‘They’re busy,’ Timur said, and threw down some notes. He checked his watch. ‘I have to get ready for the show.’
They strolled into the velvet night, crossing over Zhongshan Road to a pedestrian walkway that ran along the Puxi side of the river, side by side, not touching, but close enough to sense the heat of the other. Jaq caught her breath at the light show, skyscrapers blazing into the night sky.
Barely aware of the promenaders who crowded the Bund, families from the country who stopped and gawped, children who skipped and sang, Shanghai sophisticates who glided past on roller-skates, the man beside her filled her thoughts.
‘If you don’t want to come to the show, will you meet me afterwards?’
There was a moment, a fork in the road, when she could have made a different choice, listened to the alarm bells ringing in her brain. She could have waited for him, gone for a drink in a cool Shanghai bar, told him the truth and openly enlisted his help. Perhaps then things would have turned out differently.
She put her hands to his face, feeling the light stubble, drew him towards her and kissed him. Gently at first, tentative, exploratory.
His scent was new, spearmint mixed with spice, but the rush of desire was disturbingly familiar. Everything peripheral disappeared as she moved closer, pressing her breasts against his overdeveloped pectorals, running her hands lightly over the athletic body under his coat, closing the contact, chasing the electric tingle, melting inside.
She pulled away suddenly.
‘I have to go.’
‘Jaq, wait . . .’
‘Good luck!’ she called over her shoulder, turning to hide his mobile phone as she slipped it into her bag.
Shanghai, China
The square-faced driver raised his phone and took a burst of pictures. The quality was poor, the bright lights of Pudong throwing Puxi into relative darkness, but he’d captured enough to remove any doubt.
So, suspects 47 and 69 were in cahoots. No doubt about it. He thought his boss was paranoid, that they just happened to travel on the same flight, but perhaps that’s why Yan Bing was the boss and he was just a hired hand.
And what would his favourite fighter, Mico, make of all this? She had a soft spot for the ‘Masters of Disguise’. She’d hired them for the Hop! tour and was attending every date throughout China. She had her favourite, that much was clear. Would she tolerate a rival?
Mico might just pay him for the information. And pay even more to make the problem go away. Nothing better than having two sources of income for the same task.
Maybe Yan Bing wasn’t the only smart one.
Shanghai, China
Back in her tiny hotel room, Jaq set Timur’s phone to silent – it had been ringing almost continuously since she’d got off the metro – and set about unlocking it. A six-number PIN with ten options for each number – zero to nine – meant a million possible combinations. If she entered one every six seconds, it would take her sixty-nine days to crack the code. And if the security setting was on, the phone would lock down after a handful of failed attempts. Fortunately, she’d watched him unlock it over dinner. Middle right, bottom right, repeated three times.
Her own phone rang. She ignored it. Timur had probably figured out who’d liberated the phone from his inside coat pocket. But he had a show to do, and she had a couple of hours’ grace before he came after her. An engineer knows how to plan.
She connected the two phones with a short cable and started to copy his data. Flicking through the different apps, she saw that it was light on email traffic but chock-full of photos, which is where she started.
The first picture to capture her attention was a factory entrance, a large sign with three green recycling arrows inside a triangular flask: the Krixo logo. There was no doubt that Timur had been to Shingbo, and no doubt that there had been a working factory there at the time. The photos were grouped in files; the Master of Disguise was clearly a well-organised chap.
In a folder marked ‘Shopping List’ were high-quality pictures of museum exhibits, ancient Chinese jade: a horse, a water buffalo, a dragon, an elephant, jugs and cups, plates and bowls, carved figures. Lists of sizes and weights. Then the names and addresses of museums in Europe: Durham, Stockholm, Lisbon. Floor plans, wiring diagrams, alarm specifications.
In another folder, a set of newspaper articles.
She stared at the headline from the Northern Echo. The theft from Durham University Oriental Museum happened on the day she went to tell Vikram and Sophie that the Krixo factory had vanished. She remembered seeing it on the news that same evening. And suddenly a piece of the jigsaw snapped into place. Of course! The young man at Durham train station, the one she’d assumed was a student – she’d seen him again, more recently.
