INCARNATION

by Daniel Easterman

  ‘Stop blethering. I’m going nowhere without you. You’re my only reason for wanting to get out of this place at all. Now, press this hard against the wound, and keep pressing till further notice.’ He ripped off his shirt and handed it to her.

  Slinging his gun over one shoulder, he picked up Nabila’s in his left hand and pulled her to her feet with the right. She staggered, and for a moment he thought she was going to faint.

  ‘Don’t give up on me now. We can still do this. Believe me.’

  Behind them there came a shout. One of the technicians had found a case full of little white masks, the sort they used when handling powders or working in a toxic environment. He started distributing them to the guards, who were still spluttering loudly, and stumbling about in their desperate efforts to escape the all-pervasive gas.

  The shout came again. It was Huang Zhengmei. She was standing off to one side, rubbing her eyes and doing her best to ignore the effects the gas had had on her. The mask prevented fresh gas getting to her lungs, but it did not remove what was there already.

  ‘Give yourselves up. Reinforcements are already on the way. There’s no way out for you: you’re only making things harder for yourselves.’

  ‘Oh, shut up.’ David fired from the hip at her: one bullet struck her in the arm, another in the hip.

  ‘Time to get out of here,’ said David. He led Nabila as fast as she could walk, helping her to the lift by which they’d entered the bottom level. The doors closed behind them with a satisfying clunk. Nabila groaned and slumped heavily to the floor.

  David scanned the buttons and pressed one marked "Exit to Ground Level".

  The lift shuddered and began to rise at speed. Nabila had started coughing. Above her head, little lights flashed. They arrived at Level 1, and without warning the lift slammed to a halt.

  ‘Attention!’ came a woman’s voice from a small speaker set next to the row of buttons. ‘You may not proceed to Ground Level without formal clearance.’

  David bent down to Nabila.

  ‘I don’t think my accent’s good enough for this,’ he whispered. ‘Do you think ... can you pretend to be Huang Zhengmei?’

  She blinked painfully, struggling to keep from losing consciousness.

  ‘Help me get up,’ she said.

  He pulled her up by the elbow and helped her stand facing the little grille.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  She took a deep breath and nodded. He pushed a red button that seemed to operate the intercom.

  ‘Listen to me ... This is Huang Zhengmei. I have to get ... to Ground Level right away. Colonel Chang Zhangyi is with me. We have to get to his helicopter now.’

  There was a brief silence, then the woman’s voice returned, apologetic this time.

  ‘Major Huang, my apologies. I didn’t know it was you. Please wait while I unlock your lift.’

  A few moments passed, then the lift shook into life again. David glanced at his watch. Eight minutes left. The ascent to Ground Level seemed interminable. Level 1 lay two hundred feet beneath the surface, with only a handful of lift shafts joining it to the ground. Chaofe Ling had been built to withstand a nuclear strike from above, not from below.

  The intercom crackled into life again.

  ‘Green lift? Can you hear me? We have to take you down again. Huang Zhengmei has just been in touch with Control. She is in Level 7 and says you are an impostor. Prepare to be taken down again.’

  Nabila lay on the floor, barely moving. David felt total despair sweep through him like glass. He thought despairingly of his father, of the hours he’d spent giving him his first lessons in Chinese, his voice speaking the language with practised ease. And he thought of Chang Zhangyi, running the colonel’s voice through his head, his intonations, his inflections, his drawn-out vowels. He pressed the communications button. ‘Wo shi Chang Zhangyi. Stop this nonsense at once. The woman with me is Huang Zhengmei. You heard her yourself. The woman on Level 7 is a Uighur and an impostor. If I was down there, she’d have brought me to the phone herself, but she hasn’t. She and her companion have created a block in the tunnel. I have a helicopter ready to fly to Lop Nor in order to clear the tunnel from that end.’

  He looked at his watch. Six minutes. The blast would drive up the lift shaft and tear them to pieces.

  ‘I’m not sure if I can ...'

