The Firemaker (The China Thrillers 1)

by Peter May

  Margaret nodded and wiped a fine film of perspiration from her brow. ‘A bad dream,’ she said.

  Lotus got up and sat on the bed beside her. She had something black and soft and shiny in her hands. ‘This is for you,’ she said. ‘You must wear tonight.’ It was a shoulder-length black wig with a club-cut fringe. ‘I borrow from friend in theatre. Is good, yes?’ Margaret pinned up her hair and pulled the wig on. It was uncomfortably tight. She took a chipped make-up mirror from her purse and squinted at herself in the candlelight. The contrast of the pale, freckled skin and the blue-black hair was startling.

  ‘I look ridiculous,’ she said.

  ‘No. We hide your round eye with make-up and cover your freckle with powders. You look like Chinese girl.’

  Margaret glanced at Li. He shrugged. ‘It’ll be dark. The lights on the train will be low.’

  Lotus looked at him, hesitated a moment, then said, ‘Li Yan … I have not had the chance to say thank you.’

  He frowned. ‘What for? You’re the one who’s helping us.’

  ‘For getting me out of that police cell,’ she said.

  He looked at her blankly. ‘What police cell?’

  Yongli’s voice came out of the darkness from across the room. ‘She got picked up by Public Security, remember? I came and asked for your help. You said you would see what you could do.’ There was a tone, a hint of accusation in his voice.

  Li remembered now with a pang of guilt. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I never got the chance to do anything.’

  Lotus frowned, genuinely puzzled. ‘But they let me go. They said there had been a mistake. I thought …’

  ‘But it was a mistake, wasn’t it?’ Yongli said.

  Lotus looked very directly at Li. It seemed important to her that he believe her. ‘They said there was heroin in my bag. But I have never taken heroin in all my life, Li Yan. I swear to the sky.’

  Li was uncomfortable, almost embarrassed. ‘Then, like Yongli said, they must have made a mistake. Maybe it was someone else’s bag.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Margaret asked, disconcerted that the conversation had lapsed into Chinese. She sensed a tension in their words.

  ‘It’s nothing important,’ Li said. ‘History. We’re only looking forward now, not back.’ His words were for Lotus and Yongli more than for Margaret.

  A terrific crash from outside startled them all. Li sprang forward and immediately extinguished the candle. The darkness that engulfed them felt almost tangible, as if they could reach out and wrap it around them. All they could hear was the pounding of the rain on the roof and the tug, tug, tug of the wind at the wooden boards on the window. Margaret heard someone shuffle carefully across the floor and into the outer room. Lotus’s breathing was quick and close beside her. She reached out and found her hand and held it, and felt Lotus grasp her arm with her other hand, fingers squeezing tightly.

  The faintest grey light gave form to the room around them as they heard the front door scrape open. Margaret saw Yongli cross the room to the inner door, where he stooped to pick up a length of wood and hold it like a club. Then the door banged shut and they were plunged again into a darkness that was frightening in its density. The rasp of a match on sandpaper, a tiny explosion and a flare of light burned into the black, and Li came back through shielding the flame from the draught of his movement. ‘Tiles off the roof,’ he said, and stooped to relight the candle. None of them had realised, until then, just how stretched their nerves all were.

  Yongli dropped the chunk of wood he had been clutching and squinted at his watch. ‘Anyway, it is time we were going,’ he said.

  III

  Rain continued to fall on the sodden capital. The streets were shiny wet, reflecting all the night colours of the city, like fresh paint that had not yet dried. Thunder rumbled distantly amidst the occasional flash of lightning. The police presence seemed, if anything, greater than it had earlier in the day. Li knew that Public Security expectation of a quick capture and arrest would have been high, and that with political pressure being brought to bear by interested and increasingly desperate parties, the hunt would have been stepped up. He took some grim satisfaction from the fact that their continued success in eluding the police would be creating growing panic in the breasts of Pang and Zeng and the executives of Grogan Industries. But fear of exposure would make them even more dangerous, like wounded tigers. The greatest immediate risk for Li and Yongli and Margaret would be at the station. All points of departure would be under close scrutiny. Li thanked the heavens for weeping on them this night.

