by Paul Mason
He slammed the brakes and the Audi swung 180 degrees, its wheels half buried in the sand-slide he’d set off. As they drifted sideways Khünbish seemed for a moment fascinated by the gun, which he lifted close to his face, like a kid with a toy.
“Beretta. You ever see a James Bond movie called Doctor No?”
She shook her head. Khünbish pointed the pistol at her face:
“This gun’s basically useless. Low velocity, tiny hole. In Doctor No James Bond has to swap the Beretta for a Walther PPK.”
He jerked his arm back, pointing the gun upwards, next to his temple, to make the James Bond pose.
An instant later he jerked his body down into the seat-well, left hand gripping the wheel, and shot the Oakleys Kid under the chin, splattering his cheekbone against the sunroof of the car, never losing eye-contact with Chun-li.
“With a Walther PPK you get a one-shot kill whereas with this,” he ignored her screams and fired the Beretta casually into the Kid’s twitching body, “you always need two.”
~ * ~
11
Khünbish dragged the Kid’s body to the edge of a dune, the wind whipping sand into his face, and dropped it onto the near-vertical slope below. Chun-li peered after it. As the body slid, so did the sand it had disturbed, gradually overtaking the Kid’s splayed limbs and soaking up the blood. By the time it reached the bottom, sixty metres below, the corpse had been engulfed by sand. Khünbish said:
“Cool, hey? Have to know the right kind of dune. That could have been you.”
He skimmed the Beretta over the edge so that it, too, would disappear beneath the desert.
“Now we go to the car and have anal sex. If you don’t obey me I will take you to the camel farm and leave you with those guys all night.”
As he took a step towards her, Chun-li wondered what Brough would do in her situation. Something unpredictable, probably. Needlessly confrontational.
She hopped backwards and threw herself over the edge of the dune.
As she hurtled downwards the sand burned her leg and began to fly up her nose. She let herself go limp, like a kid on a water-slide. Her heel dug into the slope and flipped her over, tumbling sideways now with the sand clawing at her hair as it whiplashed around, her shoes flying away. She saw Khünbish leap over the edge, attempting to slalom his way down in pursuit, but losing his balance and going headfirst-now managing to arch his body and lift his hands to fly towards her like a parachutist in freefall. Behind him the lip of the dune collapsed and set off an avalanche of sand.
She slid to a halt at the bottom of the slope, her arms and legs splayed. Khünbish, his eyes white with desire, slid towards her like a guided missile but then the avalanche picked him up and shot him past, half burying Chun-li.
There was silence. She tried to stare up at the harsh, sizzling, lazuline sky but the sand made her eyes blink and sting. She pulled one arm out of the sand and used it to lever the rest of her into a crouch. The palms of her hands and her knees were burning against the hot powder.
She watched a black beetle scurry away beneath her nose. Then, like a bigger beetle, elbow first, then knee, then buzz-cut head, Khünbish crawled out of his own sand-trap, maybe twenty metres below her. In the space between them was the Beretta, glinting carbon black against the sand.
The sight of it set Khünbish into motion, making powerful but laboured strides through the sand that was still pouring off the dune’s steep face, swamping him above the ankles at each step. She made to move, but cried out in pain as the desert seared the soles of her feet. She curled into a protective ball and watched Khünbish inch his way towards the pistol.
He tried to shout something at her but was too hoarse for sound to come out. Every step made the sand hiss like brush strokes on a cymbal. There was a buzzing in her ears. She cleared the sand out with her fingers but it got louder.
Khünbish picked up the gun. The metal parts were already hot enough to burn his skin. He shook sand out of the barrel and blew it off the recoil, wiping sweat off his face with his shirtsleeve.
Chun-li’s world seemed to close around her; her vision narrowed into a dark blue cone. At the end of the cone was Khünbish, staggering forward with the gun aimed at her head. Weirdly, at the edge of the cone and only half visible, there was a mischievous looking old man flying along in the lotus position, smirking, pointing at the sky as if to say: welcome to the afterlife.
The buzzing sound turned into a roar above her head. A black machine with four wheels flew over the edge of the dune and plummeted, like a ski-jumper who has misjudged, all the way to the bottom where it bounced, somersaulted onto its roll-cage, spun and then righted itself. It was some kind of quad bike. The rider, face hidden behind a helmet, revved the engine and sped towards Khünbish, still up to his knees in sand.
Khünbish raised the Beretta with a two-handed grip and braced himself to fire. But the quad bike braked sharply, sending a sandcloud billowing thicker than a smoke grenade. When it cleared Chun-li could hear the quad bike rider screaming at Khünbish to lay the weapon on the ground. He replied by pulling the trigger.
There was only a click. And then another.
The man in the blackmarket store had already told to Chun-li this James Bond folklore about a Beretta needing two bullets to kill, so she had chambered one round and left one more in the clip, tipping the rest into her makeup bag.
