The White Mountain (15 page)

Karr slowed as he neared the end of the corridor. There was no tape
to break this time but even so, his time was close to nine seconds. They wouldn't think…

He fired ahead of him, letting momentum take him through the door, rolling and springing up, turning in the next movement to find Cherkassky on the ceiling above the door, held there in an assassin's cradle. He was turning with his feet, but it wasn't fast enough. Karr shot away the strands, making Cherkassky tumble to the floor, all the while his eyes darting here and there, looking for DeVore. He skipped over the rubble and crouched above the winded assassin.

‘Where is he? Tell me where he is.'

The old man laughed, then coughed blood. Karr shot him through the neck. DeVore had gone. Had traded on his final friendship. But he could not have gone far. Cherkassky hadn't been operating the machine. So…

Quickly, carefully, he checked the rest of the apartment. There was no sign of the controls here, so DeVore had them elsewhere. Somewhere close by. But where?

He pushed his helmet out into the corridor then, a moment later, popped his head round the corner to look. Nothing. There was a high-pitched screaming from a nearby apartment but he ignored it, stepping out into the corridor again. There was no way out overhead. The roof was sealed here. He had checked on that earlier. No. The only way out was down.

He glanced at his timer. It was only three minutes and forty-eight seconds since he had stood at the far end of the corridor. Was that time enough for DeVore to get to the lift? Possibly. But Karr had a hunch that he hadn't done that. DeVore would want to make sure he was safe, and that meant getting back at his pursuer.

He walked slowly down the corridor, keeping to the wall, the largest of his guns, an antique Westinghouse-Howitzer, pressed tight against his chest. He would take no chances with this bastard.

He was about to go on when he paused, noticing the silence. The screaming had stopped, suddenly, almost abruptly, in mid-scream. It had taken him a second or two to notice it, but then it hit him. He turned, lowering himself on to his haunches, as if about to spring. Two doors down the corridor, it had been. He went back slowly, his finger trembling against the hair-line trigger, making a small circle of the door until he stood on its far side, his back to Cherkassky's apartment.

He had two options now: to wait or to go in. Which would DeVore expect him to do? Was he waiting for Karr to come in, or was he about to come out? For a moment Karr stood there, tensed, considering, then he smiled. There was a third option: burn away the wall and see what lay behind it. He liked that. It meant he didn't have to go through a door.

He lay down, setting the big gun up in front of him, ejecting the standard explosive shells and slipping a cartridge of ice-penetrating charges into the loader. Then he squeezed the trigger, tracing a line of shells first up the wall, then along the top of it. The partition shuddered, like something alive, and began to peel away from where the charges had punctured holes in it. There was no sound from the other side of the wall; only silence and the roiling smoke.

He waited, easing his finger back and forth above the hair-trigger as the ice curled back, revealing the shattered room. Karr's eyes took in each and every detail, noting and discarding them. A young woman lay dead on the lounger, her pale limbs limp, her head at an odd angle, garrotted by the look of it. There was no sign of DeVore, but he had been there. The woman had been alive only a minute before.

Karr crawled into the room. A siren had begun to sound in the corridor. It would bring Chen and help. But Karr wanted to finish this now. DeVore was his. He had pursued him for so long now. And, orders or no, he would make sure of things this time.

He stopped, calling out.

‘Surrender yourself, DeVore. Put your hands up and come out. You'll get a fair trial.'

It was a charade. Part of the game they had to play. But DeVore would pay no heed. They both knew now that this could only end in death. But it had to be said. Like the last words of a ritual.

His answer came a moment later. The door to the right hissed open a fraction and a grenade was lobbed into the room. Karr saw it curl in the air and recognized what it was. Dropping his gun, he placed his hands tight over his ears and pushed his face down into the floor. It was a concussion grenade. The shock of it ripped a hole in the floor and seemed to lift everything in the room into the air.

In a closed room it would have been devastating, but much of the force of it had gone out into the corridor. Karr got up, stunned but unhurt, his
ears ringing. And then the door began to iris open.

