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‘You won’t survive this,’ Zhao interrupted. ‘You can’t kill us all, so don’t even try. Give us what we want to have, tell us what we want to hear and we’ll be off. Nothing will happen to anyone.’

‘Like nothing happened to Jia Wei?’ wept the girl with the gun. ‘Or Maggie?’

‘That was inev— No, not like that!’

She had swung the gun round slightly; the fat Asian had also swung the barrel of his gun and was aiming it at her head. Daxiong and the other City Demon reacted in similar fashion. The blond guy’s jaws worked away. Zhao raised a pleading hand.

‘Enough blood has been spilled! – Yoyo, listen, you’ve seen something you shouldn’t have seen. An accident, a stupid accident, but we can wipe this problem out. I want your computer, I have to know who you’ve entrusted it to. No more people must die, I promise. Survival in exchange for silence.’

You’re lying, Jericho thought. Each of your words is pure deceit.

Yoyo turned doubtfully towards Zhao, looked into the beautiful face of the devil.

‘Yes, it’s fine, Yoyo, all fine!’ He nodded. ‘I give you my word that nothing will happen to anyone as long as you cooperate.’

‘Shit!’ yelled the young man next to Daxiong. ‘It’s all a great big pile of shit! They’re going to shoot us all as soon as—’

‘You watch yourself!’ roared the blond guy.

‘Kenny, that won’t do any good.’ The fat man was quaking with nerves. ‘We should kill them.’

‘You fat fuck! First we’ll take you and—’

‘Shut it!’

‘One more word! One word and I’ll—’

‘Stop it! Stop it, all of you!’

Eyes darted back and forth, fingers tightened on triggers. As if the room had filled with an inflammable gas, Jericho thought, and now they were all desperate to click their lighters. But Zhao’s authority held them all in check. The explosion hadn’t happened. Yet.

‘Please – give – me – the computer.’

Yoyo wiped her hand over her face, smearing it with tears and snot. ‘Then will you let us go?’

‘Answer my questions and give me your computer.’

‘I have your word?’

‘Yes. Then we’ll let you go.’

‘You promise that nothing will happen to Daxiong and Ziyi – and Tony? And that guy there?’

How thoughtful, thought Jericho.

‘Don’t listen to him,’ he said. ‘Zhao will—’

‘I’ve never broken my word,’ Zhao cut in, paying him no attention. It sounded friendly and honest. ‘Look, I’m trained to kill people. Like any cop, any soldier, any agent. National security is a higher good than individual human lives, I’m sure you understand that. But I’ll keep my promise.’

‘If you give him the computer, he’ll kill us all,’ Jericho announced. He said it as soberly as possible. ‘I’m your friend. Your father sent me.’

‘He’s lying.’ Zhao’s voice sounded wheedling. ‘You know what? You should be far more afraid of him than you are of me. He’s playing a game with you, every word he comes out with is a lie.’

‘He’s going to kill you,’ said Jericho.

‘Just let him try,’ snorted the boy. So his name was Tony. He jutted his chin belligerently, but his voice and his outstretched weapon trembled slightly. Ziyi, the girl, started to sob uncontrollably.

‘Just give him that fucking computer!’

‘Don’t do it,’ Jericho insisted. ‘As long as he doesn’t know where your computer is, he
has
to let you live.’

‘Shut up!’ Daxiong yelled at him.

‘Just give him the damned computer!’ Ziyi shouted.

Yoyo walked to the table. Her fingers floated over a device hardly bigger than a bar of chocolate, connected to the keyboard and the screen.

‘You’re making a mistake,’ said Jericho dejectedly. All the strength was oozing from his limbs. ‘He’ll kill you.’

Zhao looked at him.

‘The way you killed Grand Cherokee Wang, Jericho?’

‘The way I—
What?
’

Yoyo paused.

‘Bullshit!’ Jericho shook his head. ‘He’s lying. He’s—’

‘Just shut your mouth,’ yelled the fat guy, pulled his gun around and aimed it at Jericho, who saw with startling clarity every individual drop of sweat on the killer’s forehead, glittering like bubble wrap.

Daxiong aimed at Zhao, whose eyes widened.

‘No!’ he yelled.

The lighter clicked.

