The Machine (An Ethan Stone Thriller)

by Aston, Tom

  To hell with Junko’s meeting with her insider from ShinComm – whatever he knew. He’d find the girl, get her out of there and take her down to Semyonov’s big party at the Zhonghua to talk to the man himself. Then he’d put this Junko on the plane back to Japan. She was a danger to herself and others.

  Chapter 11 - 7:08pm 29 March - Quarry Bay, Hong Kong

  The broiling Hong Kong day was turning into humid night. The red sun of the tropics was melting into the harbour as Stone pushed through the sweltering crowds into the Malaya Street Market. The Snake Market. What was that girl Junko thinking of?

  The “Market” was a narrow lane packed with stalls of snakes, reptiles and other creatures in buckets and cages, positioned next to a red light district. The snakes hung in black, shining strips from wires, the stallholders steadily butchering them with scissors. Men in undershirts sat on wooden crates, drinking snake bile and Mau Tai rice liquor to give them "virility" before their outings to the neighbouring whorehouses. Mongooses prowled on chains around wire buckets writhing with the snakes. Steam from vats of noodles mingled with the acrid smell of the Mau Tai. Stone threaded his way through, looking up as he went for the Ming Dai Hotel. There was a row of beheaded turtles, hanging by their tails, their green legs waving reflexively in the humidity.

  One thing was for sure – it hadn’t been Junko, aka Miss Hello Kitty, who chose this place. Some of the locals were pointing at Stone and shouting in Cantonese. That didn’t make sense either. White Westerners weren’t a rarity in Hong Kong, and they must have tourists down here, ogling the snakes and the bile-drinkers. A bad atmosphere. Stone’s threat-radar twitched like crazy. He checked his watch. Seven-ten. Shit - already late for Junko’s meeting.

  Stone shoved in between a pair of iron barrels - ovens, two metres high, forming a blackened gateway. Their oily smoke drifted balefully over the market. As he peered through the fumes his foreboding was replaced by dread. A large painted sign for the Chinese character “Ming”. This was the Ming Dai Hotel, and it was swarming with police. A woman wailed hysterically in their midst. Kids looked on, slack-jawed, and a solitary tart stood outside in a mini-skirt, holding a cigarette between her lips, texting, looking up occasionally.

  Stone was too late. Whatever was going to happen had already happened. He could go in the hotel and find out more, but he was too late. He would be arrested and questioned just for looking around. He’d have to regroup here.

  Stone slipped back behind one of the tall iron ovens. There was a stallholder, a skinny woman, fanning herself languidly as she stared at the police.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Stone.

  The ama didn’t look round at him. Carried on staring at the police operation. ‘She dead. Girl dead in hotel.’

  Stone’s fists balled in anger behind his back. ‘Murdered?’ he asked.

  The ama shrugged her shoulders and tapped her thumbs to her fingertips. A Chinese gesture that meant she didn’t know.

  Stone face burned at the realization that his only option was to slink away like a thief and hope he hadn’t been noticed. Anger pulsed through him. He had an urge in the pit of his stomach to at least verify what had happened. But looking at the dead woman, even if he got that far, would tell him nothing – other than confirm it was Junko Terashima. Stone would be left with the same facts. The ShinComm guy, or whoever he was, had arranged to meet Junko in this shithole of a hotel. It was only too clear why. A red light area, next to the Snake Market. The Ming Dai Hotel was rented by the hour, occupied by prostitutes. The police would assume that Junko was just another working girl who’d been unlucky. Stone was seething as he shouldered his way through the crowds. Stone had never met this girl, and there was nothing he could have done. But coming after the business with Hooper...

  Stone needed at least to check it was Junko who died. He needed to hang around, ask some questions. He shuffled over to one of the stalls. A snake writhed and lashed as a stallholder clipped its snout to a wire, scissors in hand, ready to peel the reptile open. A mongoose snapped at the writhing creature. Junko had been stupid. Stone had had no chance to stop her. He burned with guilt nonetheless, his guts twisted in determination to find her killer. He could think only of revenge. Revenge for Hooper, and revenge for Junko, the pretty Japanese girl he’d been speaking to only an hour before.

