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‘So?’

‘I don’t know,’ Grand Cherokee whimpered, while part of him detachedly observed that pain was orange. ‘Really, I don’t.’

‘What
do
you know, if anything?’

Grand Cherokee lifted his eyes, trembling. There was no mistaking what he could read in Xin’s eyes about what would happen to him if he lied one more time.

‘Nothing,’ he whispered.

Xin laughed contemptuously, shook his head and let go of him.

‘Do you want the money back?’ Grand Cherokee mumbled, and bent double with the memory of the pain that had shaken his body.

Xin pursed his lips. He looked out at the city shimmering below. ‘I keep remembering something you said,’ he remarked.

Grand Cherokee gaped at him and waited. The part of him that had floated off detached, pointed out that in fifteen minutes the first visitors would be let in, that it would probably be full because the weather was so exceptionally fine.

‘You said that Yoyo is pretty much in demand. I believe those were the words you used, am I right?’

Still fifteen minutes.

‘You can make up for lost ground, Wang. Tell the truth this time. Who else was asking about her?’

‘A detective,’ muttered Grand Cherokee.

‘Very interesting. When was this?’

‘Last night. I showed him Yoyo’s room. He asked the same questions as you.’

‘And you gave the same answers. That you’d find something out, but that it would cost a little.’

Grand Cherokee nodded, downcast. If Xin went to Owen Jericho with this information, then he could kiss goodbye to that money. Hurrying to carry out the next order before it was given, he took out Jericho’s card and handed it to Xin, who took it with both hands, looked at it curiously and put it away.

‘Anything else?’

Of course. He could have told Xin about the motorbike gang. The one trail that might actually lead to Yoyo. But he wouldn’t do this fucker any such favour.

‘Fuck you,’ he said instead.

‘Meaning no.’

Xin looked thoughtful. He stepped out of the open door to the control room, to the area between the turnstile and the platform. He paid no further attention to Grand Cherokee, as though he no longer existed. Which would probably be the best thing right now. Just stop existing until the bastard had left this floor. Not give a peep, become about as big as a mouse, less than a fingerprint on a computer display. All this was as clear as anything ever had been, to the detached part of Grand Cherokee Wang, and he spoke a well-meaning word of warning which the other Wang, the Wang blinded by hatred, ignored. Instead he shuffled after Xin and thought about how he could recover his dignity, the dignity of the man who guarded the dragon, which right now was in a fairly shabby state.
You vicious arsehole?
Xin probably knew that he was vicious, and arsehole was too small a word. Grand Cherokee reckoned that insults probably slid straight off Xin anyway.

How could he get at the fucker?

And while the detached part of Grand Cherokee was looking for a mousehole to creep into, he heard Grand Cherokee the big-mouth say:

‘Just don’t think you’re free and clear, you moron!’

Xin, who was just going through the turnstile, stopped.

‘First thing I’ll do is call Jericho,’ yelled Grand Cherokee. ‘Then the cops, right after that. Who’s going to be more interested, huh? You make sure you get away from here, out of Shanghai if you can, out of China. Off to the Moon, perhaps they’ve got something for you up there, ’cos down here I’m going to put the boot into you, you can count on that!’

Xin turned around slowly.

‘You silly fool,’ he said. It sounded almost sympathetic.

‘I’ll—’ Grand Cherokee gulped, and then it dawned on him that he had probably
just made the biggest mistake of his life. Xin walked nonchalantly towards him. He didn’t look like someone who planned to do much more talking.

Grand Cherokee scuttled backwards.

‘This area is under video surveillance,’ he said, trying to put a warning note in his voice; it slipped into panic halfway through.

‘You’re right,’ said Xin, nodding. ‘I should hurry.’

Grand Cherokee’s stomach cramped. He jumped backwards and tried to get a grip on the situation. His foe was standing between him and the passage through to the glass corridor. There was no way past him, and right behind Grand Cherokee was the edge of the platform with the roller-coaster train resting on its rails on the other side. The area where the passengers got on and off was closed off with a transparent wall that curved round underneath, and to the right and left the tracks curved off into empty space.

