Wingrove, David - Chung Kuo 02 (43 page)

Tolonen handed
Karr the knife, then sat back on his knees, rubbing at his ribs
again, a momentary flicker of pain in his face. "Okay. Let's see
what it is."

Karr slit the
Advocate's tunic open, exposing the flesh; then, leaning right over
the body, he dug deeply into the flesh, drawing the blade across the
corpse's chest.

Blood welled,
flowed freely down the corpse's sides. They had not expected that.
But there was something. Not a plate, as they'd both expected, but
something much smaller, softer. Karr prised the knife beneath it and
lifted it out. It was a wallet. A tiny black wallet no bigger than a
child's hand. He frowned, then handed it across.

Tolonen wiped it
against his sleeve, then turned it over, studying it. It seemed like
an ordinary pouch, the kind one kept tobacco in. For a moment he
hesitated. What if it was a bomb? He ought to hand it over to the
experts. But he was impatient to know, for the man—and he
was
a man, there was no doubting that now—had almost killed
him. He had been that close.

Gently he
pressed the two ends of the wallet's rim toward each other. The mouth
of the pouch gaped open. He reached in with two fingers, hooking out
the thing within.

He stared at it
a moment, then handed it across to Karr. He had known. The moment
before he had opened it he had known what would be inside. A stone. A
single white
wei chi
stone. Like a calling card. To let the
T'ang know who had killed him.

Tolonen met
Karr's eyes and smiled bitterly.

"DeVore.
This was DeVore's work."

Karr looked
down. "Yes, and when he hears about it he'll be disappointed.
Very disappointed."

Tolonen was
quiet a moment, brooding, then he looked back at Karr. "Something's
wrong, Gregor. My instincts tell me he's up to something while we're
here, distracted by this business. I must get back. At once. Jelka .
. ."

Karr touched his
arm. "We'll go at once."

* *
*

devore turned in
his chair and looked across at his lieutenant. "What is it,
Wiegand?"

"I thought
you should know, sir. The Han has failed. Marshal Tolonen is still
alive."

"Ah. . ."
He turned, staring out of the long window again, effectively
dismissing the man. For a while he sat there, perfectly still,
studying the slow movement of cloud above the distant peaks, the thin
wisps of cirrus like delicate feathers of snow against the rich blue
of the sky. Then he turned back.

He smiled-Like
Wiegand, they would all be thinking he had tried to kill Tolonen, but
that wasn't what he'd wanted. Killing him would only make him a
martyr. Would strengthen the Seven. No, what he wanted was to destroy
Tolonen. Day by day. Little by little.

Yes. Tolonen
would have found the stone. And he would know it was his doing.

There was a
secret elevator in his room, behind one of the full-length wall
charts. He used it now, descending to the heart of the warren. At the
bottom a oneway mirror gave him a view of the corridor outside. He
checked that it was clear, then stepped out. The room was to the
left, fifty
ch'i
along the corridor, at the end of a
cul-de-sac hewn out of the surrounding rock.

At the door he
paused and took a small lamp from his pocket, then examined both the
locks. They seemed untouched. Satisfied, he tapped in the
combinations and placed his eye against the indented pad. The door
hissed back.

The girl was
asleep. She lay there, facedown on her cot, her long, ash-blond hair
spilling out across her naked shoulders.

He had found her
in one of the outlying villages. The physical resemblance had struck
him at once. Not that she would have fooled anyone as she was, but
eighteen months of good food and expert surgery had transformed her,
making the thousand
yuan
he'd paid for her seem the merest
trifle. As she was now she was worth a million, maybe ten.

He closed the
door and crossed the room, pulling the sheet back slowly, careful not
to wake her, exposing the fullness of her rump, the elegance of her
back. He studied her a moment, then reached down, shaking her until
she woke and turned, looking up at him.

She was so like
her. So much so that even her "father" would have had
difficulty telling her from the real thing.

