Wingrove, David - Chung Kuo 02 (21 page)

Noticing him,
two of the men made to stand up, but Gesell reached out to either
side, touching their arms. They sat back, looking warily between
Gesell and DeVore.

"Turner . .
." Gesell greeted DeVore bluntly, his whole manner suddenly
alert, businesslike.

"Gesell . .
." He gave the slightest nod of acknowledgment, then went to the
window, staring outward, as if unconscious of the woman standing at
his side. Then he turned back, smiling. "So?"

While he'd been
gone, his lieutenant, Wiegand, had shown them around the base,
letting them see the mask—the surface installation—while
giving no hint of the labyrinth of tunnels that lay beneath.

Gesell glanced
at Mach, then looked back, a faint sneer on his lips.

"You want
me to say I'm impressed—is that it,
Shih
Turner?"

"Did I say
that?"

Gesell leaned
forward, lacing his fingers together. "No. But you're very much
a product of your level. And your level likes to impress all those
beneath it with the grandeur of their works."

"That's
true enough. And are you impressed? Are my works grand enough for
you?"

DeVore kept his
words light yet challenging, concealing his distaste for the man.
Arrogant little bastard. He thought he knew everything. He was useful
just now, admittedly—a key to things. But once he'd unlocked a
few doors he could be discarded.

He waited for
Gesell to respond, but it was Mach who answered him.

"It's very
pretty,
Shih
Turner, but what's it all for? The enemy is in
there, in the City, not out here in the Wilds. I don't see the point
of building something like this."

DeVore stared
back at Mach, then nodded. How astute of you, he thought. How clever
to penetrate so far with just one look. But you haven't seen it all.
You haven't seen the great hangars, the missile silos, the training
halls. And because you haven't, you've no idea what this really is.
To you this seems a mere shadow of Bremen, a great fortress designed
with only one thought in mind: to protect itself against attack. But
this is different. My aim is not to defend my position here but to
attack my opponents. To cut their lines and penetrate their
territory. "So you think all this a waste of time?"

He saw how Mach
looked to Gesell, then lowered his head slightly, letting Gesell take
charge again. That concession was further confirmation of what he
already suspected. The ideas, the very words the
Ping Tiao
used—these belonged to Mach. But it was Gesell who held the
power. Gesell to whom Mach demurred when his words had to be turned
into actions, Gesell leaned forward. "Wasteful, yes. But not a
total waste. You seem beyond the reach of the Seven here, and that's
good. And I've seen how your men fight. They're well-trained,
well-disciplined. In that respect we could learn from you."
DeVore hid his surprise at Gesell's candidness. "But?"

Gesell laughed
and looked about him. "Well, look at this place! It's so cut off
from the realities of what's going on. So isolated. I mean, how can
you know what's happening—what's
really
happening in the
levels—when you're so far from it all." DeVore was
smiling. "Is that what you think?"

He clicked his
fingers. At once a panel slid back overhead and a bank of screens
lowered itself into the room: screens that showed scenes from a dozen
different levels of the City. Turning back, DeVore saw how impressed
they were despite themselves.

"What do
you want to see?" he asked. "Where would you like to go in
the City? My cameras are everywhere. My eyes and ears. Watching and
listening and reporting back. Taking the pulse of things."

As he spoke the
images changed, moving from location to location, until, when he
clicked his fingers a second time, they froze, all twelve screens
showing the same image.

"But that's
Shen Lu Chua's man, Yun Ch'o . . ." Gesell began, recognizing
the figure below the camera.

"It's
Ottersleben," said Mach quietly. "Level 34. He must have
taken this earlier."

DeVore studied
them, saw how Mach looked down, as if considering what this meant,
then looked back up again, watching as a dozen images of himself led
a dozen
Ping Tiao
assault squads in the raid on their comrade
Yun Ch'o's apartment. Beside him, Gesell was leaning forward,
fascinated by the unfolding action. He saw the brief fight, saw Yun
Ch'o fall, mortally wounded; then watched as the eight hostages—the
eight Security officers Turner had told them would be there—were
led out into the corridor. When it was over Gesell looked back at
Turner, smiling tightly.

