Dragon's Eye

by Andy Oakes

  Rain and neon …

  A sharp pull into Dongzhimenneiajie. The traffic splitting out of the Worker’s Stadium in slashes … scarlet, lemon, white. End to end. A plunging saw-band of steel.

  Staring into the rear-view mirror of the BMW hire car, Haven eased the revs, slipping into the outside lane. That feeling of being watched. Being followed. Of some impending pivotal event about to be unleashed … haunting. The adrenalin rush, now easing to a walking pace. The Englishman passing a hand over his forehead; sweat, cold, clammy. He would have lost them. If ‘they’, actually existed. In this traffic, he must have lost them. Calm. Collected. Lighting a cigarette. Marlboro. Sweet tobacco, sweet America. The loose ends tied off, double knotted. He should congratulate himself. The last thorns plucked from the rosebush, and without a single prick … a single bleed. But an uncharacteristic slither of uninformed paranoia stalking every hour of every day that he had been in Beijing. He exhaled, shaking off the feeling, as he joined the straight flights of dual carriageway. Capital Airport, just another twenty-nine kilometres. But even with the nicotine, a nagging sense of something about to fall. To crash.

  On the far runway of Capital, a silver jet would be in the process of being re-fuelled, cleaned, re-stocked. Flight CX 251 … each air mile to London, and then after transfer, to New York, being punctuated only by whisky miniatures.

  Haven guided the BMW across to the slow lane. There was no hurry, fate is not a butterfly, it does not fly away. The world was a peaceful golden garden, and he, a golden picknicker within it. He lit another cigarette.

  *

  Across the huge departure lounge of Capital Airport, through the weave of torsos, a finger pointing … pale, crimson tipped.

  “There.”

  *

  Assassins, they are not apart. They have other roles also. Other hats to wear. Fathers. Sons. Lovers. Once they were even children. Babies spilling from the womb. They are neighbours. They eat. They shit. They laugh. Cry. Brushing past you in the market. Sitting next to you in the cinema. Slash of knife … a job. Taut cross of ligature … a day at the office. Snub-nosed alley hit, measured sniper shot … squeezed in between taking the children to school and a light lunch of peanuts, pickles and pumpkin soup.

  Assassins, a job like any other. Just another step toward the pension. No sweat, no adrenalin rush … even the pulse rate barely raised. Returning to the office. Paperwork in triplicate. Pencils to sharpen. Paperclips to replenish. The job finished. Leaving in time to meet the children from school. On foreheads, kisses. Carrying their lunchboxes. Asking how their day was. Daddy.

  Assassins … they are not apart.

  *

  They stood together for twenty minutes, in silence, before he moved. Briefcase and belly. Middle-aged and Mao suit. Slowly across the departure lounge, but only when the flight had been called. Flight CX 251 to London.

  People rising from red-clothed contoured foam seats. Stay-pressed slacks and sensible shoes. Hotel soap smelling. Carrier bag carrying, filled with obscure rice spirits that would never be drunk. And rising slowly, grey silk and gold. Moving against steel and glass … Haven. Joining the back of the queue. There was no hurry … fate is not a butterfly, it does not fly away.

  Fingernails to lips. Crimson on crimson. Watching, as the two intersected in grey and black. An assassin at work, black. Moving on the target, grey. Briefcase slamming into the side of the Englishman’s thigh. As the other hand, instantaneously, silver at its heart … sprinted and stabbed. A third size hypodermic emptying its load into his numbed leg. Haven’s weight shifting. Rubbing his thigh. Swearwords twisting onto gaping lips, aimed at the back of the black Mao suited middle-aged Shanghainese, as he walked, even paced, towards the gates. Steel and glass. Opening. Closing. Seconds, just seconds … and he was lost in the crowd.

  The queue advancing. Hostesses in red. Fixed smiled. Ginger breathed. A manicured hand extended. The Englishman reaching into his jacket for the boarding pass, but the dizziness already upon him. A call that would not be ignored. Flowing from his leg. Deep. Certain. Centring, warm and numb, across his forehead. Behind his eyes. The world tilting. Falling. Rushing. Hard-edged slashes. Whites into white. A thud as the floor met him in an anvil of even sided, identical marble tiles. Immediately, faces above him. A static orbit of concern against an arched cathedral ceiling; high-bowled lighting. Thinking that the stars were really fashioned from pressed steel. Watching lips, talking. But hearing no words. The world and all that it was and contained, safe behind a glass wall. Head falling to one side. Shoes, seating. Floor. Running out of focus across the length of the departure lounge. And nearer and nearer, carving across it, two men running toward him either side of a wheeled trolley stretcher. Chrome. So bright. So bright. Feeling the dribble run free from the corner of his mouth. Its course across his stubble. Silk collar in its bubbled flow. Feeling himself being lifted. The pillow under his head … feeling like concrete. The airtex blanket thrown over him, with the dead weight of slabbed stone. Blurs on blurs. Vision tunnelling. Hard light. Soft edges. All honed from peeled chromium. Only as he felt the piss flow, his bowel collapse in an urgent panicking warmth, smelling the acrid taint, the reek of his own shit … did he realise. And with the realisation, a scream, but locked into his own head now. His world, solely, him. With no means of communicating beyond the boundaries of his own skin. The muscle relaxants, the inhibitors … kicking in. Switch by switch, his body closing down. And through it all, replaying, over and over again, even in the ocean depth of his initial panic … the assassin’s precise move. The kill. The leisurely black Mao suited walk to the departure lounge gates. No hurry in his pace. No nervousness in his posture.