DeVore smiled
and reached out to brush her face tenderly with the back of his hand,
watching as she pushed up against it gratefully. Yes. She was nearly
ready now.

"Who are
you?" he asked her gently. "Tell me what your name is."

She hesitated
then raised her eyes to his again. "Jelka," she said. "My
name is Jelka Tolonen."

* *
*

jelka WAS
KICKING for Siang's throat when the far wall blew in, sending smoke
and debris billowing across the practice arena.

The shock wave
threw her backward, but she rolled and was up at once, facing the
direction of the explosion, seeing at a glance that Siang was dead,
huge splinters jutting from his back.

They came fast
through the smoke—three men in black clingsuits, breathing
masks hiding their features, their heads jerking from side to side,
their guns searching.

Ping Tiao
assassins. She knew it immediately. And acted . . .

A backflip, then
a singlehanded grab for the exercise rope, her other hand seeking the
wall bars.

The middle
assassin fired even as she dropped. Wood splintered next to her. She
had only to survive a minute and help would be here.

A minute. It was
too long. She would have to attack.

She went low,
slid on her belly; then she was up, jumping high, higher than she had
ever leaped before, her body curled into a tight ball. All three were
firing now, but the thick smoke was confusing them; they couldn't see
properly through their masks.

She went low
again, behind Siang, taking a short breath before turning and kicking
upward.

One of the men
went down, his leg broken. She heard his scream and felt her blood
freeze. The other two turned, firing again. Siang's body jerked and
seemed to dance where it lay. But Jelka had moved on, circling them,
never stopping, changing direction constantly, dipping low to
breathe.

In a moment they
would realize what she was doing and keep their fire at floor level.
Then she would be dead.

Unless she
killed them first.

The fact that
there were two hindered them. They couldn't fire continuously for
fear of killing each other. As she turned, they had to try to follow
her, but the rapidity of her movements, the unpredictability of her
changes of direction, kept wrong-footing them. She saw one of them
stumble and took her chance, moving in as he staggered up, catching
him beneath the chin with stiffened fingers. She felt the bones give
and moved away quickly, coughing now, the smoke getting to her at
last.

Fifteen seconds.
Just fifteen seconds.

Suddenly—from
the far end of the arena where the wall had been—there was
gunfire. As she collapsed she saw the last of the assassins crumple,
his body lifted once, then once again, as the shells ripped into him.

And as she
passed into unconsciousness she saw her father standing there, the
portable cannon at his hip, its fat muzzle smoking.

tOLONEN
SAT at his daughter's bedside, his eyes brimming with tears.
"It was all a terrible mistake, my love. They were after me."
Jelka shook her head, but a huge lump sat in her throat at the
thought of what had happened.

She had spent
the last ten days in bed, suffering from shock, the after-reaction
fierce, frightening. It had felt like she was going mad. Her father
had sat with her through the nights, holding her hands, comforting
her, robbing himself of sleep to be with her and help her through the
worst of it.

Now she felt
better, but still it seemed that everything had changed. Suddenly,
hideously, the world had become a mask—a paper-thin veil behind
which lay another nightmare world. The walls were no longer quite so
solid as they had seemed, and each white-suited attendant seemed to
conceal an assassin dressed in black.

The world had
flipped over in her mind. Was now a thing of menace, a jagged
landscape of threat.

It made it no
better for her that they had been after her father. No, that simply
made things worse. Far worse. For she had had vivid dreams—dreams
in which he was dead and she had gone to see him in the T'ang's Great
Hall, laid out in state, clothed from head to foot in the white cloth
of death.

She stared at
him a moment, her eyes narrowed slightly, as if she saw through the
flesh to the bone itself; and while he met her staring eyes
unflinchingly, something in the depths of him squirmed and tried to
break away.

They had been
Ping Tiao.
A specially trained cell. But not Security-trained,
thank the gods.

He looked down
at where his hands held those of his daughter. The audacity of the
Ping Tiao
in coming for him had shaken them. They knew now
that the danger was far greater than they had estimated. The War had
unleashed new currents of dissent; darker, more deadly currents that
would be hard to channel.

