Jade Dragon (2 page)

Distantly, Frankie Lam heard a soft chime and the ends of his seatbelt
snaked across his waist, their steel heads meeting with a decisive
click, locking him in place.

“There was this time,” began Lau Feng, fingering the unkempt stubble on
his chin, “I think we were near Guilin, when this girl came up to us on
the path.”

“Mmm.” Ko gave one of those nothing replies, just a noise at the front
of his lips to indicate that he was hearing Feng without actually
listening to him. The youth squatted in the lee of the concrete
stanchion and threw a quick left-right glance about the underground car
park. He knew the security drone sweep patterns better than the guys on
the monitor desk.

“She had the nicest eyes. Green. Or something.” Feng’s hand drummed on
the breastplate of his armour, and wandered like a bored spider down
past his belly and across the threadbare strips of boiled leather that
made up his battle skirt. “Anyway, she wanted to come with us. She’d
stolen her father’s sword. Very emotional about it all.”

Ko peered closely at the sensor plate on the car locking mechanism. It
was a retrofit, reasonable quality European manufacture, probably a
Moulinex or a Krupp. He reached for the bright pink disposable cellphone
that he’d picked from the pocket of a small boy in the departure
terminal and levered off the back with his balisong knife. “You’ve told
me this story before,” complained Ko, although not with any real
strength behind it.

“So the captain, he laughs at her, because she was just a girl. And she
took his head off with the blade. Just like that.” Feng mimed the motion
across his neck. “Like that,” he repeated. His stray hand settled on the
hilt of the lionhead sword at his hip. “I admired her for it, you know?
But in the end we had to hurt her to get the weapon away. ”

Ko actually bothered to give him a look. “Will you shut up? Can’t you
see that I’m trying to concentrate?” To punctuate his statement, Ko
tugged on the front of his jacket and pulled the kevleather tight. He
had the guts of the cellphone in one hand, the microtransmitter inside
it making distressed squawking sounds as it fired off spasms of misfired
signals. Lights blinked on the lock once or twice, which meant Ko was
close to getting the door to open.

Feng sniffed and cocked his head. “Soldiers are coming. You won’t get
that done in time.”

“Liar.” Ko glanced at the cellphone. It was overloading, getting hot in
his hand. Trying to crack a microwave lock like this was always a roll
of the dice; sometimes the phones would blanket the locks with enough
conflicting signals that they’d run home to mama, snap back to their
default settings and pop open; other times it would fry them solid. Ko
was sanguine, though. It wasn’t as if the G-Mek Vista GL he was crouched
by was his, after all.

“Bet you a smoke,” said Feng.

“Stop distracting—” Ko’s retort was cut short as something came alive
inside the sports car. The vehicle’s lights snapped on all at once, full
beam and glaring. From a speaker in the grille a synthetic voice barked
at him. “Attention! This vehicle is undergoing a theft! Alert! Alert!
Contact authorities immediately!”

Ko swore under his breath; suddenly Feng was nowhere to be seen and sure
enough, there were two men in APRC fatigues jogging across the car park
toward him.

“Phase two alert!” shouted the Vista GL. “Lethal deterrent charging!
This is your legal warning!”

The youth turned and ran as the electro-zappers on the bodywork whined
up to full capacity. He’d picked this part of the car park because it
was close to the maintenance access wells. Ko forced his way through the
gap between two chained gates and sprinted up three flights of concrete
stairs. He forced himself to a slow, casual walk as he emerged into the
evening, around the blunt concrete architecture of the airport’s vast
parking field. Faintly, he heard the deep buzz-crackle of the stunner
going off below.

Feng sat cross-legged on a wall. “I warned you.”

“Shut up, dead man.”

The swordsman hopped down and trailed after him. Ko paused to throw the
ruined cellphone in a waste drum, and Feng pointed at the vending
machine next to it. “You owe me a smoke.”

“Fine.” Ko slammed his debit card into the machine’s slot and the vendor
disgorged a packet of Peacefuls cigarettes. Feng licked his lips as the
youth removed the plastic wrapper and carefully set the packet on fire
with a disposable lighter. The box combusted quickly and Ko let it drop
to the ground. Feng stooped to follow it, watching it crumble into a
mound of grey ash.

