by Nigel Price
Forty Nine
Without a mobile in the apartment, there was no way they could check what was on the SIM. They had left Mr Wai’s on the floor of the car where it had fallen when Miller had rammed into the back of them, and there was no way they were going to risk another pass in front of the police just to get it. Neither of them could think that it was anything but the SIM from Miller’s stolen phone. Why else would Mrs Yan have gone to the trouble of concealing it for safety in the memory stick case and then slipping it into Harry’s pocket in the underpass as she struggled in and out of consciousness prior to ending her sad life? Presumably she had originally hoped to pass it to Lisa when she went to her office. Then she could have given a full explanation of the whole miserable episode. But that never happened. And here they were, Harry and Lisa, naked in the kitchen, the SIM card before them.
Lisa shivered. Harry put down the SIM on the working top. Went through to the bathroom and found a single bath robe. He draped it round Lisa’s shoulders, then fastened a towel round his waist.
“What now?” he said.
“We have to get this to Hans. Whoever he is giving the documents to will want this as well. It probably ties everything together. At least I hope it does.”
“I’d bet on it. That’s what they were searching for in our rooms at The Golden Lotus,” Harry said. “They’d only do that if there was something important on it. Mrs Yan probably snatched the memory stick too, anything she thought might incriminate them. She wasn’t the stupid old peasant woman that Miller thought she was. She knew that all the important stuff is on the SIM card, so probably chucked the phone as too bulky. Chau’s thugs would have found it on her too easily. We just have to hope that the other members of the Politburo are sufficiently repelled by Ryder’s activities to exclude him from their company.”
“If it’s not already too late,” Lisa added.
There was a handful of hours until dawn. The traffic had disappeared from the nearby ring road, only the occasional bus and taxi droning past. Outside the apartment block, the police in the unmarked car would have changed shift. Harry reckoned it should be easy enough for him and Lisa to slip out past them. They would walk as if just another couple living in the block. So long as Harry concealed his western features, which was easily done.
“So this morning we begin a week of meaningless ceremonies,” Lisa said, “all rehearsed, the outcomes already decided.” There was a bitterness in her voice that didn’t sit comfortably with the face and character that Harry had come to know.
He looked at her. The robe hung open. Her body underneath had a golden hue in the dim light. Temples and treasure. A rediscovered land. Harry felt that, in a way, the past week with her had been like hunting through a drawer of photographs, long forgotten, and finding amongst them one that cut through time. A special one from a lost age before everything had started to go wrong. The realisation shot through him like a bullet.
He smiled and put an arm around her.
Lisa looked at him, puzzled by his expression. “What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Harry said. And instantly wondered why. “Do we just wait until Hans returns?” he quickly added.
“Probably best to. I’ve no idea where he’s gone so we don’t really have a choice.”
Harry looked at a wall clock. “Tired?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Bed then,” Harry replied.
So they turned off the lights and went back to bed.
Sleep was the last thing that occupied them, and it was nearly daybreak when they finally succumbed. When they did, it was to sleep more deeply than either had done for a very long time.
The noise that woke them was one that Harry had not heard for some years. Tank tracks. He blearily opened his eyes. Frowned as he tried to place the sound. The moment he did, he sat up, threw off the duvet and shot to the window. Lisa rubbed her eyes, gathered the duvet around her and joined him.
Smog obscured all but the block across the way. In good visibility they would have been able to catch a glimpse of the third ring road between the two buildings opposite. Today though, only sound came from it, without sight. And the sound was of armoured vehicles. Lisa too understood.
She rushed to the television and turned it on. The first channel she tried displayed a still shot of the Chinese flag. Robust martial music played. Even Harry recognised The East is Red, the song of the Cultural Revolution.
Holding the remote control in both tight hands, Lisa flicked through the channels. All of them were identical. The same flag, the same tune.
She looked at Harry, fear in her eyes. “What has happened?”
He was already snatching at his clothes and dressing. She rushed to do the same. “I can only think of one thing,” he answered. “Chau’s made his move. He must have got wind that he was about to be toppled. He’s cut some deal with the generals. What else can it be?”
“It could be all kinds of things,” she gabbled as she struggled into her trainers, tying the laces with clumsy fingers, her whole body still shocked. “Maybe a terrorist attack on the National Congress. This would be the sort of contingency plan that would lock down the capital. A news blackout until the government has regained control and found out exactly what’s happened. Then they reopen it all, and give it whatever spin the Politburo’s decided on.”
“Either way, there’s no point just sitting here,” Harry said. They both stood, fully dressed. The same thought hit them simultaneously. Lisa gave it voice. “Where do we go?”
“Out,” Harry said. “Anywhere. We can’t just sit here wondering. We can get out and take a look around.” He started towards the door, shifting the sideboard he had used to barricade it. “Come on.”
Lisa joined him. They unlocked and opened the door and left the apartment. When they got down to the atrium, Lisa stopped. “You have to cover your face,” she said. “The police …”
“I should think a random westerner will be the last thing on their minds.”
