Peter May - The Firemaker

‘And how long do you think it’ll be before Public Security hear there was some blonde-haired, blue-eyed foreigner at the hotel? Now they’re going to know where we are. We can’t afford to wait till tonight. We’re going to have to cross the border as soon as we can.’

Margaret sat in silence, pink-faced, stung by the rebuke, and realising the justification for it. But Yongli leapt to her defence. ‘Lay off her, Li,’ he said. ‘She’d have created a much bigger stir squatting at the roadside.’ He chucked the map at him. ‘I’ve been looking at this. The main road crosses the border a couple of kilometres north of here. There’ll be some kind of border post there. But if we take that smaller road west…’ He leaned across to stab at it with his finger. ‘… we can probably get close enough to the border to see how the land lies without committing to a crossing.’

Li examined the route Yongli had pointed out. It made sense. He nodded. ‘Okay.’

As they drove out of town, heading west on a road that was little more than a dirt track, he glanced at Margaret, wanting to apologise but not knowing how. She resolutely avoided meeting his eye. She felt guilty, and ashamed, and angry with herself for putting them so thoughtlessly at risk. She could easily have squatted down behind the pick-up out on the open road. After all, it wasn’t as if there was any traffic, and she would have seen anything coming miles before it would have seen her. She felt his hand seek out hers and give it a tiny squeeze. She squeezed back, and wanted to kiss him and hold him and tell him she was sorry. But she didn’t. She sat staring straight ahead through the windscreen at the immensity of nothing that stretched before them.

Erhlien had vanished into the shimmering heat haze behind them. The dust kicked up in their wake was blowing ahead of them now on the edge of the wind, reducing visibility to less than thirty or forty yards. Yongli fumbled to light a cigarette, and she noticed that his hands were shaking. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘Sure,’ he said, but he didn’t look it. He was ghostly pale.

Suddenly a dark shape emerged from the dust up ahead of them on the road.

‘What the hell’s that!’ Li sat bolt upright, and Yongli jammed on the brakes, bringing them to a skidding halt. The engine stalled, and the silence that followed was almost eerie, broken only by the whistling of wind through grass. They sat, without a word, watching as slowly the dust cleared to reveal a black Mercedes sitting facing them on the road, perhaps twenty-five yards away. There appeared to be a single figure sitting on the driver’s side, a silhouette against the immensity of sky and grass beyond.

‘Who is it?’ Margaret whispered, as if the occupant of the other vehicle might hear her.

‘I don’t know,’ Li said, but he had a sick, gnawing fear that perhaps he did.

Yongli stubbed his cigarette out with trembling fingers, and the occupants of both vehicles sat regarding one another without sound or movement for nearly a minute. Then the driver of the Mercedes opened the door and stepped out on to the track. Still they could not see his face. He wore a dark suit, the jacket flapping open, a white shirt and a tie, and he started walking, slowly, steadily, towards the pick-up. Li sat tensed, every muscle and sinew straining as he peered through the dusty windscreen, trying to bring form to the face of the approaching figure.

‘Shit!’ he hissed under his breath.

‘What!’ Margaret was very scared now.

‘It’s Johnny Ren.’

Ren stopped, almost as though he had heard, took out a red-and-white pack of Marlboro, and lit a cigarette. Then he resumed his progress towards them, his smoke whipped away in the wind.

Li reached under his jacket to remove his uncle’s revolver from his shoulder holster. His fingers froze on the leather of its empty pocket. The gun was gone. He turned, slowly, to find Yongli pointing it at him. Margaret sat perfectly still between them, not daring to move. She had no idea what was happening here, or why.

‘They said she would be shot,’ Yongli said. A tear ran silently down his cheek. He was desperate for Li to understand, to know that there was justification in this. ‘You said you would help, but I knew you wouldn’t. And I was right. They came to me that day. Made it clear I had two choices. Lotus or you. She’d still have been there now, in some cell, if I hadn’t agreed. Next week, next month, it would have been a bullet in the head.’ Li must understand — there was nothing else he could have done. ‘I had no choice,’ he said. ‘I love her.’ His face was wet with tears now. ‘I’m sorry, Li Yan.’

Johnny Ren arrived at the passenger side of the pick-up and pointed his gun in at Li. ‘Get out,’ he said. He had a large pink plaster across one side of his forehead. He was nervous, eyes dark-ringed and wary. Li remembered that face looming over him in the park, in the rain, the intent in those same eyes, the iron fist that had smashed repeatedly into his face. So they had won. He felt sick. All those wasted lives. For what? To buy a reprieve for those terrified executives at Grogan Industries, for Pang and his ambitions. To perhaps find a cure that would get them off the hook. He slipped out on to the dirt road, overcome now by a sad sense of despair in the knowledge that no one would ever know what he and Margaret knew. Guilty and greedy men would escape justice. Ren waggled his gun at Margaret and she climbed out after Li, who ached at the thought of a bullet piercing that pale, freckled flesh, spilling her blood in the dirt of this empty place. He hoped she would have no pain. There had been enough of that in her life. He glanced at her, but she had her eyes fixed on Ren, a strange, wild quality in them, the chipped ice-blue of her irises almost chilling in its intensity.

Yongli came round the front of the pick-up, the revolver hanging loosely in his hand by his side. He was unable to meet Li’s eye. Johnny Ren held out his hand towards him. ‘Give me the gun,’ he said, not taking his eyes from Li. Obediently, Yongli placed the revolver in his hand. Ren weighed it up and down for a moment, as if measuring its worth, then cocked the hammer, turned his head and shot Yongli twice in the chest. His eyes were on Li again before the young chef hit the ground. Ren had no need to check his handiwork. He knew that Yongli was dead.

Both Li and Margaret were struck by the shock of it as if by a physical blow. Moments earlier Yongli’s face had been stained by warm, wet tears of pain and regret. Now they were turning cold in the wind that ruffled his hair as he lay dead in the dirt, blood spreading darkly around him. Life could be extinguished so easily, the human body such a frail vehicle for the weight of thought and pain and history that it bore.

Johnny Ren glanced at Margaret, meeting the eyes that never left him, and for a moment he was disconcerted by them. Then he smiled and tapped the plaster on his forehead. ‘A lucky shot in the dark,’ he said. ‘Lucky for me. Unlucky for you.’

His eyes flickered back to meet Li’s. Unfinished business to complete. Then, perhaps, a little entertainment. ‘Goodbye,’ he said.

Li felt the physical impact of the shot, watching in disbelief as blood trickled from the small round hole that had appeared in the middle of Ren’s forehead. There was the merest hint of surprise in Johnny Ren’s expression as his legs buckled under him and he tipped forward on to his face. Li saw that most of the back of his head was gone. He turned to see McCord’s gun trembling in Margaret’s hand. And still the wind blew, bending the tall grasses, whispering relentlessly through the empty spaces. The only sound, it seemed, in the whole world.