The Middle Kingdom

by David Wingrove

  The words were high-pitched, almost strangled.

  Fest held his arm tightly, whispering urgently in his ear. ‘Don’t make trouble here, Hans. Please! They suffer us down here. But if we start anything we’ll spark a riot.’

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ Ebert said, under his breath.

  Karr heard and smiled mockingly.

  ‘He’d as like break both your arms,’ Fest said quietly.

  Ebert sneered. ‘I think my father would have something to say about that, don’t you?’

  Fest pulled on Ebert’s arm, drawing him back. ‘The less said about your father, the better, Hans. These fellows know only too well who manufactures the Hei they send in to crush any sign of an uprising. GenSyn and your father are about as popular here as Genghis Khan.’

  Karr was watching them hawkishly. At the mention of GenSyn his eyes narrowed. ‘So you’re Ebert’s son?’

  Ebert threw off Fest’s hand and took a step forward, his head raised arrogantly to face out the big man. ‘You understand what it means, then?’

  Karr smiled tightly. ‘Oh, I know what it means up there. But you’re not up there now, Shih Ebert. This isn’t your kingdom and you should mind your manners.’

  Ebert went to speak again, but Karr lifted his good hand sharply to cut him off. His face was bitter. ‘Let me explain it simply for you. Today I killed a man I admired greatly. A man who taught me much about honour and necessity.’ He took a step closer to Ebert. ‘He was a man, Ebert. A master.’

  ‘You were lucky,’ said Ebert quietly, provocatively.

  A faint smile played on Karr’s lips briefly, but his eyes were cold and hard. ‘Yes. For once you’re right. I was lucky. Hwa underestimated me. He thought as you think. And because of that he’s dead.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’

  Karr laughed, then shook his head. He was about to say something more, but at that moment there was a noise in the corridor outside. An instant later the door swung open. Two uniformed officers of the Special Security squad stood there, their standard issue deng rifles held against their chests. Behind them came the General.

  Tolonen strode into the dressing room, then stopped, looking about him. Fest, Ebert and Haavikko had come sharply to attention. They stood there, heads bowed, awaiting orders, but the General ignored them a moment. He walked up to Karr and looked him up and down before turning his back on him.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to break things up, but we’ve heard from our Triad contacts. I’d have notified you before but the matter’s no longer urgent.’

  ‘Sir?’ Fest straightened up, his face expressing his confusion. He had been told this was a matter of the utmost urgency and that he would be notified at once.

  Tolonen turned his head and looked at Fest. ‘I’m sorry, lieutenant, I should explain. They’re dead. Someone got to them before us. The Kuei Chuan Triad are sending a man to take us to the place. I’ve arranged to meet them here in an hour.’

  ‘Is it far?’Fest asked.

  ‘I’m not sure. They don’t use grid references down here. But it’s a place called Ammersee.’

  Behind him, Karr laughed. ‘I know it well. It’s quite a warren. You’ll need a guide.’

  Tolonen turned and looked at the fighter again. He was a big man himself, but Karr was head and shoulders taller than him. ‘Who’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘His name is Karr, sir. He was the winner of the combat.’

  Tolonen stared at Karr, then nodded. ‘Yes. He doesn’t look like a loser.’ Then he addressed the big man directly. ‘How far is this place?’

  ‘Ten, maybe twelve li.’

  ‘And how long would it take us to get there?’

  Karr shrugged. ‘By foot forty minutes. By rickshaw fifteen, maybe twenty.’

  ‘And you’ll take us?’

  Karr looked at Ebert. ‘I’m not sure I’d be welcome.’

  Tolonen looked from Karr to Ebert. ‘Oh? And why’s that, Hans?’

  Ebert lowered his head, not looking at Karr. ‘Just a small disagreement, sir. Nothing serious.’

  ‘Good,’ said the General. ‘That’s settled then. The sooner we get there the better. I want to sort this out.’ He turned back to Karr. ‘I’m indebted, Shih Karr. I’ll make sure you’re well paid for your help.’

  Karr bowed, then turned to get his cloak.

  DeVore met them in the corridor outside Kao Jyan’s apartment. ‘I came as soon as I heard, sir.’

  ‘Well, Howard?’ said Tolonen. ‘What have we got?’

