him properly. Family, high school yearbook- the whole nine yards. But if Carslake had already looked at those things, he wasn’t letting on. Why not?
When they made it back to the little house on the outskirts of Chengdu, Carslake finally asked Stone outright. ‘Come on, Stone. You were surprised, weren’t you?’ ‘Surprised about what?’ ‘The thing underneath the crater,’ said Carslake. ‘The large metal object down there. You asked me to bring the radar set with me, because you thought there was something down there. But still you’re surprised.’ ‘I guess I was,’ said Stone. ‘But why?’ asked Carslake. ‘You knew there was something down there. You knew about the gravity anomaly. And you said those figures and names were in Semyonov’s handwriting.’ ‘I know,’ said Stone. ‘It was Oyang.’ ‘What about him?’ ‘The more I think about him, the more I think he’s pulling the strings. I got the idea in my head that Oyang was sending us up there to Sichuan to get us out of the way. Get us off the scent.’ ‘He gave you details of where to find the Machine, showed you where to go — how can that be putting us off the scent?’ ‘Oyang would assume we wouldn’t find anything. He knew about the anomaly. Must have done. He knew it would be intriguing for me, that it would look like something. He knew it would be interesting enough for me to go looking for. But it could be nothing, Doug. Just some natural phenomenon. We still have no idea whatsoever what this mysterious Machine is. Or if it exists at all.’ ‘All that time you thought Oyang’s fucking with us? You even got me over from the US?’ ‘Thought you might enjoy it,’ said Stone, flashing a smile. ‘No seriously. I’ve only really thought about it since you told me what you saw down there. Besides, going to Sichuan was only one part of the research plan. I also sent off to my students in England to look into some stuff. Not quite as exciting as what we’ve been doing, but that research was just as important.’ Carslake was half-angry, half-intrigued. He didn’t mind being used by Stone. But he hated feeling he was out of the loop. On the other hand, after Carslake had posted online about the Machine before he even arrived in China, what the hell did he expect? ‘Research about what?’ asked Carslake, guardedly. ‘What did you get your students to look at?’ ‘The true ownership of New Machine Technology — the people who are making the weapons, filing all the patents, and making all the money. It’s the number one unanswered question.’ ‘But it’s owned by the Chinese — the Chinese government.’ ‘Yeah, I’ve heard that. But that’s just an assumption — as if everything is state-owned in China. I also heard it’s owned by ShinComm, and ShinComm has regular shareholders — one of whom was Semyonov. Semyonov put in the money for sure, but like all Chinese joint ventures, New Machine must be at least fifty-one percent owned by a Chinese person or company.’ ‘OK. So ShinComm owned fifty-one percent. Even though Semyonov supplied all the cash and the ideas.’ ‘So you’d think,’ said Stone. ‘But I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Oyang knows the answer. He was in there when New Machine was set up, and he told me it’s a subsidiary of ShinComm — but he also likes to tell stories. He makes things up. Tells us what we want to hear. So we can’t rely on him. What I do know is that that none of the shares are owned simply by Semyonov or ShinComm. They’re held through mysterious nominee companies.’ Carslake looked confused, but Stone was busy. He had already retrieved his laptop from the closet at the house and was logging into the NotFutile.com system. ‘You left your computer here?’ cried Carslake. ‘What if the house got raided?’ ‘It’s all online,’ said Stone. ‘On the secure server. They’d get the hardware, but nothing else.’ ‘So what’s the answer? Your team in England found who owns New Machine yet?’ Stone opened his email and scanned over it. ‘No,’ said Stone, looking intently at the screen. ‘I didn’t think they would. Someone has been hiding his tracks too well for us to find the ownerships that easily. It’s one of those complex web of ownerships that investigators take months to uncover. It just means someone's hiding something.’ Stone’s fingers rippled across the keyboard as he began to write a blog post on the site. ‘My students had a couple of days and got nowhere. We’re not going to do any better. I’m going to try something else. I’m going to experiment with Oyang. I’m going to do things to him, and see how he reacts.’ Carslake watched the words as Stone typed the blog post for the NotFutile.com web site.
‘Anonymous sources in the Swiss Finance Ministry. Are you shitting me? How did you figure all that out?’ asked Carslake as the words spread across the page and Stone finally hit submit. ‘I didn’t. I made it up,’ said Stone. ‘Yes, but it’s bullshit right?’ ‘Your idea, Doug. Remember? You can post all kinds of shit on the Internet, right?’ ‘Sure. But it is still bullshit.’ ‘And so was your idea of a UFO hidden under the hills of Sichuan,’ said Stone. ‘This Swiss connection makes as much sense as anything else we’ve come up with. Oyang's a Chinese official with accounts in Switzerland, so let's call it an educated guess. Anyhow, so long as it gets a reaction, who cares?’
Chapter 50 — 4:34pm 10 April — United Flight 857, San Francisco to Shanghai
Ekstrom insisted on first class for this kind of flight. The client was paying of course, but the reason was that he needed a little privacy when he was planning his work and thinking things through. And, of course, it was way beneath a man of his standing to sit cheek by jowl with all those snotty kids, backpackers and college lecturers behind the curtain.
Ekstrom had been requested to personally perform a “hit” in mainland China. The assassination itself was not at all difficult. The target would not present any problem and for that matter even the location looked tailor-made. On the other hand, performing a hit in Mainland China would always present certain risks.
Thankfully, the order had come from the Chinese Public Security Bureau — which is why his corporate bosses at SCC had been so excited. It was a way-in to the Chinese market, and his bosses were seeing dollar signs. Ekstrom had agreed, but had asked some stiff questions before he left for the airport. If he was going personally to do a job where he risked the firing squad because some minor Chinese official screwed up, he demanded to know more about who was behind it. Whoever was hiring him,
Q Y Zhang was the client’s name. A full colonel in the
But as Ekstrom sat flying high over the Pacific, the natural question was — why? What need had the
As he sat in first class, twelve kilometers above the Pacific, Ekstrom was beginning to work it out. It gave a perverse thrill. The Chinese were all over the Semyonov-SearchIgnition affair. They must have been watching Alban and they knew it was Ekstrom who had killed him. Now they wanted the same man to carry out the hit in China. Everyone who was anyone in a US corporation knew that it was the SearchIgnition board who ordered Alban killed. Who else would it be? The Chinese knew it too. And by using the same assassin in China, they wanted suspicion for the next killing to fall on SearchIgnition also.
This Zhang was a clever guy.
Chapter 51 — 9:04am 12 April — Hongqiao International Airport, Shanghai, China
Du Fu’s Road to Sichuan may have been hard, but getting back to Shanghai was not. The following day,