The rider, recognising the snap of the empty pistol, slammed the quad bike into reverse, skidded away and, standing up in the saddle, executed a slow glide across the trough of the dune, a lazy arc up the slope at the other side, and then opened the throttle. Khünbish continued to pull the trigger of the gun and shout obscenities at Chun-li until the bike, an aluminium-framed Quadzilla 500 with a top speed of 80 mph, severed his legs just below the knee and spun the rest of him into the air.
“That man was an anti-social element,” Superintendent Xiao smiled bashfully at Chun-li a minute later, as he helped her crawl onto the quad bike seat behind him, “but you are not much better. Why are you helping foreign journalists disturb our social order?”
~ * ~
12
The theme park had closed. The sunset was turning the edges of the dunes molten. The camels had begun to herd together into the long shadows. The chair-lift had stopped, leaving its chains and wires to clank in the evening breeze.
Deep in the desert, Hyacinth Deng was delivering a piece to camera next to a line of tape slung between two police SUVs. Mr. Bo, off camera, was checking the draft he had prepared for her against delivery:
“Fast action by an off-duty member of the Public Security Police, taking a hard-earned recreational break here in the acclaimed Kubuqi Desert natural beauty spot, has prevented an abduction attempt by a man Inner Mongolia’s police department describe as ‘driven mad by passion’...”
Inside the gift-shop five sizes of laughing camel toys smiled plastic smiles as the sun’s last rays turned the synthetic fur on their humps from beige to russet red. Among the low-grade cashmere shawls, leather cowboy hats, Ghengis Khan masks, plastic swords and fake Chanel sunglasses, there were a few formica tables designated for the use of tour groups.
Xiao sat with his back to the sun, a surly hulk reeking of sweat and gasoline. Next to him sat Chun-li, still prone to shivering now and then but rehydrated and composed, despite her burns and scars. Opposite, blinking into the orange light, sat Brough and Georgina.
“Superintendent Xiao says we have to be very quick since the Inner Mongolia police department will soon question him,” Chun-li began.
Brough and Georgina were still too stunned to be reacting much, but nodded and swigged bottled water. Xiao spoke, Chun-li translated.
“First, Superintendent Xiao admits he is out of his jurisdiction. However, since there is now at least one fatality, his role as an expert witness could be crucial and he urges you to listen to his proposal.”
“What do you mean at least one fatality?” Georgina’s voice was a hoarse whisper
.
“Since the boy with the Oakley sunglasses is buried beneath a sand-dune, Superintendent Xiao thinks the police here will not bother recording this as a fatality,” Chun-li paused the translation and blushed.
“Continue,” said Xiao.
“Also Superintendent Xiao is willing to forget the illegal purchase of a handgun by our team.”
Georgina’s hair cascaded over her fingers as her head slumped into her hands.
“So it was your gun?”
Brough did not give Chun-li the look of admiration she had hoped for.
“Superintendent Xiao has already wiped the gun for prints, reprinting the handle from the body of,” she faltered, “attempted Mongolian rape perpetrator, and then re-printing over that with his own fingerprints.”
“Let me guess whether Superintendent Xiao has gone to all this trouble out of a sudden surge of gratitude or wants something in return?” said Brough.
Xiao cut him off.
“Superintendent Xiao says he does not want to confiscate our rushes,” Chun-li explained. “Instead he would first like to return something.”
They watched as Xiao extracted Brough’s battered laptop, retrieved at the car crash site, from a bundle of underclothes in his holdall. He slid it across the table.
“Thank you very much, does that mean we can go?” Brough’s deadpan face was caked with the salt from perspiration.
Xiao barked something at Chun-li.
“Superintendent Xiao,” she struggled to maintain control of her voice, “asks whether you have ever heard the Chinese saying: journalists go to the coal mine by taxi and return by Mercedes-Benz?”
Brough snorted.
“It means,” Chun-li began.
“It means,” Brough cut across her, “that journalists who uncover safely violations at coal mines where there’ve been fatalities are often confronted with the option of binning their discoveries in return for a reward, correct?”
Chun-li and Xiao conversed briefly and Xiao smiled, an avuncular smile, and made the thumbs up signal. Then he reached into his holdall again and produced a small brick of pristine 500-euro banknotes.
“This is one hundred thousand Euros. Superintendent Xiao invites you to choose any note and check its digital watermark. The checksum 13 and serial number N indicate they were issued by the Austrian central bank in 2007.”
“What does Superintendent Xiao want us to do in return for that?”
Georgina glared at him while Chun-li translated:
“Simply to downplay Tang Lu elements of the story. One reason the Superintendent decided to come himself, in person, and in plain clothes, is to speak man-to-man to senior correspondent Brough,” - it was Georgina who snorted now - “and not to attempt crude, Chinese police tactics such as the seizure of pictures, which the Superintendent now realises to be futile.”
“What are you trying to do?” Brough looked straight into Xiao’s eyes, which did not flinch.
Xiao leaned back and lit a Zhongnanhai; he offered Brough one, which he refused-and looked surprised as Georgina grabbed the packet and, with jittery fingers, accepted a light. Now there was smoke in the air, and fresh banknotes on the table, Xiao’s voice mellowed a notch.