The machine had a mirrorscreen facia, and despite the gang tag scrawls
across its surface, Ko could still get a good look at himself. The
screen showed him on a tropical beach, cartoon cans in white and blue
dancing about him with wild abandon. “Enjoy the Great Taste of Lan Ri!”
said the screen. “The Flavour is Now!” Ko used the screen to check
himself over; his face was a little flushed with effort, but his spikey
black hair-do was still intact and the hachimaki band across his
forehead hadn’t slipped. He flicked minuscule dots of dust from his
jacket and straightened it a little.

“You preen too much. Like a dandy.” Feng had a cigarette in his hand now
and he took a drag on it in the way a starving man would eat a meal.

Ko gave the pile of ashes a desultory kick; an identical and intact
packet of Peacefuls went into the drawstring pouch hanging on Feng’s
belt. “Those things will kill you.”

The joke was old, but it still raised a smirk from both of them. “The
only vice I can have,” said the soldier. “If you can find me another
one…”

Ko nodded at the gathering of cars and bikes in the middle of the open
concrete plaza. “Come on. Perhaps my luck will change.”

Passport control consisted of a walk through a deep penetration scanner
tunnel and an impressively large security automaton modelled on Kuan Ti,
the God of War. The machine licked the thick black ident card in his
hand with a thread-thin green laser, and took a moment to examine his
HIV Negative warrant before intoning a welcome in elaborate Mandarin.
Frankie walked through the lounge without stopping; the urge to get free
of the identical spaces inside the plane and the airports propelled him
into the arrivals area. He slowed, crossing the marble floors, looking
up to take in the arching steel framework of the terminal’s roof.

“Hello, Francis.” The voice was soft and melodic.

“Uh. Hello.” A thin Japanese woman extended a hand to him and he took
it. She had warm skin, dry and soft. At her shoulders were two very
different figures. The first, a younger man, pinched and a little
bored-looking. This one took his bags without comment and resumed
walking. The other was tall, broad about the chest and he moved in the
way that only trained men did. Frankie knew the type instantly;
corporate security. All three of them wore suits of a similar cut, the
discreet YLHI pennant there on their lapel like his, but Frankie had to
wrench his gaze away from the security agent with an almost physical
effort. The tall man’s face was concealed beneath a porcelain opera mask
of the Monkey King, a swirl of black, yellow and white.

“My name is Alice,” said the woman, “Mr Tze sends his apologies that he
could not attend to greet you in person. I’m sure you understand.”

Frankie nodded. She was very pale, he noticed, her skin the colour of
milk.

“I would also like to extend to you my personal sympathies on the matter
of Alan’s passing.” She gave a little sigh. “I was honoured to work with
him.”

A confusion of questions forced their way to the front of Frankie’s mind
as he understood in that moment how little he knew about Alan’s life,
but they defied any attempt to articulate them. In the end he managed a
clumsy “Thank you.”

“Transport has been arranged,” said Alice. “This way.”

Some quirk of legalese meant the car park outside Chek Lap Kok
SkyHarbour was still classed as a public area, and so as long as they
did nothing too reckless, there was little the greenjackets of the APRC
could do with the go-ganger crews and wayward teens but move them on or
throw in the occasional rousting when they got too rowdy. Ko privately
believed that the soldiers from the mainland liked the corporates as
little as he and his street racer friends did, and that they let the
gangers hang out here just because it pissed off the suits. As long as
they kept the level of fatalities down to an acceptable level, they
would be allowed to loiter.

Ko drew closer to the gathering and his heart sank. On his face the
emotion showed up as a tight curl at the corner of his mouth. There was
the metallic green Kondobishi Kaze he hated, with its ostentatious gold
rims and that dumbass hemi blower poking through the bonnet like a
little beehive.

“Makes a change for you to see it from the front, eh Chen? Bet you
forgot what it looks like, you see the tailgate so much!” A ripple of
brusque laughter followed the insult out toward him.

He returned Second Lei a level, icy stare—the same kind that Hazzard Wu
gave the Master of Glocks at the climax of
Gunfighter Orphanage’s
final reel. “I let you win, Second, because you cry like a girl when you
lose.” Ko held his hand waist-high. “Like a
little
girl.”

