An Inch of Ashes (Chung Kuo)(21)

‘You're Clayborn, aren't you?'

Kim took a number of books from the bottom of his bag and added them to the pile on the desk, then looked up again. ‘I lived there until I was six.'

Hammond shuddered, seeing the boy in a totally new light. ‘I'm sorry. It must have been awful.'

Kim shrugged. ‘I don't know. I can't remember. But I'm here now. This is my home.'

Hammond looked about him at the bare white walls, then nodded. ‘I suppose it is.' He put the chart down and picked up one of the books. It was Liu Hui's Chiu Chang Suan Shu, his ‘Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art', the famous third-century treatise from which all Han science began. He smiled and opened it, surprised to find it in the original Mandarin. Flicking through, he noticed the notations in the margin, the tiny, beautifully drawn pictograms in red and black and green.

‘You speak Kuo-yu, Kim?'

Kim straightened the books, then turned, looking back at Hammond. He studied him a moment, intently, almost fiercely, then pointed up at the overhead camera. ‘Does that thing work?'

Hammond looked up. ‘Not yet. It'll be two or three days before they've installed the system.'

‘And Spatz? Does he speak Kuo-yu... Mandarin?'

Hammond considered a moment, then shook his head. ‘I'm not sure. I don't think so, but I can check easily enough. Why?'

Kim was staring back at him, the openness of his face disarming Hammond. ‘I'm not naive, Shih Hammond. I understand your position here. You're here on sufferance. We're alike in that. We do what we're told or we're nothing. Nothing.'

Hammond shivered. He had never thought of it in quite those terms, but it was true. He set the book down. ‘I still don't follow you. What is all this leading to?'

Kim picked the book up and opened it at random, then handed it back to Hammond. ‘Read the first paragraph.'

Hammond read it, pronouncing the Mandarin with a slight southern accent, then looked back at Kim. ‘Well?'

‘I thought so. I saw how you looked at it. I knew at once that you'd recognized the title.'

Hammond smiled. ‘So?'

Kim took the book back, then set it beside the others on the shelf.

‘How good is your memory?'

‘Pretty good, I'd say.'

‘Good enough to hold a code?'

‘A code?'

‘When you go back, Spatz will order you not to speak to me about anything to do with the Project. He'll instruct you to keep me away from all but the most harmless piece of equipment.'

‘You know this?'

Kim looked round. ‘It's what he threatened, shortly before you arrived. But I know his type. I've met them before. He'll do all he can to discredit me.'

Hammond laughed and began to shake his head, then stopped, seeing how Kim was looking at him. He looked down. ‘What if I don't play his game? What if I refuse to shut you out?'

‘Then he&d, idth almond laughrsquo;ll discredit you. You're vulnerable. He knows you'll have to do what he says. Besides, he'll set a man to watch you. Someone you think of as a friend.'

‘Then what can I do?'

‘You can keep a diary. On your personal comset. Something that, when Spatz checks on it, will seem completely innocent.'

‘I see. But how will you get access?'

‘Leave that to me.' Kim turned away, taking the last of the objects from the bag and setting it down on the bedside table.

‘And the code?'

Kim laughed. ‘That's the part you'll enjoy. You're going to become a poet, Shih Hammond. A regular Wang Wei.'


DeVore sat at his desk in the tiny room at the heart of the mountain. The door was locked, the room unlit but for the faint glow of a small screen to one side of the desk. It was late, almost two in the morning, yet he felt no trace of tiredness. He slept little  –  two, three hours at most a night  –  but just now there was too much to do to even think of sleep.

He had spent the afternoon teaching Sun Tzu to his senior officers: the final chapter on the employment of secret agents. It was the section of Sun Tzu's work that most soldiers found unpalatable. On the whole they were creatures of directness, like Tolonen. They viewed such methods as a necessary evil, unavoidable yet somehow beneath their dignity. But they were wrong. Sun Tzu had placed the subject at the end of his thirteen-chapter work with good reason. It was the key to all. As Sun Tzu himself had said, the reason why an enlightened prince or a wise general triumphed over their enemies whenever they moved  –  why their achievements surpassed those of ordinary men  –  was foreknowledge. And as Chia Lin had commented many centuries later, ‘An army without secret agents is like a man without eyes or ears.'

So it was. And the more one knew, the more control one could wield over circumstance.

