Daylight on Iron Mountain Page 6

  But beautiful as well, the aesthete in him acknowledged. Truly the epitome of Han style.

  Servants met him, bowing low, showing him the utmost respect. From their midst, and slightly out of breath, stepped an elegantly dressed five-year-old. In the sweetest, high-pitched voice, he introduced himself as Li Peng, Li Chao Ch’in’s eldest son.

  ‘Master Jiang,’ he said whilst bowing low, the oversized sleeves of his pale blue silken robes sweeping the flagged floor, ‘you are most welcome. If you would follow me… my father awaits you.’

  Jiang smiled broadly, delighted by the boy, then followed him down the steps and across the formal garden. There, on the far side of a huge ornamental pond, two servants waited. As the visitors approached, the servants put their shoulders to the massive slatted door, sliding it back on its runners.

  Inside Tsao Ch’un awaited, his arms folded across his bull-like chest. He was standing beside a massive table, upon which was the biggest map Jiang Lei had ever seen. A map of the North American continent.

  Standing about that table were seven others, dressed in splendid silks, all of them in their late forties or early fifties.

  These were Tsao Ch’un’s most trusted men. The Seven. It was said by some – if quietly – that the great man would not have been able to function without them. If Tsao Ch’un was the head, these were his hands, and looking from face to face, Jiang Lei found himself impressed by the strength and experience he saw in their eyes.

  As Li Peng withdrew, facing Tsao Ch’un all the while, his head bowed low. Li Chao Ch’in stepped forward, welcoming Jiang Lei formally to his house. As he did so, Tsao Ch’un looked on silently, his black, hawk-like eyes taking in everything.

  Tsao Ch’un was, as Jiang had observed before, a small man. He had the look of a street fighter; of a man who had long lived off his wits to survive. Only standing there, surrounded by seven of the most impressive men on the planet, he nonetheless dominated the room. Was somehow more alive than they.

  Intelligent as he was, Tsao Ch’un was also brutal, elemental, visceral. Where others might have been measured and calculating, Tsao Ch’un was direct. He trusted his instincts and did what others would not have dared to do. Hence his success. Only he was no administrator. Others could consolidate what he had won. And those ‘others’ were the Seven.

  The formal welcome complete, Li Chao Ch’in stepped aside. Only then did Tsao Ch’un step forward and, standing before Jiang Lei, put out his right hand with its great black iron ring – token of his power – resting below the thick knuckle of the forefinger.

  At once Jiang Lei knelt, bowing his head, and took the offered ring, kissing it in fealty.

  ‘Jiang Lei,’ Tsao Ch’un said warmly, taking his arm and steering him towards the map, as if they were old friends. ‘We have been debating all morning how best to go about the task. The new campaign, I mean, against the North Americans. Tsu here thinks we should bomb them flat, as we did the Middle East, then wait for the radiation to die down. But I’m an impatient man. I can’t wait a hundred years for things to cool off. That said, a straightforward invasion might prove costly. It might easily lose us ten million men.’

  Tsao Ch’un paused and smiled. ‘The question is, Jiang Lei, how would you go about it?’

  Two hours later, Jiang stepped back, away from the map, conscious that the mood in the room had changed.

  Surprised as he’d been by Tsao Ch’un’s request, he had done as he’d been asked and given his considered answer to all the questions thrown at him. As Jiang turned to Tsao Ch’un again, he saw how the great man looked about him, meeting the eyes of his advisors one by one, each giving him a single nod.

  ‘Then it is done,’ he said, looking to Jiang once more. ‘You, Jiang Lei, will organize and lead the campaign.’

  Jiang stared back at him, shocked. He had, in that instant, been promoted to marshal.

  He fell to his knees, touching his forehead to the floor before Tsao Ch’un. ‘But Chieh Hsia… I am not a soldier. I am but a humble poet.’

  ‘That may be so,’ Tsao Ch’un answered him, grinning now and enjoying Jiang’s surprise, ‘but you will have guidance in the task. I am giving you an advisor.’

  Jiang Lei looked up, puzzled. Tsao Ch’un was clearly not talking of the Seven.

