The front door to the Mayfair house was ajar when North pushed it open. He was surprised to find that the hallway was empty; not even the resin table of gold coins with its shrine to Chin’s ancestors stood in the corner. North glanced across into the enormous living room, expecting brocade curtains and silk carpets and gilt furniture, but it too was empty, aside from half a dozen empty crates stacked around the walls and an oversized roll of bubble wrap.
When he heard the door towards the rear creak open and unseen click-clack steps cross the black-and-white marble tiles, he reached for the SIG, which had been pulled out of the bunker debris. He’d made sure to load it. The memory of his helplessness as the drones closed in would forever haunt him.
Instead of the grey cheongsam she’d worn the first time they met, Chin’s assistant sported a severe jacket and trousers. Her face was the same, but the expression was altogether harder and sadder. At the sight of his gun, she hesitated, but only for a second. ‘Mr North.’ Her voice was like the silver bells that called a man to prayer. ‘I hoped I might see you again.’
‘London lost its shine, has it?’ North asked, nodding towards the crates. He kept his weight evenly distributed. The vision could summon help at any second and Chin’s men didn’t mess around. But last time he’d been in this house, Chin had made it plain that if he didn’t give up Syd to the Chinese, Fang would be Octavia’s next meal. And that confusion needed clearing up.
‘We return to Beijing. I have new orders.’
She said ‘I’, not ‘Chin’, he noticed. Chin’s power rested on his ability to deliver Syd to his masters. If North didn’t know that already, the guide’s voice left no doubt of her scorn. ‘Chin’s mission was a spectacular failure,’ the woman said. His mission to acquire Syd. What had his assistant done? Informed on Chin to his superiors? Explained his decadent foibles, killer octopus and unpatriotic habits? Suggested quiet termination on his return? The alternative to termination was a trial and certain imprisonment. Money laundering? Tax evasion? Murder of young girls? North was willing to bet such venality would be overlooked, providing he delivered that one thing China wanted – an advantage in the race for AI supremacy.
‘I find myself embarrassed, Mr North.’ She stood close to him, raising her face to his. ‘When we met, I told you we all want something.’
‘I remember.’
‘And you offered to help.’
‘As you already know, I’m a helpful guy.’
‘We were sent tickets home for twelve of us, and our household is made up of thirteen people. I have been advised by my superiors that a seat is not available for Octavius Chin.’
It was certainly cleaner for Chin to meet with an accident in London, North thought. Less embarrassing for his friends in the party that he never returned to plead with them for mercy. Better all round. North considered Chin’s phalanx of heavies. He doubted Chin inspired personal loyalty. They’d do whatever they were ordered to do, including snap the boss’s fat neck, fold that blimp-like body into an extra-large packing crate, stamp it ‘Diplomatic baggage’, and ship it back home without hesitation. So why wasn’t Chin already dead?
The vision raised her eyes to meet his and he saw her anger was as dark as his own – that it coursed through every vein, that it was in every breath her body took. ‘Yan was a foolish girl,’ she said. ‘But we were friends and I was foolish too because I underestimated Chin’s depravity.’
The feel of his face against the cold glass. His powerlessness as he watched Yan’s body plunge through the water, as the monster came out of the deep. Upstairs, the vision in the grey cheongsam had been as powerless as him.
‘So I’ve decided what it is that I want,’ she said. Silver bells. ‘I fear Octavius Chin might be about to meet with an accident.’ She wanted revenge for her friend’s death. Killing Chin wasn’t enough for her, or he would already be dead. She wanted Chin humiliated by his enemy and she wanted him to know that he had lost in the worst possible way.
‘I don’t even know your name,’ North said. He wanted to know her name.
‘No. Because the nameless woman who asks a “great” favour of North will be all the easier for him to forget,’ she said. Yan’s friend touched his arm like a butterfly landing and taking off.
‘Where is he?’ North could guess the answer.
The woman smiled. ‘He’s downstairs, saying his goodbyes.’
*
North’s gun was raised as the elevator doors opened. But there was no one down there waiting. Even so, he moved in silence.
The water behind the glass was murky but still, and the bowls on Chin’s table scraped empty. One final meal at home with the thing he loved best in this world, before he left her for ever. Somehow North didn’t think Chin was getting the requisite permits for transporting Octavia the octopus from London to Beijing.
North used his left hand to take the weight of his right as he moved across the space Chin used as a dining room towards the narrow flight of stairs to the mezzanine. This was the way they must have taken Yan.
Chin’s back was to North as he emerged from the stairs. A dozen open barrels stood by the side of the open tank marked with skulls and crossbones, the words ‘Toxic’ and ‘Sulphuric Acid’ in capital letters. But acid didn’t appear to be enough for Chin – a metal bar hung over the water, suspending by heavy chains, with what looked like three steel torpedoes attached to it. He was lowering it in the water.
