Limit

by Frank Schätzing

  Jericho kept quiet. Tu slurped at his tea, as though to wash the taste of the word ankang from his mouth.

  ‘Well, anyway, since Wanxing was deported in 2005 the victims have begun to speak up for themselves. Early 2005 the People’s Congress even passed a law forbidding police torture, though this was a farce of course. It’s still standard operating practice to work suspects over until they sign some kind of confession as proof of mental illness, then you can torture merrily away and call it medical treatment. There are about a hundred ankangs in China, and these days there’s a lot of public debate and international pressure because of them, but back when Hongbing was admitted to the Hangzhou clinic it was still 1993 and there was no such thing as a right of appeal. There was a red banner hanging in the plane trees in the grounds, a very pretty thing to look at, saying A healthy mind in a healthy body means lifelong happiness, the usual cynical vocabulary of the gulag. Hongbing gets a diagnosis: he’s suffering from paranoid psychosis and political monomania. You won’t find a doctor outside China who’s heard of either of these conditions, they’re not on any international list, but that’s just more proof of how stupid foreigners are. The clinical assessment is all couched in the most harmless terms, it says that Hongbing makes a good impression, his mental condition is stable, he does as he’s told, he listens to the radio, he likes reading, he’s keen to help, it’s just that – and I’m quoting word for word here – he displays massive impairment in logical thought as soon as talk turns to politics. He’s quite obviously mentally disturbed and his thought processes display clear signs of megalomania, affective aggression and a pathologically overdeveloped will. The doctors prescribe a course of pharmaceutical treatment and close supervision to bring poor Hongbing back to his wits, and with a stroke of their pen, he has no more rights.’

  ‘Couldn’t he talk to a lawyer, at least?’ Jericho asked, nonplussed. ‘There must have been some way to get his case heard.’

  ‘But, Owen.’ – Tu had started eating the nibbles again, scooping up another handful just as soon as he’d swallowed the first – ‘that would have been a nonsense. I mean, how can a madman contest the fact that he’s mad? After all, everybody knows that loonies always think they’re the only sane ones. There’s no way to appeal against a police finding that you’re mad; the only people who decide how long you’re detained are the police psychiatrists and functionaries. That’s what makes it so unbearable for the victims. In a prison or a work camp, at least you know how long they’ve sent you down for, but when you’re in an ankang it’s entirely up to your tormentors. But do you know what’s truly despicable here?’

  Jericho shook his head.

  ‘That most of the inmates really are mentally ill. That’s cruel, eh? Just imagine how a healthy person suffers when he’s surrounded by others who are seriously disturbed, criminals, threatening him the whole time. Not even half a year after admission, Hongbing sees two inmates murdered, and the staff stand by and watch. Night after night he forces himself to stay awake, for fear he could be next. Then there are other prisoners, pardon me, patients, who are perfectly sane, just like he is. Doesn’t matter. They all have to go through the same hell. They’re given regular therapy, the chemical cosh, insulin shock, electroshock therapy. You’d never believe all the cures they have for a sick mind! They stub their cigarettes out on your skin, genitals preferably, they torture you with hot wires. Extreme heat, sleep deprivation, dunking in ice-cold water, and beatings, always the beatings. Troublemakers get chained to the bed and tortured till they pass out, for instance by sticking a needle into their upper lip and then passing a current through – they vary the voltage, switching from high to low so that you can’t get used to the pain. Sometimes, if the doctors and nurses feel in the mood, all the inmates in a section have to submit to punishment, whether or not they’ve done anything wrong. Given this level of expert care, many patients die of heart attacks. One that Hongbing had befriended was so desperate that he went on hunger strike. So they chained him to the bed as well, and then the mentally ill inmates were told to force-feed him, under staff supervision. But how do you go about that? Since nobody actually taught them what to do, they just force the poor guy’s jaws open and tip the liquid food into him until he suffocates, but at least he’s eaten. The death certificate called it a heart attack. Nobody was charged. Hongbing was lucky, if you want to call it that: they didn’t use the worst tortures on him. There are some car-crazy cadre members in Shanghai who put in a word on his behalf, discreetly, so that they wouldn’t draw reprisals onto themselves, but it was enough to make sure he got relatively privileged treatment. He gets a cell to himself, he’s allowed to read and watch television. Three times a day he gets a dose of narcoleptics, with very pronounced side-effects, and all the while many of the doctors are quietly letting him know that they think he’s entirely healthy. Hongbing hides the pills under his upper lip and then gets rid of them down the loo, then he gets insulin shock therapy as punishment and lies in a coma for days. Another time he’s strapped down, the doctor puts on a pair of gloves with metal plates on them and puts his hand on his forehead, boom, there’s an almighty bang and he can’t see or hear. Electroshock therapy, this time as a punishment for being Hongbing. It’s always booming and banging in the ankang – you can’t get a wink of sleep for all the screams of pain. The patients hide under the beds, in the toilet, under the wash-basin, no use any of it. If you’ve been chosen, they’ll find you. Oh, we’re out of nibbles.’

