Axel looked past the fluttering banner; saw how Ebert turned to talk to those behind him, so at ease in his arrogance, and swore again to bring him low. To pile the foul truth high, burying his flawless reputation.
He shuddered, frightened by the sheer intensity of what he felt; knowing that had he a gun and the opportunity, he would have tried to kill the man, right there and then. Up on the balcony, the Eberts turned away, making their way back inside. As the doors closed behind them the lights went down, leaving the space before the mansion in darkness.
The cheering died. Axel threw the banner down. All about him the crowd was dispersing, making for the barriers. He turned, following them, then stopped, looking back. Was it that? Was it excess of luxury that corrupted a man? Or were some men simply born evil and others good?
He looked ahead, looked past the barriers to where small knots of beggars had gathered. Already they were squabbling, fighting each other over the tiny pittance they had been given. As he came closer he saw one man go down and several others fall on him, punching and kicking him, robbing him of the little he had. Nearby the guards looked on, laughing among themselves.
Laughing… He wiped his mouth, sickened by all he’d seen, then pushed past the barrier, ignoring the offered coin.
Inside the mansion the celebrations were about to begin. At the top of the great stairway Klaus Ebert put his arm about his son’s shoulders and looked out across the gathering that filled the great hall below.
‘My good friends!’ he said, then laughed. ‘What can I say? I am so full of pride! My son…’
He drew Hans close and kissed his cheek, then looked about him again, beaming and laughing, as if he were drunk.
‘Come, Father,’ Hans said in a whisper, embarrassed by his father’s sudden effusiveness. ‘Let’s get it over with. I’m faint with hunger.’
Klaus looked back at him, smiling broadly, then laughed, squeezing his shoulder again. ‘Whatever you say, Hans.’ He turned back, putting one arm out expansively. ‘Friends! Let us not stand on formalities tonight. Eat, drink, be merry!’
They made their way down the stairs, father and son, joining the crowd gathered at the foot. Tolonen was amongst those there, lean and elegant in his old age, his steel-grey hair slicked back, the dress uniform of General worn proudly for the last time.
‘Why, Knut,’ Klaus Ebert began, taking a glass from a servant, ‘I see you are wearing Hans’s uniform!’
Tolonen laughed. ‘It is but briefly, Klaus. I am just taking the creases out of it for him!’
There was a roar of laughter at that. Hans smiled and bowed, then looked about him. ‘Is Jelka not here?’
Tolonen shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not, Hans. She took an injury in her practice session this morning. Nothing serious – only a sprain – but the doctor felt she would be better off resting. She was most disappointed, I can tell you. Why, she’d spent two whole days looking for a new dress to wear tonight!’
Hans lowered his head respectfully. ‘I am sorry to hear it, Father-in-law. I had hoped to dance with her tonight. But perhaps you would both come here for dinner – soon, when things have settled.’
Tolonen beamed, delighted by the suggestion. ‘That would be excellent, Hans. And it would make up for her disappointment, I am sure.’
Hans bowed and moved on, circulating, chatting with all his father’s friends, making his way slowly towards a small group on the far side of the hall, until, finally, he came to them.
‘Michael!’ he said, embracing his old friend.
‘Hans!’ Lever held Ebert to him a moment, then stood back. They had been classmates at Oxford in their teens, before Lever had gone on to Business College and Ebert to the Academy. But they had stayed in touch all this time.
Ebert looked past his old friend, smiling a greeting to the others.
‘How was your journey?’
‘As well as could be expected!’ Lever laughed then leaned closer. ‘When in the gods’ names are they going to improve those things, Hans? If you’ve any influence with Li Yuan, make him pass an amendment to the Edict to enable them to build something more comfortable than those transatlantic rockets.’
Ebert laughed then leaned closer. ‘And my friend? Did you enjoy his company?’
Lever glanced at his companions then laughed. ‘I can speak for us all in saying that it was a most interesting experience. I would never have guessed…’
Ebert smiled. ‘No. And let’s keep it that way, neh?’ He turned, looking about him, then took Lever’s arm. ‘And his gift?’