  ‘Three men, sir. Low-level criminals. I’ve checked with our contacts. They weren’t members of any of the local Triads. Two of them were kwai. Hired knives. The other – Kao Jyan, who owned the apartment – was a small-time racketeer. Drugs, stolen goods, nothing big.’

  Tolonen nodded. ‘Nothing to connect them with anyone higher up?’

  DeVore shook his head. ‘Not yet, sir. But we’re still investigating. Kao Jyan was known to frequent a place known as Big White’s. He’d do some of his business there, it seems. But the place was gutted yesterday. Victim of one of the local gang wars. Big White himself is dead, so that avenue’s closed to us, too.’

  ‘It all seems too convenient. Too systematic.’

  DeVore gave a brief nod. ‘As if someone’s tidying up after them.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tolonen, touching his shoulder. ‘That’s my thought exactly.’

  ‘In this case, sir, it seems genuine enough. Big White was playing off one Triad against another. It looks like he was a victim of his own greed.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Tolonen still seemed unhappy with the coincidence. ‘Dig deeper, Howard. It might be genuine, but then it might not. Someone high’s behind all of this. Someone high enough to pay off Triads as a matter of course.’

  DeVore bowed, obedient, then turned towards the guarded doorway. ‘Shall we go in, sir?’

  Axel, watching from the doorway, saw the General move about the room; saw how he looked at everything, trying to fit it all into place. In the rickshaw coming over, Tolonen had turned to him, explaining.

  ‘Sometimes, Axel, you need to see things for yourself. Sniff them out first-hand. Sometimes it’s the only way. You see things that another might have missed. Understand things. Bring things to light that would otherwise have remained hidden.’

  He saw now how the General went about that. How he looked from one thing to the next, his eyes sharp, alert for the hidden connections.

  ‘This is odd, Howard. Very odd.’

  Tolonen was leaning over the corpse that lay face down on the bed, holding the surgeon’s tag between his fingers. DeVore went over to him.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Look at this. The time of death. Two hours before the other two. Why’s that?’

  ‘I’d guess they were waiting for them in the room. That they picked them off as they came in.’

  Tolonen looked up at him grimly. ‘Maybe. But that would take some nerve. To sit with a man you’d murdered, for two hours.’

  DeVore said nothing.

  ‘Which one was this?’

  ‘We don’t have a surname, sir, but he was known as Chen.’

  Tolonen nodded, then carefully moved the bloodied head. It lay there, its shattered left profile upward on the sheets. For a while the General stared at it, as if trying to remember something. He touched the smooth skin beneath the ear and frowned, then shrugged and got up.

  ‘This one.’ He pointed down at the corpse of Kao Jyan. ‘I recognize him from the tape.’

  ‘The tape?’ DeVore looked up sharply.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Howard. I should have said. We had a tape of the two men. A copy from the CompCam files.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ DeVore said hurriedly. ‘Of course.’

  Tolonen had moved on. He stood over the third of the bodies, one hand stroking his smooth-shaven chin. ‘So who was this, then? And how did he fit in?’ He looked up and across at DeVore. ‘Whose side was he on, I wonder? Was he with these two, or did he come to kill them?�
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  DeVore met his gaze steadily. ‘His name was Chu Heng, sir. A local thug. It seems…’

  Karr, in the doorway, interrupted him. ‘Excuse me, but he was quite well known in these parts, General. A handy man with a blade. Too handy. It’s good to see him dead.’

  DeVore looked at the big man curiously, then turned to the General. ‘Who’s this, sir?’

  Tolonen indicated that Karr should come in. ‘This is Shih Karr, Howard. He’s a fighter – what they call a “blood”. He’s champion, it seems. For the time being.’

  DeVore gave the slightest bow, acknowledging the giant. ‘You know these parts, then?’

  Karr was kneeling over the corpse, looking at the wounds to Chu Heng’s neck and chest with a professional interest. After a moment he looked up at DeVore. ‘I was born in Ammersee. Until four years ago I lived here. I know its people and its business.’

  ‘So you knew these men?’

  ‘Kao Jyan? Well, I knew of him. Chen I didn’t know. He must have taken up with Kao Jyan quite recently. But he was a good man. He had honour.’

  ‘A good man, eh? You can say that, not knowing him?’ DeVore laughed, his eyes weighing up the big man. ‘But he was kwai, a killer. Do killers have honour?’

