Tom Aston - The Machine

Stone looked round to see Ying Ning, the hundred-twenty pound Chinese woman, hauling an insensible Ekstrom across the dust to the small, round hole in the ground. She tied the Swede’s hands behind his back with his belt, then shoved him head first down the shaft. Unceremoniously, like a sack of coal down a chute.

Chapter 75 — 11:34am 15 April — Shanglan Monastery, Garze Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Stone sat with Virginia Carlisle in the incense-heavy room where he’d taken tea with Giyenchen a few days before.

It turned out Ekstrom had been inserted into Semyonov’s medical team by Zhang, and offered to help Semyonov by going down the shaft. Ekstrom had gone down there unseen, while Stone and Virginia were still wondering what to do with Carslake.

‘I recognised Ekstrom when he came back up, as soon as he stepped back out of the cage at the surface,’ said Virginia.

‘When he’d left us down there for dead?’

‘I guess,’ said Virginia. ‘Semyonov asked him where you were, and Ekstrom said you’d been trapped in a rock fall underground. Steven believed it, but I thought he’d killed you. That’s when I ran.’

‘You ran?’

‘When it comes to “fight or flight”, I’m a flight girl every time,’ said Virginia. ‘You should try it. Good for your health.’ She was a smart woman. She’d known when to run from an impossible situation and regroup. A skill Stone had yet to master.

‘But what about Semyonov?’ asked Stone. ‘After all you’ve done for him. You just abandoned him.’

‘Come on, Stone. Steven had lost it, even I could see that. He wanted to believe Ekstrom’s story,’ said Virginia. ‘He didn’t even try to get away from him. Steven wanted to believe anyone who said they could get the Machine out of there. Semyonov knew it was Ekstrom coming up that shaft, even though he’d told me it was you. He didn’t care about you. He didn’t even care about me. He would happily have seen me killed. Steven knew he was dying and all he cared about was his Machine. He stayed there at the top of the shaft. At the controls — ready to help anyone who could bring it out. You, me, Ekstrom, Ying Ning — it didn’t matter who,’ said Virginia.

‘It might have worked out for him too,’ said Stone. ‘Only Semyonov weakened. He took pity on us and pulled us up out of the shaft. He struggled from his wheelchair and got to the controls when Ekstrom wasn’t looking, and pulled us out. Cost him his life. He could have let Ekstrom kill us, then go back down and get the Machine’

‘I guess.’

‘Semyonov must have already had second thoughts, though, Virginia,’ said Stone. ‘Probably when he realised you’d walked out on him. Semyonov started bringing us up, remember.’

‘Probably Ekstrom had a gun to his head,’ said Virginia.

‘No wonder he sounded weird,’ said Stone. ‘He would have been thinking how he could get out of there.’

It was all academic now. Stone looked out of the window again at the deep blue mountain sky, then looked back at Carlisle. ‘Where were you, Virginia? How did you know to come up here to the monastery?’

‘I didn’t. I had no idea where I was, but one of the monks was there,’ said Virginia. ‘Up by the fence. A guy called Panchen. He led me back through the forest to the monastery. What was I going to do? There was nothing else around, nothing at all. The head guy, the head monk…’

‘Giyenchen.’

‘Yes. He told me that a Chinese woman had persuaded Panchen to bring her to the crater and get her inside.’

So Panchen did know how to get inside the fence. And Ying Ning had persuaded him to take her back there.

‘You knew the Chinese girl didn’t you?’ asked Virginia. ‘The killer? She killed Carslake, didn’t she?’

‘Ying Ning? Yes. You could say I knew her, but you don’t get to “know” Ying Ning. I knew when Ying Ning disappeared at the Polo Club that something was wrong, that she wasn’t all she seemed. I’d no idea she’d kill Carslake though. At any rate, she’s disappeared again, and that tells its own story.’

‘The old monk’s looking pretty smug at any rate.’ Virginia said, and cast her eyes through the window as Giyenchen floated serenely by. She was right there. The head monk was looking like a burnished, brown Buddha, with a look of Yoda about him. The head monk had seen everything coming, and now was in a position to explain everything.

After a while, Giyenchen materialised quietly at the back of the little chamber, and lit a few more incense sticks in silence. For once something more than a benign half-smile played on his lips.

‘It seems your friend Ying Ning was with the Gong An , Mr Stone,’ said Giyenchen. ‘The one who called herself the Fox Girl, the dissident, was an agent of the Chinese.’

Virginia looked shocked, but Stone had guessed it already, when he’d seen what she did to Carslake. What Stone hadn’t done yet was to think through the implications.

‘It seems Ying Ning was using everyone,’ said Stone finally. ‘Including you, and me and Carslake, who led her to the find the Machine in these mountains. And the Japanese woman, whom she used to plant stories in the Western press. Junko had been passing Ying Ning’s stories to the world — through Carslake, through Terashima's Japanese blog, even through GNN. ’

‘What was Ying Ning doing though? What was her plan?’ asked Virginia.

‘She was trying to secure the Machine for China,’ said Stone. ‘That is all.’

The clear air of the mountains, the Yunnan pine and the pink Sichuan pepper flowers in the background. The cameras were there, and the make-up team. For once Virginia Carlisle was really on location. Not just acting in front of a green screen, with a guy in front of her wielding a reflector-board covered in silver foil.

‘ Stories and myths and conspiracy theories seemed to follow Steven Semyonov wherever he went,’ said Virginia to the camera. She loved that camera. And the camera loved her. ‘ And since his death in an auto accident just over a week ago, the rumor-mill producing Semyonov stories has been working even more feverishly. Sometimes, however, the truth is less exciting than all the stories. Semyonov knew he was dying, and was coming to spend his last days in seclusion in this Buddhist monastery in Western Sichuan — a place he had visited a number of times in the last year and where his funeral takes place today. So this was the reason billionaire SearchIgnition founder came to China. He came here to die, but in the end he was cheated even of his last wish. In Hong Kong, cars drive on the left. In China, straight after the border crossing at Lo Wu, they drive on the right. Steven Semyonov insisted on driving himself that night, and a simple mistake on the ramp of the freeway has cost him his last few days or weeks on earth…’