Peter May - The Firemaker

Margaret watched in silence for a long time from the cab of the pick-up as Li went through the Mercedes, very carefully, like a policeman searching for evidence. Which, she reflected, was what he was. She had no idea what he was looking for, or why. She suspected he was filling his mind with anything that would shut out his friend’s betrayal, squeeze out the guilt and regret. They had not spoken since he had taken the gun gently from her hand and embraced her and told her to wait in the cab. She had done what she was told without question or feeling. She had never spilled living blood, and the shock of it was greater than she could have imagined. She felt numb now, but knew that the pain would come later.

Li emerged from the Mercedes, a dark object not much bigger than a cigarette pack in his hand. He seemed to be prodding it with his finger and then listening to it. It was a moment or two before she realised what it was, and she leaped from the cab and sprinted the twenty-odd yards to the car. She snatched it from him breathlessly and checked the display. ‘We’ve got a signal,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘The battery’s very low.’

She looked at him. ‘Who do we call?’ And even as she asked she saw the cable trailing in his other hand, and beyond him, on the back seat of the Mercedes, Johnny Ren’s Apple Powerbook computer. She thrust the phone back into Li’s hand and slipped into the seat, opening the laptop on her knees. It took several infuriating minutes for the operating system to load before the screen presented her with its options. She hardly dared look. But there it was. The Internet Explorer icon. ‘Jesus…’ She looked up at Li’s perplexed face framed in the doorway. ‘We don’t need to call anyone. We can go on-line. We can put the entire goddamn story on the Internet and the whole world’s going to know about Grogan Industries and Pang and RXV.’

Li understood at once the implications of what she was saying. ‘Do you know how?’ he asked anxiously.

‘I think so.’ She tapped a few keys and opened up a document template on which she could type up their story. ‘It’s crazy,’ she gasped, her face shining with excitement. ‘We’re just about as far from anywhere as we can be…’ She glanced out of the window at the endless expanse of grass and desert. ‘… and yet we can talk to anyone in the world — several millions of them simultaneously.’

The computer beeped and she froze.

Li leaned in, troubled by her consternation. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Battery’s low on this, too.’ A box on the screen told her she had less than fifteen minutes computing time left. ‘God, how can I write it all in fifteen minutes?’ She starting tapping furiously on the keyboard.

Li could do nothing but wait and watch, anxious and frustrated. He walked around the car, avoiding looking back in the direction of the pick-up. He still couldn’t bring himself to think about Yongli, never mind look at his friend’s body lying in the dirt. The incessant tap, tap of the computer keys punctuated the gentle whine of the wind. He saw, through the windscreen, the concentration on Margaret’s face, the tension there. He heard the computer beep again and saw her despair.

‘Less than five minutes. Jesus, I’ve got to get on-line! Give me the cellphone.’ Her voice was shrill and insistent. He quickly rounded the car and handed her the phone. She plugged it into the modem socket on the back of the Powerbook and clicked the Internet icon. Almost instantly the melody of touch-tone numbers rang out, followed by the familiar white-noise sound of computers talking to each other across the ether — Ren’s password and ID sent automatically by his software. Then she was connected.

Li watched in awe as her fingers rattled back and forth across the keyboard, her eyes flickering up and down between keyboard and screen, the occasional grimace contorting her lips. Then there was a gasp as the computer screen suddenly went black, and the single, high-pitched wail of a disconnected line emanated from the earpiece of the cellphone. She leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes.

‘Well?’ Li asked. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear her response.

She opened her eyes slowly and looked at him. ‘I sent it to every website and bulletin board and e-mail address I could remember. It’s out there now, Li Yan. It’s not just our secret any more.’

The fence that marked the border ran off to east and west as far as the eye could see. Beyond lay Mongolia. A few miles to the north and east, the town of Dzamin Uüd, where it would be possible to catch a train for Ulaanbaatar. They stopped on a slight rise and gazed across the emptiness. They had left behind them, with the Mercedes and the pick-up and the bodies, the elation of sharing their secret with the world, and stood now facing a future of bleak uncertainty.

Li glanced back. China, in all its vast diversity, spread away to the south. His home. His country. In these last moments, as they had walked away, with every word of explanation, and with every step towards another country, his heart had grown heavy with the bitter burden of regret. Now he felt the eyes of his ancestors upon him, looking across five millennia. He had a responsibility to them, as well as to his country and to the oath he had taken as a police officer. He could not simply walk away. Margaret might have told their story to the world, but he had unfinished business in China.

He looked at her, her face stained by sweat and tears, her eyes strained by tiredness and death. And he put the flat of his hand on her cheek and felt it smooth and cool. He wished with all his heart it could be some other way.

He took a wad of dollars from his back pocket and pressed it into her hand. ‘They’ll take dollars,’ he said. ‘They always take dollars.’ He gazed beyond her across the desolate wastes of Mongolia. ‘It’s only a few miles to Dzamin Uüd. Will you manage on your own?’ She took the dollars without surprise and nodded. She had known he would not go to Ulaanbaatar with her. She had seen it in his eyes, had felt it in his touch. And she knew why. She understood. In his place she would have done the same.

‘I’ll always love you,’ she said.

He could not meet her eye. How could he make her understand how hard this was for him? He took both her hands and forced himself to look at her. ‘Even if they find a cure, what kind of existence would it be, living out my life in some foreign place, a fugitive from my own people?’

‘I know,’ she said.

He searched her eyes for understanding and saw only the reflection of his own pain.

‘I’ve got to go back, to clear my name, to wipe away the lies. Would they ever believe me if I didn’t?’

‘I know.’

‘I owe it to my uncle. I owe it to myself.’ He knew it meant losing her. And that was the hardest thing he had ever had to do in his life. ‘Margaret…’

‘Just go,’ she said, and she bit her lip to stop the tears.

They stood for a moment in silence, the wind tugging at their clothes, her hair flying out behind her, shining golden in the sun like a flag of freedom. He stooped to kiss her and they embraced, and clung to one another for a long time. Finally they broke apart, a little at a time, as if breaking the bond of a glue that held them. He turned without another word and started walking back towards the road through grass that ebbed and flowed like water on the shore. In the far distance he could see the black dots of the pick-up truck and the Mercedes where they had left them, the only break on a horizon that cut low across the immensity of blue overhead. His friend and his enemy lay dead there. His love lay behind him. Ahead of him, only uncertainty.

He waited for the call of her voice, turning in his mind’s eye to see her running through the tall grass to tell him that she was coming with him. But there was no call, and he knew that if he turned he would not be able to walk away, to leave her to face a precarious journey across a hostile land on her own. And the urge to turn back was almost irresistible. He knew she would be standing there on the rise, watching him go. He glanced over his right shoulder, an entirely involuntary movement. Just one last look. But she was gone. Down the slope, out of sight and heading for the fence, resolute, determined not to weaken. He could almost see the set of her jaw. Then he heard a swish, swish, swish, and turned to his left to find Margaret keeping stride with him. She smiled and said, ‘You didn’t really think I was going to let you go, did you? I mean, I’ve always wanted to see the inside of a Chinese prison.’ She held his arm and made him stop. Her smile faded. She said, ‘Whatever future we have is for sharing.’