She clicked on the ‘Swim Team’ folder and flicked through the pictures. What a very beautiful group of athletes they were. A tragedy that they were reduced to stripping for money. She stopped and stared at the red-headed Adonis. No doubt about it – that was the man she’d seen on the day of the robbery.
She scratched her head. So, the Masters of Disguise were art thieves as well. Masquerading as strippers. Sounded improbable, and yet . . .
She flicked forward to ‘Active’. A folder with the floor plan of the Hénán Bówùyuàn Museum in Zhengzhou. Wiring diagrams with Chinese annotations. Were the swim team also stealing to order in China, using the Hop! tour as a cover?
Or was it worse than that? The older newspaper articles were far more sinister.
CHINESE GANGS TERRORISE ENGLAND
Is there a link between the murder of a London auctioneer and that of a university professor?
New evidence has emerged that Professor John Tench – emeritus professor at Teesside University, who died in hospital from injuries sustained in a savage attack in his home – attended the controversial auction of ancient Chinese artefacts presided over in London by auctioneer Bernard Ashley-Cooper, who was brutally murdered at his £5 million mansion in Chelsea earlier this week.
Both men sustained multiple knife wounds and, in both cases, a domestic pet belonging to the victim was cruelly dismembered.
Dr David Woolly, a social anthropologist at the University of Salford, and expert in Triad gang activity, speculated that the manner of both attacks is the hallmark of a Chinese gang known as Lingchi. He added that the jade lovers’ cup, sold by Ashley-Cooper for £10 million, was once owned by Qianlong, the Qing dynasty emperor notorious for executing his enemies by slow slicing: death by one thousand cuts.
A WeChat notification flashed across the screen of the pilfered phone.
She clicked on the app. Her heart raced at the sender’s icon – green recycling arrows inside a triangular flask – the Krixo logo. She couldn’t read the Chinese characters that made up most of the brief message, but the arabic numerals gave a date and a time. A meeting? Where? And why was someone from the elusive Krixo arranging to meet with Timur? She took a picture of the message with her phone.
Who was Timur? An athlete? A stripper? A thief? Part of a gang of sadistic murderers? And what was his connection with Krixo?
Vladivostok, Russia
An eagle rose from the sea, wings spreading to the full two-and-a-half-metre span, dark brown feathers flanking snow-white shoulders, a silver fish writhing in its yellow talons. It soared up the hill above Vladivostok and passed over the hospice, the Palace of Death, where the old man lay on his narrow bed. As he slept the dream came again.
Nina, by the lake. Sitting this time. Something in her arms wrapped in muslin. The lovers’ cup! She has the lovers’ cup, and it is perfect, exactly as it was when they first met. She reaches in, detaches the first lid, the circle of flowers. She pins it to her tunic. She reaches back in, removes the second lid, the circle of fire, and holds it out to him. He is running, running, but not moving . . .
He woke with tears streaming down his cheeks and memories shredding his soul.
They met after work one day, walking by the sid
e of the Ru river, near the power station. Beyond the transformers was a set of outbuildings, which were always locked. Nina led Dmytry to the furthest one, deep in the forest, an old switch room no longer in use.
The room was bare, empty apart from an old electrical panel. Nina slipped behind it, propped a bamboo ladder up against the back of the old panel and climbed up, sliding a concealed trapdoor aside and climbing into the roof space. Dmytry followed and she pulled the ladder up and closed the hatch behind them.
‘Wait here,’ she said.
Dmytry crouched in the darkness and tried to regulate his breathing. His heart was beating so loudly, the blood coursing through his veins faster than the mighty river outside. Could she hear it?
The loft space smelt of sun-dried straw and pine needles. A match flared and fizzed, the burst of bright light softening into the warm glow of an oil lamp.
It took a few minutes for his eyes to adjust. The loft was bigger than he would have guessed. There was room for a small trestle table and chair, and a series of wooden crates.
