by Aston, Tom
Thump! What the hell? Something flew past his head, into the cloud. Stone turned, crouching into the wall, a soldier looking instinctively for cover. There was nothing there. No sound. Nothing to be seen. Only a man-sized tunnel where he’d walked through the still, dead cloud of the mist. He wasn’t dreaming though, he’d heard that dull thump as it flew past and hit something. Someone had thrown a rock, or maybe a clod of earth from behind him, but it had flown past and landed harmlessly. What the hell was it? He turned again and edged further into the cloud.
What had he expected? Some malign black tube, whose blue lights flickered as it talked to him in staccato English? It was a black cylinder, granite-like, standing upright on a concrete plinth, almost reaching to the top of the tunnel. Blue halogen lamps lit it from four sides. The electrical and cooling plant were behind it in a tunnel, just as Semyonov described, and beyond it a huge yellow-black warning sign in Chinese, as big as Stone himself.
非 请 勿 进
核 能 源
FEI QING WU JIN
Stone loved the way they put in the Roman letters. As if it would help anyone, Chinese or not. The first bit was something like Strictly No Entry. The symbol for radioactivity said the rest. Huge power lines lay in coils behind the sign, then snaked away to the reactor somewhere beyond in the darkness of the tunnels.
Hope they’ve done their risk assessment.
The really strange bit was that the black cylinder, squatting there on the concrete plinth, was not clear of obstruction, clean and looking well kept. It was surrounded by debris, covered with rock and dirt, stuck to its sides.
Stone could hazard a guess here. The rocks contained a large percentage of iron. He was in a tunnel, actually bored within an ancient meteorite. There was a large percentage of iron in the meteor, iron being the commonest element in the universe aside from hydrogen itself. Space is full of the stuff. Stone stepped up and tried to pull away one of the shards of rock stuck to the side of the cylinder. It was stuck fast, held tight by the superconducting magnets. He’d seen one of these things once, in a lab at university. They’ll rip a credit card out of your pocket and send it flying across the room. The cylinder had dragged in loose rocks from many metres around. One had just gone whistling past his head. It was another reason to power the thing down to hibernation. Impossible to move it otherwise. Certainly impossible to get it in the cage.
Stone stumbled around, wafting the mist aside. It wasn’t a concrete plinth the Machine was sitting on, but a large flat truck. The Machine, the powerpack and the cooler were all on the flat truck, as Semyonov had described. The powerdown controls were on the large square slab of batteries nearby, according to Semyonov. They were there to smooth the power supply and protect from outages. They’d been humming constantly. He found them easily enough, but the powerdown controls were harder to find.
Wuuuuurg. Wuuuuurg. A noise behind him. Loud. Like an alarm, an urgent klaxon behind in the tunnel. Stone went back, half running, half walking. What on earth was going on? He made it through the mist, waving his arms like a lunatic.
‘It’s me, Stone,’ he shouted English. ‘It’s OK. Semyonov sent me!’ Shouting into the mist of the tunnel. At what? Who? Were there cameras on him? If there were he hadn’t s seen them. Maybe he’d hit an alarm by touching the power system over there.
Stone changed tack, crouched right in by the wall. The thing could have it’s own defence system Semyonov had forgotten about. Guns, gases, lasers? It could be absolutely anything down there.
Wuuuuurg. Wuuuuurg. The alarm continued. He needed to be on his mettle. His heart rate had slowed. He was ready for it, whatever it was. Immediate, maximum violence if he needed to. He had to take it slowly. If he came out of the mist and just showed himself… But what, or who, was it? If it was a radiation leak he needed to run. Stone flattened himself to the rocky floor of the tunnel and eased forward. He came gently, slowly out of the freezing mist. Warmth suddenly on his face – he was sweating hot after coming out of the Nitrogen mist.
Sheeee-Hshawww.
He breathed slowly, steadily into the apparatus. No way you could get over-excited with this thing on your face in any case. There it was, ahead in the half-light. A tiny red light ahead of him, flashing in time with the klaxon. Stone stood up and walked over.
It was a telephone. He picked up.