Reactions took over. Karr buckled at the knees and rolled forward, picking up his gun on the way. DeVore was halfway out of the door, the gun at his hip already firing, when the butt of Karr's gun connected with his head. It was an ill-aimed blow that glanced off the side of his jaw, just below the ear, but the force of it was enough to send DeVore sprawling, the gun flying from his hands. Karr went across, his gun raised to aim another blow, but it was already too late. DeVore was dead, his jaw shattered, fragments of it pushed up into his brain.

Karr stood there a moment, looking down at his old enemy, all of the fierce indignation and anger he felt welling up in him again. He shuddered, then, anger getting the better of him, brought the gun down, once, twice, a third time, smashing the skull apart, spilling DeVore's brains across the floor.

‘You bastard… You stinking, fucking bastard!'

Then, taking the small cloth bag from his top pocket, he undid the string and spilled the stones over the dead man. Three hundred and sixty-one black stones.

For Haavikko's sister, Vesa, and Chen's friend, Pavel; for Kao Jyan and Han Ch'in, Lwo Kang and Edmund Wyatt, and all the many others whose deaths were down to him.

Karr shuddered, then threw the cloth bag down. It was done. He could go home now and sleep.

Li Yuan stood in the deep shadow by the carp pool, darkness wrapped about him like a cloak. It had been a long and tiring day, but his mind was sharp and clear. He stared down through layers of darkness, following the languid movements of the carp. In their slow, deliberate motions it seemed he might read the deepest workings of his thoughts.

Much had happened. Out there, in the chill brightness of his study, all had seemed chaos. DeVore was dead and his warren of mountain fortresses destroyed. But Klaus Ebert was also dead and his son, the General, had fled. That had come as a shock to him, undermining his newfound certainty.

Here, in the darkness, however, he could see things in a better light. He had survived the worst his enemies could do. Fei Yen and young Han were
safe. Soon he would have a General he could trust. These things comforted him. In the light of them, even Wang Sau-leyan's concessions to the Young Patriots seemed a minor thing.

For a while he let these things drift from him; let himself sink into the depths of memory, his mood dark and sorrowful, his heart weighed down by the necessities of his life. He had companionship in Tsu Ma and three wives to satisfy his carnal needs. Soon he would have a child – an heir, perhaps. But none of this was enough. So much was missing from his life. Fei Yen and Han Ch'in, so deeply missed that sometimes he would wake from sleep, his pillow wet with tears. Worst were the nightmares: images of his father's corpse, exposed, defenceless in its nakedness, painfully emaciated, the skin stretched pale across the frame of bone.

The fate of kings.

He turned and looked across at the single lamp beside the door. Its light was filtered through the green of fern and palm, the smoky darkness of the panels, as if through depths of water. He stared at it, reminded of something else – of the light on a windswept hillside in the Domain as a small group gathered about the unmarked grave. Sunlight on grass and the shadows in the depths of the earth. He had been so certain that day: certain that he didn't want to stop the flow of time and have the past returned to him, fresh, new again. But had Ben been right? Wasn't that the one thing men wanted most?

Some days he ached to bring it back. To have it whole and perfect. To sink back through the years and have it all again. The best of it. Before the cancer ate at it. Before the worm lay in the bone.

He bowed his head, smiling sadly at the thought. To succumb to that desire was worse than the desire itself. It was a weakness not to be tolerated. One had to go on, not back.

The quality of the light changed. His new Master of the Inner Chambers, Chan Teng, stood beside the doorway, silent, waiting to be noticed.

‘What is it, Master Chan?'

‘Your guest is here,
Chieh Hsia.'

‘Good.' He lifted a hand to dismiss the man, then changed his mind. ‘Chan, tell me this. If you could recapture any moment from your past – if you could have it whole, perfect in every detail – would you want that?'

The middle-aged man was silent a while, then answered.

‘There are, indeed, times when I wish for something past,
Chieh Hsia
.
Like all men. But it would be hard. Hard living in the “now” if “what was” were still to hand. The imperfection of a man's memories is a blessing.'

It was a good answer. A satisfactory answer. ‘Thank you, Chan. There is wisdom in your words.'

Chan Teng bowed and turned to go, but at the door he turned back and looked across at his master.

