Never Forget

by Never Forget (retail) (epub)

  She wanted to drown me in the pool of water.

  Her hand made contact with my cheek, and tried to force my face into the water, but my own hand shot up, and pulled hers away. But I couldn’t keep hold of her hand, because her other one smashed the side of my neck, breaking my concentration.

  ‘Yang guizi,’ she screamed. And again her right hand, opened palmed, started moving down towards my face – a second attempt to drown me. And in that second, I knew that I needed to come up with something, anything…

  Instinctively, I raised my left-shoulder – a motion that was pure, smoldering agony – and it redirected her hand, which shot by the right-hand side of my face. And as she was following through into thin air, I wrapped my legs round her midriff, and my right arm around the back of her neck, and grabbed my left bicep with my right-hand, and squeezed like a goddamn boa constrictor.

  I could feel her heart pounding against mine, the heat of her body, her breath against my neck. My body was in agony with the exertion, but the sensation of pain only redoubled my motivation and zeal.

  ‘You’re going to die in my arms,’ I whispered in her ear.

  She thrashed like crazy, but I held on tight, and pulled her face towards the water by my right-hand shoulder, and I could hear her spluttering, drowning. She bit hard into my shoulder, but the screaming pain just caused me to tense even more, and her teeth let off as a result of the increased pressure to the back of her neck, and she went back to gurgling and drowning. Her hands scratched wildly at the metal nose of the boat.

  The sweat was pouring off me. Pouring off her and through her clothes, and into mine, and intermingling with the rain.

  Intermingling with the tears pouring down my face. I felt the wrath of all Yuelin’s victims working through me – a righteous, evangelical wrath. Yet, at the same time, I felt terrified and sickened by my own emotions. By the strength of my hatred; by the pleasure I was taking in squeezing the life out of this monster, who was, after all, still a human being.

  By the fact that she wasn’t so different from my son. An individual converted to a dark cause through powerful brainwashing, and induced to commit unspeakable monstrosities.

  By the fact that, in taking her down, I’d been personally damaged in an irrevocable way, in a way far more than physical, because I too had become a fanatic.

  My body shook all over, as I squeezed with lunatic passion.

  Then, all at once, Yuelin’s body went limp.

  And then I started bawling out my goddamn eyes.

  * * *

  It’s over. That’s what I said to myself a couple of minutes later – once in my mind, once out loud, as though doing so proved it was true – as I laid there with Yuelin’s body still on top of me, and mine in breathtaking agony. I didn’t know what state Chen and Ellen were in; but I had the hard-drive, and Yuelin and her men were dead. And so, regardless of anything else, it was over. That much I could tell myself with confidence. With utter assurance.

  Or at least, so I thought. But four minutes later, when I’d only just about caught my breath, my utter assurance yet again went out of the window. Because, to my unbridled confusion, and with a gun-punch of trepidation, I suddenly made out, over the rain, the sound of a chopper approaching fast.

  Chapter 49

  I stumbled out of the escape boat, the hard-drive in my pocket, and looked up to see a Bell 212 chopper hovering a hundred feet above, its powerful lights illuminating it through the now slightly lighter rain. It appeared as though it was planning to land to my right, where fifty yards away, there was a gap in the cargo set aside for emergency helicopter landings.

  The type of the chopper told me little about who might be within. The Bell 212 was used not only by government organizations – the police, the coast guard, the military – but also sold on the civilian market.

  My first thought was to run and hide, but I was too exhausted. So, since I knew I was at the mercy of whoever might be approaching, I decided to stay in plain sight, and watch on.

  I reckoned it was incredibly unlikely to be anyone directly linked with Yuelin, because I knew I’d taken out her entire team. More likely, it was backup she’d drafted in from the LAPD. But that still didn’t quite seem to add up. It didn’t seem likely that she would’ve brought them in so quickly. And even if she had, I reckoned they may no longer be a threat to me, since Yuelin was dead.

