Daylight on Iron Mountain (40 page)

Well then, he’d send a fresh wave and then another. As many as he could spare. One surely must get through. And maybe that was all it would take to shake them and weaken their resolve.

And if that failed?

Then he would nuke them. And fuck the consequences.

Alison blanked the screen then sat back.

The contract Peter had been working on was on the desk beside her. Worthless now, of course, for why would the Seven want to clone themselves, even if they won? They had sons, good ones. And Tsao Ch’un… he’d not be interested now in anything that had GenSyn’s imprint on it, thanks to Ebert declaring for the Seven. He’d probably put the lot of them up against a wall.

But it had been sweet of Peter to call her. Sweeter still to hear from Jake, even if it was only to say goodbye, good luck.

She stared at the blackness of the screen a moment. Then she leaned forward and, pulling open the drawer, took out the neat, pearl-handled gun she kept there. It was a ladies’ gun, from the time before the City. An illegal item, stamped with its maker’s mark.

Remington
.

She smiled, a sad, partly bitter smile. It was over. She had known it from the moment she’d had the news from Fan Chang’s palace. They could not win. They could only prolong the end.

She took a cartridge from the box and loaded it.

She paused a moment, thinking of her son, and of what he’d think when he heard the news. It would break his heart. Only she could not live through all that again. Could not see it all come down another time.

‘
Goodbye
,’ she whispered. Then, placing the gun into her mouth, she pulled the trigger.

‘Is there still no news?’

Li Chao Ch’in looked up from the report he was reading and gave a roar of delight, jumping to his feet. ‘Tsu Chen! Hou Hsin-Fa! Cousin Wang! When did you get here?’

The three T’ang beamed back at him. ‘We’ve just got in,’ Wang Hui So answered, embracing him. ‘Under the umbrella, you might say.’

‘Does Amos know you’re here?’

‘It was he who arranged it,’ Tsu Chen answered him, grasping his hands. ‘Hence the uniforms…’

Standing back a little, Li Chao Ch’in saw now what he’d failed to notice straight away – that they were garbed in the uniforms of common soldiers.

‘Good disguises, neh?’ Hou Hsin-Fa said. ‘But our question… is there any news of cousin Wu?’

Li Chao Ch’in shook his head. ‘None yet. But that, I feel, is a good thing. If he were dead, that bastard would be showing off his body and rubbing our noses in the fact.’

‘But no word from Raikkonen about the rescue mission?’

‘Only that it continues. They’ve suffered heavy losses.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Tsu Chen said. ‘It was an audacious thing to do.’

‘We had to do something, and a proper campaign would have taken weeks to organize.’

‘And the news from Australasia?’

‘Is good. Chi Cheng Yu is in firm command. The new marshal has sworn personal fealty to him. He and all of the Fourth Banner.’

‘And the muster? How many finally turned up?’

‘More than ninety thousand…’

The three T’ang stared at him. ‘Are you serious?’ Tsu Chen asked.

‘Not enough to form a proper Banner, I know…’

‘No, no… it’s good. It’s very good. They’re excellent soldiers. None better. And it’s better than nothing, only…’

‘You’d hoped for more…’

‘Yes. Twice that number.’

‘They’re battle-hardened, experienced men,’ Li Chao Ch’in went on, ‘and that experience will count when confronting forces who have no experience of open warfare.’

‘Maybe. Only will it be enough?’

Li Chao Ch’in shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Only time will tell. But there is one thing in our favour. Tsao Ch’un could not have expected them to muster quite so quickly. The speed with which they’ve done so will certainly have taken him by surprise. From what our spies have learned, his own forces have been unaccountably slow in their preparations. And that might prove decisive.’

‘In the short term, maybe,’ Wang Hui So said, ‘but the war’s still his to lose, not ours to win.’

There was a momentary silence. No one challenged Wang Hui So’s statement. Each of them knew they were walking a fine line. Wang spoke again. ‘But come now, cousins. Let’s not despair. Let’s see what
Shih
Shepherd has to say for himself.’

They went through, into the Strategy Room. Shepherd was waiting for them there. Seeing them, his handsome features creased into a smile.

Amos Shepherd, like his long-time Master, Tsao Ch’un, was in his seventies now. But he was well preserved for his age, his face and arms tanned from the sun, his green eyes bright with intelligence.

