Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘What did he tell you?’

‘He gave me Yoyo’s new address. A few films and photos. And dropped a whole load of hints.’

Fumbling, Tu took the sunglasses down from his nose and tried to push the remaining glasses into a reasonably straight position. Jericho noticed that he hadn’t been mistaken: the left arm really was bound with sticky-tape. He wondered, not for the first time, why Tu didn’t get his eyes lasered or switch to photochromic contact lenses. Hardly anyone wore glasses for the purpose of improving their eyesight any more. They were just eking out an existence as fashion items, and fashion was as alien to Tu Tian as the atomic age was to a Neanderthal.

They were silent for a while. Jericho blinked in the sunlight and watched an aeroplane pass by.

‘So’ said Tu. ‘Ask your questions.’

‘There’s nothing to ask. Tell me something about Yoyo that I don’t know yet.’

‘She’s actually called Yuyun—’

‘Chen told me that much.’

‘—and belongs to a group who call themselves Guardians. I bet he didn’t tell you that, right?’

‘Guardians.’ Jericho whistled softly through his teeth.

‘You’ve heard of them?’

‘I sure have. Internet guerrillas. Dedicated to human rights, raising the profile of old stories like Tiananmen, attacks on government and industry networks. They’re really putting the wind up the Party.’

‘And they’re right to be nervous. Guardians are of a completely different calibre to our sweet little Titanium Mouse.’

Liu Di, the woman who called herself Titanium Mouse, was one of the pioneers of internet dissidence. At the start of the millennium she had begun to publish edgy little commentaries online about the political elite, initially under the pseudonym of Stainless Steel Mouse. Realising that it wasn’t as easy to imprison virtual people as it was those of flesh and blood, Beijing’s leadership began to get very nervous. These dissidents showed presence, without being present.

The head of the Beijing secret police remarked that the new threat gave cause for extreme concern and that an enemy without a face was the worst kind, a conclusion that grossly overestimated the first generation of net dissidents – most didn’t even contemplate disguising their identity, and even the ones who did made other mistakes sooner or later.

The Stainless Steel Mouse, for example, had walked right into their trap when she assured the founder of a new democratic party of her support, not knowing it was an official assigned to her case. As a result of which she was dragged off to a police station and imprisoned for a year without trial. After that, however, the Party learned their next lesson: that it may be possible to make people disappear behind walls, but not on the internet. There, Liu Di’s case gained significance, made the rounds in China and attracted the attention of the foreign media. Suddenly, the whole world was aware of this shy, twenty-one-year-old woman, who hadn’t even meant any of it that seriously. And that turned out to be the powerful, faceless enemy the Party had cowered so fearfully from.

After her release, Liu Di upgraded from steel to a stronger metal. Titanium Mouse had learned something. She declared war on an apparatus that Mao couldn’t have thought up in his wildest dreams: Cypol, the Chinese Internet Police. She routed internet forums via servers abroad and created her blogs with the help of programs that filtered out incriminating words as she wrote. Others followed her example, became increasingly sophisticated in their methods, and by then the Party really did have cause to worry. While veterans like Titanium Mouse made no secret of their true identity, Guardians were haunting the net like phantoms. Tracking them down would have required ingenious traps, and although Beijing kept setting them, so far no one had been caught.

‘Even today, the Party still has no idea how many of them there actually are. Sometimes they think they’re dealing with dozens, sometimes just a few. A cancerous ulcer in any case, one which will eat away at our magnificent, happy and healthy People’s Republic from the inside.’ Tu hacked up some phlegm and spat it in front of his feet. ‘Now, we know what comes out of Beijing, predominantly rumours and very little of anything that makes sense, so how big do you think the organisation really is?’

Jericho thought about it. He couldn’t remember ever having heard of a Guardian being imprisoned.

‘Oh sure, now and then they arrest someone and claim that person is one of them!’ said Tu, as if he had read Jericho’s thoughts. ‘But I happen to know for certain that they haven’t made one successful arrest yet. Unbelievable, isn’t it? I mean, they’re hunting an army, so you’d think there’d be prisoners of war.’

‘They’re hunting something that looks like an army,’ said Jericho.

‘You’re getting close.’

‘But the army doesn’t exist. There are only a few of them, but they know how to keep slipping through the investigators’ nets. So the Party exaggerates them. Makes them seem more dangerous and intelligent than they really are, to distract from the fact that the State still hasn’t managed to pull a handful of hackers out of the online traffic.’

‘And what do you conclude from that?’

‘That for one of Beijing’s honourable servants you know a suspicious amount about a bunch of internet dissidents.’ Jericho looked at Tu, frowning. ‘Is it just my imagination, or are you playing some part in the game too?’

‘Why don’t you just come out and ask if I’m one of them?’

‘I just did.’

‘The answer is no. But I can tell you that the entire group consists of six people. There were never more than that.’

‘And Yoyo is one of them?’

‘Well.’ Tu rubbed his neck. ‘Yes and no.’

‘Which means?’

‘She’s the brains behind it. Yoyo brought the Guardians to life.’

Jericho smirked. In the distorting mirror of the internet, anything was possible. The Guardians’ presence suggested they were a larger group, potentially capable of spying on government secrets. Their actions were well thought out, the background research always exemplary. It all created the illusion of being an extensive network, but in actual fact that was thanks to their multitude of sympathisers, who were neither affiliated to the group nor possessed knowledge about their structure. On closer inspection the Guardians’ entire activism boiled down to a small, conspiring hacker community. And yet—

‘—they have to be constantly up to date,’ murmured Jericho.

Tu jabbed his elbow into his ribs. ‘Are you talking to me?’

‘What? No. I mean, yes. How old is Yoyo again?’

‘Twenty-five.’

‘No twenty-five-year-old girl is cunning enough to outmanoeuvre the State Security in the long term.’

‘Yoyo is extraordinarily intelligent.’

‘That’s not what I mean. The State may be limping behind the hackers, but they’re not completely stupid. You can’t get past the Diamond Shield using conventional methods, so sooner or later you’ll have the Internet Police knocking at your door. Yoyo must have access to programs which enable her to always be a step ahead of them.’

Tu shrugged his shoulders.

‘Which means that she knows how to use them.’ Jericho spun the web further. ‘Who are the other members?’

‘Some guys. Students like Yoyo.’

‘And how do you know all this?’

‘Yoyo told me.’

‘She told you.’ Jericho paused. ‘But she didn’t tell Chen?’

‘Well, she tried. It’s just that Chen won’t hear any of it. He doesn’t listen to her, so she comes to me.’

‘Why you?’

‘Owen, you don’t have to know everything—’