He smiled. Today had been a good day. Months of hard work had paid off. Things had connected, falling into a new shape  –  a shape that boded well for the future.

The loss of his agents amongst the Ping Tiao had been a serious setback, and the men he had bought from amongst their ranks had proved unsatisfactory in almost every respect. He'd had barely a glimpse of what the Ping Tiao hierarchy were up to for almost a week now. Until today, that was, when suddenly two very different pieces of information had come to hand.

The first was simply a codeword one of his paid agents had stumbled upon: a single Mandarin character, the indentation of which had been left on a notepad Jan Mach had discarded. A character that looked like a house running on four legs. The character yu, the Han word for fish, the symbol of the Ping Tiao. It had meant nothing at first, but then he had thought to try it as an entry code to some of the secret Ping Tiao computer networks he had discovered weeks before but had failed to penetrate.

At the third attempt he found himself in. Yu was a new recruitment campaign; a rallying call; a word passed from lip to ear; a look, perhaps, between two sympathetic to the cause. DeVore had scrolled through quickly, astonished by what he read. If this were true...

But of course it was true. It made sense. Mach was unhappy with what was happening in the Ping Tiao. He felt unclean dealing with the likes of T'angs and renegade majors. What better reason, then, to start up a new movement? A splinter movement that would, in time, prove greater and more effective than the Ping Tiao. A movement that made no deals, no compromises. That movement was Yu.

Yu. The very word was rich with ambivalence, for yu was phonetically identical with the Han word meaning ‘abundance'. It was the very symbol of wealth, and yet tradition had it that when the fish swam upriver in great numbers it was a harbinger of social unrest. Yu was thus the very symbol of civil disorder.

And if the file was to be trusted, Yu was already a force to be reckoned with. Not as powerful yet as the Ping Tiao, or as rich in its resources, yet significant enough to make him change his plans. He would have to deal with Mach. And soon.

The second item had come from Fischer in Alexandria. The message had been brief  –  a mere minute and three quarters of scrambled signal  –  yet it was potentially enough, in its decoded form, to shake the very foundations of the Seven.

He leaned forward and ran the film again.

The first thirty seconds were fairly inconclusive. They showed Wang Sau-leyan with his Chancellor, Hung Mien-lo. As Fischer entered, the T'ang turned slightly, disappearing from camera view as the Captain bowed.

‘Are they here?' Wang asked, his face returning to view as Fischer came out of his bow.

‘Four of them, Chieh Hsia. They've been searched and scanned, together with their gift.'

‘Good,' the T'ang said, turning away, looking excitedly at his Chancellor. ‘Then bring them in.'

‘Chieh Hsia...'

DeVore touched the pad, pausing at that moment. Wang Sau-leyan was still in full view of Fischer's secreted camera, his well-fleshed face split by a grin that revealed unexpectedly fine teeth. He was a gross character, but interesting. For all his sybaritic tendencies, Wang Sau-leyan was sharp; sharper, perhaps, than any amongst the Seven, barring the young Prince, Li Shai Tung's son, Yuan.

He sat back, studying the two men for a time, unhappy that he had not been privy to their conversations before and after this important meeting. It would have been invaluable to know what it was they really wanted from their association with the Ping Tiao. But Fischer's quick thinking had at least given him an insight into their apparent reasons.

He let the film run again, watching as it cut to a later moment when Fischer had interrupted the meeting to tell the T'ang about the fire.

The camera caught the six men squarely in its lens: Wang Sau-leyan to the left, Hung Mien-lo just behind him, Gesell, Mach and their two companions to the right. It was an important moment to capture  –  one that, if need be, could be used against the T'ang of Africa. But equally important was the moment just before Fischer had knocked then thrown the doors wide; a moment when Wang's voice had boomed out clearly.

‘Then you understand, ch'un tzu, that I cannot provide such backing without some sign of your good intentions. The smell of burning wheat, perhaps, or news of a whole crop ruined through the accidental pollution of a water source. I'm sure I don't have to spell it out for you.'

DeVore smiled. No, there was no need for Wang Sau-leyan to say anything more. It was clear what he intended. In exchange for funds he would get the Ping Tiao to do his dirty work  –  to burn the East European Plantations and create havoc with City Europe's food supplies, thus destabilizing Li Shai Tung's City. But would the Ping Tiao take such a radical action? After all, it was their people who would suffer most from the subsequent food shortages. Would they dare risk alienating public opinion so soon after they had regained it?