‘I see.’
‘She’d asked you for information, right?’
‘Erm – that’s right.’
‘About a meeting in Beijing that Alejandro Ruiz took part in before he disappeared?’
‘Yes. Yes, exactly.’
‘I’m pursuing that trail. It might be the same people that have Ruiz and Loreena on their conscience. You would be doing me a great favour if you would let me have the information.’
‘Well—’ The other man hesitated. Then he sighed. ‘Sure, why not. Will you keep us up to date? We’d very much like to know what happened to Ruiz.’
‘Of course.’
‘So, we’ve gone through the documents here. In 2022 Ruiz had just been appointed head of the strategy department. He was moving heaven and earth to open up new areas of business. Some of the oil multinationals were increasingly looking into joint ventures, so there were discussions in Beijing, for a whole week—’
‘Why there?’
‘No real reason. They could equally well have met in Texas or Spain. Perhaps because the most important was a project between Repsol, EMCO and the Chinese oil company Sinopec, so they agreed on Beijing. The initiator of the joint venture suggested that it should be turned into a business summit. Almost all the big companies agreed to take part, which meant that discussions went on all week without interruption. Ruiz was happy about that. He thought something might change.’
‘Do you have any idea what he might have meant by that?’
‘Not really, to be quite honest.’
‘And where did the summit meet?’
‘At the Sinopec Congress Centre on the edge of Chaoyang, a district to the northeast of Beijing.’
‘And Ruiz was in good spirits?’
‘Most of the time, yes, although it turned out that the train had already pulled out. On the other hand, it could hardly have got worse. On the last day of the summit he called and said that at least the week hadn’t been wasted, and there was one last session that evening, more of an unofficial meeting. A few of them wanted to get together and discuss a few ideas.’
‘And the meeting was also held in the Congress Centre?’
‘No, further out. In the district of Shunyi, he said, at a private house. The next day he looked depressed and unwell. I asked him how the meeting had gone. He reacted oddly. He said nothing had come out of it, and he’d left early.’
‘Do you know who took part in it?’
‘Not explicitly. Ruiz had hinted that representatives of the big companies had come together – I guess we were the smallest fish in the pond. Russians, Americans, Chinese, British, South Americans, Arabs. A proper summit. Not much seems to have come out of it.’
I wouldn’t be so sure of that, thought Jericho.
‘I’d need a list of official participants at the summit,’ he said, ‘if such a thing still exists.’
‘I’ll send it to you. Give me an email address.’
Jericho passed on his details and thanked the man. He promised to get in touch as soon as anything new came in, signed off and looked at Yoyo.
‘What do you think?’
‘A meeting in which senior oil company representatives take part,’ she mused. ‘An unofficial one. Ruiz doesn’t wait for the end. Why does he leave?’
‘He might have felt unwell. That’s the harmless explanation.’
‘That we don’t believe.’
‘Of course not. He left because he’d come to the conclusion that the whole thing was going nowhere, because there was an argument, or because he didn’t want to go along with whatever they decided.’
‘If he’d just been angry, he’d have told his people or his wife the reasons. Instead he said nothing.’
‘He felt threatened.’
‘He was afraid they might hush him up because he didn’t want to play.’
‘As they did, by the look of it.’
‘And who are they?’
‘Hmm.’ Jericho pursed his lips. ‘We’re thinking along the same lines, aren’t we?’
* * *
Yoyo stayed with him that night. Nothing happened except that they emptied another bottle of wine together and he held her in his arms, faintly surprised that he only wanted to console her: a girl overtaxed by adulthood, intelligent, talented and beautiful who, at the age of only twenty-five, had already driven wedges of insecurity into the armour of the Party and at the same time preserved the attitude of a teenager, a punishing, immature stroppiness that was every bit as unerotic as her efforts to defy biology and keep from growing up. It seemed to him that Yoyo wanted to stay in adolescence for ever, or until circumstances calmed down enough to grant her a more peaceful youth than the one she had already had. He, on the other hand, wanted only to wipe out this phase of his life, those said transitional years. Small wonder, then, that neither of them felt what they should have felt, as Yoyo had put it.
