Walking away out of the airport terminal, it felt like Hong Kong again — sticky, hazy heat but none of the greenery. In the distance stood the skyscrapers of Shanghai. Seventy or eighty stories in novel but uninspiring shapes. The hot breeze tugged at Stone’s shirt and his unruly hair.
Stone instinctively looked around to see if he was being followed. His calm eyes flicked and scanned, as they had a hundred times before. But just like Hong Kong, with crowds and teeming traffic on all sides, it was impossible. He joined the line for a cab. If someone followed him in a car it would be easier to spot.
‘Zhongxin,’ he said to the driver. The centre. Deliberately vague. It would take a while in this traffic and the driver was happy enough. Stone looked from the window at the shops and the signage — some neon and glitzy, some shabby and hand-painted. The Chinese characters were communist simplified versions, easier to understand than in Hong Kong. 24 Hour Printing/Copying. Ten Thousand Miles of Cloud — Hunan Restaurant. Learn English — Guaranteed Good Job. Learn Computers — Guaranteed Good Job. 1 Minute Pregnancy test, 1 Hour Abortion, Ultrasound for Sex of Baby.
Stone used the time to look again through Junko Terashima’s notes about Oyang.
It seemed Robert Oyang had contacted Terashima, the day after her ill-starred attempt to confront Semyonov at the press conference back in San Jose. She’d obviously made an impression, and Oyang had sent her the photo of “the Machine”, the photo Ying Ning had showed him that looked like a patch of bare desert. The photo that had made Junko come over to Hong Kong.
It was after that “ShinComm people” lured Junko to her death in the Snake Market. Oyang could have been complicit in that. On the other hand, the bad guys who’d done away with Semyonov could have done it to keep Terashima from talking to Oyang. Stone needed to get a handle on the kind of guy Oyang was. Firstly Oyang hadn’t done anything shifty with Stone. He wanted to meet at his office. ShinComm Tower, fifty-sixth floor. The meeting itself looked OK. Stone was feeling good about it. The meeting with Robert Oyang was his kind of thing. He loved confronting corporate suits, and this time there was a danger element thrown in.
Stone looked around out of the car windows. They were still there. Two people on scooters behind the car, both wearing full-face helmets. No one wears those helmets in sweltering Shanghai. No one at all. They could be tailing him.
It could be professor Zhang’s Gong An which was tracking him — or it could be ShinComm themselves. It was an enormous corporation with huge reach, especially in Shanghai. Either way, ShinComm would know about Stone — his web site, his campaigns, his pursuit of Semyonov, the business in Afghanistan. And so would Oyang.
The taxi stopped again. Another set of lights in the smoggy humidity. There were at least two, possibly three men back there following him. Stone looked to the side, to another shop window full of job ads. Wanted female under 21 — must know computers. Wanted male over 1.70 m — must be able to accept hardship, work long hours. Stone wound up the windows and asked the driver to start the aircon. The guy did nothing but Stone kept the windows shut in any case. The backseat was covered in thick, protective plastic, burning hot. Stone positioned himself to see through the rear-view mirror.
Stone looked again at the facts about Oyang. Thirty-four. Highly intelligent. Educated at the elite Beijing Foreign Language Institute. He worked as a diplomat first in Nigeria, then he went to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco.
Chinese diplomats are high achievers. Their education system is one round after another of competitive exams to reach the next level — from middle school onwards. Oyang must have a first-class brain to go as far as he had done.
According to Ying Ning, Oyang’s career stalled in the US, because he was too westernised, not a real communist. From Junko’s file, however, Stone could see no evidence of career problems. Maybe Ying Ning just didn’t like him.
Certainly Oyang was westernised, though. By the look of it, during his time in San Francisco, he craved recognition as some kind of Bay Area intellectual. Oyang spoke French and Italian, fluently it was said. He affected to like expensive wine, and also art. He was popular in San Francisco for his liberal views on democracy and politics. Not your average Chinese guy.
Stone’s mind wandered to the image of Zhang — also a Chinese official, but the very antithesis of this Oyang.