Lever’s eyes widened. ‘You knew about that?’
‘Of course. But come. Let’s go outside. It’s cool in the garden. We can talk as we go. Of Chung Kuo and Ta Ts’in and dreams of empire.’
Lever gave a soft laugh then bowed his head. ‘Lead on…’
It was just after four when the last of the guests left the Ebert Mansion. Hans, watching from the balcony, stifled a yawn, then turned and went back inside. He had not been drinking and yet he felt quite drunk – buoyed up on a vast and heady upsurge of well-being. Things had never been better. That very evening his father had given over a further sixteen companies to him, making it almost a quarter of the giant GenSyn empire that he now controlled. Life, at last, was beginning to open to him. Earlier he had taken Tolonen aside to suggest that his marriage to Jelka be brought forward, and while, at first, the old man had seemed a little put out, when Hans had spoken of the sense of stability it would bring him, Tolonen had grown quite keen – almost as if the idea had been his own.
Ebert went down the stairs and out into the empty hall, standing there a moment, smiling, recollecting Tolonen’s response.
‘Let me speak to her,’ Tolonen had said, as he was leaving. ‘After the coronation, when things have settled a little. But I promise you, Hans, I’ll do my best to persuade her. After all, it’s in no one’s interest to delay, is it?’
No, he thought. Especially not now. At least, not now that they had come to an arrangement with the Americans.
He went out and said goodnight to his father and mother then came back, running across the hall and out through the back doors into the garden. The night seemed fresh and warm and for the briefest moment he imagined himself outside, beneath a real moon, under a real sky. Well, maybe that would happen soon. In a year or two perhaps. When he was King of Europe.
On the ornamental bridge he slowed, looking about him. He felt a great restlessness in his blood, an urge to do something. He thought of the mui tsai, but for once his restlessness was pure, uncontaminated by a sense of sexual urgency. No, it was as if he needed to go somewhere, do something. All this waiting – for his inheritance, his command, his wife – seemed suddenly a barrier to simple being. Tonight he wanted to be, to do. To break heads or ride a horse at breakneck speed.
He kicked out, sending gravel into the water below, watching the ripples spread. Then he moved on, jumping down the steps to the path and vaulting up on to the balcony above. He turned, looking back. A servant had stopped, watching him. Seeing Ebert turn, he moved on hurriedly, his head bowed, the huge bowl he held making slopping sounds in the silence.
Ebert laughed. There were no heads to break, no horses here to ride. So maybe he would fuck the mui tsai anyway. Maybe that would still his pulse and purge the restlessness from his system. He turned, making his way along to his suite of rooms. Inside he began to undress, unbuttoning his tunic. As he did so, he went over to the comset and touched in the code.
He turned away, throwing his tunic down on a chair, then went across and tapped on the inner door. At once a servant popped his head round the door.
‘Bring the mui tsai to my room then go. I’ll not need you any more tonight, Lo Wen.’
The servant bowed and left. Ebert turned back, looking at the screen. There were a great number of messages for once, mainly from friends, congratulating him on his appointment. But amongst them was one he had been expecting. DeVore’s.
He re
ad it through then laughed. So the meeting with the Americans had gone well. Good. The introduction was yet another thing DeVore owed him for. What’s more, DeVore wanted him to do something else.
He smiled then sat down, pulling off his boots. Slowly, by small degrees, DeVore was placing himself in his debt. More and more he had come to rely on him – for little things at first, but now for ever larger schemes. And that was good. For he would keep account of all.
There was a faint tapping at the inner door.
He turned in the chair, looking across. ‘Come in,’ he said softly.
The door slid back. For a moment she stood there, naked, looking in at him, the light behind her. She was so beautiful, so wonderfully made that his penis grew hard simply looking at her. Then she came across, fussing about him, helping him with the last few items of his clothing.
Finished, she looked up at him from where she knelt on the floor in front of him. ‘Was your evening good, master?’
