Paul Adams sat down. He had a glass of whisky and he drank it in one swallow, then refilled it. “You’re English…” he said.
“I was at your home in Dulwich,” Matt said. He was rummaging through a cupboard for a tea-bag. “I tried to find Scarlett there. But she’d gone.”
“They’ve taken her.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“No.” He drank again. “I know who you are!” he exclaimed. He had only just worked it out. “You’re the boy they’re all looking for. You’re the reason why they wanted Scarlett.”
Matt didn’t say anything. The kettle boiled and he made himself the tea, adding two spoons of sugar.
“Matt Freeman. That’s who it was. Matt Freeman!” He got up and went over to the kitchen, weaving his way across the carpet. Matt didn’t know whether to be saddened or disgusted. He had never seen anyone so utterly lost. Paul Adams leant heavily against the side of the counter and suddenly there were tears in his eyes. “They lied to me,” he said. “They told me she’d be all right if I helped them. I was the one who caught her! She’d have got away if it hadn’t been for me. But I only did it to protect her. They said they’d kill her if I didn’t help them.”
“Did they take her to The Nail?” Matt asked.
“She’s not there.” Paul Adams shook his head.
“Is she still in Hong Kong?”
“Somewhere. They won’t tell me.” He paused and looked at the window. The first streaks of morning were beginning to bleed through the night sky. “I thought they’d be grateful for what I did, but they said I’d never see her again. They were mocking me. I’d helped them and it was all for nothing. They wanted me to know that.” He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I don’t understand what they want, Matt. I don’t understand anything any more. This whole city…” His voice trailed away.
“Mr Adams, I can help you,” Matt said. “I can find her and get her out of here.”
“How? You’re just a kid.”
“I need to have a shower and get changed.” Matt was still dripping water onto the expensive carpet. “Do you have spare clothes?”
“I don’t know…” He waved vaguely in the direction of the bedroom.
Matt drew on the last of his strength, forcing his mind into gear. He had to find Scarlett. That was the reason he was here. But that wasn’t going to be possible, not if she had been taken to some secret location. Was she even still in Hong Kong? He guessed that she would have to be. The Old Ones were using her to get at him. Surely they would keep her there until he arrived.
How to find her? Matt’s eyes were desperately heavy. All he wanted to do was go to bed. But somehow he knew that this was his last chance. He had to bring all the pieces together, here in this room. First there was Paul Adams, destroying himself, wracked with guilt and misery. Then there was the man called Lohan, somewhere in Hong Kong with his thousand foot-soldiers. Richard and Jamie. Maybe they had found their way over to them. And the fireworks. What was the name he had seen, stencilled on the crates?
And suddenly he had it.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I may be able to find Scarlett, but you’re going to have to help me. Will you do that?”
“I’ll do anything.”
“Does your telephone work here? And do you have a phone book?”
Paul Adams had been expecting something more. How would a simple phone call save his daughter? “It’s over there…” He gestured with the hand that was still holding the whisky glass.
Matt went over to the telephone. It was a desperate plan. But he could think of no other way.
He picked it up and began to dial.
* * *
They came for him just after seven o’clock.
Matt was asleep on the sofa, dressed in jeans and a sweater that didn’t really fit but were a lot better than the ones he had dumped in the bathroom. He had taken a hot shower, washing the smell of the harbour off his skin and out of his hair. And then he had fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.
He hadn’t heard the police arrive. They had driven down Harcourt Road and turned into Wisdom Court without sirens. He was woken by the sound of the door being smashed open and the shouts of a dozen men as they poured into the flat. Some of them were carrying guns. It was hard to say who was in charge. Suddenly they were everywhere and Matt was surrounded.
He started to get up but something hit him in the chest. It was a dart, fired from what looked like a toy gun, trailing wires behind it. But the next thing he knew, there was an explosion of pain and he was literally thrown off his feet as a bolt of electricity seared through him. He had been hit with a Tasar, a weapon used by police forces all over the world. Despite its appearance, it had fired an electrical charge that had resulted in the total loss of his neuromuscular control. Matt had never felt pain like it. It seemed to shatter every bone in his body. He heard an animal whimper and realized it was him.
Matt collapsed to the ground, unable to move. The policemen weren’t taking any chances. They had deliberately neutralized him before he could use his power against them.
A moment later, two of them fell on him. They twisted his arms behind his back and he felt cold steel against his wrists as a pair of handcuffs were locked into place. One of the policemen grabbed him by the hair and twisted him round so that he was in a kneeling position.
Another man appeared at the door.
“So this is Matthew Freeman,” he said.
The chairman of the Nightrise Corporation had wanted to make sure that everything was safe before he came in. Now he strutted forward and stood over Matt, looking down at him with a smile on his face. Although he had been hastily summoned out of bed, he was as smartly dressed as always, in a new suit and polished shoes. “What a great pleasure to meet you,” he added.
Matt ignored him. He twisted round so that he was facing Paul Adams. His eyes were filled with anger. “What have you done?” he yelled.
