Tom Aston - The Machine

Stone sat in the stationary car in the middle of the road. He tried the door. Locked. The engine burbled at rest behind his head. Stone’s seat belt released itself, and a warning light came on in front of him. Then another, indicating the airbags had been disabled. Naturally. And here it comes. Two more lights to go. The traction control and anti-lock braking were switched off. Stone was already searching for the remote control box. Under the steering wheel, in the glove box? It must be accessible…

An angry, bloodthirsty roar behind Stone’s head from the engine, and the tachometer needle swung way up into the red. The Porsche took off with a wild power that forced him almost into the back seat. Stone braced himself against the racing bucket-seat and began to kick with his heel at the dash and the front fascia of the car to find the remote box that was driving this thing.

Never say those Germans don’t make a solid piece of equipment. It took Stone over a minute to completely smash in the radio and SatNav, and then lever off the top of the dash, pulling off a large sheet of plastic over a metre in length. Stone was pulling out leads and wires wherever he could. It made no difference. And the remote driver knew his stuff. Without the seat belt, Stone was thrown across the car about every ten seconds.

The odd tree and a wall flashed by, but Stone knew where he was going. Ekstrom has taken him round that blind bend earlier to show him where he was going to die. Not good enough to do the job. Ekstrom had to be sure Stone knew what was coming, and who was doing this to him. The car was swerving, slaloming down the straight. It was all Stone could do to stay in one place on the smooth leather.

He slithered into the back of the car and tried to pull the seats out. The engine was rear-mounted. It could be the remote control box had been placed back there. Maybe it had, but it made no odds. Stone made no impression on the back seats at all by hammering away at them with the heel of his boot. He was bent over, hunched, no room to move or brace himself. The car swerving and turning like a demented teenager on a skidpan. He felt like a contestant in a Japanese game show — decidedly unfunny and slightly pathetic for even being there.

The car went into a kind of power slide onto the grass at the top of the hill, the kind of thing you only see on TV. Then he was back on the road. Whoever was driving had a swagger about them. A perverted elan. After the slaloming and sliding, Stone was set for the main event. The car accelerated down a long straight incline, back towards the blind bend and the stream he’d passed earlier.

Stone squeezed out of the backseat, having barely scuffed the leather with his efforts. Plan B. He wrenched the long hunk of plastic from above the dash, then squeezed to fold it lengthways. The car fell into top gear as it neared the bottom of the hill. 200 km/h. Not a hope of making that corner, stream or no stream.

But something told him the driver would give it a try. And send him slamming like a hockey puck into that stone wall — suitably spectacular for the headlines. Wild man Ethan Stone steals car and dies taking corner at ludicrous speed. What crime was Stone running away from?

The car swung slightly outwards to take the bend. Stone shoved the plastic dashboard down through the steering wheel, jamming it hard. The wheel tried to turn back, but too late. The car held its trajectory, beyond the outside of the bend. Stone braced himself, arms and head against the steering wheel. The wheels left the edge of the road, with the engine shrieking in the second or so the car was airborne.

The Porsche slammed into the bed of the stream. Not quite what the engineers had in mind when they designed it. The car slid and rolled on for another seventy metres, then thunked into the rocks in the water.

The remote driver had been trying to regain control throughout. The brake pedal was still flattened as the car sat immobile in the riverbed. As he sat in the stationary car, Stone saw the gearshift move optimistically into reverse and the engine screamed in frustration. No chance. The transmission was probably about fifty metres back up the hill. This piece of German engineering had lived fast. But sadly, died young. Stone lay back on the seat again, shielded his eyes, and kicked out the remainder of the broken windscreen.

If Stone was right about what had just happened, some young man in the Atrium of the club had been taking him for that little test drive, but he wasn’t going to find out who. For now, what he needed to watch out for were the tender ministrations of a certain Swedish gentleman, got up like a Chinese paramedic.

Dusk was half an hour away. He could run back to the club and arrive unseen. There was a Swedish gentleman he needed to pay a visit to, unannounced. But first, Virginia needed to tell him the truth about Semyonov.

The labels were written in English, in Roman letters. But by a Chinese hand. It was evidently beneath the High Mistress of GNN to write them out for herself. She’d tipped some hotel functionary to scribe out the baggage labels. Fedex papers for all ten bags, trunks and parcels, neatly packed in the corridor outside Virginia Carlisle’s suite.

VJF Carlisle

GNN Worldwide Television News

293 W 43 rdStreet

New YorkNY

The bird was about to fly — or had she already flown? And who could blame her after her little joyride with Ekstrom, and Stone’s own motoring mishap for that matter? Stone gently put an ear to the door. She hadn’t left yet. The noise of urgent activity inside attested to the fact. So did the voices. He would wait outside for a few seconds. Adds to the surprise.

He pondered for a second on what Oyang had said. Sometimes it suits people to make up stories and legends. These things could be true. Or they could be false. The real questions were about who was creating the stories . And there were a lot of stories about Semyonov, told and retold. Oyang, certainly, had come up with all kinds of stuff to put Stone off the scent. Oyang had tried to have Stone killed, and looked the other way when someone had gone after Junko Terashima. Ying Ning — most of what she had said had turned out to be true. The only worrying thing about her was that she had disappeared. Carslake knew more about Semyonov than anyone. Where he’d grown up, near Manchester, New Hampshire. His school. His real name, Steven Starkfield. His conviction for hacking, who he’d met in prison, his series of illnesses.

Add what Carslake knew about Semyonov to what Stone had just discovered about Virginia Carlisle, and the picture became a whole lot clearer. Carlisle herself was the key.

Stone finally knocked on the door.

‘The car is waiting,’ he said in a Chinese accent. ‘The car take baggage to Shanghai Pudong Airport.’

‘I didn’t ask for a goddamned car!’ shouted Virginia from inside.

‘What?’ Stone called through the door.

The door was flung open and there she was, standing in front of him. Hands on hips. It was her what the fuck? look, and she was good at it.

‘Be honest,’ said Stone. ‘You practised years to get that right.’ He smiled into her frown.

‘What the hell are you doing here? This place is too dangerous,’ she said. ‘There’s a lunatic who just killed Robert Oyang.’

‘I know. His name is Johan Ekstrom. He’s a paid assassin,’ said Stone, strolling into the room and taking a beer from Virginia Carlisle’s fridge. ‘He was paid to kill me too. In fact he was paid to kill Oyang and make it look like it was me. But don’t worry, since you survived that little drive around the estate with him, I think we can assume he means you no harm. He had plenty of opportunity…’