‘Come,’ she said, indicating the chair for him to sit.
She unpacked the first box, wiping away the straw dust with a soft white cloth. The little statue stood six inches high, pale celadon, a man and a boy and a deer. She placed it on the table in front of him.
‘May I touch?’
Did she blush, or was it just a trick of the light?
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
He inspected the carving, holding it to the light, turning it slowly.
He felt Nina’s breath on his neck, smelt her honeyed fragrance, and his own fire burned brightly.
‘So beautiful.’ He stared into her dark eyes as he held it out to her.
‘Shhh.’ She put a finger to her lips and snuffed the lamp. In the darkness, he heard it too. Thwack, thwack. The sound of an axe chopping through a fallen branch. Voices. Men gathering firewood for the furnaces.
When he first saw the backyard furnace arrive in the village, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Even as a civil engineer, he knew enough about steelmaking to realise that something so primitive wouldn’t produce anything useful.
But no one at the commune would listen to him. People turned white, began to shake, whispered stories about what happened to those who tried to reason with the authorities. And what happened to their families.
At night the town glowed orange, red sparks and flames lit up the sky. By day they cut down more trees to keep it stoked up like an enormous, insatiably hungry baby. And all the baby produced was excrement – nu shi ge la.
The pig iron they produced was brittle, useless. But the party officials were only interested in the weight of production, not the quality. They had targets, meaningless numbers, quotas that had to be met.
When the villagers ran out of scrap iron, they started to bring their cooking pots and hoes, their hammers and plough blades, nails and animal halters, water pipes and wheels, bicycles and bed springs. The things they needed to live, to farm, to cook, to repair their houses and keep their carts on the road.
And still they were out there, stripping the lovely mountain forest bare. The Chinese had been expert steelmakers since 500 BC. How could they forget so fast?
He let out a sigh as the footsteps receded. They waited in silence until the only sound was the water lapping against the shore, the wind in the trees and their own hearts beating in unison.
‘Look at this,’ she said, lighting the lamp again.
The green jade shimmered as if it had a life of its own, a fire inside. The serpentine body, layered with scales, rose from muscular legs, the broad feet ending in curved talons. The wings were partly folded against its back, and the long neck and head were ridged with triangular thorns, the mouth slightly open to reveal sharp teeth. Almost alive in his hands, the artist had captured the sinuous movement, a moment of action frozen in time, solidified into one of the most beautiful objects Dmytry had ever seen. So intricate, so delicate, there were patterns within the patterns.
The dragon was exquisite, but Nina took his breath away. He closed his eyes and breathed in her fragrance.
A rustling sound told him that Nina was packing the dragon back in its bed of straw. ‘We should go,’ she said.
His heart sank in disappointment. ‘We can come again?’
‘There’s more to see,’ she said. ‘And touch.’
His heart skipped a beat. He blinked hard as the harsh light of the switch room invaded the darkness. Nina held the trapdoor open for him.
‘Be careful,’ she said.
If only he had heeded her advice.
They met as often as they could, in the loft of the old switch room beside the power station, away from the prying eyes of the villagers, away from her father’s trusting smile. The forest had gone, the trees chopped down to fuel the backyard furnaces that turned useful metal objects into brittle pig iron, of no use to anyone except the party statisticians.
They would arrive separately. Dmytry first, careful that no one saw him, carrying a concealed picnic inside some rolled-up drawings or a tripod case. Nina would watch and wait. If it wasn’t safe, she would go home, and he would loiter in the emptiness where the old electrical panel used to be before it was taken apart and fed to the furnace.
But usually, he didn’t have long to wait.
They would eat first. The visiting Russians were well supplied, but he could see that the villagers were desperately short of food. Dmytry loved the moment when Nina chose an object. This was their pretence for coming here. Chinese lessons, through the stories of priceless objects. The unspoken rule was that he could hold her while she talked. Sometimes he pressed his chest to her back, his chin resting on her shoulder, his lips nuzzling her neck, his hands around her waist. Sometimes she would sit beside him on the chair, a warm thigh pressed against his; if he was lucky, she would sit in his lap. When she finished the story and he’d answered her questions correctly, she allowed him one long kiss before pulling away to leave first.
