People's Republic

  Yannis shook his head. ‘I thought we could get your robotics stuff out.’

  Ethan raised his cast slightly. ‘You see me doing any soldering with this on?’

  Yannis clearly didn’t want Ryan around. ‘Why weren’t you in school?’ he asked bitterly.

  ‘Asthma attack,’ Ryan said. ‘Doctor said I should rest.’

  ‘You don’t look very ill,’ Yannis said.

  Ryan laughed. ‘I’m not very ill. But I’ve got an excuse to miss a couple of days of Twin Lakes tedium, and I plan to make the most of it.’

  ‘Well, if you’re watching that film, I might as well go home and do my homework. I just wanted to see if you were OK.’

  Ethan looked mystified. ‘Yannis, why are you being a dick? I’ll put the hot dog grill on for you, we can chill.’

  But Yannis was heading back towards the stairs. ‘I only like seeing a whole movie,’ he said. ‘Otherwise you don’t enjoy it properly.’

  Ethan hobbled after Yannis and yelled up the stairs. ‘Why do you always act up if anyone else is around?’

  ‘I’m not acting like anything,’ Yannis said, his voice sounding all stressed and high-pitched. ‘I thought we were friends is all. We usually do things together.’

  Ethan was exasperated. ‘We asked you to come in, watch a movie and eat hot dogs. It’s not like we’re throwing you out.’

  Yannis didn’t answer. The front door slammed. Ethan and Ryan looked at each other.

  ‘Did I do something to piss him off?’ Ryan asked.

  ‘He gets jealous if you have any friends apart from him,’ Ethan said. ‘He’s the same at chess club. But it’s his problem. Let’s watch the rest of the movie.’

  *

  The bloody-nosed henchman grabbed Ning off the floor and threw her down on the desk in front of Ingrid.

  ‘How can you let this happen to your daughter?’ Leonid shouted, as Ning stared up at the ceiling tiles. ‘What kind of mother are you? What kind of mother lets her own daughter suffer, just for money?’

  ‘Chaoxiang will find out what you did,’ Ingrid shouted. ‘He knows you have a daughter. Anything you do to Ning, he’ll do to her.’

  Leonid laughed. ‘Chaoxiang upset some very important people. He’s nothing but a corpse in a Chinese prison uniform.’

  Ingrid leaned forward, so that her bloody face was less than half a metre from Ning’s, and spat at Leonid’s face. Leonid backed away, wiped up, then pulled up Ning’s T-shirt and tipped his steaming coffee over Ning’s stomach.

  ‘No,’ Ingrid shouted, as Ning screamed in pain.

  As the hot liquid scalded Ning’s skin, Ingrid tried to stand and one of the henchmen shoved her back down in her seat.

  ‘How can you do that?’ Ingrid shouted. ‘She’s just a little girl.’

  Leonid sensed he’d hit a weak spot and looked at the teenager. ‘Apparently she doesn’t like her little girl getting burned. Go make me another nice hot cup of coffee.’

  ‘OK,’ Ingrid shouted, as she ran her bloody hands through her hair. ‘You win. I’ll give you the account details.’

  ‘Good,’ Leonid said. ‘But you’d better play it straight, or it’ll be more than a cup of coffee that I burn her with.’

  Ingrid pointed at the water she’d used to rinse out her eyes. ‘Give that to her.’

  The teenager grabbed the jug and tipped some of the water over Ning’s burn. Leonid didn’t seem to approve, but he was more interested in getting information out of Ingrid than in yelling at the boy.

  ‘I don’t remember the numbers by heart,’ Ingrid said. ‘In my luggage there’s an address book and diary. I can access some accounts by computer, some only by telephone.’

  One of the henchmen spoke to Leonid in Russian.

  ‘Kuban already went through her diary and address book,’ one of the henchmen said. ‘There were no bank details.’

  Ingrid snorted. ‘Do you think I write them down for any idiot to find if I lose them? They’re written in a simple code that Chaoxiang taught me. I’ll also need a pencil and a calculator.’

  As Ning sobbed from the pain in her burned abdomen, Leonid told the teenager to go and find Ingrid’s stuff, and bring a replacement computer so that she could access the internet.

