The Art of War Page 12

  He looked about him quickly, wondering whether he should hide and let the man pass, then decided against it. He was almost certain he hadn’t been seen, so he would have the element of surprise.

  As the footsteps came on, he flattened himself against the wall. Then, as the man turned the corner, he reached out and pulled him close, whirling him about and pinning him against his chest, his right hand going to the man’s throat, the knife’s blade pressed tight against the skin.

  ‘Cry out and you’re dead,’ he said softly in his ear.

  ‘Turner!’ It was a whisper of surprise.

  ‘Shen Lu Chua,’ he answered quietly, tightening his grip on the Han. ‘What a surprise to meet you here.’

  The Ping Tiao leader swallowed painfully, but he held his head proudly, showing no sign of fear. ‘What are you doing here?’

  DeVore laughed softly. ‘You forget who holds the knife, Shen Lu Chua. Why is Gesell taking prisoners?’

  ‘You saw... ? Of course.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘You think I’d tell you?’ Shen sniffed.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I know what Gesell intends.’

  Shen’s mocking laughter confirmed it. This was his idea. And Gesell knew nothing of it. Which in itself was interesting. It meant there were splits in their ranks – divisions he could capitalize upon. But why be surprised? They were human, after all.

  ‘You know nothing...’

  But DeVore had stopped listening. Hugging Shen closer he thrust the tip of the knife up through the Han’s neck, into the cavern of his mouth, then let him fall. For a moment he watched Shen lie there, struggling to remove the blade, small croaking noises coming from his ruined larynx, then he stepped forward and, kneeling over the man, tugged the head back sharply, breaking his neck.

  Hung Mien-lo sat at his desk in his office, the small, desk-mounted screen at his side lit with figures. Standing before him, his head bowed, was the Master of the Inner Chamber, Sun Li Hua.

  ‘You summoned me, Chancellor Hung?’

  Hung Mien-lo glanced at Sun, then continued to tap in figures on the keyboard.

  ‘You took your time, Master Sun.’

  Sun kept his head lowered. ‘I am a busy man. There was much to organize for my master.’

  Hung sniffed. ‘And which master is that, Sun?’

  Sun smiled faintly. ‘The same master we both serve.’

  Hung Mien-lo raised his head and stared at Sun, then laughed and, reaching across, turned the screen about so that it faced the man.

  ‘Do you recognize these figures, Master Sun?’

  Sun raised his head for the first time, studying the screen. Then he looked back at Hung, his expression unchanged. ‘Those look like the household accounts, Chancellor.’

  ‘And so they are. But they’re wrong. They’ve been tampered with. And not just once, but consistently, from what I can make out.’ He touched the pad to clear the screen, then sat back, smiling. ‘Someone has been milking them of quite considerable sums these last four years.’

  Sun met his gaze openly. ‘And?’

  Hung nodded, admiring the man’s coolness. ‘And there are only three men who could have done it. I’ve questioned the other two, and it’s clear that they are innocent. Which leaves you, Master Sun. Your family has prospered greatly these past four years.’

  ‘Are you accusing me of embezzlement, Chancellor Hung?’

  Hung Mien-lo smiled. ‘I am.’

  Sun stared back at him a while, then laughed. ‘Is that all? Why, if every official who had massaged his accounts were to be arrested, the Seven would quickly find themselves short of servants.’

  ‘Maybe so. But you have been caught, Master Sun. I’ve evidence enough to have you demoted to the Net.’

  Sun looked back at him, untroubled, his smile intact. He recognized the big squeeze when he saw it. ‘What do you want, Chancellor? What’s the real reason for this meeting?’

  ‘You think I have an ulterior motive, is that it, Master Sun?’

  There was movement in Sun’s squat face, then, uninvited, he sat down, his features set in a more serious expression. ‘We are realists, you and I. We know how the wind blows.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Sun sat back, relaxing, his face filled with sudden calculation. ‘We have been fortunate, you and I. Events have moved strongly in our favour this last year. We have risen while others have fallen away. Our families are strong, our kin powerful.’

  ‘So?’

