INCARNATION

by Daniel Easterman

  ‘Will you come to London with me?’ he asked.

  ‘London?’

  ‘I can get you a passport. Once we’re out of China, we’ll see if you can have a permanent one.’

  ‘But I don’t want to leave China.’

  He touched her cheek gently, pushing back a strand of hair that had strayed across her eyes.

  ‘I think you have to, dear. Once they know who you are, the authorities will hunt you down and kill you.’

  ‘I want to take revenge. For what was done to Kashgar.’

  ‘Then leave China with me. You can do more with my help from outside than you could ever hope to do here. Believe me.’

  ‘But ... where will I live? What will I do?’

  ‘You can live with me. I have a house. You could help me look after Maddie.’

  ‘What do you mean? You think I want to be your private nurse? Give me a bed and a residence permit, and I’ll put myself at your disposal

  He shook his head. He meant nothing like that.

  ‘I’m not asking you to be a nurse, or a home help, or a private clinic for Maddie.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I’m asking you to be my wife.’

  She looked at him in amazement, then took him in her arms, and held him tightly, as if there was a risk of his flying away. They remained locked in their embrace for a long time.

  ‘Even though I’m not a Muslim?’ he asked.

  ‘Even though you’re the blackest heathen on the face of the earth.’

  ‘Even though I nearly killed you out here?’

  She kissed him on the lips.

  ‘It doesn’t matter any longer. I would have died back home. No doubt of that.’

  ‘It’s starting to get dark,’ he said. ‘I think we should get out of this area before the sun goes down.’

  She did not say anything. She seemed to have frozen. David shook her.

  ‘Nabila, we’ve got to go.’

  She pulled back slightly. Her hair stroked his cheek.

  ‘It’s already too late,’ she said.

  He drew away from her and turned to look in the direction she was facing.

  The ground must have opened up somewhere to disgorge them. There must be twenty in all, he thought. They wore well-pressed grey uniforms with red insignia at the collars and red berets on their shaven heads, and in their hands they carried submachine-guns poised to shoot.

  He raised his hands resignedly and waited for them to come.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  Chaofe Ling

  There was a short flight of steps leading downwards, then a lift. They made him stand in the lift, two men behind him, two holding his arms. No one hit him, no one threatened him, no one spoke to him. He indulged himself in a little fantasy, that he’d been captured by aliens and was being taken aboard their ship. After what he’d seen outside, he wondered if the fantasy could possibly be worse than reality. Even little green men might have a code of ethics, or be burdened with consciences.

  He counted the buttons and made seven levels. To his vague disappointment, they stopped at Level 3, and he was frogmarched out into a corridor that seemed never to end. As he stepped from the lift, he shouted ‘Haberdashery!’ at the top of his voice. The cry bounced and slid along the never-ending passage, and died back into the silence that was always there. He wondered what they were doing with Nabila.

  He spoke to them after that in Uighur, for form’s sake He asked questions, made vociferous protests, but he doubted if even one of them could understand a word of the language. He planned to keep up his pretence as long as he could, though he didn’t expect for a moment that they would let him go free as a result. His story was that he and Nabila, a paramedic, had been accompanying a British explorer who had died en route, along with six others of their companions. It was important to have a story during an interrogation, it provided something for the mind to fasten on, something to embroider, something to lay traps with.

  One thing worried him, and that was how exactly they’d known that he and Nabila were there in the first place. There were no ground-level personnel detectors at the site, he’d have staked his life on it. Who, after all, was likely to approach the complex on foot?

  He was made to sit on a small go-kart, and escorted on a long journey that took him to door number 74:7 (3). The number was like all the other numbers, the door was like all the other doors. Except for one thing: the tiny character painted in black lacquer, the character p ‘u, simplicity.

  ‘What about Nabila?’ he asked when they pushed him inside. ‘The woman who was with me.’ But they did not answer. He tried in Chinese, but they pretended not to understand. They left, dosing the door behind them.