“I called them while you were in the shower.” Adams went over to the chairman. It was clear he was afraid of him. He stood there, wringing his hands together as if trying to wash them clean. “This is the boy, Mr Chairman,” he muttered. “He came to the flat in the middle of the night. I called you the moment I could.”
“You’ve done very well,” the chairman muttered. He was still gazing at Matt. “I never thought it would be this easy,” he said.
Matt swore at him.
“I knew you were looking for him, Mr Chairman,” Paul Adams went on. “And now you have him. So you don’t need Scarly. Tell me you’ll let Scarly go.”
The chairman turned his head slowly and examined Scarlett’s father as if he were a doctor about to break bad news. “I will not let Scarly go,” he said. “I will never let Scarly go.”
“Then at least let me see her. I’ve given you the boy. Don’t I deserve a reward?”
“You most certainly do,” the chairman said.
He nodded at one of the policemen, who shot Paul Adams in the head. Matt saw the spray of blood as the back of his skull was blown off. He was dead instantly. His knees buckled underneath him and he fell to one side.
“A quick death,” the chairman remarked. He nodded at Matt. “Soon you’ll be wishing you could have had one too.”
He turned and walked out of the room. Two of the policemen reached forward and jerked Matt to his feet. Then they dragged him out, along the corridor and down to the city below.
TAI FUNG
The dragon was moving towards Hong Kong, closing in with deadly precision, gaining strength as it crossed the water. Scarlett had summoned it and it had heard. Even she couldn’t turn it back now.
It had begun its life as nothing more than a front of warm air, rising into the sky. But then, very quickly, a swirl of cloud had formed, spinning faster and faster with a dark, unblinking eye at the centre. By the time the weather satellites had transmitted the first pictures from the Strait of Luzon, it was already too late. The
dragon was awake. Its appetite was as big as the ocean where it had been born and it would destroy anything that stood in its path.
The dragon was a typhoon.
Tai fung.
The words mean “big wind”, but they went nowhere near describing the most powerful force of nature; a storm that contained a hundred storms within it. The typhoon would travel at over two hundred miles an hour. Its eye might be thirty miles wide. The hurricane winds around it would generate as much energy in one second as ten nuclear bombs. To the Chinese, typhoons are also known as “the dragon’s breath”, as if they come from some terrible monster living deep in the sea.
Since 1884, the Hong Kong Observatory had put out a series of warnings whenever a typhoon had come within five hundred miles and each warning has come with a beacon, or a signal, attached. Signal One was shaped like a letter T and warned the local populace to stand by. Signal Three, an upside down T, was more serious. Now people were told to stay at home, not to travel unless absolutely necessary. Later on came Signal Eight, a triangle, Signal Nine, an hourglass, and finally, most terrifyingly, Signal Ten. Perhaps appropriately, this took the shape of a cross. Signal Ten meant devastation. It would almost certainly bring wholesale loss of life.
And that was what was on its way now.
But there were no warnings. Nobody had been prepared for a typhoon in November, which was months after the storm season should have ended. And anyway, no typhoon could possibly have formed so quickly. It would normally take at least a week. This one had reached its full power in less than a day. The whole thing was impossible.
Nor was there anyone left to send out the signals. Hong Kong Observatory had been abandoned. Many of the scientists had left. The others were too scared to come to work as the city continued its descent into sickness and death.
Unseen, the dragon rushed towards them. The skyscrapers were already in its sight. Suddenly they seemed tiny and insubstantial as, with a great roar, it fell on them. By the time anyone realized what was happening it was already far too late.
The chairman of the Nightrise Corporation was wondering how many people had died in the last twenty-four hours and how many more would die in the next. He could imagine them, sixty-six floors below, crawling over the pavements, begging for help that would never come, finally losing consciousness in a cloud of misery and pain. He himself would leave Hong Kong very soon. His work here was almost finished. It was time to claim his reward.
The Old Ones were going to give him the whole of Asia to rule over in recognition of what he had achieved. Even Ghengis Khan hadn’t been as powerful as that. He would live in a palace, an old-fashioned one with deep, marble baths and banqueting rooms and gardens a mile long. The world leaders who survived would bow in front of him and anyone who had ever offended him, in business or in private life, would die in ingenious ways that he had already designed. He would open a theatre of blood and they would star in it. And anything he wanted he would have. The thought of it made his head spin.
He was behind his desk in his office on the executive floor of The Nail and he was not alone. There was a man sitting on the same leather sofa that Scarlett Adams had occupied just a week before. The man had travelled a very long way and he was still looking crumpled from his flight. He was elderly, dressed in a shabby, brown suit that didn’t quite fit him. It was the right size but it hung awkwardly. The man was bald with two small tufts of white hair around his ears and white eyebrows. He looked ill at ease in this smart office. He was out of place and he knew it. But he was glad to be here. It had been a journey he was determined to make.
His name was Gregor Malenkov. For many years he had been known as Father Gregory, but he planned to put that behind him now. He had left the Monastery of the Cry for Mercy for good. He, too, had come for his reward.
“So how do you like Hong Kong?” the chairman asked.
