The Firemaker tct-1

by Peter May

  ‘Don’t be a damned fool, Li. You and I both know you’re not going to shoot me.’

  But Li’s eyes had taken on a cold, dark intensity. He looked unwaveringly at Wu. ‘If you believe I’m capable of any of this, Detective … then you must believe I’m capable of blowing your head off. If you want to test me, go ahead.’

  Wu thought about it for a very brief moment. ‘I take your point,’ he said.

  ‘So tell everyone to back off.’

  ‘You heard him. Get the hell out of here,’ Wu shouted immediately. No one moved. ‘Now!’

  Slowly, uniformed, plainclothed and forensics officers backed out of the apartment on to the landing. Li turned Wu around, pushing the revolver into the back of his neck, and made him follow. They stopped at Li’s bedroom and he pulled Wu backwards towards the dresser. ‘Get my holster out of the top drawer,’ he said. Wu did as he was told. ‘Hang on to it.’

  Out on the landing, police officers parted to let them pass. ‘Don’t anyone try anything,’ Wu said. ‘No heroes, please. I’ve got a wife and kid who want to see me again.’

  ‘Not what I’ve heard,’ Li said.

  Wu smiled grimly. ‘Okay, so we’re separated. So I lied. That’s no reason to kill a man.’

  Li pushed him down the stairs one step at a time. ‘According to you, I don’t need much of a reason.’

  ‘Hey, come on, Li,’ Wu said. ‘I’m just doing my job. You’d do the same. You know you would. I mean, I don’t believe any of this is going to stand up. But you’re not doing yourself any favours.’

  ‘Well, I sure as hell can’t rely on you to do me any.’ And he shoved the barrel harder into the base of Wu’s skull.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Wu said. ‘Have it your way.’

  They passed silent, watching officers on the ground floor as they went through the front doors and out into the hot night, Wu telling everyone quietly and repeatedly to stay calm. The uniformed officers in the street looked on in amazement as Li pushed Wu towards his Jeep. ‘All right boys,’ Wu said. ‘Nothing tricksy, now. We’re going to let him go, all right?’

  Li grabbed his holster and shoved Wu away, still pointing the revolver at him, and opened the door of the Jeep. He leaned in and started the engine. He looked very directly at Wu. ‘I didn’t do this.’

  Wu raised his hands. ‘Hey, I’m not arguing. Just go.’

  Li jumped in, threw the revolver and holster on to the passenger seat, banged the gears into reverse, and the Jeep screamed backwards up the street, smoke rising from the wheels in white clouds. A small road cut across the parkland that divided the street down its centre. He passed it, crashed into first gear and spun the Jeep across the road on to the opposite carriageway, and then north towards the bright lights of East Chang’an Avenue. The only thing he could see were the lifeless eyes of Old Yifu staring at the ceiling. He put up a hell of a fight, Wu had said. Li could picture it. The old man would not have given his life cheaply. Li’s tears for his uncle flowed now without restraint.

  And then, with a sudden jolt, he realised that if they had killed Lily just because she had witnessed Margaret’s request for the blood tests, then they would have to kill Margaret, too.

  III

  Margaret’s taxi dropped her in Tiantandong Road outside the east gate to the Temple of Heaven. But there was nothing heavenly about Tiantandong Road. It was a wide road in the process of redevelopment, with no streetlights. Piles of rubble and litter lined the sidewalk. Traffic rumbled distantly beyond a deserted cycle lane. Rows of grim apartment blocks opposite cast pale light across the tarmac. In the distance, exotic new buildings based on traditional Chinese designs were floodlit and stood out against the night sky. Another world. Beyond the railings, the park lay in brooding darkness.

  In spite of the heat, Margaret shivered. The area was deserted. She felt vulnerable and was already regretting her decision to come. There was no sign of McCord. She walked to the gate and peered through the bars. There was a moon tonight, and as her eyes grew accustomed to its light she saw, beyond a second gate, a long line of cypress trees in an avenue leading towards a distant three-domed temple. The touch of a hot lizard hand on her arm made her squeal with fright. She turned, heart pounding, to find McCord at her elbow. ‘Jesus Christ! Did you have to sneak up on me like that?’