  As the chopper continued its descent, the rotors slicing the rain with a garbled whop-whop-whop, I noticed movement to my left. A few seconds later, Ellen and Xi Chen appeared from the direction of the deckhouse. Both looked worse for wear: Chen bleeding from the shoulder, though not badly; Ellen clutching a bloodied arm, as well as the MP5 I’d cast aside.

  The bullet that’d killed Jantzen must’ve exited his head, and hit Ellen’s arm. But while I couldn’t see the wound, I reckoned, judging by the amount of blood, it wasn’t serious.

  They came over to my side.

  ‘She’s dead?’ shouted Ellen over the sound of the rain and the encroaching aircraft.

  I nodded. ‘You okay?’

  She nodded. ‘It’s not too bad. And Chen has also weathered the storm.’

  Chen nodded. Even though we had these unknown interlopers arriving, there was an odd calm among us. Perhaps it was because we felt as though, after that ordeal we could brave anything. Perhaps it was just exhaustion.

  Ellen gestured at the chopper. ‘So who’s this?’

  ‘No clue. But hand me the submachine gun.’

  Ellen handed it over. The chopper was now twenty feet or so from the ground, and the people within could surely see us, though we couldn’t see them: we could only see the black body of the chopper.

  ‘I’m going to investigate. Hang back.’

  I didn’t wait for a reply. I moved forward, cradling the gun as opposed to holding it at the ready: I didn’t want to make anyone nervous. In no time, I was under the rotors – the Bell 212 has a rotor diameter of forty-eight feet – and being buffeted by the wind generated by their motion as the chopper touched down. I stopped ten feet away, directly opposite the passenger door. And though they could undoubtedly see me, I still couldn’t see a single occupant: the windows were all made out of reflective glass. And there was nothing to indicate who this chopper belonged to: it was completely unmarked.

  I took a deep breath as the rotors decelerated and then eventually came to a stop. And then the passenger door flung open.

  At once, four suited men, all carrying Uzi submachine guns, exited the chopper, fanned out in opposite directions, and pointed their weapons at me.

  ‘Put your weapon on the ground, Marshall, and kick it over,’ one of them shouted. ‘We have no desire to shoot. But you’re outgunned, so I suggest you cooperate.’

  I glanced at Ellen and Chen then back at the four men. They looked like Secret Service.

  I nodded, put the MP5 on the ground, and kicked it over to the guy nearest me. There was no winning this fight.

  The guy who’d shouted the instructions then turned to the chopper, and shouted: ‘It’s on the ground.’

  Then, clambering out of the chopper, clutching a heavy-duty umbrella, was just about the last person I expected: Secretary of State Ruth Forsyth. Involuntarily, I shook my head.

  She too wore a look of confusion, though hers wasn’t quite so pronounced as I imagined mine was. However, that made sense: she’d already seen me from the window.

  Forsyth took five paces forward, halving the distance between us.

  ‘Do you have the hard-drive?’ she said.

  I blinked twice. The only way she could’ve known about the hard-drive was through Vann. Only, I didn’t reckon he would have spoken about it. And even if he had, how on earth did she find her way here?

  ‘But how?’

  She cut me off. ‘Yes or no.’

  I nodded.

  ‘And the man protecting it – the spy – is he dead?’

  Again, I couldn’t see how she knew about the spy. It occu
rred to me that maybe it was just an educated deduction though, for all her knowledge, she was still slightly behind the pace: she didn’t know the spy hadn’t made it to the boat.

  I nodded again. ‘The spy’s dead.’

  ‘And who are those two?’ She nodded behind me. ‘Ellen Kelden I suspect, and who else?’ I knew she couldn’t make them out, but this comment demonstrated another gap in her knowledge. She didn’t know about Chen’s abduction.

  ‘One’s Ellen. The other, a friend.’

  She looked at me a long moment; then:

  ‘I want the hard-drive.’

  I looked up at the sky, and let the rain wash against my battered face. I must’ve looked a mess. But right now, it was my mind that felt under assault.

