Necropolis (26 page)

"Who has taken over Hong Kong?" Scarlett asked, although she already knew the answer.

"They are called the Old Ones," Lohan said. "At least, that is what you call them. In the East, we talk of gwei, evil spirits. We have many names for them."

"I know about all this," Scarlett said. "It's what Father Gregory told me."

"Who is Father Gregory?"

"He's a monk. I went through a door in a wall and I met him…"

"This was at the Church of St. Meredith's." Lohan knew the name. Perhaps he had read about it in the newspapers when Scarlett disappeared, but she doubted it. He seemed to know a lot about a lot of things.

She wondered how. She still wasn't sure how he fit in. "You have to understand that we have been interested in you for a long time, Scarlett," Lohan said. It was as if he had been reading her thoughts.

"We?"

"I am referring to the organization to which I have the great honor to belong. In fact, we have been watching you since the day you were born." He allowed this to sink in, then went on. "Have you ever wondered how you came to find yourself in the Pancoran Kasih Orphanage in Jakarta? Well, I can tell you. We arranged it. Why were you taken to live in Great Britain, thousands of miles away from your true home? We wanted it."

"Why?"

"To keep you safe. To hide you from the enemies that we knew would one day search for you."

"There was an accident in Dulwich. A white van…" Scarlett didn't know why it had come into her mind right then, but she was suddenly sure that it was connected. She had a sense of everything coming together.

Lohan nodded. "It happened when you were thirteen years old," he said. "It was not enough simply to send you far away. My organization had a sacred pledge to protect you, even from your own carelessness. When you stepped in front of the van, one of our people was there to push you out of the way. He was able to save you once. Unfortunately, he was less successful a second time."

"He tried to contact me. In London."

"His task was to give you a message. Under no circumstances were you to come here to Hong Kong. We had hoped to intercept you before you even left for the airport. But by then it was too late. The Old Ones had discovered who you were. They killed him."

"He was waiting for me at the restaurant — the Happy Garden."

Lohan nodded, a tiny spark of anger in his eyes. Perhaps part of him blamed her for the death. "Three people died in the explosion," he said. "And the British authorities didn't even bother to investigate.

They just blamed it on us — Chinese gangs fighting each other. What did it matter to them? A few dead fei jais."

He used the Cantonese slang for petty criminals. "To the police, it just meant more paperwork."

"This all happened because of the church, didn't it?"

It was all making sense. Father Gregory had told her he was going to hand her over to the Old Ones.

Scarlett had managed to escape — but not before she had given him her name and address. That had been all he needed. From that moment on she had been in a trap from which there was no escape.

"As soon as you returned, the Old Ones closed in on you," Lohan said. "They knew that they had found one of the Gatekeepers, and they weren't going to let you go. From that moment on, they never let you out of their sight."

Scarlett thought back. She had felt all along that she had been under surveillance, but it was only now that she realized how true that had been. Every movement she had made had been watched. She had been pushed around like a piece on a board game — and the last roll of the dice had brought her here.

"They used my dad to bring me to Hong Kong," she said, and felt a sudden ache of sadness. Where was he?

"We never wanted you to come to this city," Lohan said. "Once you were here, you would be utterly in their power, and you have no idea to what extent that has been true. All day, every day, you have been surrounded by them. Nobody has been allowed to come anywhere near you. Haven't you noticed? Since you have been here, nobody has approached you. Nobody has come near."

"There was a man with a letter…" Scarlett began. "On Queen Street."

Lohan shook his head. "We didn't send him. We knew that it would never have worked." He paused.

"The Old Ones control the police, the government, and the civil service. They have made deals with the Chinese authorities — and they have killed anyone who has stood in their way. The hospitals, the fire service, the newspapers, and the television and radio stations all serve them now. They keep constant watch on us through the surveillance cameras in the streets and know what we buy every time we use a credit card. They have taken over the mobile phone network and the Internet. Every call is monitored, every one of the millions of e-mails that are sent every day is read by their spyware. Criticize the government — you die. Even try to tell people what you know — you die. We're back where we started, Scarlett. How many thousands of people can you kill in a city like this without anyone noticing? Only the Old Ones know the answer.

