The Machine (An Ethan Stone Thriller) (30 page)

‘What is the Machine, Oyang?’

Oyang’s face was blank and resigned.  He wasn’t listening.  Just shaking his head.

‘The Machine, Oyang?  Don’t you want to know what’s going on there?  What Semyonov was doing there?’

‘How should I know?  Semyonov told me nothing but stories.  Anyway, it’s over.  I know what the
Gong An
sent to NotFutile.com, Stone.  They told you that I had to stop taking from the Machine, or it would destroy me in the same way it destroyed Semyonov.  Isn’t that true?’  

He was a clever guy, Oyang.  But right now he was gibbering, confused.  ‘I think maybe the Machine is just a story, Stone, just a kind of a legend Semyonov made up to confuse me about what he was doing.’

‘You don’t really think that.’

‘Why shouldn’t I?  I don’t know whether the Machine exists or not, and neither do you.  But I can see what comes out of it.  For over a year, the Machine gave and gave and gave.  Maybe it did the same with Lin Biao in 1969.  Now Lin Biao is dead, and Steven Semyonov came to China for it, and he is dead too.   Now they’re after me.  How much more of a warning do you need?’

‘You’re saying the Machine gave and gave,’ said Stone.  ‘What did it give you?’

‘Power, money.  You know what it gave me, Stone,’ said Oyang.  ‘You’ve seen it.  Do you think technology like that came from nowhere?  That it grew like bean sprouts out in Sichuan?  Be serious.  Anyway, I don’t care anymore.  Sometimes I think that Steven was using all those visits to Sichuan as a smokescreen.  That there is no Machine, that everything came from his imagination.  Nothing has come from the Machine since he died.’ 

Oyang was a bright fellow, and he’d worked with Semyonov closely.  He said he didn’t care, but he cared more than anyone.  Like half the world, he had been in awe of Semyonov.  Semyonov’s intelligence engendered a kind of dumb hero worship.  Admiration without understanding.  An intellectual crush.  Stone had seen it at that party in Hong Kong – both women and men with that dreamy look in their eyes.  Like dogs looking up at their master. 

Oyang, because he was closer to Semyonov, had had it worse than most.  To Oyang, Semyonov was still the untouchable white Buddha.  Unknowable.

Now, however, with Semyonov gone, Oyang was lost.  His power had gone, and with it his nerve.  He was terrified the
Gong An
would kill him, and Stone’s bogus post on NotFutile.com had sent him into a tailspin.  Which meant Stone had been right, at least partially.  Maybe Oyang was telling the truth when he said that Semyonov’s money had not been transferred to Switzerland.  But Stone would bet that plenty of other money had found its way into Oyang’s private accounts in Lausanne.  No wonder Oyang was paranoid.

‘Oyang,’ said Stone, taking a calm tone again.  ‘Can I ask you a question?’

Oyang said nothing.

‘Have you been a naughty boy?  Have you been ripping off all those ideas and technology, wherever they’re coming from?  Have you just been taking the ideas, from the Machine or ShinComm or wherever, and selling them?  Making some fast money?’

Oh dear.  That one hit a nerve.  Oyang stood bolt upright, energized for the first time. ‘Get out of my room before I call security.  My man is armed, you know.’

‘Get a grip Oyang,’ said Stone.  ‘It was always going to come out.  Some stuff has been patented, some not.  Nanotech processes used for crude drug smuggling, beautiful technology diverted to grubby weapons sales.  You’ve been creaming millions off from Semyonov’s technology, haven’t you, Oyang?  And sending the money to Switzerland.  Now Semyonov is dead, and it’s all starting to unravel on you.’ 

Stone watched Oyang, sitting on the edge of the white fur sofa, twirling the chess pieces in his fingers.  Stone was right.  Which meant Oyang was a dead man walking.  And Stone’s post on NotFutile.com, which had been as near to the truth as he’d hoped, had made it all a hundred times worse for Oyang.  No wonder Oyang was falling apart.

‘They’ll kill you, Oyang.  Like they killed Semyonov.  Whatever Semyonov did, he managed to get on the wrong side of the Chinese and the Americans at the same time.  So he fled from the US, but still got nailed in China.  Quite an achievement, I’d say.  Semyonov was hot property, Oyang.  Toxic.  And you’re shaping up to be even worse.’  Stone went to sit beside Oyang on the sofa.  Oyang was rubbing his hands, picking at the nails.  ‘Go now, Oyang.  Go to your wife in Switzerland, live a quiet life.  It’s your only chance.’