He thought about this, and suddenly, quite unexpectedly, he felt lighter.
There was someone else with them in the room. He looked up, and that shy boy who had been hurt so often was sitting in the gloom of the loft, watching his fingers glide through Yoyo’s hair. Numbed with red wine and worry, he stared straight ahead, while the boy’s eyes filled with tears of disappointment that girls like Yoyo only ever used boys like him to talk to. His nose, disproportionately swollen by the beginnings of puberty, was still too big for his otherwise childish face. His hair needed washing, and of course he was wearing the stuff he always wore, a human being who loved everyone and everything more than he loved himself. How Jericho had hated the little bastard who couldn’t understand why that adult man with the girl in his arms, the girl he could have had there and then, wasn’t declaring his love – why he suddenly didn’t desire her, when he had desired her, hadn’t he?
Had he?
Jericho saw the boy sitting there, felt his paralysing, nagging fear of being inadequate, failing, being rejected. And suddenly he didn’t hate him any more. Instead he drew him into the embrace, he granted him absolution and assured him that he wasn’t to blame for anything, anything at all. He expressed his sympathy. Explained the necessity of finally disappearing from his life, since he had vanished from it in a purely physical sense long ago, and promised him that they would both find peace sooner or later.
The boy turned pale.
He would come back, that much was certain, but for that night at least they were reconciled. The world became more tangible, more colourful. Towards morning, when Yoyo lay snoring quietly on his belly, he still hadn’t slept a wink, and yet he wasn’t tired in the slightest. He carefully lifted her shoulders, slipped from the sofa and let her drop back. She murmured, turned on her side and rolled into a ball. Jericho looked at her. He wondered excitedly who would appear once she had shed the foolish costume of the eternal teenager. Someone very thrilling, he suspected. And she would be happy and adult. She just didn’t know it yet. She would be able to feel everything, not what she was supposed to feel, not what she wanted to feel, but just what she actually felt.
Just before nine. He picked up his phone, went into the kitchen area and put on a strong pot of coffee. He knew what he had to do, and how they could nail those bastards.
Time to make a call.
‘I’ve been thinking about your offer,’ he said.
‘Oh.’ Patrice Ho seemed surprised. ‘I hadn’t expected to hear from you so soon.’
‘Some decisions are quick to make.’
‘Owen, before you say something—’ Ho hemmed and hawed. ‘I’m sorry if I behaved badly in any way. I didn’t mean to put any pressure on you – you must think I’m never satisfied.’
‘I hope you aren’t,’ said Jericho. ‘Not in terms of the results, anyway. So I will go on supporting you in this paedophile case.’
‘You will?’ Short pause. ‘You’re a friend! A true friend. I’m more obliged to you than ever.’
‘Good. Then I’d like to call in some of my credit.’
‘And
I’ll be happy to help you!’
‘Just wait. It’s possible that you’re not going to like it.’
‘That’s what I’m assuming,’ Ho said drily.
‘Right, listen. In the last week of August 2022, in Beijing, or more precisely in the Sinopec Congress Centre in the district of Chaoyang, there was a meeting of international oil companies. I’ll send you the list of participants. On the last day of the summit, on the evening of 1 September, some of these people met up unofficially in the district of Shunyi. I don’t know who took part in that meeting, but it seems to have been an illustrious circle. And I don’t know where the meeting took place.’
‘And that’s what I’m to find out. I get it.’ Ho paused. ‘This sounds like a routine investigation. What wouldn’t I like about it?’
‘The second part of my request.’
‘Which would be?’
‘I can only tell you once I’ve got the answer to part one.’
‘Fine. I’ll sort it out.’