"And they are everywhere. The woman and the driver who pretended to work for your father were both shape-changers. We don't know where they came from or what exactly they are. Many of the crowds that surrounded you were the same. Why do you think Wisdom Court is empty? They wanted to keep you in isolation, and every man, woman, or child who might come into contact with you was either taken away, killed, or replaced."

"Replaced with what?" Scarlett asked.

"With creatures that belong to the Old Ones." Lohan filled the bowl a second time and drank it. The alcohol had no effect on him at all. "The whole city is against you, Scarlett. If you stepped outside now, you would be seen and identified in seconds. That was why you couldn't travel here sitting in a car. It was also why we had to be so careful reaching you. One of my people added the guidebook to your luggage at the airport. Then we bribed the supervisor of an office building and transmitted a message on the screen. The fortune-teller is part of our organization, and she sent you to The Peak. Four different approaches, and each time we had to be certain that you alone knew our intentions."

"So what am I going to do?" Scarlett couldn't keep the helplessness out of her voice. This is what it came down to. She was stuck in a room in a dirty block of apartment buildings. And outside, a whole city was searching for her. She remembered how the day had begun — even the flies were on their side.

'You must not be weak!" For a moment, Lohan didn't even try to hide his contempt. He spat out the words and his mouth, cut in half by the scar, was twisted into a sneer. "It will not be easy," he said. "The Old Ones chose this city very carefully. You are on an island with only four possible ways out. First, of course, there is the airport, where you arrived. But that is out of the question. Every flight will be watched, and even if we disguise you and give you a false passport, the danger is too great.

"The second possibility would be to travel by Jetfoil to the island of Macao, which is only an hour away.

From there you would be able to fly to Singapore or Taiwan. But again there is too much risk. I don't think that you would even get on board before you were spotted. There is a passport control at the terminal, and remember — every single official will be looking for you."

"Can't I go into China?" Scarlett asked.

"It is possible to cross into China at Shenzhen. Many tourists go there to shop because the prices are cheap. But there are police everywhere. The border is well patrolled. And once the Old Ones know you are missing, they will be looking carefully at everyone who crosses."

"So what's the fourth way?"

But she wasn't going to find out. Not then. She hadn't even noticed the telephone in the room, but suddenly it rang. The three men froze, and she saw at once that it wasn't good news. Lohan didn't answer it himself. He gestured at the Japanese man, Red, who snatched up the phone and listened for a moment in silence. He put it down and muttered a few words in Chinese. Scarlett didn't understand what he'd said, nor did she need to. The call was a warning. The Old Ones were here.

Lohan turned to her, examining her as if for the first time. Even now he seemed undisturbed, refusing to panic.

"Have they found us?" Scarlett blurted out the question.

Lohan nodded slowly. "They're outside. The building is surrounded."

"But how…?"

"We seem to have missed a trick." Lohan's eyes were still fixed on her. For a few seconds, he didn't speak. Then he worked it out. "You have something with you," he said. "The woman — Mrs. Cheng or someone at Nightrise — gave you something to wear."

"No —" Scarlett began. But then she remembered. Her hands went to her throat. "The chairman gave me this."

She was still wearing the jade pendant. Now, with trembling fingers, she unhooked it and took it off.

The little green stone with the carved insect hung at the end of the chain. She handed it over. "It can't be bugged," she said weakly. "It can't…"

Lohan examined it with cold anger. Then he turned it round and dangled it in front of her face.

Scarlett gasped. The creature inside the pendant — the lizard or the locust or whatever it was — was moving. She saw it blink and shift position. Its legs curled up underneath it. One of its wings fluttered.

Scarlett cried out in revulsion. The thing was alive. And all this time it had been around her neck…

Lohan laughed briefly and, without humor, closed his fist over the pendant, winding the chain around his wrist.

"What are we going to do?" Scarlett asked.

