Peter May - The Firemaker

Eventually, shortly after nine thirty, Yongli got to his feet. ‘I’ll go and get our wheels,’ he said. ‘Meet me outside the gate in half an hour.’ And he was gone without another word, vanishing quickly into the darkness.

Margaret looked at Li with concern. ‘Is he all right?’

Li shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ Usually you couldn’t shut Yongli up, or stop him making bad jokes. But there wasn’t much to talk about, and not much to laugh at. If they got caught, Yongli could face execution. There was a good chance they would be looking for him in Beijing. It was known the two of them were friends. Still, his friend’s mood was puzzling, uncharacteristic. Li looked at Margaret. ‘I hate this,’ he said. ‘I hate doing this to my friend. I hate running away.’

A little after ten they picked their way carefully across the tracks. They heard a train coming in the distance, clouds of steam and smoke rising up in its lights. Its whistle blew several times in the dark. Li took Margaret’s arm and led her to a dead area between junctions, and they crouched down to watch the train pass and head on into the station. As soon as it was gone, they sprinted across the remaining tracks and up an asphalt slope to the big iron gate through which they had come that morning. Li peered out into the street. It was quiet, the occasional lorry rumbling by. Haloes of mist were starting to form around the streetlights, and there was a slight chill in the damp air. ‘We’ll wait in the cover of the wall until he comes,’ Li said, and they stood hidden in its shadows with an oblique view through the half-open gate into the street beyond.

By ten thirty, there was still no sign of Yongli, and they were both starting to get nervous. ‘Suppose he’s been picked up,’ Margaret said. ‘We wouldn’t know. We could be waiting here for hours. And if he talks…’

‘He won’t talk,’ Li interrupted firmly, but she could see that he was worried, could hear the tension in his voice.

Another ten minutes went by, and then they saw the lights of a vehicle approaching slowly along the sidewalk. With the curve of the road, its headlights were pointed directly at them. They pressed themselves hard into the shadow of the wall, and as it drew closer and its lights swung away, Li leaned forward to take a look. He pulled back again immediately. ‘Police,’ he whispered.

The gentle purring of the engine in a low gear drifted slowly past and Li risked another look. It was a uniformed patrol vehicle, and it was heading on down the street.

‘Do you think they were looking for us?’ Margaret whispered.

He shook his head. ‘If they knew we were here to be looked for, they would know where to look.’

Another agonising ten minutes passed before an ancient pick-up truck clattered along the street towards them, pulling up in front of the gates with a squeal of brakes. Yongli leaned across from the driver’s side and signalled to them through the open passenger window. Li took Margaret’s hand, and they darted out across the sidewalk and up on to the bench seat of the pick-up. Li banged the door shut. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

Yongli waved his arms in frustration. ‘We had no goddamn gasoline. The guy screwed me for a tankful, and we had a hell of a diversion to get it. I’ve got more cans in the back. He says if I get caught with his pick-up he’ll say it was stolen.’ He crunched into first gear and they lurched away from the sidewalk.

‘Is everything all right?’ Margaret asked anxiously.

Li nodded. ‘A fuel problem. But it’s okay.’

Yongli withdrew his map from inside his shirt and handed it across Margaret to Li. ‘You can navigate.’

Li flicked on the courtesy light and ran his eyes quickly over the large, pristine map of the Middle Kingdom. He snorted. ‘There’s only one road. To Erhlien.’

‘Then just make sure we stay on it.’ Yongli’s gloom had been replaced by agitation. He seemed excitable, almost hyper. He thrust a pack of cigarettes at Margaret. ‘Here, light one for me.’ She passed them to Li who lit two and passed one back to Yongli. He dropped the stick into fourth gear and they picked up speed, trundling north parallel with the railway line, heading for the wide open spaces of Inner Mongolia and the northern reaches of the Gobi Desert.

They left the lights of the city behind them with some relief. The road passed among hills that marked the farthest limit of Shanxi province, and through the remains of a huge broken-down wall that stretched to the east and west. ‘The Great Wall of China,’ Li said. But it wasn’t so great here, where it had been allowed to fall into disrepair and was little more than a heap of rubble and stones. For a while the road followed it, before swinging north again, leaving the hills behind, and entering the dark, vast emptiness beyond.

It was around three hundred miles to the international border with Mongolia, once known as Outer Mongolia because of its relationship to the Middle Kingdom. They planned to make the journey in a little over six hours, Yongli dropping them as close as possible to the border, allowing them to cross during the hours of darkness. But none of them had considered the possibility of a puncture three hours into their journey, or the fact that their pick-up would not be equipped with a jack.

Yongli kicked the tyre in frustration. He knew he should have checked there was a jack before they left. The brace would unscrew the wheelnuts, but they had nothing to lift the truck, allowing them to remove the wheel. Ironically, the spare was sound and well filled with air.

The pick-up sat at an angle on the camber of the road, tilting down towards the nearside rear wheel. Moonlight shimmered off into the distance among the endless swaying acres of grassland. The only sound was of the wind whistling through the grass. It was a wind soft on the skin and filled with the sweet scent of wild flowers. A vast black sky bejewelled with stars spread above them like a dome, the moon a brilliant silver orb passing through its firmament. The road vanished to distant points behind and ahead of them. They were stranded and exposed, with nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.

Yongli was almost beside himself with anger and self-recrimination. ‘It’s hopeless, it’s completely hopeless,’ he kept saying. ‘It’s all my fault.’ Margaret was beginning to tire of him.

Li had instituted an exhaustive search of the vehicle — beneath the seats, under the bonnet in case the jack was strapped to the inside of the engine compartment, beneath the tailgate in case there was some hidden storage area. But they found nothing. And the back of the vehicle was empty. Nothing that might be of any use in improvising a jack. Li sat pensive and smoking at the roadside now, staring off into the distance. He had said almost nothing since the puncture.

Margaret had an idea. ‘Where’s the railway line?’ she asked suddenly. ‘We’ve been following it most of the way.’

‘Over there.’ Li pointed off to their right, but she couldn’t see it.

‘There might be old sleepers — you know, railroad ties — or bits of track lying around that we could use to lever up the truck.’

Li was on his feet in an instant. ‘You’re right,’ he said. And he turned to Yongli. ‘You head south, I’ll go north. If you don’t find anything within an hour, come back.’ Yongli nodded and set off immediately at a jog for the railway line. Li said to Margaret, ‘Will you be all right here on your own?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I’m coming with you.’

At first they jogged up the line, but their pace very quickly reduced to a fast walk, Margaret struggling to keep up with Li over the uneven ground. They did not talk much, conserving their breath. Li reckoned they covered maybe seven miles in the hour, and they found nothing. The futility of that wasted time, and the further hour they would waste going back, was demoralising. It remained unspoken, but they both knew that if the truck was still there by morning, they were bound to be seen and reported. And it would only be a matter of time before they were picked up by the police.