  But revenge is best served…

  Stone stopped and forced himself to think clearly. He’d been repressing the anger about Hooper, and now this. He had to force himself not to care, rediscover the old Stone, the cool killer. He would check out as much as he could, then plan on revenge. Revenge meant ruining Semyonov and exposing him, and anyone else who was behind this. Anger is hot, indiscriminate, but revenge is cold, hard and refined. It is focused. Stone would have to be focused. He would need to be at his very best.

  The killer could be watching Stone right now. Possibly following him. All to the good. He stopped and stood tall to show himself. If someone was watching, Stone wanted to be seen. And he wanted to be found.

  Stone clenched his jaw to channel the anger. Calmed his body and slowed his breathing. Analyzing. The primitive thirst for revenge was something he hadn’t felt for years, and he was going to use it. Junko had been lured to that hotel. Stone was going to lure the killer in turn. For Hooper, for Junko - someone was going to pay an exorbitant price.

  His mind and senses switched to full alert in the crowd – cycling through motives, possibilities, methods. One thing didn’t make sense for a start. Why so crude? It was crude for Semyonov’s SearchIgnition people, with their cool suits and master’s degrees. It would take the police all of two hours to work out Junko wasn’t a prostitute, and find her real identity. And yet the whole thing had been timed to draw Junko away from Semyonov, and give Semyonov’s people their alibis as they attended his “event” at the Zhonghua. The killing had been contracted out for sure. The couple of hours before identification would give time for a hitman to make his exit. That’s all anyone needed in Hong Kong.

  Stone checked his watch. He itched to go to that party, to confront Semyonov face to face, to drag him out from his pampered five-star hotel. But this was a time for ruthlessness and cunning. He would give it a few more minutes to gather what information he could, then he would have to give it up and go after Semyonov. But he’d be coming back to this place.

  Stone walked out from the market into the main street, all traffic and noise. He walked about 300 metres around three sides of a square, back round to a dark doorway where he could observe the police vans, by the entrance to the Snake Market, and check for anyone tailing him

  Stone stood in the shadows as the police operation proceeded. Amongst the Hong Kong Police were a number of tall Chinese men in olive uniforms. They were speaking Mandarin, not the Cantonese language used in Hong Kong, and the heavy “R” sounds of their accents told Stone they were from Northern China. Officers of the Gong An, the Public Security office from Beijing.

  This didn’t make any sense either. Stone had spoken to Junko only an hour or so before. She’d been murdered a matter of minutes ago, and yet the Beijing Public Security people had taken charge from the Hong Kong Police already. Question mark. How did the Beijing Gong An know Junko was here? They’d followed her. And who’s to say that they hadn’t followed Stone?

  Chapter 12 - 7:20pm 29 March - Quarry Bay, Hong Kong

  Stone stayed hidden in the shop doorway for another ten minutes. He saw the Gong An come out of the Snake Market with a body bag, and place it into their olive green truck. No chance to identify the body. Most of the police had gone away, though not all. Things were getting back to normal and cars drove past once more.

  It was dusk already. The street was alive with neon, heavy with traffic again. The Gong An’s truck finally pulled away, and the little crowd of onlookers from the Snake Market had finally dispersed. Only the prostitute remained there, chain-smoking cigarettes in her cheap miniskirt and high-heeled ankle boots, arms crossed in boredom.

/>   Stone watched as a man approached her, a regular “john” by the look of him. But what happened next was a surprise. Stone saw the girl shake her head and turn away a few steps, looking back down at her phone. Didn’t she want the business? Who was he? The man followed her and grabbed her shoulder. Stone stepped instinctively forward, but the girl swivelled fast from her hips, eyes flashing. The man stepped back.

  Stone realised she’d just spit in the guy’s face. The man raised his hand to slap her. Again she was too quick. Stubbed the cigarette on his arm and deftly flicked a foot behind his ankle.

  The punter lay on his back with the spittle still on his cheek. The woman flicked her cigarette down at him in an extravagant gesture of disgust, then stalked away, hips swinging on the high heels, through the traffic in Stone’s direction. This was no tart after all. She’d been observing the whole thing. Police, Gong An, body bag. Everything.

  Stone looked from the shadow as she stepped up onto the pavement in front of him. She languidly lit up another cigarette, holding it in pouting lips. Close-up, she looked too good to be a tart. Her eyes were bright behind the smoky eyeliner, and her skin clear. She leaned her hip against a lamppost and took out her phone once more, using her thumb to work the keys while her other arm trailed lazily behind her, holding the cigarette. The smoke crept in blue tendrils into the still, hot air.