  ‘Shepherd,’ Tsao Ch’un said, then laughed, his laughter taken up by the others. ‘You will go and see him, Jiang Lei. He is expecting you. But first you will stay here for a day or two. Li Chao Ch’in needs to brief you. And besides, there are things I wish to discuss…’

  Jiang bowed again, but he was shocked. A mere hour ago he had been but an unimportant general. One of hundreds in Tsao Ch’un’s service. Now he was confidant to the Son of Heaven and leader of a campaign to conquer the territories of the old American empire. And it had happened in an instant.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said, conscious of the others listening, ‘but why me?’

  Later that evening, finally alone with Tsao Ch’un, he got his answer.

  ‘I have had my eye on you for some while, Jiang Lei,’ he said, handing Jiang a large glass of the finest French brandy. ‘I have long been impressed by you… by your integrity and your staunch refusal to use your position for personal gain.’

  Tsao Ch’un raised his glass, saluting Jiang, then laughed. ‘You are by far my poorest general, Jiang Lei. But that is no criticism. On the contrary. Such a trait is almost unique among my servants, and there are many of them. Like the ancient Greek, Diogenes, I have been searching a long, fruitless time for an honest man. But now I have found one.’

  Jiang sipped from his glass, then nervously asked, ‘Are you sure I am up to such a task, Chieh Hsia?’

  The instinct to get up from his seat and abase himself was overpowering. Tsao Ch’un had insisted on informality, but to be informal with such a one as he… it was impossible. It was like being informal with Genghis Khan.

  Tsao Ch’un smiled, then drained his drink. ‘I have no doubt of it at all, Jiang Lei. In fact, it reassures me to have you in charge. But tell me… how many Banner armies will you need for the task?’

  Jiang thought a moment. ‘Ten… maybe fifteen?’

  ‘Then you shall have thirty.’

  Again Jiang Lei was astonished. A single Banner was half a million men. At a stroke Tsao Ch’un had put him in command of fifteen million troops. It was very different from the 10,000 he had commanded as a general.

  Jiang shook his head, then, aware that he had Tsao Ch’un’s ear, ‘And my family?’

  Those dark, bottomless eyes stared back at him.

  ‘You want them with you?’

  Jiang swallowed, then nodded.

  Tsao Ch’un studied him a moment, then smiled.

  ‘Then so it shall be.’

  Early that next morning, as the sun slowly edged its way above the distant peaks, a craft set down on the pad at Tongjiang. As its engines shut down and the door hissed open, a man in the uniform of a marshal stepped forward, out of the shadows.

  Seeing the stranger in his imposing outfit, Chun Hua and the two girls began to kneel and bow their heads. But even as they did so, the great man spoke, bidding them get to their feet again.

  At the sound of that voice, all three of them jerked their heads up, a look of sheer astonishment lighting their faces.

  ‘Jiang Lei?’ Chun Hua said, not sure whether she was dreaming.

  He stepped closer, catching her in his arms and lifting her up, embracing her, then setting her down as the girls crowded about him, tearful now.

  ‘My pretty darlings… gods how I’ve missed you…’

  From a window high above, Tsao Ch’un looked on coldly. It was a touching scene, if one were of that disposition. But he was not. He had not become great through sentiment. Even so, he felt a certain satisfaction at the sight. It was as he’d thought. Jiang Lei was steadfast in both loyalty and love.

  He spoke up, talking to someone in the shadows just beyond him.

  ‘Stay close t
o him, Hung. Be his shadow. I trust him… for now… but even those I’ve trusted have proved false, and power can corrupt a man… even a good man like Jiang Lei.’

  There was the briefest pause and then the shadows answered.

  ‘It shall be done.’

  Chapter 13

  AMOS

  Amos Shepherd sat in the shade of the oak, looking down the grassy slope towards the bay. There was the faintest wind, rustling the leafy branches overhead and rippling the placid surface of the water. Out there, across the bay, you could see the peeling whiteness of the old house, embedded in the far side of the valley. Beyond it, the City climbed the sky, so tall it seemed a natural border to the green world of the Domain.