  Karr met his eyes firmly. ‘Some do. You, for instance. Haven’t you had to kill in your line of work?’

  DeVore smiled. ‘Ah, but that’s different.’

  ‘Is it?’ Karr straightened up, moving to the second of the bodies, giving it the same scrupulous examination as the first. ‘Are people so very different below the Net?’ He glanced up at DeVore, then back at the body. ‘Do you know what kwai is, Major?’

  ‘They kill for profit. What more do I need to know?’

  Karr laughed but did not look up. ‘I thought you’d be curious, if only professionally. You see, Chu Heng was kwai, too, but he wasn’t typical. He was what they call a “twisted blade”. Most kwai would have spat on Chu Heng.’

  ‘A knife’s a knife.’

  Karr shook his head. ‘Not so. Some weapons are better made than others. And some are made by masters. So with a good kwai. You see, to become kwai one must study long and hard. It is a discipline. A way of life.’

  ‘Down here? The only way of life I’ve seen down here is grab what you can and kill to keep it.’

  Karr looked up, his grey eyes calm, controlled. ‘Tsao Ch’un was Son of Heaven.’

  For once the old saying carried rather too much meaning. Tsao Ch’un was the tyrant who had united Chung Kuo and built the great City. He, in his time, had grabbed and killed to keep what he had taken. Until the Seven – his chief ministers – had deposed him.

  ‘Kings do as they must,’ DeVore said, his eyes suddenly dangerous.

  Karr straightened up to his full height, facing DeVore. ‘And kwai. As I said, Major, to be a kwai here is an honourable calling. Most are not as Chu Heng was. Nor should you confuse them with the punks and paper tigers that run with the Triads. A kwai has inner strengths. He draws from deeper wells than greed.’

  DeVore laughed scornfully. He was about to answer Karr, but Tolonen stepped in between the two men. ‘Major DeVore, Fest, Ebert, Haavikko. Leave us a moment. I want a word with Karr.’

  DeVore bowed, then went outside, followed by the other three. When they were gone, the General turned to face the big man.

  ‘You know the ways of this place, Karr. What do you think happened here?’

  Karr looked about him. ‘It’s messy. Hastily arranged and hurriedly carried out. Yet the killings… Well, they’re odd. If I didn’t know better I’d say that Kao Jyan’s death was a piece of Chu Heng’s work. This slashing and gouging is his trade mark. He was a sadist. He enjoyed inflicting pain.’

  ‘And the others?’

  Karr put his head to one side. ‘I’ve not looked at Chen yet. But whoever killed Chu Heng was good at it. Trained to kill quickly and efficiently.’

  ‘A soldier, maybe?’

  Karr laughed. ‘I hadn’t thought of that, but yes.’

  Tolonen smiled, pleased.

  ‘You’re a useful man, Karr, and my ensign, Haavikko, tells me you’re a magnificent fighter. Intelligent, too. I could use a man like you.’

  Karr set Kao Jyan’s head down gently and looked up at the General. ‘I’m under contract, General. Ten fights, if I live that long.’

  ‘I’ll buy your contract out.’

  Karr smiled. ‘Maybe. But why? I don’t understand, General. What use could I be to you?’

  At that the General laughed. ‘You have a talent. An eye for things. I could see it at a glance. And you know this place. Know how its people think and act. At present we have to rely on our contacts down here. On Triad bosses. And that’s not merely costly but unreliable. They’d as soon be in another man’s pay as ours.’

  ‘And I’m different?’

  ‘I’d judge so.’

  Karr stood and looked about him. ‘What happened here, General? What really happened?’

  Tolonen moved across the room. He stood at the games machine, toying with its touch pad. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You, the Major, those three junior officers outside. That’s some team to investigate a small time killing like this. So why are you all here? What’s important about these men? What did they do? Or should I ask, what did they know?’

  Tolonen laughed. ‘What they did was kill a Minister. What they knew, however, remains a mystery. But someone knows. The someone who killed them.’

  Karr came and stood at his shoulder, looking at the game that had come up on the screen. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It looks like the last stored memory. Kao Jyan was a good player, it seems.’

  Karr shook his head. ‘That’s not Kao Jyan. I’d swear it. In fact, I’d say that wasn’t anyone from round here. Look at those patterns. And this is an eighth-level game. Whoever was playing this was a master of Wei Chi.’

