Wearily, Shunin raised his eyes from his plate. ‘And give him the chance to tell us how we can dance our way to Hell? What would be the point?’
‘We must try to reason with him,’ Blythe insisted.
‘But Mao is not a reasonable man.’ Shunin sucked his fingers before wiping them on his napkin. ‘You want a solution? Then you must get rid of him.’
‘Get rid…? But even if we could, what sort of message would that be?’
‘A most effective one,’ Shunin said.
She shook her head, not in contradiction but in confusion. ‘I’m not sure I can accept that. There are rules, laws. We mustn’t forget the hand of history is on our shoulders.’
‘Nor must we forget that Mao’s hand is at our throats,’ Shunin added drily.
‘So what are you suggesting, Papasha?’ Konev asked.
‘I repeat,’ Shunin replied, in a manner that suggested he wasn’t used to repeating himself, ‘there is only one way to persuade Mao, and that’s to get rid of him.’ He picked at a sliver of lobster flesh he had found attached to his thumb. ‘Permanently.’
Suddenly D’Arby, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, began to splutter in disbelief. ‘Assassination? That’s comic-book stuff, Mr President. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen, not in civilized countries.’
‘Depends on your definition of civilized,’ Washington interjected. ‘The Chinese claim thousands of years of civilization, and every one of them has been marked by butchery.’
Much like the Russians, Harry thought, although they couldn’t claim their version of civilization went back anything like so far. And what had the British and Americans between them achieved in Iraq, apart from leaving the Iraqi leader dangling crook-necked on the end of a rope? Sometimes the definition of civilization seemed to have indistinct and very grubby edges.
‘Prime Minister,’ Shunin said, ‘you have brought me to this place, and to this point. I didn’t seek it, but you insisted. You can’t now pretend to be elsewhere.’
‘But you’re talking…butchery,’ D’Arby protested.
‘Not butchery,’ Washington corrected, joining in. ‘A little judicious carving. Let’s carve him as a dish fit for the gods. Shakespeare. He was British, I seem to remember.’
‘We need more than an ancient cliché to justify what you’re suggesting,’ D’Arby bit back, rustling in discontent, yet Harry had the suspicion that this was all part of D’Arby’s game, egging the arrogant American on. Now the Prime Minister was looking at Blythe, wanting to test her opinion. Harry sensed from her frown that she was still undecided.
‘Where’s the law in all this?’ she asked softly.
‘The law?’ Shunin shrugged. ‘The law of survival. What more is needed?’
‘But assassination. Deliberate assassination,’ she continued. ‘That can never be a legitimate weapon.’
The Russian’s dark eyes danced in mockery. ‘Forgive me, Madam President, but how many times did you Americans try to kill Castro? And wasn’t it you who sent bombers after Gaddafi? There was Saddam, of course. And Diem in South Vietnam, butchered in the back of a van, even though he was your ally. Not to mention Allende and all those Africans.’
All before her time, of course, but it would have been a feeble excuse to offer. She didn’t bother, settling back in silence.
‘Think about it as a pre-emptive strike. A judicial assassination,’ Konev suggested. ‘One blow and we can wash our hands of the swine.’
‘You’ll never be able to do that.’ It was a new voice. Harry’s. They all looked at him in some surprise.
‘Ah, Mr Jones. I’m glad you could join us,’ Shunin said. ‘And what is it, precisely, we will not be able to do?’
‘Wash your hands and be clean.’
‘You are something of an expert in this field?’
Harry used no words; his stare said it all.
He had killed, of course, that was part of Harry’s job, as a soldier. And not always from an anonymous distance. Sometimes you had to look the poor heathen in the eyes. Like Michael Burnside. Yes, he’d even known the poor bastard’s name.
