Jade Dragon (22 page)

At the altar there were constructs of gold and painted plaster; saviour
and cross, seraphs and saints. They appeared stern and unforgiving, and
Juno kept her head down, the bill of her cap pointed at the floor.

Someone nearby took a breath. “It’s traditional to take your hat off
inside the House of God. ”There was gentle admonishment in the voice.

Juno looked up to see an old priest. He had a pleasant face with
concerned eyes that peered from a dark cassock. “Would you mind if I
didn’t?”

The priest smiled. “I’m sure we can let it go this once.”

“Can… Can I sit? I’m not…” Her words trailed off. This was all new
to her.

He found a place on one of the pews and gestured around. “It’s a slow
day. We have plenty of room.”

She sat on the bench behind him, perched on the edge in case she felt
the sudden urge to escape. “Thanks.”

“First time?” he asked, and got a nod in reply. “Well, we never close.”
The priest patted the wood. “We’re always here.” He offered her his
hand. “I’m Father Woo.”

There was the sound of fluttering and she looked up. Birds moved in the
rafters, caught by shafts of light through the stained glass windows.

“Doves,” explained the priest with a wan smile. “They roost up there,
despite my best attempts to entice them to leave. We have an
understanding now. They behave themselves and I don’t chase them with
brooms.”

Juno found herself warming to the old man. He was the last thing she
expected to find in a city as ruthless and as rapid as this one. “Is it
always this quiet?”

Woo sighed. “We’ve never been the busiest of branch offices, if you take
my meaning. These days… many people are finding other idols to give
their love to.”

She swallowed hard at his choice of words. “It’s peaceful.”

He nodded and steepled his fingers. “How can we help you, child?”

“Why do you think I need help?”

Another smile. “I’ve been doing this job a long time, my dear. I’ve
developed an eye for my visitors.”

“I have dreams,” she began haltingly, “bad dreams, about death and
destruction. I see terrible things.”

“Dreams can’t hurt you,” said the priest, “a nightmare is just your mind
ridding itself of waste.”

“This is different,”she insisted. “These visions… I think I see the
future, sometimes the past. But there are memories of things that seem
out of place, like they belong to someone else.” Juno took his hand, her
eyes glistening. “Father, I think something terrible is going to happen
to me, to all of us. I’ve seen it.”

The priest said nothing for a moment, surprised by her words. “We can’t
grasp the future, child. That’s not for us to know. All we can do is
look to what is right, to try and do the proper thing when the choice is
laid out in front of us.” He squeezed Juno’s hand. “Life is about
choice. That’s the gift God gives us. It’s how we use that choice that
makes the world a better place.”

“Or a darker one,” she added.

“Yes,” he said sadly. “But if you do what is right, and trust in God,
your soul will be saved.”

A gasp escaped Juno. She felt hollow inside. “But, Father… What if I
don’t have one?”

The priest blinked. “Juno, everyone has a soul—”

She bolted up from the pew, clattering against the old wood. “You know
who I am?”

“Of course I do. I’m not blind, child, I have a television. Your face is
on billboards everywhere.” He frowned. “That doesn’t mean we can’t
talk—”

“I have to go.” Juno scrambled away down the aisle. Above her, the birds
left their roosts, disturbed by the sudden commotion.

The old man was still calling her name when she crashed on to the street
and wheeled into the roar of the living city.

It was evening when Ko awoke. The watery day had given way to a drowsy
sunset, pregnant with humidity. “Typhoon weather,” his sister always
called it, glaring out of the window of the apartment and fanning
herself furiously, as if that would lessen the chances of a tropical
storm.

He frowned as he thought of Nikita and rooted through his clothes. The
Sifu had got one of the younger pupils to wash his gear and hang it up
in the corner of the meditation cell where they’d put him. The poultice
of herbal remedies and treated bandages across his chest was moist and
tight, but the pain from the wound was far less than it had been before.
Quietly, so as not to draw any attention, he searched until he found the
corporate cellphone. Despite the damage he’d done to it, the thing was
still working, and—he hoped—the sat-locator circuits inside were still
dead to the world. As he flipped it open, he heard a rough chug of
laughter from out in the courtyard, and Ko leaned close to the window to
take a peek. On the stone steps, his erstwhile rescuer was chatting
amiably with his teacher, the two men grinning like they were old
friends.