  A professional hit. A mute death dealt out to him with such efficiency. An efficiency to be wondered at, even admired. His keen curiosity still intact. Wondering what had been used … Mixture No2? He would have smiled, if he could have … the very irony of it. Injected with the very same cocktail mixture of drugs that he had been one of the architect-bartenders of. Even as breaths faltered, taking a professional pride in its smooth flowing passage. Its cold and systematic ruthlessness.

  Counting the seconds, as if it were a personal experiment. Stopwatch and clipboard in hand.

  THREE MINUTES THIRTY-TWO SECONDS.

  A compromise of Mixture No2, or death would have tied its knot by now. An assassin who does not assassinate? A kick-start of panic nailing him in place. A drug designed to kill that does not kill? He was being delivered. Delivered.

  Moving out of the terminal building. Strapped tighter into the steel cot. In its thin plated chrome, elongated reflections of a clear blue sky.

  FOUR MINUTES EIGHTEEN SECONDS.

  And now pure panic. Boundaryless. Bottomless. Filling all that held him to life, and life to him. Delivered … to what?

  *

  ‘Point, and then view it all as if from Heaven,’ the comrade had said. Yes, he had been right, but still she regretted it. A wall of glass. Barbara moving against it, slowly, as below the chrome bright cot was loaded into the rear of the unmarked ambulance.

  In Beijing Military Hospital, the elected and cross-matched recipients of his kidneys would already have been prepared. An army general. A local high-ranking party official. Between them, sharing a tether on life of one hundred and thirty-five years. In Guangzhou’s Zhongshan Medical College, the men who would receive his corneas were already in situ. Hong Kong businessmen with wallets stitched open. Dollars in a steady, unabating flow. Model patients, each last one of them … they had insisted on only one matter. The kidneys, the harvested corneas that they would receive, they must be fresh. Living.

  Delivered. Delivered.

  *

  ‘Point, and then view it all as if from Heaven,’ the comrade had said. Yes, he had been right, but still she regretted it. It wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.

  Chapter 45

  HONGQIAO AIRPORT, SHANGHAI … THE PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF CHINA.

  One week
later.

  Ten cleaners in a line with mops, moving in unison across the floor of the airport. A sweep to the east … a sweep to the west. A sweep to the east … a sweep to the west. Half of the vast floor, scuffed grey. Half of the floor, a mirror sea of reflections. Strip lights. Indicator boards. Neon signs. As if that portion of the world had suddenly been tipped upside down.

  *

  So early … the first shuttle flight of the morning. Passengers decanted and free from the luggage-laden carousels and the press of braided, peak capped customs and permit inspectors. All except one. An hour later, a steel partition door sliding back upon itself. A figure. Alone. Moving through the officials; their ministrations left indelibly on his internal travel visas. Stamps of black on white. Red on white. Green on white. Stopping for an instant and looking back. Folding the papers neatly and placing them in his inside pocket. When he started to walk again it was at a faster pace, traversing the line of cleaners at a forty-five degree angle. Walking from wet to dry. A straight trail of footprints making for the far exit.

  A single car was parked on the slip road outside. Through a condensation misted windscreen, instantly recognising the lone passenger. Recognising the carton of cigarettes, sharp cornered and bulky, poking out of the top of the carrier bag. Marlboro. Yaobang already feeling for his box of matches.

  A series of jolts as the window wound down. Helping it with his thick fingers.

  Focussing on the commuter’s face. The scarring around the eyes, mouth, nose. The right wrist and hand, heavily bandaged. And his posture … the way he moved. Whispering of dark rooms. Metal framed beds. Truncheons of hard, black rubber. And questions, over and over again … the same questions

  “Shhhitttt …”

  Like a sigh.

  “… what happened Boss, walk into a fucking door?”

  Piao pulled the carton of cigarettes from the plastic bag and tossed it onto the Big Man’s lap.

  “Several doors. Over and over again”

  Cellophane, cardboard … ripped. A match … struck. Two cigarettes lit. Yaobang handing one to the Senior Investigator. For a while, seconds uncounted … not talking. The smoke around Piao in a shifting question mark.

  “Where the fuck you been, Boss? I tried to get news, but not even the offer of bottles of Japanese whisky could loosen a fucking lip.”

