Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘And where would she stay?’

‘If she was pretty, your bed. You’ve made it now, son. You live in a loft in Xintiandi. It’s time for you to arrive in your new life.’

‘Thanks. I’m there.’

‘You’re dealing with people who don’t quite get long-term incomers.’

‘Anything else, Reverend?’ Jericho swung himself off his couch, walked to the bar and chose a cappuccino. ‘Don’t you want to know how our search is going?’

‘You haven’t got anything.’

‘How do you work that out?’

‘If you had anything, you’d have been rubbing my nose in it for ages.’

‘Your call is Priority A. Why’s that?’

‘So that I can boast about being your best member of staff.’ Tu giggled. ‘You wanted to know who what’s-his-name Wang phoned before he died.’

The coffee gurgled into the cardboard cup.

‘You mean—?’

‘Yes, I do. I’ll send you over his telephone traffic. All the conversations he’s had since 26 May. You can fall at my feet if you like.’

‘How did you manage that?’

‘Certainly not by rummaging through his remains. As luck would have it, I play golf with the CEOs of two service providers. The guy was registered with one of them. My acquaintance was kind enough to pass the data on to me, no questions asked.’

‘Christ, Tian!’ Jericho blew on his coffee. ‘Now you owe him all the favours in the world, right?’

‘Not at all,’ Tu said in a bored voice. ‘He owes me something.’

‘Good. Very good.’

‘Where do we go from here?’

‘Diane is constantly checking the net for suspicious texts, Zhao and I are keeping an eye on the markets. If no one appears in the course of the next few hours, I’ll have to consider extending the circle of investigators and showing photographs around. I’d rather avoid that if we can.’ Jericho paused. ‘How did your conversation with Chen Hongbing go?’

‘So-so. He’s worried.’

‘Isn’t he at least reassured that she’s at liberty?’

‘Hongbing has turned worrying into an art form. But he trusts you.’

Behind Tu, a big bird of prey flapped into the air. A giraffe came quite close.

‘Tell me, where are you?’

‘Where do you think?’ Tu grinned. ‘In my office, of course.’

‘And where are you pretending to be?’

‘In South Africa. Pretty, isn’t it? It’s from the autumn collection. We’re offering twelve environments. The software places your image in the background as soon as you make your call, and adapts you to the environment. Have you noticed that the sun’s shining on my bald head?’

‘And the other environments?’

‘The Moon’s really brilliant!’ Tu beamed. ‘In the background the American moon base and spaceships landing. The program gives you a spacesuit. One can see your face through the visor of the helmet. Your voice is a bit distorted, like in the moon landings last century.’

‘One giant step for mankind,’ Jericho teased.

‘Let me know if anything new comes up.’

‘Will do.’

Jericho took a sip of his coffee. Thin and bitter. He urgently needed fresh air. As he crossed the foyer, Diane told him she had received a data packet from Tu, and passed it on to him. He stepped out into the street, with his eye on the display. Numbers, days and times became visible. Wang’s phone traffic. Diane compared the relevant data with information they had already. Of course Jericho didn’t expect any matches.

But she told him there was one.

He frowned. The evening before his death, Grand Cherokee Wang had dialled a number that also appeared among Jericho’s contacts. Diane had correlated names and numbers, so that there was no doubt about who the student had phoned on the afternoon of 26 May.

Jericho stared at the name.

Suddenly he realised that he’d made a terrible mistake.

He had gone for direct confrontation, which temporarily forced him out of his location. After setting up another scanner near the front door of Cyber Planet, Jericho set off. If the scouts caught one of their target people, he could be back within a few minutes.

The streets were still empty, which meant that he made good headway. He parked the Toyota behind a soot-black building, straightened his hologoggles and approached Wong’s World on foot. The glass façade of this Cyber Planet showed that the market was on the way up. This branch of Wong was decidedly less run down than the other one. As Zhao had described it, it lacked the booths for prostitutes and people running gambling games; everything seemed to be entirely devoted to the preparation of food and the sale of groceries. Vegetables, herbs and spices were displayed in baskets and containers. For one customer, a woman reached into a basket with a grabber and pulled out a snake that went into violent convulsions when the saleswoman routinely cut open its body and pulled off the skin. Jericho turned away and inhaled the smell of fresh wontons and baozis. The stand was busy. Two young men with damply glistening torsos, swathed in the steam that rose from huge pots, swung their ladles, passed bowls of broth and crunchy crab and pork dumplings over the counter. Jericho walked on, ignoring the protests of his stomach. He could eat later. He crossed the street, stepped into Cyber Planet and glanced around. There was no sign of Zhao. There were no sleeping pods, but he might have gone to the toilet. Jericho waited for ten minutes, but Zhao didn’t appear.

He stepped outside again.

And suddenly he saw them.

There were two of them. They were both strolling towards the wonton stall and inadvertently looked in his direction as they did so. Their outlines glowed red on the glass of the hologoggles. The boy was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, the girl a mini-skirt for which she was a stone too heavy and a biker’s jacket with a massive City Demons logo. They were laden down with Wong’s World paper bags. They asked the sweaty wonton cooks to put generous portions of soup in sealable plastic bowls, which they received, chatting and laughing, and put in the bags. Both looked carefree and generally cheerful. They talked to other customers for a while and walked on.

They bought enough breakfast to feed a whole gang.

Jericho followed them while the computer supplied him with details taken from Tu’s database: the girl’s name was Xiao Meiqi, known as Maggie, a computer science student. The boy was called Jin Jia Wei, on an electronic technology course. According to Tu, they were part of Yoyo’s inner circle. With Daxiong, that meant that Jericho now knew by sight four of the six dissidents. And those two certainly weren’t going to be demolishing the contents of those bags all by themselves.

He pushed his way towards them, while at the same time keeping an eye out for Zhao. Maggie Xiao and Jin Jia Wei had their Thermos flasks filled with tea, they bought cigarettes and little cakes with a paste of nuts, honey and red beans that Yoyo loved – so Jericho recalled – then they crossed the street. As soon as he saw their parked e-bikes on the other side, he knew there was no point going on following them on foot. He turned back to his Toyota, started it up and steered it between passers-by and cyclists. The street was too wide for washing-lines, there was nothing to obstruct his view, so he could see the looming silhouette of the blast furnace a few kilometres away. Jin and Maggie dashed towards it on their bikes. Seconds later Jericho too had left the commotion of the market behind him, and now saw a dusty patch of waste ground, with the old steelworks stretching beyond. The bikes raised clouds of dust. He avoided following the two of them in a straight line, instead driving the Toyota into the shadow of a row of low Portakabins.