The Machine

voice shouting over and over, ‘Stay where you are! Don’t move. DO NOT. FUCKING. MOVE!’

Stone was in the backpackers hostel. Eighteenth floor of the Chungking Mansions. A Kowloon tower block. On the top bunk of three in a dorm of eighteen people.

‘I said, do not fucking move!’ bellowed the Scottish voice again. A British officer of the Hong Kong Police, a hangover from the old days. Three Chinese policemen behind him.

Assorted backpackers and students from Canada, Malaysia, Japan, Mexico were scrambling for backpacks and money belts. Girls covered themselves with the bed sheets, squinting into the strip lights. Two lads dropped little bags of white powder behind the bunks. They were thinking ‘drugs raid’.

Stone knew it wasn’t. Amid the rustling and scrambling in bags, Stone sat up and dangled his legs over the side of the bunk and looked at the officer. Then he slowly strayed an eye over the three Chinese policemen in blue shirts and cargo pants. Probably fit enough, with decent martial arts. All four had pistols, but still clipped into their belts. An escape looked on for the moment.

Then a scream. A couple of tall Chinese men in those olive drab uniforms and shiny black boots had appeared in the brightly lit dorm. More screams as the others saw the sub-machineguns pointed their way. Dogs barking, girls screaming. Boys shouting ‘Don’t shoot!’ and holding their hands in the air.

‘SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!’ bellowed the Scottish guy. His was a limited but effective vocabulary. A tense silence. The Scot began eyeballing all the men in turn and pointing with a stick.

Enough of this. Stone jumped softly down from the bunk. The Scottish guy stepped back. Too slow. Stone could have leaned his weight into the cop. Caught him a percussion blow on the temple before he’d even raised his hands. The other three cops were distracted, their eyes flitting about the room at those hands in rucksacks and arms shooting in the air. Stone could have had them too. Maybe. Would have been fun to try at any rate.

The two olive drab boys at the door were the problem. They were pros all right. The one was covering the room with his assault weapon, causing all the screaming. The other fellow had crouched low to get a shot upwards at Stone’s head, at an angle where he could be sure not to hit anyone else. Near enough to give no chance of missing, but far enough to be out of reach of an unarmed, but dangerous, man. Such as Stone. If the Scots policemen hadn’t recognised Stone, the Gong An boys certainly had. They were pros. And they knew all about him.

Stone offered his wrists to the Scottish officer. His forearms were wiry, covered in light blonde hair. The policeman looked in distaste at the green, homemade tattoo of new age design on Stone’s right forearm.

‘How did you know it was you we wanted?’ said the policeman, his tone triumphant but suspicious as he broke out the cuffs. ‘Something to hide, have we?’

‘You are arresting me for the murder of Junko Terashima,’ said Stone.

That video of the killing he’d received through the NotFutile.com anonymous electronic dropbox. Completely untraceable. But there on the hard drive of Stone's computer nonetheless. Stone had just been framed.

Chapter 16 — 4:05am 30 March — Hong Kong

Four a.m. Stone was hooded and cuffed, riding in the back of a car. He tried to remain alert and glean what was happening.

Early mornings were a bad time for Stone. Most people have that small ecstasy the start of a new day brings. That tiny reminder of being alive. For Stone, his days began with a reminder of people he’d seen killed. Comrades, enemies, random bystanders. They all looked the same dead. Some call it post-traumatic stress. It wasn’t. It might be post-traumatic for all he knew, but it wasn’t stress.

The peace activist thing was Stone’s way of dealing with it, but it was times like this, in the wee small hours, that he was honest enough with himself about how pathetically unsatisfying his new life was. After the thrill of combat, nothing is the same again. Hooded and cuffed in the back of the car, Stone felt a dim echo of the same thrill, reverberating in the pit of his stomach. And he thought of that time with Hooper, trapped together in the dark cellar in Afghanistan.