‘How can I?’ said Oyang.  ‘It’s an admission of guilt.  If I went to the airport it would be obvious and they could shoot me down.’

‘Oyang.  THEY’LL FUCKING KILL YOU.  Stop all this crap go.  You’re in deep, and you know it.  I don’t believe in the death penalty, and that’s what’s coming your way if you don’t do something.’

Stone shut the door, leaving Oyang sat on the white fur sofa, looking at the chessboard.  He walked down the softly lit corridor.  It was like a dreamy Aladdin’s cave - and somehow fitting.  It fitted perfectly with the Disneyland going on in Oyang’s mind.  Oyang had lost it well before now.  Back in Shanghai he’d given Stone the information about the Machine, even showed him Semyonov’s robot manufacturing plant – but then lost his nerve and tried to have Stone killed the day after.  He’d probably been talking to Terashima after her question in San Jose, trying to find out how much she knew.  All the while knowing she was at risk of being killed.  He was highly intelligent, Oyang, making money on a massive scale.  He had planned an epic financial swindle to make money out of Semyonov.  Yet his nerve failed him all the time.  He was completely lacking in physical courage – and now he was scared even to leave his hotel room.

Stone was also aware that Oyang was in far more danger in that Polo club than he would be in Shanghai.  For Zhang and his
Gong An
henchmen, that Polo Club was the perfect place to kill him.  Far better than arrest, or assassination.  Throwing a Chinese dissident or intellectual in jail is one thing.  Doing it to a millionaire businessman with all those friends in California needs more care.  The Chinese like to meet out swift justice, but they also like to avoid all those smug feature pieces in the Wall Street Journal about human rights.  Quite convenient then that Oyang should die in some ludicrous millionaires’ binge at the Polo Club.  And for the strait-laced communist Zhang and his
Gong An
buddies, much more fitting.

  That led Stone to another conclusion.  Balong was also the perfect place for him to die for the same reason.

 Chapter 52 -
1:07pm 12 April –
Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

Ekström sat at the controls of the Porsche Turbo S which had been set up in the Atrium of the Balong Country Club.  He checked himself in the reflection.  Eyes a pleasant, smiling blue underneath the neatly styled hair.  There was just a hint of steel under the blond.  Perfect.  He threw the stick smoothly into first gear, left foot poised to drop the clutch. 

Ekström was no poser.  He looked good, but his look, his apparel - it all had a point.  Take those shoes.  Looked like tennis shoes, but to people who knew, the difference was obvious.  They were designed specifically for driving high performance cars, and Ekström kept them for that purpose only. 

Three – two – one.  High up to his left the light went green, and Ekström pulled away in a surge of smooth power from the 430 horsepower unit behind his head.  Gear changes - fast and clean.  He kept the revs in the powerband, 3500 – 4500, and twisted easily around the hills on the asphalt road, and then through onto the dirt section of the track.  The noise was incredible – so realistic.

The red brown dust of the Balong estate enveloped the windows of the car.  Ekström’s cool concentration was total.  He braked hard, shifted to second for the hairpin, powered out.   Seven thousand revs.  Beautiful.  His favourite part of the course, and the Porsche handled it fabulously.  Better than the Maserati he’d tried earlier.

The Maserati dealer behind him was unconcerned.  From his concession stand at the Balong Club, he’d already sold seven cars to rich Chinese on the first day of the polo weekend.  Maserati was a more exclusive brand.  The Porsche was almost commonplace.

Ekström checked his time on the competition board and stepped out of the simulator booth in the atrium of the Country Club to a ripple of jockish applause from the polo boys.  Ekström was impressed.  It was a staggering piece of simulator technology from ShinComm Corporation.  The car dealers used it so more people could test drive the cars, but the controls were so realistic they could also be switched to “live” mode, and drive a real car remotely around the estate. 

He turned to the Porsche dealer behind him.  ‘The controls were just like the real thing,’ he called.  ‘And the graphics – wow!’

The dealer made a polite bow.  ‘It’s a new system.  Smoothvision live video combined with amazing RC software from ShinComm.  My customers can drive a car through Shanghai, London, or the French Alps from these controls – a real car.  Anywhere we have a Porsche dealership.  Helps to sell the cars.  And if someone takes a car for a test drive and gets too aggressive, we can take control from here and bring them back safely.’