He pulled her up on to his lap then began to stroke her neck and shoulder, looking up into her dark and liquid eyes, his blood inflamed now by the warmth of her flesh against his own. ‘Never better, Sweet Flute. Never in my whole life better.’
DeVore slipped the vial back into its carrying case, sealed the lid, and handed it to Lehmann.
‘Don’t drop it, Stefan, whatever else you do. And make sure that Hans knows what to do with it. He knows it’s coming, but he doesn’t properly know what it is. He’ll be curious, so it’s best if you tell him something, if only to dampen down his curiosity.’
The albino slipped the cigar-shaped case into his inner pocket then fastened his tunic tight. ‘So what should I say?’
DeVore laughed. ‘Tell him the truth for once. Tell him it kills Han. He’ll like that.’
Lehmann nodded, then bowed and turned away.
He watched Lehmann go then went across and took his furs from the cupboard in the corner. It was too late now to sleep. He would go hunting instead. Yes, it would be good to greet the dawn on the open mountainside.
DeVore smiled, studying himself in the mirror as he pulled on his furs, then, taking his crossbow from the rack on the wall, went out, making his way towards the old tunnels, taking the one that came out on the far side of the mountain beside the ruins of the ancient castle.
As he walked along he wondered, not for the first time, what Lever had made of the gift he’d given him.
The Aristotle File. A copy of Berdichev’s original, in his own hand-writing. The true history of Chung Kuo. Not the altered and sanitized version the Han peddled in their schools, but the truth, from the birth of Western thought in Aristotle’s yes/no logic, to the splendours of space travel, mass communications and artificial intelligence systems. A history of the West systematically erased by the Han. Yes, and that was another kind of virus. One, in its own way, every bit as deadly for the Han.
DeVore laughed, his laughter echoing down the tunnel. All in all it had been a good day. And it was going to get better. Much better.
It was exactly ten minutes past five when the scouts moved into place on the mountainside, dropping the tiny gas pellets into the base’s ventilation outlets. At the entrance to the hangar, four masked men sprayed ice-eating acids on to the snow-covered surface of the doors. Two minutes later Karr, wearing a mask and carrying a lightweight air canister, kicked his way inside.
He crossed the hangar at a quick march, then ran down the corridor linking it to the inner fortress, his automatic moving this way and that as he looked for any sign of resistance, but the colourless, odourless gas had done its work. Guards lay slumped in several places. They would have had no chance to issue any kind of warning.
He glanced down at his timer then turned, looking back. Already the first squad was busy, binding and gagging the unconscious defenders before the effects of the gas wore off. Behind them a second squad was coming through, their masked faces looking from side to side, double-checking as they came along.
He turned back, pushing on, hyper-alert now, knowing that it would not be long before he lost the advantage of surprise.
There were four lifts, spaced out along a single broad corridor. He stared at them a moment then shook his head. A place like this, dug deep into the mountainside, would be hard to defend unless one devised a system of independent levels, and of bottlenecks linking them – bottlenecks that could be defended like the barbican in an ancient castle – the killing ground. So here. These lifts – seemingly so innocuous – were their barbican. But unlike in a castle there would be another way into the next level of the fortress. There had to be, because if the power ever failed, they had to have some way of ensuring that they still got air down in the lower tunnels.
There would be shafts. Ventilation shafts. As above.
Karr turned and beckoned the squad leader over.
‘Locate the down shafts. Then I want one man sent down each of them straight away. They’re to secure the corridors beneath the shafts while the rest of the men come through. Understand?’
The young lieutenant bowed then hurried away, sending his men off to do as Karr had ordered. He was back a moment later.
‘They’re sealed, Major Karr.’
‘Well? Break the seals!’
‘But they’re alarmed. Maybe even boobytrapped.’
Karr grunted, impatient now. ‘Show me!’
