Dragon's Eye (53 page)

Surveillance … an art in which mistakes cannot be erased. Piao, pulling every trick from a deep bag of experience. Changing his jacket frequently, extremes of colour. Glasses, sunglasses … worn, not worn. Sometimes a tie, a collar. Sometimes a tee shirt, a vest. Hanging different keepsakes in the windscreen of the hire car and changing them frequently. Lucky charms. A Dragon. A miniature football shirt. On the top of the windscreen itself, see-through plastic stickers with different boy’s and girl’s names on it.

Peng & Ye. Yan & Miao. Zhou & Lili.

Changing them frequently also. Anything to deceive the quick glance of the target being followed. Hints that his eyes would catch that would pacify any suspicions. Operating at an almost subliminal level. Subtle messages, whispering to his sub-conscious …

See, you are not being followed. His jacket is a different colour. The windscreen of the car has different names upon it … Hong & Wei. A dragon hanging from the rear-view mirror, not a plastic Coca-Cola bottle. See, he wears a tie, not a tee shirt. And sunglasses. Relax … see for yourself, you are not being followed.

*

It was an hour and a half before the Englishman emerged to an afternoon dying on its feet. Hot rivers of traffic from Qianmenxijie, Tiananmen Square, Dongdandajie … south, towards the Park of the Temple of Heaven. An hour and a half, waiting … sweat, in slow trains down the back of his shirt. Watching the bank’s revolving doors revolve. Parents, children in tow, leaving the Palace of Museums. Three hundred and ten thousand objects dedicated to the political indoctrination of the people.

An hour and a half, Piao thinking only about a gap in time and place in which he could kill a man.

Keeping a respectable distance. Parking beyond the line of trees, the perimeter fence. Through binoculars, smudges focusing into hard edges … watching as Haven returned to the Diaoyutai State Guest House. Walking up the steps of one of the many villas dotted around the leafy grounds of what was the site of the Imperial Residence some eight hundred years previous, the villas … reserved only for the most noteworthy of foreign guests. Immaculate. The Englishman looking as if the day had not held in its teeth a humidity that almost bled sweat. A day in a life, marking its passage by the grubby rings of grey soot that it bequeathed to the inside of shirt cuffs and to shirt collars.

A glint from a brass and glass door, and Haven was gone.

Piao parked, walked. The Qianmen Hotel two blocks away.

Three hours sleep. A shower, as cold as misery. Shaving, cutting himself. Blood in a flow, and unable to staunch it.
Fuck, fuck … why won’t it stop!
In the mirror, half misted, a face staring back. Hardly recognisable. Tracing the scar around his ear. Across his stomach. Its ache in red seams down his back. Feeling and looking like the jigsaw of an old man. Plunging his face into the washbasin. Ice and hotel soap. The water flowing over its rim. Again, again … vigorously washing his face, his hands. Wanting, needing to wash so much away. Until the pain, the decisions, the shadows of acts not yet carried out … were gone. The hotel soap in a crudely printed wrapper. The hotel soap making him smell of pink roses. All day, of pink roses.

*

Picking up Haven’s car on Salihelu. Prompt, 10:30am, as usual. Black, German … Mercedes. The morning light, like sliced lemons across its paintwork. Hot, humid, the air already with a sting in its tail. Thoughts of a shower, ice cold. A kill, flame hot … orbiting the Senior Investigator’s attention. Through the glare, following the Englishman to fixed points in a day, measured by pools of boredom …

The black Mercedes pulling north towards Nanhai, negotiating the junction at Qianmenxijie. Traffic in a smoked shuffle as the sun fell through the concrete tangents and aerial forests of the city. The Senior Investigator on autopilot. Brief glimpses of Haven in his interior of leather and glass. Piao trying to see him as stone … just a target to knock down. But failing miserably. Only imagining the swift act. The blur of action. Form, colours, in a haemorrhaging wash.

A knife … 
yes, a knife would be best.
A series of ‘pops’ as it pierced jacket, shirt, skin. Resistance, as it pushed through flesh. Grating bone. Seconds, it would be, the knife up to its hilt, his fist against the silk of the Englishman’s shirt … before the bleed. Seconds, to stare into a man’s eyes whom you are killing. Seconds, to contemplate what noise it would be that would prise his lips apart, as the wave of blood rolled up his shirt. Cream to crimson.

Knowing how it would be. Intimately. With certainty.

It was dark when the Mercedes pierced the sanctuary of the Diaoyutai State Guest House … and was lost to sight. Dark, as the Senior Investigator drove across a city splintered in harsh neon light.

