The Art of War (8 page)

He jumped to his feet and turned away, putting his hands up to his face. ‘Kuan Yin preserve you, Axel Haavikko, for what you’ve done!’

Yes, he saw it all now. It all led to this. The drinking and debauchery, the insubordination and the gambling. This was its natural end. This grossness. He had observed his own fall, from that moment in General Tolonen’s office to this... this finality. There was no more. Nothing for him but to take the knife and end himself.

He stared at the knife. Stared long and hard at it. Saw how the blood was crusted on its shaft and handle, remembering the feel of it in his hand. His knife.

Slowly he went across, then knelt down, next to it, his hands placed either side of it. End it now, he told himself. Cleanly, quickly, and with more dignity than you’ve shown in all these last ten years.

He picked the knife up, taking its handle in both hands, then turned the blade towards his stomach. His hands shook and, for the briefest moment, he wondered if he had the courage left to carry the thing through. Then, determined, he closed his eyes.

‘Lieutenant Haavikko, I’ve come...’

Haavikko turned abruptly, dropping the knife. The pimp, Liu Chang, had come three paces into the room and stopped, taking in the scene.

‘Gods!’ the Han said, his face a mask of horror. He glanced at Haavikko fearfully, backing away, then turned and rushed from the room.

Haavikko shuddered, then turned back, facing the knife. He could not stand up. All the strength had gone from his legs. Neither could he reach out and take the knife again. His courage was spent. Nothing remained now but his shame. He let his head fall forward, tears coming to his eyes.

‘Forgive me, Vesa, I didn’t mean...’

Vesa. It was his beloved sister’s name. But the dead girl had no name. Not one he knew, anyway.

He heard the door swing open again and footsteps in the room, but he did not lift his head.
Let them kill me now
, he thought.
Let them take their revenge on me. It would be no less than I deserve
.

He waited, resigned, but nothing happened. He heard them lift the girl and carry her away, then sensed someone standing over him.

Haavikko raised his head slowly and looked up. It was Liu Chang.

‘You disgust me.’ He spat the words out venomously, his eyes boring into Haavikko. ‘She was a good girl. A lovely girl. Like a daughter to me.’

‘I’m sorry...’ Haavikko began, his throat constricting. He dropped his head, beginning to sob. ‘Do what you will to me. I’m finished now. I haven’t even the money to pay you for last night.’

The pimp laughed, his disgust marked. ‘I realize that, soldier boy. But, then, you’ve not paid your weight since you started coming here.’

Haavikko looked up, surprised.

‘No. It’s a good job you’ve friends, neh? Good friends who’ll bail you out when trouble comes. That’s what disgusts me most about your sort. You never pay. It’s all settled for you, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know what you mean. I...’

But Liu Chang’s angry bark of laughter silenced him. ‘This. It’s all paid for. Don’t you understand that? Your friends have settled everything for you.’

Haavikko’s voice was a bemused whisper. ‘Everything... ?’

‘
Everything.
’ Liu Chang studied him a moment, his look of disgust unwavering, then leaned forward and spat in Haavikko’s face.

Haavikko knelt there long after Liu Chang had gone, the spittle on his cheek a badge of shame that seemed to burn right through to the bone. It was less than he deserved. But he was thinking about what Liu Chang had said. Friends... What friends? He had no friends, only partners in his debauchery, and they would have settled nothing for him.

He dressed and went outside, looking for Liu Chang.

‘Liu Chang. Where is he?’

The girl at the reception desk stared at him a moment, as if he were something foul and unclean that had crawled up out of the Net, then handed him an envelope.

Haavikko turned his back on the girl, then opened the envelope and took out the single sheet of paper. It was from Liu Chang.

Lieutenant Haavikko,

Words cannot express the disgust I feel. If I had my way you would be made to pay fully for what you have done. As it is, I must ask you never to frequent my House again. If you so much as come near, I shall pass on my record of events to the authorities, ‘friends’ or no. Be warned.

Liu Chang

He stuffed the paper into his tunic pocket then staggered out, more mystified than ever. Outside, in the corridor, he looked about him, then lurched over to the public drinking fountain, inset into the wall at the intersection. He splashed his face then straightened up.

