Peter May - The Runner

Tao said to Wen, ‘When you say he’s been behaving strangely, what do you mean?’

She gasped and threw her hands up in despair. ‘I found a piece of paper folded into one of his jacket pockets. It had a poem written on it. Some stupid poem that didn’t even make any sense. When I asked him about it he nearly went berserk. He snatched it from me and accused me of spying on him.’

Tao was frowning. ‘What kind of poem?’

‘I don’t know. Just a poem. I found it a couple of days later between the pages of a book in his bedside table. I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want to be accused of spying again.’

‘Is it still there?’ Li asked.

She nodded. ‘I’ll get it.’

She returned a few moments later, with a grubby sheet of paper folded into quarters, well rubbed along the folds. She thrust it at Li. He took it and opened it carefully and spread it out on the table. He and Tao leaned over it. The poem was written in neat characters. It had no title and was unattributed. And, as Wen had said, appeared to make very little sense.

Li was completely nonplussed ‘It’s not much of a poem,’ he said.

Tao said quietly, ‘None of the Triad poems are.’

Li blinked at him, confused now. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s a tradition which has mostly passed from use,’ Tao said. ‘But there are still some Triad groups who practise it. Members are given personal poems to memorise. They can be interrogated on them to verify their identification.’ He lifted the sheet of paper. ‘But they are supposed to destroy them once they have been memorised.’

Wen was listening to their exchange with growing disbelief. ‘What do you mean, Triads?’ she said. ‘Are you telling me Sun Xi is a Triad? I don’t believe it.’

Tao looked at Li and shrugged. ‘Canton was one of the first areas in mainland China the Triads moved back into after the Hong Kong handover. If Sun had got himself into financial trouble with his gambling he would have been a prime candidate for Triad recruitment. And a big feather in their caps, too. A detective in criminal investigation.’

‘Even more so now,’ Li said. ‘Now that he’s an elite member of Beijing’s serious crime squad.’ He felt sick, suddenly remembering Mei Yuan’s appraisal of him. He lies too easily , she had said. And he had been Sun’s mentor and confidant. He had been succouring the cuckoo in the nest, his personal dislike of Tao leading him to look in all the wrong places. He was almost unable to meet his deputy’s eye. ‘I guess it’s me who owes you the apology,’ he said.

‘What are you talking about!’ Wen was nearly hysterical. ‘He’s not a Triad! He can’t be a Triad!’

Tao paid her no attention. He said to Li. ‘Apologies are not what’s important now, Chief. Finding Doctor Campbell is.’

A small lamp on a drinks table somewhere close by cast the only light in the room. Fleischer had switched off the ceiling light. ‘My eyes have grown rather sensitive as I have got older,’ he had explained unnecessarily.

Then he had leaned over her, as if wanting to get a better look. He had a warm, friendly face, avuncular, the smooth white hair and cropped silver beard lending the impression of an old family friend. Trustworthy, sympathetic. Until you saw his eyes. Margaret had looked straight into them when he leaned into the light, and thought she had never seen such cold, blue eyes in her life.

She was having trouble concentrating now. She was gripped by almost unbearable cramps every few minutes, and feared that she was going to give birth right there, still tied to the chair.

Fleischer was oblivious to her distress, and she had the impression that he was showing off to her, preening himself before someone who might just recognise his genius. He also seemed oblivious to the others in the room. CEO Fan and Detective Sun hovering somewhere just beyond the light of the lamp, shadowy figures whose impatience Margaret could feel, even through her pain. And poor Dai Lili. She simply didn’t count. A guinea-pig. A failed experiment. She whimpered quietly, slumped in her chair.

‘We selected seven altogether,’ Fleischer was saying. ‘Making sure we represented the major disciplines; sprinting, distance running, a swimmer, a weightlifter, a cyclist. Each of them was in the top half dozen in their respective sports. Already talented, but not necessarily gold medal winners. And that was key. They had to be good to start with.’ He was pacing in and out of the light, restless, energised by his own brilliance.

‘And what did you do to them?’ Margaret said. She pushed her head back and forced herself to focus on him.

‘I made them better,’ he said proudly. ‘I produced the first genetically modified winners in the history of athletics. Human engineering.’ He paused, and grinned. ‘You want to know how I did it?’

And Margaret did. In spite of her pain and her predicament. But she was damned if she was going to let Fleischer know it. So she said nothing, just staring back defiantly.

‘Of course you do,’ he said. ‘You think I don’t know?’ He drew a chair out of the darkness and into the circle of light, turning it around so that he could sit astride the seat and lean on its back, watching Margaret closely as he spoke. ‘All the drugs that these idiot athletes around the globe are still using to improve their performances are synthetic. Copycats. All they can ever do is emulate what the body does of its own accord in the world’s best natural athletes. Real testosterone and human growth hormone, building muscle and strength. Endogenous EPO feeding oxygen to tired muscles. That’s what makes winners. That’s what makes champions.’ He shrugged. ‘In any case it’s hard to take drugs now without being detected. Here in China they cracked down after all those embarrassments in the nineties. They made it illegal to supply banned drugs to athletes. An athlete found guilty of doping faces a four-year ban here. His coach, anything up to fifteen years.’ He grinned again. ‘So we have to be a little more clever. Because now they can test at any time. With only twenty-four hours’ notice, if you have been taking a banned substance, there is no way to get it out of your system. So I do two things.’ He held up one finger. ‘First, I programme the body to produce naturally what it needs. If you run fast I increase the testosterone. If you run long, I increase the EPO. If you lift big weights, I increase the growth hormone.’ He held up another finger. ‘And second, if they want to test you, I programme your body to destroy the excess.’

Margaret gasped as another cramp gripped her, and she wondered fleetingly if Fleischer thought she was perhaps gasping in admiration. She controlled her breathing, and felt a fine, cold sweat break out across her forehead. ‘How?’ she managed to ask.

‘Ah,’ Fleischer said. ‘The sixty-four thousand dollar question. In this case, perhaps, the sixty-four million dollar question.’

‘I suppose that’s how you got these athletes to agree to be your guinea-pigs, was it? With money?’

‘Oh, that was a part of it, Doctor. But only a part. You have to ask yourself why an athlete wants to win. Why they will put themselves through all that grinding pain and hard work, all that blood, sweat and tears. After all, they were doing it way before the monetary rewards made it financially worthwhile.’ He paused long enough to allow her to consider his question. And then he answered it for her, ‘Vanity, Doctor. It’s that simple. A desperate need for self-esteem, or the esteem of others. Fame, celebrity. And they are utterly single-minded in the pursuit of it.’ He chuckled. ‘So, you see, it wasn’t hard to convince them. After all, I was promising to deliver what it was they all wanted. Like a god, I could make them winners. Or not. It was their choice. But it was irresistible.’