Peter May - The Firemaker

In spite of the heat, Margaret shivered. The area was deserted. She felt vulnerable and was already regretting her decision to come. There was no sign of McCord. She walked to the gate and peered through the bars. There was a moon tonight, and as her eyes grew accustomed to its light she saw, beyond a second gate, a long line of cypress trees in an avenue leading towards a distant three-domed temple. The touch of a hot lizard hand on her arm made her squeal with fright. She turned, heart pounding, to find McCord at her elbow. ‘Jesus Christ! Did you have to sneak up on me like that?’

‘Shhh.’ He put his finger to his lips. ‘Come on.’ He pushed the gate and it swung open. ‘Quickly.’ She saw the perspiration beading his forehead, smelled the alcohol sour on his breath, could almost touch his fear. He looked back, frightened eyes darting left and right, as he pushed the gate shut behind them. He started scurrying towards the inner gate. She hurried after him.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Into the park. If we haven’t been followed we’ll be safe there.’

The small gate by the ticket booth was not locked. He held it open for her, and led her quickly away from the light along the avenue of cypresses. As their pupils dilated, shadows grew out of the wash of moonlight that lay across the park, and the lights of the city receded into the distance. ‘For heaven’s sake, McCord, whatever you’ve got to tell me you can tell me now.’

‘When we get to the corridor,’ he whispered breathlessly. ‘It’s safer there.’

The corridor was a long, cobbled passageway raised on stone slabs. It dog-legged for several hundred metres towards the distant temple. A steeply pitched tiled roof ran its length, resting on maroon pillars and an understructure of intricately patterned blue, green and yellow beams. Margaret and McCord passed under a brick gate with a pale green roof, through the shadow of a large tree, and up a broad sweep of steps to its east end. McCord seemed relieved. It was dark here, he said, and safe. Through the pillars they could see the park around them in the moonlight, and anyone who might approach. But still he was unable to stay in one place and say his piece. He was driven, nervous and restless, almost on the verge of hysteria, it seemed to Margaret. He continued to walk agitatedly along the corridor, past long lines of shuttered and padlocked counters from which vendors sold cheap mementos to tourists during the day. But his pace had slowed now and he seemed more thoughtful, hands pushed deep into the pockets of his jacket. He glanced nervously in her direction as she kept pace with him along the corridor. He sensed that her patience was wearing thin. ‘I need your help,’ he said eventually, as if he had had to summon the courage to ask.

‘What for?’

‘I want you to go with me to the American Embassy. They won’t have anything to do with me.’ He chuckled sourly. ‘I guess I kind of burned my boats with the good old US of A. But they’ll believe you.’

‘Believe me about what?’

‘That they’re trying to kill me.’

Margaret was at a loss. ‘ Who is trying to kill you?’

‘The same people that killed Chao Heng and those others. They’ll do anything to try and cover up.’ He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his neck and his forehead. His breath was coming now in short asthmatic bursts that wheezed and gurgled in his throat. ‘Though God knows what the point of it all is. They’re all going to die, the same as everyone else.’ There was something chilling in the way he spoke so glibly of death, raising goose bumps on Margaret’s arms. He glanced at her again, but couldn’t meet her eye for long. ‘I didn’t know anything about it. That’s the God’s honest truth. Not until that night at the duck restaurant. They sent a car for me. It was waiting outside. Took me to Zhongnanhai. You know what that is?’

‘The New Forbidden City.’

He nodded. ‘Where the bigwigs are.’ He fumbled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, sucking smoke deeply into his lungs through the crackling phlegm in his tubes. ‘Gave these things up years ago,’ he said. ‘But lately I thought what the hell.’ He took another draw. ‘The thing is, Chao was going to go public. You see, he had nothing to lose.’

Margaret shook her head. McCord was just rambling. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.

‘Pang Xiaosheng,’ he said, stabbing his cigarette at her. ‘You heard of him?’

‘Vaguely.’ Margaret tried to remember. Something Bob had told her. ‘Minister of Agriculture. Sponsored your research into the super-rice.’

‘ Ex Minister of Agriculture,’ McCord corrected her. ‘Future leader of China.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Or so he thought.’

Margaret was losing patience. ‘You’re still not making any sense, McCord.’

‘Oh, please,’ he said, turning towards her, an unpleasant sneer on his face, ‘call me Doctor. Even Mister. I’m not one to stand on ceremony.’

‘Look…’ She stopped and stood her ground. ‘Either you tell me what this is all about or I am going. Right now.’

‘Hey, cool it.’ He tipped his ash on the cobbles. ‘I’m coming to it, okay?’ They had reached the end of the corridor, and a cobbled slope led up through an arched gate to the temple beyond. A strange smile spread across McCord’s face. ‘Jeesus,’ he said. ‘Know where we are?’

‘In a park?’

He ignored the sarcasm in her tone. ‘Never even thought about it,’ he said. ‘Kind of ironic really. Come and see.’ And he headed up the ramp through the arch. She sighed and stood for a moment before following him, frustration bubbling up inside her. They emerged from the shadow of the gate into planes of shimmering silver marble, rising on three tiers to the blue-and-gold domes that rose, one on the other, more than a hundred and twenty feet into the Beijing sky. McCord wandered out across the paving stones towards the temple, the moon casting his shadow blue in his wake. He flicked his cigarette away, and it showered red sparks across the marble. He had suddenly become diminutive in the scale of things. He raised his arms on either side of himself like a bird and spun round to face her, grinning maniacally. ‘I feel washed in the light of heaven,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests.’ And he turned away again to tilt his head back and gaze up at the vast temple that loomed over him. He laughed out loud. ‘The Son of Heaven came here twice a year to pray. The first time was on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month to ask for a good harvest.’ He turned around again to face her, still grinning like an idiot, and she saw tears brimming in his eyes. ‘And then again at the winter solstice to give thanks for blessings received.’ And suddenly the grin vanished and he stepped towards her, tears running silently down his cheeks. ‘But Pang Xiaosheng didn’t have to pray for a good harvest. He had me to engineer one for him.’ He shook his head, and with bitterness in his voice said, ‘And he won’t be giving thanks for blessings received.’

Margaret stood stock still, absorbed by a performance that was both terrifying and sad, a tragedy played out on an ancient stage, a bizarre script performed by a grotesque clown. ‘Do you want to tell me what happened, Dr McCord?’ she asked quietly, in a voice that whispered back at them from among the terraces.

McCord seemed spent, and very small and insignificant in the shadow of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. ‘It was Chao Heng who set up the super-rice research programme for the Ministry of Agriculture. He was Pang’s man. And it was Chao who brought me in. That meant doing a deal with my employers, Grogan Industries. They were happy to put up the money, because Pang was in a hurry and they’d have a free hand. None of the interference they’d have got from government bodies in the States. The chance to put all their theories into practice on a grand scale. If it came off, they got the patent on the super-rice and the chance to sell it worldwide. Worth billions. Billions and billions. And the Chinese? Well, they’d just be happy because they could feed themselves, and Pang could sell himself as the man to lead them into the next millennium. And me? I was the man who was going to create the super-rice. And I did.’