‘Stone?’ said a crackly American voice. ‘It’s Virginia. Something’s happened. You’d better come back up.’
Chapter 71 - 9:23am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China
Carslake’s stone cell was like the others. Square, high ceiling, stone walls. Grey and bare. Damp. There was an easy chair from about 1965 - Cultural Revolution red of course.
The bed was too small for Carslake, and narrow. There was a nice red pattern to that too. It was Carslake’s blood. Virginia had come to find him and wake him up, but had to leave to throw up.
Now Semyonov was in there, in an electric wheel chair, health improving all the time. His unmoving face gazed down on the scene. Stone wondered if Virginia knew what The Man was thinking, because nobody else did.
Carslake had been killed wearing only his shorts. It would have been dark in that room while he slept - dark as a sealed, stone tomb. There was one bright light on the ceiling, and when that was out, no chink from any other source. The body lay beside the bed. His chest hairs were graying, and though he’d seemed lazy, Carslake’s body was fit. Built, in fact. There were traces of grey roots in his hair, and unbelievably, his moustache. This man had dyed his hair. He was older than he looked.
Carslake, evidently, had been a man who looked after himself. Dyed his hair, trimmed his fingernails – but cultivated the straggly hair and moustache. Not all he seemed then. Maybe Semyonov had noticed that, like he noticed everything else.
Determining cause of death didn’t exactly require the services of a path-lab. A deep cut across the front of his neck, five centimeters deep, through the windpipe and carotid arteries. It does the trick in most cases. Carslake’s fingernails were neatly trimmed though.
Stone disgusted himself when he looked at these things so dispassionately. He was already going over unarmed combat and assassination manuals in his mind. Some of those methods were as old as the hills, and this was one of them. The manuals he himself had used were written for SOE in World War Two. Only the photos were updated.
Despite the litres of Carslake’s blood around the place, this had been no fight with blades. The cutting mark extended full circle around the man’s neck. The tongue stuck out, and the eyes bulged wide in silent shock. Strangulation. Garrotting – that was the technical term used in the books. Valued as an assassination method because it was silent. There were two variants. The “compression”, and the “cutter”. As Carslake’s head was half-severed, so it could be safely said this was the “cutter”. The assassin would have woken Carslake somehow. Carslake stands bolt upright, half-asleep. The killer flips the wire over his head from behind. The classic method is to stamp hard on the back of the right knee to unbalance, crossing the wire at the back and tightening. In this case, the killer had been behind Carslake, flipped the wire over his head, then turned himself back to back with him. The assassin’s arms would cross above their head in the turn, and then push outwards. The wire would squeeze and cut round Carslake’s neck.
Stone guessed that the killer went back to back with Carslake, then bent over forward, right over so that Carslake was yanked off his feet by the wire. Only that kind of pressure could have cut so deeply. Also, there was some dried blood under his fingernails, but not much. You’d expect a man to scrabble at the wire, but Carslake had had no chance, it had been too quick. Someone here was an operator, a trained killer.
All this Stone explained to Semyonov, who may well have figured it for himself, depending which trio of TV channels he’d been watching recently. Was he an expert on assassination as well as everything else? Semyonov had never trusted Carslake in any case, and didn’t
look sad to see him gone.
‘Carslake was a big guy,’ said Semyonov. ‘Strong too. Look at the muscle tone. I guess whoever did this was worried about that strength. That’s why they chose the back-to-back thing, to gain extra leverage on a big man, and for surprise. There was some planning involved I think.’ Semyonov’s red eyes and expressionless moon-face turned ominously at Stone. ‘You are the obvious candidate of course, Stone. A trained killer.’
Why say that? Semyonov knew Stone had been with Virginia all night. Maybe it was just resentment. More likely he was testing Stone’s reaction. More intellectual games.
‘Could have. But didn’t,.’ said Stone, still looking at the body.
‘And did you see the deliberate mistake, Stone?’ said Semyonov, turning his wheelchair to leave. Testing him again. ‘Your problem is that you have the mind of a killer. You’re too busy admiring the methods. Take another look at his chest if you want some real evidence.’
