Peter May - The Firemaker

He said, ‘The Hard Rock Café.’ But that was all. The atmosphere between them remained sour.

The Hard Rock Café was attached to the Beijing Landmark Towers off Dongsanhuanbei Road. A red soft-top Chevvy with fifties fins projected from a first-floor roof, for all the world as if it had fallen from the top of the adjacent fourteen-storey tower block and lodged there. A blue globe, with the Hard Rock Café logo, sat atop an elaborately roofed mock-Greek-pillared entrance. Out front, on the sidewalk, stood a ten-foot-high red Les Paul guitar. Margaret followed Li up black-and-red steps, scared to touch and smear the polished brass handrail supported on black-and-gold Les Pauls. They passed beneath a large five-point red star over the legend NO DRUGS AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS ALLOWED. They had not spoken for more than fifteen minutes.

Inside, the restaurant was doing brisk business. Staff wearing emerald shirts and black jeans were serving early lunches to Beijing’s new young jet set and a scattering of curious tourists and foreign residents.

A pretty young waitress approached Li and they had a brief conversation. She nodded towards a stall in the far corner, and Li headed off towards it. Margaret followed, depressed and annoyed with him, and wondering why she was here. As they approached the stall, she saw that there were four young men seated in it. They were all immaculately and expensively dressed, with beautifully cut hair and manicured hands. They were unlike any other Chinese she had seen since she arrived. They reeked of wealth. A hush fell over their conversation as Li arrived at the table, and one of them aborted the call he’d been making on his cellphone. The man in the far right-hand corner smiled to show beautiful predatory teeth, and Margaret saw that he was not as young as he had first appeared. Mid-thirties, perhaps. His confidence, and the way the other three at the table deferred to him, immediately marked him out as the man Li had called The Needle. He might sell drugs, but he didn’t look like a man who used them.

‘Well, well,’ he said, still smiling. ‘If it isn’t Mr Li Yan, our friendly neighbourhood cop. Heard you got yourself promoted, Mr Li. Congratulations.’ He held out his hand, but Li ignored it.

‘I want a word,’ he said.

‘Oh, do you?’ The Needle glanced at Margaret. ‘And who’s this? Your girlfriend?’

‘She’s an American observer.’

‘An observer?’ He exaggerated a look of surprise. ‘And what’s she come to observe? How Beijing cops harass innocent citizens?’

‘No,’ Li said evenly. ‘She’s here to observe how innocent citizens are willing to co-operate with the police and spare them the trouble of getting a warrant.’

‘She speak Chinese?’ The Needle glanced at her suspiciously.

‘No.’

‘Hey, lady, you want to fuck?’ The Needle directed this at Margaret in Chinese.

Margaret looked at Li, confused. ‘Was he speaking to me?’

‘Sure,’ The Needle said in English. ‘I just say, how you doing?’

‘I need to talk for a few minutes,’ Li said, ignoring this exchange.

‘Talk, then.’

‘In private.’

‘Where?’ The Needle grew cautious.

‘In the Jeep. I’m just round the corner in the carpark.’ The Needle hesitated. Li said, ‘You’ve got nothing to hide, right? So you’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s just a little information I need.’

The Needle was pensive for a moment, then wiped his mouth with his napkin and stood up. ‘You’ve got ten minutes. I’m a busy man.’

His adjutant, on his left, moved quickly to let him out, and he followed Li and Margaret to the door.

‘What’s going on?’ Margaret whispered to Li.

‘We’re just going to have a little chat,’ Li said. But there was something in his tone that set Margaret’s nerves on edge. And there was something cold and hard in his eyes that she hadn’t seen there before.

The Jeep was in the carpark of the Landmark Towers Hotel. Li told Margaret to get in the back. The Needle got in the front passenger seat. Li started the engine. ‘Hey!’ The Needle barked, startled. ‘You didn’t say anything about going anywhere.’

‘Just a short drive,’ Li said, unperturbed. ‘It’ll give us a chance to talk.’ But he said nothing as they drove south, and then west on Gongren Tiyuchang Road. The Needle grew increasingly uneasy.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Just somewhere quiet and discreet, so we won’t be disturbed. I know how important your street cred is. You don’t want to be seen hanging around with a cop, do you?’

‘Stop, right now, and let me out!’ The Needle was starting to panic. ‘This isn’t what I agreed to.’

Li turned south on Dongdoqiao Road. ‘You’re not making a very good show of co-operating with the police,’ Li said. ‘You don’t want to give our American observer the wrong idea, do you?’

‘Fuck your American observer! Let me out!’ He tried to open the door but it was locked.

‘What’s going on?’ Margaret asked from the back, becoming concerned.

‘Oh, nothing much,’ Li said. ‘Just a routine breach of human rights.’

He turned the Jeep hard right, through open gates, and into a vast concourse, the giant circular Beijing Workers’ Stadium looming ahead of them. Soldiers on exercise, dressed in green camouflage, were piling into covered lorries and sweeping through the concourse in a wide arc towards the gates as Li drove in. He steered a course between them and slid the Jeep to a stop outside one of the exit ramps from the stadium. He killed the engine, flicked off the central locking and turned to The Needle. ‘Get out,’ he said.

Through a crack in the vast doors that opened on to the stadium at the top of the ramp, there was a glimpse of green grass and concrete terrace. The Needle jumped out of the Jeep. ‘What the hell are you up to, Li?’

Li rounded the bonnet and with one hand grabbed The Needle by his lapel. There was a sound of tearing cloth and stitching. Margaret was right behind them. ‘What are you doing?’ She was alarmed now.

Li dragged the unwilling Needle up the ramp behind him, the drug dealer’s physical resistance feeble in the face of Li’s size and strength. He searched around desperately for some sign of life — a face, a figure, a witness. But there was no one. No one but Margaret, chasing after them up the ramp, shouting at Li, demanding to know what the hell he thought he was up to.

Li ignored them both, pulling the door open a fraction and jerking The Needle through the gap. Margaret stood for a moment, panting, then squeezed through in their wake, in time to see Li push the other man down the slope, across the running track and on to the grass pitch. Terraces of empty seats rose up all around them. On days when China’s national soccer team played here, it was filled with sixty thousand cheering, screaming fans. Now it was eerily quiet, the voices of the two men on the grass echoing around the acoustic bowl of the stadium. Margaret heard the creak of the door they had entered, and turned in time to see it shutting behind them. A sensation, like ice-cold fingers, touched the back of her neck. ‘Li!’ she screamed. But Li’s attention was elsewhere. His left hand was holding The Needle by his shirt collar, twisting it, pushing it hard into his throat.

Gone was the cool confidence of this untouchable trafficker in drugs and misery. He seemed very small beside Li, childlike and whimpering. His feet almost left the ground. With his free hand, Li drew a large revolver from a shoulder holster beneath his jacket, and pushed the nozzle-end into The Needle’s forehead. His face was pale and grim, his eyes black. Margaret ran on to the grass. ‘Stop this,’ she said quietly. The Needle flicked a panicked glance in her direction. She might be an ally, the witness he needed to stop Li.