Limit

by Frank Schätzing

  * * *

  ‘So what should we do?’ hissed Tu.

  ‘Notify the police,’ said Jericho tersely. ‘Before they turn up of their own accord.’

  ‘You want to go on the offensive?’

  ‘What other option do we have? That maniac set half the steelworks on fire. It won’t take them long to find the bodies and then some witnesses in Quyu. It looks as if a bomb just went off on Siping Lu – doesn’t it, Yoyo—?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘—and there’s a crashed airbike decomposing in the courtyard, chock-a-block with heavy-duty weapons. And one that brought the traffic to a standstill. They’ll be able to piece together some of the puzzle from all that.’

  ‘But how much of it?’

  ‘I’m telling you, it will only be a few hours before they start asking what your friend Hongbing had to do with the massacre in Quyu. They’ll think of Yoyo in no time at all. I mean, the thing in the steel factory looks like some campaign of destruction against the City Demons, don’t you think? And Yoyo’s part of the group.’

  ‘And what about you?’ asked Yoyo. ‘Do you reckon they’ll think of you too?’

  ‘How would they? My car was incinerated in Quyu.’

  ‘But they’ll be able to identify it.’ Tu pursed his lips. ‘And besides, Siping Lu has security cameras. Which means they’ll have recordings of all of you meeting up, of Yoyo and Daxiong going into the building, of how that – that—’

  ‘Kenny.’

  ‘—Kenny guy herded the two of you in front of him—’

  ‘Not just us,’ said Jericho. ‘Think about it. You were just as easily visible, in your state of heavenly wrath. And who is it who works in your company to finance her studies?’

  ‘Yoyo, the girl who just can’t keep her mouth shut,’ snorted Yoyo.

  ‘Yes, my dear, you really do have a sparkling reputation,’ commented Tu, scratching his bald head. With his new glasses on, he looked almost civilised. ‘So what are we going to tell them? That Yoyo happened to overhear Kenny, completely by chance, while—’

  ‘Forget it,’ Yoyo interrupted him. ‘You want me to tell the police that I’m in possession of secret information? With my record? If that arsehole is from the government I might as well lock myself up and throw away the key. Or better still, just shoot myself!’

  ‘I don’t think the police are in on this,’ said Jericho.

  ‘Yes, but you don’t know what might happen if they get their hands on me.’

  ‘Hold on a second.’ Tu was shaking his head energetically. ‘Let’s be realistic. We’re assuming the Shanghai police force has the same powers of deduction as a quantum computer. They’re not going to put all the pieces together that quickly.’

  ‘Well, either way, we still need to notify them,’ said Jericho.

  ‘But perhaps not straight away.’

  ‘Yes, straight away. If someone trashes your apartment and you don’t report it, that looks odd. Not to mention that Yoyo, Daxiong and I turned up just beforehand, and that I have a flying machine just like Kenny’s.’

  ‘Okay fine, then how about this: someone holds up a motorcycle club in Quyu and causes a bloodbath. He has accomplices, all of them on flying machines. What they don’t realise is that Yoyo had a family friend visiting, Owen, and he ends up creating a hell of a problem for them, right? Both Yoyo and Owen get hold of one of the airbikes and are able to flee. Not long after, Yoyo receives a call from Hong-bing, telling her that someone’s trying to break into his apartment.’

  ‘No way!’ Yoyo shook her head. ‘You don’t call your daughter if someone’s trying to break into your place.’

  ‘Fine, then—’

  ‘I know. Kenny threatened to kill all the members of your family,’ Jericho suggested. ‘So you call your father. He doesn’t answer, so you go to see him, enlisting the help of Hongbing’s best friend, Tian.’

  ‘And we have no idea what the guys want?’ asked Yoyo sceptically. ‘You expect them to believe that?’

  ‘That’s the plan.’

  ‘God, what a cock and bull story.’