Friends. What friends? Or were they friends at all?

Liu Chang knew, but he could not go near Liu Chang. Who, then?

Haavikko shivered, then looked about him. Someone knew. Someone had made it their business to know. But who?

He thought of the girl again and groaned. ‘I don’t deserve this chance,’ he told himself softly. And yet he was here, free, all debts settled. Why? He gritted his teeth and reached up to touch the spittle that had dried on his cheek. Friends. It gave him a reason to go on. To find out who. And why.

DeVore took off his gloves and threw them down on the desk, then turned and faced his lieutenant, Wiegand, lowering his head to dislodge the lenses from his eyes.

‘Here.’ He handed the lenses to Wiegand, who placed them carefully into a tiny plastic case he had ready. ‘Get these processed. I want to know who those other four are.’

Wiegand bowed and left.

DeVore turned, meeting the eyes of the other man in the room. ‘It went perfectly. We attack Helmstadt in two days.’

The albino nodded, but was quiet.

‘What is it, Stefan?’

‘Bad news. Soren Berdichev is dead.’

DeVore looked at the young man a moment, then went and sat behind his desk, busying himself with the reports that had amassed while he was away. He spoke without looking up.

‘I know. I heard before I went in. A bad business, by all accounts, but useful. It may well have alienated the Mars settlers. They’ll have little love for the Seven now, after the destruction of the pipeline.’

‘Maybe...’ Lehmann was silent a moment, then came and stood at the edge of the desk looking down at DeVore. ‘I liked him, you know. Admired him.’

DeVore looked up, masking his surprise. He found it hard to believe that Stefan Lehmann was capable of liking
anyone
. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘he’s dead now. And life goes on. We’ve got to plan for the future. For the next stage of the War.’

‘Is that why you went to see those scum?’

DeVore stared past Lehmann a moment, studying the map on the wall behind him. Then he met his eyes again.

‘I have news for you, Stefan.’

The pink eyes hardened, the mouth tightened. ‘I know already.’

‘I see.’ DeVore considered a moment. ‘Who told you?’

‘Wiegand.’

DeVore narrowed his eyes. Wiegand. He was privy to all incoming messages, of course, but he had strict instructions not to pass on what he knew until he, DeVore, authorized it. It was a serious breach.

‘I’m sorry, Stefan. It makes it harder for us all.’

The Notice of Confiscation had come in only an hour before he had gone off to meet the
Ping Tiao
, hot on the heels of the news of Berdichev’s death. In theory it stripped Lehmann of all he had inherited from his father, making him a pauper, but DeVore had pre-empted the Notice some years back by getting Berdichev to switch vast sums from the estate in the form of loans to fictitious beneficiaries. Those ‘loans’ had long been spent – and more besides – on constructing further fortresses, but Lehmann knew nothing of that. As far as he was concerned, the whole sum was lost.

Lehmann was studying him intently. ‘How will it change things?’

DeVore set down the paper and sat back. ‘As far as I’m concerned it changes nothing, Stefan. All our lives are forfeit anyway. What difference does a piece of paper bearing the seals of the Seven make to that?’

There was the slightest movement in the young man’s ice-pale face. ‘I can be useful. You know that.’

‘I know.’

Good
, thought DeVore.
He understands. He’s learned his lessons well. There’s no room for sentimentality in what we’re doing here. What’s past is past. I owe him nothing for the use of his money.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, leaning forward and picking up the paper again.’You’re on the payroll now, Stefan. I’m appointing you lieutenant, as from this moment. Ranking equal with Wiegand.’

Yes
, he thought.
That should take the smile from Wiegand’s face.

When Lehmann had gone he stood and went across to the map again. In the bottom left-hand corner the carp-shaped area that denoted the Swiss Wilds was criss-crossed with lines, some broken, some solid. Where they met or ended were tiny squares, representing fortresses. There were twenty-two in all, but only fourteen of them – boxed in between Zagreb in the south-east and Zurich in the north-west – were filled in. These alone were finished. The eight fortresses of the western arm remained incomplete. In four cases they had yet to be begun.