His own
investigations had drawn a blank. He did not know how they would have
known his household routines. Siang? It was possible, but now that
Siang was dead he would never know. And if not Siang, then who?

It made him feel
uneasy—an unease he had communicated to Li Shai Tung when they
were alone together. "You must watch yourself,
Chieh Hsia,"
he had said. "You must watch those closest to you. For there
is a new threat. What it is, I don't exactly know. Not yet. But it
exists. It's real."

Bombs and guns.
He was reaping the harvest he had sown. They all were. But what other
choice had they had?

To lay down
and die. The only other choice.

Tolonen looked
at his daughter, sleeping now, and felt all the fierce warmth of his
love for her rise up again. A vast tide of feeling. And with it came
an equally fierce pride in her. How magnificent she had been! He had
seen the replay from the Security cameras and witnessed the fast,
flashing deadliness of her.

He relinquished
her hand and stood, stretching the tiredness from his muscles.

They would come
again. He knew it for a certainty. They would not rest now until they
had snatched his breath from him. His instinct told him so. And
though it was not his way to wait passively for things to come to
him, in this he found himself helpless, unable to act. They were like
shadows. One strove to fight them and they vanished. Or left a
corpse, which was no better.

No, there was no
center to them. Nothing substantial for him to act against. Only an
idea. A nihilistic concept. Thinking this, he felt his anger rise
again, fueled by a mounting sense of impotence.

He would have
crushed them if he could. One by one. Like bugs beneath his heel. But
how did one crush shadows?

* *
*

fei yen jumped
down from her mount, letting the groom lead it away, then turned to
face the messenger.

"Well? Is
he at home?"

The servant
bowed low, offering the sealed note. Fei Yen snatched it from him
impatiently, moving past him as if he were not there, making her way
toward the East Palace. As she walked, she tore at the seal,
unfolding the single sheet. As she'd expected, it was from Li Yuan.
She slowed, reading what he had written, then stopped, her teeth
bared in a smile. He would be back by midday, after four days away on
his father's business. She looked about her at the freshness of the
morning, then laughed, and pulling her hair out of the tight bun she
had secured it in to ride, shook her head. She would prepare herself
for him. Would bathe and put on fresh clothes. Perhaps the new silks
he had sent her last week.

She hurried on,
exhilarated, the delights of her early morning ride and the joy of
his return coursing like twin currents in her blood.

She was about to
go into her rooms when she heard noises farther down the corridor, in
the direction of Li Yuan's private offices. She frowned. That part of
the East Palace was supposed to be off-bounds while Li Yuan was away.
She took two steps down the corridor, then stopped, relieved. It was
only Nan Ho. He was probably preparing the offices for his master's
return. She was about to turn away, not wishing to disturb the Master
of the Inner Chamber, when she realized what it was she had found
strange. There had been voices . . .

She walked
toward him, was halfway down the corridor when he turned.

"Lady Fei.
. ."

She could see at
once that he had not expected her. But it was more than that. His
surprise in finding her there had not turned to relief as, in normal
circumstances, it ought. No. It was almost as if he had something to
hide.

"You know
Prince Yuan will be here in two hours, Master Nan?"

He bowed his
head deeply. "He sent word, my Lady. I was preparing things for
him."

"My husband
is fortunate to have such an excellent servant as you, Master Nan.

Might I see your
preparations?"

He did not lift
his head, but she could sense the hesitation in him and knew she had
been right.

"You wish
to see, my Lady?"

"If you
would, Master Nan. I promise not to disturb anything. I realize my
husband has his set ways, and I'd not wish to cause you further
work."

"They are
but rooms, my Lady . . ."

"But rooms
are like clothes. They express the man. Please, Master Nan, indulge
my curiosity. I would like to see how Prince Yuan likes his room to
be. It would help me as a wife to know such a thing."