  Stone could just about see her phone screen in the darkness. This girl wasn’t texting. She was looking through photos. The hotel, the police, and then one picture after another of the Gong An. Stone counted twenty at least, and then finally, the pictures he’d been expecting. Three photos of Ethan Stone.

  Well, well. Time to tempt this woman into a quiet alleyway for a “conversation”.

  But at that moment a large motorcycle roared up to a stop beside the tart. Stone saw her glance towards his way as the bike arrived. A glimmer of a smile too. She’d seen him all right. Been watching him. She swung her rear onto the seat of the motorbike, still holding the phone in one hand as she flicked another cigarette onto the sidewalk. There was an unspoken insult in the ping of the cigarette towards Stone. The bike’s engine burbled in readiness while she sat, sidesaddle, feet up on the rest. Looking at the phone like she was on a barstool.

  Change of plan. It was too good to resist. Stone stepped from the shadow and grabbed the phone from her hand as the bike pulled off. A shout. The bike jerked to a halt. The rider in black leathers jumped off and faced up to Stone. Gesturing, shouting. But opening a knife in his palm.

  Stone didn’t look up. He stood on the sidewalk, looking through the photos on the phone. The blade in his peripheral vision stayed a safe two metres away. He felt the smooth rush of adrenaline through his body, but let his heart rate drop. This was the kind of confrontation he was good at. The rider was screaming at him, but it was all bluff. As long the knife stayed at that distance, it was cool. Stone flicked through the photos some more, just to annoy the guy.

  The guy was agitated, but he’d left it too long to be credible. Stone goaded him. Shot a cheeky glance, then looked back down. ‘Nice photos. The lady has a thing for men in uniform.’ He was acting cool, but his thumb was scrolling fast through the photos looking for confirmation. And there it was. The tart had been very scientific. A close-up photo of Junko Terashima going into the hotel; then another shot, later, of a body covered in a blanket, but with a slender arm trailing from it, wearing Terashima’s watch and bracelets. It was Junko all right. Stone felt it like kick to the stomach.

  The knife jabbed towards him. Still a safe distance. Stone didn’t move, but watched the guy’s feet with sly eyes, in case he was foolish enough to get closer. Stone’s anger had just congealed into cold hatred and this guy with the bike leathers had picked the wrong time to look for trouble.

  The girl’s heeled ankle boots came into view. She stepped in front of the rider, put her hand on his chest. A gesture of authority, that. Almost ownership. The rider palmed the knife.

  ‘You kill Junko,’ she said simply to Stone. There was no anger in her voice, but Stone sensed it in her nonetheless. She wanted to blame someone.

  She was trying to make him angry, but it wouldn’t work. Stone was back in business. She’d be the one to get angry.

  Stone looked up from the phone finally, looked her in the eye, his eyes like chips of grey ice. ‘You know who killed her?’ He fixed her, but she simply looked back with the vacant eyes of an insolent teenager. ‘Let me guess,' said Stone. 'China21, the “protest” group. And you’re funded by Semyonov.’

  That did it.

  Hatred flashed across her face. She spat viciously, a great gout of saliva landing on his chest.

  Stone looked down in bemusement at his shirt, then smiled up at her. ‘A simple “no” would have sufficed.’

  She snatched at the phone but Stone pulled it away, teasingly holding it from her. She glared, but stopped grabbing. Stone responded by offering the phone to her with a mocking bow. Resentfully she took it from him.

  ‘I warned Junko,’ she said. She looked like she was carrying a similar set of emotions to Stone. Anger, guilt, lust for revenge. But suppressed. She was suppressing it just like Stone had. Like him, she’d been there to get Junko Terashima out of harm’s way. They’d both failed.

  Stone turned to go, but the woman spoke again. ‘She told me about you, Mr Ethan Stone. And your photographs from Afghanistan.’

  Junko, Junko, Junko! How could she be so casual with information? She’d given away her sources to this dodgy Chinese protest group, who knew far more than seemed possible. No wonder she got killed.

  Stone watched the motorcycle move away into the traffic. The tart glanced round at him in the traffic. A smile and a nod - patronizing. Or trying to be.

