Daylight on Iron Mountain

by David Wingrove

  Yes, and they’d badly underestimated them. He knew that now. Whatever Marshal Raikkonen might have said, the men they’d been facing weren’t raw recruits. And they certainly weren’t pushovers. As for their tactics – well, that had surprised them, as well. How clever they were. How brave, too. He’d have taken his hat off to them, only they’d probably have blown the top of his head off if he had.

  No. It was a lost cause, they all knew that now. If he had any regrets it was that he wouldn’t see his wife, Margaret, nor his boys again. But this was his time, and they would understand.

  Some day.

  Maybe, he thought. Only he wished he could have seen the end of it. Wished he could have known whether this had made any difference at all. Whether their efforts had freed the world from that bastard Tsao Ch’un’s grip. Now he’d never know.

  From further down the corridor the whispering grew in intensity. A moment later there was the distinct noise of safeties being removed, the sound of clips being fitted into guns.

  Sven had sat forward. Henrik and Einar, too, were suddenly tensed.

  ‘You ready?’ Karl asked, smiling at them fondly, knowing it was the last time he would see them.

  It was Einar who answered, his bloodied features stretched into a grin. ‘You bet we fucking are!’

  Tsao Ch’un stood beneath the shower’s flow, washing the blood from his chest and limbs, even as his men reported to him.

  He had finished with Shen Fu for today. Had had his way and purged himself. For the moment. Now he took the time to listen to what had been happening in his absence.

  First up was the news of Wang Hui So’s death, shot by his own servant. Tsao Ch’un was pleased with that. Very pleased. But not as much as by the news that they had managed to hack in to Amos Shepherd’s systems.

  He hadn’t been sure his team were up to it – that they could in any way match a man like Shepherd for intelligence and guile, but they had, and the beauty of it was that Shepherd – and the remainder of the Seven – would not even be aware of it. From this point on he could track their every move, hear every order they gave the moment it was given. It gave him a tremendous advantage.

  Only what Tsao Ch’un didn’t know – and he didn’t know because no one wanted to give their Lord the bad news – was that there were rumours of unrest, even of revolt, in the ranks of Tsao Ch’un’s Third Banner Army; the army that was camped out around Bremen, waiting for the order to go in.

  It was an order he was just about to give, only right then news started to come in from North America that four of the Seven’s newly formed two-thousand-man units had attacked Tsao Ch’un’s forces there, hitting them out of the blue and withdrawing almost immediately, inflicting heavy damage. These attacks were not decisive militarily, yet their effect upon morale was huge. They had been dealing very well with the situation up to that point. Now…

  He got Tsao Heng on the line.

  Seeing his father on the screen, Heng bowed low. ‘Father…’

  ‘You must hold firm, Heng. Things have changed. From here on we dictate what happens.’

  ‘But I thought…’

  Seeing his father’s face Heng fell silent again, his head tucked in to his chest. He had learned not to argue with his father.

  ‘As I said,’ Tsao Ch’un said, slowly and deliberately, as if dealing with a recalcitrant servant and not one of his marshals, ‘from now on we dictate what happens. Await my orders, Heng, but spread the word among your officers that something is happening – that something has changed and that we now have a massive advantage over our enemies.’

  ‘Can I know what that is, Father?’

  ‘Best not,’ Tsao Ch’un said, ‘but you will see with your own eyes how things fare from henceforth.’

  He cut connection, then turned towards his grooms, throwing the towel he was holding aside and letting them bring his clothes to him.

  It was time to up the pace of things. To take a few risks and show them who was boss.

  Three were dead now. Four alone remained.

  Tsao Ch’un pulled on his trousers, then nodded to himself.

  Assassins. He would send in another round of assassins. And then another. As many as it took. Just to show them he was serious.

  Big Wen swung from the rope, his feet dangling, his face black and his tongue lolling from his mouth. Below the landowner the crowd cheered and laughed and those who had been his tenants, who had hired shabby rooms from him at exorbitant rents, laughed and cheered more than any.