  ‘Shhh.’ He put his finger to his lips. ‘Come on.’ He pushed the gate and it swung open. ‘Quickly.’ She saw the perspiration beading his forehead, smelled the alcohol sour on his breath, could almost touch his fear. He looked back, frightened eyes darting left and right, as he pushed the gate shut behind them. He started scurrying towards the inner gate. She hurried after him.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Into the park. If we haven’t been followed we’ll be safe there.’

  The small gate by the ticket booth was not locked. He held it open for her, and led her quickly away from the light along the avenue of cypresses. As their pupils dilated, shadows grew out of the wash of moonlight that lay across the park, and the lights of the city receded into the distance. ‘For heaven’s sake, McCord, whatever you’ve got to tell me you can tell me now.’

  ‘When we get to the corridor,’ he whispered breathlessly. ‘It’s safer there.’

  The corridor was a long, cobbled passageway raised on stone slabs. It dog-legged for several hundred metres towards the distant temple. A steeply pitched tiled roof ran its length, resting on maroon pillars and an understructure of intricately patterned blue, green and yellow beams. Margaret and McCord passed under a brick gate with a pale green roof, through the shadow of a large tree, and up a broad sweep of steps to its east end. McCord seemed relieved. It was dark here, he said, and safe. Through the pillars they could see the park around them in the moonlight, and anyone who might approach. But still he was unable to stay in one place and say his piece. He was driven, nervous and restless, almost on the verge of hysteria, it seemed to Margaret. He continued to walk agitatedly along the corridor, past long lines of shuttered and padlocked counters from which vendors sold cheap mementos to tourists during the day. But his pace had slowed now and he seemed more thoughtful, hands pushed deep into the pockets of his jacket. He glanced nervously in her direction as she kept pace with him along the corridor. He sensed that her patience was wearing thin. ‘I need your help,’ he said eventually, as if he had had to summon the courage to ask.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I want you to go with me to the American Embassy. They won’t have anything to do with me.’ He chuckled sourly. ‘I guess I kind of burned my boats with the good old US of A. But they’ll believe you.’

  ‘Believe me about what?’

  ‘That they’re trying to kill me.’

  Margaret was at a loss. ‘Who is trying to kill you?’

  ‘The same people that killed Chao Heng and those others. They’ll do anything to try and cover up.’ He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his neck and his forehead. His breath was coming now in short asthmatic bursts that wheezed and gurgled in his throat. ‘Though God knows what the point of it all is. They’re all going to die, the same as everyone else.’ There was something chilling in the way he spoke so glibly of death, raising goose bumps on Margaret’s arms. He glanced at her again, but couldn’t meet her eye for long. ‘I didn’t know anything about it. That’s the God’s honest truth. Not until that night at the duck restaurant. They sent a car for me. It was waiting outside. Took me to Zhongnanhai. You know what that is?’

  ‘The New Forbidden City.’

  He nodded. ‘Where the bigwigs are.’ He fumbled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, sucking smoke deeply into his lungs through the crackling phlegm in his tubes. ‘Gave these things up years ago,’ he said. ‘But lately I thought what the hell.’ He took another draw. ‘The thing is, Chao was going to go public. You see, he had nothing to lose.’

  Margaret shook her head. McCord was just rambling. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.
>
  ‘Pang Xiaosheng,’ he said, stabbing his cigarette at her. ‘You heard of him?’

  ‘Vaguely.’ Margaret tried to remember. Something Bob had told her. ‘Minister of Agriculture. Sponsored your research into the super-rice.’

  ‘Ex Minister of Agriculture,’ McCord corrected her. ‘Future leader of China.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Or so he thought.’

  Margaret was losing patience. ‘You’re still not making any sense, McCord.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ he said, turning towards her, an unpleasant sneer on his face, ‘call me Doctor. Even Mister. I’m not one to stand on ceremony.’

  ‘Look …’ She stopped and stood her ground. ‘Either you tell me what this is all about or I am going. Right now.’

