Daylight on Iron Mountain Read online

  In life the army of the Ch’in had been a million strong, soldiers of the First Emperor, Ch’in Shih Huang-ti. Their terracotta figures had followed their great lord into the realm of the dead, beneath the yellow earth; there, no doubt, to carve out an empire fit for the Son of Heaven.

  Tsao Ch’un grinned, then jumped down, striding between their ranks looking first at this one then at that.

  ‘This one, I think…’

  And, raising the baseball bat he was carrying, he swung. The clay head cracked in half as it tumbled from the body.

  He swung again.

  ‘Do you have to, brother?’ Chao queried, watching from his wheelchair on the walkway high above. ‘It seems… I don’t know… lacking in respect. He was a great man, our King of Ch’in.’

  ‘A great man and a fool,’ Tsao Ch’un answered, taking another swing and removing another clay head. ‘Besides, this is fun. You know how much I like to break things, Chao Ni Tsu! To vandalize them!’

  And he laughed, a great gust of laughter, before he swung again.

  ‘You know what he believed, Chao? He believed he could be immortal. That all he had to do was build a bridge to the Isles of the Immortals, out there to the east, and he could join them, peach and all!’

  Chao knew the tale. ‘It’s just…’

  Tsao Ch’un swung again. ‘Oh, leave off, Chao! Let me have my fun. What are a few clay heads compared to what we will discuss today?’

  It was true. Only it seemed somehow sacrilegious. Ch’in Shih Huang-ti had been a great man. The great unifier of China. And it was lacking in respect. Unless Tsao Ch’un meant something else by the gesture.

  ‘Immortal! I mean to say… When a man is dead, he’s dead. His reputation? Well, that’s different. But the flesh… the flesh decays, brave Chao. Back to dust and clay, as these fellows will testify!’

  And he laughed again. A fierce, belligerent laughter.

  There was a crack as another head fell and then another. He had ‘killed’ a good dozen of them by now.

  ‘You know, Chao… I should have a purge, don’t you think? Shake things up a bit. Stop my people from becoming too complacent. It’s what Ch’in Shih Huang-ti would have done. He had no time for fools, you know… except himself, that is. He got conned, Chao, by a shaman. The man took him for a fortune. Riches enough to fight a great campaign. And what did he buy? A bridge! A fucking non-existent bridge! Well, you won’t find me buying no fucking bridges!’

  He swung. There was the crack of clay, the tumble of broken shards.

  ‘But I do like to break things. I really do. It annoys them, see. All the pompous little nothings. It winds them up. Gives them indigestion. Stomach cramps… And I like that. I like seeing them all discomfited.’

  Another head flew. The floor now was littered with broken pottery.

  ‘You think me ruthless, Chao, I know. But we Han have always been ruthless. In 259 BC in southern Shan-hsi, the army of Chao no relatives of yours, my friend, I should quickly say was starved into surrender by the Ch’in at Ch’ang P’ing. Etiquette demanded that they give up their weapons and go home, only the Ch’in generals executed them, to the last man. Four hundred thousand men. Beheaded, every last one, their heads made into a great pile as a warning to others.’

  Tsao Ch’un paused, narrowing his eyes. ‘You know what? That purge… it’s a good idea, neh? You could compile a list for me, Chao… like in the old days.’

  A list, Chao thought, turning his chair slightly and wishing that Amos were there so they could settle this matter. Another bloody list.

  Back in the old days it had seemed the only way to go about things. To target one’s enemies and ‘reduce’ them. Necessity had forced their hand. But purges. He hated the notion. Weren’t they at peace now?

  Only the truth was that they weren’t. Not yet. Oh, America would fall, eventually. The Middle East question would be resolved, one way or another, but…

  ‘Well, Chao? Will you make me a new list?’

  Chao Ni Tsu looked across to where his old friend stood, baseball bat poised, ready to strike again.

  ‘If that’s what you want.’

  ‘Oh, I do. The more I think of it… Well, imagine. When the executions begin. Think what a panic they’ll be in!’ He laughed, but this time it was barely a laugh. His eyes were serious, looking inward at his thoughts.