  I looked back at her. ‘I won’t give you the hard-drive until I know what’s going on. Either shoot me now, or tell me how on earth you know to be here. Your choice.’

  She moved her bottom jaw back and forward. ‘I could ask you the same damn thing.’ I shrugged. Said nothing.

  After a few moments, she said: ‘Fine. I’ll tell you.’

  She took another three steps forward, and gestured to her men to stay put. They still had me in their sights, and she was still out of my range. But this was more intimate. In fact, her men were now all but out of ear-shot.

  ‘It’s quite simple, Marshall. As I’m sure you’ve deduced, my Deputy, Todd Liang, was the target of a blackmail attempt by Chinese nationalists: he’d dabbled in child pornography on The Onion Router, and they found out. But, when they made contact with him a month ago, in an attempt to put him under their thumb, he pretended to play ball, but in fact told me what was going on. As a result, I had a man telling me what these terrorists were planning from the start: the sniper killings, the Consulate, the attempt on my life. And since Liang happened to be of Chinese descent, they opened up to him, and that meant I had the inside track.’ She paused. ‘I never intended him to die. They must’ve sensed that he was about to sell them out – but I was pretty damn confident that he wouldn’t have actually revealed to them that he already had. And I was right.’

  She paused. My world was reeling. I understood what she was saying – she knew about all the attacks in advance. But it didn’t make an ounce of sense.

  ‘But why?’

  She raised a halting hand. She regarded me a moment, as if deciding what else to disclose. She continued:

  ‘When I got wind of their plans, I realized there was an opportunity here. Not only to ultimately seize the technology they were using, which would be greatly useful to the US government. But also to finally change opinions on China, its authoritarian government, and the vitriolic nationalism they’ve been sowing among their people for some twenty-five years now. China have been covertly stealing trillions of dollars from the United States through hacking – an effort made possible by an army of committed, brainwashed nationalists – and, as far as I’m concerned, that’s an act of war. However, the politicians here don’t have the guts to confront China, and regular people here don’t care about hacking, barely even know it goes on: it doesn’t mean anything to them.

  ‘But if Chinese nationalists started taking lives on US soil, then people would pay attention. And then politicians would be forced to take a radically firmer stance on China. Of course, I was never actually going to let them take my life – I knew there was a bomb in the safe-house, and wasn’t going set it off – but it was a powerful opportunity to make the US public realize that there are Chinese nationalists willing to go so far as to kill American leaders. I’m aware that they’ve thoroughly covered their tracks. But the plan was to seize the hard-drive as they tried to smuggle it out of the country, and then reveal that Chinese nationalists had in fact been behind all the atrocities of the past few days.’

  I took a deep breath, steadying myself against the barrage of information. It was devastating. She’d known that these nationalists were planning to murder pro-Tibet activists, both with sniper rifles and at the Consulate, and had done zilch to stop them. What’s more, she had never really been in any danger during the attempt on her life as she’d known all the nationalists’ plans, so everything that Scott and I had done to save her had been for nothing. In fact, she was in no small way responsible for Scott’s death.

  I remembered her look of pure fear when I’d showed up on the motorbike. And I now I understood. It was because she’d figured she knew what the attack against her entailed, and so, when I’d turned up with a gun, she had thought there was another element to the nationalists’ attack she hadn’t known about, and she was a goner.

  Then, suddenly, I remembered also what Ellen had told me about Chinese hackers attacking American gas pipes back in 2012, and Forsyth pretending to be oblivious, while using the hackers’ actions against them. She’d done the same thing again.

  I was speechless a moment. Then I said incredulously:

  ‘So you let innocent people die, gave a terrorist group free rein, in order to change the political agenda? You let a bunch of kids burn because you were frustrated by the lack of will to stand up to China?’

  She waved a dismissive hand.