  Sun’s lips were smiling now, but his eyes were still cold and sharp. ‘What I mean is this. We should be allies, Hung Mien-lo. Allies, not enemies.’

  Hung Mien-lo leaned towards him, his expression suddenly hard, uncompromising. ‘And if I say no?’

  For the first time a flicker of uncertainty crossed Sun Li Hua’s face. Then, reassuring himself, he laughed. ‘You would not be talking to me if you had already decided. You would have had me arrested. But that’s not your purpose, is it? You want something from me.’

  But Hung was glaring at him, angry now. ‘Have you no ears, man? No understanding of the situation you are in?’ He shook his head, astonished. ‘You have dared the ultimate, Sun Li Hua. You have killed a T’ang. And even the merest whisper in some ears of your involvement would bring about your certain death.’

  ‘You have no proof...’ Sun began, then saw that what Hung had said was true. Such a thing needed no proving: it was enough that suspicion existed. And then he understood what Hung Mien-lo had been getting at – why he had raised the matter of the embezzled funds. Demotion to the Net would make him vulnerable. Would place him beyond the protection of law and kin. He stared at his hands a moment, sobered. There was nothing he could do. Hung Mien-lo held all the cards.

  He bowed his head. ‘What do you want?’

  Hung Mien-lo studied Sun Li Hua a moment, savouring his victory. For some time now he had wanted to humble the man, to pull him down from his high horse. Today, forced by the Prince to act, he had taken a gamble: had wagered that what he’d guessed about Sun and the old T’ang was true. And had won. But that was only the start. The next step raised the stakes considerably. This time he gambled with his life.

  Thus far his hands had been clean. Thus far others had accomplished all he had wished for, as if on his behalf. But now...

  He took a deep breath, studying the man, making certain in his own mind that this was what he wanted. Then, calmly, his voice controlled, he answered Sun.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I want. I want you to kill again. I want you to kill the new T’ang, Wang Ta-hung.’

  Emily Ascher’s face was dark with anger, her nostrils flared, her eyes wide, glaring at Gesell. She stood face on to him, her hands on her hips, her chin tilted back challengingly.

  ‘Go on! Confront him with it! I bet the bastard denies it!’

  Gesell’s chest rose and fell violently. The news of Shen’s death had shaken him badly. Things had been going so well...

  ‘You’re sure?’

  She made a sharp, bitter sound of disgust. ‘It was his knife. The blade with the pearled handle. The one we confiscated from him when he came to see us that time.’

  ‘I see...’

  She leaned closer, her voice lowered to a whisper. ‘Then you’ll kill him, neh? As you said you would if he double-crossed us?’

  Gesell shuddered involuntarily, then nodded. ‘If it’s true,’ he said softly. ‘But he’ll deny it.’

  ‘Then you’ll know it’s true.’

  ‘Yes...’ He turned and looked across to where the albino was standing, watching their exchange. ‘Where is he?’ he demanded, his voice raised for the first time since they had come up in the lift.

  ‘He’ll be here,’ Lehmann answered coldly.

  ‘And if he’s not?’ Ascher asked.

  ‘Then we die here,’ Gesell said, not looking at her, returning the albino’s cold stare.

  In the distance there was the stutter of small arms fire, then a muffled ex
plosion that made the floor shudder beneath their feet. The armaments had been shipped out more than fifteen minutes back. It was time to get out. But they couldn’t. Not until Turner was here.

  Gesell spat then turned away, pacing up and down slowly, looking about him at the men and women gathered in the corridors nearby. ‘What’s keeping him?’ he muttered angrily. He could see how tense his people were, how quickly they had caught his mood. Under his breath he cursed Turner. Emily was right. They should never have got into this.

  Then, as he turned back, he saw him.

  ‘Well,’ he said quietly, glancing at Ascher. ‘Here he is now.’

  DeVore spoke briefly to the albino, then came across. ‘You’re ready?’

  Gesell shook his head. ‘Not yet. I want some answers.’

  ‘About Shen Lu Chua?’

  Gesell laughed briefly, surprised by his audacity. ‘You’re a cool one, Turner. What happened?’

  DeVore was staring back at him, his whole manner candid, open. ‘I killed him. I had to. He attacked me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I tried to explain to him why I was there, but he gave me no chance.’