The shaft was in a tiny corridor leading off what seemed to be some kind of storeroom. Karr studied it a moment, noting its strange construction, then, knowing he had no alternative, raised his fist and brought it down hard. The seal cracked but didn’t break. He struck it again, harder this time, and it gave, splintering into the space below.
Somewhere below he could hear a siren sounding, security doors slamming into place.
‘Let’s get moving. They know we’re here now. The sooner we hit them the better, neh?’
He went first, bracing himself against the walls of the narrow tunnel as he went down, his shoulders almost too wide for the confined space. Others followed, almost on top of him.
Some five ch’i above the bottom seal he stopped and brought his gun round, aiming it down between his legs. He opened fire. The seal shattered with a great upward hiss of air, tiny splinters thrown up at him.
He narrowed his eyes then understood. The separate levels were kept at different pressures, which meant there were air-locks. But why? What were they doing here?
He scrambled down then dropped. As he hit the floor he twisted about. A body lay to one side of the shaft’s exit point, otherwise the corridor was empty.
It was a straight stretch of corridor, sixty ch’i long at most, ending in a T-junction at each end. There were no doors, no windows and, as far as he could make out, no cameras.
Left or right? If the groundplan followed that of the level above, the lifts would be somewhere off to the left, but he didn’t think it would be that simple. Not if DeVore had designed this place.
Men were jumping down behind him, forming up either side, kneeling, their weapons raised to their shoulders, covering both ends of the corridor.
Last down was the squad leader. Karr quickly despatched him off to the left with six men, while he went right with the rest.
He had not gone more than a dozen paces when there was a loud clunk and a huge metal firedoor began to come down.
From the yells behind him he knew at once that the same was happening at the other end of the corridor. No cameras, eh? How could he have been so naïve!
He ran, hurling himself at the diminishing gap, half sliding, half rolling beneath the door just before it slammed into the floor. As he thudded into the end wall he felt his gun go clattering away from him, but there was no time to think of that. As he came up from the floor the first of them was on him, slashing down with a knife the length of his forearm.
Karr blocked the blow and counter-punched, feeling the man’s jaw shatter. Behind him, only a few paces off, a second guard was raising his automatic. Karr ducked, us
ing the injured guard as a shield, thrusting his head into the man’s chest as he began to fall, pushing him upward and back, into the second man.
Too late, the guard opened fire, the shells ricocheting harmlessly off the end wall as he stumbled backwards.
Karr kicked him in the stomach then stood over him, chopping down savagely, finishing him off. He stepped back, looking about him. His gun was over to the right. He picked it up and ran on, hearing voices approaching up ahead.
He grinned fiercely. The last thing they would expect was a single man coming at them. Even so, it might be best to give himself some additional advantage.
He looked up. As he’d thought, they hadn’t bothered to set the pipe-work and cabling into the rock but had simply secured it to the ceiling of the tunnel with brackets. The brackets looked firm enough – big metallic things – but were they strong enough to bear his weight?
There was only one way to find out. He tucked his gun into his tunic and reached up, pulling himself up slowly. Bringing his legs up, he reached out with his boots to get a firmer grip. So far so good. If he could hold himself there with his feet and one hand he would be above them when they came into view. The rest should be easy.
They were close now. At any moment they would appear at the end of the corridor. Slowly he drew the gun from his tunic, resting the stock of it against his knee.
There! Four of them, moving quickly but confidently, talking among themselves, assuming there was no danger. He let them come on four, five paces, then squeezed the trigger.
As he opened fire, the bracket by his feet jerked, then came away from the wall. At once a whole section of cabling slewed towards him, his weight dragging it down. Along the whole length of the ceiling the securing brackets gave, bringing down thick clouds of rock and debris.
Karr rolled to one side, freeing himself from the tangle, bringing his gun up to his chest. Through the dust he could see that two of them were down. They lay still, as if dead, pinned down by the cables. A third was getting up slowly, groaning, one hand pressed to the back of his head where the cabling had struck him. The fourth was on his feet, his gun raised, looking straight at Karr.
The Broken Wheel Page 28