  He wondered, briefly, where Johnny Ren was. Now that he knew who had employed him, it was no surprise to Li that Ren had been able to move about so freely, evading detection. No doubt he was long gone, safe in some place beyond the reach of the Middle Kingdom.

  He stroked the whiskers that adorned his upper lip and chin, a strange, unaccustomed wiry sensation between his fingers, yet another acquisition from Lotus’s theatrical friend. He felt guilty now at the way he had treated her in the past, his lack of concern when Yongli had come looking for his help. They could not have got this far without her.

  They parked the car a couple of streets away from the station and, huddled in waterproofs under black umbrellas, hurried through the dwindling late night traffic. The concourse was deserted. A few travellers, waiting for taxis, sheltered under bus stands and the awnings of kiosks that during the day would sell fruit and vegetables and cold drinks to thirsty passengers. A queue trailing back into the night had formed at the main entrance to the station, where baggage was being checked through X-ray equipment, and officers of the railway police were randomly scrutinising passengers’ papers.

  ‘We’ll never get past them,’ Yongli whispered as they approached the back of the queue. ‘If they check our papers …’

  But Lotus had more fortitude. ‘You said it yourself, Ma Yongli. They are looking for Li Yan and a yangguizi. Not two Chinese couples.’ She glanced at Margaret. She had a waterproof scarf tied down over her wig. Her make-up was crude, but in the bad light of the station entrance, she would pass for Chinese at a glance. Li Yan’s whiskers were convincing. Lotus only hoped that the brim of his hat and his umbrella would shield them from the rain. She had little confidence that the gum would hold in the wet.

  More travellers joined the queue behind them as they shuffled forward, making slow progress to the baggage checkpoint. The rain still battered down on them, dampening conversation in the queue. But it was also making the officers checking the queue, after long hours of toing and froing in the wet, less conscientious than they might otherwise have been. They made a cursory check of the documents of a young couple in front of them, and then waved Li and the others through without a second glance. Yongli checked through their holdall and they were into the station. He was pale and trembling, and enormously relieved. They didn’t stop to look back, but hurried forward to the gate that opened on to their platform. The train stood huffing and chuffing impatiently, great clouds of steam rising into the night. The platform was heaving with passengers searching for compartments, friends and relatives hugging and kissing them farewell, children waving to aunts and uncles or parents embarking on long journeys, all under the watchful eye of a stern-faced female attendant at the ticket barrier. Li knew her type at a glance. Officious, bureaucratic, unbending. She would slam the gates closed at three minutes past midnight exactly, shutting out all latecomers, even if the train itself were late in departing. She examined their tickets and waved them through brusquely.

  On the platform Lotus gave Yongli a long hug and then kissed him and held his face and told him to be careful and come back to her safely. He was choked, almost tearful. ‘I’d do anything for you, Lotus,’ he whispered. ‘Anything. I love you.’

  She gave Li a kiss on the cheek and told him to look after her man. Then she embraced Margaret in a long, desperate hug. When they broke apart she said simply, ‘Good luck.’ She bit her lip as she watched them climb aboa
rd. Yongli leaned down and kissed her again. A whistle sounded, and reluctantly she turned and hurried away into the station before the gate clanged shut. Yongli watched her go with moist eyes. He turned at last, and the three of them made their way into the crowded Hard Class compartment to find their seats among the damp travellers who squeezed into every corner, opening baskets of food and flasks of tea, making themselves comfortable and preparing for the long journey ahead. Margaret heard someone noisily dragging phlegm up from their throat and gobbing it on to the floor. She shivered with disgust, but didn’t dare look, keeping her head down, face shielded by the black hair of her wig. She prayed no one would speak to her and was startled when Li whispered, ‘If you can sleep, lean against my shoulder.’ She nodded and he put an arm around her. He touched his whiskers self-consciously to make certain they were still there, and glanced at Yongli. But Yongli was lost in a world of his own, pressed up against the window, wiping a hole in the condensation to try to see out. There was little to be seen, though, in the dim lights of the empty platform.

