Certainly Oyang was westernised, though. By the look of it, during his time in San Francisco, he craved recognition as some kind of Bay Area intellectual. Oyang spoke French and Italian, fluently it was said. He affected to like expensive wine, and also art. He was popular in San Francisco for his liberal views on democracy and politics. Not your average Chinese guy.
Stone’s mind wandered to the image of Zhang — also a Chinese official, but the very antithesis of this Oyang.
Stone read on in Junko’s notes. Oyang may speak Italian and buy expensive wine, but it could be just a front, a means to an end. He was a charmer, and he was doing all those things as part of his job.
Oyang had been wasted in Nigeria, but he was the perfect man for the Chinese to send to Silicon Valley and charm Californian technologists into joining China’s research projects. According to Junko’s notes, he soon became known to the leading lights in Silicon Valley. He must have thought he’d hit the motherlode when he got to meet Semyonov.
It was fun to look at Junko’s neatly written notes, and the comments Ying Ning had scrawled over them in a purple pen. Junko obviously thought Oyang was “a good man”. It was like he’d managed to charm Junko too. She noted that Oyang “spoke out in favour of workers’ rights in ShinComm”.
Ying Ning scribbled over this in English, “
Ying Ning took everyone for a hypocrite. But then, Oyang seemed like a master at telling people what they wanted to hear. Talks human rights in California. In Beijing —
They cab sped up, down the tunnel under the river. This was a danger area, the most likely site of “Tragic Accident Kills Tourist”. Stone craned his neck around. The two scooters were definitely there, one carrying a passenger. The danger would come if a scooter passed them. Someone could blind the driver with a laser. Like all Chinese cabs, this one had no seat belts, and the driver was doing sixty or seventy now they were out of the traffic.
They emerged from the tunnel into the open spaces and seventy storey buildings of the Pudong district. A stark contrast to the organic clog across the river. Nearly there.
Anyhow, what did Oyang want with Stone? Oyang had been Semyonov’s man, and now Semyonov was dead. Oyang might simply want to find out what Stone knew, and leave it at that. Or he might want to throw out information about Semyonov’s death, using Stone and his anonymous site. This was the kind of thing Stone loved. And since Oyang was known to be highly charming and intelligent, Stone would need to be on his mettle.
The taxi slowed up at the side of the road. The driver said nothing, but looked sourly out of the window at the crowds of the unemployed hanging around. Unmistakably country folk, from their walnut brown faces and their clothes. Men in ancient suits, women in coolie hats and paddy field rubber boots. Behind them was a shiny sign with the ShinComm logo, and the sixty stories of the ShinComm Tower. They’d arrived.
‘Farmers, look for work,’ said the driver.
Stone looked again. Farmers? They were desperate peasants, migrants hustling for work in the towering offices. The well-dressed office workers paid them no attention whatsoever. Like they didn’t exist.
‘Watch out for farmers,’ repeated the driver, eyeing the crowd with contempt from the side window. ‘No stop here.’
There must be five hundred peasants out there. Some kind of gangmaster had appeared by the tower. The crowd were shouting, shoving, begging for work. Stone made the driver stop and paid him. He wasn’t going to let the man’s distaste for this mob delay him. He got out, then began to push round the back of the car. Then he began to move with difficulty through the crowd toward the front door of the tower. It was slow going. The farther he got the more peasants there were.
Stone became aware of someone moving in the crowd behind him. Not one of the “farmers” — he was wearing a black T-shirt. Stone skirted the toward the side of the mob, his senses on full alert. Definitely someone moving fast behind him, too — perhaps two of them. He should confront them, they were close, he wanted to…
He span, catching one guy an elbow in the temple. The bone-on-bone impact shakes the brain in the skull and stuns. The chaos was such that no one even looked round in the crowd. Someone grabbed at his bag behind him. Stone swivelled back. A woman was screaming, her hair flailing above the crowd. What the hell? She screamed again, hysterically, as Stone reached her.
Too late he realised. He half-turned. There was a gun, its muzzle suddenly nestling in his spine. The woman looked straight at him, suddenly calm. A set-up. The taxi had driven away. Stone was shoved along at gunpoint through the crowd. It had all taken only a few seconds. A black van appeared in the heart of the mob. Stone was forced in.
The peasant mob banged on the side panels of the van as it moved off.
Chapter 30–12:04pm 2 April — Shanghai, China
‘Strip!’ he barked. ‘I say all the clothes off!’
The Chinese guy in the black T-shirt had exchanged the small handgun he used to capture Stone in the crowd of peasants. He was now holding an AK47, as were the other two Chinese in the back of the van. It seemed like overkill at a range of two and a half metres.
The van had pulled away from the ShinComm Tower and driven for five minutes. Now it had stopped and Stone was being made to strip.
‘I say all the clothes!’ he shouted again. ‘And stand up!’
There are ways of doing these things. This was the wrong way. OK — they were checking for RFID chips, which could be tracked. fair enough, but one of the Chinese lads was filming it on his phone, his tongue sticking gleefully in his cheek. Stone kicked his clothes across the van. Accidentally smashing the phone against the side of the van in the process.
‘Sorry.’
As Stone expected, the boss-man of the three scanned the pile of clothes with the RFID detector, rummaging through a couple of times. Nothing. The boss-man shrugged. He banged a couple of times on the side of the van, and they moved off again, Stone sitting unclothed on the floor of the van.
‘Is this what they mean by “coming naked to the conference table”?’ said Stone to the boss-man. Smart words, but he felt pretty stupid.
An hour and twenty minutes later he was at a large villa, by the look of it well outside the city of Shanghai. The boss-man threw him something to wear. Swim shorts. The shorts were the right size. Oyang had done his homework on Stone.
The sky was clear and hot. Stone was led through two sets of gates and around the back of the house, where there was a large swimming pool, two tennis courts and huge garden secluded by high stands of trees and bamboo. There were changing rooms and what looked like an outdoor kitchen. Just your regular Chinese family home then.
A Chinese man lay on a lounger reading the Wall Street Journal in English. There was a young woman by him in the tiniest of bikinis.
‘Oyang,’ said Stone, strolling up to him. ‘So kind of your men to collect me. As you can see, I found the time to change
‘After what has happened to my good friend Semyonov, Mr Stone, I have to take precautions,’ said Oyang, putting down his Wall Street Journal. ‘It is so easy to plant tracking or bugging devices and,’ said Oyang with a sickly smile, ‘My men wanted to body search you also, but…’
‘But they valued their front teeth,’ said Stone, staring Oyang in the eye. Stone had thought Oyang would be charming but steely, making veiled threats in order to keep the upper hand in the conversation. Instead, on first impressions, he was simply a creep. He kept glancing at that tiny bikini, though the girl didn’t seem to mind.
Oyang asked a flunkey for drinks, and made small talk until they arrived. At one point he turned to the