  On the other side of the door he saw, not a room, but a wall, and for a moment he started to panic. Then he saw that it was a ghost wall painted in black. On it was painted in white lacquer the character su, the simple and unadorned self.

  Ghost walls were built in order to keep evil spirits out of rooms or buildings. The spirits can travel only in a straight line, so the short wall impedes their movement, since they have no way of going round it. David hesitated briefly, then went round the wall to the right. Before him lay a vast room, its walls painted black, and its only illumination coming from two long rows of paper lanterns that hung down from the ceiling like the bellies of incandescent white doves.

  In the centre of the room stood a plain chair of lacquered wood. The finish of the lacquer was Japanese in its simplicity, but the contours of the chair were unmistakably Chinese. The chair was placed on a square of red silk, about six foot by six. The floor was lacquered perfectly, and if David looked down he could see himself reflected in it. He began to work his way round the room, brushing the walls lightly with his hand. The pain in the stump on his left hand was growing distressing, like a throbbing ache in a rotten tooth. He found the door, marked only by a small red light that flashed every few seconds, and an electronically operated lock that gave way to neither blows nor caresses.

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ intoned a voice from behind. He swung round to see a grave-faced man sitting in the lacquered chair, watching him.

  David strode up to him. He was about fifty years old. tall, with a strong chin and thick eyebrows. It was not a face so much as a palimpsest on which the grey devices of a lifetime had been written: hate and scorn and pride and contempt and murderous rage, the seven sins times seven. David looked into his eyes and away again. He had not forgotten the face. How could he have?

  ‘Colonel Chang Zhangyi?’

  Chang Zhangyi nodded. He was dressed in black, very simply, as though to blend with the room. ‘Welcome to Chaofe Ling. Sit down next to me, here on the floor. I’d like to talk with you.’

  ‘I’d prefer to stand.’

  Chang Zhangyi looked at him as though about to order him to sit, then thought better of it.

  ‘If that is your choice.’

  ‘It is.’ He paused. ‘What is this place anyway?’

  ‘This room? I thought you’d be intrigued. This is meditation room. I like to spend at least an hour each day quieting my inner self. Every year I spend a month at a monastery in the mountains north of Guilin. Does that surprise you?’

  ‘Why should it surprise me? We all have our weaknesses.’

  ‘You don’t like me, do you, Mr Laing?’

  ‘That’s beside the point.’

  ‘On the contrary, it is the point. Liking and hating wear us out. I’ve brought you here because I think I can spare you all that.’

  ‘And if I prefer to keep my likes and dislikes as they are?’ David asked.

  The other man looked at him for a long time without answering. David watched him, perfectly still. Inside, he was screaming to know what had become of Nabila.

  ‘You have come to the end of a very long journey, Laing Shiansheng,’ Chang Zhangyi said finally. ‘All your battles, all your journeyings, all your yearnings end here.’

  ‘What exactly do y
ou mean by that? I’m to be put to death, is that all you mean?’

  ‘Not if you do not wish it. No one will threaten you while you are here. You’ve been very brave. You’ve survived great perils, you’ve endured intense deprivations. None of that should go unrecognized or unrewarded.’

  ‘I don’t understand. My purpose in coming here was to destroy this place. If my superiors in London give the go-ahead, it could still be bombed out of existence.’

  Chang Zhangyi shook his head slowly. His gaze seemed fixed somewhere beyond the room.

  ‘That will not happen. Please suffer no anxiety on that account.’

  ‘Why not? You can’t be sure ...’

  ‘Because Anthony Farrar will not pass your message on to anyone else. Because he will tell his colleagues he has had confirmation that you are dead, and that there is no Black City in the Taklamakan. That is why.’

  David felt a surge of pure fury rise up in him. He could never have found words to express it. He knew now who had killed Sam and who had betrayed Matthew Hyde.

  ‘Try not to think about revenge,’ said Chang Zhangyi. ‘It’s futile. You will never see Anthony Farrar again. If you can reconcile yourself to that, you can get on with your own life.’

