‘He’s not always this charming, Steven!’ said Virginia’s voice, heavy with irony. A big security guy had stepped between Semyonov and Stone, and was standing with his back to Stone.
‘Peace Studies isn’t it?’ said Semyonov, easing aside the meathead security man. ‘You’re doing great work in your campaigns against the arms trade. I congratulate you, Stone.’ Did he actually mean this? ‘But you need to work on the publicity. Get on TV. You should get Virginia here to help you.’
‘You deny New Machine Corporation is making weapons?’ shouted Stone, as The Man turned.
‘I deny nothing, Mr Stone,’ said Semyonov, and he walked off with the tuxedo’d security man.
Stone said nothing for a second. That was a reaction he hadn’t expected. You’re doing great work. I congratulate you. Was Stone supposed to buy that? And then there was, I deny nothing. Questions raced through Stone’s mind. Stone was an intelligent guy, but Semyonov had just confounded him.
Virginia moved up next to Stone again in the crowd. Spotlights were on Semyonov as he walked up to a stage at the front and took his place alongside some frowning Chinese dignitaries. The music stopped, the noise level was dropping. The entertainers and the waitresses had disappeared
Everyone’s eyes were on Semyonov. ‘What’s he doing?’ Stone asked. The three Chinese dignitaries were dressed in the plain, button-fronted suits of the Chinese Communist Party. This meant it was a serious occasion. Semyonov and the three Chinese were on large TV screens positioned throughout the Crabflower Club.
‘You don’t know?’ smiled Virginia.
‘I crashed the party. Remember?’
The TV screens were showing an ornate document, one copy placed in front of each person on the dais. It was written in English on one half and Chinese characters on the other. A contract document in both languages. The screen showed the title.
Investment Joint Venture — New Machine Research Corporation, Jiangsu Province, People’s Republic of China
The dignitaries, seated on either side of Semyonov, signed their names at the bottom of the deed and used their formal Chinese ink stamps to make it official. There was polite applause. Now it was Semyonov’s turn to sign. The room was packed with witnesses. Cameras were on him from five angles. An awed silence descended.
‘He’s actually going to do it, Stone,’ whispered Virginia. Even as a hardened reporter, she was staggered.
‘He doesn’t even know what he’s investing in!’ whispered a voice next to them.
‘That’s not right,’ came another. ‘He knows everything, remember?’ Joking, but with a grain of truth.
‘I guess he works in mysterious ways, huh?’
‘This is not a stunt, Stone,’ said Virginia solemnly, staring at the screen. ‘He said he’d do it. He’s giving them the whole lot. He’s going to sign it all away. Twenty-five billion dollars!’
Stone half-expected trumpets, some kind of fanfare. What they got was even better. On the screen, Semyonov picked up a gold fountain pen in his right hand, and a silver fountain pen in his left. There was another gasp as he proceeded to sign both halves of the document, English and Chinese, simultaneously, one pen in each hand. With the left hand he wrote his American signature, at the same time as he was signing with his right in elegant Chinese script.
‘I heard he could do that,’ whispered Virginia. She’d flushed red.
‘Have the Chinese brainwashed him, or what?’ asked a loud Australian voice behind them. Fair question. The camera panned over onto the Communist Party official next to Semyonov. His flat, unreadable face showed only indifference.
The Australian voice was there again. ‘Writing with two hands at once? It’s not a normal thing, right?’
No, not a normal thing. Definitely not normal.
‘I’ve seen him do that before,’ said another voice, ‘Semyonov can totally do that.’
‘Forget the writing,’ said Virginia. ‘Signing away your whole fortune to the Chinese state is not a normal thing.’
There followed not so much an excited buzz — more of an uproar, a chaotic scene, confusion. There was shouting, cheering, hooting and surges through the crowd like it was a rock concert. Stone began to push his way through the shell-shocked crowd in the Crabflower Club towards the table where, of all things, Semyonov was signing autographs. With both hands. Showing he could actually do it and it wasn’t a trick. A different witty message with each hand. It’s not a normal thing, right?
