by Aston, Tom
‘So we can’t be sure it’s him?’ said Stone.
‘Oh, it was him. I saw the body myself,’ said Virginia. ‘On a gurney in the back of an ambulance. He’s pretty unmistakable. But they wouldn’t let us film it.’
‘Something they don’t want you to see, maybe? I’ll give that bastard Semyonov one thing,’ said Stone. ‘He keeps us guessing. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to ask a few questions here. Semyonov cashes out, quits his company, and signs away his whole fortune in only a couple of weeks. Making sure it’s all in front of witnesses, recorded on six cameras. He’s learned Chinese. Add to all that the business of the weapons dealing and the murder of Junko Terashima. Finally, Professor Zhang drops into conversation that Semyonov had come to China to work on something called The Machine. Then bang, Semyonov is dead.’
Stone turned to face her. ‘Let’s cut the crap,’ said Stone. ‘You want me to go undercover and dig up the real story - discover what Semyonov was really up to. And you think I’ll do it because I’ve no where else to go.’
She smiled in agreement. She could be disarmingly naïve, this woman. Perhaps it was her vanity. ‘Face it, Stone. I could put staffers from the Hong Kong office on this, but they can’t do a thing in China without being followed - but you’re perfect. You’re happy to go undercover, for some reason you’re happy to avoid publicity – even though it would help your cause.’ Virginia looked at Stone with what was meant to be a knowing look ‘But mostly because you like to make things difficult for yourself,’ she said. ‘You’d be going into China after you’ve just been banned. You can’t resist.’
‘You’re saying I can’t resist you, Miss Carlisle?’
She blushed just slightly. ‘No. You know what I mean.’
He was playing her along, but Stone himself was still mystified by the whole business. Like who had killed Junko, and who had tried to kill him. This Ekström character for sure. But then who was Ekström working for? Semyonov, who was now dead? Virginia Carlisle saw a big shining mystery to be unraveled, but she was naïve. This was the tip of the iceberg. She knew nothing of Semyonov’s weapons, nothing of Ekström, certainly nothing of the Machine.
‘OK, Virginia.’ If Carlisle wanted him to do this, he’d make her work for it. ‘I’ll need access to any notes that Junko kept, including anything she had on her contacts in China21,’ urged Stone, looking doubtful. ‘You’ll also need to tell me everything you know about her.’
‘Is that a yes?’ said Virginia.
She must really want this. ‘It’s a maybe,’ he said, stringing her along. ‘Now. Junko Terashima. Her files, her contacts. You’ve been through them already.’
‘What makes you think..?’
‘Because I mentioned China21 back there, and you didn’t question it. You’ve been through her stuff. Or your flunkeys have.’
She was disconcerted. ‘I’ll take it as a compliment, Stone. Little Miss Junko was not all she appeared to be. Contacts with Chinese dissidents. Real extremists. Also shadowy corporate figures from ShinComm…’
‘You mean she was a real journalist, who did her own work? Whatever next?’
She ignored the jibe. ‘Are you in?’
‘I’ll need cash, some false ID’s, some more cash, a Chinese visa,’ he said. ‘The Hong Kong police took a liking to the last lot.’
‘Already done,’ she said, pointing to an envelope on the table. Stone had seen the envelope as soon as they’d walked in. A schoolgirl error on her part. Stone looked inside. There was even a GNN American Express card. Fat lot of use that would be in China, but the cash and false passport would be fine. GNN had come up trumps here. ‘Now, are you in?’ she asked again.
She was keen. And the keener she is, the longer she has to wait. And so naïve. Stone would take the envelope and then do exactly as he wanted.
‘Just tell me about Junko Terashima’s contacts,’ he said, pushing her a little further.
‘There’s a scad of stuff in there,’ she said, ‘But there are two important contacts. Someone called Ying Ning gave Junko all the info about ShinComm – working conditions, suicide rates – mostly boring stuff. But she sounds dangerous. Unstable – she’s part of an extremist dissident group called China21. The other guy who only comes on the scene in the last two weeks is a man called Robert Oyang.’