  ‘I don’t wish for reconciliation.’

  ‘No, but you must. And in time you will.’

  ‘You say I’m to be rewarded for what I’ve gone through. That makes very little sense. I came here as your enemy, I am still your enemy. Why don’t you just have me taken out and shot? Why make an exception of me?’

  ‘Laing Shiansheng, you are not my enemy. You and I have never been enemies, and we are not enemies now. Forget about the Chinese Politburo or the People’s Liberation Army or the Guojia Anchuanbu.’

  ‘Forget about them?’

  ‘They are of no real importance.’

  ‘Then why have you ...?’

  ‘I am a member of the Concilium of the Hui Hou. You have heard of us, of course. You have, perhaps, thought of us from time to time. Fantasized about us.’

  David went rigid. For the first time since entering this place, he felt frightened.

  ‘I have heard … a little.’

  ‘Yes. Everyone has heard a little. But we are much more than whatever you will have heard.’

  ‘I’ve heard you are butchers.’

  ‘Only when we have to be. We abhor violence unless it favours proper ends.’

  ‘And what ends are those?’

  ‘Order. Law. Security. The elimination of the weak.’

  ‘What do you want with me?’ David demanded. ‘What are the Hui Hou doing out here? I thought you belonged in cities. Like cockroaches.’

  Chang Zhangyi’s eyebrows rose.

  ‘I am truly surprised at you, Laing Shiansheng. You know so much about this country and its secrets, and yet you say you are ignorant of the true position the Hui Hou hold in Chinese society.’

  The colonel’s hair was brushed back from his head, leaving his forehead exposed. David noticed small pock marks near the hairline. Chang Zhangyi went on speaking.

  ‘Did it never occur to you that the government in Peking could never have carried out a project like this on their own? Didn’t you know that, whenever they face problems they cannot solve without help, they turn to us? The arrangement made between Chaofe Ling and Saddam Hussein will bring vast quantities of oil into China. Most of it will remain in the hands of the Hui Hou. We are also negotiating deals with Iran and Libya. In due course, the United States will want a bomb as well, and I assure you they will pay us anything we ask. Others will follow.

  ‘Where do you imagine this complex obtained the raw materials it needed to make the warheads? How do you think they were able to attract foreign scientists to work on the programme? I suppose you don’t even know that over a dozen British scientists have been working here since the project’s inception.’

  ‘And me?’ asked David. ‘What do you want with me? Do you expect me to work on your project as well?’ His back and legs ached, and he longed to sit on the floor. But that would have made it seem that he was sitting at Chang Zhangyi’s feet, like a disciple with his master. And David did not consider himself Chang Zhangyi’s disciple.

  The colonel looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. His gaze reminded David of a lizard’s stare - cold, half-focused, potentially fatal.

  ‘I told you that your prowess should not go unrewarded. You thought you were brought here to be punished. Instead, I propose to offer you a reward beyond your imagining.’

  ‘If it can’t be imagined, how can it ...?’

  ‘Be quiet for a moment, and I will tell you. It can take as long as thirty years for an aspirant to be admitted within the ranks of the Hui Hou. Some men die while waiting. A man like Sir Anthony Farrar, for example, has been close to us for many years, but he has never been properly committed, and has not been offered entrance even to the zhu yuanchuan.’

  David recognized the phrase, the "bamboo circle", as one he’d heard whispered wherever a group of Chinese gathered for drink or food. It referred to the lowest level of the Hui Hou hierarchy. People spoke of joining it as others might speak of winning the lottery or marrying into money.

  ‘You, however,’ Chang Zhangyi continued, ‘are the sort of man we actively seek. I am offering you admission directly to the si yuanchuan, the silk circle, the second level of allegiance. You will enter it at the seventh grade. Before long you will be able to qualify for admission to the yu yuanchuan, the feather circle. That is a rare honour. With that honour comes tangible reward and the beginnings of a new responsibility.’

  'I don’t expect you’re offering any of this for nothing. The one thing I do know about the Hui Hou is that they exact a price for everything they give.’