"That was
clever of you, Turner. A nice trick. But it doesn't mean much
really,
does it?"

"Like the
T'ang's ear, you mean, or the map of Helmstadt?" DeVore laughed,
then moved closer. "You're a hard man to convince,
Shih
Gesell. What must I do to satisfy you?"

Gesell's
features hardened. "Show me the other maps. The maps of Bremen."

"And in
return?"

But before
Gesell could answer, the woman, Ascher, interrupted him.

"You're
talking deals here, but it's still a mystery to me,
Shih
Turner. If you're so powerful, if you can do so much, then why do you
need us? This base you've had built, the raid on Helmstadt, the
killing of Wang Hsien—any one of these things is far beyond
anything we could do. So why us?"

Gesell was
glaring at her angrily. DeVore studied the
Ping Tiao
leader a
moment, then half turned, looking back at the woman.

"Because
what I can do is limited."

She laughed
coldly, staring back at him, her dislike unconcealed. "Limited
by what?"

"By
funding. By opportunity."

"And we
have those?"

"No. But
you have something much more valuable. Your organization has
potential. Vast potential. All this—everything I've patiently
built over the last eight years—is, as
Shih
Mach so
rightly described it, inflexible. Your organization is different.
It's a kind of organism, capable of vast growth. But to achieve that
you need to create the best climate for that growth. What we did
yesterday was a beginning. It raised your public profile while giving
you considerable firepower. Both things strengthened you
considerably. Without me, however, you would have had neither."

Gesell
interrupted. "You're wrong. You needed us."

DeVore turned
back. "Not at all. I could have taken Helmstadt on my own.
You've seen my men,
Shih
Gesell. You've even remarked on how
good their training and discipline is. Well, I've a thousand more
where they came from. And a thousand beyond them. No, I asked you to
join me yesterday because such a relationship as we must forge has to
be reciprocal. There has to be give and take. I gave you Helmstadt.
As, in time, I'll give you Bremen. But you must give me something
back. Not a great thing. I'd not ask that of you yet. But some small
thing to cement our partnership. Some favor I might find it difficult
to undertake myself."

"A small
thing?" Gesell was staring at him suspiciously.

"Yes. I
want you to kill someone for me. A child."

"A child?"

DeVore clicked
his fingers. The images on the screens changed; showed a dozen
separate portraits of an adolescent girl, her ash-blond
shoulder-length hair loose in some shots, tied in plaits in others.
Her straight-boned slender figure was caught in a dozen different
poses, dressed casually as if at home, or elegantly in the latest
First Level fashions.

"But that's
. . ."

"Yes,"
DeVore said, looking up at the screens. "It's Jelka Tolonen.
Marshal Tolonen's daughter."

* *
*

JELKA HAD JUST
FINISHED her exercises when her father entered the exercise hall. Her
instructor, Siang Che, seeing him, bowed then backed away, busying
himself at the far end of the gym.

She turned,
hearing a different tread, then laughed, her young face breaking into
a great beam of a smile. "Daddy! You're back early!" She
ran across, reaching up to hug him to her. "What's up? I didn't
expect you until the weekend."

"No,"
he said, smiling down at her, lowering his head to kiss her brow.
"I'd almost forgotten . . ."

"Forgotten
what?"

Tolonen put one
hand on her shoulder. "Not here. Let's go through to your rooms.
I'll talk to you once you've changed, neh?"

He stood there,
looking about her room while she showered. It was not a typical young
girl's room. Not by any means. In a box in one comer were flails and
batons, practice swords, chucks and staffs, while high up on the wall
was a brightly colored painting of Mu-Lan, the famous warrior
heroine, dressed in full military armor, her expression fierce as she
took up a defensive pose. Old maps and charts covered the front of
the built-in wardrobes to the left, while to the right most of the
wall space was filled with Jelka's own hand-drawn designs—machines
and weaponry, their ugly purpose disguised somehow by the sleek
elegance of her pen.