Stone read on in Junko’s notes. Oyang may speak Italian and buy expensive wine, but it could be just a front, a means to an end. He was a charmer, and he was doing all those things as part of his job.
Oyang had been wasted in Nigeria, but he was the perfect man for the Chinese to send to Silicon Valley and charm Californian technologists into joining China’s research projects. According to Junko’s notes, he soon became known to the leading lights in Silicon Valley. He must have thought he’d hit the motherlode when he got to meet Semyonov.
It was fun to look at Junko’s neatly written notes, and the comments Ying Ning had scrawled over them in a purple pen. Junko obviously thought Oyang was “a good man”. It was like he’d managed to charm Junko too. She noted that Oyang “spoke out in favour of workers’ rights in ShinComm”.
Ying Ning scribbled over this in English, “Oyang = director ShinComm. Oyang talk worker rights = hypocrite bullshit.”
Ying Ning took everyone for a hypocrite. But then, Oyang seemed like a master at telling people what they wanted to hear. Talks human rights in California. In Beijing — nada. Meanwhile he’s shipping his family off to Switzerland. The phrase “hypocrite bullshit” sounded right on the money in this instance.
They cab sped up, down the tunnel under the river. This was a danger area, the most likely site of “Tragic Accident Kills Tourist”. Stone craned his neck around. The two scooters were definitely there, one carrying a passenger. The danger would come if a scooter passed them. Someone could blind the driver with a laser. Like all Chinese cabs, this one had no seat belts, and the driver was doing sixty or seventy now they were out of the traffic.
They emerged from the tunnel into the open spaces and seventy storey buildings of the Pudong district. A stark contrast to the organic clog across the river. Nearly there.
Anyhow, what did Oyang want with Stone? Oyang had been Semyonov’s man, and now Semyonov was dead. Oyang might simply want to find out what Stone knew, and leave it at that. Or he might want to throw out information about Semyonov’s death, using Stone and his anonymous site. This was the kind of thing Stone loved. And since Oyang was known to be highly charming and intelligent, Stone would need to be on his mettle.
The taxi slowed up at the side of the road. The driver said nothing, but looked sourly out of the window at the crowds of the unemployed hanging around. Unmistakably country folk, from their walnut brown faces and their clothes. Men in ancient suits, women in coolie hats and paddy field rubber boots. Behind them was a shiny sign with the ShinComm logo, and the sixty stories of the ShinComm Tower. They’d arrived.
‘Farmers, look for work,’ said the driver.
Stone looked again. Farmers? They were desperate peasants, migrants hustling for work in the towering offices. The well-dressed office workers paid them no attention whatsoever. Like they didn’t exist.
‘Watch out for farmers,’ repeated the driver, eyeing the crowd with contempt from the side window. ‘No stop here.’
There must be five hundred peasants out there. Some kind of gangmaster had appeared by the tower. The crowd were shouting, shoving, begging for work. Stone made the driver stop and paid him. He wasn’t going to let the man’s distaste for this mob delay him. He got out, then began to push round the back of the car. Then he began to move with difficulty through the crowd toward the front door of the tower. It was slow going. The farther he got the more peasants there were.
Stone became aware of someone moving in the crowd behind him. Not one of the “farmers” — he was wearing a black T-shirt. Stone skirted the toward the side of the mob, his senses on full alert. Definitely someone moving fast behind him, too — perhaps two of them. He should confront them, they were close, he wanted to…
He span, catching one guy an elbow in the temple. The bone-on-bone impact shakes the brain in the skull and stuns. The chaos was such that no one even looked round in the crowd. Someone grabbed at his bag behind him. Stone swivelled back. A woman was screaming, her hair flailing above the crowd. What the hell? She screamed again, hysterically, as Stone reached her.
Too late he realised. He half-turned. There was a gun, its muzzle suddenly nestling in his spine. The woman looked straight at him, suddenly calm. A set-up. The taxi had driven away. Stone was shoved along at gunpoint through the crowd. It had all taken only a few seconds. A black van appeared in the heart of the mob. Stone was forced in.
The peasant mob banged on the side panels of the van as it moved off.