‘Hoff made the decision on her own account, and she told the whole corporation that there may perhaps be an attack, without pretending that she had any real information,’ the caller said. ‘Gaia was informed as well, just like every other link in the corporate network, but they saw no reason to change the programme up on the Moon. Hoff seems to have let all the right people know.’ The caller didn’t dare name names over the telephone, even though it was practically impossible that anyone might be listening in on this connection. On the other hand, they had never expected that the encrypted messages piggy-backing on harmless email attachments could be cracked.
‘Tu,’ said Xin thoughtfully.
‘That’s the name he gave. I’ll send you over his mobile number. We don’t know where he was calling from.’
Unlike the astonishing diversity of given names, the number of Chinese family names was limited indeed. The vast majority of Chinese people shared just a few dozen clan names, mostly monosyllables – the so-called Old Hundred Names. It was not uncommon for an entire village to be called Zheng, Wang, Han, Ma, Hu or Tu. Nevertheless Xin couldn’t shake off the feeling that he had heard the name Tu quite recently, and in connection with Yoyo.
‘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.
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.’
‘It’ll take us at least half an hour to get to the airport in the Audi.’
‘That could be too late.’
‘Forget the bloody Audi,’ Yoyo called out. ‘If we’re to have any chance at all, we need a skycab.’
‘I could order one,’ Jericho suggested.
‘Do that,’ Tu agreed. ‘We’ll be at the hotel in ten minutes.’
‘Your wish is my command.’
Jericho hung up and ran out to the corridor. As he dashed towards the lifts, he could see with his mind’s eye how the efficient German police would be unravelling the puzzle of their arrival, dauntless, dutiful and assuming the worst. He went up to the roof and found the skyport empty. A liveried hotel employee beamed at him from over the edge of his terminal. Jericho’s arrival seemed to give him a new purpose in life, stranded up here as he was on the lonely expanse of the roof.
‘Would you like to order an aircab?’ he asked.
‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘One moment, please.’ He slid his fingers busily across the console. ‘I could have one here for you in ten to fifteen minutes.’
‘As quick as you can!’
‘While you’re waiting, would you like any help with your lugg—’
The sentence probably ended with –age, but Jericho was back in the lift. He hurried to his room and shoved Diane into his rucksack with all the hardware. He packed whatever clothing lay around on top, checked and holstered his Glock, ran along the corridor and left a note for Tu:
I’m on the flight deck.
Charité Hospital, Institute of Forensic Pathology
‘No, he’s not,’ said the voice on the telephone.
Dr Marika Voss hopped from one foot to another, while Svenja Maas stood next to her, pale and wringing her hands.
‘Malchow,’ she repeated stubbornly. ‘Hel – ge Mal – chow.’
‘As I’ve already said—’
‘My colleague called him.’
‘That may well be, but—’
‘First she was held in a queue, then one of your switchboard staff put her through. To Malchow. To Hel—’
‘There’s no such person.’
‘But—’
‘Listen,’ said the voice, growing audibly less patient as the conversation went round and round in circles. ‘I would very much like to help you, but we have nobody of that name in the whole Foreign Office! And the extension number that you gave me doesn’t exist either!’
Dr Voss pressed her lips together indignantly. She’d known as much, ever since the automated dialling system had told her that there was no such number. Despite all this, she saw no reason to back down.
‘But the woman on the switchboard—’
‘Ah yes, the switchboard.’ A short pause, a sigh. ‘And what was the woman called?’
‘What was she called?’ Dr Voss hissed.
‘Something like Schill or Schall,’ Maas whispered, hunched over, miserable.
‘Schill or Schall, my colleague says.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘We do have a Scholl. Miss Scholl.’
‘Scholl?’ asked Dr Voss.
Maas shook her head. ‘It was Schill.’
‘It was Schill.’
‘I’m sorry. No Schill, no Schall, no Malchow. I really do advise you to call the police. Clearly you’ve been the butt of a very nasty joke.’
Dr Voss gave in. She thanked the civil servant in an icy tone, then called the number for the police. At her side, Svenja Maas wilted.
Within five minutes the case officers had tracked down the numberplate. Within seconds, they knew the name of the hire firm’s client. They compared that information with the records from immigration, and learned that Tu Tian had touched down in Berlin early the day before, giving the Grand Hyatt on Marlene-Dietrich-Platz as his address.
Two minutes after that, a team was dispatched to the hotel.