He was right. They exited the building. In the police car outside, the two men on duty were talking into a radio. Neither so much as looked up as Harry and Lisa went quickly past, heading for the small square nearby. On corners and outside the shops, groups of people chattered and gestured. Everyone was wondering what was happening. No one glanced at Harry or Lisa.
They made their way across the square and headed for the ring road. The closer they got, the louder the sound of tracked vehicles. At last they arrived at the tree-lined walkway bordering the great dusty expanse of the road. On a normal day, all lanes in both directions would have been jammed with cars and buses. Instead, there wasn’t a car or a bus to be seen. Only a long column of tanks and armoured personnel carriers rumbled past, their tracks squealing on the tarmac surface. Then a column of military trucks bearing soldiers. Their faces were expressionless like stone statues conjured into life but without spirits.
Lining the pavement, the people of Beijing looked on, wondering. Some pointed, some waved. None of the soldiers waved back. Just the stone stares.
“Surely this can’t have anything to do with Hans and the file?” Lisa said.
“Who knows? It might be something else altogether, but it seems a coincidence. There’s got to be something more than poisoned children behind this? That might have kept Chau from power, but any shame that stuck to him wouldn’t last forever. A few more worthwhile projects here and there. People forget. He’d have been in the clear in a year or two.”
“Maybe we underestimated his thirst for power,” Lisa replied.
“Could he organise this?” Harry said, looking at the tanks and troops.
“We’ve no idea who his friends are. Or what struggles have been going on in the background. We don’t even know whose side these tanks are on.”
Harry thought for a moment. “Well I can’t just sit in the apartment and wait. Let’s leave a note there in case Hans returns, then get into town.”
“Where to?”
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nbsp; “Tiananmen Square. The Great Hall of the People. People will be gathering. We can find out what’s going on.” He started back towards the apartment.
“Yes, great. Or be cut down by machineguns like 1989. Great idea, Harry.”
She followed in his wake. Back at the square they noticed shops were being shut. The coffee shop where they had sat the previous day had lowered its shutters. The last man out was fastening a padlock to secure it. Lisa asked him if he knew what was going on. In reply he stared at her suspiciously, mumbled something and hurried away.
The playground too was deserted. Children had been snatched indoors, parents sensing trouble.
Hurrying along the pavement, they approached the unmarked police car guarding Hans’ apartment. Harry hunched into his shirt collar, turning his face away. Drawing alongside, his step faltered. He stopped a couple of paces short. He stretched out his arm, holding back Lisa.
The side window had been smashed. Beads of glass littered the pavement. Harry stepped towards it. Stooped to look inside. The two plain clothes policemen were leaning against each other, sprawled across the gear box. The interior of the car was spattered with blood. The body nearest to Harry had two bullets holes in the temple.
Hands over her mouth, Lisa took a step back. Harry checked around. There was no one in sight. Everyone who might have been out and about was over by the ring road, drawn to the spectacle of armoured vehicles and troops flooding into the city.
There was a thump-thump in the sky of helicopters passing overhead, half a dozen of them. Troop carriers. Heading in the direction of the city centre.
“Tiananmen,” Harry said. “Whatever’s happening, it’s there.”
His gaze went to Hans’ block beside him. He found the window of the apartment where he and Lisa had spent the night making love. Through the dust covering the exterior of the large spread of windows, he could see the curtains were drawn back. There was movement inside.
Lisa was looking up too. “Hans is back,” she said.
“If he is he’s got company.” One of the figures moving inside the apartment stepped close to the window. It looked out, searched around, and found Harry looking up.
“Time to move,” Harry said, as he locked eyes with Clive Miller.
Fifty
They found the scratched and battered Chery parked where they had left it. Harry dug the keys out of his pocket, and tangled with them the tiny SIM. He dropped it. Swore, scrabbled to pick it up and stuffed it back in his pocket.
The engine started, its high-pitched buzz hardly the throaty roar Harry would have liked at the start of a car chase. They had a couple of minutes before Miller and his men would be out on the street and after them.
“Can you navigate to the centre of town?”
Lisa gave him one of her looks.
“Okay. Sorry.”
With the city built in a simple geometrical pattern, concentric squares of ring road fanning out from Tiananmen in the centre, it was never hard to find the way in. Harry shot the little car down the street until Lisa pointed the way to an underpass cutting under the third ring road. As Harry accelerated down it, a traffic cop tried to flag him down. Harry ignored him. There were other cars about but few of them heading into the centre.
“They must have worked out that you’d end up going to your boss,” Harry said, checking his mirrors. No sign of Miller yet. “If this is Chau triggering some kind of coup, have they already got Hans?”
“If they have then they’ve got the file and we’ve lost.”
“Yet they’re still looking for the SIM,” Harry said. “So there’s stuff on it that frightens them.”
“Maybe they just want to kill us to tie up loose ends?”
“That’s a cheerful thought,” Harry replied.
Another check in the rear-view mirror showed a distant blue dot. It veered round a corner coming into sight far behind them. “Here we go,” Harry said.
Lisa turned and saw the car. She tested her seat belt with a couple of tugs. “Go for it, Harry.”
He put his foot to the floor. With pretty much no result at all. If he had been on a horse and had dug his heels into its flanks, it had just turned round and looked at him with disdain.