Lei’s crude sneer froze on his face, the humour fading like vapour.
“Watch your mouth, punk. You’re asphalt to me, understand? I wouldn’t
even race you for pinks.”

Ko resisted the urge to say what he really thought—that Second was a
braggart and a fool, who only kept his green monster on the road because
he funded it with cash skimmed from back-alley drug pushing that even
the triads wouldn’t touch. Instead he just looked away. Sometimes it was
easier to let the fool have his way than start a fresh fight every time
they crossed paths. Give the baby the teat.

But Lei had other ideas. “You know who this is?” He put the question to
the assembled gangers, who quieted, sensing violence brewing. “This is
Chen Watt Ko, spooky Chen, no-hope loser with his imaginary friend!”
Second advanced toward him. “Where’s your pal, Ko? Is he here?” Lei cast
around, made a show of looking high and low. He pantomimed a shiver.
“Whoo-hoo-hoo! Ko sees dead people!”

“Tell him I said he has a face like a baboon’s ass-crack.” Feng was
there on the hood of the green car. He stubbed out one Peaceful on the
windscreen and lit another.

Second looked right through the swordsman. “No? Not here? What a shame.”
He stepped up and prodded Ko in the chest. “You’ve been a freak since we
were kids, Chen. I only keep you around for laughs.” Second snapped his
fingers and the nondescript dolly with him handed over a pop-pack of
clear capsules. He took a couple and tossed them into his open mouth
like candy drops. Ko’s antipathy showed; drug-takers disgusted him.

“Zen, zen…” sang the girl. “I’m the quiet mind inside, pretty
voice…”

“I see your grandmother…” Ko began, and Second wheeled around to face
him, his eyes alight with sudden fury. “Your grandmother is very
disappointed in you. She says you’re too fat and you lay with unclean
women.”

Second’s fist was cocked and in that second Ko thought the other man
would knock him to the ground—he was bigger and it would have hurt a
lot—but at the last moment he spat and pushed Ko away. “You’re so smart,
Chen, how about you walk home tonight, huh?” Lei snapped out an order
and no one argued. “Nobody gives Ko a lift, understand? He don’t deserve
to roll with us!”

“I got a car.” The lie came from nowhere.

“Oh?” Second faced him again. “Your sister has that crackerbox Ranger of
yours, I saw it down in Central! Where are these new wheels, then?”

A glimmer of movement caught Ko’s eye. A formation of three gunmetal
Mercedes Vectors were pulling into the corporate waiting area near the
airport terminal. “There it is,” he replied. “I’ll just go get it.”

Second mumbled something under his breath about “idiot” but Ko was
already walking away.

Feng jogged after him. “What are you going to do, boy?”

“A daring and stupid thing.”

Frankie watched Alice’s man jog away with his carry-on in his hand,
toward the stand of silver cars waiting on the slip road outside the
terminal. She gave him a small, controlled smile. “If you prefer to
drive yourself in the city, I can have my department arrange something
suitable for you. For the moment, though, I would recommend you opt for
a pool car and driver. Hong Kong has changed a lot since you left.”

“It, uh, always does.” He glanced at the masked man again.

“Mr Tze takes the security of his personnel most seriously,” said the
woman, answering the question before he spoke it.

Frankie frowned. The night air was cloying and strange somehow.

“Is something amiss?” asked the woman.

“It’s nothing,” he replied after a moment. “Just… I was born here. But
now… Now I’m home and it feels…
Foreign?
”

“The thing about the Euros is,” began Ko, “they got what you call an
‘engineer mindset’.”

The man came up from the back seat with a start, dropping Frankie’s bag
and slamming the door. Where the hell had this punk come from? “This is
a restricted area—”

Ko was still speaking. “See, they look at fine ride like this and can’t
think past the test track and the wheel lab. They forget that cars drive
on the Street.” He pointed at the dashboard. “And the Street’s got a
manner of finding its way around things.”

“You can’t be here,” said the driver, shooting a quick glance to where
his passengers were waiting. “I’m calling security—”

“You know about the design fault, though, huh? Otherwise you wouldn’t be
driving one of them, right?” Ko pointed again. “One in every six…
That’s a pretty serious risk, neh?”