  ‘I’m cooperating now,’ Ingrid said. ‘Can you at least make Ning more comfortable? Take her cuffs off, give her something for the burn.’

  ‘You are not in a position to make demands,’ Leonid said sharply.

  ‘I need to concentrate to extract the numbers and sound relaxed when I call the banks to make your transfers. How can I do that with my daughter in agony?’

  Leonid saw the logic in this and gave a slight nod. ‘She can be made comfortable,’ Leonid told Ingrid. ‘Food, toilet, a few clothes.’

  Ingrid nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Take the girl out,’ Leonid told the bloody-nosed henchman. ‘But no further than the next room. I’ll need her back here if her mother tries any funny business.’

  Ning stretched when her cuffs were released and the bindings on her legs cut off. For the first time in almost six hours she was able to move freely, but she hurt all over. The skin around her belly button was blistered, she had a broken toe, bloody wrists, and a dark scab where her chin had hit the gravel.

  Ning’s newly appointed guard waved her towards the door. The room outside had been fitted out as a break area for the staff who worked in the club. There were a few random chairs, a sink, a grubby-looking fridge, chipped mugs and wobbly tables. There was a toilet off to the side and Ning headed straight for it.

  The henchman insisted on standing in the doorway, but at least had the decency to look away as Ning peed. She then stood by a mirror and washed quickly. Her chin and neck were bloody.

  She used a grimy bar of soap to wash the worst of the blood off her face and splashed the burn with cold water. As she came back into the break room the teenager strode through with Ingrid’s luggage and a laptop tucked under his arm.

  Ning’s guard opened up the fridge. She’d expected to see mouldy bread, and half-eaten noodle pots, but to her surprise it was packed with platters on silver trays for some kind of function in the dance hall.

  Ning was in too much pain to feel hungry, but she hadn’t eaten since the picnic food on the plane and felt she ought to because she didn’t know when she’d get another chance. She pulled a paper plate from a cellophane-wrapped stack and made herself swallow a few pieces of fruit, along with a kind of potato salad with chunks of fatty lamb in it. As Ning chewed slowly, her guard tucked into the cling-film-wrapped platters with relish.

  ‘Can I get my trainers?’ Ning asked.

  Her guard didn’t speak English, so she repeated her request, but added gestures like she was pulling on shoes. The guard led Ning out into a passageway. Her backpack leaned against the hallway wall, and looked like it had been pulled about, with bits of clothing spread over the floor.

  Unlike the studio and the break room, the hallway had windows. Ning had lost all sense of time and was surprised to see that it was dark.

  She dug her spare trainers out of the bag, then leaned against the wall. There was no way to avoid pain as she pushed her injured foot into her trainer, and her toe was much more painful with shoes on, but she could hardly escape in her socks.

  As they walked back into the break room, Ning glimpsed Ingrid in the dance studio. She had the laptop in front of her. Leonid sat on a corner of the desk watching intently, while the teenager stood by the wall looking uncomfortable.

  Ning’s guard had developed a taste for party nibbles and when she turned back he was leaning into the fridge cramming more food into his mouth. She remembered what Ingrid said about taking any chance to escape, and with the guard deep in the fridge, would there ever be a better one?

  Ning stood and moved back towards the hallway. She felt Kuban’s knife in her pocket, but it made her uneasy because she didn’t know the best way to use it.

  ‘I forgot something,’ Nin
g said airily, as she stepped back towards the hallway.

  She made it two steps out of the staffroom before the guard grabbed her.

  ‘Nyet,’ he said firmly.

  The guard was more than twice Ning’s weight, so she only had one shot. She packed her strength, rage and everything she’d learned in four years at Dandong National Sports Academy into one titanic punch.

  The guard’s nose exploded. As he crashed backwards, Ning walked into a mist of blood and threw a second punch at his temple. He slid down the wall, unconscious and minus two front teeth.

  Ning looked backwards. She’d made a fair bit of noise and half expected to see Leonid charging towards her, but apparently she’d got away with it. With luck she’d have a few minutes before anyone came out and discovered him.

  Ning unbuttoned the guard’s coat, and was disappointed not to find a gun. She took his wallet and grabbed her own small backpack from the floor. She had no idea if all of her stuff was still in there, but there wasn’t time to stand around and check.