  ‘Hey, cool it.’ He tipped his ash on the cobbles. ‘I’m coming to it, okay?’ They had reached the end of the corridor, and a cobbled slope led up through an arched gate to the temple beyond. A strange smile spread across McCord’s face. ‘Jeesus,’ he said. ‘Know where we are?’

  ‘In a park?’

  He ignored the sarcasm in her tone. ‘Never even thought about it,’ he said. ‘Kind of ironic really. Come and see.’ And he headed up the ramp through the arch. She sighed and stood for a moment before following him, frustration bubbling up inside her. They emerged from the shadow of the gate into planes of shimmering silver marble, rising on three tiers to the blue-and-gold domes that rose, one on the other, more than a hundred and twenty feet into the Beijing sky. McCord wandered out across the paving stones towards the temple, the moon casting his shadow blue in his wake. He flicked his cigarette away, and it showered red sparks across the marble. He had suddenly become diminutive in the scale of things. He raised his arms on either side of himself like a bird and spun round to face her, grinning maniacally. ‘I feel washed in the light of heaven,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests.’ And he turned away again to tilt his head back and gaze up at the vast temple that loomed over him. He laughed out loud. ‘The Son of Heaven came here twice a year to pray. The first time was on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month to ask for a good harvest.’ He turned around again to face her, still grinning like an idiot, and she saw tears brimming in his eyes. ‘And then again at the winter solstice to give thanks for blessings received.’ And suddenly the grin vanished and he stepped towards her, tears running silently down his cheeks. ‘But Pang Xiaosheng didn’t have to pray for a good harvest. He had me to engineer one for him.’ He shook his head, and with bitterness in his voice said, ‘And he won’t be giving thanks for blessings received.’

  Margaret stood stock still, absorbed by a performance that was both terrifying and sad, a tragedy played out on an ancient stage, a bizarre script performed by a grotesque clown. ‘Do you want to tell me what happened, Dr McCord?’ she asked quietly, in a voice that whispered back at them from among the terraces.

  McCord seemed spent, and very small and insignificant in the shadow of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. ‘It was Chao Heng who set up the super-rice research programme for the Ministry of Agriculture. He was Pang’s man. And it was Chao who brought me in. That meant doing a deal with my employers, Grogan Industries. They were happy to put up the money, because Pang was in a hurry and they’d have a free hand. None of the interference they’d have got from government bodies in the States. The chance to put all their theories into practice on a grand scale. If it came off, they got the patent on the super-rice and the chance to sell it worldwide. Worth billions. Billions and billions. And the Chinese? Well, they’d just be happy because they could feed themselves, and Pang could sell himself as the man to lead them into the next millennium. And me? I was the man who was going to create the super-rice. And I did.’

  He turned away, wandering off across the flagstones, talking at the night. ‘Jesus, it was so beautiful. A grain of rice impervious to insects or disease or fungus. Indestructible. Guaranteed one hundred per cent return from planting.’

  ‘How did you do it?’ Margaret asked.

  He spun round, eyes gleaming. ‘How did I do it? It was easy. It was so simple it was perfection. I took a cholera toxin gene — you know, the stuff that makes cholera fucking lethal — and I put it in the rice.’

  Margaret looked at him, horrified. ‘But that’s … insane.’

  McCord shook his head, almost laughing at her shock. ‘No, it’s not,’ he said. ‘The cholera toxin killed everything. Insects, bacteria, viruses, fungi.’

  ‘And people?’

  ‘Well, that was the beauty of it. You cooked it, it was harmless, and the rice tasted every bit as good as it always had. But the really clever bit was getting it in there. Smart stuff, state of the art. But I told you all this.’ He waved his little finger at her. ‘Remember?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said dryly. ‘Your little penis.’

  He grinned. ‘So I took my cholera toxin gene, stuck it on the back of a friendly virus, and sent it in to multiply in the DNA of the rice.’

  ‘A friendly virus?’ Margaret asked, unable to keep the scepticism from her voice.

  He clouded. ‘Sure. In this case the cauliflower mosaic virus. Makes all those patterns on the leaves of a cauliflower. We’ve been eating it for thousands of years and it’s never done us any harm.’

  ‘So you thought it would be a good idea to feed people cholera toxin genes and cauliflower viruses when they thought they were eating rice?’