He fell in love, head over heels.
Zhengzhou, China
The town of Zhengzhou was gridlocked. Car horns beeped, windows were lowered and heads leaned out, shouting, coughing and retreating.
Jaq emerged from Zhengzhou train station into a diffuse yellow light and stood blinking in surprise. The capital of Henan Province – the most populous region in China – boasted a spacious, modern town centre with a tall central tower and several buildings that resembled giant alien eggs scattered around a lake. A city of ten million people, and yet she had never heard of it until yesterday.
The receptionist at the Shanghai hotel had translated the WeChat message on Timur’s phone. He was meeting Wang from Krixo in the forest of pagodas at the Shaolin Temple complex, Dengfeng. And Jaq planned to be there.
Before leaving Shanghai, Jaq had employed Speedy and his motorbike to return the phone to Timur. With strict instructions to wait until the next call, answer it and say he’d found it on the Bund before arranging its return. On no account should he mention her involvement. Once she’d got that job done and paid for, she’d texted Natalie for advice, checked out of the Shanghai hotel and taken an overnight train west.
‘Gōngjiāo zhàn?’ She knew the Mandarin word for bus station, but her enquiries were met with blank stares. A few fellow passengers replied to her question with questions of their own, and then she was completely lost.
‘Dengfeng?’ Her destination. The officials seemed disinclined to help, even though their main occupation appeared to be staring into space. One after another they waved her back towards the train station with a frown. Language was her superpower, but China was her kryptonite. Jaq had never felt so helpless, so alien in another country.
‘Can I help?’ A Chinese man walked towards her, moving upstream against the crowd, dressed in a sharp business suit.
‘I’m heading to Dengfeng.’
‘To the Shaolin Temple?’
Timur was meeting Wang at the Shaolin Temple.
But how did this stranger know where she was going?
She narrowed her eyes. ‘What makes you think that?’
He laughed. ‘You want to go to Dengfeng. No one goes to Dengfeng unless they’re going to the temple. It’s famous.’ His accent was American. Probably he learned his English from the TV.
‘So how do I get there?’
‘Best pick up an organised tour from your hotel.’
Jaq shook her head. ‘I haven’t got much cash.’
‘You need a cashpoint?’ He pointed to the hole in the wall.
She shook her head. Vikram still hadn’t paid her and she’d reached the limit on all her cards.
He frowned. A foreigner in China without money must be a novelty.
‘Just point me in the right direction for the bus.’
He waved a slender hand back the way she’d come. ‘The bus station is inside the train station.’
Of course, how stupid. China was brand new; all this infrastructure had been built in the last decade. If you could start from scratch, on a blank canvas, why not integrate everything? Connecting the airport, high-speed train, bus and bicycles for hire at every intersection.
The businessman consulted his phone. ‘The fast buses leave every half hour. Get off at the last stop, the old bus station in Dengfeng, and then pick up a number eight to Shaolin.’ He opened a notebook and scribbled something down in Chinese characters. ‘Here.’ He tore the page from the notebook. ‘Show this to the driver.’
‘Thanks,’ Jaq said, taking the paper. ‘You speak good English.’
‘I should hope so.’ He smiled. ‘I’m an American citizen.’ And he was gone.
Bolas. What an ass. Don’t judge by appearances alone. Jaq hid her embarrassment in brisk steps in the direction the businessman had indicated. The bus to Dengfeng pulled in a few minutes early. Jaq joined what looked like a queue, standing behind a young woman with a crying baby. The gap between Jaq and the young mother was clearly misjudged, based on an English sense of personal space, and within minutes half a dozen people had forced their way in front of her. A crowd of people pushed and jostled forward as the bus doors hissed open. Jaq stood back and let them go, waiting until the end. The only seat remaining was right at the front, next to the mother who was now discreetly nursing her baby.
The Chemical Reaction Page 24