  Now she had to work out which way to run. One end of the corridor led towards the club they’d passed through on the way in. It had been empty back then, but it was evening now and she could hear music thumping.

  She went the other way, heading for a door at the end of the hallway. It was hard to look through because of the reflections of the indoor lights, but it apparently led outside. She made out a set of emergency stairs through the glass, and saw that it led to the courtyard where they’d arrived that morning.

  The gates they’d driven through appeared to be shut, but they didn’t look unclimbable. And if the bin scavenger that Kuban beat up had got inside, there had to be a way for Ning to get out. She turned the handle and gave the door a shove. It took some effort to make it budge and she hobbled out on to the metal steps.

  20. DOCTOR

  The air was muggy and the only light came through the club’s windows. Ning had to battle every step, leaning heavily on the handrail to keep the weight off her bad toe. When she got down to the gravel courtyard a rowdy group of men blocked an alleyway leading to the front of the building, so she kept low and limped between parked cars towards the rear gates.

  They were a couple of metres high and too close to the ground to slide under. She pulled the wire mesh, hoping to find a loose flap to climb through. When she had no luck, Ning turned towards the bins. They were drum shaped, two metres high, made from aluminium with handles halfway up.

  Ning planned to wheel the bin across to the gate, pull herself up to the top and then jump over. If she’d been fit it would have taken seconds, but her toe and burned stomach was agony as she grabbed the bin’s handle and dragged it four metres towards the gate.

  She glanced about as the wheels juddered on the gravel. There was nobody on the stairs, but the men in the alleyway would see if they’d bothered to take an interest.

  With the bin resting against the fence, Ning reached up and grabbed the rim with both hands. Fighting pain, she got one foot on the handle, then pulled a knee up on to the rim. The position was precarious and a rat shuffled over black bags as she stepped into the bin.

  She wasn’t sure how much the rubbish would settle, but after a wobble she found herself standing inside the bin with the rim coming up to her knees. From here she had to clamber across to the top of the fence and jump down on the far side, but as she reached across she heard footsteps on the metal stairs.

  The teenager was first out. Ning lunged desperately for the fence, but her burned abdomen brushed against something sticking out of a bag and her whole body went into spasm. As she crashed backwards into the rubbish bags, Leonid appeared behind the running teenager.

  Ning knew she was screwed. She didn’t try getting back over the gate, because even if she made it she was in no state to run.

  What happened next made no sense. The teenager started gesticulating and shouting in Russian. The motorised gates slid apart as Leonid shouted in Russian, Kyrgyz or possibly a mix of both. The only word Ning understood was dollars.

  The sound of men running out of the alleyway made Ning realise that Leonid had offered a bounty to whoever caught her. But surely the teenager had seen her drop into the bin?

  Ning didn’t dare peek, but there were voices and footsteps in the gravel nearby. She spent a couple of minutes sharing the bin with at least one rat, until someone decided to wheel it back to its usual spot.

  After a thump against the courtyard wall, Ning was shocked by fat fingers curling over the metal rim, followed by the squashed-up face of the powerfully built teenager. She braced herself, expecting to be grabbed and yanked out, but instead he made a shush gesture.

  ‘I tell them you jump over and run up hill,’ the teen said, struggling with his English. ‘I come back. But it be long time, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ning said.

  ‘Do not move. I must go.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ning said, as the face disappeared.

  *

  Ryan was bursting with information when he got home. Amy did a full debriefing, talking him through everything Ethan had said, and everything he’d learned about Gillian Kitsell: the stuff about Gillian being disowned because of her sexuality, Ethan’s sperm donor father, the secure room in the basement.

  Amy typed up detailed notes and sent them by secure e-mail to an Information Manager (IM) at TFU headquarters in Dallas, together with the pictures of the lock on the secure room.

  The IM would work through the night, checking out everything Ryan had unearthed and following up any leads. When Ryan woke in the morning he’d have a detailed report in his inbox, telling him which facts did and didn’t check out, along with suggested lines for further questioning and things they hoped he could learn from Ethan over the coming days.

  ‘Hear you had a good day,’ Ted said, as Ryan strolled through to the kitchen.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ryan said, as he rubbed his eyes. ‘It’s knackering though. You’re only sitting about, but the whole time you’ve got to judge what you can and can’t say and work out what to ask next without the guy losing his temper and calling you a nosy bastard.’