This bastard Semyonov knew him too, too well. Stone looked down once more amongst the blood-matted hair of Carslake’s chest.
‘It occurs to me that your friend Carslake was with the CIA,’ said Semyonov. ‘As you pointed out yesterday, the CIA is very interested in me. Especially after Oyang’s antics in releasing all that technology onto the market,’ said Semyonov. ‘But it appears that someone took exception to the CIA’s intrusion into Chinese territory. An agent of the Chinese state killed this man.’
‘Doesn’t that bother you?’ asked Stone.
‘Why should it?’ said Semyonov. His swollen, flipper-like hand moved over the controls of the wheelchair and he hummed toward the door. ‘The killer is here to protect me. Perhaps it should bother you, though, Stone.’
The wheelchair stopped at the door, as if a tinge of regret had hit him.
‘Like I said,’ he said. ‘It’s all going to shit. Let’s get the Machine out of the mine, and get out of this craphole.’ Semyonov’s voice trailed off as he rolled away down the stone corridor.
Carslake from the CIA. It explained why Carslake had known so much about Semyonov. Which in turn explained why Semyonov had been so wary of Carslake.
Stone hadn’t expected this. Clearly, neither had Carslake. Poor guy. Stone stared down at Carslake’s chest once more. Amongst the darkening blood and the hair was a large gout of saliva. The killer had finished up, then calmly, spitefully, spat onto Carslake’s chest.
That cold spittle in the middle of Carslake’s chest meant only one thing – something Semyonov wasn’t aware of for once. Ying Ning. She’d made her way here somehow and she’d killed Carslake because he was a CIA agent. Ying Ning was no rebel, no dissident fighting for workers’ rights. She was no Fox Girl, will-o-the-wisp continually slipping through the net of the Gong An. She was a Chinese agent, an agent provocateur who’d manipulated just about everyone she’d ever come into contact with. All to protect Semyonov? More likely to protect the Machine.
Whatever. It was no time to play Sherlock Holmes. Stone had to get back down there. He would have to bring the Machine out alone.
Chapter 72 - 10:57am 14 April - Garzê Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China
The half-mile of hole drilled through the rock seemed to pass quicker this time. Perhaps Stone had more on his mind. He’d left Virginia at the top of the shaft operating the winding gear. Semyonov was out there too in his wheelchair, plastic oxygen tubes peeking into his nostrils. In truth he was looking better than he had since Stone had met him on the island. Probably the mountain air.
It was a calculated risk to leave them up there. If Ying Ning was the killer on the loose, she was working for the Chinese government, who’d done everything up to now to look after Semyonov as a strategic investment. In theory she should be no threat – to Semyonov at least. Ethan Eric Stone, however, could well be alongside Doug Carslake on her wanted list. Not a lot he could do about that right now, short of telling Virginia to look out for Chinese girls carrying cheese wires. As for protecting himself, Stone couldn’t go near the Machine with anything like a blade or a gun, even if he chose to.
Stone turned off his helmet flashlight and crept first in the opposite way down the tunnel away from the Machine. Semyonov had said there was a network of old tunnels down there, and it was as well to look for a refuge, or an escape route. Also to check there was no one lurking in his rear as he went towards the Machine. He came upon two forks in the first two hundred metres, then thought better of it. He couldn’t risk getting lost. He walked back along, past the cage waiting for him at the same point in the tunnel, then crept on silently in the direction of the Machine.
It seemed quicker this time. He’d only just arrived at the incline and the electrical humming was quite loud already. There was the familiar freezing mist on the slope already. Something wasn’t right. It was like the Machine had been moved nearer to the shaft.
Stone edged up the side of the incline, stooping, hugging the ironstone side of the tunnel, feel the bubbles and nobbles in the meteorite rock. The freezing mist, vapour wisps of liquid nitrogen flicked his skin, like an arrogant icy finger drawn down the nape of his neck. He hadn’t had this earlier, not on the slope. Now it was as if the clouds and tendrils of vapour were tumbling slowly downwards to enfold him, to surround him and suck him in. It was deathly cold once more.
Sheeeeeeee-Hshaaaaawww.