  He was painting. Or rather, he was thinking of painting. The easel was set up nearby, his palette set down beside it. But as yet the canvas was untouched, the colours unmixed, for this was the crucial part. The part that took the time. The technical act of painting was secondary. He could do that without thought. It was this that was all-important.

  It was late morning, and the sun was almost at its zenith. It was the best time of the day, when the valley was flooded with light, no shadows on the green.

  Amos Shepherd was a powerful-looking man, long, grey hair and a short grey beard framing his handsome, sun-burned face. He was in his fifties now, yet he had the look of a man ten years his junior: an ageless, almost biblical appearance, his sea-green eyes set deep into a face that seemed all-knowing; his powerful, aquiline nose like something carved.

  In the stillness of his concentration, he was a statue in flesh.

  Somewhere far off a cuckoo called. As silence fell, so a single bee drifted close and then away.

  Amos narrowed his eyes, trying to pierce and penetrate the veil of appearance, trying to see beyond it. To decode it.

  To outward eyes he seemed entranced, but this was the moment when it happened, when he slipped through and saw reality. Or something close. Some deeper level, anyway. Something the casual eye could never see.

  The sound of the craft grew slowly. Indiscernible, at first, it grew in his head. It cut across his consciousness like a fissure in the rock.

  Amos looked up.

  Of course. Tsao Ch’un’s new marshal.

  Leaning forward, he selected a brush. Squeezing a tiny bead of black from the tube, he dipped the brush and drew a horizontal line, needle thin at one end, thickening at the other, dividing the canvas.

  Skyline and surface.

  As the craft swooped in over the bay, the vibration of its engines filling the air, Amos stood, watching it slowly descend to the lawn beside the cottage.

  He had met Jiang Lei before, at official functions. But that had all been rather formal. There was little chance to come to know a man in such circum stances. But this time the man had come to stay for a day or two, so Amos could get to know him.

  It had been Tsao Ch’un’s wish.

  Amos looked back at the canvas. He had laid the first stone. What followed would follow. He had no idea yet what it was, only that it was ordained. Not in a fatalistic way, but as all his paintings were, because they pursued an ineluctable yet undiscoverable logic.

  They painted him, not he they.

  Amos smiled. Now wouldn’t that have sounded pretentious had he ever uttered it aloud? Yet it was true. It was all a process of surrender. He was but the channel for it.

  Tearing his attention away, he walked across to his visitors. The craft had set down now and as the ramp descended, so Jiang Lei stepped out, blinking against the bright sunlight.

  This would not be so strange for him as for others who had come here in the past. At least Jiang had some recent experience of the outside. Some of them had been inside so long that it startled and disturbed them. Like in that old Asimov novel, The Caves of Steel.

  Maybe he’d show Jiang some of that stuff. See what he thought of it.

  ‘Jiang Lei!’ he hailed, walking across to greet him, offering his hand, conscious of the other’s awkwardness at that – how Jiang half made to bow before tentatively putting out his own hand.

  ‘It’s good to see you again. I’m really pleased that we’ll be working together.’

  ‘Shih Shepherd…’

  Jiang bowed despite himself. He couldn’t help it. None of these Han could. It had become an auto-reflex with them. Like in the old days. And those clothes. They were like something from a costume drama.

  ‘Amos,’ he corrected him. ‘While you’re here you must call me Amos. You are my guest. If there’s anything you need…’

  Again that awkwardness, that slowness to respond. He liked that. This one wasn’t as slick and superficial as the rest. Tsao Ch’un had chosen well in that regard.

  He knew that Jiang Lei would not irritate him. At least, not in the way that so many of the others did.

  He watched Jiang look about him; saw how he registered his surroundings.

  ‘It’s… stunning.’

  Amos smiled, pleased. ‘Yes… isn’t it? There’s no place like it on earth. Not now, anyway.’

  Jiang Lei looked back at him. ‘I’m sorry, I…’

  But the words were lost in the whine of the craft’s engines as it lifted again, turning and sweeping off towards the south, climbing steeply as it went.

  In the silence that followed, Shepherd studied his guest.

  ‘You want to know, don’t you?’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yes. You want to know why Tsao Ch’un chose you. I mean… it isn’t obvious.’