‘Whatever it is you’re doing, stop.’ North said.
As the fat man turned towards him, North noticed with surprise that tears streaked the bulging cheeks. Chin appeared oblivious to the gun in North’s hand. ‘I tried the acid but I can’t tell if it’s working. And it’s not right that Octavia lives on here in captivity without me, North. She would pine – we have a special bond, she and I. Let me finish and we can talk.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘It’s better this way, North. When these seismic airguns are in the water, I can turn them to maximum and the noise should be enough to kill her. Sound is how I trained her.’
North considered shooting him where he stood – it would be kinder treatment than Chin had offered the octopus. On a pole close to the water’s edge was a huge red button. On the wall, what looked like an enormous cattle prod. North thought back to Yan’s death. The klaxon, sounding on and off three times. He pressed the button and the alarm shrieked across the space, bouncing off the walls and the water.
Chin’s hands went to his ears. He made to move towards the button to disable it, but North shook his head, pointing his semi-automatic directly into the other man’s face. North’s eyes scanned the water, but there was nothing there. The noise stopped, his ears ringing in the sudden silence. The surface of the water was like glass. Had Chin already killed the creature? How many barrels of acid had he already poured into the water? Enough?
North took a step towards Chin and, instinctively, the other man took a step backwards. ‘My household has gone, hasn’t it?’
North could see it now, movement on the surface of the water in the centre of the pool, rippling outwards, but Chin still had his back to the water.
‘Did you really think they’d bring you back to Beijing only to throw you in a hole or hang you? Why bother?’
North moved again, and Chin took another step. Smaller this time. ‘I admire your loyalty. I won’t hurt your precious Fangfang Yu.’
‘That’s probably the truest thing you’ve ever said.’
‘I know plenty, North.’ North could sense the other man’s fear like something wet and suffocating across his nose and mouth.
The ripples came closer to the edge of the pool.
Closer yet.
The tip of a tentacle emerged from the water and curled over the edge.
‘Things your government should know.’ Chin was sweating, North could smell it on him.
Inch by inch, the tentacle unfurled.
‘I know who has power in Beijing and who wants it. My network of informants here in London. I’ll give them all of it in return for political asylum.’ Chin had a strong hand.
A second tentacle appeared, further along the edge of the pool, stretching and feeling first one way and then the other over the white tiles.
‘You’d betray your country?’
‘My country betrayed me first, North.’
Chin spoke the truth. Fang was safe – Chin couldn’t hurt her. He was powerless. And Hone wasn’t a sentimental man. He didn’t care about Yan when she was alive and he would care even less now she was dead. The past was the past. The one-eyed man would jump at what Chin knew about the inner workings of government and party in Beijing. The acquisition of a Chinese agent of Chin’s seniority would be the coup of a generation. And Chin would milk it – drip-feed the information to keep himself valuable. Rebuild his life again in the West. He would be passed from London to America and on through any ally who wanted him. He wouldn’t have the status and the money and the access he’d once had. But it was altogether better than the alternative. The woman upstairs knew the risk she was taking in leaving Chin’s death to North. Her orders must have been to kill Chin herself and she would have to lie to her superiors – that she had left Chin dead. To take the revenge they were both owed for Yan’s terrible death.
Best then if Hone and his bosses never got to hear Chin’s generous offer.
‘What do you know, Chin? Tell me something that changes how this ends for you.’
Chin’s eyes darted around the space as he reached for something that would sway North. He let out a small mew of satisfaction as he found it. ‘I know your General Kirkham is about to be awarded a peerage for services to the defence of your nation.’ North felt his upper lip twitch into a snarl, and fought it. ‘And I know he and Ralph Rafferty intend to silence the grieving widow.’
‘Esme hasn’t said anything. She hasn’t told the truth.’
For a moment Chin forgot his own predicament in his enjoyment of the game he was playing. ‘Do you think they’ll take that risk?’ He smirked. ‘Powerful men like that? Never.’
‘It’s just as well we have our own arrangements in place then.’
Behind Chin, the bulbous head of the octopus reared out of the water and the giant arms reached out for its tormentor. Chin spun around with a scream of terror.
He was still screaming as the arms took hold and drew him into the water.
The screams became muffled, as the octopus crushed him close, pulling him down, and the water closed over his head.
North had to pass the tank on his way back to the lift. He paused and glanced in, out of curiosity. As he did, Octavia let Chin go and he scrambled away as fast as he could swim, bubbles pouring from his mouth. He made it as far as the glass where North stood watching. Chin’s hands beat against it – pleading – his mouth chewing the water and his eyes bulging, before the tentacle wrapped around his fat ankle and pulled him relentlessly back.