*

As straight as an arrow, the Fuxing Road … leading onto Xichang’anjie, Dongchang’anjie, Jianguomenwai. Out of the city, into the city, out of the city. Spearing Beijing, pinning it in place. A tarmacadam stick through the belly of a wriggling fish. Lanes of traffic, racing hot … angry.

Piao put his foot down. The Mercedes four cars ahead, on Qiamendajie, feeding onto the carriageways, moving east. A seamless dip into madness. Chromed psychosis. Jamming into the next lane, horns all around him. Swarming motorcycles in wild flight. No rules in this driving, just muscle. In the Mercedes, its air-conditioned wave, Haven, running a hand through his hair. He was going to be late. Ten, fifteen minutes, but late all the same.

Fuck this traffic. Fuck Beijing. Fuck China.

Across the carriageways, low enough to see the rivets, a jet, sprinting up from Capital Airport. Gaining height now as it stretched south-west towards Wuhan. The great cotton growing plains of Hebei would be under its wings … the invasion route of the Northern Barbarians as they made their way to the Yellow River Basin, tempted by the shining lights of civilisation. The ancient capitals of the Celestial Empire, Luoyang and Kaifeng … the silver jet’s footsteps. The Yellow Mountains, Heavenly City Peak, Immortal Peak, Flying Dragon Peak … umbilical cords of recognition. Piao lit a China Brand, drawing on its bitterness. Pulling his gaze from the sky and back to the tarmac. Better to concentrate on the road. Silver jets fleeing to silver cities, were for silver people. For him, the piss puddled longs. The tattoos of cabbage leaves squashed underfoot. The streets choking in their own smoke.

So many places never to see, an itch that you can never hope to reach.

Ahead, a Toyota pick-up, mud and chrome dented fenders … pulled violently across two lanes, separating Piao from the Mercedes. Horns, brakelights, a flock of motorcycles startled into a weaving dance. In slow motion, one going down. Angle between bike and road surface pressing more acute. A hand taken off of the throttle and held up, warding off fast metal. Wheels coming down fast. The Senior Investigator floored the brake. Arms locking, bracing as they bit hard.

“Shit. Shit.”

Thumping the wheel with both palms. Fumes, heat haze … rubber tainted. And through it, watching the Mercedes drift away. Haven lost. Tail-lights in a fade from scarlet to palest pink. Fading, fading, gone.

Forty minutes for a paramedic crew to fight through traffic, knotted and growling. For a motorcycle and a pick-up truck, to be removed from the lanes. For the road to be swept of glass, mud, twists of metal trim, and sawdust put down. Piao having to drive halfway to Tongxian, shadowing the Great Canal, before being able to head back west towards the city centre. Midday now, and the shadows shortening. The highway cutting between Baliqiao and the distant city … a sweep of greyed spikes, points blunted by a mustard haze of pollution. At the debris littered junction with the Wenyuhe and the Chaobaihe, the traffic slowed, staggered, stopped. No apparent reason, just the secret life of heavy traffic. The Senior Investigator lit another cigarette. Winding down the side window. Smoke escaping across the outside of the windscreen. Looking around, the heat haze rippling metal and flexing concrete. Through car windows, faces, puffed and pink. Releasing the handbrake as the string bead traffic loosened and slowly broke up. Clear road glimpsed between bumper to bumper. As he eased the gas, black seeping into the corner of Piao’s vision. A car, squat and glossy … cruising. Opening out into a sprint of jet laced in tart lemon splinters of reflection. A Mercedes, in the next lane, easing next to him. Its driver in a nonchalant sideways glance at Piao. Palm on chin, the Senior Investigator in a vacant sideways glance back at the other driver, before the realisation.

Haven. Fuck it … Haven.

A high tension wire hooked up, eye to eye. The Englishman shorting it. Foot clamped down on the accelerator.

Piao. Fuck it … Piao.

A dash of black sprinting into silver, as the Mercedes gunned. A second, two, three … before the Senior Investigator reacted. A buzzing, deep, hot, invading his inner ear, as he careered his car across the lane. Fifty metres ahead, the Mercedes, lost in exhaust and skidded rubber. A smell, heady, sickening … like burnt caramel. Like a belly full of too much toffee apple. Everything accelerating, as if he was stationary, but the world itself was racing. Headlong. Unbalanced. Everything now with a razor edge. Everything now liquid, and with the hue of mercury. The game over. Ripping the adhesive names, Zhou & Lili, from inside the windscreen. Tearing the miniature club football shirt from the rear-view mirror. The game over. Unshocked, as he realised, without even a hint of hesitation … that at last he could kill.