  ‘He wasn’t shy though?’ Ted asked.

  Ted had an apron on and stood by a five-ring hob with rice steaming at the back and a sizzling pan of strip beef and peppers up front. He was also jiggling his bum to a Phil Collins tune coming through the ceiling speakers.

  ‘Ethan’s quite the gossip queen once you get him going,’ Ryan said, as he leaned towards the pan. ‘Your Mexican smells good. Less sure of your taste in music.’

  ‘You can’t beat old Phil,’ Ted said. ‘Only thing better than Phil’s concerts is Texas A&M in a play-off game!’

  ‘Is that baseball or something?’ Ryan asked.

  Ted balled up an oven mitt and laughed as he threw it at Ryan. ‘College football, boy! Don’t you know sport?’

  ‘We have rugby in Britain,’ Ryan explained cheekily. ‘It’s similar to American football, but we don’t need all those girly pads and helmets because the players are real men.’

  ‘I’ll put you over my knee if you ain’t careful,’ Ted laughed. ‘We’re about done here. There’s guacamole and sour cream in the fridge. Can you get that out, and set the table for four?’

  ‘Four?’

  ‘Didn’t Amy tell you? The boss is coming. Called on her cell a while back. Must have hit traffic cos I thought she’d be here about now.’

  Ryan sighed as he opened the cutlery drawer.

  ‘No fan of Dr D?’ Ted asked.

  ‘I’ve only met her a couple of times,’ Ryan explained. ‘She’s annoying, with the high-pitched voice and the wavy arms and the, Hi I’m Denise, but you gotta call me Dr D.’

  Ted laughed. ‘You’ve got her accent to a tee. I know she’s odd, but she’s very good at her job. She’s also the head of TFU, which means she’s my and Amy’s boss. So try keeping her sweet, OK?’

  ‘No worries,’ Ryan said, as he peeled cling film from the guacamole and tasted a dab
on his little finger. ‘Will she be staying over?’

  ‘For a few nights,’ Ted said. ‘Anyone asks, she’s your grandmother on your late mother’s side, as per the mission background.’

  ‘I remember,’ Ryan said, as the doorbell rang.

  Ted pressed the button to release the front door and Dr D found her own way to the kitchen. She came in, placed a large gold box on the table and kissed Ryan on both cheeks.

  ‘I read Amy’s message to the IM,’ Dr D said. ‘Boy-o-boy, that’s progress. I got you a gift. I really think it’ll help with the mission.’

  The gold box made Ryan think it was a large cream cake, but he popped the lid and discovered a rounded pebble and a bonsai tree.

  ‘It’s for your room,’ Dr D said excitedly.

  This wasn’t the sort of thing you expected from a senior American intelligence officer. Ryan thought Dr D was bonkers, but Ted’s request to play nice was fresh in his mind.

  ‘It’s umm … lovely,’ Ryan said. ‘I’ve always liked tiny trees.’

  ‘It’s a feng shui kit,’ Dr D explained. ‘When I saw your bedroom, with the toilet and shower pointing towards the bed, I knew the energy was all wrong. Place the tree on your window ledge and the stone on the shelf above the toilet. The chi in your room will be rebalanced and you’ll feel properly energised when you wake up in the morning.’

  ‘Ryan could do with more energy,’ Amy said, as she came in and gave Dr D a kiss. ‘He can be a right miserable bugger when he first gets out of bed.’

  Ted whispered in Ryan’s ear as he reached into a cupboard to grab the plates. ‘Google feng shui when you get a chance,’ he said. ‘And be grateful, she once bought me a purple healing shirt.’

  Dr D sat at the dining table as Ryan spread out plates and cutlery.

  ‘I reckon our best bet will be finding a new lady friend for Gillian Kitsell,’ Dr D said. ‘Ryan, we need to know Gillian’s type. Next time you’re over at the house, look out for any photos of Gillian with one of her exes.’

  ‘TFU not finding out that Gillian’s a lesbo must be a bit of a cock-up,’ Ryan said. ‘I mean, people she works with must know. And she travels so there must be airline records of her flying with female partners.’