himself, the First Dragon, had the slightest lead as to why Gustav Ebert had been killed, much as the great man prided himself on knowing everything. But that did not surprise him, for what the First Dragon did not know – what he would never have suspected in his wildest, darkest dreams – was just how far events were shaped by Tsao Ch’un: how every single strand of their intrigues was spun from the darkness of this room, like the threads of a giant web.

Tsao Ch’un glanced across. Chao Ni Tsu was sleeping in his chair, his ash-white hair combed back from his wrinkled face. In his late seventies now, he slept a lot these days. But Tsao Ch’un still liked to have him there, useful or not, if only as a reminder of the old days, when the two of them had taken on the world and beaten it.

Yes. It was Chao who had devised this system. Chao who had given him the means by which he might control and shape it all.

It was all quite simple, really. To rule such a host of mightily ambitious men he had had to ensure that they never became his rivals. Their own, certainly, but never
his
. Which was why, over the years, Tsao Ch’un had spun intrigue after intrigue, setting one against another, keeping them at each other’s throats and away from his.

What delighted him most, however, was the fact that they thought themselves completely unobserved, safe from all watching eyes.

Tsao Ch’un sat back, taking in everything.

On screen, the First Dragon yawned, then stood and came around his desk. It was his habit on most nights to send for a meal of shrimps and freshly baked bread, only tonight the old man seemed to have no appetite. He was troubled. The interview with Lahm had puzzled him.

As it ought
.

P’eng Chuan, Lahm’s rival, was the obvious suspect, especially after what he’d said to Lahm earlier in the day. But he too seemed greatly troubled. He paced his bedchamber, ignoring the two young boys who lay there, naked beneath the silks, whilst he spoke to his AI. Sending out queries and getting back reports, striving to discover just who had struck the killing blow, and why.

That why, of course, puzzled them all. Were BioMek the culprits? They would certainly benefit from the fallout more than any others. Only it seemed unlikely. To assassinate a rival, that wasn’t their style.

Prince Ch’eng So Yuan, whose image was on the screen beneath P’eng Chuan’s, was clearly not to blame. Unless, of course, he had taken something to steady his nerves, for he slept like a baby, his great fat belly rising and falling like some huge silken pillow inflating and deflating.