Limit

by Frank Schätzing

  Jericho stared straight ahead.

  Hang on, though! He wasn’t entirely incapable of action. Zhao might have forced him onto the defensive, but he had something the hitman didn’t know about. His secret weapon, the key to everything.

  Yoyo’s computer.

  He had to find out what she had discovered.

  Then he would track her down again, to take her back to her father. Chen Hong-bing. Was it a good idea to call him? Tu Tian had established the contact, but in point of fact Chen was his client. The man had a right to be informed, but what would he say to him? All fine, Yoyo’s in great shape … No, honourable Chen, it isn’t the police who are after her, just a hardened hitman with a weakness for explosive devices, but hey, don’t worry, she’s still got both arms and legs and her whole face, haha! Where is she? Well, she’s on the run! Me too, see you soon.

  What could he say, if he didn’t want the man to die of a heart attack?

  And what if he did get the police involved? Of course he would have to give them a bit of background, not least concerning Yoyo. Which risked drawing attention to the girl. They would ask what part she’d played in the massacre, look at her data, establish that she was on file, even that she had a criminal record. Impossible. The police were out of the question, even though Zhao wasn’t a cop, regardless of what he might have told Yoyo in the control centre:

  I’m trained to kill people. Like all policemen, like all soldiers, all agents.

  All agents?

  National security is a higher good than individual human lives.

  The Secret Service, on the other hand, had already blown plenty of other things sky high, particularly when they got involved in matters of national security. Zhao could have been bluffing, but what if he actually had the blessing of the authorities?

  But what about calling Tu?

  That looked pretty pointless too. Jericho forced himself to think clearly. First switch on Diane. He looked around. The bistro was two-thirds full, but the tables around him were free. Here and there young people were writing on their laptops or making phone calls. He set keyboard and screen in front of him and connected both to the hard drive in the rucksack. Then he jammed in the headset earbud and linked the system to Yoyo’s computer. A symbol appeared, a crouching wolf threateningly showing its fangs. Below it appeared some text:

  I’m inviting you to dinner.

  Okay, then, thought Jericho.

  ‘Hi Diane,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Hi, Owen.’ Diane’s velvety timbre. The consolation of the machine. ‘How did you get on?’

  ‘Fucking awful.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that.’ How honest that sounded. Okay, then, it wasn’t dishonest. ‘Can I help?’

  You could be made of flesh and blood, thought Jericho.

  ‘Please open the file “I’m inviting you to dinner”. You’ll find access data in Yoyofiles.’

  Silence fell for two seconds. Then Diane said:

  ‘The file is locked four times. I’ve been able to use three of the tools successfully. I haven’t got the fourth access authorisation.’

  ‘Which tools worked?’

  ‘Iris, voice and fingerprint. All assigned to Chen Yuyun.’

  ‘Which one’s missing?’

  ‘A password, by the look of it. Shall I decipher?’

  ‘Do that. Have you any idea how long the decoding’s going to take you?’

  ‘Afraid not. At the moment I can only speculate that the coding includes several words. Or one unusually long one. Is there anything else I can do for you?’

  ‘Go online,’ said Jericho. ‘That’s it. See you later, Diane.’

  ‘See you later, Owen.’

  He logged on to Brilliant Shit. If his assumption was correct, the Guardians’ blog was being used as a dead letter drop, and regularly checked.

  Jericho to Demon, he wrote. I’ve got your computer. He added a phone number and an email address, stayed logged in and stored the blog as an icon. As soon as someone saved a message in it, Diane would let him know straight away. By now he felt a little better. He bit into his baguette, topped up his coffee and decided to contact Tu.

  A call came in for him.

  Jericho stared at the display. No picture, no number.

  Yoyo? So quickly?

  ‘Hi, Owen,’ said a very familiar voice.

  ‘Zhao.’ Everything inside Jericho shrank to a tiny lump. He paused for a moment and tried to sound relaxed. ‘Or should I say Kenny?’

  ‘Kenny?’

  ‘Don’t pretend to be more stupid than you are! Didn’t that fat asshole call you that before he kicked the bucket?’