Ahead, the traffic building. A wall of heat rippling metal. The Mercedes slowing fast. Brake lights bleeding ruby, as it skewed across the lane choking in its own smoke. A door flung open. A figure in white momentarily glancing back. Running. Running, against the stream of heavy traffic moving with resolve in the opposite direction. White against red. White against blue. Black … yellow. A curtain shimmer of heat leaving the tarmac. Pluming from bonnets, roofs. Shrinking him. Swallowing him. Piao also running. Under the soles of his shoes, the burn from the road. Instantly, sweat in a sheen across his face, his arms. Sprinting, drawing every ounce of energy to his legs; already starting to labour. Shins, ankles, knees, turning to rusty iron. Calves, thighs … concrete. A running man chasing a running man down a broken corridor of slow-moving glass, plastic, chrome. The gap between them measured in dirty number plates and worn treaded tyres. Each windscreen burning from a sun held at midday … cadmium. Everything feeling as if it were in the process of being gilded.

The highway rising across a grey junction of traffic, static in exhaust fumes. Ahead, thirty metres, forty … the Englishman. Legs, torso, head, distorted by the shimmer of the road surface as he ran from the bridge’s apex and down its gentle incline. A monochrome matchstick man, shifting against a wall of colour. Piao’s lungs bursting. Fire and lead. The slope tugging at his stride, pulling him down like a magnet. Sweat in streams … down his face, neck, chest. Aware that his thoughts were drifting, like feathers on a breeze. A glimpse across the parapet, below, a string of schoolchildren, five, six year olds, hand in hand and being led across the junction of snarls and belching smoke. Anywhere but here … at that instant wanting to be a child. On a swing, a slide, in a play pit. Crossing a junction, hand in hand in hand, with other children. Anywhere but here. And other thoughts, random and fired by delirium. Only one image holding. The Englishman, at his feet, dead. Centre of forehead, an unbleeding hole from a single round.

So neat. So very neat.

The distance between them, not closing. As if an invisible hand were holding them apart. As if that hand didn’t want blood on it. A moan of horns as Haven vaulted the barrier, parting the on-coming traffic. Waves of motorcycles curving, folding around his sprint. A mechanical waterfall engulfing him. Ahead, the slip road where the Tonghui River turned snakelike, meeting up with itself. The Senior Investigator following with gasped breaths. Oil and dust. Catching his foot on the top of the barrier, falling … gravel, stinging into the heels of his palms. Bleeding in deltas down his wrists and onto his shirt cuffs.

“Fuck. Fuck.”

Mentally pulling himself up, but wanting to stay on the road, clasped to the narrow central reservation. Starting to walk. Starting to run. In his mouth, the taste of blood. Face to the sky, pulling on breaths as if they were chains tethered to anchors. The sky … just knife-cuts of cloud in a cerulean wash, but praying that it would rain. Rain. Cold and relentless, like that night on the stained iron deck of the barge. Ahead, Haven. A stutter of glimpses through traffic. Shreds of white, riding in, riding out of focus through a bow wave of exhaust fumes. Moving down the slip road and onto the rough ground … the shadowed ground, beneath the spans of the flyover. Sunlight, shadow, back into sunlight. Haven, a chameleon of caramels and creams. Beyond the flyovers and the constant sigh of eight lanes, a series of dirt tracks. Government run yards hemmed by a holed wire fence. A topography of trash tips and snubnosed mountains. The Englishman already amongst them, in running relief against their detritus. Snared in the reflections of oil slicked and rainbowed puddles. Piao, through the gate. Corrugated iron shacks. Black dogs pissing gold. Bent men … dull-eyed. And the heavens achingly blue. Ridiculously blue. Broken only by the lonely scratch of a single telegraph wire, threaded between poles. Curve to curve. Curve to curve. Curve to curve.

The track finishing in a cul-de-sac of dust, patches of black oil, snatches of exhausted grass. The Englishman already climbing, falling, negotiating a series of rubbish dunes. Looking around. A snatch of a glance … worried. Face catching the light. A sheen of sweat, as if he were fashioned from stainless steel. Piao stopping on the rough path, almost collapsing. Doubled up. Lungs … hotplates. Breath across his lips in a hot fan. Looking up, Haven, like an albino spider. Feeling for his pistol, its butt, but drawing his hand away from it. So easy to kill, now. So easy … but wanting to see his eyes. Needing to see his eyes as the round discharged. Punching, buzzing through material, skin, flesh, bone. So easy; too easy.