Tom Aston - The Machine

‘I’m going back to find Carlisle,’ he said. ‘I just realised why Virginia Carlisle hightailed it here to join us. She wants to stop the truth leaking out.’

Back outside the Country Club, questions slid around Stone’s mind in geometric patterns, like pieces on a chessboard. He had to find Carlisle. He was sure now what she was up to. He also had to find Ying Ning. She’d disappeared and he didn’t trust her any more. The last time she’d disappeared like this she’d been with Panchen, and things had not turned out too well. Ying Ning could be decorating Rupert’s silk shirt with angry saliva at this very moment. Or going after Oyang with a kitchen knife.

Stone walked back in front of the glitzy concession stores in the atrium of the clubhouse, making his way toward the GNN studio. Super-rich Chinese textile barons circulated with Western bankers from Shanghai and Hong Kong. Not often those bankers found their chargecards so completely outgunned like this. Stone quickened his pace as he approached the car dealers’ concessions.

Outside, a scrum of polo players was waiting to test drive the Porsche and Maserati cars. Before textile exporters from Ningbo and Hangzhou bought them for cash to drive home. Stone saw her in their midst, in the middle of the crowd. Virginia, with the polo lads fawning over her still. Two cars were brought up. A well-heeled lad stepped up to take the first. Latino. Argentinian, possibly, or Uruguayan. The Italian salesman wasn’t looking at the polo guy. He’d seen Virginia, and was beckoning her forward to ignore the line and try the car straightaway. She had this effect on people.

The next few seconds passed in slow-mo. Stone was trying to make his way towards Virginia. Her saw her give a flick of the hair to the Maserati salesman — which had the Italian guy practically genuflecting. All very amusing for her. Stone waved toward her, but she didn’t see. Stone saw the Italian bow and open the door for her. But the passenger door for some reason. A polo player politely shut the door of the Maserati for her and made another gallant bow before taking his place as her driver. But then Stone saw a blond haired polo player moved right up behind the first one before he could get in the driver’s seat. Caught him a punch in the kidneys. Precise and discreet, two knuckles. And completely brutal. The first player’s legs buckled beneath him. The blond polo player walked round to the driver’s side. Smiling. White jeans. The same dark blue shirt with a red dragon on the breast. The shirt of the Shanghai Polo Club. The bastard shot a look of triumph towards Stone as he bent to get in the car beside Virginia Carlisle. That look from the head-cam video. Ekstrom.

Stone bolted after them through the crowd of polo boys, but the Maserati’s tyres had already spun in the gravel and pulled off. A Latino kid was feeling for the seatbelt of the second car when Stone hauled him out onto the ground.

‘Sorry.’

Stone landed low in the bucket seat, hit the accelerator and the engine erupted behind his head. Blue and red polo shirts scattered in front of him as the Porsche took off with preternatural acceleration. The needle stood at one hundred by the time he hit the asphalt, but still, the Maserati was already a distant blur of dust disappearing up the hillside. Maserati, Porsche. Porsche, Maserati. Stone backed himself to catch the Maserati, however good a driver Ekstrom was.

And for a simple reason. It was a trap.

Ekstrom had set some kind of trap for Stone. What it was, was anyone’s guess. He’d have to deal with that when he caught up with him. Always supposing he didn’t hit a tree beforehand, of course.

Rupert said there were over fifty kilometres of roads on the Balong Estate. Ekstrom could be leading him anywhere — even off the Estate and back to Shanghai on the gaosu expressway. Stone wound the car up cleanly, and it held the road gloriously, the backend drifting predictably on the corners, and then gripping positively again to accelerate.

Stone looked ahead to guess at Ekstrom’s plan. Realistically, Ekstrom had to be the better driver. Stone wasn’t bad, but he hadn’t owned a car for four years and in any case, Ekstrom wouldn’t try this unless he were confident. The plan may well be simple. Draw Stone into a maneuver he couldn’t handle at high speed.

In that case Ekstrom shouldn’t have given him the Porsche. The thing could practically drive itself, and cornered like it was on rails.

He thought of Virginia. She’d got in the car voluntarily. She hadn’t even seen him when she got in that car. She would be completely unaware. She’d never seen Ekstrom in her life. Just another handsome polo player. Was he going to stop the car in some remote spot and coolly shoot Stone in front of the doyenne of the world’s media? Unlikely. And if he killed Virginia, it would cause a stir. To say the very least.

The Maserati thundered down a hill toward a blind left hand bend and disappeared. Dust billowed at the corner. Stone’s mind said caution but he couldn’t let Ekstrom get away. He sped up down the hill. There was a stream flowing away to the right. Water in the road? And a stand of trees for the Porsche to skid into? He thought of Panchen’s primitive ambush just days ago.

It hadn’t been dust behind the Maserati. It was smoke. Ekstrom had hit the brake hard just before the bend. Stone stood on the brake in the last fifty metres with the car still straight, lurching forward in the seat. Just enough, too. The car aquaplaned in the water as it hit the bend. The front-left wheel gripped just in time to pull the backend clear of a heavy stone wall on the shoulder.

So that was Ekstrom’s game. Crude but effective.

Well then. Stone could be crude but effective too. He floored the car again and closed up to 200 metres from the Maserati, then kept it there, turning sharply with Ekstrom through a succession of bends. The Porsche handled like a dream. It wasn’t even that difficult.

The road ran straight again and Stone saw his chance. A fork. Ekstrom was letting up on the gas, allowing Stone to close up on the Maserati. Stone played ball. Flipped back on the gear paddle and the Porsche eased up closer. One hundred metres. Ekstrom would give him to have no time to react next time. As the Maserati curved off to the right, Stone hit the anchors and flipped down into the second gear. With shriek of the engine and a judder of the anti-lock, the Porsche slowed to a crawl. No hint of a skid. He turned off to the right and let the Maserati disappear.

Stone had given up the chase. He’d drive back to the clubhouse, and leave Virginia to her afternoon’s drive with Ekstrom. There was a woman the Swede couldn’t harm without attracting some attention. Make that a lot of attention. It would make the evening news if he so much as farted in her presence. Virginia’s fame would protect her. In fact Ekstrom was probably using her as the perfect alibi. The bastard thought he had it all worked out.

Stone drove along past another fork and a sign in Chinese and English, which read Balong Polo Resort and Country Club in one direction and Gaosu Expressway, Shanghai, Ningbo in the other. He followed the road back to the club. Perhaps Virginia would be there when he got back, having a cocktail with her new friend.

After what he’d seen in that Atrium building, and after what he’d seen in Oyang’s factory, Stone should have been ready for what happened next. The Porsche appeared to lose power, but in fact the accelerator pedal was pushing back against the sole of his foot. The car slowed to a roll. Then the steering wheel spun in front of him and the car made a handbrake turn on the gravelly surface. Which took some doing with a four-wheel drive Porsche. Whoever — whatever — was driving this thing, knew what he was doing.