Stone caught sight of one. “and the barman says, this is some kinda joke, right?” was written with the left hand, while the right hand wrote, “A Californian, a blonde and a rabbi walk into a bar,”. An old one. And Stone was not in the mood for jokes.
Stone was three metres away. The bodyguard spoke in Semyonov’s ear again. The Man looked up to catch Stone’s eye. It looked like Semyonov was going to speak to him, but then the Chinese Party dignitaries stood up to leave. Stone was still eyeballing him, and it must have looked really intense.
Whatever the reason, Semyonov’s large white head and red eyes turned again toward Stone, and he made a tired gesture with his hand for Stone to approach.
‘Why did you do it?’ said Stone. It was the only relevant question, the only thing he could think of, because nothing here made any sense. But Semyonov was still impassive. He scribbled again with both hands, and handed the two slips of paper to Stone. The words weren’t even in English.
‘You didn’t get the Crabflower Club thing did you?’ said Semyonov, looking suddenly tired. Must he explain everything to these pitiable fools? ‘The Crabflower Club. Remember? It was the name of the poetry club in “The Story of the Stone”. The classic Chinese novel. I wrote you some verse, Stone. Thought it was appropriate.’
There was a shout to Stone’s left. ‘He can’t be leaving. Semyonov’s the party dude, he’s gotta stay!’
But Semyonov was indeed leaving. The Chinese VIPs made their way out through a rear door with the bodyguards. Semyonov turned his huge head and neck away from Stone, impassive again, like a great white bull, and was ushered away behind the Chinese. The SCC meatheads took him through the crowd at speed. Stone tried to follow, but it was a few seconds before he got free of the crowd. He gave one of the Crabflower staff an authoritative nod as he followed Semyonov’s party through the fire door. It worked. He sped up. Suddenly he was outside in the darkness of the loading bay behind the Zhonghua. There was a smell of fish and the harbour, the air sticky and hot again after the aircon inside. But no sign of Semyonov.
Stone looked around amongst the cars and trucks. Semyonov could be anywhere. He could have been whisked off already. Stone felt stunned. The two-handed writing, those intense red eyes, those mystical comments — Semyonov had completely outmaneuvered him. If he was a killer, he was a cold, heartless bastard.
Stone became aware someone had followed him out. A door closed behind him. Stone’s ears pricked up for danger, but he was still scanning the yard for Semyonov. There were footsteps. The Communist Party men were being helped into a black Mercedes, surrounded by Chinese paramilitaries in olive dress uniforms, shiny black webbing and boots. Soldiers of the Public Security again — the Gong An. All unusually tall and even more unusually, holding European-made HK sub-machineguns.
Stone stood in the shadow — still no sign of Semyonov’s huge, white head. Stone kept an eye on those tall guards. Some kind of elite Chinese unit sent to guard Semyonov. What the hell was that guy up to?
A sleek, white sports car flashed in front. The soft whine of an electric motor, no other sound. Semyonov. It had to be, driving his electric sports car. Driving himself. There were steps behind him again, but Stone kept his eyes on the car high-tailing it out of the car park. The brake lights flashed bright red in the darkness as the car paused before joining the traffic, then disappeared toward the Harbour Tunnel.
Behind Stone, the footsteps sped up. There was a shout from the black limo in front of him. Two of the paramilitaries pointing their weapons his way. The footsteps were right behind him now. He spun, arm raised, ready to lean his weight into an elbow to the temple. But then stopped himself as the assailant grabbed his sleeve and pulled him.
‘For Pete’s sake, Stone! Make it look realistic!’
For Pete’s sake? Virginia Carlisle, GNN. She planted her lips on him, then dug her fingernails into his butt. She’d followed behind, looking for Semyonov like him. Now she’d seen the guns and she was pretending they were drunken lovers, sneaking out on the loading bay.
‘I didn’t know you cared.’
‘I care enough to stop from getting shot, Stone!’ she breathed, and dug her fingernails into him again. ‘C’mon, kiss me! Before I get my ass blown off.’