  ‘The most important thing is to keep you out of it,’ said Tu. ‘No dissident background, no Guardians.’ He gave Yoyo a reproachful look. ‘On that note, you could have told me you were all hanging out in a blast furnace. I only knew about the Andromeda.’

  ‘I’m sorry. You weren’t supposed to get dragged that far into it.’

  ‘How do you figure that out? I provided the infrastructure for you and your troop of pests. You can’t get much deeper involved than that.’ Tu sighed. ‘But fine. Point two on the agenda. What do we tell Hongbing?’

  Yoyo hesitated. ‘The same story?’

  ‘What?’ barked Jericho.

  ‘Well, I just thought—’

  ‘You want to have your father believing this was all the act of some nut job?’ Suddenly he was furious with her. He pictured Hongbing, filled with all that sorrow. And now they wanted to pull the wool over his eyes yet again?

  ‘Owen.’ Yoyo raised her hand. ‘It’s great, everything you’ve done for us, but this really has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Your father deserves an explanation!’

  ‘I’m not sure if he really wants one.’

  ‘Exactly. You’re not sure. My God, he was taken hostage, held at gunpoint, his daughter was threatened, his apartment destroyed. You have to tell him the truth! Anything else is pure cowardice.’

  ‘Stay out of it!’

  ‘Yoyo,’ said Tu softly but firmly, as if commanding a dog to come to heel.

  ‘What?’ she snapped. ‘What is it? It has nothing to do with him! You said yourself that it would be a mistake to burden my father with it.’

  ‘The circumstances have changed. Owen’s right.’

  ‘Oh yes, I forgot.’ Yoyo contorted her face mockingly. ‘He’s a family friend now.’

  ‘No. He’s just right – pure and simple.’

  ‘But why? What does Owen know about my father?’

  ‘Well, what do you know about him?’ asked Jericho, antagonised.

  Yoyo glared at him. Clearly he’d hit a sore spot.

  ‘Hongbing is embittered, set in his ways, introverted,’ said Tu. ‘But I know him! I’m waiting for the day when he’ll break out of that bitter shell, and I don’t know whether I should long for it or dread it. He’s had to spend years of his life feeling utterly, terribly helpless. Up until now there was no reason to rub his nose in the fact that you’re China’s most-wanted dissident, but that just changed. After this morning he knows full bloody well that you have some explaining to do.’

  Yoyo shook her head unhappily.

  ‘He’ll hate me.’

  ‘He’s more likely to hate me for having helped you, but I don’t genuinely believe that either. You can’t carry on lying to him, Yoyo. For him, the worst possible thing would be you not confiding in him. You’d be taking away his—’ Tu seemed to be struggling to find the words, ‘his purpose as a father.’

  ‘His purpose as a father?’ echoed Yoyo, as if she’d misheard.

  ‘Yes. Everybody needs to feel significant in some way or another. Hongbing tried to do something too, a long time ago, and he was punished for it. His purpose was taken away from him.’

  ‘And now he’s punishing me.’

  ‘Punishing you is the last thing he wants to do.’

  Yoyo stared at him.

  ‘But he’s never spoken to me about his life, Tian! Never! He’s never confided in me! And you don’t think that’s a punishment? In what way have I been significant to him? Okay, he worries about me from morning to night, and I’m sure he’d rather lock me in out of sheer worry, but what’s the point? What does he want from me if he won’t even talk to me?’

  ‘He’s ashamed,’ said Tu softly.

  ‘Of what? I’m the one suffering. I have a – a zombie for a father!’

  ‘You can’t talk like that.’

  ‘Can’t I? What about him explaining somethin
g to me for a change?’

  ‘He’ll probably have to,’ nodded Tu.

  ‘Oh, great! When?’

  ‘It’s your turn first.’

  ‘Why me again?’ exploded Yoyo. ‘Why not him?’

  ‘Because you’re the one in a position to reach out to him.’

  ‘Don’t come to me with your emotional guilt trip,’ she shouted. ‘My friends are dead, and my father was nearly killed too. I’m the one who’s had the most to deal with here.’