  ‘Listen to me very carefully indeed,’ David said. ‘If you do not get me to the surface within the next few seconds, I shall see to it personally that you are whipped senseless before being shot.’

  There was silence, then a click. The lift began to rise again. Ten seconds later, it clanked to a stop at Ground Level. David turned his key in the door, and it opened without interference. The first thing he noticed was the sound of the wind somewhere above them.

  He hurried to drag Nabila out of the lift before the girl below thought better of her decision. When he looked up, he saw that they were at the bottom of a shallow well, with steps that led up to the sands.

  ‘Nabila, you’ve got to climb these. I’ll give you a hand.’

  She looked at the steps as if they had been carved there by the hands of giants. Wouldn’t it be much easier if she just lay down where she was and waited for the blast to destroy her?

  Without waiting for a response, he dragged her upright and started pulling her to the top. She managed to walk with great difficulty, but he pushed and pulled until she was at the lip of the well. The wind was howling now. He looked down and saw that blood was soaking through the shirt that she held against her chest.

  Up on top, the sandstorm had picked up momentum. Visibility was abysmal, but not yet anything like the pea-soup variety they’d experienced before. David blinked, feeling defeated at the last. Then he saw the helicopter.

  It was only a few feet away, its dull, camouflaged surface almost shimmering in the heat and rushing sand. The pilot was still engrossed in the Rolling Stones, while awaiting the bunking light on his transceiver that would alert him to Chang Zhangyi’s imminent return. He didn’t look up and didn’t notice anybody coming.

  There was a sudden howling as the helicopter doorway opened. David stood in the opening, pointing a gun at the pilot’s head.

  ‘Out! Now! Xianzai. Li.’

  The pilot swallowed hard, then dashed for the door. David kept the gun levelled at his head.

  ‘You’ve got about three minutes to run as hard as you can in that direction. But first, help me get her safely on board.’

  They took her like a rag doll, and lifted her on to the floor of the copter. The pilot looked at her softly and stroked her hair into place.

  ‘Is she badly hurt?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think so.’

  ‘There’s a first-aid box in the rear. Field dressings, painkillers, the lot.’

  ‘You’d better get moving.’ David did not want to risk letting the pilot fly the craft, knowing he would in all likelihood take them straight to his base.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Chaofe Ling’s going up any minute now.’

  The pilot looked out across the flat expanse of wasted sand. The sandstorm blocked off much of it.

  ‘I’ll never make it.' he said. ‘Not in this!’

  There was a sound behind them. David spun and froze as he saw Huang Zhengmei and two guards standing at the exit from a second lift.

  'Put your hands behind your back, Mr Laing. Pilot, take him into custody.’

  David realized he had thrown the guns into the helicopter after Nabila. He saw the pilot take his pistol from a holster on his hip and raise it. There was no point in any of this now. They would all be dead anyway.

  Suddenly, the pilot twisted, took aim and shot Huang Zhengmei and the guards in quick succession. He breathed in and out quickly, then turned to David, slipping the gun back into its holster.

  ‘I never did like her much,’ he said. ‘Now, let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Look after her, will you? I’ll get this thing in
the air.’

  ‘Can you fly it?’

  David hesitated. He still saw the pilot as his enemy.

  ‘We’ll soon find out, won’t we?’

  They jumped aboard and David took the pilot’s seat.

  The rotors were just coming up to full thrust when he felt the first tremors. The helicopter lifted a fraction, and he applied more pressure, and then, beyond the howling of the rotors and the roaring of the storm, he could hear it, deep, deep below, like a monstrous beast goaded beyond all endurance. He struggled to pull the copter away, but it seemed frozen in one place.

  The pilot stood beside him.

  ‘Let me,’ he said. ‘Please. You can kill me later if I don’t go where you want. But this way, we’ll all die.’

  David looked out and saw a column of fire rising through one of the lift shafts, high, high into the air.

