Tom Aston - The Machine

Stone watched Oyang, sitting on the edge of the white fur sofa, twirling the chess pieces in his fingers. Stone was right. Which meant Oyang was a dead man walking. And Stone’s post on NotFutile.com, which had been as near to the truth as he’d hoped, had made it all a hundred times worse for Oyang. No wonder Oyang was falling apart.

‘They’ll kill you, Oyang. Like they killed Semyonov. Whatever Semyonov did, he managed to get on the wrong side of the Chinese and the Americans at the same time. So he fled from the US, but still got nailed in China. Quite an achievement, I’d say. Semyonov was hot property, Oyang. Toxic. And you’re shaping up to be even worse.’ Stone went to sit beside Oyang on the sofa. Oyang was rubbing his hands, picking at the nails. ‘Go now, Oyang. Go to your wife in Switzerland, live a quiet life. It’s your only chance.’

‘How can I?’ said Oyang. ‘It’s an admission of guilt. If I went to the airport it would be obvious and they could shoot me down.’

‘Oyang. THEY’LL FUCKING KILL YOU. Stop all this crap go. You’re in deep, and you know it. I don’t believe in the death penalty, and that’s what’s coming your way if you don’t do something.’

Stone shut the door, leaving Oyang sat on the white fur sofa, looking at the chessboard. He walked down the softly lit corridor. It was like a dreamy Aladdin’s cave — and somehow fitting. It fitted perfectly with the Disneyland going on in Oyang’s mind. Oyang had lost it well before now. Back in Shanghai he’d given Stone the information about the Machine, even showed him Semyonov’s robot manufacturing plant — but then lost his nerve and tried to have Stone killed the day after. He’d probably been talking to Terashima after her question in San Jose, trying to find out how much she knew. All the while knowing she was at risk of being killed. He was highly intelligent, Oyang, making money on a massive scale. He had planned an epic financial swindle to make money out of Semyonov. Yet his nerve failed him all the time. He was completely lacking in physical courage — and now he was scared even to leave his hotel room.

Stone was also aware that Oyang was in far more danger in that Polo club than he would be in Shanghai. For Zhang and his Gong An henchmen, that Polo Club was the perfect place to kill him. Far better than arrest, or assassination. Throwing a Chinese dissident or intellectual in jail is one thing. Doing it to a millionaire businessman with all those friends in California needs more care. The Chinese like to meet out swift justice, but they also like to avoid all those smug feature pieces in the Wall Street Journal about human rights. Quite convenient then that Oyang should die in some ludicrous millionaires’ binge at the Polo Club. And for the strait-laced communist Zhang and his Gong An buddies, much more fitting.

That led Stone to another conclusion. Balong was also the perfect place for him to die for the same reason.

Ekstrom sat at the controls of the Porsche Turbo S which had been set up in the Atrium of the Balong Country Club. He checked himself in the reflection. Eyes a pleasant, smiling blue underneath the neatly styled hair. There was just a hint of steel under the blond. Perfect. He threw the stick smoothly into first gear, left foot poised to drop the clutch.

Ekstrom was no poser. He looked good, but his look, his apparel — it all had a point. Take those shoes. Looked like tennis shoes, but to people who knew, the difference was obvious. They were designed specifically for driving high performance cars, and Ekstrom kept them for that purpose only.

Three — two — one. High up to his left the light went green, and Ekstrom pulled away in a surge of smooth power from the 430 horsepower unit behind his head. Gear changes — fast and clean. He kept the revs in the powerband, 3500–4500, and twisted easily around the hills on the asphalt road, and then through onto the dirt section of the track. The noise was incredible — so realistic.

The red brown dust of the Balong estate enveloped the windows of the car. Ekstrom’s cool concentration was total. He braked hard, shifted to second for the hairpin, powered out. Seven thousand revs. Beautiful. His favourite part of the course, and the Porsche handled it fabulously. Better than the Maserati he’d tried earlier.

The Maserati dealer behind him was unconcerned. From his concession stand at the Balong Club, he’d already sold seven cars to rich Chinese on the first day of the polo weekend. Maserati was a more exclusive brand. The Porsche was almost commonplace.

Ekstrom checked his time on the competition board and stepped out of the simulator booth in the atrium of the Country Club to a ripple of jockish applause from the polo boys. Ekstrom was impressed. It was a staggering piece of simulator technology from ShinComm Corporation. The car dealers used it so more people could test drive the cars, but the controls were so realistic they could also be switched to “live” mode, and drive a real car remotely around the estate.

He turned to the Porsche dealer behind him. ‘The controls were just like the real thing,’ he called. ‘And the graphics — wow!’

The dealer made a polite bow. ‘It’s a new system. Smoothvision live video combined with amazing RC software from ShinComm. My customers can drive a car through Shanghai, London, or the French Alps from these controls — a real car. Anywhere we have a Porsche dealership. Helps to sell the cars. And if someone takes a car for a test drive and gets too aggressive, we can take control from here and bring them back safely.’

Ekstrom felt his smartphone vibrate and turned to walk away from the hubbub in the marble atrium. Well, well — another message. Two in just a few days. Where was he going next, after the hit at the Country Club? Ekstrom entered his password to decrypt the message.

His eyebrows raised slightly in surprise. Two targets now — and both here in Balong, at the same place. Unconventional.

And the second target — Ethan Stone. Ekstrom had been expecting that one, ever since Williams loused up in Hong Kong. But it was a much more interesting challenge than his first assignment. And the car dealer had just given him an idea.

This was just getting worse. Stone came out of the luxurious Shui Hu Hotel and walked back up from the yachting marina when it hit him. Huge, shiny, dark blue in front of him. A dark blue truck in front of him with a satellite dish deployed on its roof, and a familiar logo on the side panel. GNN Worldwide News. Virginia Carlisle was here again. What was she doing? Did she know Stone was here? Or Oyang? Was she really extrapolating from that post Stone had made on the NotFutile.com web site?

Impossible. There was only one person who could have told her to come here to Balong. Carslake. But why would she listen to Carslake anyway? Stone needed another chat with Virginia Carlisle.

The Polo Tournament was a big event, but it still shouldn’t be that difficult to find Virginia Carlisle. Stone strolled out to a tented village on the edge of the polo fields. Which were in themselves vast. Each field roughly four times the size of a football field.

The scene was nauseatingly reminiscent of Hello magazine, but with a Chinese twist. Argentinian polo players mingled with electronics and textile barons from China’s Gold Coast. Exquisite dim sum and fragrant rice alongside the canapes and caviar. And the ever-present champagne. Stone thought of Ying Ning telling him about that poem on the plane. The Lovely Women , by Du Fu. A party for the super-rich in Tang Dynasty China. Ying Ning was amused by Du Fu’s feelings. Admiration, envy, disgust, desire. Bourgeois feelings she called them, whatever that meant. And in amongst it all was the brooding presence of the super-rich men. Super-powerful, surrounded by flunkeys, dawdling through the crowds, fawned over. Did Ying Ning really think that about Stone? That he was somehow attracted by all this stuff? Stone shook his head.