  ‘We’ve all had a lot to deal with,’ Jericho interrupted. He had heard enough. ‘So solve your problems, but solve them somewhere else. Tian, when do you think my computer will be here?’

  ‘In a few minutes,’ said Tian, grateful for the change of subject.

  ‘Good. I’ll get to work on the Swiss films again. Can I use your office?’

  ‘Of course.’ Tu hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders submissively. ‘So I’ll notify the police then. Agreed?’

  ‘Yes, do it.’

  ‘Are we all available for questioning?’

  ‘There’s no point hiding, otherwise they’ll just pay us personal visits.’ Jericho furrowed his brow. ‘They may have already started. The first victim in Kenny’s dirty game was Grand Cherokee Wang.’ He looked at Yoyo. ‘Your flatmate. They’re going to be all over you like a pack of hungry wolves.’

  ‘They can go ahead,’ said Yoyo grimly. ‘Let’s see them try to eat me.’

  ‘Eat me, and I’ll eat you alive.’

  ‘Well remembered,’ snorted Yoyo, turning round and walking off to the kitchen.

  * * *

  Jericho was ecstatic to have Diane back again. Without holding out any great hopes, he checked the three websites which were supposed to be interchanged according to the report, and was disappointed. The mask hadn’t unearthed anything. It seemed they really had been taken out of circulation.

  So that just left him with the Swiss films and a hunch.

  He gave Diane a series of directions. With programmed courtesy, she informed him that the analysis would take some time, which meant it could just as easily take five years as five minutes. The computer had no plan on this front. He might as well have asked Alexander Fleming how long he would need to discover penicillin. As the films were three-dimensional, Diane had to go through data cubes rather than data surfaces, which threatened to drag the process out for a long time.

  Joanna came in, bringing him some tea and English biscuits.

  It was four years now since they had broken up, but Jericho still didn’t know how to act around the woman who had lured him to Shanghai and then left him out of the blue. At least, that’s how it had seemed to him: that Joanna had ditched him in order to marry someone who was hitting the big time in the Chinese boom, someone who didn’t conform in the slightest to what one might assume to be her ideal partner. But it was this very man who had become Jericho’s closest friend: a friendship, initiated by Joanna, which had started out within the cocoon of a business relationship, and developed in such a way that neither Tu nor Jericho had really realised it was even happening. It had come down to Joanna to alert them to the fact they had become more deeply attached, at the same time hoping to make Jericho realise it was about time he stopped seeing himself as indebted to everyone.

  ‘I don’t,’ he had retorted with a baffled expression, as if she had just suggested he shouldn’t walk to work on all fours any more.

  But Jericho knew exactly what she meant. She had exaggerated a bit of course, which was in her nature, because Joanna went to the other extreme: she hardly ever felt guilt. This might lead to accusations of self-righteousness, but her behaviour was far from amoral. She just lacked the guilt that all children were born into. From the day you first come into the world, you find yourself being constantly admonished, lectured, caught in the act, always in the wrong, subjected to judgement and constant corrections, all of which are intended to make an imperfect human being into a better one. The extent of the improvement is measured by how much you live up to others’ expectations, an experiment doomed to failure. It normally leads to failure for all involved. Accompanied by good wishes and silent reproaches, you ultimately end up taking your own path and forget to grant the child within you absolution, a child accustomed to being scolded for running off alone. Rushing through the crossroads of ‘I can’t, I shouldn’t, I’m not allowed’, you always find yourself back in the same place you set out from a long time ago, regardless of how old you may have become in the process. Your whole life long, you see yourself through the eyes of others, measure yourself by their standards, judge yourself by their canon of values, condemn yourself with their indignation, and you are never enough.

  You are never enough for yourself.