  ‘Oh, right.’ The other man laughed quietly. ‘As you wish, then – Kenny.’

  ‘Kenny who? Kenny Zhao Bide?’

  ‘Kenny’s just fine.’

  ‘Okay, Kenny.’ Jericho took a deep breath. ‘Then wash your ears out. Yoyo’s slipped through your fingers. I got away from you. You won’t get any further as long as one of us has a reason to feel threatened by you.’

  A sigh of resignation came through the receiver.

  ‘I’m not threatening anybody.’

  ‘Yes, you are. You’re shooting people and blowing up buildings.’

  ‘You’ve got to look the facts in the face, Owen. You put up a decent fight, you and the girl. Admirable, but not especially clever, I’m afraid to say. If Yoyo had cooperated, everyone might still be alive.’

  ‘Ridiculous.’

  ‘It was your people who started all the shooting.’

  ‘Not at all. They only started shooting because you’d killed Xiao Meiqi and Jin Jia Wei.’

  ‘That was unavoidable.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yoyo would hardly have talked to me otherwise. Later I did everything in my power to avert any further bloodshed.’

  ‘What do you want, Kenny?’

  ‘What do you think I want? Yoyo, of course.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘To ask her what she knows and who she’s told.’

  ‘You—’

  ‘Don’t worry!’ Kenny cut in. ‘I’m not planning on killing even more people. But I’m under a certain amount of pressure, you know? Pressure to succeed. These are the times we’re living in, everyone constantly wants to see results, so what would you do in my place? Come away empty-handed?’

  ‘You’ve got your hands pretty full. You’ve destroyed Yoyo’s computer, and the complete infrastructure of the Guardians. Do you really think any of them wants to mess with you again?’

  ‘Owen,’ said Kenny in the voice of a teacher who needs to explain everything three times, ‘I don’t know anything. I don’t know whether I destroyed Yoyo’s infrastructure, how many computers she transferred the data to, whether everyone she confided in died in the control centre. What about that huge bike-riding baby? What about you? Didn’t she tell you anything?’

  ‘We won’t get any further like this. Where are you anyway?’

  Kenny paused for a moment.

  ‘Nice flat. Looks like you’ve done some house-clearing.’

  Jericho gave a sour smile. He felt a kind of satisfaction in being proved right and having got out in good time.

  ‘You’ll find a cold beer in the fridge,’ he said. ‘Take it and go.’

  ‘I can’t do that, Owen.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Haven’t you had jobs to do, like I do? Aren’t you used to taking things to their conclusion?’

  ‘I’ll tell you once more—’

  ‘Imagine the inferno if the flames should take hold of other parts of the building.’

  Jericho’s mouth dried up all of a sudden.

  ‘What flames?’

  ‘The ones from your flat.’ Kenny’s voice had dropped to a whisper and he suddenly reminded Jericho of a snake: a huge talking snake stuffed into the body of a human being. ‘I’m thinking of the people, and also of you. I mean, everything here looks new and expensive. You’ve probably put all your savings
into it. Wouldn’t it be terrible to lose all that at one go, just for a matter of principle, out of solidarity with some pig-headed girl?’

  Jericho said nothing.

  ‘Can you imagine my situation any better now?’

  A host of insults collected on the tip of Jericho’s tongue. Instead he said as quietly as possible, ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘That’s a weight off my mind. Really! I mean, we weren’t a bad team, Owen. Our interests are marginally different, but basically we want the same thing in the end.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Just tell me where Yoyo is.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Kenny seemed to think about it.

  ‘Good. I believe you. So you’ll have to track her down for me.’

  Track her down—

  Good God! What sort of bloody idiot was he? He didn’t know what tricks the hitman had up his sleeve, but doubtless everything he said was designed to drag the conversation out. Kenny was trying to track him down. To locate him.

  Without hesitation, Jericho hung up.

  Less than a minute later his phone lit up again.

  ‘I give you two hours,’ hissed Kenny. ‘Not a minute longer. Then I want to hear something that will put my mind at rest, otherwise I’ll consider myself forced to undertake a radical restructuring of the building.’

  Two hours.