  Hooper was dead. Junko Terashima was dead. Stone would quell the anger, like he had done in the old days when he’d lost a comrade. He would crush and quell the emotions. There was no other way.

  He looked at himself in a shop window and wiped the spittle from his jacket. That Chinese girl – he’d barely met her. But he’d connected with her. She’d been thinking like him and repressing the same feelings.

  Stone checked the time. He was hardly in party-mood, but Semyonov’s “event” was definitely one party he wasn’t going to miss.

  Chapter 13 - 8:12pm 29 March - Zhonghua Hotel, Central, Hong Kong

  The magnificent Zhonghua Hotel. Stone had made his way to a large lobby in front of one of the hotel’s ornate reception rooms: The Crabflower Club. Stone walked in and picked up one of the house telephones at a distance from the entrance to the club. He made like he was on the phone while he observed the entrance and figured out how he was going to crash the party.

  A single hostess stood behind a counter at the entrance to the Crabflower Club, flanked by two tuxedo’d security men. There were two obvious ways of getting in here. A simple con – pretend to be someone else, bluff your way in, and be sure you get the body language right, and say the right things. There was also “dumpster diving”. The hostess was taking the tickets and letters of invitation from the guests and throwing them in some kind of waste bin behind the counter. If Stone could make out he was a cleaner and swipe the bin, he’d be sure to find something to get him in.

  The problem was, the bin was hidden right behind there, beside one of the security meatheads. Stone thought the simple con would be more fun in any case. He observed the hostess and the two security men for a few more seconds.

  Torso and arm movements are strong giveaways to activity in a person’s limbic brain, the body’s emotional centre. The Chinese hostess was bending forward toward the guests, confident and friendly – but not subservient. Every so often her body language would betray her and she leant back, or angled her torso defensively, side-on to one of the guests. Someone she didn’t like. She also subconsciously leaned or moved away from both the security guys whenever they stepped towards her.

  Stone had counted on searches, frisking, lynx-eyed detectives
he’d have to make his way past. But there was none of this. It was all very low key - no doubt Semyonov wanted to look cool. Getting in should be easy if Stone made the right impression on the hostess. In the second he walked up, she had to trust him more than she trusted the security men beside her. He put down the phone and approached the hostess, gaining eye contact for a second. Warm smile. Then he flashed a look at the security boys. They wore the lapel pin in the shape of a small, silver hammer. The same silver hammer Stone had seen on Ekström in Afghanistan. These were Special Circumstances men in tuxedos – and yet the atmosphere couldn’t be more different from what he’d expected.

  Stone looked again at the hostess. She wore a Chinese silk dress, elegantly high up on the neck and with the leg slit from ankle to thigh. Stone ran his eyes over her, from shapely hip to breasts. The split-second examination that hints at interest and flattery. So she knows she’s been noticed, but no more. Helps build rapport with some women, and this lady was one of them.

  He glanced over the counter at the name badges for the guests. Not many left. He was late after his interlude at the Snake Market.

  ‘There I am. Armistead Harker,’ said Stone, glancing back up in her eyes.

  She returned the smile with a hint of flirtatiousness. Leaned forward, looked Stone back in the eye and paused, like she was thinking about it. The meathead to the right had angled his body. Aggressive. Not good.

  ‘Professor Stone,’ said the hostess, with a knowing smile. ‘No need for that.’ She handed over a badge in the name Ethan Stone. ‘We were expecting you.’

  Well, well. The woman had been told to look out for Stone, and she’d found him. She was perfect hostess for Semyonov’s party - a good figure and “the smarts” as the Americans say. Masters degree from one of Virginia Carlisle’s “good schools”. Equally at ease in English and Mandarin. All part of the carefully burnished image that surrounded everything to do with Semyonov – relaxed, cool, intelligent. No one – least of all those Semyonov invited - would believe that he was anything other than the super-intelligent, cultured man. A moral and intellectual hero, as George Watts put it. Could it be that the naïve young reporter, Junko Terashima, was the only one to see through Semyonov’s facade? Looking around at the cool intellectuals arriving at the Crabflower Club, Stone half-doubted Junko’s story himself. But then there were still the men in tuxedos with a silver hammer on their lapels. And Junko was dead.