  It took Jericho a moment to react. In a trance, he stood up, went to the bar and came back with a couple of bags of crisps.

  ‘Cheese and onion,’ he read out. ‘Or would you like bacon?’

  ‘All the same to me. In the second year, Hongbing tries to escape. He’s almost out and then they catch him. He still dreams about that today, more than about all the rest of it. As a reward for showing so much initiative they dose him with scopolamine, which makes you listless, so that you don’t spend your time thinking about silly things like escape. I hardly need mention that the stuff causes serious physical and psychological injury. In the third year of his stay, summer of ’96, a young worker is admitted to the clinic who had reported her factory manager’s son for taking bribes. The son beat her senseless, and she reported that as well, so the factory manager decided that anyone who could act with such a lack of decorum must be insane. The chief of police and the director of the ankang agreed. She’s whisked away to the clinic without any medical diagnosis, without standing trial or being sentenced, while the ankang director’s son-in-law is named a section manager in the factory. Coincidences do happen. Oh, and Hongbing? Falls in love with the lady, and looks after her until six months after her admission, when she dies under insulin shock therapy. Which breaks the last of his resistance. On the day he lost that woman, Hongbing lost the last of his strength.’

  ‘That’s dreadful, Tian,’ Jericho said softly.

  Tu shrugged. ‘It’s the story of a wrong turn, as so many of us have taken in life. A story of might-have-been and had-I-only. Then, spring ’97, our merry band of madmen get a new member in their ranks, a well-to-do sort, pragmatic, self-assured. As you might expect, the first thing the doctors do is take care of that self-assurance. He’s not exactly an unknown quantity in dissident circles, this chap, he’s something of a local hero for fighting against corruption. He was section head in an electronic components factory and led thousands of employees in a protest against the management getting rich on the backs of the workers. Went to Beijing with proof, and was arrested and sectioned for his pains. In the ankang they give him all kinds of muck, he gets ill, his hair falls out, he has fits, can’t sleep, his nerves are shot and his memory’s full of holes but they can’t break his will to live. His only goal is to get out of there as quick as he can, and he has powerful friends in Shanghai, for instance his brother-in-law plays golf with the chief of police. This man likes Hongbing. He spends a lot of time with him, listens to what he has to say, slowly puts him b
ack together again. Six months later he’s back outside, gets a senior job at a software company and makes plans to get rich and powerful. The year after that, when Hongbing’s finally free, he’s thirty years old and he’s spent five of those years in the clinic; his friend from the ankang fixes him a job with a car dealer and takes it upon himself to take care of him whenever and however he can.’

  The sun had climbed higher. Soft, rosy dawn light touched all the rooftops.

  ‘You’re the friend from the ankang,’ Jericho said softly.

  ‘Yes.’ Tu took his glasses off and began to clean them on a corner of his shirt. ‘I’m the friend. That’s the link between Hongbing and me.’

  Jericho was silent for a while.

  ‘And Hongbing has never talked to Yoyo about this time?’