  ‘They’ve grown fat and bloated, Chao. Corrupt. Not that I care too much whether they’re corrupt or not, provided I see my share, but… they grow too sure of themselves. And that can’t be good for me, can it now? No. We need to strip them of their power. To make them question whether they are the next to go.’

  Chao nodded. ‘We must make them fear you again, Chieh Hsia.’

  Tsao Ch’un met the old man’s eyes and nodded. ‘Fear me… Yes. You have it perfectly, Chao Ni Tsu. So make a list. A long list, mind you, sparing no sector of society. And then we’ll see, neh?’

  Outside again, Chao let his Master push him, Tsao Ch’un quiet now, quiet and brooding. But Chao knew that quiet of old. Knew that it meant he’d come to a decision.

  ‘Have you made up your mind?’

  Tsao Ch’un spoke to his back. ‘I did… and then I didn’t. Smashing all those heads…’ His voice softened, as if, for a moment, he was talking of something other than the murder of tens of millions.

  ‘It’s no easy thing to decide upon. Japan… well that was easy. There was always an animosity between us. They were always our enemies. And so I did not hesitate. I knew what I had to do. But these others… this strange alliance. I wondered if there wasn’t, perhaps, some better way of dealing with them…’

  A strange alliance indeed, thought Chao. Arab and Jew joining together to fight a Holy War against Tsao Ch’un. It would have been unthinkable only a year ago. But things had changed. No. When things were at their most chaotic, the Arabs and Jews had been at each other’s throats. It had been a fierce and bitter war; one which seemed destined to end in mutual obliteration. Only then they, the Chinese, had arrived with their City and their settlers, and things had changed. With armageddon facing them, the two blood enemies had united, ending a hundred years and more of conflict.

  Two days ago, that had been. Two days since that historic and foolhardy moment.

  Tsao Ch’un slowed the chair, then stopped. ‘Chao Ni Tsu? Was there ever a woman in your life?’

  Chao smiled. ‘There was. But that was long ago.’

  ‘Really? I am surprised. I thought…’

  ‘It was while I was in College. In Ying Kuo. You know, at Cambridge. Before I met you. She was a native, an English girl. A pretty young thing. We went out for a time, but I think she found me too intense, too nervous… yes, and too nerdy.’

  Tsao Ch’un laughed. ‘Nerdy… now there’s a term I haven’t heard for ages.’

  ‘Perhaps you should google it.’

  The two men laughed. Between them they had destroyed that world. Buried it where it could not be found.

  ‘So she left you, Chao?’

  ‘Did I say that? No, Tsao Ch’un. I wrote her a letter. Or rather, an e-mail. You remember e-mails.’

  ‘I’m not senile, Chao. I do remember how things were.’

  ‘Well… it was strange. You’d think I was heartbroken, only I wasn’t. I was relieved. Romance… I was not programmed for romance. But I had to learn that. Had to experience it so I could understand it.’

  ‘And move on?’

  ‘Yes, and move on. But I sometimes think of her. She must be dead now.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Oh yes, I looked. In the records. To see if she survived. Only she didn’t.’

  ‘Ah…’ Tsao Ch’un was silent a moment, then he began to push again.

  ‘Coming here, Chao… I didn’t realize it, but it was just what I needed. To get away from court and all of that incestuous nonsense that goes on. No. Let the Seven keep things ticking over. Let them worry and make decrees. I needed a break…’

 
; ‘Yes, but why here?’

  Tsao Ch’un stopped and gestured towards the horizon. Out there lay the old city with its high walls and its imposing watchtowers. And beyond it and all about, what seemed like a tiny mountain range, but what were in fact the tombs of thirty ancient emperors, dating back to the Chou, three thousand years before.

  ‘I came here, Chao, because this is where it began. China and the dream of unification. Of one single nation ruled by the Son of Heaven. And now that we’re in the endgame… well… I just thought it apt, that’s all. To come and see it all, one last time. Before the game was over. Before we’d placed the last stone on the board.’

  Tsao Ch’un smiled. ‘And to swim, of course, and bash in a few heads and… to eat gammon and sweet chestnuts. And to talk to my oldest, dearest friends. While there was time. Before our days were done.’

  3

  IN OLD CH’ANG-AN

  Amos, arriving, found them in the old city.

