Frank Schätzing - Limit

Tu Tian, for example, had shortened the game when he had rather bluntly requested the aforementioned favour, just by calling him xiongdi . The diplomatic walk on eggshells could be dispensed with amongst close friends. Perhaps it was because he was really very fond of Chen, but maybe he just didn’t want to interrupt the golf match for such a long-winded process, the outcome of which was already clear either way. In any case, once he had come out with it, the yolk-yellow late afternoon sun broke through the cheerfully dispersing clouds and bathed the surroundings in the tones of an Italian Renaissance landscape painting. Two days of rain came to an end, and Mr Tu, who had begun comme il faut with the words: ‘Owen, I know you’re up to your ears in it with the move, and I wouldn’t normally bother you’ – looked up to the heavens, picked up his Big Bertha club and ended succinctly – ‘but there’s a favour you could do for me – xiongdi .’

Tu Tian on the Tomson Shanghai Pudong golf course, two days before, deep in concentration.

Jericho waited obediently to find out what the favour might be. Tu was temporarily on another planet as he swung into a powerful drive. The rhythmic momentum came from his back, muscles and joints working in automated harmony. Jericho was talented; for two years now he had enjoyed the honour of playing on the best courses in Shanghai, when people like Tu invited him along, and when they didn’t he played in the renowned but affordable Luchao Harbour City Club. The difference between him and Tu Tian was that one of them would never get close to achieving what the other one seemed to have been given genetically. Both of them had decided relatively late to spend time hitting little white balls at over two hundred kilometres per hour in an attempt to guide them into small holes in the ground. But on the day when Tu first walked onto a golf course, he must have felt as if he was coming home. His game was far beyond being described with attributes like accomplished or elegant. From the very beginning, Tu had played the way newborn babies swim. He was the game.

Jericho watched respectfully as his friend sent the ball into a perfect trajectory. Tu paused in the teeing position for a few seconds, then let Big Bertha fall with an expression of pure contentment.

‘You mentioned a favour,’ said Jericho.

‘What?’ Tu wrinkled his forehead. ‘Oh, yes, nothing major. You know.’

He set off, briskly following the journey of his ball. Jericho marched behind him. He didn’t know, but he had a good idea what was coming.

‘What problem does he have?’ he asked, taking a guess. ‘Or she?’

‘He. A friend. His name is Chen Hongbing.’ Tu grinned. ‘But that’s not the problem you need to help him with.’

Jericho was familiar with the caustic element of his remark. The name was a bad joke, and one at which those it poked fun at were least able to laugh. It was likely that Chen had been born at the end of the sixties in the previous century, when the Red Guards had inflicted terror on the country, and when newborns had been given the most preposterous names in honour of the revolution and the Great Leader Mao: it was quite common for someone of the age where they could not yet control their bladder to be called ‘Down with America’, ‘Honour of the Leader’ or ‘Long March.’

It was actually fear that had bestowed those names. An attempt to come to terms with things. Before the People’s Revolutionary Army brought a bloody end to the Red Guards in 1969, there was uncertainty about who would rule China in the future. Three years before, on the Square of Heavenly Peace in Beijing, Mao Zedong had come down to join the mere mortals, as it were, and had a red armband tied around his sleeve, thereby symbolically becoming the leader of the Guards, a million-strong bunch of predominantly pubescent fanatics, absconding from their schools and universities, who sheared their teachers’ heads, beat them and chased them through the streets like donkeys, because anyone who knew the simplest of things and wasn’t a farmer or a worker was regarded as an intellectual, and therefore subversive. The chaos didn’t end until the spring of 1969 – and only then because the so-called Gang of Four were rattling their chains loudly in the background. But the Red Guards walked the same path as their victims and found themselves back in re-education camps, which, in the opinion of many of the Chinese people, made things even worse. Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, raved about cultural operas and warmed up to some of the worst atrocities in China’s history. But the naming of children, at least, slowly normalised.

Chen, Jericho estimated, had come into the world sometime between 1966 and 1969: a time in which his name was about as common as caterpillars in salad. Hong-bing literally meant ‘Red Soldier’.

Tu looked at the sun.

‘Hongbing has a daughter.’ The way he said it implied that this alone was worth telling the story for. His eyes lit up, then he got a grip of himself. ‘She’s very pretty and unfortunately very reckless too. Two days ago, she disappeared without a trace. Generally speaking she trusts me, and I’m tempted to say she trusts me even more than her father. Anyway, it’s not the first time she’s taken off for a while, but before she has always let someone know, so to speak. Him, me or at least one of her friends.’

‘And she forgot this time.’

‘Or she didn’t have a chance. Hongbing is worried out of his mind, and rightly so. Yoyo has a tendency to annoy the wrong people. Or, shall we say, the right ones.’

Tu had outlined the problem in his own way. Jericho pursed his lips. It was clear what was expected of him. Besides that, the name Yoyo had unleashed something inside him.

‘And I’m supposed to look for the girl?’

‘You would be doing me a good turn if you met with Chen Hongbing.’ Cheerfully Tu spotted his ball and began to pace more briskly. ‘Only, of course, if you feel you’re able to.’

‘What exactly has she done?’ asked Jericho. ‘Yoyo, I mean.’

Tu stepped over to the white object in the shortly cut grass, looked Jericho in the eyes and smiled. His look said that he wanted to get back to putting now. Jericho smiled back.

‘Tell your friend it would be an honour.’

Tu nodded as if he had expected nothing less. He called Jericho xiongdi one more time and turned his undivided attention to the putter and ball.

The younger generation in China hardly played the game any more. Their tone of voice had become globalised. If someone wanted something from somebody, they generally came straight to the point without wasting any time. With Chen Hong-bing it was clearly a different matter. Everything about him marked him out as a representative of an older China, one in which there were a thousand ways of losing face. Jericho was indecisive for a moment, then had an idea of how he could salvage the situation for Chen. He leaned over, pulled a carpet knife from the toolbox next to the desk and began to briskly cut the chair free from the bubble wrap.

Chen raised both hands in horror.

‘I beg you! This is so embarrassing for me—’

‘It doesn’t have to be.’ said Jericho cheerfully. ‘To be honest I was hoping for your help. There’s a second knife in the toolbox. What would you say to us joining forces and making this place a little more comfortable?’

It was an ambush. At the same time he was offering Chen a way out of the self-inflicted mess. You help me, I’ll help you, then you’ll be contributing to my move, we’ll both be able to sit more comfortably and you can get the dust off your face. Quid pro quo.

Chen seemed uncertain. He scratched his head, rattled himself to his feet, then fished the knife out of the box and took hold of the other chair. As he began to cut through the sticky-tape, he visibly relaxed.