  What was Jericho supposed to do in two hours?

  He hastily bundled the display and the keyboard back into his backpack, put a banknote on the table and left the bistro without a backwards glance. He strode towards the lift, took it down to the underground garage, climbed onto his bike and brought it out onto Liuhekou Lu, where he started the engine and flew towards the river. During the short flight a bulky ambulance hovered below him, big enough for him to land on. In the distance he saw an armada of unmanned fire-engines making for the hinterland of Pudong. Private skymobiles crossed his path, pleasure-blimps bobbed above the Huangpu. For a moment he considered flying to the WFC and looking up Tu, but it was too early for that. He would need peace to carry out his plan, and he had to have somewhere to stay, for as long as Kenny robbed him of the warmth and security of Xintiadi.

  And he knew where.

  Looming over the grand buildings of the Bund was one of the most peculiar hotels in Shanghai. Like a huge lotus blossom, China’s symbol of growth and affluence, the roof of the Westin Shanghai Bund Center opened itself up to the sky. It made some people think of an agave, others of an outsize octopus extending its tentacles to filter birds and skymobiles out of the air. Jericho saw it only as a refuge whose manager played in the same golf club as himself and Tu Tian. A casual acquaintance without the bonus of familiarity, but Tu liked the man, and tended to use the hotel as accommodation for business partners too lowly for the WFC and the Jin Mao Tower. Jericho was also granted the indulgence of special conditions, a favour that he had so far never called on. Now, since he felt little desire to wander nomadically from bistro to bistro, he decided to make use of it. After he had landed his bike by the front entrance, he stepped into the lobby and asked for a single room. The cameras set into the wall scanned him and passed the relevant information on to the receptionist. She smilingly greeted him by name, a sign that he was already on their files, and asked him to set his phone down on the touchscreen. The hotel computer compared Jericho’s ID with the database, authorised the reservation and uploaded the access code to Jericho’s hard drive.

  ‘Would you like us to take your car to the underground car park?’ the woman asked, and performed the trick of speaking with a smile even though her lips never met.

  ‘I’ve come on an airbike,’ said Jericho.

  ‘We’ve got a landing bay, as I’m sure you know,’ said the smile fixed to the corners of the receptionist’s mouth. ‘Do you want us to park your bike there for you?’

  ‘No, I’ll do that myself.’ He grinned. ‘Quite honestly, I need every hour of flying time I can get.’

  ‘Oh, I understand.’ The smile switched from routine politeness to routine cordiality. ‘Safe journey up there. Don’t forget, the hotel façade can take more knocks than you can.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

  He left the lobby and flew his bike up along the glazed outside wall, constantly accompanied by his reflection. For the first time he became aware that he wasn’t wearing a helmet, as the regulations for airbikes demanded. Another reason to keep away from the police. If they found out that the bike wasn’t registered to him, it was going to be a tough thing to explain.

  The landing pad was open and almost empty, aside from the hotel’s own shuttles. Nearly all twentieth-century visions of the future had assumed some form of private urban air traffic powered by lightbeams, taking it for granted that aerial traffic would shape the face of cities. In fact, the number of such skymobiles was tiny, and they were restricted to State and city institutions, a few exclusive taxi companies and millionaires like Tu Tian. In purely infrastructural terms, of course, there were good reasons for lightening ground traffic by exploiting the airborne variety, except that all these considerations faced a great Godzilla of a counter-argument: fuel consumption. To counteract the force of gravity you needed powerful turbines and a whole load of energy. The economical alternative, the gyrocopter, spiralled its way into the air by rotor power like a helicopter, but had the disadvantage of excessively massive rotor blades. Financially, the expense of making cars fly was entirely disproportionate to the effect, and airbikes, even though they were more economical and affordable, weren’t really an exception to that. They were still expensive enough to make Jericho wonder who could afford to supply a hitman with three – especially customised models. The police, chronically underfunded? Hardly. Secret services? More likely. The army?

  Was Kenny a soldier? Was the army behind all this?