An old armchair
to one side displayed a touch of luxury, heaped as it was with
colorful silk cushions, but her bed was spartan, a simple dark-blue
sheet covering it. Beside it, beneath a half-length mirror, was her
study desk, a
wei chi
board set up to the right, books and
papers stacked neatly on the left at the back. He went across and
looked, interested to see what she was reading.

At the very
front of the table, facedown beside her comset, was a copy of Sun
Tzu's
The Art of War,
the Ping Fa. He picked it up and read
the passage she had underlined:

If not in the
interests of the state, do not act. If you cannot succeed, do not use
troops. If you are not in danger, do not fight.

He smiled. Ten
thousand books had been written on the subject since Sun Tzu first
wrote his treatise twenty-five hundred years before and not one had
come as close to capturing the essence of armed struggle as the Ping
Fa. He set the book down again, then studied the w
ei chi
board
a moment, noting how a great spur of black stones cut between two
areas of white territory, separating them. There were other books
piled up on the desk—the San
Kuo
Van Yi, the
Romance
of the Three Kingdoms,
Tseng Kung-liang's
Wu Ching Tsung Yao,
his Essentials
of the Martial Classics,
and the
Meng
Ke
among them—but what took the Marshal's interest was a
small floppy, orange-covered volume tucked away at the back of the
desk. He reached across and pulled it from the pile.

It was an
ancient thing, the cover curling at the edges, the paper within
yellowed badly. But that was not what had caught his eye. It was the
words on the cover. Or, rather, one word in particular.
China.

He stared at the
cover for a time, frowning. He had not heard that term—not seen
it in print—in more than forty years. China. The name that
Chung Kuo, the Middle Kingdom, had had before Tsao Ch'un. Or at
least, the name it had been called in the West. He leafed through the
book, reading at random, then closed it, his pulse racing. Islam and
Communism. America and Russia. Soviets and Imperialists. These were
lost terms. Terms from another age. A forgotten, forbidden age. He
stared at the cover a moment longer, then nodded to himself, knowing
what he must do.

He turned,
hearing her in the next room, singing softly to herself as she
dressed, then forced himself to relax, letting the anger, the tension
drain from him. It was a mistake, almost certainly. Even so, he would
find out who had given this to her and make them pay.

"Well?"
she asked, standing in the doorway, smiling across at him. "Tell
me, then. What is it?"

She saw how he
looked down at the book in his hands.

"In a
moment. First, where did you get this?"

"That? It
was on your shelves. Why, shouldn't I have borrowed it?"

"My
shelves?"

"Yes. It
was in that box of things you had delivered here three weeks ago. My
amah,
Lu Cao, unpacked it and put it all away. Didn't you
notice?"

"She
shouldn't have," he began irritably. "They were things
General Nocenzi had sent on to me. Things we'd unearthed during the
Confiscations. Special things ..."

"I'm sorry,
Father. I'll tell her. But she wasn't to know."

"No . . ."
He softened, then laughed, relieved that it was only that. "Did
you read any of it?"

"Some."
She smiled, looking inside herself a moment. "But it was odd. It
presented itself as a factual account, but it read more like fiction.
The facts were all wrong. Almost all of it. And that map at the
front. . ."

"Yes . . ."
He weighed the book in his hand a moment, then looked up at her
again. "Well, I guess no harm's done. But listen. This is a
forbidden book. If anyone were to find you had read even the smallest
part of it . . ." He shook his head. "Well, you
understand?"

She bowed her
head. "As you wish, Father."

"Good. Then
this other matter . . ." He hesitated, then gave a short laugh.
"Well, you know how long Klaus Ebert and I have been friends.
How close our families have always been."

She laughed.
"
Shih
Ebert has been like an uncle to me."

Her father's
smile broadened momentarily. "Yes. But I've long wished for
something more than that. Some stronger, more intimate bond between
our families."

"More
intimate . . ." She stared at him, not understanding.

"Yes,"
he said, looking back at her fondly. "It has long been my dream
that you would one day wed my old friend's son."

"Hans? Hans
Ebert?" Her eyes were narrowed now, watching him.