Stone had what he wanted. Without speaking, Stone took the envelope with the cash and false passports from the table. Virginia smiled broadly, as if she’d won.
‘Guys like you feel like trouble follows them around,’ she said. ‘But the truth is, you make it a full time job to go looking for trouble.’
What was she? His best friend? Stone didn’t do “personal chats” with anyone, least of all stuck-up, millionaire journalists.
‘But you have to do one thing for me,’ said Stone, making it sound like an order. He took the small computer from his backpack. ‘I’m going to email to you a video clip which was sent to me. I’m afraid it’s not very nice,’ he said, tapping in Virginia’s personal email address. The one he’d memorized just to freak her out. ‘I want you to get your techie TV people to look at it. There's something weird about the video format. Remember, it’s the format I’m interested in, not what you see in the video.'
'And what is the video?'
'It’s Junko Terashima’s murder.’
Chapter 22
http://dougcarslake.blogs.Notfutile.com
UFOWATCH BLOG
Billionaire genius Steven Semyonov may be DEAD, but the weird stories about him refuse to go away. Since his death, the staff at his Marin County mansion has been speaking out about his extraordinary personal habits.
Semyonov’s staffers say he never took a shower. He had trusted servants rub down his white, hairless body with medical alcohol twice every day. He also insisted on a whole-body massage with almond oil, sometimes twice a day.
That oil and alcohol gel sounds kinky, huh? But the people at the mansion confirm they never knew Semyonov to have any relationship, sexual or otherwise.
Although Semyonov retired to his bedroom for many hours, staff suspect he never slept. He often appeared to meditate, but for only a few minutes.
Semyonov is known to have learnt many languages, seemingly without effort. Staff say he would sit in front of two or even three television shows at the same time, in different languages. Recently he watched two or three channels at a time in Chinese.
Semyonov never allowed himself to be X-rayed, either at airports or hospitals.
Does something strike you about all this? Is it just me? This guy was NOT FUCKING HUMAN!!!!!!!!
No wonder the Chinks killed him off. Coal truck my ass.
But supposing Semyonov was killed in that “tragic accident”? OK. I’ve got one question for you guys in Beijing: how’s that autopsy going, boys? Notice anything, shall we say, different?
Chapter 23 - 12:10pm 30 March – Zhonghua Hotel, Hong Kong
Stone left Virginia Carlisle’s sumptuous rooms on the forty-third floor and took the elevator down. Interesting what Virginia had said back there about Stone always looking for trouble. Stone had started this because someone had goaded him with the video of Hooper’s death. He’d been determined to avenge him by nailing Semyonov.
Perhaps Virginia had a point. What Virginia didn’t get, however, was Stone’s need to understand – to figure out what was happening. Semyonov might be dead, but Stone felt farther than ever from figuring out what had gone on in the whole business.
Ground floor. Stone stepped out of the hotel elevator and strode over to the reception desk. He was now persona non grata in Hong Kong and China, or would be by the following morning. If he was going to stick around, it was only polite to stay beneath the radar. Going back to the hostel was out of the question. But there was somewhere else to stay where they wouldn’t think to look for him.
‘I’d like a room please. Not sure how many nights,’ he said, offering the passport straight from Carlisle’s large envelope. He a
lso waved the Amex card at clerk. ‘I’m with GNN,’ he said. ‘You can charge the room to the same account as Ms Carlisle. Room 4314.’
That GNN credit card she had given him was solely for the sole purpose of keeping tabs on him. Did she really think he’d be stupid enough to use it? Even here?
Stone went up to the room, ordered room service and took a shower. It felt good, it really did. Stone was almost surprised. He tried to think when he’d last indulged himself like this. Like… never.
--o0o0o--
After a lunch of lobster at Ms Carlisle’s expense, Stone felt like a different man. In fact he could see how the pampered international traveler like Carlisle came to feel so self-important. Imagine all that obsequious attention, all that servility, day after day. Over time, it would do something to a man. Perhaps even to him. Stone had often felt that soft luxury was a kind of vice which could ensnare people. It ought to bring out the puritan curmudgeon in him. It ought to but... but he’d leave the puritanism for another day. The fact that Virginia Carlisle was paying for it all made ordering lobster on room service just about acceptable. And it did taste good.