Jericho saw Tony lifting his gun, then there were two shots in quick succession, and the fat guy collapsed. Everything happened at the same time. With a deafening bang the fair-haired man’s pistol went off and shot away half of Tony’s face. He tipped over and obstructed Daxiong’s view, while Ziyi squealed and Yoyo stormed towards the door. Zhao tried to grab her, missed her and fell headlong. Jericho reached for the gun on the floor. He grabbed the barrel, but Zhao was faster, while Ziyi was shooting wildly in all directions, forcing the blond guy to take cover behind the table.

He ducked.

Daxiong dashed forward, slipped in Jia Wei’s blood and cracked the back of his head on the floor-tiles, dragging Jericho with him. A burst of fire ploughed up the floor next to him. Jericho rolled away from the unconscious giant and saw Ziyi stride like a vengeful goddess over Tony’s corpse, shouting and firing indiscriminately. A moment later a bright red fountain sprouted where her right arm had been. The reports from Zhao’s pistol rang out as he ran outside. Ziyi hesitated. Glassy-eyed, she turned round, an expression of mild surprise in her eyes, and sprayed her pumping blood at the blond guy, spurting it into his eyes. The man raised a hand to protect himself, tried to avoid her dying body, lost his balance.

Jericho leapt up. Ziyi’s severed arm twitched at his feet, and suddenly he was caught up in the vision of a theatrical performance. He was gratefully aware of something within him stepping aside and something else taking control of his thoughts and his motor abilities. He bent down, fumbled the gun from Ziyi’s slack fingers, aimed the muzzle at the stumbling hitman and pulled the trigger.

Empty.

With a yell, the blond guy slung the dead girl away from him, reached for his gun
and, still blinded by Ziyi’s blood, fired his magazine off into the air. Jericho whirled out of the line of fire and without so much as another glance, he leapt over the prostrate bodies and hurried outside.

* * *

Xin briefly imagined how simple things might have been. Tracking down the girl and her computer. Knowing which one it was. Charming information out of her as to who he still had to worry about, which would have taken only a few minutes. Xin was sure that Yoyo was extremely susceptible to pain. She would quickly have told him what he needed to know.

Fast work.

Instead, Owen Jericho had turned up as if pulled out of a hat. Xin hadn’t the slightest idea what had sent the detective here. Hadn’t his disguise been perfect? Irrelevant for the time being. Dark and massive, the blast furnace loomed above him. Two airbikes were parked down below, between Yoyo and the stairs. In her confusion, she had probably spent a moment too long wondering which way was shorter, and meanwhile Kenny had managed to get outside and block her exit route. The tower of girderwork provided no opportunity for escape. So she had fled across the bridge connecting the control centre and the blast furnace, to the other side, into the middle of the jungle of walkways, equipment and pipes that ran riot around the crucible.

He came after her, in no particular hurry. Each level of the furnace’s scaffolding was connected to the next by a flight of steps, but the way down was blocked by broken props. By now Yoyo too was aware of her mistake. She looked alternately upwards and at Kenny, as she pushed her way slowly backwards. Once again he was sure that he was going to win. He stopped.

‘This isn’t what I wanted,’ he called out.

Yoyo’s features blurred. For a moment he thought he was about to see her bursting into tears again.

‘I never planned to give you the thing,’ she cried.

‘Yoyo, I’m sorry!’

‘Then fuck off!’

‘Have
I
broken my word?’ He put all the hurt he could muster into his words. ‘Did I?’

‘Kiss my butt!’

‘Why don’t you trust me?’

‘Anyone who trusts you dies!’

‘
Your
people started it, Yoyo. Be sensible, I just want to talk to you.’

Yoyo looked behind her, looked up, and turned her gaze back to Kenny. She had
almost reached the steps leading to the next level. He set his pistol down in front of him and showed her the palms of both hands.

‘No more violence, Yoyo. No bloodshed. I swear.’

She hesitated.

Come on, he thought. You can’t get down. You’re in a trap, little mouse. Stupid little mouse.

But suddenly the mouse seemed anything but helpless. He uneasily wondered who was actually playing games with whom here. The girl was in shock, sure, but as she approached the stairs she no longer resembled the tear-drenched Yoyo who had been ready to hand him her computer just a minute before. In her catlike agility he recognised his own alertness, practised over the years and based on stubbornness, suspicion, deviousness and a will to survive. Yoyo was stronger than he’d imagined.