  Another whistle sounded, somewhere up ahead a light flashed, and the train jerked and then moaned, and started pulling painfully out of the station, creaking and groaning as it gathered speed. As they emerged from the station, trundling and rattling across a great conjunction of lines, Margaret inclined her head a little to see out of the clear patch Yongli had rubbed in the window. Raindrops spattered hard against the glass, running city lights down the pane in wavering, jagged streaks. A flash of lightning threw the skyline into sharp relief for a brief moment. Less than a week ago she had driven into Beijing in the heat of a Monday afternoon, with the hope of an escape for six weeks from a life that had barely seemed worth living. Now, just five days later, she was leaving in the dark and the rain, a fugitive, guarding a life that seemed all the more valuable for the sentence of death that had been placed upon it. She clung tightly to Li. She wasn’t even going to try to analyse her feelings for him. All that mattered was that she wanted to be with him. For all that she might have lost, still she had found something precious. Something worth living for – even if that life had only a short time left to run.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I

  Saturday

  A pall of yellow smog hung over a skyline of factory chimneys and tall buildings belching smoke out into the dawn, an early morning mist rising to join with the coal smoke and dust blown in off the desert to make a sulphurous cocktail in the sky.

  As their train rumbled and clattered its way into the industrial city of Datong, Margaret awoke from a restless slumber to find herself still nestled into Li’s shoulder, his arm holding her safe and secure. Their carriage was a fog of cigarette smoke, people coughing and snorting as they gathered their belongings together. The floor was littered with orange peel and old food wrappings, and was sticky with spit. Yongli still leaned against the window, gazing through the streaked glass, like a blind man, into space. Margaret reached out and touched his arm. He turned and she smiled, and he made a poor attempt at a smile in return. Li got to his feet as the train shuddered to a halt on the platform and flicked his head towards the door. Margaret and Yongli followed him into the corridor and out and down on to the platform where the flow of travellers swept them through the ticket barrier and on to the crowded concourse. Heads down, they hurried past two patrolling police officers and out into the street.

  The city was already gearing itself up for the day. The streets were filled with people working in the haze by the roadside, stall-owners sorting vegetables or arranging clothes, tinsmiths wielding hammers, bicycle repairers respoking wheels. Vehicles with their sidelights still on emerged from the mist for a few moments, and then passed into it again. Buildings seemed insubstantial and ghostly, people wandering the sidewalks like spectres. It was cooler than it had been in Beijing, and dry. It also seemed like another country, almost another century. It was how, Margaret imagined, a Chicago of the 1930s might have looked. Even the Chinese-built cars seemed old-fashioned, of another era. Men in dark coats with broad-brimmed hats and carrying tommy-guns would not have seemed out of place.

  A work gang in railway colours trotted past. Li tapped Yongli on the shoulder to rouse him from some distant reverie. ‘Come on.’ He spoke with the authority of a man who had some idea of what he was about.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘Somewhere out of public view.’ And they followed the work gang at a discreet distance, through tall iron gates in a high wall, and out across a great confluence of lines, red and green lights winking in the mist, the occasional grind of metal on metal as rails slid between rails to make connections between lines. They lost sight of the workers and kept on across the lines, towards the dark shadow of a bank of derelict sheds. The rails here were rusted, grass and weeds growing tall between the sleepers. Lines of old carriages lay rotting in front of the sheds.

  Li pulled himself up on one and kicked the door open. The inside smelt musty and damp. With Yongli’s help, Margaret hauled herself up and followed him down the corridor. It was an old sleeping car, compartments with fold-down beds on two levels, stripped bare and divested of any comfort they might once have had. But the carriage was clean enough, and though it smelled damp, seemed secure against the elements, and dry. Li slid open a door to one of the compartments and looked in. ‘This’ll do,’ he said. With the sheds on one side, and a view out across the junction towards the city on the other, they would be able to see anyone approaching. He threw their holdall on to one of the beds and sat down to light a cigarette and slowly peel off his whiskers. Margaret wandered to the window and looked out through the dusty glass at the sun pushing up above the skyline, dispelling the early morning accumulation of mist and smoke. She pulled off her wig and with relief released her hair to tumble across her shoulders. Yongli remained in the doorway.

  ‘I’ll go and try to get us transport,’ he said to Li. ‘I might be some time.’