  Jiang hesitated, then, ‘No. It isn’t.’

  ‘It’s very simple. He chose you because to put any other man in charge of the venture would have been to set up a rival – Mark Antony to Caesar – and Tsao Ch’un could never countenance that.’ Amos paused. ‘It is not so much your qualities, Jiang Lei, as your lack of ambition that makes you his ideal choice.’

  ‘Thirty Banners, and every last man loyal to me, their commander.’

  ‘Exactly. So you and I are honoured. Alongside Chao Ni Tsu.’

  Jiang Lei frowned. ‘In what way?’

  ‘In that we are the only three men on the planet whom Tsao Ch’un trusts. The rest…’

  Amos laughed. A rich, deep laughter that made Jiang smile.

  ‘But come… let me show you around. Unless you’d like to rest after your journey?’

  Jiang Lei shook his head. ‘No… please… I’d love to see. I’ve heard so much about this place…’

  For the briefest moment Amos seemed to freeze, or at least to let some minuscule shard of doubt enter his eyes. Only as soon as it appeared it was gone, and he was exactly as before, charming, welcoming. The perfect host.

  ‘Come, then,’ he said. ‘While the sun is overhead.’

  ‘What’s the painting going to be about?’

  Amos smiled. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen it yet.’

  ‘And you have to see it… before you can paint it?’

  ‘It comes in flashes. They all do. I understand it later. But while it’s happening…’

  Jiang Lei looked from the canvas to the man and back again. ‘While it’s happening… ?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. It’s not something I can articulate. It’s just something that happens.’

  ‘And you trust it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was nothing as yet. Or as good as. Just a black horizontal line. Which could have been anything. Only he saw how Amos stared at the canvas, intently, like he was conjuring visions from the air. He had been warned about it, warned about the intensity of the man. Schizophrenic, some said, yet he seemed perfectly normal. Most of the time.

  They had finished their tour an hour back, and in all that time he had seen no one except Amos. Was he genuinely alone here?

  The solitary madman.

  ‘Amos?’

  ‘Yes, Nai Liu?’

  That use of his pen name made Jiang take a mental step back. Shepherd, it was said, did nothing whimsically. So what did he mean
by using it? Did he mean to suggest some kind of bond between them – that they were both artists and therefore brothers in some fashion?

  Jiang asked his question.

  ‘How did you come to know Tsao Ch’un? I mean, you two… it seems the most unlikely alliance.’

  Amos smiled. ‘And so it is.’

  ‘I tried to look it up, but…’

  ‘There’s nothing there. I know. That’s because it’s all been erased. At the Ministry’s insistence. But come… let’s go inside. We can have a glass of wine, and I’ll tell you everything.’

  Jiang Lei sat on the bed, looking about him. He had been given a small room beneath the eaves at the very top of the house, and from the small, scuttling noises he could hear, he was not alone in inhabiting it.

  There wasn’t room for much – a small chest of drawers, a chair and the single bed on which he sat, tucked in beneath the tiny dormer window. On the chest of drawers was a wash jug in a bowl. Behind it, propped up against the wall, a large oval mirror stood, the backing silver blackened in places so that small holes seemed to be punched into the returning image of Jiang’s face. The rafters were exposed and the bare walls of the room had been whitewashed, but some years ago now, for it was flaking in places.

  The room had a damp, woody smell, added to which was a sharp, underlying scent he could not recognize.

  Jiang was not one to remark upon the quarters he was given, but this was strange. It had the feel of a child’s room, not the kind of room you’d place an honoured guest in.

  Chun Hua, for one, would not have liked it. But then Chun Hua had not been invited. For this was business. Serious business.

  He looked down, for that brief moment letting his mind stray back to their one snatched night together at Tongjiang. How awkward that had been. Not at all how he’d imagined. But then, why was he surprised? They had been strangers these past four years. To expect things to be as they were…

  Even so, the warmth of her body beside his in the night had unsettled him. Like the room, the furnishings, the bed, it had all been too much. Some part of him had drawn back, rebelling against the physicality of it. So unexpected. So… He would adapt. In time it would be as it had been. Or so he hoped.