Never mind.
He was a detective, and he had kept his promise. He had brought Yoyo back to his two clients, to Tu and Chen. Everything else was for Shaw and the British Secret Services to bother about, none of his business, and he was also horribly tired. At the same time, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink, no matter how hard he was yawning now.
Tu on the other hand hardly appeared to sleep at all, and the shock seemed to have jolted him into a state of unceasing wakefulness, driven by the guilt of not having been there at Yoyo’s side. She had been asleep in her bed for two hours now – all the guest suites in the Big O had several rooms, and spectacular views – while he sat with Jericho in the living room, drinking tea and gobbling down the nuts and nibbles like a maniac.
‘I have to eat,’ he said half apologetically, belching loudly. ‘Food and sex are man’s essential desires.’
‘Says who?’ muttered Jericho.
‘Confucius, since you ask, and he meant by it that we should be sure to eat well so that we can protect our women. Which means I have some catching up to do.’ A handful of Brazil nuts and jelly babies together. ‘And if I ever get my hands on that swine—’
‘You won’t.’
Tu slapped the table. ‘We’ve got this far, xiongdi. Do you really think that I’ll knuckle under and let the bastard get clean away? Think of what he did to Yoyo’s friends, to Hongbing. The tortures he put him through!’
‘Not so loud.’ Jericho glanced at the half-closed bedroom door. ‘No question that you’re right to be angry, but perhaps you should just be grateful that you’re not dead.’
‘All right, I’m grateful. What next?’
‘Nothing next.’ Jericho spread his hands and rolled his eyes. ‘Live. Life goes on.’
‘It’s not like you to take this attitude,’ Tu chided him. ‘The woodworm doesn’t just sit about making comments on the carpentry.’
‘Thanks for the comparison.’
‘So why did we get involved in the first place?’ Tu asked between gritted teeth. ‘So that the bastards could get away with it?’
‘You listen to me.’ Jericho put down his teacup and leaned forward. ‘Maybe you’re right, and maybe next week I’ll see it all differently, but where has all this got us? Following leads in ever-widening circles, all these killers, mercenary armies, Secret Services, coups in West Africa, government ploys and corporation plots, yesterday Equatorial Guinea, today the Moon, the day after tomorrow who knows, maybe Venus? Where has it got us? Corrupt oil cartels, Korean atom bombs, hotels on the Moon, rogue astronauts, oil managers getting shot at, Greenwatch wiped out, theories about China and the CIA, nine-headed monsters? Where? To a baking hot day and a man scared for his daughter. The furniture still in its packing and he’s worried that she’s disappeared, but first of all he has to help me get two chairs out of the bubble-wrap so that we have something to sit on. To be blunt, I couldn’t give a shit about Xin and his Hydra. With the best will in the world, I have no idea what we have to do with Orley Enterprises. There’s a girl in the next room, still breathing, we didn’t have to lay her out in a shroud, and to me that’s worth all the global conspiracies you could pile up together, since it looks as though we’re well out of this game, however the whole thing plays out. We’ve got those sods on the run, Tian, so much so that they can’t see any point in killing us. The story will fizzle out of its own accord. It begins and ends on the Shanghai Pudong golf course when you asked me to bring your friend his daughter back, alive and in one piece. That’s what I did. Thank you, next please.’
Tian looked at him appraisingly, a handful of nuts raised halfway to his mouth.
‘I’m very grate—’
‘No, you’re not following me.’ Jericho shook his head. ‘We’re all grateful, all of us, to one another, but now we’re going to fly off home, you can take care of your joint venture with Dao IT, Yoyo will carry on her studies, Hongbing will sell that silver Rolls that he was telling me about and enjoy his commission, and I’ll wipe Xin’s fingerprints from my furniture and try to fall in love with some woman who’s not called Diane or Joanna. And won’t it just be wonderful to be able to do all that? To lead a perfectly ordinary, boring life. We’ll wake up from this hideous dream, we’ll rub our eyes and that will be that, because this isn’t our life, Tian! These are other people’s problems.’
Tu scratched his belly. Jericho sank back into the depths of the sofa and wished he could believe what he’d just said.
‘A perfectly ordinary, boring life,’ Tu echoed.
‘Yes, Tian,’ he said. ‘Ordinary, boring. And if I can give you some advice, as a friend: talk to Yoyo. Both of you. Talking helps.’
It was rude to talk this way in Chinese culture, even with a friend. But perhaps after all the last two days had brought – how much closer did you need to be before you allowed such trust? He looked out at London as the day began, and wondered whether he should leave Shanghai and come back here. Actually, he didn’t much care either way.
‘I’m sorry,’ he sighed. ‘I know it’s nothing to do with me.’
Tu let the nuts he was holding rattle back down into the bowl, and stirred them with his finger. For a while, neither of them said anything.
‘Do you know what an ankang is?’ he asked at last.
Jericho turned his head. ‘Yes.’
‘Would you like to hear a story about an ankang?’ Tu smiled. ‘Of course you wouldn’t. Nobody wants to hear a story about an ankang, but you’ve brought it upon yourself. This is a story which begins on 12 January 1968 in Zhejiang province, when a child is born, an only child. Nothing to do with the one-child policy, by the way, that was only proclaimed years later, though of course you know that, since you’re practically Chinese yourself.’
12 January—
‘Not your own birthday,’ Jericho said.
‘No, besides which I was born in Shanghai, and this happened in a small town. The child’s father was a teacher, meaning that he was under serious suspicion of harbouring such heinous aims as wanting to educate people, or using his brain to develop an intellectual position. In other words, suspected of thought. Back in those days even knowing the rudiments of your own country’s history was enough to have you beaten in the streets, but when Beijing’s creatures began to destroy our culture in the name of revolutionising it, this teacher of ours adapted to the new circumstances. At first. After all, the capital was a vipers’ nest of Red Guards, but out in the provinces the local Party leaders were fighting the Guards. The peasants and workers out there were doing quite well from the policies of Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi. So our teacher worked in a tractor factory to avoid the suspicion of intellectualism, and he did what little he could to stop Deng and Liu from being toppled by the Maoists. There was a Red Guard faction established in his town that was openly sympathetic to Deng, the Coordinated Work Committee, and this teacher thought it would be a good idea to join them. Which it was. Until ’68, when the committee broke up under pressure from the hard-liners, who didn’t need to know more than that he had once been a teacher. The day that he began to fear for his life was the day his son was born.’
Jericho sipped at his tea, and a suspicion stole over him.
‘What was this teacher called, Tian?’
‘Chen De.’ Tu tapped at a peanut with his finger, sending it skittering over the table. ‘You can probably guess his son’s name for yourself.’
‘A name meant to show how faithful the father was. Red Soldier.’