Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘Have you taken those pages down from the web?’ he asked, since inspiration failed to strike.

‘That channel of communication has been closed.’

Xin knew what the decision entailed, so he understood why his caller was so sullen. The man at the other end of the line had himself suggested the piggy-back encryption, and had written the code. It had served them well for three years. Hydra’s heads had been able to exchange messages in real time, functioning as one great brain.

‘We’ll get over it,’ he said, trying to sound friendly. ‘The net served its purpose for us, and more, and it’s all down to you! Everybody respects your contribution. Just as everybody will understand why we decided to break off simultaneous communication so close to our goal. The time has come when there’s nothing more to say. All we can do is await developments.’

Xin hung up, stared down at his feet and shifted them to a parallel position, ankles and instep exactly the same distance apart, not touching. Slowly, he drew his knees inwards. How he hated the tangled web of accident and circumstance! As soon as he felt the hairs on his calves begin to brush against one another, he adjusted his feet, shifted his thighs, his arms, his hands, his shoulders, positioning them symmetrically along the line of an imaginary axis, until he sat there as an exact mirror image, one side of his body the perfect reflection of the other. This usually helped him to get his thoughts in order, but this time the technique failed. He felt dizzy with self-doubt, blindsided by the thought that perhaps he’d done everything wrong, that hunting Yoyo down had only made things worse.

Thoughts and afterthoughts.

Losing control.

His heart hammered like a piston. Only one last nudge, he felt, and he would burst apart into a thousand pieces. No, not him. His shell. The human cloak called Kenny Xin. He felt like a host body for his own larval self, like a cocoon, a pupa, the mid-stage of some metamorphosis, and he was horribly afraid of whatever it was that was eating him from the inside. Sometimes it grew, flexed itself and choked the breath in his throat, and he couldn’t tame it, couldn’t take the strain any longer; at these moments he had to give the beast something to calm it, just as he had allowed it to burn the hut where his torturers had kept him. Unredeemed, sick and poverty-stricken as they were, he had given them to the flames, and in that moment had felt himself made free, cleansed of all suffering, his mind clear and unclouded. Since then he had often wondered whether he had gone mad that day, or been cured of madness. He could hardly remember the time before. At most, he remembered his disgust at living in this world. His hatred towards his parents for having given birth to him, even if at such a tender age he knew little of just how he had been thrust into this world. He only felt certain that his family was responsible for his life, which was already enough to make him hate them, and that they were making it a living hell.

That there was no sense to his existence.

It was only after the fire that the sense of it all became clear. Could he be mad when suddenly everything made sense? How many so-called sane people spent their days in the most senseless activities? How much of accepted morality was based on ritual and dogma, with not the least shred of sense to it? The fire had broadened his horizons, so that all at once he recognised the plan, creation’s twisting labyrinthine paths, its abstract beauty. There was no way back from here. He had moved up to a higher level which some might call madness, but which was simply an insight of such all-illuming power that he had to struggle to contain it. Any attempt to share it with others was mere vanity. How could he explain to others that everything he did flowed from a higher insight? It was the price that he paid, by making other people pay.

No. He hadn’t made things worse.

He had had to make sure!

Xin imagined his own brain. A Rorschach universe. The purity of symmetry, predictability, control. Slowly, he felt his calm return. He stood up, plugged the phone into the room’s computer console and uploaded the hotel reservation lists. He went through them one by one. Naturally he didn’t expect to see Chen Yuyun or Owen Jericho turn up in the lists. Hydra’s hackers had gone through the lists several times over once they had broken into the hotel systems. He didn’t exactly know what he expected to find, he only knew that he felt he would find something .

And what a find.

It fell into place like the last piece of a puzzle, neatly explaining everything that had happened in the museum and answering half a dozen other questions besides. Three rooms in the Grand Hyatt on Marlene-Dietrich-Platz had been booked to a company called Tu Technologies, registered in Shanghai. They had been booked by the director of the company, who had signed for them in person. Tu Tian.

The outfit that Yoyo worked for.

That was where he knew the name from!

He loaded the company homepage and found a portrait of the owner. A plump man, almost bald, with a pate like a billiard ball. All in all, so ugly that he came out the other side as rather appealing. His thick lips could make a frog turn green with envy, but they were somehow sensual at the same time. His eyes, peering out from behind a tiny pair of glasses, glowed with humour and pitiless intelligence. He radiated a Buddha-like calm and iron determination, all at once. Xin could tell at first sight that Tu Tian was a streetfighter, a jackal in jester’s clothing. Somebody he could ill afford to underestimate. If he was helping Yoyo and Jericho, that meant that they were mobile, that they could leave Berlin as quickly as they had shown up.

The Vogelaars were dead. Which meant that they would be leaving Berlin.

Very soon. Now.

Xin strapped on his gun. He chose a long red wig and a face-mask with a matching beard, then stuck appliqués to his forehead and cheekbones. He pulled on an emerald-green duster coat, put on a slim pair of mirrored holospecs and stopped in front of the mirror for a few seconds to check the effect. He looked like a pop star. Like a typical mando-progger, who had made more money than he’d ever had good taste.

He hurried from the hotel, flagged down a taxi and ordered it to the Grand Hyatt.

Tu’s face showed up on the screen. Jericho was hardly surprised to hear him say:

‘Get Diane packed. We’re leaving.’

‘What about the glass eye?’

Yoyo’s fingers appeared onscreen. Vogelaar’s false eye stared at him. Denuded of its eyelids, it looked somehow surprised, even a little indignant.

‘There’s no doubt that it’s a memory crystal,’ he heard her say. ‘I had a look at it, it’s the usual pattern. Hurry up. The cops will be with you shortly.’

‘Where are you now?’

‘On our way to you,’ Tu said. ‘They’ve got the car numberplate. In other words, they know that it’s a hire car, they know who rented it, they know his address, and so on and so forth. I should guess that they’ll make the connection with this morning’s unhappy events.’

‘And with your jet,’ said Jericho.

‘With my—’

‘ Fuck! ’ said Yoyo’s voice. ‘He’s right!’

‘As soon as they find out that you rented the car at the airport, they’ll twig,’ said Jericho. ‘They’ll arrest us even before we check the car back.’

‘How much time do we have?’

‘Hard to say. The first thing they’ll do is go through the passenger lists of all the flights that landed before you went to the rental desk. That will take a while. They won’t find anything, but since you must have got here somehow or other, they’ll check the private flights.’