Jericho felt the life flowing back into his veins. The prey had become the hunter! In tense expectation he viewed his emails and saw that the Repsol man had sent the whole schedule of the summit, and sure enough, everybody had met in Beijing, representatives of almost every company that was involved or ever had been involved in the oil and gas business, strategists almost to a man.
He went through the list and gave a start.
Of course! That was only to be expected. And yet—
He quickly passed on the details to Ho, looked in on Yoyo, who was fast asleep, sat back down at the kitchen counter and started coming up with theories.
And all of a sudden everything fell into place.
* * *
Late that afternoon – Yoyo had groggily gone on her way, not without asking to be updated on the latest developments – Patrice Ho called him back.
‘Three years is a long time,’ he said, trying to make it sound exciting, ‘but I may have found something. I can’t tell you exactly who took part in the meeting, but I can tell you with some certainty where it took place and who the host was.’
‘A private house?’
‘Correct. There are no Sinopec facilities in Shunyi, but the strategy manager of the company lives there. Big property. We looked into him just for a laugh, and found out that he lives notoriously beyond his means, but yes, lots of people do that. His name is Joe Song. He represented Sinopec during the summit. Can you do anything with that?’
‘I think so, yeah.’ A name, another name! Now it would all depend on whether he was right. ‘Thanks! That’s all fine.’
‘I get it. Now comes the bit I’m not going to like.’
‘Yes. You have to hack into Song’s computer.’
‘Hmm.’
‘It could be that I’m mistaken and the guy has nothing to hide. But if—’
‘Owen, listen. A promise is a promise, okay? But before I do that, I need more information. I’ve got to know where your investigations are leading.’
Jericho hesitated. ‘Possibly to the retrieval of the Chinese government’s honour.’
‘Aha.’
‘You promise to help me anyway?’
‘As I said—’
‘Okay, listen up. I’ll give you the background. Then I’ll tell you what you need to look for.’
* * *
Twenty minutes later, when he could be certain that the Repsol man had drunk his first café con leche, he called Madrid again.
‘Can I bother you again?’
‘Of course.’
‘You mentioned that the joint venture planned between Sinopec, Repsol and EMCO was based on an initiative. Can you remember who the initiator was?’
‘Sure.’ The man told him the name. ‘By the way, he was the one who blew the whole thing up into a summit and suggested holding it in Beijing. Sinopec liked that. The Chinese like the world being negotiated on their territory.’
‘Thanks. You’ve been a great help.’
The initiator—
Jericho smiled grimly. He saw the Hydra stretching its necks, darting its heads forwards, baring its fangs. It hissed at him, but its mighty serpentine body bent and started slowly retreating.
That night he slept a deep and dreamless sleep.
* * *
The next day, radio silence till lunchtime. Then Ho rang, and he sounded just as excited as he had two and a half weeks previously, when Jericho had passed on the news of the capture of Animal Ma Liping.
‘Incredible,’ he said. ‘You were right.’
Jericho’s heartbeat did a drumroll.
‘What exactly did you find?’
‘The icon. That snaky thing, what’s the creature called again?’
‘Hydra.’
‘On Song’s company computer! Hidden among other programs. To make his deleted emails visible again. However, we’ll have to get at his hard disk.’
‘No problem. You have sufficient grounds to arrest him officially.’
‘Owen, that could—’ Ho caught his breath. ‘That could make my promotion to Beijing—’
‘I know.’ Jericho smiled. ‘Bust the guy. You’ll find data that look like white noise, but using that icon you’ll be able to get a message out of it without too much difficulty.’
‘I’ll call you. I’ll call you!’
‘Wait!’ Jericho started to pace back and forth, kept in motion by adrenalin. ‘We need the other participants in the meeting. It only looks like a plot by a business sector, it’s really a conspiracy by a small number of people. We’ve got to get to them. Focused and fast, so that none of them has a chance to get away. Perhaps you’ll manage to wring a confession from our friend by pointing out the mitigating circumstances.’
‘Like him being able to keep his head attached to his neck,’ sniffed Ho.
‘Oh, come on. I thought the death penalty was abolished in 2021.’