  Earlier, when the news had first broken, they had been afraid. They had thought this the very worst of news. But now… well, now they understood. It was their chance. For this brief moment, while Tsao Ch’un’s eyes roamed elsewhere, they could take their vengeance on bastards like Big Wen. Men who would as soon have spat on them as give them a fen in charity.

  And right then, even as their excitement threatened to die down, there was a surge in the crowd over by the big lift and a sudden roar of delight.

  ‘Boss Yang! They had captured Boss Yang!’

  Roped-up and struggling, a dozen men carried him through that great press of people, across to where Big Wen dangled from the ceiling beam. There, as the crowd bayed and Boss Yang struggled, his great bulk pressing down on his captors, they strung him up beside his fellow exploiter. The whole crowd chanted out the numbers – ‘One! Two! Three!’ – and they heaved him up into the air, where his small white feet kicked and kicked, then grew still.

  The crowd went mad. Great smiles adorned their faces. Even young children were celebrating, dancing around and laughing at the sight of the two fat villains strung up side by side.

  ‘Who next?’ was the question on everyone’s lips, but the answer wasn’t difficult.

  ‘Chi Fei Yu!’ someone shouted, and the cry went up from a thousand mouths – ‘Chi Fei Yu! Chi Fei Yu! Chi Fei Yu!’ – even as a group of them rushed off to try and find the man who had lent so many of them money in time of need, only to demand huge interest payments when it came due.

  And so it went on, late into the night, in level after level, stack after stack, the world gone mad, gone vengeful.

  Amos Shepherd stood there beneath the crescent moon, looking out across the darkness of the water.

  Inside, in the brightness of the cottage, the three T’ang were talking, debating matters and deciding what to do next.

  After a day of setbacks, he knew what they needed to do. It was exactly what they’d had to do from the start. They had to kill Tsao Ch’un. To throw everything they had at him until he succumbed. Until there was no breath in his body, no thoughts coursing through his brain. Until he was dead, as in gone.

  All else was sophistry.

  They even knew where he was. Only how to get at him?

  Yes. That was the problem. It always had been. And it wasn’t as if they were the first. Great men were natural targets for the demented, the ambitious and the vengeful. And Tsao Ch’un had survived them all. A dozen of each, and more besides. Why should they succeed where so many others had failed?

  A voice cut into his thoughts.

  ‘Shih Shepherd?’

  He turned. It was Haavikko, the young major Marshal Raikkonen had sent as his intermediary.

  ‘What is it, Knut?’

  Haavikko came across. From his face Shepherd could see that it was not good news.

  ‘The last unit we sent in… to Baltimore, to counter Tsao Heng’s move south… They were waiting for us. Blew our ships out of the air.’

  The news shocked Shepherd. ‘But they…’

  He stopped. He was going to say that they couldn’t have known. But why not? What if they had a spy in the system? Someone feeding back information?

  ‘How many people knew where they were going?’

  ‘Aside from the pilots… and they had sealed orders… just six of us. And I’d vouch for every one.’

  Shepherd nodded. So would he. But this still suggested that their security systems had been breac
hed.

  ‘We lost them all?’

  ‘Every last man.’

  Shepherd pondered that a moment, then, looking up, addressed the young major again.

  ‘Knut. Go tell your marshal that we’re done with North America. We must let it go for a time. It’s time for new strategies. Time for something audacious. While there’s still time for it. I want…’

  He stopped. The back door of the house had just opened, spilling light out onto the lawn. Through that bright rectangle the three T’ang stepped, like figures from a dream, their Han robes looking totally out of place in that setting.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Shepherd called to them, giving the briefest nod to Haavikko, before walking slowly towards them. ‘What has been decided?’

  It was Li Chao Ch’in who answered him.

  ‘We have decided that the normal period of mourning for Wang Hui So must be set aside. His son must inherit. Which is why, at noon tomorrow, Wang Hui So’s oldest son, Wang Lung, will be made T’ang in his father’s place.’