  The wounded beast groaned and struggled, then roared in its death throes. David changed places with the pilot, and moments later they were lifting through sand and wind and fire, lifting high, spiralling upwards in a tight circle to gain height.

  David looked down. The ground below them was heaving into an obscene and dreadful life. Suddenly, the columns of fire were cut off, and the ground vanished from sight as they twisted higher, rising above the storm into high, clean air.

  They raced forward and forward still, and in their ears the sounds of Chaofe Ling’s deadly agony chimed like the chimes of hell.

  David looked back only once. In a wide area a little larger than Chaofe Ling itself, the storm had been beaten aside by a flat cloud of debris and sand. A shock wave dashed them like a giant hand swatting a butterfly, then another, and another. David looked on in admiration as the pilot handled the copter through each of the buffetings it received, until all grew still around them. And a silence came, as though great guns had fallen to rest.

  They continued like that for a little while. David fetched the first-aid kit and started dressing Nabila’s wound properly. While he was doing that, the pilot turned to him.

  ‘My name’s Chen,’ he said. ‘Chen Hsiaodong.’

  ‘David. David Laing.’

  ‘American?’

  ‘English.’

  Chen’s face lit up.

  ‘You like the Rolling Stones?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Oasis? The Verve?’

  ‘I’m too old for that.’

  ‘You ever meet Mick Jagger?’

  ‘Not knowingly.’

  Chen smiled.

  ‘Which way would you like to go, David?’

  ‘Any way, as long as it takes us out of China.’

  ‘That’s fine by me.’

  And the chopper dipped, then rose again, heading into the growing darkness of the west, and the hibiscus-red glow of sunset.

  Part VIII

  MIRAGE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT

  ‘Farrar.’

  There was silence, then a series of echoes bounced across gulfs of space.

  ‘Who is this?’

  More weird noises, then a clear line.

  ‘Hello? You don’t seem to be getting through.’

  ‘Farrar? This is Chang Zhangyi.’

  ‘Chang Zhangyi? How the hell did you get this number?’

  ‘That’s hardly important. I need to speak with you.’

  ‘Do you? Well, why don’t you just go ahead?’

  Crackles and hisses, then the pure silence of emptiness.

  ‘We’re facing a setback at this end.’

  ‘Don’t I bloody know! Your shipment is late, and my people have been getting reports about an underground nuclear explosion west of the usual Lop Nor sites. I thought you’d tested this system to destruction long ago. So just what the hell’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing. You don’t have to worry. Our arrangements still stand. Your money is safe.’

  ‘Is it? I should most certainly hope so, otherwise you’re in serious trouble. What happened, exactly?’

  ‘Our scientific regulators insisted on an underground test of the weapon. For technical reasons. Don’t ask me why.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was detonated too close to the complex. There was a mismeasurement. The tunnel was damaged, and we couldn’t move the warheads out to Lop Nor. They’re still there, waiting for shipment.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but where the blazes have you been all this time? Mmmm? I’ve been trying to get hold of you at your different numbers, and there’s been no reply or no signal.’

  ‘Sir Farrar, fond as I am of you, I don’t sit around waiting for your delightful calls. I’ve been all over the place since the accident, talking to people, making fresh arrangements. We can ship the warheads out in another three to four days. Five at the most. But first I need more classified information from you.’

  ‘More? I’ve given you just about every last scrap of classified material you could possibly want.’

  ‘Nevertheless, there are things I vitally need to have at my disposal before I go ahead with the shipment.’

  ‘I can’t see what ...‘

  ‘Let me be the judge of that.’

  ‘All right. But don’t take long. I have things to do.’

  He looked down at Maddie’s long limbs and tanned body, tracing the knobbed curve of her spine with his eyes. He’d bought her the sunbed as a present, to compensate for the loss of her days by the lake, following their return to London. The drugs he was giving her - courtesy of the late but unlamented Calum - made her drowsy, and there was always a risk that she might fall asleep while on the bed and receive bad burns.