‘So it was. But I can always threaten to bring it back specially for him. Soon we’ll know who the other participants were, you can be sure of that!’
‘Fine. If he doesn’t talk, we’ll have to check out every single alibi. I know that’s going to be a big job.’
‘Not really. I’d say the companies will be very interested in getting the truth into the open. In times like these, they don’t want to cock up their reputations.’
‘Whatever. It will have to be a concerted action. That means you’ll have to bring in MI6 and the American Secret Service, as well as the Secret Services of all the countries affected. Then I’m going to phone Orley Enterprises, so promise me that the Chinese police won’t stonewall. You’re going to be bathed in glory.’
‘The glory will be yours, Owen!’
Jericho said nothing.
Did he want that? Did he want to be bathed in glory? A little bit proud, perhaps, as Yoyo had suggested. They’d earned that, Yoyo, Tian and he. And apart from that, he just needed one more good night’s sleep.
* * *
Early in the afternoon, Joe Song, the oil strategist, was arrested in his office, looked completely dumbfounded, and the investigators went to work. Just as restorers work their way through layers of paint to reveal much older art, they brought to light Song’s deleted emails, supposed white noise which, with the expert use of the decoding program, was shaped into a document whose contents were enough to put Song in jail for the rest of his life.
And yet he denied everything. For an evening and a night he denied having anything to do with the attacks, and nor did he know anything about an organisation called Hydra, or how the icon and the message had found their way onto the Sinopec computer. Meanwhile a police unit was raging around his house before the eyes of his terrified wife, and found another gleaming, pulsing Hydra on Song’s private computer, and the manager still claimed not to know anything. It took a night in jail and two consultations with his lawyers, before Patrice Ho, on the afternoon of 6 June – in a soundproofed room – vividly presented him with the bleakness of the rest of his life, but not wi
thout suggesting a possible way out in the event that he admitted everything.
After that Joe Song couldn’t stop talking.
Jericho listened ecstatically to what Ho went on to tell him. Immediately afterwards he dialled Jennifer Shaw’s number. It was nine in the morning in London, and he was almost pleased to be seeing her again.
‘Owen! You keeping okay?’
‘Pretty good now, thanks. You?’
‘The Big O makes an ants’ nest look like a Zen monastery. All the investigations get concentrated here so that you can’t take so much as a step without getting hopelessly entangled.’
‘Doesn’t necessarily sound as if you’ve achieved clarity.’
‘Still, by now we know that Gaia’s hotel manager was a former Mossad agent. Good that you called, though. Julian seems to have triplicated himself. He’s working round the clock, but I know he wanted to call you at the next possible opportunity.’
‘So is he there?’
‘He’s buzzing around the place. Shall I try to put you through?’
‘I’ve got a much better suggestion, Jennifer. Bring him here.’
Shaw raised a Mr Spock eyebrow.
‘I assume you have more on your mind than just saying hello.’
He smiled. ‘You’re going to like it.’
* * *
A short time later they were all gathered in Jericho’s loft, projected vivid and life-sized on Tu’s holowall, and Jericho played his cards. Orley didn’t interrupt him once, while his eyebrows drew together until they stood like craggy mountain ranges above his clear blue eyes, but when he finally turned his head towards Shaw, his voice sounded calm and relaxed.
‘Prepare a helicopter to the airport,’ he said. ‘From there we’ll take the jet. We’ll pay him a visit.’
‘Now?’ asked Shaw.
‘When else do you suggest?’
‘To be quite honest I haven’t the faintest idea where he is right now. But okay, of course we can—’
‘You don’t need to.’ Orley smiled fiercely. ‘I know where he is. He told me, right after we got back. When he called to express his dismay.’
‘Of course,’ said Shaw devotedly. ‘When do you want to fly?’
‘Give me an hour for hand luggage. Inform Interpol, MI6, but they’re not to steal the show. Owen?’ Orley stood up. ‘Do you want to come?’
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