  Shepherd opened his mouth, meaning to say that there were more important things to be doing with their time. Killing Tsao Ch’un for one. But these were very formal men. And they were Han. Ruthless they might be at times, but they were real sticklers for tradition. And besides… to bring the numbers back up again – that would be one in the eye for Tsao Ch’un!

  ‘What an excellent idea,’ he said, smiling, then bowing low to each of them in turn. ‘In the meantime let me share my thoughts with you…’

  *

  Marshal Aaltonen, Head of Security for City Europe, stood beside the generator, looking on as the searchlight picked out body after body.

  It looked as if someone had dropped them from the sky. And maybe they had. Only there were too many of them, and besides, most of them were wrapped in plastic, like flies trapped in a spider’s web.

  Aaltonen let out a sharp breath. The bastards! They’d used ice-eaters. Sprayed them down onto the levels and then watched as the levels turned to sticky pap, collapsing, taking the bodies down with them.

  Bremen. This big gap in the City had once been called Bremen, after the north German town that had stood beneath the super-plastic the Han called ice. Now it was just a hardened, transparent mess. A see-through tomb for half a million souls.

  Tsao Ch’un really did not give a shit who got in his way. Ruthless was not the word for this. This was demonic. These were just families, getting on with their lives. To kill them…

  Aaltonen was a hard man, yet he felt for once like crying for the waste, for the simple tragedies of all those lives that had ended as suddenly as that.

  He clicked his fingers. At once his aide approached. ‘Yes, Marshal?’

  ‘Schwartz… get word of this back to the Domain. Most important, let Shepherd know, because if they could do this here…’

  Schwartz waited for something more, but Aaltonen shook his head. ‘Look… just tell him, okay?’

  Shepherd sat at the communications board, looking up at the bank of screens, wondering who could be leaking information to Tsao Ch’un. They had to be, because for the last few hours the old man had anticipated their every move, and that simply wasn’t possible. The two units he’d sent in to hit him at the Black Tower, for instance. The speed with which Tsao Ch’un’s troops had locked on to the two small fleets made no sense – not unless he knew where they were coming from and where they were headed. One thing was for certain – it wasn’t guesswork.

  The big question was who… and how?

  Or was it?

  Amos stood, then turned away from the board. It was after three in the morning now on the second day of the war.

  Yes, and we’re still alive. But for how much longer?

  The problem with his leakage theory was that there was no one he could think of whom he didn’t trust. All of the technicians and guards here were hand-picked, and besides, they had no direct access to what was going on. As for the main players, not a single one of them stood to benefit from aiding Tsao Ch’un. Quite the contrary.

  So what then?

  The truth was, he knew the answer. Had known this last hour but refused to acknowledge it. Why? Because he didn’t think it possible. Because he’d been so careful all these years to safeguard it, and if what he was thinking was true, then all those years of watchfulness had been in vain.

  They had hacked into his system; climbed over all of the spiky mile-high firewalls he had constructed with such care, sneaking past all of his best detection systems – systems he had put months of his genius into – and in so doing had not shown a single trace of their existence. They hadn’t stumbled over a single tripwire!

  It was an affront to his pride. But he had to face it. His so-called discreet system had been breached, and now Tsao Ch’un was looking on, over their shoulders, watching their every move the moment that they made it.

  He went back inside.

  ‘Shut it down! Shut the whole thing down! It’s been corrupted!’

  Heads turned, disbelief in their eyes.

  ‘But Shih Shepherd…’

  He raised a hand, silencing the sudden clamour. ‘No, wait… rescind that order. I need to think this through. But listen… don’t process any instructions until I tell you it’s safe.’

  Shepherd walked through into his own office, a tiny space sectioned off from the rest of the basement, then sat, mulling it over.

  This was the kind of thing that Chao Ni Tsu had been good at. It had his touch. Only Master Chao was dead, and as far as Shepherd knew, no one of that kind of ability had replaced him.