Ekström felt his smartphone vibrate and turned to walk away from the hubbub in the marble atrium.  Well, well – another message.  Two in just a few days.  Where was he going next, after the hit at the Country Club?  Ekström entered his password to decrypt the message. 

His eyebrows raised slightly in surprise.  Two targets now – and both here in Balong, at the same place. Unconventional.

And the second target – Ethan Stone.  Ekström had been expecting that one, ever since Williams loused up in Hong Kong.  But it was a much more interesting challenge than his first assignment.  And the car dealer had just given him an idea.

 -oO0Oo-

This was just getting worse.  Stone came out of the luxurious Shui Hu Hotel and walked back up from the yachting marina when it hit him.  Huge, shiny, dark blue in front of him.  A dark blue truck in front of him with a satellite dish deployed on its roof, and a familiar logo on the side panel.  GNN Worldwide News.  Virginia Carlisle was here again.  What was she doing?  Did she know Stone was here?  Or Oyang?  Was she really extrapolating from that post Stone had made on the NotFutile.com web site?

Impossible.  There was only one person who could have told her to come here to Balong.  Carslake.  But why would she listen to Carslake anyway?  Stone needed another chat with Virginia Carlisle.

Chapter 53 -
1:19pm 12 April
- Balong Polo Resort and Country Club, Zhejiang Province, China

The Polo Tournament was a big event, but it still shouldn’t be that difficult to find Virginia Carlisle.  Stone strolled out to a tented village on the edge of the polo fields.  Which were in themselves vast.  Each field roughly four times the size of a football field. 

The scene was nauseatingly reminiscent of Hello magazine, but with a Chinese twist.  Argentinian polo players mingled with electronics and textile barons from China’s Gold Coast.  Exquisite dim sum and fragrant rice alongside the canapés and caviar.  And the ever-present champagne.  Stone thought of Ying Ning telling him about that poem on the plane. 
The Lovely Women
, by Du Fu.  A party for the super-rich in Tang Dynasty China.  Ying Ning was amused by Du Fu’s feelings.  Admiration, envy, disgust, desire.  Bourgeois feelings she called them, whatever that meant.  And in amongst it all was the brooding presence of the super-rich men.  Super-powerful, surrounded by flunkeys, dawdling through the crowds, fawned over.  Did Ying Ning really think that about Stone?  That he was somehow attracted by all this stuff?  Stone shook his head.

It wasn’t quite like Du Fu’s poem, this.  Photographers bobbed about among the crowds, searching for the quintessential image for Rupert’s press release.  Glamorous and rich.  They were rich all right.  Not so sure about glamorous.  Chinese millionaires, plus Shanghai expatriate wives lusting over South American lads in tight trousers.  At least Virginia Carlisle had real glamour on her side.  Should make her easy to spot.

And so it proved.  She’d had a GNN studio set up in the Country Club.  Stone flashed a confident smile at the security guy and walked into the studio.

And there she was on all the live TV monitors, just about to begin a piece in front of the cameras.  She had stayed in her regular TV character.  US army combat trousers, olive drab T-shirt.  Tailored for a thousand dollars on Fifth Avenue, naturally.

The energy coursed through Virginia as soon as she stepped in front of the bluescreen.  An amazing sight.  She bounded on there like a cheerleader.  Stone watched her do her stuff through the monitors.  The picture showed her back in Sichuan, in the village Stone recognised as Shang-ri La.  He’d passed it on the bus.  Virginia’s crew had obviously given up on the search and taken some footage of the picture postcard Chinese town for later use.  Risible.  Crass.  But absolutely effective.  Half of Asia looked like Shanghai - but Shangri La?  Shangri-La was definitely China.  So why not use it?

And if you have Virginia in the foreground, well…  She had been placed into a scene, standing on a stone-built traditional bridge over the river.  Her face breathed honesty, credibility, gravitas, and just a tiny bit of passion.  She spoke to you through the camera like she’d known you for twenty years.  Animated, engaging, beautiful.  There were some ducks and a couple of pagodas behind.   There were two guys in front, out of camera shot, with a silver foil board to get the lighting right, and a wind machine purring quietly to the side.  Stone’s favourite was the hair lighting consultant, because “filming great hair is never easy”.

GNN’s commitment to authenticity knew no bounds.

Virginia had seen Stone, too, flashed him one of her thousand-watt smiles.  Then she looked back to the camera and made the finger signals for three-two-one.  Winked to Stone on two.  She was off and running, taking it from the autocue in one smooth take.