Grand Hyatt
Thanks to Tu’s dauntless driving, they reached the hotel sooner than they had expected, and with even more reason to get away again as quickly as they could – he must have chalked up dozens of traffic offences between the hospital at Turmstrasse and the hotel on Marlene-Dietrich-Platz. He got out, threw the keys to the concierge and asked him to take the car down to the underground parking.
‘Shall we go to the bar?’ Yoyo asked, loudly enough that the man couldn’t help but overhear it. Tu winked, understanding her plan, and picked up the charade.
‘To tell you the truth, I feel like something sweet.’
‘There’s a Starbucks in the Sony Center. Up the street.’
‘Great. See you there. I’ll just go tell Owen.’
It was vaudeville stuff of course, but it might buy them some time. They crossed the lobby as fast as they could without arousing suspicion, went up to the seventh floor and headed for their rooms.
‘Leave everything there that you don’t need,’ Tu called to her. ‘Bring only the bare essentials.’
‘Easy enough,’ Yoyo snorted. ‘I don’t have anything! You look after yourself, don’t waste time fussing with your suitcase.’
‘I don’t care about fashion, me.’
‘True enough, we’ll have to work on that. See you on the flight deck in two minutes.’
* * *
Seven floors below, Xin jumped out of the taxi. By now he knew what floor they were on, what room numbers, the only thing he didn’t know was who had which room. All the rooms were booked to Tu Technologies, and neither Yoyo nor Jericho were mentioned by name. He walked into the lobby in his full battledress. Hyatt staff and guests would certainly remember who had walked in at 15.30: a tall man, a striking figure with a flowing mane of red hair and a Genghis Khan moustache, probably some sort of artsy type. Holospecs hid the Asiatic cast of his eyes. He could easily be taken for European. The best disguise was to make yourself noticed.
He walked into a lift and pressed for the seventh floor.
Nothing happened.
Xin frowned, then spotted the thumbscan plate. Of course. The lift worked on authorisation only, as in most international hotels. He trotted obediently back into the lobby, where a contingent of his fellow-countrymen was just making their way to the reception desk. There was a sudden throng. The staff at the desk steeled themselves for the task of making sense of the new arrivals’ broken English, riddling out what they meant from what they said, and adding to the rich confusion with their own small store of Chinese words. Xin headed purposefully to the only receptionist who was busy with other tasks, in this case the telephone. He drew himself up to his full height and then wondered what on earth he could ask her.
How do I get up to the seventh floor?
Would you like to check in? – No, I have some friends staying here and I wanted to drop in on them. I can authorise you and then call them for you, to let them know you’re coming. Ahh, you know how it is, actually I wanted to surprise them. I understand! If you wait just a moment, I’ll ride up with you. It’s all a bit busy at the moment, as you see, but in a few minutes’ time … Can’t we be a bit quicker? – Well, you see, I’m not really supposed to – it’s really just guests who can—
Xin turned away. The whole thing was too complicated. He didn’t want to leave his thumbprint
in the Hyatt’s system, any more than he wanted to risk Tu, Jericho or Yoyo being warned. He mingled in with the other Chinese.
* * *
Jericho saw the skycab lift over the Tiergarten park and make for the Hyatt, a muscular-looking VTOL with four turbines. It came in fast, dipped its jets with a hissing snarl and sank slowly down onto the landing pad.
‘Your taxi’s here,’ the hotel employee said, smiling, the joy in his voice announcing how wonderful it was that air transport was so widely available these days, and what a pleasure it was to see people use it.
In the next moment Yoyo hurried from the terminal, a crumpled shopping bag under her arm and Tu trotting in her wake. He was pulling his suitcase along behind him as though it were a recalcitrant child.
The taxi settled.
‘Just what the doctor ordered,’ Tu beamed.
‘Just what the detective ordered,’ Jericho reminded him amiably.
‘Enough strutting and preening, you two.’ Yoyo headed for the boarding hatch. ‘Is your jet cleared for take-off?’
It was as though her question had slammed on the brakes in Tu’s stride. He stopped, fumbled at the bare expanse of his scalp and tried to twist his fingers into the tiny short hairs there.
‘What is it?’
‘I forgot something,’ he said.
‘Say it’s not so.’ Yoyo stared at him.
‘It is. My phone. I just now thought, all I need to do is call the airport from the taxi, and then I realised—’
‘You have to go back to your room?’
‘Erm – yes.’ Tu left his suitcase where it was, turned around and hurried back to the lift. ‘I’ll be right back. Right back.’