The door to the apartment was open, and Stone pushed his way in. Light flooded the room, showing off a selection of brutal modern art prints on the wall. There was the smell of strong coffee. A Chinese woman was sprawled across the solitary armchair with one leg hanging over the arm. Skinny black jeans and a black singlet, pulled tight over her breasts. No Asian subservience from this woman, that was for sure.
She wore a laconic smile, but said nothing, looking at Stone while chewing on crackers from a box, one after the other. Her eyes ran over his tall body like a thirsty woman looking at a long, cold drink. A smile played around her lips and she made sure her eyes stayed on Stone until he could be in absolutely no doubt that he’d been checked out.
‘A simple handshake would have sufficed,’ Stone said without looking, and walked over to pour a coffee for himself. ‘Do I pass inspection?’
He glanced at her again. Yep. That arrogant smile was unmistakable.
It’s not so difficult to find people if they want to be found. The signal came from Ying Ning not long after Stone’s posting on the NotFutile.com blog; Stone noticed a new blog entry on the web site.
http://yingning.blogs.notfutile.com
Capitalist plutocrat Steven Semyonov got what he was asking for, and much quicker than he thought. He was doing deals with the rightist clique that has taken over in Beijing, but they saw him coming. Took his money like the bourgeois bankers they are, then killed him as soon as he crossed the border
China21 continues to fight the capitalist billionaire clique which has seized control of China. The struggle goes on until the Revolution is restored.
No one else would take notice of this post. China21’s bland language of “struggle”, “bourgeois” and “revolution” meant nothing. And how retarded would any Chinese have to be in the 21st Century to sign off with “Long Live the Cultural Revolution”?
No. It wasn’t supposed to mean anything. Ying Ning had posted on Stone's site to make contact. After that it was simple to get in touch through the anonymized email server.
Ying Ning. The woman dressed as a tart when Junko was murdered in the Snake Market. That arrogant laconic smile was her trade mark. But she looked better without the lipstick and red wig for sure. So this was Ying Ning, with the spiky hair and the slim, angular body. The source of Junko’s information on ShinComm Corporation and New Machine Technologies.
Stone stood while he poured himself a coffee. Did she think he was going to blush or something? Her eyes stayed on him, drinking him in, and who knows what she was thinking.
‘Did you learn about Semyonov by sipping wine with his capitalist cronies?’ she asked. ‘Did he explain about his weapons factories? No? Or did you learn more from your visit with Professor Zhang?’
‘I found out more than you think,’ he said. ‘But Junko’s file tells me you’re the expert. So you can tell me, since you bought me here.’
‘OK. I tell you one thing. They will execute you, Stone,’ she said, coolly. ‘Zhang gave you one day to leave Hong Kong, but you are still here. If Gong An finds you in China, you will be a spy and you will be shot. Again. But this time it will be the last.’
She’d spotted the bullet wound scar just above his elbow, then. ‘What about you?’ said Stone. ‘They shoot subversives like you, don’t they? Or is it a prison camp in Qinghai?’
‘Could be.’ She shrugged. ‘But I know what I’m doing. I have the contacts, and I am Chinese. For yellow-haired yang guizi like you,’ she used a racist term for a foreigner, ‘A man of a metre eighty-eight — not so easy to hide in China.’
‘Cool,’ said Stone. His calm, grey eyes searched into her. ‘Sounds like you’re the person I need to get me into China. Help me blend in.’
Ying Ning was still lounging back, one leg over the arm of the chair. She chose that point to take out a carton of cigarettes and tap it on the arm of the chair, then carefully take a cigarette and begin to smoke. It was like Ying Ning was marking her territory. ‘I’m the right girl for a lot of things,’ she replied. Stone could see she was thinking. Making a decision in her mind. ‘You ready for a holiday in Jiangsu province, Mr Shi-tou?’
Shi-tou? What did that mean? Stone already knew his Chinese wasn’t up to much. Shi-tou? It meant a stone, or a piece of stone. Something like that.
She helped him out, smiling with disdain. ‘It means Rock-head,’ she said, and breathed out a cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘I heard you learned some Chinese, Rockhead. But you didn’t study hard, I guess. Shi-tou sounds funny in English also, no?’
Stone laughed back into her black eyes. He liked her already. He ran his gaze for a second over her hips. The ones he remembered from the leather miniskirt in the Snake Market. ‘Come on then, Cat-Woman,’ he said. ‘I may just let you come along. We’re going to China to meet a man called Robert Oyang. But first you need to tell me all you know about Semyonov and ShinComm Corporation.’
He turned to get more coffee. Ying Ning lounged in the chair and checked him out from behind, then stubbed out her cigarette in deliberate fashion and walked up behind him. Pulled at his shirt to turn him around to face her.
‘You haven’t explained why you came here, Rockhead,’ she sa id. ‘You have not been honest before we go any further.’
‘I told you. I want to find out about what Semyonov was doing at ShinComm.’
‘You lie,’ she said. ‘You are looking for the Machine. Everybody is looking for the Machine.’
She was right of course.