  The colonel nodded.

  ‘If you are to have such privileges, we should have something in return. You are now a dead man, Laing Shiansheng. In a few days or weeks, your death will be recorded officially. Your wife is dead, your son is dead, and it seems that it will not be very long before your daughter dies as well. You can never return to England, never go back anywhere as yourself.

  ‘A man such as you needs help to start a new life, otherwise he really will find himself dead and buried. Some have to find huge sums of money to carry off such a thing. You don’t have to. You only have to tell us what you know. You have spent years watching China, gathering information, sifting it, passing it on to your superiors. Your insights will be invaluable to us.’

  ‘And to Chinese intelligence, no doubt.’

  ‘Perhaps. They would certainly express an interest. If they pay a sufficiently high price, they may have all they ask for.’

  ‘Why should you or anyone else be interested in what I know? You have that simpering bastard Farrar. He’ll already have told you far more than I can.’

  Chang Zhangyi shook his head.

  ‘Farrar knows less than you imagine. We aren’t interested in the sort of gossip he sniffs up from the floors inside Vauxhall House.’

  ‘My answer is no. You should have known that. I have a loyalty to my colleagues. If Farrar’s a traitor, it doesn’t mean I have to be one.’

  ‘No matter. I don’t expect a positive answer inside a month or more. There’s no rush. You will be well looked after. A surgeon will take care of that finger. You will find that life at Chaofe Ling can prove more pleasant than life in many other places.’

  ‘What about Nabila? What’s been done with her? I want to see her.’

  ‘Is she important to you? We thought she was just your guide. And perhaps of some use as a receptacle for your sexual release.’

  David fought down an impulse to hit him. If Chang Zhangyi was deliberately seeking to provoke him, he preferred to remain calm.

  ‘I plan to marry her. If you want my compliance in anything, make sure she’s safe. I’ll rely on you for that.’

  An amused light glinted briefly in Chang Zhangyi’s eyes.

  ‘I see,’ he
said. 'In that case, I’ll have her brought to your quarters.. Would you like me to conduct you there?’

  ‘I don’t seem to have much choice.’

  ‘No, not much. Mr Laing, let me show you something. As a token of our goodwill.’

  He reached into his tunic pocket and drew out a folded sheet of paper. Without unfolding it, he passed it to David.

  ‘I shall arrange for this to be sent to your daughter,’ he said. ‘I know it will mean a lot to her.’

  David unfolded the paper. It contained several lines in Chinese script. A name, followed by an address. Zheng Juntao, the student Maddie had loved, who had disappeared into some forgotten work camp, and who had now returned to life with an address in a small town in Chengdu Province.

  ‘They can be reunited,’ Chang Zhangyi said. ‘He is not that important. I can arrange for him to be given a passport and an exit visa. If you want. It is up to you.’

  ‘May I ... keep this?’

  Chang Zhangyi nodded, arid David put it in his pocket. It would change Maddie’s life to have this, he thought. Change it, and perhaps save it. The Hui Hou pressed a hard bargain. How could he deny his own daughter the gift of life?

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

  His quarters turned out to be a suite of rooms as richly furnished as those you might find in a grand hotel. The bathroom, a place of tinted mirrors and hidden lights, boasted a huge sunken bath and a separate Jacuzzi. In the bedroom, a walk-in wardrobe took up two walls and was stuffed with shirts and trousers and a long rack of silk ties. There were books to read in seventeen languages, records to play, videos to watch, and a large wide-screen television. One room was fitted out as a gym, with state of the art equipment made by a company in Seattle. Not even the best Chinese hotels had fittings like these.

  ‘You will get used to luxury,’ said Chang Zhangyi.

  David shook his head.

  ‘What’s the point of having fifty suits and a hundred ties and hand-made shoes if I have to wear them here?’

  ‘You won’t always be here. When enough time has passed, you will be given a new identity and a place to live. You don’t have to stay in China unless you want to.’