‘My Lords…’

The greetings over, they sat, looking up at the great map, conscious of the historic context of the place.

Much of the logistics of the North American campaign had been worked out in this room. All of the ‘follow-up stuff’ as Shepherd called it. The fine detail. The big decisions, of course, had been made by Shepherd and Marshal Jiang in a hotel room in Richmond, over a
wei ch’i
board. But this chamber had played its part. As now it would again.

‘Okay,’ Shepherd said, addressing them directly. ‘We’ve little time, so
might I suggest this… with ninety thousand men at our immediate disposal, it makes no sense to use them as a single force. What I’m suggesting is that we split the Northern Banners into smaller units of two thousand men – much like the assault force that went in to New York earlier. That’d give us forty-five tiny armies, fifteen to a Banner, that can be flown in to hot spots, and that can be used to turn the tide against Tsao Ch’un.’

Li Chao Ch’in looked about him. His fellow T’ang clearly liked the idea.

‘Moreover,’ Shepherd went on, taking their smiles for agreement, ‘we move them out of Bremen as swiftly as we can. And ourselves. The more we concentrate our forces here, the more likely we are to become a target. It would not surprise me if Tsao Ch’un decided to try a nuclear strike against us. So let’s not be here for that. Let’s spread ourselves a little wider, a little thinner, and make it difficult for Tsao Ch’un to pick us off.’

Wang Hui So spoke up. ‘And the disposal of the troops… who decides on that?’

‘I thought we’d leave that to the individual marshals. We can provide guidance, of course, and identify priorities. But it’s important, I feel, that they be given the power to fight this war the best way that they can, unhampered, without one hand tied behind their backs all the while. Tsao Ch’un believes he has an advantage over us in that regard. The fact that there’s but one of him and several of you. He thinks that’ll make it easier for him – that his decisions will be faster, more responsive to the situation, whereas, if we do this, it’ll give the advantage to us. His sons against our marshals… I know who I’d back to win…’

‘If our forces were even…’ Tsu Chen said. ‘But two thousand men…?’

‘Trust me,’ Shepherd said, looking from one to the other. ‘Sometimes sheer weight of numbers can prove a handicap. Just think. There’s the problem of feeding all those mouths, of finding transport to move them swiftly from one point to another. The larger the force the bigger the problems, whereas our much smaller forces won’t have any of that. We can drop them in and pull them out again. Use them precisely where they’re needed. And no need to worry about lines of supply.’

‘I like that,’ Li Chao Ch’in said. ‘It seems…’

‘An elegant solution,’ Wang Hui So finished for him.

There was sudden laughter. The laughter of relief, at the thought that this might yet work. That they might, after all, survive the day.

‘So what do you need?’ Tsu Chen asked. ‘You want us to sign a document, empowering the marshals?’

‘Not at all,’ Shepherd said, getting to his feet. ‘Just your word of agreement.’

Li Chao Ch’in looked about him, then back at Shepherd again. ‘You have it. But you said about us moving away from here…’

There was a sudden hammering at the door. Shepherd walked across and threw it open. One of the Ministry’s agents stood there, head bowed, what looked like a small parcel in one hand. There was a whispered exchange between the two, then Shepherd came back across to them. He had the parcel.

He held it out to Li Chao Ch’in.

‘It is for you, Lord Li. From your “Master”, Tsao Ch’un. Our agents have checked it for poisons and explosives.’

Li Chao Ch’in reached across and took the parcel from Shepherd. He looked inside.’What is it?’

Shepherd looked down. ‘A tape. From Tongjiang…’

Li Chao Ch’in’s face changed. All colour blanched from it. And the parcel… he held it away from him now, as if he held some dead thing.

‘Do you want to be alone?’ Tsu Chen asked gently.

Li Chao Ch’in hesitated, then, in a small, quiet voice. ‘No… we’d best all see this. I…’

He groaned, closing his eyes, knowing what he was about to see. His worst fears made real.

Wang Hui So reached across, put his hand over his cousin’s. But he said nothing, for there was nothing to be said.

Li Chao Ch’in thrust the parcel towards Shepherd again. ‘Put it on…’

‘Are you sure?’