The look in Xin’s eyes left no room for misunderstanding.

With one leap, Grand Cherokee was in the middle car. He glanced towards the head of the dragon. Each car was nothing more than a platform with seats mounted on it, the back of each seat looking like a huge scale or a wing, which made the vehicle vaguely resemble a silver reptile. The only extra detail was up at the front: a projection, something like a long, narrow skull. There was a separate steering system up there which could be used to move the whole train a short distance, in emergencies. Not through the loops, but along the straight sections of track.

Where the track passed around the building’s side pillars, just before it began to climb, there was a short bridge from the track into the building, one on each side. Inside the pillars was plant and electronics, and storage rooms. The steel bridges led right into the glass façades of the pillars, and if necessary they could be used to evacuate the train if for some reason it couldn’t get to the boarding platform. The bridges led to a separate staircase and lift, not reachable from the glass corridor.

Grand Cherokee ran through all of this in his head as he crouched there, which was his second mistake; he was losing time, instead of acting right away. Xin pounced and landed between him and the dragon’s head. There were only two rows of seats between them, and Grand Cherokee realised that he had thrown away his chance of reaching the steering unit. He considered jumping back onto the platform, but it was clear that Xin would be right behind him if he did. Probably he wouldn’t even make it as far as the turnstile.

Xin came closer. He clambered through the rows of seating so fast that Grand Cherokee stopped thinking and fled to the end of the train. The glass barrier for the boarding platform ended a little way beyond. Here, the track swung out from the front of the building, curved around a good distance and then about twenty-five
metres on, turned the corner that led behind the pillar.

‘Very stupid idea,’ said Xin, as he approached.

Grand Cherokee stared out at the track, then back to Xin. He had long ago realised that he had gone too far, and the guy meant to kill him. Damn Yoyo! What a dumb bitch, getting him into this kind of trouble.

Wrong, the detached part of Grand Cherokee told him, you’re dumb yourself. Ever thought you could climb through thin air? And when big-mouth Wang had no reply, the calm, distant voice added: You do have one great advantage. You don’t suffer from vertigo.

Does Xin?

Knowing that the enormous height did nothing to him suddenly freed Grand Cherokee’s limbs of their paralysis. His mind made up, he put one foot on the track, took one step, another. Half a kilometre below him he saw the green forecourt in front of the World Financial Center, criss-crossed with footpaths. Cars moved like ants along the two levels of the Shiji Dadao, running from the river to the Pudong hinterland. The sun burned down on him through the enormous hole in the tower as he left the protection of the glassed-in boarding platform and went along the track, one metre at a time. Gusts of warm wind tugged at him. To his left, the glass façade of the tower grew further away with every step, or more exactly, he was getting further away from it. To the right he could see the roof of the Jin Mao Tower. The business high-rises of Pudong grouped themselves around and behind it, with the shimmering curve of Huangpu, and Shanghai stretching all around, unimaginably vast.

His heart beating wildly, he stopped and turned his head. Xin was standing at the end of the train, staring at him.

He wasn’t following.

The arsehole didn’t have the guts!

Grand Cherokee took another step and slipped between two of the spars.

His heart stopped beating. Like a cat falling, he flung out all four limbs, grabbed hold of the rail and for a hideous moment swung there above the abyss before he managed, using all his strength, to heave himself up. Panting like an engine, he tried to stand. He was halfway between the boarding platform and the curve of the corner, and the track was beginning to tilt. The wind fluttered his coat, which was turning out to be the least practical garment imaginable for a stroll at five hundred metres.

Gasping, he looked round again.

Xin had vanished.

Onward, he thought. How far to the bridge now? Twenty-five metres, thirty? At the most. Get moving! Make sure that you round that corner. Get to safety. Who cares what Xin is doing?

He took heart and walked on, arms stretched for balance, master of himself once more, when he heard the noise.

The noise.

It was something between a rattle and a hum, following a heavy metallic clunk. It drew away in the other direction. It froze the blood in Grand Cherokee’s veins, although it was a noise he knew well, a noise he heard every day he spent up here at work.