Ko watched Fixx. The way the guy had moved out there at the docks, and
the hardware he was packing… He had to be a sanctioned operative, no
question about it. But ops were rarer than virgins in this part of the
world. The mere fact that Fixx was here in Hong Kong and that for some
reason he’d chosen Ko to save from certain death was unnerving.

On the drive to Mongkok, he’d questioned the man. At first Ko thought
Fixx was someone that the corp guy had recruited to get him away from
the triads, but the op showed genuine confusion when Ko mentioned it. He
insisted that somebody called “Papa Leg-bar” had sent him, and Ko had no
clue who the hell that was.

But Fixx seemed to know things. Not like names or exact details, but he
gave Ko a cool-eyed stare and told the youth that he knew he was looking
for revenge, that he was in search of reparation for his blood. And
however you sliced it, Fixx had saved his life out there. Ko wasn’t sure
if that should make him pleased, or more wary.

He dialled Gau’s number; just before they stashed the Korvette, Ko had
forwarded a file he found in the phone’s memory. Mister Wageslave had
transmitted a copy of a police record about a hit-and-run in Mongkok
during their phone conversation.

Gau answered on the second ring. “This is gonna cost you,” he said
without preamble. “If Second knew I was talking to you—”

“Fuck him,” growled Ko. “You owe me, Gau. Remember Shek-O?” There had
been a gang rumble on the beach at Shek-O a year earlier, when a Sabre
Girl left Gau concussed. Ko had stopped him drowning in the surf and got
him home alive. “What you got?”

There was a sigh. “I looked at the pix. I asked around. Spoke to my
cousin.”

Ko nodded. Gau’s relative broke heads for the Wo Shing Wo, who ran most
of the action in the Mongkok area.

“This guy who was clipped? It wasn’t a mistake like the cops say it is.
Cousin says, it was ordered. Bought and paid for. The lie was so the
corps didn’t lose face.”

“Who paid for it?”

Gau hesitated. “Listen, Ko. Once I tell you this, once I hang up, we’re
done. Your name is poison, man. Second wants to cut you up, and anyone
you hang with.”

“Gimme the name!” snapped Ko. “That’s all I want!”

“Cousin says she was some fat little bitch, big shot music corp or
something. The boss called her Miss High.”

Feng watched from the shadows, glowering at him.

teh jade DRAGON gonna rule HK

enda the world

Graffiti seen in Lok Fu Metro Station.

The Korvette grumbled along Nathan Road in the stop-start evening
traffic, a black shark drifting between the slab-sided hulks of
double-decker buses. The street was lit with gaudy neon and blinking
holos, dancing over their heads. Ko caught a glimpse of a flickering
dragon in brilliant green, but it was gone before he could focus on it.

In the driving seat, Fixx glanced at the dashboard navscreen. “Couple
more blocks.” He looked up at the youth. “Still time to change your
mind.”

Ko’s eyes flicked to a passing street corner. Feng stood out there, arms
folded, shaking his head. “Just drop me off outside,” he insisted,
turning back. “I’ll handle it.”

Fixx made an amused noise. “I don’t think I’ll be doin’ that.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Didn’t seem that way at the docks,” said the op. “Or perhaps I was just
readin’ the situation wrongly.”

Ko’s lip twisted. “Look, this isn’t one of those things where you save a
guy’s life and then it belongs to you. That’s the Apache who do that,
not the Chinese.”

“The old guy, the Sifu. He asked me to keep an eye on you for him. Says
you’re reckless, impulsive-like. Could get you into trouble.”

Ko looked away and smoothed down the jacket he was wearing. The clothes
were nondescript and traditional in cut, and they reminded him of a
school uniform; but that was all they had to spare in the dojo, and
there was no way he’d get into The Han in his go-ganger colours.
“There’s only one ticket on the door, and it’s in my name.”

Fixx smiled. “You let me worry about that.”

The thief blew out a breath. “Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate what you
did for me, but the Good Samaritan thing, it’s getting a little old now.
Why don’t you just go on about your business and let me deal with mine?”

The sanctioned operative’s eyes flicked to him over the rim of the
espex. “Maybe you
are
my business, kid.”

He slapped his hands on the dash in exasperation. “Why? What the hell do
you want with me, Fixx?”