  ‘Never.’ Tu held the glasses up to the light and looked thoughtfully at the lenses. ‘Have a look at your own life, Owen. You know it yourself, there are some experiences that just lock your vocal cords tight. You’re tongue-tied by the shame, and also, you think that if you don’t talk about it, it will fade with the years, but its power over you simply grows. After he was freed, Hongbing considered going to court. I told him, build your own life up first before you take any more steps. He had such a knack with cars! Whenever a new model came onto the market, he would know all there was to know about it within days. He listened to me, and worked up to being a salesman. In 1999 he got to know a girl from Ningbo and married her, in a great rush. They didn’t suit one another, not one tiny bit, but he wanted to catch up on his five lost years, fast-forward and start a family as soon as possible. Yoyo was born, the marriage broke up just as predicted, since Hongbing suddenly decided he wasn’t able to love any more. Truth was it was only himself he couldn’t love, and he still can’t today. The girl went back to Ningbo, Hongbing was given custody and tried to give Yoyo what he didn’t have.’

  ‘Kindness.’

  ‘Hongbing’s problem is that he thinks he doesn’t deserve kindness. But Yoyo has got the wrong idea. She thinks that she’s done something wrong. By saying nothing he’s given her an enormous guilt complex, which is exactly the opposite of what he intended, but you’ve met him, you know what he’s like by now. He’s walled himself up in his own silence.’ Tu sighed. ‘The night before last, in Berlin, when I was out on the tiles with Yoyo and you were sulking in the hotel, I finally got round to telling her my story. She’s clever, Yoyo, and straight away she asked whether something like that had happened to Hongbing.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘He’ll have to talk to her.’

  ‘Yes.’ Tu nodded. ‘Once he can break out of his shell. I have to tell you that in secret, without her having the least idea, he’s still fighting to be rehabilitated.’

  ‘And you? Were you ever rehabilitated?’

  ‘In 2002, when I became manager at the software company, I decided to lodge an appeal. It was rejected nine times. Then, totally out of the blue, I heard that it was all a dreadful mistake and that I had been the victim of misdiagnosis, even of a criminal conspiracy! My reputation was restored and that smoothed the path for my career. I put in a word for Hongbing and got him made technical director of a Mercedes dealership, which gave him enough of a livelihood that he could go to court at last, and he’s been making his case ever since. He’s gathered whole crates full of evidence, medical affidavits showing that he was never mentally ill, but so far his sentence has only ever been partially revised. I picked my fight with corrupt managers, but they’d broken the law after all. He took on the Party. And the Party’s an elephant, Owen. He’s a marked man, he’s scarred for life. I think that if he were fully rehabilitated, he might even be able to confide in Yoyo, but as it is—’

  Jericho turned his teacup around between his fingers.

  ‘Yoyo has to learn the truth, Tian,’ he said. ‘If Hongbing won’t talk to her, you’ll have to.’

  ‘Ah well.’ Tu perched his glasses back on his nose and gave a wry grin. ‘After this morning, at least I have some practice.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me.’

  Tu gazed at the empty crisp packets, lost in thought. Then he looked Jericho in the eyes.

  ‘You’re my friend, Owen. Our friend. You’re one of us. You’re part of it.’

  2 June 2025

  LYNN

  London, Great Britain

  The address 85 Vauxhall Cross, in the south-west of the city, on Albert Embankment near Vauxhall Bridge, looked as if King Nebuchadnezzar II had tried to build a Babylonian ziggurat with Lego bricks. In fact, the sand-coloured hulk with the green armoured glass surfaces contained the beating heart of British security, the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as SIS or MI6. In spite of its playful appearance, it was a genuine bulwark against the enemies of the United Kingdom, last attacked by an IRA unit twenty-five years ago, when a missile had been fired at it from the opposite bank, although without doing much more than shake the cups and saucers in the Secret Service coffee lounge.