That time in Northern Ireland, the time of the great flap. Late 80s. The dirty war at its height. His commanding officer told him the story. Burnside was a civvy clerk at headquarters, loyal, likeable, trusted, the man who inputted all the most sensitive security data into the computer system–data like the names and backgrounds of every single one of the informers on their list. And something had turned the data clerk–they didn’t find out until later that he’d discovered a British soldier screwing his wife, and those Northern Irish Prods weren’t the forgiving type. Burnside couldn’t forgive, and neither could he forget. It tortured him, and he had wanted to fight back, to hurt them as much as he had been hurt. So he had agreed to switch sides, provide the IRA with the details of everyone on that security list–not make a copy, nothing that anyone could find in his pocket and lock him up for, but stored in his mind. He was a man who enjoyed memory games, so he had sat patiently and memorized the entire list, every single man, woman and teenage snitch the British had. A hundred lives, all about to be lost because of one undersexed misfit.
In telling him all this, Harry’s commanding officer knew what he was asking him to do. Not that he said so in as many words, everything was deeply deniable, but the British army was in a hole and Harry was just the sort of man who might dig them out.
Mavericks make up their own mind, and sometimes they make their own law, too. For Harry it wasn’t so much a matter of right against wrong, because he had enough understanding of what the British had been up to in Northern Ireland to know they had no exclusive claim on virtue. But he knew just how many names were on that list, how many families were wrapped up in it, how many lives would be destroyed if the list was exposed. So many lives, matched against one.
He went to the address of the clerk, a terraced house in the Shankill area of west Belfast. Harry knew the wife had left and there were no children. That made it easier. He followed Burnside across a patch of waste ground to the pub, where he watched the man, sitting alone, morose, no eye contact with others, ignoring their casual greetings, trying to disappear beneath the varnish of his booth before finishing his drink and rising to make his solitary way home once more. A pathetic figure, the sort of guy Harry imagined was never happier than when filling his evenings with a pub quiz, using that blotting-paper mind of his to show others that he wasn’t just as wimp. And yet this no one was someone, someone who had a right to his life, as dull as it might be. And yet, and yet others had a right to their lives, too, and, in Northern Ireland, life and death was sometimes a zero-sum game.
Harry intercepted him on the waste ground. Burnside stopped as soon as he saw Harry on the path ahead.
‘Hello, Michael,’ Harry said.
‘What do you want?’ Burnside demanded, but Harry was close enough to see that in his eyes he already knew. There was no room for untidy ends, not on the Shankill.
‘I’m sorry, Michael.’
And Harry shot him twice. Head shots. No suffering.
It had seemed the right thing to do, even the righteous thing to do, to save so many. Yet it had cost Harry a part of his soul.
And now D’Arby and the rest were staring at him in the candlelight.
‘You do this,’ Harry said softly, ‘and you will wake up feeling a little dirty, every day. You’ll spend the rest of your life trying to wash it off your hands, Mr Konev, but no matter how hard you scrub, you won’t succeed.’
‘Are you suggesting it would be wrong?’ Shunin asked.
There was a silence, interrupted only by the sputtering of a candle.
‘It’s not my decision to take, Mr President.’
The twist of contempt had barely begun to flare in the Russian’s eye before Harry extinguished it.
‘But I’ll not use that as a reason to duck your question. If getting rid of Mao could save my country, I’d do it myself.’
‘Ah, a patriot,’ Shun
in observed quietly.
‘A soldier, Mr President. I was once a soldier. It was as a soldier that I met my first Russian.’
‘Where?’
‘Afghanistan.’
They were like two medieval knights sizing each other up, and for the first time Shunin allowed himself to show a little emotion. No one came back from Afghanistan without having first struggled to the other side of Hell. He offered a slight nod of the head. Harry took it as a warning that Shunin would never again underestimate him.
‘Now, perhaps, I understand why your Prime Minister brought you, Mr Jones.’ He moved the tips of his fingers together. ‘Did he live, your Russian?’
‘He was alive when I left him.’
‘Then may his good fortune follow us all.’
‘With the exception of Mao,’ D’Arby added, taking his cue to bring an end to their personal joust.
‘In any event, I don’t think we need to worry too much about getting our hands dirty, do we?’ Shunin growled. ‘It seems that Mao has a substantial lead on us in that department.’