Finally he got down to business. Carlisle thought she’d just hired Stone to do a job for her. All she’d done in reality was give him some cash, a passport, and a charge card he wouldn’t use. First of all he sent off a little research project to a couple of his students back in England. Find out the real ownership structure of New Machine Technology Corporation.
Then, Stone had to figure out where he was going next. He’d come here to link up with Junko Terashima and build the story that would destroy Semyonov. But not only was Terashima dead, Semyonov was gone too. So maybe Stone should slope off back to Europe with the bits of Terashima’s files that Virginia had given him. That would put him on the right side of Zhang’s twenty-four deadline to leave Hong Kong. He could take himself off and continue his research into the part the Special Circumstances and SearchIgnition were playing in all this.
On the other hand, Hooper had recently had an executioner’s bullet drilled through his skull, and Junko Terashima had been killed in a way that would have won a nod of approval from Charles Manson. Stone felt in no mood to meekly obey the deadline set by Zhang, or anyone else. He wasn’t about to go home, just as things were getting interesting.
As for the option of staying put and doing some more “research” … who was he kidding? Staying in one place was the riskiest thing he could do. And there were the questions, sprouting and spawning almost by the hour - where were the weapons coming from? What was Semyonov doing in China? And what hell was the Machine, that Semyonov had spent twenty-five billion to get his hands on it? Those questions were luring him on into Mainland China. In Hong Kong he faced arrest and possibly another “chat” with Professor Zhang. In China, on a false passport, Stone could be shot as a spy.
But then, there had been many times when Stone could have been shot. It was not the kind of thing that had ever bothered him that much. Stone took out his laptop, logged into the anonymized NotFutile web site, and began to type.
http://stone.blogs.notfutile.com
RIP Junko Terashima
Amid the press ballyhoo surrounding the death of Steven Semyonov, the murder of the young journalist Junko Terashima has barely been mentioned.
Terashima was the reporter who confronted Semyonov about his weapons activities a couple of weeks ago. She was fired as a troublemaker by GNN, but was so convinced of Semyonov’s guilt that she went off to Hong Kong to confront him. Lured away from Semyonov’s announcement event, she was murdered in the backstreets of Hong Kong just minutes before Semyonov declared he was giving all his money to the Chinese.
Now Terashima’s files have been leaked to NotFutile.com. They include two very significant contacts in Mainland China. To protect the safety of these Chinese citizens, NotFutile cannot reveal their identities. Nonetheless, we intend to pursue the story Terashima was working on.
It should at least be possible to smoke out Ying Ning using the posting on the NotFutile.com web site. But it was this Robert Oyang that Stone really wanted – the man Terashima had gone to meet in Hong Kong. According to Junko's files, Oyang had been Steven Semyonov's closest associate in China.
Chapter 24 - 10:15am 30 March - Los Angeles, California
Chris Ostrovich had hooked up his laptop to the fifty-inch high definition screen in the office meeting room. He had on screen the grisly video Stone had sent to Virginia Carlisle. He was forcing himself to examine it, stopping and running and replaying, and at the same time talking to Virginia on a Skype link.
‘I know, Chris,’ she said, ‘It’s a real video nasty. Stone sent it this morning, through his anonymized email server.’
Ostrovich was a vision technician at the GNN Online web site. He was watching the footage in Los Angeles. ‘I’m not sure what’s going on, Ms Carlisle. I’ve watched parts of it fifty times. Gonna give me nightmares.’ He flinched as the video began again, and the camera settled on the girl in that crummy hotel room.
The question was all about the video file format, but it was impossible not to get distracted by the pictures. The young woman was seen against the grey wall of the hotel room, standing on her toes and stripped naked, hands tied to the light fitting. That was bad enough, but there was terror in her eyes. Ostrovich still had to look away when it zoomed onto her face. The pretty eyes disfigured by pain and fear, staring at someone or something. And then the ululation and writhing of the poor woman as the man came to her and sprayed her naked body with that weird aerosol – her neck, her breasts, between her legs. She screamed as he did it. What was it? Acid?