  Xi’an had been abandoned twenty years back. The ancient walled city was one of the places Tsao Ch’un’s Brigades had been forced to subdue, back in 2045. Though it had not yet begun to crumble, there was considerable sign of war damage. Only it was not its present state, but the great sense of history contained within its walls that struck Shepherd as he walked its empty main street, the Nan Ta Chieh, heading for the bell tower.

  The Panp’o had first settled here on the banks of the Wei Ho, a branch of the Yellow River, back in the Neolithic period, almost seven thousand years past. Their villages were scattered all about this region. But it was the Chou who had first built a city, here at the end of the Silk Road, thirteen great dynasties ruling the surrounding lands from Ch’ang-an, their capital. They lasted from 1046 through to 771 BC, when they were swept away in their turn. Their successors were the Ch’in, who, after 260 years of striving against their neighbouring states, finally unified their great land; their young king, later known as Ch’in Shih Huang-ti, defeating their opponents one by one. The Han in 230 BC, the Chao in 228 BC, the Ch’i in 226 BC, and then the Wei in 225 BC. The Ch’u were defeated in 223 BC and finally the Yen in 222 BC.

  Two hundred and sixty years of warfare. It seemed an implausibly long time. Yet so it had been. The ‘Warring States’ period, had been the last time China had been divided for any great length of time, and from its chaos had come the determination to unify the land; one that every successive emperor strove to achieve. There was of course, the San-kuo period, the ‘Three Kingdoms’ as it was known, and the Wu Tai, the ‘Five Dynasties’, but those had been mere blips forty-four years and fifty-three respectively since which time there had been the Tsin, the Sui, the T’ang, the Sung, the Kin and Southern Sung, the Yüan, the Ming and the Ch’ing, not to mention the Ko Ming under Mao and Deng. Dynasties that lasted centuries, and then fell, to be replaced by other dynasties in an endless progression.

  And was that pattern broken?

  Shepherd stopped, looking about him. Before its latest troubles, this had been a thriving city of ten million souls. Why, even back in the second century BC, it was said that more than a million inhabited its mighty walls a figure, Shepherd mused, that was larger than his own country’s population at that time. China had, indeed, a long and great history. He could understand just why, in its dealings with such as the Americans, it looked on them as uncultured children and their land as ‘the land without ghosts’. No wonder the Chinese thought of them as soulless barbarians.

  The thought amused him. He had met many Americans in the last year or two, and knew that the Chinese view of them was mistaken. Jiang Lei knew it too. But Tsao Ch’un persisted in that view. He had no time for them.

  It was Tsao Ch’un’s zealots, his Pu Shou or ‘radicals’, who had kept America down these past twenty years, snipping off the green shoots of recovery as they appeared. Reducing the once mighty American empire to a gaggle of contesting kingdoms. Only now those quarrelling nations were uniting. At the very last they had begun to show some fighting spirit. Some spunk, as they liked to call it!

  It was that which had delayed him. That which, he knew, he would have to raise with Tsao Ch’un before he went from here. Raise and resolve. Because, if he was right, then America was about to become a problem.

  The bell tower was directly above him now, its massive walls dominating the centre of the ancient city, pushing up into the sky. If any single structure spoke of ancient China’s might, it was this. This and the city’s massive walls.

  It spoke of a power and magnificence unmatched in history. Why, you could run a marathon around those forty-foot-high walls, perhaps stopping at each of the great watchtowers that studded its length. Or at one of the four massive gatehouses set at the four directions of the compass, that soared into the blue, like the bell tower.

  Only now, with spectacular incongruence, a dozen and more high-rise Western hotels broke up that skyline. As if here and here only, the future had collided with the past.

  ‘Amos! Up here!’

  Shepherd looked up, shielding his eyes against the early morning sun. It was Tsao Ch’un, leaning out from the upper balcony of the tower.

  ‘Wait there! I’ll come up!’

  Climbing up, he wondered why Tsao Ch’un had summoned him today. And why here, where modern China Chung Kuo had begun? Was this meant to be some kind of lesson? Or, maybe more to the point, an explanation of events a setting of things in their historical context. Flying in, he had found himself impressed by the great mounds of the emperors’ tombs that filled the valley to the north of the city. Were they to excavate them all, he had been told, it would take a thousand years.