The Russian had the moment, and he used it. ‘So, Madam President, Mr Prime Minister–the proposal is that we rid ourselves of this menace.’ He left the thought to hover between them. ‘Does either of you disagree?’
No one moved. Even the candles froze.
‘Do you believe there can be any other solution?’ he added quietly.
Silence.
Then Blythe began slowly shaking her head, she hadn’t yet caught up with the rest of them. It was Washington who, in his own idiosyncratic style, came to his President’s rescue.
‘Pointless,’ the American said drily. ‘Even if you could find a means of getting to him, it would be a waste of time.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ D’Arby snapped, not bothering to disguise his irritation.
‘Oh, I have no ethical problem with the elimination of Mao, not at all,’ he responded, pronouncing the name as if the Chinese leader were salad dressing. ‘Justice requires he come to a sticky end. But let’s think it through. The problem with China isn’t one man, it’s the entire system. We get rid of Mao, but nothing will change. The system will go marching on, millions and millions of little yellow worker ants ready to take over the world. Take just one of them out? Totally pointless.’
It was as though a hand grenade had been tossed into the room and was slowly rolling across the table. They sat transfixed by his words.
‘What are you implying, Marcus?’ Blythe demanded softly.
‘We go the whole hog.’
‘Are you being deliberately contrary?’ D’Arby snapped.
Washington’s expression glowed with contempt.
It was Nipper who broke the moment, bouncing into the room, his arrival announcing that Flora was on her way and their dinner was ready to change course. Blythe looked at her plate; it had scarcely been touched and she had no appetite. She put her napkin to one side. ‘If you don’t mind,’ she said, ‘I’ll pass on the rest of dinner. I’d like to reflect on things for a while. We can pick the discussion up in the morning.’
D’Arby sprang to his feet, helping draw back her chair, and the others rose in their places. Shunin was last, his movements as always considered, almost defiant. From the doorway Flora set her jaw in discontent as she saw her carefully planned meal being cast into disarray. As Blythe departed, Shunin helped himself to another drink, Konev sat silent, his face taut and grim, while Washington leaned against the mantle, staring into the hearth and quarrelling with the ashes.
When Harry looked at D’Arby, he expected to find the expression of a man who had been pushed too far. Instead he thought he saw the flicker of a smile. This was still his game. And in that instant, Harry knew he could no longer trust him.
The early hours of Saturday morning. Shanjing.
‘We must stop,’ Li Changchun announced, his voice frail with fatigue.
‘Never!’ Fu insisted.
‘Minister, we must rest.’
‘But we have almost finished.’
‘Almost finished, yes. So now it becomes even more important that the task be completed accurately, not by those who are so exhausted that they cannot tell the difference between computer code and a child’s puzzle.’
‘This is not a time for faint hearts.’
‘Nor for mistakes,’ the director insisted stubbornly.
Fu’s lips wobbled in indecision. He had not a glimmer of understanding of what these people did, only that he needed them, and he could see how whipped they all were. One had collapsed over her desk. ‘So when?’ he demanded.
‘In a few hours. After we have slept.’
‘And then?’
‘We finish the task. Go on to the next.’ The director thought he had the measure of this most unwelcome visitor. ‘You, of course, will have the honour of pressing the final button, Minister.’
They were about to destroy a nation, one that had been unconquered for a thousand years and had ruled the greatest empire the world had ever known. Fu Zhang was not a patient man but it was said that the journey of a thousand miles is taken one step at a time, and this was to be the first and most glorious step of them all. A few hours more could make no difference. The rest might even make the experience more memorable. The wretched Li was right, there was nothing to be gained by hurrying and tripping. With a lingering sense of reluctance, Fu rose from his chair.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bedtime, Friday. Castle Lorne.
Blythe Edwards lay in her bath, an old-fashioned roll top, surrounded by sweet-scented candles with a tumbler of whisky at her side, hoping the hot water would seep away the many miseries that had wormed their way inside. First it had been Arnie, now Mao, men who seemed determined to bring low all the things she stood for. Bastards.