“It’s an extraordinary city,” Father Gregory rasped. “Quite extraordinary. I came here as a young man but it was much smaller then. Half the buildings weren’t here and the airport was in a different place. All these lights! All the traffic and the noise! I have to say, I hardly recognized it.”
“A week from now, it will be completely unrecognizable,” the chairman said. “It will have become a necropolis. I’m sure you will understand what that means, a man of your learning.”
“A city of the dead.”
“Exactly. The entire population has begun to die. In just a matter of days, there will be no one left. The corpses are already piling up in the street. The hospitals are full – not that they would be any use as the doctors and the nurses are dying too. Nobody even bothers to call the cemeteries. There’s no room there. And soon things will get much, much worse. It will be interesting to watch.”
“How are you killing them?” Father Gregory asked. “Would I be right in thinking it is something to do with the pollution?”
“You would be entirely correct, Father Gregory. Although perhaps I should not call you that, as I understand you are no longer in holy orders.” The chairman stood up and went over to the window, but the view had been almost completely obliterated by the mist which swirled around the building, chasing its own tail. There was going to be a storm. He could just make out the water down in the harbour. The water was choppy, rising into angry waves.
“There has always been pollution, blowing in from China,” he continued. “And the strange thing is that the people here have tolerated it. Coal-fired power stations. Car exhausts. They have always accepted that it’s a price that has to be paid for the comforts of modern life.”
“And you have made it worse?”
“The Old Ones have added a few extra chemicals – some very poisonous ones – to the mix. You’ve seen the results. The elderly and the weak have been the first to go, but the rest of the city will follow if they are exposed to it for very much longer. Which they will be. An unpleasant death. We are safe, of course, inside The Nail. The air is filtered. We just have to be careful not to spend too long in the street.”
Father Gregory pressed his fingers together. His sty had got much worse. The eyeball was now jammed, no longer able to move. Only his good eye watched the chairman. “I have to say, I’m disappointed,” he said. “I was looking forward to meeting – to actually seeing – the Old Ones.”
“The Old Ones have left Hong Kong. They have a great deal of work to do, preparing for a war that will be starting very soon. As soon as they heard that Matthew Freeman had been taken, they went.”
“I don’t understand why they don’t show themselves to the world,” Father Gregory said. “You have two of the Gatekeepers. So surely nothing can stop them…”
“It’s not the way they work. If the Old Ones told the world that they existed, people would unite against them. That would defeat the point. By keeping themselves hidden, they can let humanity tear itself apart. That is what they enjoy.”
There was a moment’s silence. Father Gregory licked his lips and something ugly came into his eyes. “I want to see the girl,” he said. “I still can’t believe that she managed to break free when I had her. I had plans…”
“Yes, that was most unfortunate,” the chairman agreed. “Well, right now they are together. The boy came all this way to find her, so I thought it would be amusing to let them spend one day in each other’s company.”
“Is that safe?”
“The two of them are locked up very securely and nobody knows where they are. The boy has certain abilities which make him dangerous. But as for the girl…”
“What is her power?”
“It seems that she drew the short straw. I’m afraid Scarlett Adams is not quite the superhero one might have imagined.” The chairman smiled. “She has the ability to predict the weather. That’s all. She can tell if it’s going to rain or if the sun is going to shine. As she will never see either of these things again, it will not do her very much good. We are sending her away tonight. To another country.”
“You
can’t kill her of course.”
“It’s vital that both children are kept alive. In pain, but alive. We are going to bury them in separate rooms, many thousands of miles apart. They will be given limited amounts of food and water, but no human contact. The Old Ones have asked me to blind Matt Freeman and that will be done just before Scarlett leaves. We want her to take the horror of it with her. In the end, she will probably go mad. It will be one of the last memories that she has.”
“Excellent. I’d like to be there when it happens.”
“That may not be possible.”
Father Gregory was disappointed. But he continued anyway.
“What about the other boy?” he asked.
“Jamie Tyler?” The chairman was still standing at the window. “He is somewhere here in Hong Kong. We haven’t yet been able to find him.”
“Have you looked for him?”
The chairman blinked slowly. Far below, two Star Ferries were crossing each other’s paths, fighting the storm as they made their way across the harbour. Where had the storm come from? It seemed to be getting stronger. He was surprised the ferries were still operating and looked forward to the time when they finally stopped. It had always annoyed him, watching them go back and forth.
A boat will be the death of you. And it will happen in Hong Kong.
A prophecy that had been made by a fortune-teller. Well, soon there would be no more boats. There would be no more Hong Kong.
“Jamie Tyler can’t leave the city,” he said. “Unless, of course, he dies in the street and gets thrown into the sea. Either way, he is of no concern to us.”
There was another silence.
“But now, my dear Father Gregory,” the chairman said. “It is time for you to go.”
“I am a little tired,” Father Gregory admitted.
“It has been a pleasure meeting you. But – please – let me show you out….”
There was a handle on the edge of one of the windows and the chairman seized hold of it and pulled. The entire window slid aside and the wind rushed in, the mist swirling round and round. Papers fluttered off the desk. The stench of the pollution filled the room.