  He smiled. It was just like the Han to exaggerate and round their figures off – ‘Ten Thousand Years!’ they’d cry. Only this once he was sure that they were right. This was Egypt and Rome, Troy and Constantinople, rolled into one. And then some.

  Tsao Ch’un was waiting at the top of the steps, Chao Ni Tsu in his chair just beyond him, out in the open. And, at a distance, four guards. Part of Tsao Ch’un’s hand-picked elite.

  ‘Well?’ Tsao Ch’un asked, grinning fiercely. ‘What do you think of our little town? A monument to impermanence, neh?’

  Shepherd smiled, then grasped his hands. ‘I am impressed, old friend. Such a vast weight of history… one but rarely encounters something like this.’

  ‘Which is why I let it be. Let the air get to it. Call me sentimental, but…’

  Shepherd laughed. ‘Sentimental? You, Tsao Ch’un?’

  ‘Oh yes. I came here as a child. My parents brought me. We had a meal near here, at the Te Fa Ch’ang restaurant, in the shadow of the tower. Dumplings. Such magnificent, mouth-watering dumplings, based on genuine recipes from the T’ang court. I have tasted nothing like them since.’

  Shepherd stared at him, surprised. He had never, in all the time he’d known him, seen this side of Tsao Ch’un. This softer side.

  He looked about him. The red lacquer of the pillars and shutters was overpowering. And everywhere one looked there was elaborate decoration in the Han style, with dragons and lucky pictograms, all of them picked out in golden lettering.

  Chao Ni Tsu, he saw, was dozing. As ever these days, Shepherd thought, walking across and then crouching in front of him.

  ‘Master Chao…’

  Chao Ni Tsu opened his eyes. ‘Oh, Amos… You’ve come.’

  ‘Fresh from the front,’ he said, and smiling, reached out to take Chao’s hands. Those clever, subtle hands that even he considered brilliant. They and the mind that lay behind them.

  He released Chao’s hands and stood. ‘Well… we are assembled.’ He looked to Tsao Ch’un. ‘I saw the news. On my way here. It seems they have a death wish, neh?’

  Tsao Ch’un nodded. ‘I sent an envoy to them, do you know that? One of my best negotiators. And do you know what they did?’

  Shepherd shrugged.

  ‘They killed him, that’s what they did. And sent him back to me. Slit open and filled with sand, then sewn up agai
n.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I sent them another. A bit of a bully this time. He was under strict instructions to let them know their options.’

  ‘Which were?’

  ‘To surrender or die.’

  ‘Fine choices. And how did they respond?’

  ‘They sent him back.’

  ‘Slit open and sewn up?’

  Tsao Ch’un nodded.

  ‘I see.’

  Amos was silent for a time, then he smiled. ‘So what have we to discuss? It seems to me they’ve pared their options down to a single choice.’

  ‘Maybe. And maybe not. But I wanted your counsel, Amos. I wanted to hear what you had to say before… well, before anything, really.’

  Again, that was unlike Tsao Ch’un. To be so hesitant. So untrusting of his own instincts. Only it was a big decision. To destroy whole peoples. That was not something one did without reflection.

  ‘I was wondering,’ Tsao Ch’un said, staring away thoughtfully, ‘how the future would see me. Whether, in better times than these more liberal times they would understand. All of the death, the suffering I’ve caused. You would have thought that I enjoyed such things. Only there is no other way. The path of blood… we must follow it, gritting our teeth, bearing the worst, knowing that what lies ahead will be much better.’

  He paused, looking back at Shepherd. ‘The West was weak. We all know that. Spoiled and self-indulgent. Not to speak of the waste. As for their insolence! It was quite breathtaking, don’t you think? What had they, after all? A mere thousand years of history at most… and as for America, that was but an infant society. Three hundred years… it’s as long as one single dynasty. Whereas China has a history that goes back three thousand years. Think of it! Three thousand years of unbroken culture. Three thousand years of sound government and law-making. Why, when Europe was struggling to get up off its hands and knees, still suffering the long dark ages that followed the fall of Ta Ch’in, the great Roman empire, this one city alone could boast a population of a million and a half souls. Imagine it. How far ahead of them we were. And they dare to call us backward!’