  Jennifer Shaw was on her way to her son’s birthday dinner when she received a call from a very senior authority. She switched to receive, and C’s voice filled the leather-scented interior of her freshly restored Jaguar Mark 2. In most people’s eyes, the head of the British Foreign Secret Service was, after thirty-one James Bond films, called M, which was quite close to the reality, except that Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the legendary first director, had introduced the letter C, and since then all directors had been called C – not least because it happened to stand for ‘control’.

  ‘Hello, Bernard,’ said Shaw, in the certain knowledge that her evening was stuffed.

  ‘Jennifer. I hope I’m not disturbing you.’

  A set phrase. Bernard Lee, the current director, couldn’t have cared less if he was disturbing her, or how. The only disturbance that he would have acknowledged was the disturbance to national security.

  ‘I’m on my way to Bibendum,’ she said truthfully.

  ‘Oh, always excellent. Especially the skate wing. I haven’t been there for ages. Could you call in on me for a moment beforehand?’

  ‘How long’s a moment?’

  ‘Only if you have time. On the other hand—’

  ‘The traffic’s not too bad. Give me ten minutes.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She called her son from her mobile and told him to go ahead and order a starter without her, but to get her a double portion of the iced lime soufflé.

  ‘Which means that I won’t see you before pudding,’ her son complained.

  ‘I’ll aim to be there for the main.’

  ‘Has this got anything to do with Orley’s moon trip?’

  ‘No idea, darling.’

  ‘I thought the bomb went off and didn’t do any harm, and they were all coming home safe and sound.’

  ‘I don’t really know.’

  ‘Oh, well. I guess the Prime Minister’s kids see their mother even more rarely.’

  ‘How nice to have brought positive-thinking people into the world. Don’t be cross with me, sweetie, I’ll call as soon as I can.’

  At Wellington Arch she turned from Piccadilly into Grosvenor Place and followed Vauxhall Bridge Road over the Thames. Soon she was sitting in full evening dress in Lee’s office, with a glass of water in front of her.

  ‘We’ve reconstructed Norrington’s deleted emails,’ the director said without any preamble.

  ‘And?’ she asked excitedly.

  ‘Well.’ Lee pursed his lips. ‘You know, all the clues pointed to him, but we didn’t have any real evidence—’

  ‘The fact that Kenny Xin shot him full in the face seems pretty convincing to me. Have you found any trace of Xin, by the way?’

  ‘Not the slightest. But we have come across something alarming. Our American colleagues are worried too. Norrington’s mails didn’t make any sense at all at first, he had deleted nothing but white noise, so we tried it with the Hydra program. And sudd
enly we had a complex correspondence in front of our eyes. Unfortunately there’s nothing to tell us who Hydra is, and it isn’t clear who else received the messages. What is certain is that Norrington must have had access to a secret router, to which he sent encrypted emails.’

  ‘All from the central computer of the Big O?’

  ‘Definitely. Without the mask, that snake-headed icon, we can’t do a thing with the emails. It wouldn’t have occurred to anybody that they are encoded, and he was too clever to install the decoding program on his work computer, and instead carried it around with him on a memory stick. However, we’re getting some insights into the planning and construction of the launching pad in Equatorial Guinea, and learning some amazing things about the black market in Korean atom bombs, things that even we weren’t aware of. Okay, the bomb went off, as we know, without doing any damage.’

  ‘Indirectly it caused a lot of damage,’ said Jennifer. ‘But okay, Julian, Lynn and most of the guests are on the way home. They should be at OSS in a few hours.’

  ‘You see; and now it’s imperative that you talk to Julian.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘As soon as possible, I mean. Within the next hour. I need his assessment.’

  Shaw raised an eyebrow. ‘About what?’

  ‘According to Norrington’s correspondence, the whole business isn’t quite over yet.’

  ‘Tell me quite clearly. I have to know that it’s worth leaving my son to celebrate his thirtieth birthday without his mummy.’

  Lee nodded. ‘I think it’s worth it, Jennifer. Last year, there wasn’t just one mini-nuke sent to the Moon.’ He paused, sipped on his water and set the glass down carefully in front of him. ‘There were two.’

  ‘Two,’ echoed Jennifer.