‘One last thing,
Chieh Hsia
. Such a gift might well prove useful. Might prove, for us, a blessing.'

Li Yuan came out into the light. ‘How so?'

Chan lowered his eyes. ‘Might its very perfection not prove a cage, a prison to the mind? Might we not snare our enemies in its sticky web?'

Li Yuan narrowed his eyes. He thought he could see what Chan Teng was saying, but he wanted to be sure. ‘Go on, Chan. What are you suggesting?'

‘Only this. That desire is a chain. If such a thing exists it might be used, not as a blessing but a curse. A poisoned gift. It would be the ultimate addiction. Few men would be safe from its attractions. Fewer still would recognize it for what it was. A drug. A way of escaping from what is here and now and real.'

Li Yuan took a deep breath, then nodded. ‘We shall speak more on this, Chan. Meanwhile, ask my guest to come through. I shall see him here, beside the pool.'

Chan Teng bowed low, and turned away. Li Yuan stared down at the naked glow of the lamp, and moved his hand close, feeling its radiant warmth, tracing its rounded shape. How would it feel to live a memory? Like this? As real as this? He sighed. Perhaps, as Chan said, there was a use for Shepherd's art: a way of making his illusions serve the real. He drew his hand away, seeing how shadows formed between the fingers, how the glistening lines of the palm turned dull and lifeless.

To
have Han and Fei again
. To
see
his
father smiling
.

He shook his head, suddenly bitter. Best nothing. Better death than such sweet torment.

There was movement in the corridor outside. A figure appeared in the doorway. Li Yuan looked up, meeting Shepherd's eyes.

‘Ben…'

Ben Shepherd looked about him at the room, then looked back at the young T'ang, a faint smile on his lips. ‘How are you, Li Yuan? With all that's
happened, I wasn't sure you'd remember our meeting.'

Li Yuan smiled and moved forward, greeting him. ‘No. I'm glad you came. Indeed, our meeting is fortuitous, for there's something I want to ask you. Something only you can help me with.'

Ben raised an eyebrow. ‘As mirror?'

Li Yuan nodded, struck once again by how quick, how penetrating Ben Shepherd was. He, if anyone, could make things clear to him.

Ben went to the edge of the pool. For a moment he stared down into the darkness of the water, following the slow movements of the fish, then he looked back at Li Yuan.

‘Is it about Fei Yen and the child?'

Li Yuan shivered. ‘Why should you think that?'

Ben smiled. ‘Because, as I see it, there's nothing else that only I could help you with. If it were a matter of politics, there are a dozen able men to whom you might talk. Whereas the matter of your ex-wife and the child. Well… who could you talk to of that within your court? Who could you trust not to use what was said to gain some small advantage?'

Li Yuan bowed his head. It was true. He had not thought of it in quite such a calculated manner, but it was so.

‘Well?' he said, meeting Ben's eyes.

Ben moved past him, crouching down to study the great tortoise shell with its ancient markings.

‘There's an advantage to being outside things,' Ben said, his eyes searching the surface of the shell, tracing the fine patterning of cracks beneath the transparent glaze. ‘You see events more clearly than those taking part in them. What's more, you learn to ask the right questions.' He turned his head, looking up at Li Yuan. ‘For instance. Why, if Li Yuan knows who the father of his child is, has he not acted on that knowledge? Why has he not sought vengeance on the man? Of course, the assumption has always been that the child is not Li Yuan's. But why should that necessarily be the case? It was assumed by almost everyone that Li Yuan divorced Fei Yen to ensure the child of another man would have no legitimate claim upon the dragon throne, but why should that be so? What if that were merely a pretext? After all, it is not an easy thing to obtain a divorce when one is a T'ang. Infidelity, whilst a serious enough matter in itself, would be an insufficient reason. But to protect the line of inheritance…'

Li Yuan had been watching Ben, mesmerized, unable to look away. Now Ben released him.

‘You always saw things clearly, didn't you?'

‘To the bone.'

‘And was I right?'

‘To divorce Fei Yen? Yes. But the child… Well, I'll be frank and say that that puzzles me somewhat. I've thought about it often lately. He's
your
son, isn't he, Li Yuan?'