‘Try to be forensic about it,’ Stone had said in his email. ‘Turn off the sound. Use the zoom function to look at the details in the room. Don’t look at her face. It won’t be as bad and you’ll learn more. There must be some clue as to who, or what...’
It sounded a good plan. Except for the person who had to do it. Ostrovich had zoomed in, turned off the sound, frozen the frames. He done all he could to avoid looking at the perverted spectacle. He zoomed in on the bedside table. There could be a card or a matchbook he could focus in on. Something that could give him a clue about the killer maybe. He zoomed in on the bedside table. Still quite clear – high res. Ostrovich zoomed in further. Now this was strange. His brow creased in bewilderment and he zoomed in further still. What the hell?
Ostrovich finally saw what this Stone fellow had meant.
‘Any ideas Chris?’ Virginia Carlisle said again into the headset. ‘Stone said there was something weird about the file format or something.’ Ostrovich was barely listening, and he certainly wasn’t looking at the girl’s eyes any more.
‘OK, Ms Carlisle,’ said Ostrovich at length. ‘Er… How do I say this?’ He didn’t want to sound stupid in front of a star reporter. ‘I’ve a video clip here, which plays on some kind of Internet browser-based video player. Works on any computer in fact. The file he sent you looks way too small for a clip of around two minutes. It’s a little over a meg. Yet I can zoom in, and in, and in... It seems like I can zoom in as far as I want, and the image is still razor sharp. Never gets grainy or blocky. I’ve filled the whole of the fifty-inch monitor here with a close-up image of the ashtray on the table, and it’s still crystal.’
He felt a little stupid. ‘I know a few things about online video and television, Ms Carlisle, and aah… you just can’t do that. I feel like I’m standing in front of a crime scene with a full-size TV camera, looking at whatever I want, in realtime. Yet all I have is a tiny file sent by email. This isn’t just a better system than we’re using. It’s like nothing I’ve seen before. I’m gonna have to study the file programming format and call you back, Ms Carlisle.’
-oO0Oo-
Ostrovich rang back after two hours.
‘It took me about an hour, but I managed to break into the programming code,’ said Ostrovich. ‘It’s just that...’ and his voice paused.
‘That what? What is i
t?’ asked Carlisle.
‘I’ve no idea,’ said the technician, embarrassed. ‘Virginia, this could be a computer program from Mars. It’s full of advanced mathematics – fractals, I think - but like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s not a big program – in fact it’s incredibly compact. I just... don’t understand it. I feel like a five-year-old trying to decipher Ancient Greek. It’s like no programming language, no software I’ve ever seen. Someone has decided to tear up every programming method, every software architecture that has been used for the last fifty years.’
‘OK, Chris. Thanks,’ said Virginia Carlisle, with a note of exasperation. ‘Can’t you even tell where it came from? If the technology is so unusual, that at least should give us a clue.’
‘That’s the point,’ said Ostrovich. ‘It’s not unusual. At least not in China. It’s called SmoothVision. “Grainless, HD video on the Internet with no delays” according to their web site. Turns out there are over twenty million copies of this program in use, mainly in South China. The technology tells us nothing whatever about the murder, Virginia. Except that some programmer in China is way, way ahead of us. This could revolutionize the whole of television, and it’s made by a firm I never heard of...’
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Carlisle, ‘A Chinese company called New Machine Technology.’
Chapter 25 - 8:02am 1 April - Hung Hom, Hong Kong
The door to the apartment was open, and Stone pushed his way in. Light flooded the room, showing off a selection of brutal modern art prints on the wall. There was the smell of strong coffee. A Chinese woman was sprawled across the solitary armchair with one leg hanging over the arm. Skinny black jeans and a black singlet, pulled tight over her breasts. No Asian subservience from this woman, that was for sure.