Money. That was his greatest problem. Money for wages, food and weaponry. Money for repairs and bribes and all manner of small expenses. Most of all, money to complete the building programme: to finish the network of tunnels and fortresses that alone could guarantee a successful campaign against the Seven. The Confiscations had robbed him of many of his big investors. In less than three hours the remainder were due to meet him, supposedly to renew their commitments, though in reality, he knew, to tell him they had had enough. That was why Helmstadt was so important now.

Helmstadt. He had wooed the
Ping Tiao
with promises of weapons and publicity, but the truth was otherwise. There would be weapons, and publicity enough to satisfy the most egotistical of terrorist leaders, but the real fruit of the raid on the Helmstadt Armoury would be the two billion
yuan
DeVore would lift from the strongroom. Money that had been allocated to pay the expenses of more than one hundred and forty thousand troops in the eight garrisons surrounding the Wilds.

But the
Ping Tiao
would know nothing of that.

He turned away from the map and looked across at his desk again. The Notice of Confiscation lay where he had left it. He went across and picked it up, studying it again. It seemed simple on the face of it: an open acknowledgment of a situation that had long existed in reality – for Lehmann’s funds had been frozen from the moment Berdichev had fled to Mars, three years ago. But there were hidden depths in the document. It meant that the Seven had discovered evidence to link Stefan’s father to the death of the Minister Lwo Kang, and that, in its turn, would legitimize Tolonen’s action in the House in killing Lehmann Senior.

It was an insight into how the Seven were thinking. For them the War was over. They had won.

But DeVore knew otherwise. The War had not even begun. Not properly. The Confiscations and the death of T’angs notwithstanding, it had been a game until now; a diversion for the rich and bored; an entertainment to fill their idle hours. But now it would change. He would harness the forces stirring in the lowest levels. Would take them and mould them. And then?

He laughed and crumpled the copy of the Notice in his hand. Then Change would come. Like a hurricane, blowing through the levels, razing the City to the ground.

Major Hans Ebert set the drinks carefully on the tray, then turned and, making his way through the edge of the crowd that packed the great hall, went through the curtained doorway into the room beyond.

Behind him the reception was in full swing, but here, in the T’ang’s private quarters, it was peaceful. Li Shai Tung sat in the big chair to the left, his feet resting on a stool carved like a giant turtle shell. He seemed older and more careworn these days, his hair, once grey, a pure white now, like fine threads of ice, tied tightly in a queue behind his head. The yellow cloak of state seemed loose now on his thin, old man’s frame and the delicate perfection of the gold chain about his neck served merely to emphasize the frail imperfection of his flesh. Even so, there was still strength in his eyes, power enough in his words and gestures to dispel any thought that he was spent as a man. If the flesh had grown weaker, the spirit seemed unchanged.

Across from him, seated to the right of the ceremonial
kang
, was Tsu Ma, T’ang of West Asia. He sat back in his chair, a long, pencil-thin cheroot held absently in one hand. He was known to his acquaintances as ‘The Horse’, and the name suited him. He was a stallion, a thoroughbred in his late thirties, broad-chested and heavily muscled, his dark hair curled in elegant long pigtails, braided with silver and pearls. His enemies still considered him a dandy, but they were wrong. He was a capable, intelligent man for all his outward style, and since his father’s death he had shown himself to be a fine administrator; a credit to the Council of the Seven.

The third and last man in the anteroom was Hal Shepherd. He sat to Tsu Ma’s right, a stack of pillows holding him upright in his chair, his face drawn and pale from illness. He had been sick two weeks now, the cause as yet undiagnosed. His eyes, normally so bright and full of life, now seemed to protrude from their sockets, as if staring out from some deep inner darkness. Beside him, her head bowed, her whole manner demure, stood a young Han nurse from the T’ang’s household, there to do the sick man’s least bidding.

Ebert bowed, then crossed to the T’ang and stood there, the tray held out before him. Li Shai Tung took his drink without pausing from what he was saying, seeming not to notice the young major as he moved across to offer Tsu Ma his glass.

‘But the question is still what we should do with the Companies. Should we close them down completely? Wind them up and distribute their assets among our friends? Should we allow bids for them? Offer them on the Index as if we were floating them? Or should we run them ourselves, appointing stewards to do our bidding until we feel things have improved?’