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Xin pushed a few clumps of rice a little further apart on the wooden board until their appearance appealed to him.

He began to eat.

When Jericho looked back, his life in China seemed like a confused succession of dangerous risks and escapes, all encircled by soundproofed walls and building sites, in the shadow of which he had striven to improve his financial state with the industriousness of an animal burrowing a hole. In the end, the hard slog had shown results. His bank manager began to seem more like a friend. Dossiers about shares in deep-sea vessels, water treatment plants, shopping centres and skyscrapers were presented to him. The whole world seemed intent on making him aware of all the things he could spend his money on. Clasped against the bosom of better society, respected and overworked, Jericho ended up paralysed by his own achievements, too exhausted to add the final chapter to the story of his nomadic life by moving to the kind of area it would be worth growing old in. The step was long overdue, but the thought of packing up yet again made him go cold. So he gave priority to lying wearily on the sofa in the evenings as floodlights and construction noise leaked through the curtains, watching feature films and murmuring the mantra I-have-toget-out-of-here to himself, then falling asleep in the process.

It was around this time that Jericho began to seriously doubt the point of his existence.

He hadn’t doubted it when Joanna had lured him to Shanghai, only to leave him three months later. He hadn’t doubted it when he’d realised he didn’t have enough money for the flight back, nor to rebuild the life he’d left behind in London. He hadn’t doubted in his first Shanghai digs on the edge of a highway, where he’d lived on damp floors and struggled to squeeze a few litres of brown water from the shower every morning, the windows of the two-storey house rattling lightly from the never-relenting traffic.

He had just told himself it could only get better.

And it had.

To start with, Jericho had offered his services to foreign enterprises that had come out to Shanghai to do business. Many felt insecure within the fragile framework of Chinese copyright protection legislation. They felt spied on and cheated. With time, though, the self-service mentality of the dragon had given way to great remorse. While, at the beginning of the century, China had still happily plagiarised everything hackers unearthed from the depths of the global ideas pool, now even Chinese business people were increasingly despairing about their state’s inability to protect ideas.
They too began to be on the receiving end of the words ‘It seemed worthy of imitation to us’, which was a polite way of saying ‘Of course we stole it, but we admire you for having created it.’ For years, the Long-Nose accusations that Chinese companies and institutions had stolen their intellectual property had been indignantly rejected or not even acknowledged, but Jericho found that now it was Chinese companies, above all, who needed web detectives. Native entrepreneurs reacted excitedly to the fact that, during his time with Scotland Yard helping to build up the department for Cyber Crime, he had been fighting
against
them. In their opinion, it could only be advantageous to have their patents protected by someone who had previously done such an excellent job of clobbering them when they crossed the line.

Because the problem – an undulating, proliferating, all-enveloping, truly uncontrollable monster of a problem – was that China’s creative elite would go on cannibalising itself so long as a nationally and internationally accepted and implementable system for the protection of intellectual property rights remained elusive. It had always been obvious that capitalism, practically reinvented by China, was
based
upon property rights, and that an economy whose most important asset was knowhow couldn’t exist without the protection of brands, patents and copyright, but it hadn’t really interested anyone – not, that is, until the day when they themselves became victims of the situation. By now, the country suffering the most economic damage at the hands of Chinese espionage was China itself. Everyone was digging around in other people’s front gardens, and with electronic spades wherever possible. The hunting ground was the global net, and Owen Jericho was one of the hunters, commissioned by other hunters as soon as they got the impression that they themselves were the quarry.

Once Jericho became part of that network without which no favours would be done and no trade negotiated in China, his career ascended like a rocket. He moved five times in five years, twice of his own free will, the other times because the houses he was living in at the time were to be pulled down for reasons he could no longer remember. He moved to better areas, wider streets, nicer houses, getting ever closer to realising his dream of moving into one of the rebuilt shikumen houses, with stone gateways and peaceful inner courtyards, located in the pulsating heart of Shanghai. Even though he had to make compromises along the way, he had never doubted it would happen at some point.