As soon as she leapt onto the steps he knew that any further diplomacy was a waste of time. If there had ever been a chance of coaxing the girl down, it was gone.

He picked up his gun.

The wail of a turbine rose up behind him. Kenny turned round and saw Jericho sitting on the saddle of one of the airbikes, trying to get the vehicle started. He weighed up his options in a flash, but Yoyo took priority. He ignored the detective and hurried after the escaping girl whose footsteps made the passageway above him tremble, and watched through the bars as her silhouette dashed away. A few leaps and he was up there. He found himself in a ravine of struts and pipes, and caught a glimpse of flying hair as Yoyo disappeared behind a rusty pillar; then her footsteps hammered towards the next floor up.

She was slowly turning into a nuisance. High time to bring this matter to a close.

He chased after her, floor after floor, until she had nowhere left to go. A few metres above her the furnace tapered, ending in an inlet through which coke and ore had been funnelled in earlier times. Above it rose an angular, winding structure that culminated in a massive exhaust outlet, making the construction visible even from a distance. Vertical scaffolding-rods led to the highest point, about seventy metres up. Nothing beyond that but open sky. No escape was possible, unless you dared to pick your way about twenty metres along a pipe leading sharply downwards, and jump another ten metres down onto the enormous pot-like tank in which it ended.

He listened. It was surprisingly quiet up here, as if the vague and distant sounds of the city and the background noise of Xaxu were a sea that surged below him. The turbines of large aircraft sang somewhere in the stratosphere.

Xin threw his head back. Yoyo had disappeared.

Then he saw her climbing. She clung to the stanchions like a monkey, pulled herself higher up, and he understood that there probably was a possible escape route.
A conveyor belt abutted the inlet. It ran down from the top of the furnace to the ground, steep, but walkable.

The bitch.

Did he actually need her alive? She had reached her hand out to the computer, there was no doubt which one it was. It was still in the control room … except he didn’t know who she’d talked to about the matter.

Cursing, he began his ascent.

A loud hissing sound came towards him. With one hand clamped to the scaffolding and the other gripping his gun, he turned his head.

The airbike was coming straight at him.

* * *

Jericho had stalled the first bike he tried. It was a new model, very different from the ones he was used to. The controls gleamed from a flat user interface, there was nothing mechanical on this one. He slipped from the saddle, jumped onto the second airbike, whose engine was running, and ran his hand over the touchscreen. He was luckier this time. The machine reacted like a goaded bull, bucked and reared and tried to throw him off. His hands gripped the handles. Before, they’d been vertical, now they curved upwards and could be twisted in all directions. The bike circled wildly. The display blinked like the lights on a fruit machine. Just by chance Jericho touched two of them, and the carousel-ride came to an end, but he was carried instead towards the front of the control room; he shifted his body weight, narrowly avoiding collision, and flew in an extended 180-degree turn. His eyes scoured the surroundings.

No trace of Yoyo or Zhao.

He gradually got the knack of turning. He brought the bike up, but neglected to pivot the jets at the same time, which immediately got him into trouble again, because the bike now soared into the sky like a rocket. He felt himself sliding helplessly out of the saddle, and struggled with darting fingers to correct the mistake, regained control, and took another turn with his eyes on the blast furnace.

There they were!

Yoyo had made it to the inlet, where the conveyor belt began, followed by Zhao, who hung two metres below her in the scaffolding. Jericho forced the machine upwards, in the hope that it would react as he wished. He saw the hitman give a start and hunch his shoulders. Less than half a metre away from him, Jericho swung the airbike round, turned a circle and bore down on the furnace once more. On the edge of the conveyor belt, Yoyo was looking charmingly helpless. He understood exactly why as he flew over the belt. Where there should have been rollers and struts, part of the construction had simply broken away. For a long stretch only the
side braces remained. Getting down from there would have required the skills of a professional tightrope-walker.

Yoyo was trapped.

He cursed himself under his breath. Why hadn’t he taken the blond guy’s pistol off him? There had been weapons lying around all over the control centre. He watched furiously as Zhao’s head and shoulders appeared over the rim. With one bound the hitman was on the inlet. Yoyo recoiled, went down on all fours and gripped the brace of the conveyor belt. She nimbly let herself down on it until her feet touched a rod further below, tried to find a halfway solid footing, began lowering herself down, hand after hand, inch after inch—