Tom Aston - The Machine

She was trying to make him angry, but it wouldn’t work. Stone was back in business. She’d be the one to get angry.

Stone looked up from the phone finally, looked her in the eye, his eyes like chips of grey ice. ‘You know who killed her?’ He fixed her, but she simply looked back with the vacant eyes of an insolent teenager. ‘Let me guess,' said Stone. 'China21, the “protest” group. And you’re funded by Semyonov.’

That did it.

Hatred flashed across her face. She spat viciously, a great gout of saliva landing on his chest.

Stone looked down in bemusement at his shirt, then smiled up at her. ‘A simple “no” would have sufficed.’

She snatched at the phone but Stone pulled it away, teasingly holding it from her. She glared, but stopped grabbing. Stone responded by offering the phone to her with a mocking bow. Resentfully she took it from him.

‘I warned Junko,’ she said. She looked like she was carrying a similar set of emotions to Stone. Anger, guilt, lust for revenge. But suppressed. She was suppressing it just like Stone had. Like him, she’d been there to get Junko Terashima out of harm’s way. They’d both failed.

Stone turned to go, but the woman spoke again. ‘She told me about you, Mr Ethan Stone. And your photographs from Afghanistan.’

Junko, Junko, Junko! How could she be so casual with information? She’d given away her sources to this dodgy Chinese protest group, who knew far more than seemed possible. No wonder she got killed.

Stone watched the motorcycle move away into the traffic. The tart glanced round at him in the traffic. A smile and a nod — patronizing. Or trying to be.

Hooper was dead. Junko Terashima was dead. Stone would quell the anger, like he had done in the old days when he’d lost a comrade. He would crush and quell the emotions. There was no other way.

He looked at himself in a shop window and wiped the spittle from his jacket. That Chinese girl — he’d barely met her. But he’d connected with her. She’d been thinking like him and repressing the same feelings.

Stone checked the time. He was hardly in party-mood, but Semyonov’s “event” was definitely one party he wasn’t going to miss.

The magnificent Zhonghua Hotel. Stone had made his way to a large lobby in front of one of the hotel’s ornate reception rooms: The Crabflower Club. Stone walked in and picked up one of the house telephones at a distance from the entrance to the club. He made like he was on the phone while he observed the entrance and figured out how he was going to crash the party.

A single hostess stood behind a counter at the entrance to the Crabflower Club, flanked by two tuxedo’d security men. There were two obvious ways of getting in here. A simple con — pretend to be someone else, bluff your way in, and be sure you get the body language right, and say the right things. There was also “dumpster diving”. The hostess was taking the tickets and letters of invitation from the guests and throwing them in some kind of waste bin behind the counter. If Stone could make out he was a cleaner and swipe the bin, he’d be sure to find something to get him in.

The problem was, the bin was hidden right behind there, beside one of the security meatheads. Stone thought the simple con would be more fun in any case. He observed the hostess and the two security men for a few more seconds.

Torso and arm movements are strong giveaways to activity in a person’s limbic brain, the body’s emotional centre. The Chinese hostess was bending forward toward the guests, confident and friendly — but not subservient. Every so often her body language would betray her and she leant back, or angled her torso defensively, side-on to one of the guests. Someone she didn’t like. She also subconsciously leaned or moved away from both the security guys whenever they stepped towards her.

Stone had counted on searches, frisking, lynx-eyed detectives he’d have to make his way past. But there was none of this. It was all very low key — no doubt Semyonov wanted to look cool. Getting in should be easy if Stone made the right impression on the hostess. In the second he walked up, she had to trust him more than she trusted the security men beside her. He put down the phone and approached the hostess, gaining eye contact for a second. Warm smile. Then he flashed a look at the security boys. They wore the lapel pin in the shape of a small, silver hammer. The same silver hammer Stone had seen on Ekstrom in Afghanistan. These were Special Circumstances men in tuxedos — and yet the atmosphere couldn’t be more different from what he’d expected.

Stone looked again at the hostess. She wore a Chinese silk dress, elegantly high up on the neck and with the leg slit from ankle to thigh. Stone ran his eyes over her, from shapely hip to breasts. The split-second examination that hints at interest and flattery. So she knows she’s been noticed, but no more. Helps build rapport with some women, and this lady was one of them.

He glanced over the counter at the name badges for the guests. Not many left. He was late after his interlude at the Snake Market.

‘There I am. Armistead Harker,’ said Stone, glancing back up in her eyes.

She returned the smile with a hint of flirtatiousness. Leaned forward, looked Stone back in the eye and paused, like she was thinking about it. The meathead to the right had angled his body. Aggressive. Not good.

‘Professor Stone,’ said the hostess, with a knowing smile. ‘No need for that.’ She handed over a badge in the name Ethan Stone . ‘We were expecting you.’

Well, well. The woman had been told to look out for Stone, and she’d found him. She was perfect hostess for Semyonov’s party — a good figure and “the smarts” as the Americans say. Masters degree from one of Virginia Carlisle’s “good schools”. Equally at ease in English and Mandarin. All part of the carefully burnished image that surrounded everything to do with Semyonov — relaxed, cool, intelligent. No one — least of all those Semyonov invited — would believe that he was anything other than the super-intelligent, cultured man. A moral and intellectual hero, as George Watts put it. Could it be that the naive young reporter, Junko Terashima, was the only one to see through Semyonov’s facade? Looking around at the cool intellectuals arriving at the Crabflower Club, Stone half-doubted Junko’s story himself. But then there were still the men in tuxedos with a silver hammer on their lapels. And Junko was dead.

The hostess nodded imperceptibly to one of the guards as Stone walked past her into the club. Stone half-expected to be followed inside. He felt his mind calculating how to deal with the two guards. They’d let him in quite deliberately — but why?

The Crabflower Club was a different world from the teeming sweatshops and markets of Hong Kong only a couple of hundred metres away. Stone had expected something of orgiastic extravagance, and indeed there was champagne, entertainers, and lavish food. There were gorgeous models stalking around in revealing designer outfits. But it was the omissions from the guest list which impressed Stone. No politicians, racing drivers or fellow billionaires for Steven Semyonov. Here were the up-coming futurologists, thinkers and entrepreneurs. There were charity directors, architects and experts in little known technologies from the whole of the Pacific Rim. Semyonov had handpicked the guest list, it appeared. Semyonov’s parties in California were legendary, and it would be obligatory to have a good time, to get wild even. Stone glanced around. Certainly a buzz. A room full of PhD’s had never partied so hard.

And it was a great party. It was euphoric. Because most people there couldn’t believe they were even invited to a party by Steven Semyonov. Even Stone felt himself relax a little. And if he was honest, Stone couldn’t believe himself that those SCC meatheads had let him in. It was so relaxed. He’d expected a truly fascistic security operation, but that was way wide of the mark. The atmosphere at the Crabflower Club was open, welcoming. The opposite of what he’d expected.