  Tolonen laughed strangely. ‘Our killer?’

  Karr turned his head, meeting his eyes. ‘Well, it would be one way of filling two hours.’

  It was a big, five-pole sedan, its mauve er-silk banners emblazoned with black, stylized dogs, symbol of the Kuei Chuan Triad. The ten shaven-headed pole-men sat against the wall opposite, tucking into bowls of ducksoy soup and noodles, while in a conspicuously separate group, standing beside the sedan, in mauve and black fake-satin uniforms, were the pen p’ei – rushing daggers – numbered patches on their chests indicating their standing in the Triad hierarchy.

  Ignoring the lowly pole-men, Ebert strode up to the lowest-numbered of the p’ei, who immediately bowed low and touched his forehead to the littered floor of the corridor.

  ‘Let’s get going,’ Ebert said brusquely. He dropped a fifty-yuan coin beside the man’s head. ‘There’ll be another if you get us there in twenty minutes.’

  The p’ei’s eyes went to the coin, then, widening, looked up at Ebert. He nodded his head exaggeratedly. ‘As you wish, Excellency!’ He stood and turned to the pole-men, barking orders in a pidgin Mandarin that none of the three young soldiers could follow. Soup bowls were dropped at once as the pole-men hurried to get into position. Six of the p’ei formed up at the front. Daggers drawn, they would clear the way ahead of the sedan. Behind ran the last four of the p’ei, guarding against ambush.

  Axel watched Ebert and Fest climb inside, then followed, stopping in the curtained doorway to look back at the bowed, shaven-headed pole-men.

  ‘Come on, Haavikko!’ said Fest impatiently. ‘You don’t want the man to lose his fee, do you?’

  Axel ducked inside, taking the seat across from Fest and Ebert. ‘Why did you do that, Hans? There’s no hurry to get back.’

  Ebert smiled. ‘You have to keep these types on their toes, Haavikko. It’ll do them good to have a nice long run.’ He looked at Fest and laughed. ‘You should see the buggers’ faces! It’s worth a hundred yuan just for that!’

  Axel looked at him for a moment, then shrugged. He didn’t like
it, but they were probably used to it down here. This was how they expected the Above to behave.

  The sedan lifted at once and they were away, the carriage swaying rhythmically about them, the shouts of the senior p’ei encouraging the men to run.

  ‘What do you think of that, Hans?’ Fest asked, leaning forward to draw the curtain back and look out at the runners. ‘It seems the General has bought the fighter’s contract.’

  Ebert laughed dismissively. ‘The man’s a brute! A primitive! I tell you, he’ll prove nothing but trouble!’

  Axel looked down. He had said nothing earlier when Ebert had insulted Karr, but now he had had a belly full of Ebert’s arrogance. ‘You only say that because he stood up to you.’

  Ebert glowered. ‘I’ll break him! See if I don’t!’

  Axel laughed and looked up, meeting Ebert’s eyes. ‘And how will you do that, Hans? Is the General yours to command?’

  Ebert bit back the reply, then looked away, a dangerous expression in his eyes. ‘No, but there are others who feel as I do.’

  It was clear he meant DeVore. Surprisingly, the Major seemed to have been as much put out by the big man as Ebert. In the corridor outside the murdered Han’s apartment he had muttered angrily about upstarts and big sacks of wind. It was clear he had not appreciated the big man correcting him about the kwai.

  ‘Karr will be the General’s man,’ Axel insisted. ‘Answerable only to him.’ He paused, then, rubbing it in, added, ‘It seems he has need of such men.’

  Ebert laughed mockingly, but Haavikko’s words had offended him. He turned aside angrily and, beneath his breath, muttered, ‘Gods, but what fools they give us in command!’

  Fest leaned forward. ‘Hush up, Hans! Have a care what you say!’

  But Axel had heard and was furious. This was too much. ‘I take it you refer to General Tolonen?’

  Ebert turned on him squarely, his right fist bunched, his face dark with anger. ‘And what if I do? What’s it to you what I say?’

  Axel drew himself up in his seat. ‘It is discourteous, to say the least. You forget where your duty lies, and to whom. Retract your words, Hans Ebert, or I’ll be forced to make you retract them!’