Before anyone could reply, there was an explosion in the street. It sounded soft and far away, but it was followed at once by screaming and the sound of falling glass. There was the wail of police sirens — not one car but any number of them, closing in from all sides.

Lohan produced an automatic pistol, drawing it out of his back pocket. It was sleek and black, and he handled it expertly, loading it with a clip of ammunition, releasing the safety catch and briefly checking the firing mechanism. 'You must do whatever we tell you," he said. "No questions. No hesitation. Do you understand?"

Scarlett nodded.

From somewhere in the building came the first burst of machine-gun fire. Lohan threw the door open, signaled, and together they began to move.

TWENTY-ONE

Across the Roof

Lohan was the first out into the corridor, then Draco and Scarlett, with Red behind. They were all armed, apart from her. The man outside the elevator had unhooked his machine gun and was cradling it in his arms. He didn't look scared. In fact, he was completely relaxed, as if this was all in a day's work.

Scarlett was feeling sick with anger. This was her fault. The jade pendant that she had been given was bugged in every sense of the word — and it had told the chairman exactly where she was. Why had she even worn it? She should have left it beside the bed. But it was too late to think about it now. The Hong Kong police had arrived. They were already on their way up.

Her every instinct would have been to get out of there as quickly as they could, but they were moving slowly, taking it one step at a time. Lohan was listening for any sound, his head tilted sideways, his gun level with his shoulder. Scarlett saw him signal to the man at the elevator, pointing with two fingers, ordering him to stay where he was — probably a death sentence. These people had some sort of code among themselves. They did exactly what they were told no matter what it might cost.

For a brief moment, everything was silent. The police cars had turned off their sirens, and the gunfire had stopped. The corridor was empty. But then, with a surge of alarm, Scarlett saw a blinking light.

There were two arrows next to the elevator doors, one pointing up, the other down. One of them was flashing. The elevator was on its way up.

Lohan gestured with the gun. "You follow me. This way."

They set off down the corridor, but it seemed to Scarlett that he was leading them the wrong way. It would obviously have been crazy to have tried taking the elevator, but wouldn't the emergency stairs be somewhere nearby? Lohan was taking them ever farther into the building and away from what was surely the only way out.

But nobody argued. Scarlett still had no idea who Lohan was or what authority he had over the others.

He had said that he belonged to an organization that had been looking out for her from the day she had been born, but he hadn't told her what it was called, who ran it, or anything like that. It seemed that he and his people were some sort of resistance, fighting against the Old Ones, the last survivors in a city that had been attacked from within. But they weren't the police. They weren't the army. What did that leave?

It was too late for any more questions. Lohan was moving a little faster, still on tiptoe, making no noise, as if he expected one of the many doors to spring open and someone to jump out. How high up were they? How long did they have before the elevator arrived? The end of the corridor was about a hundred feet away with ten doors on either side. A row of lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling lit the way ahead.

Scarlett heard a loud, metallic click and risked a glance back. The man with the machine gun had released the safety catch. Lohan muttered something under his breath.

There was the ping of a bell.

The elevator had arrived.

Scarlett was still watching as the doors opened and yellow light flooded out. The man with the machine gun had positioned himself directly opposite with his shoulders planted against the wall. Without any warning, he opened fire, sending a firestorm of bullets into the elevator. The noise in the confined space was shocking. She could actually feel it, hammering into her ears. But she couldn't see what the man was shooting at. The entire corridor blazed white and red and she heard a high-pitched scream like nothing she had ever heard before, as whatever was inside the elevator was pulverized.

Then something appeared, stretching out of the open doorway. It was impossible to make it out clearly between the gloom of the corridor and the brilliance of the gunfire, the two of them strobing — black, white, black, white — turning everything into slow-motion chaos. Some sort of tentacles, extending themselves into the corridor. They reached the man. One slammed into his face. Another curled around his throat. But it was the third that killed him, punching right through his stomach and dragging him up the wall, a great streak of blood following up behind him. The man was screaming, his legs writhing in agony. But his finger was clenched around the trigger and he was still firing. His last bullets went wild, tearing into the ceiling and floor.