  Li nodded and chucked him a bundle of notes held with an elastic band. ‘See if you can get some cigarettes,’ he said. Yongli turned to go. Li called after him and he turned back. ‘I appreciate this, Ma Yongli.’ He hesitated. ‘And I’m sorry. I was wrong about Lotus.’

  There was a pained look in Yongli’s eyes, and he looked away, unable to speak for a moment. ‘You were,’ was all that he said in the end, and he turned away again. They heard his footsteps retreating down the corridor, and then watched his tall, round figure dwindle across the tracks, disappearing finally into the mist without looking back.

  ‘He seems very low,’ Margaret said eventually.

  Li drew deeply on his cigarette, the tobacco crackling as it burned. ‘Ma Yongli is an extrovert. He can be … manic, sometimes. He has incredible highs. He also has terrible lows. He’ll come out of it.’ He stood on his cigarette. ‘I must try to sleep. I got none during the night.’ He looked at her. ‘Will you be okay?’

  She nodded, and he curled up on the bed in a foetal position, and within minutes was deeply asleep. She looked at his face in repose, all the tension relaxed out of the muscles. He appeared so innocent, almost childlike, she wanted to hold him and comfort him and mother him. She looked away quickly, tears blurring her vision. She mustn’t think about it, she told herself. There was no future in regretting things that had not even happened yet. They were all going to die some time. Dying was not what mattered. Living, and what you did with your life, were the important things. She must try to hold on to that.

  She sat down opposite him, and for a long time watched him sleep, drinking him in, taking simple pleasure in just being with him, at peace and without fear. It seemed to her that she no longer feared death. She was more afraid of losing what life she had left, of wasting even one precious second of it. The worst thing was knowing that in all probability she had longer than Li. She kicked off her sandals and slipped on to the bed beside him, folding herself into his curves, putting her arms around him, holding him tight
and feeling his body suffuse hers with its warmth. Ironically, she felt truly happy for the first time in years, almost euphoric. She allowed herself to slip away into a dream-world where anything and everything was possible, where even in the blackest of human moments there would still be light. And she knew she loved him.

  *

  He rose slowly, like a diver emerging from the deep, to break the surface of consciousness, soft bubbles foaming around him, the heat and light of the sun strong and bright after the strange underwater gloom of a deep and untroubled sleep. He became slowly aware of her softness enfolding him, and he turned carefully so as not to disturb her, and found his face next to hers. The slow gentle rhythm of her breathing continued, unbroken. She was almost painfully lovely. The fine line of her nose, the arch of her brows, her delicate chin, her full and well-defined lips, the freckles sprinkled randomly across her nose. He brushed a lock of hair gently back from her forehead. Her breath was hot on his skin. He leaned forward to kiss her and saw her eyelids flicker. He closed his eyes as she opened hers.

  She saw him lying sleeping, his face only inches from hers, his head tilted slightly as if he were about to kiss her. She felt a strange ache inside as she remembered her final thought before succumbing to sleep. She tipped her head forward to kiss him and saw his eyelids flicker, and closed hers as he opened his.

  He smiled when he saw that her eyes were shut. Then, after a moment, they opened again, and she returned his smile. He kissed her softly, feeling the gentle give of her lips against his. She responded, and opened her mouth in a desire to draw him in. They were moved now by something beyond passion or lust. Beyond time. For there seemed no need to rush, and every reason to savour. The sun beat in through the grimy window of the abandoned carriage, bathing their bodies in heat and light as they moved together, joined by love and sadness, affinity and death. Her breasts filled his hands and his mouth, her skin sweet on his tongue. She felt all the fine muscles of his back, firm buttocks that she grasped and pulled towards her, drawing him inside. He was so beautiful she never wanted to let him go. He filled her with himself, moving slowly to the rhythm of their hearts. She gasped, almost sobbing. It was a pleasure close to pain, on the edge of endurance. Her fingers dug into his back, trying to hold him there, to draw him deeper, to finally consume him, until he exploded inside her and she lost all control, wave after wave of ecstasy washing over senses numbed by years of indifference. A convolution of muscles and nerves that robbed the brain of independent thought and immersed them both in unashamed abandon. Nothing mattered now, nor ever would again.