‘So few places to meet and not be overheard,’ he said. ‘We don’t kid ourselves at the embassy. Besides, once there, they’d track you easily.’ He turned to Nadia, eyes suddenly bulging with excitement, like an overgrown kid. ‘Have you ever seen a snow leopard? Can you imagine, a snow leopard in this heat?’
Without waiting for a reply, he strode up a winding pathway towards metal cages containing shrieking birds, some monkeys, and … the snow leopard didn’t look too happy.
Suddenly she felt nauseous. Not the common garden variety. This was the clawed-animal-in-your-colon kind. She walked as calmly as she could towards a bench.
‘You okay?’ Jake asked.
She didn’t meet his eyes. ‘It’s the heat.’ Second lie. She made a promise to stop at ten.
‘It’s the humidity,’ Hanbury interjected. ‘Over ninety per cent in August. Poor little bugger.’
She glanced up sharply, but Hanbury was staring at the snow leopard. ‘Sometimes I think about coming here in the small, wee hours and putting it out of its misery. You see, animals can’t kill themselves. This one never even moves. Animals don’t realise when the game is lost, don’t know when to call it a day.’ He turned to her, and the playful, avuncular veneer was gone. He looked into her, through her, as if she was already gone.
He knew. Possibly through his embassy connections, maybe via the Colonel back in Moscow. But he knew.
Jake was squatting on the pebbles, staring at the leopard. It got up and came over to sniff his fingers through the wire mesh. Jake stroked its nose. Hanbury raised an eyebrow.
‘Are you talking about Salamander?’ Jake asked, standing up.
‘Who else?’ Hanbury replied, smoothly.
The nausea ebbed. Nadia needed to get her head into the game. ‘So, can we talk here?’
Hanbury plonked himself down next to her, with a middle-aged sigh, and the wooden beams under her bottom lifted a few centimetres. He pulled out a smartphone, touched it a few times then surveyed the blue and white sky. ‘Definitely.’
‘Do you know the location of Blue Fan?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
She and Jake exchanged a glance. They hadn’t expected that particular answer.
‘Then why isn’t she in custody? Someone knock her off her number-two-most-wanted pedestal?’
Hanbury leant his head back to survey the sky through the tree cover. ‘Not quite.’ Some locals meandered towards the snow leopard enclosure, a giggling toddler in pigtails riding her father’s shoulders while his beaming wife shouldered the cluttered pushchair up the slope.
Hanbury hauled himself upright, his paunch leading the way, and headed down towards the central gardens. Nadia and Jake followed. They walked past two elderly women doing their morning exercises. Nadia realised the park was full of people doing warm-ups and tai chi. One tall, reed-thin woman of indeterminate age was practising sword-fighting, her ponytail waving behind her as she executed a flawless series of complex movements, while a younger woman kneeling on the dusty ground, watched with sharp, unwavering eyes.
‘The serious martial artists are over in Victoria Park, the exhibitionists are in the Hong Park over in Central, but there is some real local talent here and it’s more relaxed,’ Hanbury said, wiping sweat from his brow with a second handkerchief. They all sat on a stone bench, and Nadia studied three separate groups of teachers and students learning the tai chi long form. Yang style – she recognised it. She’d seen the Chef practice once.
Hanbury sighed. ‘We sent people in at 4 a.m. SAS.’
Jake spoke first. ‘And?’
Hanbury flourished his hands like a conjurer. ‘And nothing. They disappeared. Dead of course. There’s quite a prosperous organ market here. Being fit young men, they were probably sliced, diced and iced, then shipped in polystyrene to Mumbai.’
Nadia winced. Hanbury was so matter of fact about it. There was more to him than met the eye. He wasn’t standard embassy material. Jake had shown her Hanbury’s file on the plane. Contractor for Her Majesty’s government in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Was he a killer? Hard to tell. Probably one step removed. Not the one to pull the trigger, but the one who set up the target. Which made her wonder …
Hanbury continued. ‘Blue Fan’s location – at least that particular one – is an underground maze of tunnels and chambers. Many homeless live there at night, not to mention it’s a sanctuary for the remnants of a Falun Gong circle. The police won’t enter, they say it will cause a social storm, be used as political capital by those who oppose re-integration, trigger another Umbrella Protest.’
It wouldn’t stop her and Jake going in. Besides, her organs were too irradiated to make any money on the market. Her mind stalled. She’d promised not to think about it. Find Salamander, kill him, then give Jake a good time. That was Plan A. Plan B was take down Salamander and get killed in the process. Plan B, statistically speaking, was Plan A. Plan C was simply get killed in an exotic location.
Nadia switched her attention to the central group of Chinese locals near a dry fountain. Most were sitting in a circle, watching a young man who moved more fluidly than any other she’d ever seen, except the Chef, her taciturn trainer back in Russia who should be coming to their aid soon. This man, though, was something else; it was as if he had no bones or joints, like he was a human snake. The two other groups at opposite ends of the park quickly finished what they were doing, and scuttled over to join the growing audience. Hanbury was mid-sentence, but was mainly addressing Jake, and the tail-end of the nausea still tugged at her guts, so Nadia got up and walked over to watch. She’d been trained in martial arts, and knew a bit of tai chi, but this guy had obviously popped out of the womb doing it.
He finished a complicated routine, where he crouched down and leapt up and spun and kicked, all in a heartbeat, landing soundlessly. Everyone around burst into applause, Nadia included. Some of the people clearly knew him; a local tai chi hero.
The crowd was beginning to disband, when a young woman cut through and walked straight up to the man. She had short, rough-cut black hair, and wore a tight-fitting black one-piece suit with an open Chinese collar. Her features weren’t quite Chinese, they were thicker set. She was slim, not an ounce of fat. The only non-black item on her person was a rectangular grey pouch strapped to her outer right thigh. Sticking out the top were six thin silver handles, with a metallic blue sheen. Blades.
Shit.
The woman adopted a martial stance, right leg forward, right arm bent, her open palm head height. A challenge to the man who had just wowed everybody. The crowd that had begun dispersing converged again, creating a solid wall of people, Nadia on the inner ring. Which meant Jake and Hanbury could see nothing.
The man noticed the challenger for the first time, with a barely detectable flinch. He knew who she was. He cautiously mirrored her stance, and the back of his right wrist made light contact with hers. The crowd stopped breathing. It was like an adult version of the game ‘blink’. Thirty seconds passed. Nadia could see his eyes, but also those of Blue Fan – Nadia presumed it was her, in the flesh. Maybe she could try and arrest Blue Fan here and now. But with what? She had no weapons. Besides, this couldn’t be coincidence.
A few people pulled their smartphones out to take videos, but others in the audience dissuaded them, politely or otherwise.
Without warning, his arm rammed forward like a piston, propelling an iron fist, like he really meant to flatten her, but Blue Fan’s head had moved. She whirled around almost too fast to see, her left arm chopping towards his neck. He blocked it with his own left, while Blue Fan’s back leg scythed around low, aiming to sweep him off his feet. But he was good, and spun in mid-air, landing a few feet away from her. She stood up straight, relaxed, like she was waiting for a bus.
He