  ‘Don’t get all high and mighty. You can’t deny they’re a serious threat to our national security. After all, whichever way you cut it, we’ve just had a team of them plotting a string of attacks on our soil. And we’re living in precarious times; times when democratic, Western supremacy is under threat by rising authoritarian powers. These powers aren’t going anywhere anytime soon; so we need to stand up to them. And since they play dirty, we have to as well. It’s regrettable people had to die, but it’s for the greater good.’ She paused. ‘And let’s not forget that you, too, have let innocent people die for a greater good, in order to salvage your son. Sometimes you need to make sacrifices.’

  I shook my head. I didn’t have the energy to muster anger. But I felt a swell of pure, unadulterated disgust, not only at what she’d done, but also at the insinuation that it was in any way similar to what I’d done.

  ‘My God, I was trying to save the person I love most. You let people die simply to manipulate. If anything, your actions are comparable to the authoritarians you claim to revile. You’re selling our values down the river, even as you claim to be protecting them.’

  She darted her tongue against her bottom lip. ‘Don’t be so naïve, Saul.’

  I put my hands behind my head and groaned. I was so exhausted that I barely knew how to react.

  Forsyth went on:

  ‘So let me guess. You figured out how Yuelin Lie and the spy were communicating, and that led you here, because you wanted to stop the technology which, I’m assuming you know the measure of now, from getting to the Chinese government?’

  I nodded. Then, after a moment’s thought, I decided to elaborate, since she was going to get to the bottom of things sooner or later.

  So I told her about Yuelin abducting Chen; about Yuelin falling out with the spy, and putting Chen and the technology on the ship with her own man; about the hostage situation that’d transpired once Yuelin realized Ellen and I had boarded the ship, and Yuelin’s death. I told her also that Ellen and Chen were the silhouettes standing behind me.

  Forsyth nodded contemplatively. ‘What state’s Chen in?’

  I shrugged. ‘He’s been through the trenches. But he’ll survive.’

  Forsyth was quiet a spell; then: ‘Saul, I want the hard-drive.’

  I racked my brain. I didn’t want to hand it over: this woman had been complicit in the murder of countless innocents, and I wasn’t sure I wanted the technology to get into the hands of the NSA. Wasn’t sure they could be trusted.

  But I had few options. If I tried to chuck it off the boat, I might succeed, but I’d surely die in the process. Or I could draw the Walther I’d picked up again from the floor of the escape boat, and try to shoot her. But leaving aside the fact I’d probably be shot before I could, the question remained. Was I really willing to kill the Secretary of State?


  And in either eventuality, I’d be leaving Ellen to an unknown fate.

  ‘If I hand it over, what’ll happen?’ I had little leverage, but it seemed worth asking.

  Forsyth nodded. Knew what I was driving at. ‘I’ll find Chen a new home in the States, and his part in this will remain secret. And I can clear Ellen’s name. I’ll relocate her, get her new documentation – like they do in witness protection services – and she can live in peace.’

  ‘And me?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s tough. I can’t call off FBI Headquarters: I don’t have that power, and can’t give them adequate reason. But I appreciate that, while you were inadvertently a pain in my neck, you sincerely put your life on the line to protect mine. So, I’m willing to take you back to the mainland, and allow you to disappear. And once I pin the blame where it belongs, your name will be relatively cleared in all this, too.’

  ‘When you say, “pin the blame where it belongs,” are you planning on making it clear a rogue team was responsible, or are you planning on revealing that a state-sponsored spy was also in cahoots?’

  ‘The former. Even I appreciate that the latter is too volatile a revelation. Making it clear that it was a rogue team with historic links to the PLA is quite enough. And it’ll discourage the Chinese government from making a knee jerk denial – because they’re not directly to blame – while still forcing them to acknowledge their implicit culpability.’

  I nodded. ‘And what about Vannevar Yeung?’

  ‘I can’t promise, but I might be able to get him off the hook.’

  I was disgusted by the thought of striking a deal with this woman. But I had no choice. I had to be thankful for any help she was willing to provide.

  ‘So the three of us get on the chopper and leave, then what?’

  ‘Three of my men take control of the ship, bring it back to port, and some more of my most trusted men will take it from there. They’ll ensure the carnage is laid at Yuelin’s door.’