One hand left the steering wheel and dipped into a jacket pocket. It
returned with the tarot card, the Knight of Wands. Fixx held it up.

“That’s it?” Ko snorted. ’“Cos of some stupid card trick you suddenly
gotta stick to me like glue?” He tried to snatch the card from the op’s
fingers, but Fixx did a magician’s flourish and made it disappear.
“That’s jagged, man! You think your freaky-ass cards and your pocket
full of chicken bones makes you some kinda wizard?”

“Houngan,” corrected Fixx, but Ko wasn’t listening.

“Whatever you think you know about me—”

“Ain’t about you,” the other man said. "Nor me neither. It’s about the
way things come together. We got parts to play.

Ko’s face flushed with annoyance. “Who told you that, huh? Some voodoo
hoodoo? Some—”

“Ghost?” Feng was there in the back seat. Ko could smell the dry scent
of his leather armour.

Fixx saw the fractional glimpse he gave the rear-view mirror and looked
as well, eyes narrowing. He sniffed.

Ko was still talking, the words spilling out of him. “Maybe you don’t
see nothing, huh, did you ever think that? Maybe people are right when
they call you spooky and weird, maybe the phantoms are all in your head
and you’re just too looped to know it…” He trailed off, silenced by
his own words.

Fixx gave him a quizzical look. “You all right, kid?” The navscreen
chimed.“ We’re here.”

Ko’s face darkened, and taking care not to let his eye line cross the
back seat again, he popped the latch as the vehicle halted at the kerb.
“One thing,” said the youth, “if you’re coming with me.”

“Yeah?”

“Quit calling me ‘kid’.”

Fixx tabbed the autodrive control and set the Korvette to take itself
somewhere secluded. “Whatever you say, slick.”

The deal, such as it was, came together in a flurry of text messages,
back and forth in the dimness of the meditation cell. The wageslave was
waiting for Ko’s call, and he could taste the man’s anxiety even through
the strings of letters and numbers. There would need to be money, real
yuan cash and not some fairy gold eDollars that would vanish from the
account the moment the transaction was done. The corp made promises, and
the thief turned the screws on him.

Not just cash, wageslave. More than that.

This chance would never come again, Ko was sure of it. He made the man
secure stratojet transfers, nameless and no-questions-asked tickets that
would get Ko and Nikita out of Hong Kong and to any major city in the
world. The thief thought about the Zarathustra Clinic, the glossy
brochure of the clean white buildings in Zurich and Aspen.

Ko laughed off the corps attempts to get him to meet on Hong Kong
Island. Nah. That was the corporate heartland over that side of the bay.
Ko wanted the meet to go down on his turf, Kowloon side, the domain of
the Street. He thought about how Hazzard Wu had dealt with a similar
situation in
Cat Street Killer,
the last reel was the nightclub duel.
Yeah…

They’d meet at The Han. The place was high profile and exclusive,
catering to top echelon corps, media types and the richest members of
Hong Kong’s criminal dominions. You had to have an AmEx Plasma card just
to get in, so he’d heard. Wageslave could make that happen, he promised.
Ko’s name would be on the guest list. Of course, he hadn’t reckoned on
needing a “plus one”.

Feng still did not speak to him, silent since the incident at the docks,
and he seemed to be there less and less. Ko had lost the last few
Peacefuls in his pockets to the waters in the bay, and couldn’t even
give the swordsman the smallest of offerings by way of apology. The
warrior retreated to the shadows and faded.

Fixx and the Sifu caught him trying to sneak out. He heard them talking
in riddles, something about “black skies over the peak”, the old man’s
voice tight with anger as he spoke of “monsters on the streets” and
“poisoned blood”.

He told them, after a fashion, how it was going to go down.

“Smells like a trap,” Fixx noted. “More at stake than you know.”

But Ko didn’t care. He wanted out, him and Nikita gone. The city, his
life, everything he knew had turned on him, piece by piece.

“I’m done here,” he told them, and he meant it.

Any other nightclub, and the red carpet outside would have been crammed
with paparazzi and camera drones; but the management at The Han had a
discreet flicker-field screen extending out to the street. It formed a
tube of runny air, appearing like smoke hazing through glass, fogging
the image of anyone who passed inside. Coupled with an EM frequency
jammer, discretion was assured.