  Tsao Ch’un had a team of hackers, true, working out of Pei Ching. And they were good. Only not this good.

  Okay… So maybe Tsao Ch’un’s been keeping secrets from me…

  Maybe. He wouldn’t put it past the old bastard. But surely word would have got out if Chao had had a successor. Rumours of it, anyway. As it was he’d heard nothing.

  Then maybe it was a team of lesser programmers and hackers. Maybe they’d been working on this for some while.

  If so, then there was an aspect of Tsao Ch’un he’d not anticipated. To be that devious.

  Okay, so let’s assume he has penetrated my system. That he’s watching it right now.

  That didn’t mean he could see everything they were doing. Only what was on their screens. What they were actually doing and saying was still a blank to him. All he was seeing was the results of their discussions; the end product of their deliberations.

  Which meant that as of that moment Tsao Ch’un didn’t know that they knew he’d hacked in.

  Shepherd smiled, realizing what that meant.

  He’s responding to what he’s seeing on our screens. To where we say our troops are heading.

  But what if they’re heading somewhere else?

  For a brief window – an hour, maybe two hours – they could feed him misinformation. Could make him react to ghost messages. But only for a brief time. Once he didn’t see results any more, he’d guess that they knew. That they’d worked out he was watching them.

  So they had to use this while they could. Give him something to reassure him that his trackers were still up and running, while hitting him hard elsewhere.

  Handwritten orders, that was the key to this right now. Something Tsao Ch’un couldn’t see on the screens in front of him. Something only an old-fashioned spy might discover.

  And then not in enough time to make any difference.

  Shepherd’s smile broadened. He could see it already. Three armies, each comprising five units of two thousand men. The first would attack the Third Banner Army in Bremen. Only that would be a feint, up there on the screen where Tsao Ch’un could watch. The other two… they’d be the real assaults. One on the nest of programmers in Pei Ching, the other on Tsao Ch’un, attack craft swooping in over the Po-hai Sea to attack the Black Tower itself.

  Shepherd nodded to himself. He would organize it all right now. Before they lost the initiative.

 
; He paused, wondering whether it was worth waking the three T’ang to let them know what was happening, then decided to let them sleep. After all, there was no real point. It would be hours before their forces could be readied.

  Besides… this was a matter of professional pride.

  Shepherd’s smile faded; became a look of pure determination. He would track those prying bastards down and roast them online. Fry their brains and burn out their cerebral nerve-endings, even as his elite troops fell on them from above. But not yet. Not just yet. Let them think they had the upper hand a little longer. Then he would turn on them. They and their Master both.

  Tsao Ch’un yawned, then pulled himself up onto his feet. He ought to take the chance to rest while he could. Tomorrow, he knew, would be the decisive day. Only, tired as he was, he didn’t feel like sleeping. There would be time to sleep when this was done. When his enemies were all dead.

  He walked over to the big picture window and looked out across the bay. In the late morning light the sea was grey, the sky the palest blue, like the eyes of one of the long-noses, the Hung Mao as they had come to call them.

  Had he been right to let the Hung Mao live? To let them share the world with the Han?

  The truth was he didn’t know. Only that back then he’d had no option. His scheme would not have worked without their compliance. To have had to fight them all, that would have been a step too far. His certain undoing. Chao Ni Tsu had thought as much, and what Chao thought was usually very near to the truth.

  Tsao Ch’un turned, looking to the ancient chair he’d kept as a reminder of his one-time companion. If only he’d had Chao to call on now.

  He sighed. How he missed those days, when things had not yet been cast into their final form. How he missed the uncertainty, the hazard of each day. All of his schemes and intrigues since had been but games, to make him feel as if he were doing something. It was only now that he realized just how little it had satisfied the need in him.

  That need to be alive and active. To be a man. Fully a man. Yes, and at the same time a power greater than any the world had seen. Greater than all their Hitlers and Napoleons, their Caesars and Alexanders. To be Tsao Ch’un. Why, even the mention of his name had struck terror into hearts.