  ‘No...’ Gesell looked at Ascher, then back at DeVore. ‘I knew Shen. He wouldn’t do such a thing.’

  ‘You knew him?’ DeVore laughed. ‘Then I guess you knew he was smuggling out eight prisoners? Senior Security officers.’

  Gesell felt Ascher touch his elbow. ‘He’s lying...’

  DeVore shook his head. ‘No. Ask your man Mach to check on it. Shen’s sidekick, Yun Ch’o, has taken them to an apartment in Ottersleben. Level Thirty-four. I think you know the place.’

  Gesell tensed. Maybe Turner was bluffing, stalling for time. But that made no sense. As he said, it was easy for Mach to check. In any case, something else was bothering him. Something Turner hadn’t yet explained.

  ‘They tell me they found the body down at One-twenty. Even if it’s as you say and Shen was double-crossing us, why were you down there?’

  He stepped back sharply as DeVore reached into his uniform jacket. But it wasn’t a weapon DeVore drew from his inner pocket. It was a map. Another map. DeVore handed it across to him.

  ‘It was too good an opportunity to miss. I knew it was down there. I’d seen it, you see. Years ago.’

  Gesell looked up at him again, his mouth open with surprise. ‘Bremen... Gods! It’s a Security diagram of Bremen.’

  ‘A part of it. The rest I’ve sent on.’

  ‘Sent on?’ He was about to ask what Turner meant when one of his messengers pushed through the crowded corridor behind him and came up to him, almost breathless. He made the man repeat the message, then whirled about, facing Turner.

  ‘There’s a problem.’

  ‘A problem?’ DeVore raised his eyebrows.

  ‘It seems we’re trapped. The last of the bridges has been blown.’

  ‘I know. I ordered it.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘You heard. We’re not going out that way. That’s what they’re waiting for, don’t you see? They’ll have worked out what we’ve done and they’ll be sitting there, waiting to pick us off in the side corridors on the other side of the bridge. But I’m not going to give them the opportunity. I’ve a craft waiting for us on the roof.’ DeVore glanced at the timer inset into his wrist. ‘We’ve less than five minutes, however, so we’d best get moving.’

  Gesell glanced at the map, then looked back at DeVore, astonished, the business with Shen forgotten. ‘You’ve transporters?’

  ‘That’s what I said. But let’s go. Before they work out what we’re up to.’

  ‘But where? Where are we going?’

  DeVore smiled. ‘South. To the mountains.’

  Chapter 45

  CONNECTIONS

  Wang Sau-leyan stood before the full-length dragon mirror in his dead father’s room while his brother’s maids dressed him, watching his own reflection.

  ‘You should have seen them! You wouldn’t believe how offended they were!’ He laughed and bared his teeth. ‘It was marvellous! They’re such hypocrites! Such liars and schemers! And yet they fancy themselves so clean and pure.’ He turned and glanced across at the Chancellor, his mouth formed into a sneer. ‘Gods, but they make me sick!’

  Hung Mien-lo stood there, his head lowered. He was unusually quiet, his manner subdued, but Wang Sau-leyan barely noticed him; he was too full of his triumph in Council that afternoon. Dismissing the maids, he crossed to the table and lifted his glass, toasting himself.

  ‘I know how they think. They’re like ghosts, they travel only in straight lines. But I’m not like them. They’ll have prepared themselves next time, expecting me to be rude again – to trample on their precious etiquette. They’ll meet beforehand to work out a strategy to deal with my “directness”. You see if they don’t. But I’ll wrong-foot them again. I’ll be so meek, so sweet-arsed and polite they’ll wonder if I’ve sent a double.’

  He laughed. ‘Yes, and all the time I’ll be playing their game. Undermining them. Suggesting small changes that will require further debate. Delaying and diverting. Querying and qualifying. Until they lose patience. And then...’

  He stopped, for the first time noticing how Hung Mien-lo stood there.

  ‘What is it, Chancellor Hung?’

  Hung Mien-lo kept his head lowered. ‘It is your brother, Excellency. He is dead.’

  ‘Dead? How?’