  She opened her eyes and rolled over on her back. He hadn’t told her yet about her mother’s death, not that he thought she’d care. Her body was very like Lizzie’s, the same proportions, the same softness in the limbs. He looked down at the beads of sweat that had formed on her skin.

  ‘Who was that on the phone?’ she asked.

  ‘Just a business colleague. Nobody you know.’

  ‘Still no word about Daddy?’

  ‘Not yet. But I’m still trying.’

  She didn’t like him, and she didn’t trust him. But at the moment, he was all she had. She wished she was back at the lake, she wished she was naked and swimming in the deep cool water, she wished she could dive down until the darkness and the weeds swallowed her.

  Chen Hsiaodong flew west for a while, then turned due north towards Urumchi. It was a risky option, but one they had to take: Alma-Ata was simply too far. Nabila would have died long before then. Urumchi was on the wrong side of the Chinese border, but it had a large hospital and teams of trained doctors.

  It was still a very close thing. Her heart almost gave out twice on the way, and only emergency injections kept her going.

  When they landed at the airport, Chen helped David unload Nabila from the helicopter, and took off again at once. David left his weapons on board - one sight of them, and every policeman and state security official within fifty miles would be breathing down their necks.

  Somebody found a trolley, and they were soon wheeling her to the airport entrance. At the hospital, she was taken off straight to an operating theatre. She was in for ten hours.

  While they operated, David made contact with Liu Yaobang, Nabila’s friend at the Minorities Hospital, the one who’d given her the name of the brothel. He explained the situation to him and asked for assistance.

  'I’ll do what I can,’ he said.

  The following day, against the loud protests of her doctors, David wheeled Nabila to a van that had been found by Dr Liu. She was far from well, but David knew that another few hours would bring the police or the PSB or the Guojia Anchuanbu sniffing around.

  David drove west to Kulja, a rough journey of about four hundred miles. The van had fewer springs than he’d have liked, but he’d tied Nabila down firmly to a low bed in the back, and he drove as carefully as he could, bearing in mind the need for haste. Liu had given him drugs and advice on what to do for
Nabila. The rest was down to luck and blind faith.

  He passed a few military convoys, all headed in the opposite direction. They’d be scurrying in from all directions on an abortive rescue mission to Chaofe Ling. Every so often, he’d allow himself a smile as he thought of their victory. He had never imagined it could be so complete, so injurious a blow. But then he’d look back at the still form of Nabila and drive on without thought of victory or triumph.

  Chen Hsiaodong was waiting at Kulja as arranged. He told David he had a wife and two children, and he wanted to leave China more than anything. More than he loved his wife, more than he loved his children.

  Still unconscious, Nabila was transferred from the van to the helicopter, which had been waiting on the edge of town. Kulja was a one-horse border town packed with Russians, Chinese, Kazakhs, Mongols, Kirghiz, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Tartars, Uighurs, and any other race that could find room in its narrow streets. Another face would not be noticed. No one would report them; no one would care. They were just more strays on the Silk Road, a couple more refugees trying their luck on the ancient trade routes.

  Alma-Ata was another matter. With a population of one and a half million and a nervy sense of its giant neighbours to east and west, the capital of the Kazakh Republic was not a place to sneak into.

  They got permission to land at the airport, but once they disembarked, they were hustled to an empty shed next to the transit lounge. A horde of customs and immigration officials descended on them. None of them looked happy. It took over an hour for David to persuade them to send for someone from the British embassy. He wrote a brief, cryptic note, and sealed it in an envelope.

  Half an hour later, the door of the shed opened and a man in a white suit came in, ushered by two policemen.

  ‘Laing? Is that you? Good God, man, I’d heard you were dead.’

  It was then that David realized his luck had turned. He’d met Douglas Ross before, back in Carstairs, a few weeks ago. With Tursun, that was it: he’d been at some of the sessions with Tursun. He’d been the one to find the boy.

  ‘Ross? I didn’t think to find you here.’