“Tang Lu has a bad name for pollution but a good name for social order. To my regret, I’ve turned a blind eye to something that was undermining social order. When I get back, I expect the production process at Tang Lu Nickel Metal Hydride will be altered, maybe relocated. Some money will stop flowing into the bank accounts of certain high officials. The Tang Lu Police Department will get on with its job of rooting out minor crime and preventing drunkenness. The Western TV channel will show its report. The bosses in Beijing will get angry at the bosses in Ningxia; they will get angry with me; they will probably retire me anyway for getting involved in an incident with,” Chun-li paused the translation, “with a criminally obsessed sex pervert. But you have found bigger things than pollution, right here in Inner Mongolia.”
“Why don’t you just keep the money yourself?” Brough asked.
“Because I am not corrupt. This is the official corruption fund we keep at the Police HQ and I had to sign it out. I see from your defiant response that you do not believe you are corrupt either,” Xiao chuckled.
“Shall we terminate this?” Georgina snapped at Chun-li.
“Superintendent one more thing has to say,” Chun-li’s translation skills were fading with fatigue. “Please check laptop.”
Brough opened the computer, which had been left on standby. Xiao watched with satisfaction as the faces of the two Westerners shrivelled with disgust.
“Sixteen hundred such images have been detected on this hard drive,” Xiao’s voice became businesslike. There was a special CD full of child pornography on hand at police HQ to deal with threats to social order like David Brough.
“What the?” Georgina began.
“What chapter is this Chun-li?” Brough sniggered.
“Huh?”
“What chapter in the manual for wasting the time of foreign journalists?”
“Oh,” she laughed wearily, against a pain-seared ribcage, “probably chapter seventeen.”
“The bribe will not be necessary,” Georgina pushed the money back across the table. “Nor will the attempt to frame Mister Brough. David, I will accept your word that these images are not there because of any of your sexual deviations. Chun-li, say thank-you to Superintendent Xiao for rescuing you, and also for agreeing to forget the matter of the gun. Tell him we don’t care how many bodies the police find, since we were not responsible for killing anybody.”
She stood up and offered her hand to Xiao, who shook it rhythmically, making her voice undulate.
“Please convey to the Superintendent that Channel Ninety-Nine is a responsible broadcaster and was never going to call into question the conduct of the police department at Tang Lu, which was always courteous. And that our primary interest in this case was always in presenting a balanced story about pollution, of which Tang Lu is just one of a number of elements. We have no interest in any wider story about rare metals, or alleged market manipulation, and certainly do not want to draw attention to any of the unfortunate events that have befallen us, since these are part of the job of being an international news crew.”
Chun-li gabbled fast in Mandarin and Georgina maintained a saccharine smile. Carstairs, sitting outside as lookout, gave a whistle as the headlights of a small convoy of police vehicles bumped towards them.
“What the fuck are you agreeing to do?” Brough hissed at Georgina as Xiao exchanged pleasantries with Chun-li, burying the cash back into his holdall.
“I don’t give a shit about you and effing Rare Earth obsession - but this little cow and her gun could have got us into serious trouble.”
Xiao had become magnanimous now, playing the gentle giant with the one-pip Mongolian Superintendent in charge of the incident. He’d followed the Audi in a hired taxi, he explained to the awestruck local cops, simply because he’d noticed the occupants, two criminal-types, observing the Ruifeng van through binoculars.
They all trooped outside, the lights from the police vehicles casting everybody’s shadow, harsh and black, onto the walls of the ravine. Brough and Georgina were hissing threats to each other; Chun-li was squirming as Xiao patted her on the head.
Then, in the dark of the gift shop, a pair of red, electric camel eyes lit up and they heard the park’s Mongolian theme tune echoing at them, from a tinny speaker inside its hump.
Now a second pair of eyes lit up and a second electric camel began singing, setting up a discordant Bactrian fugue; now a third and a fourth. A dark figure was moving along the whole row of camel gifts, pressing each of them on the head to start them singing. Soon there was a trashy camel symphony echoing out of the gift-shop’s open door and into the ravine.
The cops and journalists fell silent. Rupert Wong raised his camera to catch the moment but Mr. Bo’s hand halted it halfway. Against the last sliver of d
usk they saw the silhouette of a man move over to the formica tables, reach beneath one, and pull away something small that had been taped there.
“What’s this?” Xiao glared at Chun-li, who could only reply with a panicked look.
“Who’s that?” shouted the Mongolian police chief, flipping the press-stud on his holster.
A skinny youth with a bruised and peevish face emerged into the headlamps. It was Li Qi-han.
“This man is an impostor!” Li Qi-han pronounced, in a refined and vintage Beijing Party School accent, pointing a stiff finger at Xiao.
“He is Xiao Yi-ming, failed dotcom entrepreneur and swindler. Only this morning he incited the residents of an old-people’s hostel into senseless anti-social acts, aided and abetted by a known rightist element.