Tom Aston - The Machine

There was a shout to Stone’s left. ‘He can’t be leaving. Semyonov’s the party dude, he’s gotta stay!’

But Semyonov was indeed leaving. The Chinese VIPs made their way out through a rear door with the bodyguards. Semyonov turned his huge head and neck away from Stone, impassive again, like a great white bull, and was ushered away behind the Chinese. The SCC meatheads took him through the crowd at speed. Stone tried to follow, but it was a few seconds before he got free of the crowd. He gave one of the Crabflower staff an authoritative nod as he followed Semyonov’s party through the fire door. It worked. He sped up. Suddenly he was outside in the darkness of the loading bay behind the Zhonghua. There was a smell of fish and the harbour, the air sticky and hot again after the aircon inside. But no sign of Semyonov.

Stone looked around amongst the cars and trucks. Semyonov could be anywhere. He could have been whisked off already. Stone felt stunned. The two-handed writing, those intense red eyes, those mystical comments — Semyonov had completely outmaneuvered him. If he was a killer, he was a cold, heartless bastard.

Stone became aware someone had followed him out. A door closed behind him. Stone’s ears pricked up for danger, but he was still scanning the yard for Semyonov. There were footsteps. The Communist Party men were being helped into a black Mercedes, surrounded by Chinese paramilitaries in olive dress uniforms, shiny black webbing and boots. Soldiers of the Public Security again — the Gong An. All unusually tall and even more unusually, holding European-made HK sub-machineguns.

Stone stood in the shadow — still no sign of Semyonov’s huge, white head. Stone kept an eye on those tall guards. Some kind of elite Chinese unit sent to guard Semyonov. What the hell was that guy up to?

A sleek, white sports car flashed in front. The soft whine of an electric motor, no other sound. Semyonov. It had to be, driving his electric sports car. Driving himself. There were steps behind him again, but Stone kept his eyes on the car high-tailing it out of the car park. The brake lights flashed bright red in the darkness as the car paused before joining the traffic, then disappeared toward the Harbour Tunnel.

Behind Stone, the footsteps sped up. There was a shout from the black limo in front of him. Two of the paramilitaries pointing their weapons his way. The footsteps were right behind him now. He spun, arm raised, ready to lean his weight into an elbow to the temple. But then stopped himself as the assailant grabbed his sleeve and pulled him.

‘For Pete’s sake, Stone! Make it look realistic!’

For Pete’s sake? Virginia Carlisle, GNN. She planted her lips on him, then dug her fingernails into his butt. She’d followed behind, looking for Semyonov like him. Now she’d seen the guns and she was pretending they were drunken lovers, sneaking out on the loading bay.

‘I didn’t know you cared.’

‘I care enough to stop from getting shot, Stone!’ she breathed, and dug her fingernails into him again. ‘C’mon, kiss me! Before I get my ass blown off.’

She was an attractive woman. He couldn’t help noticing.

‘Will this be on GNN “Wake up World”?’ asked Stone, looking sideways at the tall soldiers in green. They were barking orders in Mandarin, but had lowered their weapons. There was really no danger.

Still — no sense in turning down some free entertainment from Ms Carlisle. Or was it acting lessons?

Stone gave in and ran his fingers up from her thighs to her butt to her back, then pulled her backwards into the shadows in a fair approximation of a drunken clinch.

‘For God’s sake! Get your hands on me, Stone! You might get off on this guns and danger thing, but I’d rather live to tell the tale.’

What was her game?

In any case — a good thing she was here. Stone needed to have a talk with her about Junko Terashima.

— oO0Oo-

Virginia Carlisle took Junko’s death exactly as Stone expected. Shock and grief — but controlled grief. There was even a tear which may or may not have been real. It wasn’t that Carlisle was as hardened to the nastiness of the world as he was. Mercifully not. It was just that she was one of those “well-balanced” people who have a mechanism for shutting out the misfortune of others. Bad luck, unhappiness, depression — well-balanced people like Carlisle avoid it, like it’s a contagion. Which is not a bad way to be.

Carlisle reminded him of the stuck-up babes from his university days. Bright, attractive, always knew the right things to do and say. They started their careers while still at high school. They were building a career — a life. People from Stone’s background go to school, university if they’re bright, they get a “job”. Then they work, for a long time.

People like Virginia Carlisle had realized years before Stone that the minute you got a “regular job”, you were hosed. Finished. People like Stone got a “regular job”. People like Carlisle got a “life”. At eighteen, Stone had a vague sense that he wanted a “life”and not a “job”, but unlike Virginia Carlisle, he had no idea what to do about it. He did a year of maths at university, then decided it was boring. He did a year of Chinese because it looked cool. Turned out it wasn’t cool after all, so he dropped out. Then it was the army. All the while Virginia Carlisle and the boys and girls like her shook their beautifully coiffured heads and got on with their “lives”. Just about the time Stone had been sent on his first Afghan tour.

In any case, Virginia had more than a “life”, she had an uber-life . She was a socially ambitious Ivy League woman. She gravitated straight to the in-crowd wherever she was. In fact, she practically defined the in-crowd. Stone had been one of the out-crowd all his life, and often an out-crowd of one. He was always a force of one. It suited him that way.

Stone ought to be against someone like Carlisle on principle. But he wasn’t against her. They were just different. All people have ways of living their lives. Stone might look down on some of the things Virginia had done. He despised her falseness, her play-acting, that she was always the “face that fits”. He hated that she took the credit for everyone else’s work, that she would do that to Junko and she’d do it to him. He should hate her.

But he didn’t hate her. Why was that?

At the backpackers’ hostel, Stone sat up looking at his laptop, and pulled out the two slips of paper Semyonov had given him. Semyonov had stonewalled him better than he could have thought possible. He’d got nothing but clever wordplay from the man. He left with only the two slips of paper Semyonov had written on simultaneously. Semyonov had said it was poetry.

The SearchIgnition search engine confirmed that it was indeed poetry. From a Roman poet called Horace, who lived two thousand years ago.

exegi monumentum aere perennius

odi profanum vulgum

This was getting ridiculous. He’d got nothing from Semyonov, and now he was reduced to looking for significance in Latin poetry. The search engine duly gave translations, and Stone wrote them down.

I have created a monument more lasting than bronze

I hate the ignorant masses

Perhaps the second one was Semyonov’s weary, cynical answer. “I hate the ignorant masses”. Could be. But Stone was clutching at straws.

Just then, an alert popped up on the laptop. An incoming email via the NotFutile.com web site. Stone had a bad feeling. Ekstrom.

Last time, Ekstrom had sent a video of a slaughterhouse. This time he’d gone one better. He’d emailed video footage of the murder of Junko Terashima.