Through the hood, Stone heard the noises change as they went under a tunnel. They were passing back over to Hong Kong Island. The car went round a series of bends. They were in Mid-Levels, or maybe Happy Valley. The upscale part of Hong Kong Island.

Finally he was set down in a room. There was a curt order in Chinese and his hood was removed. Stone squinted into the bright lights. Two of the olive drab and shiny boot team were in the room, at the back, with their guns. Impassive, efficient, alert. Then, facing Stone across a small melamine table was a solitary Chinese man in Communist Party garb — buttons right up the front of his jacket to the neck. He even wore a Mao cap, like a stereotypical Communist Party man. He was middle-aged and had that neutral look you often get with older Chinese people. Neither smiling nor frowning.

The Chinese man’s eyes glittered with intelligence though. Bright black eyes looked out from the slits in the wrinkled flesh of his flat Chinese face. Stone stared back insolently. He was beginning to enjoy this.

‘My name is Zhang, Englishman,’ he began in fluent English. ‘You will address me as Professor Zhang.’

Stone knew all about what the word professor meant. Or didn’t mean. ‘I thought we called each other tongzhi in China?’ Stone used the Chinese word for comrade. Old fashioned in the new China, but Zhang was definitely one of the old guard.

‘You are not my comrade, English,’ Zhang replied contemptuously. ‘And you will call me professor.’ Zhang pulled himself up a little. ‘It appears you know why you are here.’

‘No,’ Stone said. It was the opposite of what he’d said when they arrested him. Hopefully that would annoy Zhang. His eyes stayed on Zhang — his hands, mannerisms, his eyes. But the investigator was difficult to read. His body language said nothing as yet.

‘You confessed at the time of your arrest,’ countered Zhang, as if already tired of the proceedings.

‘You choose your words with care, professor, so I shall do the same,’ said Stone. Zhang nodded back to him, and Stone went on. ‘I knew why I had been arrested. And I can see from what you have said, that I am right. I was arrested for the murder of Junko Terashima. But your men have made a mistake.’

Stone might be manacled, but he had to make the most of his one advantage. Stone knew he hadn’t killed anyone. Though the fact that video evidence had just been placed on his computer was not going to help him any.

Zhang nodded again, as if he didn’t believe a word. Standard interrogation practice, in both East and West.

‘I have explained myself,’ Stone said, ‘Now it’s your turn. What is the real reason you are talking to me, professor? All this — it’s very irregular.’ Trying to get Zhang to react. It wasn’t going to be easy. Zhang’s eyes were so narrow in his ancient, lined face they looked like they were nearly closed.

‘Continue talking,’ said Zhang. ‘If it pleases you to surprise me.’

Stone left a silence of at least a minute before he spoke. No sense making it easy for the man. ‘Firstly,’ he said. ‘Neither you, nor your comrades here, are from Hong Kong.’ Zhang arched a questioning eyebrow. A good sign. Stone carried on. ‘Your comrades in the car were speaking with a Beijing accent. You are a visitor to Hong Kong, Professor. Your skin betrays your years in the arid North of China. The humidity down here in the South preserves the skin,’ Stone explained.

Zhang’s dry, leathery face smiled mockingly. ‘Is this a discussion about my complexion, English?’

Stone went on, ‘Since Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China, with its own police, it is highly irregular that you should take custody of me. Professor.’

Zhang knew he was right. It was a long shot, but Stone had the chance here to discover what the Gong An’s real interest was — in Terashima, in Semyonov, New Machine Technologies, or whoever.

‘Observant,’ said Zhang. ‘But let me ask you. Why did you murder Miss Terashima?’

It was time to bluff his way out of this. ‘Professor Zhang,’ said Stone. ‘You are an intelligent man. So let’s cut out the chat, shall we? Your Gong An people from Beijing were on the scene only minutes after the murder. You must have had her followed. You probably had me followed. That means you know I didn’t kill Junko