One day, his bank manager asked him what he was waiting for. Jericho replied that he wasn’t quite there yet, but would be someday. The bank manager made him aware of his bank balance and said that ‘someday’ was, in fact, now. With the revelation that he’d been working so hard he hadn’t paid attention to the possibilities now open to him, Jericho left the bank and teetered home in a daze.

He hadn’t realised he had come so far.

With the realisation came the doubts. They claimed they’d always been there, but that he had avoided acknowledging them. They whispered: What the devil are you doing here anyway? How did you even get here?

How could this happen to you?

They told him that it had all been for nothing, and that the worst position anyone could ever find themselves in was that of having achieved their goals. Hope blossoms beneath the shelter of provisional arrangements, often for a whole lifetime. Now, suddenly, it had become official. He was to become a Shanghaian, but had he ever wanted that? To settle in a city he would never have moved to without Joanna?

As long as you were on the journey, said the doubts, you didn’t have to think about the destination. Welcome to commitment.

In the end – he lived in a fairly prestigious high-rise in the hinterland of Pudong, the financial district, the only drawback of which was the fact that more skyscrapers were being constructed around it, that and the noise and a fine brown dust which settled in the windowsills and airways – it took a further eviction by the city authorities to shake him from his lethargy. Two smiling men paid him a visit, let him serve them tea and then explained that the house he was living in had to give way to an utterly amazing new-build. If he so wished, they would gladly reserve an apartment in it for him. But a further move for the duration of the coming year would, much to their regret, be unavoidable. To which end, the authorities considered themselves overjoyed to be able to offer him an apartment near Luchao Harbour City, a mere sixty kilometres outside Shanghai – which, for a metropolis lovingly embracing other towns in the course of its expansion, wasn’t
really
outside at all. Oh, yes, and they wanted to start work in four weeks, so if he could – you know. It wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened, and they said they were very sorry, but they weren’t really.

Jericho had stared at the delegates as the wonderful certainty of having just awoken from a coma streamed through him. Suddenly, he could smell the world again, taste it, feel it. He shook hands with the baffled men gratefully, assuring them they had done him a great service. And that they could send whomever they wanted to Luchao Harbour City. Then he had phoned Tu Tian and, in keeping with matters of decorum, had asked whether he might know someone who knew someone who knew whether there was a renovated or newly built shikumen house in a lively corner of Shanghai, vacant and which could be moved into at short notice. Mr Tu, who prided himself on being Jericho’s most satisfied client as well as his good friend, was the first port of call for questions such as these. He managed a mid-size technology company, was on good terms with the city’s powers that be, and happily declared that he would be willing to ‘keep an ear to the ground’.

Fourteen days later, Jericho signed the rental contract for a floor in one of the most beautiful shikumen houses, situated in Xintiandi, one of the most popular areas of Shanghai, and which could be moved into right away. It was a new-build of course. There weren’t any genuine old shikumen houses left, and there hadn’t been for a long time. The last ones had been torn down shortly after the world exhibition of 2010, and yet Xintiandi could still be classified as a stronghold of shikumen architecture just as in similar fashion the old town of Shanghai was anything but old.

Jericho didn’t ask who had had to move out to make it vacant. He hoped the apartment really had been empty, put his signature on the document and didn’t give any more thought to what favour Tu Tian might ask for in return. He knew he owed Tu. So he prepared for his move and waited humbly for what was to come.

* * *

And it came sooner than expected. In the form of Chen Hongbing and an unpleasant commission which there was no way of getting out of without insulting Tu.

Shortly after Chen left, Jericho set up his computer terminal. He washed his face, combed his dishevelled hair into some semblance of order and pulled on a fresh T-shirt. Making himself comfortable in front of the screen, he let the system dial the number. Two T’s appeared on the screen, each one melting into the other, the symbol of Tu Technologies. The next moment, an attractive woman in her mid-forties was smiling at him. She was seated in a tastefully decorated room with lounge furniture and floor-to-ceiling windows which offered a glimpse of Pudong’s skyline. She was drinking something from a tiny porcelain cup which Jericho knew to be strawberry tea. Naomi Liu would kill for strawberry tea.