  ‘He... killed himself. This afternoon. An hour before you returned.’

  Wang Sau-leyan set the glass down on the table and sat, his head resting almost indolently against the back of the tall chair.

  ‘How very convenient of him.’

  Hung Mien-lo glanced up then quickly looked down again. ‘Not only that, but Li Shai Tung’s armoury at Helmstadt was attacked this afternoon. By the Ping Tiao. They took a large amount of weaponry.’

  Wang Sau-leyan studied the Chancellor’s folded body, his eyes narrowed. ‘Good. Then I want a meeting with them.’

  The Chancellor looked up sharply. ‘With the Ping Tiao? But that’s impossible, Chieh Hsia...’

  Wang Sau-leyan stared at him coldly. ‘Impossible?’

  Hung’s voice when it came again was smaller, more subdued than before.

  ‘It will be... difficult. But I shall try, Chieh Hsia.’

  Wang Sau-leyan leaned forward, lifting his glass again. ‘Make sure you do, Hung Mien-lo, for there are others just as hungry for power as you. Not as talented perhaps but, then, what’s talent when a man is dead?’

  Hung Mien-lo looked up, his eyes meeting the new T’ang’s momentarily, seeing the hard, cold gleam of satisfaction there, then bowed low and backed away.

  Kao Chen stood in the corridor outside the temporary mortuary, his forehead pressed to the wall, his left hand supporting him. He had not thought he could be affected any longer – had thought himself inured to the worst Man could do to his fellow creatures – yet he had found the sight of the mutilated corpses deeply upsetting. The younger ones especially.

  ‘The bastards...’ he said softly. There had been no need. They could have tied them up and left them. Surely they’d got what they wanted? But to kill all their prisoners. He shuddered. It was like that other business with the hostages – Captain Sanders’s young family. There had been no need to kill them, either.

  He felt a second wave of nausea sweep up from the darkness inside him and clenched his teeth against the pain and anger he felt.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’

  His sergeant, a Hung Mao ten years Chen’s senior, stood a few paces distant, his head lowered slightly, concerned but also embarrassed by his officer’s behaviour. He had been assigned to Kao Chen only ten days before and this was the first time they had been out on operations together.

  ‘Have you seen them?’

  The sergeant frowned. ‘Sir?’

  ‘The dead. Cadets, most of them. Barely out of their teens. I kept thinking of my son.’


  The man nodded. ‘The Ping Tiao are shit, sir. Scum.’

  ‘Yes...’ Chen took a breath then straightened up. ‘Well... let’s move on. I want to look at their dead before I report back.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Chen let his sergeant lead on, but he had seen the doubt in the man’s eyes.

  All of this looking at the dead was quite alien to him – no doubt his previous officers hadn’t bothered with such things – but Chen knew the value of looking for oneself. It was why Tolonen had recruited Karr and himself: because they took such pains. They noticed what others overlooked. Karr particularly. And he had learned from Karr. Had been taught to see the small betraying detail – the one tiny clue that changed the whole picture of events.

  ‘Here it is, sir.’

  The sergeant came to attention outside the door, his head bowed. Chen went inside. Here things were different, more orderly, the bodies laid out in four neat rows on trestle tables. And, unlike the other place, here the bodies were whole. These men had died in action: they had not been tied up and butchered.

  He went down the first of the rows, pausing here and there to pull back the covering sheets and look at a face, a hand, frowning to himself now, his sense of ‘wrongness’ growing with every moment. Finally, at the head of the row, he stopped beside one of the corpses, staring down at it. There was something odd – something he couldn’t quite place – about the dead man.

  He shook his head. No, he was imagining it. But then, as he made to move on, he realized what it was. The hair. He went closer and lifted the head between his hands, studying it. Yes, there was no doubt about it, the dead man’s hair was cut like a soldier’s. Quickly he went down the row, checking the other corpses. Most of them had normal short hair – styles typical of the lower levels – but there were five with the same military-style cut, the hair trimmed back almost brutally behind the ear and at the line of the nape.

  ‘Sergeant!’

  The man appeared at the doorway at once.

  ‘Bring me a comset. A unit with a visual connection.’