  With his backpack over his shoulder, Jericho took the lift to his floor and held his phone up to the infrared port beside the door to his room. It swung open, revealing a view of the room behind it. Fussy and staid, was his first impression. All in great condition, but stylistically nowhere. Jericho didn’t care. Within a few minutes he had freed Diane from her backpack and connected her up. That made this room his new investigation agency.

  Would Kenny set the loft on fire?

  Jericho rubbed his temples. He wouldn’t be surprised, but on the other hand he doubted that the hitman would wait in Xintiandi until he called. Kenny would try to arrest Yoyo on his own initiative, probably aware that Jericho wasn’t automatically prepared for collaboration just because he was waving a box of matches around.

  ‘Diane?’

  ‘I’m here, Owen.’

  ‘How’s the search for the password going?’

  It was a stupid question. As long as Diane registered no success, he didn’t need to worry about where things went from here. But talking to the computer made him feel as if he was in charge of a little team that was doing everything in its power.

  ‘You’ll be the first to know,’ said Diane.

  Jericho gave a start. Was that humour? Not bad. He lay down on the huge bed with its gaudy yellow cover and felt terribly tired and useless. Owen Jericho, cyber-detective. Hilarious. He had been supposed to find Yoyo, and instead he’d put a psychopath on her trail. How in God’s name would he explain that to Tu, let alone to Chen Hongbing?

  ‘Owen?’

  ‘Diane?’

  ‘Someone’s uploading a post to Brilliant Shit.’

  Jericho jolted upright.

  ‘Read it to me.’

  At first he was disappointed. It was a list of coordinates, with no sender or any kind of accompanying text. Time, input code, nothing else.

  An address in Second Life.

  Did it come from Yoyo?

  With leaden head and arms, he pulled himself upright, walked over to the little desk where he’d put his screen and keyboard, and took a look at the short text. At length he found a single letter that he’d probably overloo
ked: a D.

  Demon.

  Jericho took a look at his watch. Just after eleven. At twelve o’clock Yoyo was waiting for him in the virtual world. As long as the message really did come from her and wasn’t another attempt by Kenny to locate him. Had he given away the address of the blog to the hitman? Not as far as he remembered. Kenny surely couldn’t be so cunning as to turn up all of a sudden in Brilliant Shit as well, but caution was plainly advised. Jericho decided not to take a risk. From now on he would put any online communication through the anonymiser.

  He lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

  There was nothing he could do.

  After a few minutes the turbulent sea of his nerves was calm once more. He dozed off, but he didn’t sink into a relaxing sleep. Just below the surface of his consciousness, he was haunted by images of creeping torsos that weren’t human beings, but failed designs of human beings, grotesquely distorted and incomplete, covered with blood and mucus like newborn babies. He saw legless creatures, their faces nothing but smooth, gleaming surfaces, split down the middle by obscenely twitching pink openings. Half-charred lumps teetered towards him like spiders on a thousand legs or more. Eyes and mouths suddenly opened up in a scab of shapeless tissue. Something blind stretched towards him, darting a gnarled tongue between fanged jaws, and yet Jericho felt no fear, just a weary sadness, since he knew that in another life all these monstrosities had been as human as he was himself.

  Then he fell, and found himself back on a bed, but it was a different bed from the one on which he had lain down. Dark and damp, lit by feeble moonlight that fell through a dirty window and outlined the bleak, bare room where he had ended up, it seemed to exert a curious power over him. Lucidly dreaming, he realised that he must be in his comfortable, boringly furnished room, but he couldn’t sit up and open his eyes. He was bound to this rotting mattress as if by magnetic force, swathed in weird, dry silence.

  And in the midst of that silence he suddenly heard the click of chitin-armoured legs.

  Jagged feet scratched at the edges of the bedcover, snagged in the fabric and drew fat, segmented bodies up to him. A wave of anxiety washed over him. His horror was due less to the question of what the armoured creatures wanted to do to him, than to the most terrible of all realisations: that a perfidious dream had slung him back into the past, to a phase of his life that he thought he had long since overcome. His rise through society in Shanghai, the peace that he had made with Joanna, his arrival in Xintiandi, it was all revealed as a fantasy, the real dream, from which the invisible insects were now waking him with their rustles and clicks.