Xin had woken the Dragon.

He had started the ride!

A scream of fear broke out of him, that was torn away by the warm gusts and scattered over Pudong. Whimpering, he clambered on as fast as he could. His ears told him that the train had just passed the northern pillar, then he saw it climbing the slope through the great gap. At the moment the dragon was still moving slowly, but once it got to the roof it would pick up speed, and then—

He crawled forward like a mad thing in the shadow of the southern pillar. The tilt on the tracks was becoming more pronounced, so that he had no choice but to move ahead on all fours.

Too slow. Too slow!

The fear will burst your heart, thought the detached part of Grand Cherokee. Try cursing.

It helped.

He screamed hell and damnation into the deep blue sky, his voice cracking, grabbed hold of the warm metal of the track and hopped rather than crept forward. The rails had begun to thrum. Twice he nearly lost his balance and fell off the curve, but each time he caught himself and worked his way stubbornly onward. High above him a hollow whistling sound signalled that the carriages had reached their highest point and were now on the flat stretch up above, and he still had not reached his goal. Trying to catch sight of the dragon, he saw only himself reflected in the mirrored glass on the pillar façade, somehow looking damn good, like a movie hero. All in all he should have been having the time of his life here, but there was the nagging question of the happy ending, the fact that the dragon had just passed the catapult.

The rails began to vibrate mightily. Grand Cherokee clambered onward, choking out the word ‘Please!’ over and over like a mantra, ‘Please, please, please—’ in sync with the thrumming of the rail.

‘Please—’ –
Raddangg
– ‘Please—’ –
Raddangg
—

He came round the pillar. He could see the steel bridge not ten metres in front of him, leading from the rails to the wall of the building.

The dragon swept down from the roof.

‘Please—’

The train hurtled down, thunderous, deafening, into the depths, then coiled in on itself in the loop and shot upwards. The whole structure was moving, shaking. The rails seemed to dance to and fro before Grand Cherokee’s eyes. He stood up, managed to leap across several spars at once and keep his balance despite the tilt.

Five metres. Four.

The dragon rushed down in the loop.

Three metres.

– shot round the corner—

Two.

– flew towards him.

In the moment that the train crossed the point where the bridge led off, Grand Cherokee did the impossible, a superhuman feat. Howling wildly, he leapt clear, an enormous standing jump. The sharp bow of the front carriage passed below him. He stretched out his arms to grab hold of one of the seats, touched something, lost his grip. His body smashed into the backs of the seats in the next row, was flung high, pirouetted and for a moment seemed to be heading into the deep blue sky, as though he had decided to reach outer space.

Then he fell.

The last thing that went through Grand Cherokee’s head was that he had at least tried.

That he hadn’t been so bad after all.

* * *

Xin craned his head. High above him he could see people going into the glass viewing platform. The corridor would be opened soon as well. Time to get going. He knew how things worked in high-rise surveillance control rooms, he knew that hardly anybody would have glanced at the monitors in the last quarter of an hour. Even if they had, they wouldn’t have seen much. Leaving aside the two moments when Wang had suddenly dropped to the control room floor, they had been standing close beside one another most of the time. Two close friends having a chat.

But now he had set the dragon moving. Before the usual time. That would be noticed. He had to get out of here.

Xin hesitated.

Then he quickly wiped his fingerprints from the display with his sleeve, paused, and also wiped the places where Grand Cherokee had fumbled about with his greasy fingers. Otherwise those blasted smears would haunt his dreams. There were some things that tended to cling to the inside of Xin’s skull like leeches. Lastly, he hurried along the corridor and left it the way they had come. In the lift he peeled the wig
from his head, took off his glasses, tore the moustache from his upper lip and turned his jacket inside out. It had been made specially for him, reversible. The grey jacket became sandy beige, and he stuffed the wig, beard and glasses inside. He decided to change lifts in the Sky Lobby on the twenty-eighth floor, then went down to the basement, through the shopping mall and out into the bright sunshine. Outside he saw people running towards the south side of the building. Cries went up. Somebody shouted that there had been a suicide.