She loved her country and had promised to serve it, no matter what the personal cost, and she’d always accepted that would require sacrifice, but until this evening she’d had no idea how difficult it would be, trying to run the world while at the same time dragging a ruined marriage behind her. That hadn’t been in the game plan. It undermined her sense of self-worth, knocked away the foundations. She was beginning to fear she couldn’t do it all on her own. She felt so lonely.
No, she felt far worse than that. She felt humiliated. It was absurd, she was the most powerful woman on the planet, yet she couldn’t even keep hold of one miserable excuse for a man. When the rest of the world found that out, the jackals would have a field day, and no matter how she tried to tell herself otherwise, it mattered what they thought. She was a politician, after all. And a woman.
She had screwed up big time. Her life stank, this whole Mao thing stank. And it was all going to get worse. She took a gulp of whisky, chewing it before swallowing, trying to find comfort, but it didn’t work. She wasn’t right for the job, as a president, or as a wife. A trickle of perspiration made an unsteady path down her temple. Her face was flushed. She was on the point of tears.
She wasn’t up for this, but was anyone? Yes, she thought, some were up for it, seemed almost enthusiastic. Wanted to go to war. Yet what had Sun Tzu written? Know your enemy. Sound advice. But she didn’t know this enemy, it was all confusion. Truth was, right now she didn’t even know herself.
She lay back in her bath, miserable, as the steam mingled with her tears and trickled them away.
Late Friday night. Castle Lorne.
Nearly eleven. Harry lay awake in bed. Despite the rigours of the last couple of days, he couldn’t sleep, Michael Burnside wouldn’t let him. The clerk sat in the chair on the opposite side of the room, staring. As always, he said nothing, it was Harry who did all the talking, contriving a one-handed debate about the rights and wrongs of what he had done. It was simple; he had murdered an unarmed man. Except Burnside hadn’t been unarmed, he’d had information, and information could be the most devastating of weapons in the wrong hands. And it hadn’t been murder, either; it had been–what was the phrase Washington
had used? A judicial assassination. Except it hadn’t been judicial, merely necessary. Harry wouldn’t even offer the excuse that he’d been obeying orders, because his CO had taken care to ensure that not even a whisper of an order was given. He didn’t need to. Unwritten codes, unspoken appeals, that was how soldiers fought the dirty war. OK, so Harry had done no wrong, his action had saved dozens of lives, and the entire army command structure would back him to the hilt, in private. Except–why were there always so many exceptions, Michael?–if the matter ever became public, his commanders would say not a word, and the only word that others would use then would be murder. But you won’t say anything, will you, Michael? You can’t. Because I killed you. And so it went on, with Harry’s conscience scurrying around in the darker recesses of his soul, looking for a place to hide.
The house was silent. Everyone had long since retreated to their rooms and Harry’s head was buried in his pillow when he thought he heard the creak of a footstep on the stair. A couple of seconds later he was sure of it. Someone was out there, and not in search of a glass of water, for then they would have switched on the light, but there was none showing beneath his door.
Harry went to his window, which gave him a view across the forecourt to the causeway beyond. The moon was new and the cloud cover thick, but in the fragments of light Harry saw a figure gliding past, heading for the causeway. A man, by the size, he thought, but couldn’t be sure. And not on a night-time stroll, judging by the cautious yet determined step.
Harry hesitated. What to do–to follow? Or to ignore and forget? Yet from the far side of the room the eyes of Michael Burnside reminded Harry that he wasn’t a man of hesitations, he was a maverick, one who got on with things in his own style. So he dressed quickly and crept down the stairs.
There was a side door leading from the kitchen; Harry found it left on the latch. The night walker was clearly intending to return, and wanting to do so as surreptitiously as he had left–yes, he, Harry was sure of that now, from the manner of his walk. Harry set off in pursuit, his shoes crunching on the gravel, feeling for every step on ground he could not see.
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