  Silent. For the first time Piao noticing freedom. Big things at first, in bites. The coldness. The sky. And then the little things, in nibbles. The litter in the gutter. The belch of ten thousand factory chimneys.

  “Where the fuck you been, Boss?”

  Piao pulled deeply on the Marlboro’s butt, holding the smoke down. Holding so many things down. It burnt. Rounding the front of the Sedan. Pulling open the stuck door and getting in. Hiding the pain, as best as he could. Always hiding the pain.

  “Haven. He got away. I didn’t get to kill him.”

  “Well, Boss, somebody fucking did …”

  Yaobang tapped the envelope in the dashboard well.

  “… or perhaps this is for something else?”

  The envelope reeked of government. Of box-like offices. Of pressed suits over threadbare underwear. The Senior Investigator ripped it open. Inside the envelope … things expected, things unexpected. A life folded in Manila. A letter from the Danwei and the Ministry of Security, retracting all charges against him. Absolution from the murder of Liping and the Chairman of the Shiqu. Release from any further charges that might spring from his investigation of the eight who were found in the Huangpu, or from any of the events surrounding it. Sticky, tricky, legal words, that he would have to examine and perform an autopsy on at a later date.

  Digging deeper. Food, clothes, furniture vouchers … to be spent at the Friendship Store. Deeper still. A purchase voucher for a car, second-hand. Of course! A slip to draw his wages, his backpay. Another slip, informing him of his promotion of two grades. Waiting for him, an upholstered chair, velour covered. Another slip … noting his promotion and awarding the relevant rise in pay. One hundred yuan a month. Zhiyuan, the old bastard, how right he’d been. And on yet another slip, an address of a new flat rented on his behalf. His new home. A road just off of Wenmiao. Views of the river, if you went up onto the roof and stood on tiptoes. A road off of Wenmiao. He was going up in the world, or was it down? A road off of Wenmiao, an area littered with middle-ranking cadre and nodding Party brown-nosers. A road off of Wenmiao … they were already trying to block him in. Package him up. Keep him safe. Keep him sweet. A last draw on the cigarette, flicking it out of the car window. A fury of sparks, before it faded and died.

  Deeper still. A floppy disc. Removing it. Turning it over and over in his fingers. Its blunt, rounded corners. Its safe edges. Its inoffensive demeanour. How could death come in such a neat and innocent looking package? He lit another cigarette. It tasted better than the first. It always did. Always would.

  In the bottom of the envelope, a smaller envelope. So different from everything that had surrounded it. Pastel against harsh monotones. Handwriting against type. Perfumed page against the hints of ink and stationary cupboards. Lingling. For an instant, the thought, the constant question within himself … is she coming back, does she really want to come back home? Reading it, and as he did, instantly aware that there was nothing at the bottom of the page about her wanting to come back.

  ‘… the blood tests, the doctor’s reports, the files from the hospital. They were prepared at our request. They were lies. You do not have HIV. You never had HIV.”

  Cold. Numb. For seconds, not able to move. Not able to breathe. And then the slow thaw of relief. Of release. As soft, as warm as a deep swelling wave of morphine.

  The car coughed into life, settling into an uncomfortable shiver. Yaobang finishing his second cigarette to the last strands of tobacco.

  “So, Boss, good trip?”

  ‘Good trip’ … a question to be answered, but not yet.

  The car rolled and Piao wound up the window. He would be going to the flat now, on a road just off of Wenmiao. A home that he had yet to know. Behind the door, nothing but the mechanics of a life. Behind the door, no perfumed letters. A life, re-visited. In his fingers, the floppy disc in idle orbits. Taking hold of it more firmly. Bending it, until the black casing bruised grey … snapping with the caustic high note of plastic.

  His last link to the man who was Haven. His last link to the woman who was …

  Winding down the window. In two separate jig-saw halves, letting the plastic, now valueless, slip from his fingers. Death, sentenced by data, in tumbled falls into the stained gutters.

  Cold. So cold. But leaving the window down. Pulling the jacket on the back seat around himself. Reaching to fasten the collar, but the button missing. The button still missing. And who was there to put a new one on? Moving toward Yichuan Park … the spike of the trees, the carve of the walls, softened, blunted by the early morning smog. The breath of the Yellow Dragon. Gleaming cities. Gleaming people. Never further away. For a second, closing his eyes as the soundless, matt landscape, fell past his window.

  A button missing. He would have to learn to sew.

  Copyright

  Published in the UK by Dedalus Ltd,

  24–26, St Judith’s Lane, Sawtry, Cambs, PE28 5XE

  email: info@dedalus.com

  www.dedalusbooks.com

  ISBN printed book 978 1 903517 21 5

  ISBN e-book 978 1 907650 84 0

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  Publishing History

  First published by Dedalus in 2003

  First ebook edition in 2012

  Dragon’s Eye copyright © Andy Oakes 2002


  The right of Andy Oakes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Printed in Finland by Bookwell

  Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A C.I.P. listing for this book is available on request.