  That was what Joanna had meant. She had developed a remarkable talent for freeing herself from the entanglements of her childhood. Her way of looking at things was genuine, as sharp as a knife, her behaviour consistent. She had considered herself fully within her rights to break up with Jericho. She knew that the breakdown of their relationship would cause him pain, but in Joanna’s world, this kind of pain was no more the result of culpable behaviour than toothache. She hadn’t robbed him, hadn’t publicly humiliated him, hadn’t continually deceived him. She paid no attention to what others felt she should have done or not done. The only person whose gaze she wanted to be able to meet was the one right opposite her in the mirror.

  ‘How are you?’ asked Jericho.

  ‘Well, how do you think?’ Joanna sank down into one of the cantilever chairs scattered around Tu’s office. ‘Very agitated.’

  She didn’t look particularly agitated. She looked intrigued, and a little concerned. Jericho drank his tea.

  ‘Did Tian tell you what happened?’

  ‘He gave me an overview in passing, so now I know his version.’ Joanna took a biscuit and nibbled at it thoughtfully. ‘And I’ve heard Hongbing’s too of course. It sounds dreadful. I wanted to speak to Yoyo, but she’s in the middle of battling out her tiresome father–daughter conflict.’

  Jericho hesitated. ‘Do you actually know what that’s about?’

  ‘I’m not stupid.’ She jerked her thumb in the direction of the door. ‘I also know that Tian is involved.’

  ‘And that’s not a problem for you?’

  ‘It’s his business. He must know what’s he’s doing. I’m too shamefully lacking in ambition myself, as you know. I wouldn’t make a very convincing dissident. But I understand. His motivations seem clear to me, so he has my unconditional support.’

  Jericho was silent. It was obvious that Chen Hongbing wasn’t the only one who had eaten bitterness at some point in his past. Tu’s professional status implied all manner of things, but not collaboration with a group of dissidents. There must be something from way back that was influencing his behaviour.

  ‘Maybe he’ll tell you about it someday,’ Joanna added, eating another biscuit. ‘In any case, you’ve all been hunting, and now I’m coming to gather. And as Yoyo is otherwise engaged, I’m starting with you.’

  Jericho briefly explained what had taken place since Chen’s visit to Xintiandi. Joanna didn’t interrupt him; that is if you didn’t count the occasional ahhs, mm-hms and ohhs which were ritually expressed in China as a form of courtesy to assure the other person of your attentiveness. During his report, she also devoured all of the biscuits and drank most of the tea. That was fine by Jericho. He still didn’t have even the slightest appetite. After he finished talking, they both fell silent for a while.

  ‘It sounds like you’ve all got a long-term problem,’ she said finally.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tian too?’ It sounded like Me too? Jericho was just about to tell her that her own wellbeing should be the least of her worries, but stopped himself; perhaps he was reading too much into her question.

  ‘You can work that out for yourself,’ he said. ‘In any case, even Kenny will have to acknowledge the fact that he’s cocked things up. By now we cou
ld have confided in anyone under the sun. He missed his opportunity to eliminate everyone who knew about it.’

  ‘You mean he won’t keep trying to get Yoyo?’

  Jericho pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose. He could feel a headache coming on. ‘It’s hard to tell,’ he said.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Believe me, I’ve met psychopaths who are bad to the core, ones who tortured their victims, filleted them, canned them, let them die of thirst, cut off this or that, things you wouldn’t believe. Their type are motivated purely by obsession. And then there are the professional killers.’

  ‘Who combine business with pleasure.’

  ‘The main thing is that they see it as a job. It brings them money. They don’t develop any emotional connection to their victims, they just do their job. Kenny botched his up. Aggravating for him, but usually you’d expect him to leave us in peace from now on and turn his attention to other jobs.’

  ‘But you don’t think that’s the case?’

  ‘He’s a professional and a psycho.’ Jericho circled his index finger over his temple. ‘And those guys are a little harder to classify.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘Someone like Kenny could feel offended that we’ve not all been eliminated as planned. He might think we shouldn’t have put up a fight. It’s possible that he’ll do nothing. But it’s just as possible that he’ll set my loft on fire, or your house, or lie in wait for us and shoot us down, and all just because he’s angry.’

  ‘I see you’re full of optimism as usual.’