‘Good afternoon, Naomi.’

‘Good afternoon, Owen. How’s the move going?’

‘Fantastically, thank you.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it. Mr Tu told me you’re having one of our big new terminals delivered.’

‘Yes, this evening, I hope.’

‘How exciting.’ She put the cup down on a transparent surface which seemed to sway in thin air, and looked at him from beneath her lowered lashes. ‘Then I’ll soon be able to see you from head to toe.’

‘That’s nothing compared to the excitement of seeing
you
.’ Jericho leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘Anyone would swear that you’re sitting right here in front of me.’

‘And that’s enough for you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I’m worried it might be. It will be enough, and you’ll see no reason any more
to invite me around personally. I think I’ll have to convince my boss not to deliver the thing to you after all.’

‘No holographic program could compare to you, Naomi.’

‘Tell
him
that.’ She nodded her head in the direction of Tu’s office. ‘Otherwise he might come up with the idea of replacing me with one.’

‘I would break off all business connections in an instant if he did that. Is he—?’

‘Yes, he’s here. Take care. I’ll put you through.’

Jericho enjoyed their little flirting ritual. Naomi Liu was the conduit for all forms of contact with Tu Tian. Having her on his side could be useful. And Jericho wouldn’t have hesitated for a second in inviting her to his apartment, but she would never have taken him up on the offer. She was happily married and the mother of two children.

The shimmering double T rotated again briefly, then Tu’s huge head appeared on the screen. The little hair he had left was concentrated just above his ears, where it was grey and bristly. Narrow glasses were balanced on his nose. The left arm looked as if it was held together by transparent sticky-tape. Tu had pushed his sleeves up and was shovelling sticky-looking noodles into his mouth, fishing them out of a paper box with clattering chopsticks. The large desk behind him was full of screens and holo-projectors. In between were piles of hard disks, remote controls, brochures, cardboard boxes and the remains of various packaging.

‘No, you’re not interrupting,’ mumbled Tu with his mouth full, as if Jericho had expressed any concern on the matter.

‘I can see that. Have you ever been to your canteen, by the way? They make fresh food there.’

‘So?’

‘Proper food.’

‘This is proper food. I poured boiling water on it and it turned into food.’

‘Do you even know what it’s supposed to be? Does it say anything on the packaging?’

‘It says something or other.’ Tu carried on chewing steadily. His rubbery lips moved around like copulating rubber tubes. ‘People with your anarchic sense of time management wouldn’t understand perhaps, but there are reasons for eating in the office.’

Jericho gave up. As long as he’d known Tu, he’d hardly ever seen him devour a healthy, decent meal. It seemed as though the manager had set himself the task of ruining the Chinese cuisine’s reputation as the best, most varied and freshest in the world. He might be a genial inventor and a gifted golf-player – but when it came to culinary matters, he made Kublai Khan look like the father of all gourmets.

‘So what were you celebrating?’ he asked, with a glance at the chaos in Tu’s office.

‘We were testing something out.’ Tu reached for a bottle of water, washed down the noodles in his mouth and burped audibly. ‘Holo-Cops. A commission from the traffic-control authorities. They function excellently in the dark, but sunlight is still giving them problems. It corrodes them.’ He chortled with laughter. ‘Like vampires.’

‘What does the city want with holographic policemen?’

Tu looked at him in amazement.

‘To regulate the traffic, what else? Another one of the real ones was run over last week, didn’t you read about it? He was standing in the middle of the Siping Lu crossing in Dalian Xilu when one of the furniture transporters raced right into him and distributed him evenly all over the tarmac. It was a huge mess, screaming children, angry letters! No one regulates the traffic voluntarily any more.’