Slowly, as the increased flow of petrol started to have an effect on the engine, the car gathered speed. The road was broad and sparsely occupied. One other car loomed in front of them and Harry swung around it. The alarmed driver stabbed his horn.
The BMW was gaining. Harry and Lisa shot over a crossroads. A cyclist went head over heels trying to miss them. Moments later the BMW ploughed straight over the bicycle, crushing it. The cyclist sat to one side gawping.
Miller closed up behind them. He rammed the rear bumper. As the day before, it lifted the Chery clear of the road and slammed it back down. Miller swung out into the middle of the road, trying to come alongside. No contest. With the greatest of ease he slid into position. The rear window opened and Gun Man jabbed a pistol at them. His broad face leered from behind the tiny iron sight, aiming at the closest target, Lisa.
Harry swung the car to the right, slamming it into the side of Miller’s. The smaller vehicle bounced off the larger one, but it did what he had intended – threw Gun Man off his aim. The pistol fired and missed. He dropped his weapon down the back of Miller’s seat and doubled over to hunt for it. For the briefest moment Harry had the pleasure of watching Miller rant.
“You okay?” he said to Lisa, doing his best to check on her and steer the car at the same time.
“I’m fine. Just watch the road,” she called back. “Give me the gun. I’ll take a shot at them.”
“You don’t know how to use it.”
“Give me the gun!”
“My pocket,” Harry said.
He felt her hands rummage and take the gun. She opened her window and twisted in her seat to aim at the BMW. She pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
“Safety’s on,” Harry said.
“I know that,” she snapped.
Harry took one hand off the wheel and tried to help, almost hitting a motorbike.
“Leave it!” Lisa shouted at him. She found the button and fiddled with it.
The BMW was swinging back towards them, setting up for another ramming.
Lisa aimed and fired. Harry saw Miller’s window shatter. The car veered away, Miller fighting with the wheel. Lisa studied the results of her shot and looked at the gun with approval.
“Shit, you’re a pro,” Harry said. “Grand Theft Auto?”
“Call of Duty: Black Ops 3.”
Then their own rear window did what Miller’s had just done. Glass showered over them. And another incomer, punching a hole in the dashboard. One more popped through the windscreen. A web of cracks fanned out from the bullet hole but the glass held.
This couldn’t go on. Harry knew their luck wouldn’t hold. He spun the wheel and shot the car down a side road.
“Where are you going?” she shouted.
The BMW had powered straight on. For the moment Harry had lost them.
“Don’t worry. I’ll bring it back on track …”
He did a ninety degree turn down the next side street, bringing him parallel to the road he had just left. “There,” he said smugly.
“Brake!”
Her scream struck him the same instant he saw the truck blocking their path. Filling the narrow side road, it was disgorging an enormous pile of sacks. Workmen looked up from their task at the sound of screeching brakes as Harry skidded to a halt, the car slewing round at right angles. The engine stalled and died. Harry turned the ignition. Nothing. He tried again. As dead as his dramatic escape.
“Out.”
Lisa protested once, then followed him.
“Help me,” Harry said. With the gears in neutral and one hand on the steering wheel through the open window, he pushed the car to the side of the road, Lisa adding her weight against the boot. “We’ll leave it here.”
“Now what?”
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bsp; “We run,” he said. He knew the direction because he recognised the narrow streets in the heart of old Beijing. They were close to Tiananmen Square and the vast walls of the Forbidden City. In side streets military trucks were parked in rows. Soldiers loitered on the corners in groups, armed, as if they were waiting but didn’t know why.
“We’ve got to make contact with Hans,” Harry said. “We need a phone.”
“Easy,” Lisa answered. A restaurant stood to one side. Tables arranged along the broad pavement outside were deserted, the diners opting for air they could breathe. Huddled behind the windows, they peered out, watching the troops. Lisa charged in. Through the glass Harry saw her go to the nearest table where three young girls were chatting. One of them was texting. Lisa spoke to her. There was an exchange. The girl shook her head. Her friends spoke up. Offered Lisa a mobile.
Lisa stabbed in a number and put the mobile to her ear. Then she was talking rapidly. The conversation was brief. She signed off and handed back the phone. She pulled out her wallet to offer payment but the girls waved it away.
“Got him,” she said, running back to Harry.
“That was easy.”
She shrugged. “He said he can meet us at a place I know. In Zhongshan Park. It is just the other side of the Forbidden City. This way,” she pointed.
“Just like that?” Harry said.
“Why not? I told him about the SIM. He said he has handed the file to his contact. If the SIM card contains what we think it does, he said it will finish Ryder Chau.”
Harry looked after her as she hurried away. “Are you sure about this?” He followed. “Lisa.”
“Come on, Harry. Miller might be here any moment.”
She led the way alongside the towering walls of the Forbidden City. They seemed to go on forever. In fine weather there would have been the noise of loud speakers from inside, briefing tour groups on the history of the place. Delegates to the Congress would have been taking the opportunity to see the sights while in from the provinces. It would have been a grand occasion. A chance not to be missed. Today, with pollution levels off the scale, there was only the noise of the occasional car or truck. Apart from the soldiers there were few other people about.