The T’ang met Shepherd’s eyes. There was anger in them as well as hurt. Uncertainty too. Maybe Tsao Ch’un had spared his family…

Only the tape showed otherwise. Tongjiang was burning, and there, in the gardens where he had stood but half a day ago, lay three of his sons: dead, their eyes sightless, their naked bodies smeared with blood.

Seeing that, Li Chao Ch’in made a strange, half-choking noise. ‘
Kuan Yin
preserve us all…’

But worse was to come. Panning away from that awful sight, the camera showed another – showed his wife, baby daughters, and Li Peng, being led
in chains, up into the back of an unmarked cruiser.

And there, just in the background, visible for a moment beyond his family, was the First Dragon, Shen Fu: his wrists and ankles bound, being carried on a stake, up into another of Tsao Ch’un’s craft.

Li Chao Ch’in groaned again.

The camera jerked round, reacting to the sound of shots. There, near one of the doors at the back of the east wing, soldiers were waiting, guns raised, picking off whoever emerged. Laughing as they shot the poor devils who staggered out, their hair and clothes on fire.

Li Chao Ch’in buried his face in his hands. He could bear to see no more.

‘Enough!’ Shepherd called, his face, usually so hard, touched by Li Chao Ch’in’s suffering.

The tape stopped.

‘
Aiya
,’ Wang Hui So said softly, staring at his cousin who sat there now, sobbing in the sudden silence of the room.

But there was nothing to be said.

In the seventh subterranean level of the Black Tower, in a cellar which had been adapted for the task, lay the chamber. There, naked on the slab in the centre of that white-tiled room, lay Shen Fu, his hands and feet bound tight. Taut wires attached him to the brightly polished electrodes that gleamed in the scouring white light from overhead.

Tsao Ch’un had stripped off. All he wore was his butcher’s apron. In the heated iron brazier close by were the implements, ready for his use.

He had promised himself this, from the moment when he’d heard that Shen Fu had sided with the Seven. The First Dragon deserved to die. Only he, Tsao Ch’un, had no intention of letting him die. He was interested only in giving him pain, endless pain.

Right now Shen Fu lay there, as if at his ease, his chest rising and falling slowly, his eyes closed. He seemed almost relaxed. But that would change. And as for closing his eyes…

Tsao Chun reached out for the heated clippers and smiled.

He’d be fucked if the bastard was allowed to close his eyes.

*

Wolfgang Ebert stood by the board, looking on as his team of hackers responded to the latest assault.

They were trying to shut Bremen down, to infiltrate its computer systems and switch the whole thing off. Only his men were preventing that; tracking each new attack and deflecting it. For the last three hours they had tried, just as Shepherd had said they would, and now their attempts were getting more and more desperate. What had begun as a kind of dance, a trial of intelligence and agility, had turned into smash and grab raids.

Ebert smiled. They could try smashing and grabbing as much as they liked, only it was a stalemate. And the longer it went on…

Something on one of the screens caught his attention.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing to it.

‘What do you…?’ his man began, then let the query drop. ‘Shit…’

Pixel by pixel, it seemed, the screen was turning black. Like an old mirror, flecked with black spots, the darkness on the end screen slowly grew.

Ebert looked along the line. Every screen was now affected.

‘What can you do?’ he asked, looking to the team leader.

The young man shrugged. ‘If we had any idea what it was… it’s not a virus…’

The end screen was completely black now, while the others…

Everything blinked, like there’d been a power surge. A moment later there was a fanfare, a faint, tinny little tune, like you’d get from a child’s computer game when you’d made another level. One second later the whole damn place switched off.

In the sudden dark, voices yelled and people knocked against each other in the room. If they’d shut the big circulation fans down then they were all in trouble. Without air they couldn’t breath. Not for long, anyway.

Ebert touched out a code on the communicator inset into his wrist. A moment later a voice sounded in his head.

‘Wolfgang? What’s happened? The whole fucking lot’s closed down!’

‘I know. And I can’t explain it. One moment things were fine, the next…’

‘Are none of your machines working?’

‘Not one. Something closed them all down…’ Wolfgang paused. He had an idea. ‘Amos… can you get hold of Alison? She had a team working on this kind of thing and—’

‘Alison’s dead.’

‘
What!
’ The news shocked him. But Amos didn’t go into detail.

‘Get out of there at once,’ Shepherd said. ‘We’re giving Bremen up. The troops are out and the T’ang are elsewhere, and as for the new First Dragon…’