  ‘It worked. And it was perfectly harmless.’ McCord was almost aggressive in his defensiveness. ‘We had extensive field trials in the south. The research team lived on the stuff for a year before we ever went public with it. The returns were terrific and it tasted great.’ It was his turn to be sarcastic. ‘And no one died of cholera toxin or mosaic virus.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘So we launched it three years ago. All over China. The results were phenomenal, Dr Campbell. Phenomenal. Yields increased by up to a hundred per cent. Goodbye hunger.’

  ‘And hello profit.’

  ‘And why the hell not!’ McCord turned on her. ‘You put up the money, you take the risk, you reap the rewards.’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling there’s a “but” somewhere in our future?’ Margaret asked.

  * * *

  He gave her a sour look and took a couple of long pulls on his cigarette before he spoke again. ‘They never told me about Chao getting ill. Nearly a year ago. At first they thought it was AIDS. He liked boys, you know.’ He wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘They were treating him for AIDS, but it wasn’t that, and they started getting worried, and Pang had him admitted to Military Hospital Number 301.’ He stood staring at the ground, breathing stertorously, as if he had been running. ‘It was some new fucking virus no one had seen before. A retrovirus. Lies dormant in the brain for five years or more. You don’t even know it’s there. Then for no reason it decides it’s going to screw you. Starts attacking the white blood cells and ends up completely fucking your immune system. Bit like AIDS, only worse. And harder to pin down, ’cos it mutates faster than you can say “Gotcha”.’ He dragged his eyes up to meet hers and held them for a long moment before the truth suddenly dawned on her.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘It’s in the rice.’ And the hair rose upon the back of her neck and along her arms and on her thighs.

  His eyes filled up again and he flicked his cigarette vindictively at the night. ‘Somehow,’ he said, ‘somewhere along the line, our innocent little cauliflower mosaic virus recombined with another virus, probably something equally innocuous somewhere out there in the test environment.’ He paused to catch his breath, coming now in increasingly short bursts. ‘And we got a mutation. A third and, this time, lethal virus. RiceX Virus they’re calling it. RXV. Inherent in the genetic make-up of the rice. We never even knew it was there.’

  There was a long silence as Margaret absorbed what he had just told her. She was aware of the blood pulsing behind her eyes, in her throat, in the pit of her stomach. She felt sick. ‘You mean it’s still there in th
e rice?’ she asked eventually. He nodded. ‘The stuff that people are growing and eating?’ He nodded again. ‘And anyone who eats it has got, or is going to get, this virus … this RXV?’

  He dragged his eyes away from his feet for a moment to stare off into the trees. His voice was trembling. ‘Of course, it won’t show itself for another couple of years yet. Chao was eating it long before it went into production.’

  Margaret simply found herself unable to deal with the scale of what he was saying. ‘But that’s more than a billion people,’ she gasped.

  He shrugged. ‘More than that. They’ve been exporting super-rice all over the world. And once the virus is out there, who knows how else it’s transmitted? We could be looking at half the world’s population or more.’

  And in that moment, Margaret was struck by the sickening realisation that she, too, had eaten the rice. For a moment she simply couldn’t believe it. There had to be a mistake, some way of undoing it. She couldn’t be going to die just because she’d eaten some rice. It was like the moment she had heard that Michael was dead. She couldn’t accept it. It just didn’t seem possible. She wheeled round on McCord, fear turning to anger turning to rage.

  ‘You fucking people!’ she screamed at him, her voice echoing back from every marble surface and rising into the hot pine-scented night. ‘You stupid fucking people! What nature took three billion years to achieve, you thought you could do in three. You thought you could play fucking God!’

  McCord flinched, but he did not speak for a long time. ‘Irony is,’ he said finally, ‘I haven’t eaten rice since I was a kid. Got an allergic reaction to the stuff.’

  Margaret was riven between despair and anger. She wanted to fly at him, punching and kicking and tearing at his face. But her despair robbed her of strength and she stood helplessly in the night, crushed and burdened by the weight of what she knew — that she had eaten death and there was no way back; that before she died she would see two billion people, maybe more, die ahead of her; that there was nothing she could do about any of it.