Stone heard his own breathing in the mask. Slowing down. His heart was a slow steady bass line. Stone’s subconscious mind was readying him for action once more. Probably nothing again, like the telephone.
Then a short, sharp, slithering sound a few metres away – the thick power cable, as thick as a man’s arm, sliding across the ground. Followed by a lurching sound. Someone was moving the Machine - toward the slope. Stone slipped faster up the side of the slope. He’d get up there, get level with it. But he must stay hidden in the mist.
Sheeeeeeee-Hshaaaaawww.
The buzzing was louder, and the blue lights were there on the Machine, but still shrouded in mist. It hadn’t been powered down. Whoever was moving it must be dragging the heavy power cable too. Stone edged forward, almost abreast of the Machine. He could make out the shape of the cylinder, and the fragments of ironstone covering it. There was something else stuck to the side. He leaned forward slightly into the mist.
Sheeeeeeee-Hshaaaaawww.
Thump! On the back of the helmet. A roundhouse kick had just removed his hard hat. He knew what was next, and crouched forward and down. Two lightning high kicks went over his head, swirling the mist into tiny eddies. But Stone was low. The dark figure emerged, as Stone pushed from his haunches and hit him in the midriff to put him on his back.
It didn’t work out. The man had crashed backwards into something, and managed to regain his footing.
Stone stayed low and wrenched off the breathing mask. The man had grabbed Stone’s hair and was trying to dash his head against a bony knee, but he’d have to do better than that.
‘Surprised to see me, Ethan Stone?’ Stone knew those high kicks, and that lean, hard midriff. The voice confirmed it. Ekström.
‘You’re losing your touch Ekström,’ said Stone. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t like surprises?’ Stone again used his legs. Grabbed Ekström by the thighs and pushed up, hoisting him into the air, crashing his head into the rock of the ceiling. Rocky flakes came away and thwacked onto the side of the Machine. Ekström crashed down onto the cylinder, knocking it backwards. It fell onto the low-loading platform of its transporter truck. Rolled forwards, but then stuck in place.
‘That’ll be your gun, Ekström, stuck to the side of the thing, stopping it rolling away. There. You knew it would come in useful.’
‘Not my weapon, Stone. Do you think I'd use that Chinese piece of shit,’ replied Ekström. Cool, in spite of everything.
Stone was above Ekström. He still had hold of him. Had him on his back. He was close to Ekström’s face, holding his arms back. It was close-in wrestling, ju-jitsu style. Ekström couldn’t strike,
could barely move. Stone couldn’t strike either, but most opponents panic in this situation. They try to break out, or strike back. Usually they move their arms or twist their heads. It opens the neck to a choke position where they can be subdued. Even an attempt to get up would show the back of Ekström’s neck to Stone, and invite an arm bar across the throat.
But Ekström was not usual. He was no panicker. He talked. He liked to talk, Ekström. Usually about himself.
‘I heard the whole thing, Stone. Back in the hangar on the island, when I was helping Semyonov into those plastic underpants. I got your whole story about the Machine. It’s quite an invention isn’t it?’ he said with his accented English. ‘See what you can get by being nice to people? Zhang sent me in there to tend to the sick. Very useful being on Semyonov’s medical team.’
‘You got to wear a mask and a hairnet. You’d like that.’
Ekström was talking for a reason, not just to taunt. What was he up to? ‘Amazing what you get to hear, when you’re tending to Mr Semyonov. Quite an invention, that Machine,’ said Ekström with some relish. ‘How much do you think it will fetch to the highest bidder? America, China, Russia – they’ll all be ready to talk.’
What was he doing, spouting this bullshit? They were face-to-face, breath-to-breath, Stone with his arms pinning Ekström’s to his sides and his elbow poised over Ekström’s throat for when his chance came.
‘The Machine’s locked, Ekström. You won’t get a thing out of it.’
‘Of course. But the key is sitting in a wheelchair right above us. He’s an interesting man, Semyonov. Very motivated by one thing. He’ll do anything to see that his invention doesn’t go to waste. He’s already defected once. I don’t think loyalty is his strong point, Stone. Do you?’