She was an attractive woman. He couldn’t help noticing.
‘Will this be on GNN “Wake up World”?’ asked Stone, looking sideways at the tall soldiers in green. They were barking orders in Mandarin, but had lowered their weapons. There was really no danger.
Still — no sense in turning down some free entertainment from Ms Carlisle. Or was it acting lessons?
Stone gave in and ran his fingers up from her thighs to her butt to her back, then pulled her backwards into the shadows in a fair approximation of a drunken clinch.
‘For God’s sake! Get your hands on me, Stone! You might get off on this guns and danger thing, but I’d rather live to tell the tale.’
What was her game?
In any case — a good thing she was here. Stone needed to have a talk with her about Junko Terashima.
— oO0Oo-
Virginia Carlisle took Junko’s death exactly as Stone expected. Shock and grief — but controlled grief. There was even a tear which may or may not have been real. It wasn’t that Carlisle was as hardened to the nastiness of the world as he was. Mercifully not. It was just that she was one of those “well-balanced” people who have a mechanism for shutting out the misfortune of others. Bad luck, unhappiness, depression — well-balanced people like Carlisle avoid it, like it’s a contagion. Which is not a bad way to be.
Carlisle reminded him of the stuck-up babes from his university days. Bright, attractive, always knew the right things to do and say. They started their careers while still at high school. They were building a career — a life. People from Stone’s background go to school, university if they’re bright, they get a “job”. Then they work, for a long time.
People like Virginia Carlisle had realized years before Stone that the minute you got a “regular job”, you were hosed. Finished. People like Stone got a “regular job”. People like Carlisle got a “life”. At eighteen, Stone had a vague sense that he wanted a “life”and not a “job”, but unlike Virginia Carlisle, he had no idea what to do about it. He did a year of maths at university, then decided it was boring. He did a year of Chinese because it looked cool. Turned out it wasn’t cool after all, so he dropped out. Then it was the army. All the while Virginia Carlisle and the boys and girls like her shook their beautifully coiffured heads and got on with their “lives”. Just about the time Stone had been sent on his first Afghan tour.
In any case, Virginia had more than a “life”, she had an uber-life. She was a socially ambitious Ivy League woman. She gravitated straight to the in-crowd wherever she was. In fact, she practically defined the in-crowd. Stone had been one of the out-crowd all his life, and often an out-crowd of one. He was always a force of one. It suited him that way.
Stone ought to be against someone like Carlisle on principle. But he wasn’t against her. They were just different. All people have ways of living their lives. Stone might look down on some of the things Virginia had done. He despised her falseness, her play-acting, that she was always the “face that fits”. He hated that she took the credit for everyone else’s work, that she would do that to Junko and she’d do it to him. He should hate her.
But he didn’t hate her. Why was that?
At the backpackers’ hostel, Stone sat up looking at his laptop, and pulled out the two slips of paper Semyonov had given him. Semyonov had stonewalled him better than he could have thought possible. He’d got nothing but clever wordplay from the man. He left with only the two slips of paper Semyonov had written on simultaneously. Semyonov had said it was poetry.
The SearchIgnition search engine confirmed that it was indeed poetry. From a Roman poet called Horace, who lived two thousand years ago.
exegi monumentum aere perennius
odi profanum vulgum
This was getting ridiculous. He’d got nothing from Semyonov, and now he was reduced to looking for significance in Latin poetry. The search engine duly gave translations, and Stone wrote them down.
I have created a monument more lasting than bronze
I hate the ignorant masses
Perhaps the second one was Semyonov’s weary, cynical answer. “I hate the ignorant masses”. Could be. But Stone was clutching at straws.
Just then, an alert popped up on the laptop. An incoming email via the NotFutile.com web site. Stone had a bad feeling. Ekstrom.
Last time, Ekstrom had sent a video of a slaughterhouse. This time he’d gone one better. He’d emailed video footage of the murder of Junko Terashima.
Stone was dealing with an evil psychopath, but he was past the anger stage. He climbed onto to his bunk, numbed by hatred, and forced himself to sleep.