The Middle Kingdom (45 page)

"Sir!"

Auden looked up,
judging the distance, then raised the heavy rifle to his shoulder and
fired. The bolt flew up, trailing its thin, strong cord. They heard
it thud into the ceiling of the tunnel, then two of the men were
hauling on the slack of the cord, testing that the bolt was securely
fixed overhead.

One of them
turned, facing Ebert, his head bowed. "Rope secure, sir."

"Good."
He stepped forward and took the gun from the soldier's shoulder.
"Take Leiter's gun, Spitz. Or mine if you can find it."

"Sir!"

Ebert slipped
the gun over his right shoulder, then took the rope firmly and began
to climb, hauling himself up quickly, hands and feet working
thoughtlessly. Three-quarters of the way up he slowed and shrugged
the gun from his shoulder into his right hand, then began to climb
again, pulling himself up one-handedly toward the lip.

They would be
waiting. The grenades had done some damage, but they wouldn't have
finished them off. There would be backups.

He stopped just
beneath the lip and looked back down, signaling to Auden that he
should begin. At once he felt the rope tighten beneath him as it took
the weight of the first of the soldiers. Turning back, Ebert freed
the safety with his thumb, then poked the barrel over the edge and
squeezed the trigger. Almost at once the air was filled with the
noise of return fire. Three, maybe four of them, he estimated.

Beneath him the
rope swayed, then steadied again as the men below took the slack.
Ebert took a long, shuddering breath, then heaved himself up, staring
over the lip into the tunnel beyond.

He ducked down
quickly, just as they opened up again. But he knew where they were
now. Knew what cover he had up there. Quickly, his fingers fumbling
at the catch, he freed the smoke bomb from his belt, twisted the neck
of it sharply, then hurled it into the tunnel above him. He heard the
shout of warning and knew they thought it was another grenade. Taking
another long breath, he pulled the mask up over his mouth and nose,
then heaved himself up over the lip and threw himself flat on the
floor, covering his eyes.

There was a
faint pop, then a brilliant glare of light. A moment later the tunnel
was filled with billowing smoke.

Ebert crawled
forward quickly, taking cover behind two badly mutilated bodies that
lay one atop the other against the left-hand wall. It was not a
moment too soon. Bullets raked the tunnel wall only a hand's width
above his head. He waited a second, then, taking the first of his
targets from memory, fired through the dense smoke.

There was a
short scream, then the firing started up again. But only two of them
this time.

He felt the
bullets thump into the corpse he was leaning on and rolled aside
quickly, moving to his right. There was a moment's silence. Or almost
silence. Behind him he heard sounds—strangely familiar sounds.
A soft rustling that seemed somehow out of context here. He lifted
his gun, about to open fire again, when he heard a faint click and
the clatter of something small but heavy rolling toward him.

A grenade.

He scrabbled
with his left hand, trying to intercept it and throw it back, but it
was past him, rolling toward the lip.

"Shit!"

There was
nothing for it now. He threw himself forward, his gun held chest
high, firing into the dense smoke up ahead. Then the explosion pushed
him off his feet and he was lying among sandbags at the far end of
the tunnel, stunned, his ears ringing.

"Light!"
someone was saying. "Get a fucking light here!"

Auden. It was
Auden's voice.

"Here!"
he said weakly and tried to roll over, but there was something heavy
across the back of his legs. Then, more strongly. "I'm here,
Sergeant!"

Auden came
across quickly and reached down, pulling the body from him. "Thank
the gods, sir! I was worried we'd lost you." He leaned forward
and hauled Ebert to his feet, supporting him.

Ebert laughed,
then slowly sat back down, his legs suddenly weak. "Me too."
He looked up again as one of the soldiers brought an arc lamp across
to them.

"Shit!"
he said, looking about him. "What happened?"

"You must
have blacked out, sir. But not before you did some damage here."

Ebert shuddered,
then half turned, putting his hand up to his neck. There were two
bodies sprawled nearby, facedown beside the sandbags. He looked up at
Auden again.

"What are
our losses?"

"Six men,
sir. Including Leiter. And Grant has a bad head wound. We may have to
leave him here for now."

"Six men?
Fuck it!" He swallowed, then sat forward. "Do we know how
the other squads are doing?"

Auden looked
down. "That's another problem, sir. WeVe lost contact. All the
channels are full of static."

Ebert laughed
sourly. "Static? What's going on? What the fuck's going on?"

Auden shook his
head. "I don't know. I really don't know, sir. But it's odd.
There's an intersection up ahead that isn't on the map. And when you
went up ..." Auden hesitated, then went on. "Well, it seems
they must have had a sluice or something at the bottom of the slope.
One moment I was standing there, helping get the men on the rope, the
next I was knee deep in icy water."

Ebert looked
down. So that was the strange sound he had heard. He shivered, then
looked back up at Auden. "I wondered. You know that? As I was
climbing the rope I was asking myself why they hadn't finished us off
at once. Just a couple of grenades. That's all it would have taken.
But that explains it, doesn't it? They meant to drown us. But why?
What difference would it make?"

Auden smiled
grimly back at him. "I don't know
_L
sir, but if you're
feeling all right we'd best press on. I don't like this quiet. I have
the feeling they're watching us all the while, getting ready to hit
us again."

Ebert smiled and
reached out to touch his sergeant's shoulder briefly. "Okay.
Then let's get moving, eh?"

Auden hesitated
a moment longer. "One last thing, sir. Something you ought to
know."

Ebert saw how
Auden's eyes went to one of the corpses and felt himself go cold
inside. "Don't tell me. They're like the copies at the wedding.
Is that it?"

Auden shook his
head, then went across and turned over one of the corpses, tugging
off its helmet.

"Gods!"
Ebert got up slowly and went across, then crouched above the body
and, taking his knife from his belt, slit the jacket open, exposing
the naked chest beneath.

He looked up at
Auden and saw his own surprised bemuse-ment mirrored back at him.
"The gods preserve us!" He looked back down at the soft
curves of the corpse's breasts, the soft, brown, blinded eyes of the
nipples, and shuddered. "Are they all like this?"

Auden nodded.
"All the ones IVe looked at so far."

Ebert pulled the
jacket back across the dead woman's breasts then stood up, his voice
raised angrily. "What does it all mean? I mean, what in hell's
name does it all mean?"

Auden shrugged.
"I don't know, sir. But I know one thing. Someone told them we
were coming. Someone set us up."

GENERAL TOLONEN
dismissed the two guards, locked the door, then turned to face the
young Prince, his head bowed.

"I am sorry
I had to bring you here, young master, but I couldn't chance letting
our enemies know of this, however small the risk."

Li Yuan stood
there stiffly, his chin raised slightly, a bitter anger in his
red-rimmed eyes. He was barely half the General's height and yet his
air of command, even in grief, left no doubt as to who was master,
who servant, there. The Prince was wearing the
cheng fu,
the
rough, unhemmed sackcloth of traditional mourning clothes, his feet
clad in simple, undecorated sandals, his hands and neck bare of all
jewelry. It was all so brutally austere—so raw a display of
grief—it made Tolonen's heart ache to see him so.

They were in a
secure room at the heart of the Bremen fortress. A room no more than
twenty
ch'i
square, cut off on all six sides from the
surrounding structure, a series of supporting struts holding it in
place. It was reached by way of a short corridor with two air locks,
each emptied to total vacuum after use. Most found it an
uncomfortable, uneasy place to be. Once inside, however, absolute
secrecy could be guaranteed. No cameras looked into the room and no
communications links went out from there. In view of recent
developments, Tolonen welcomed its perfect isolation. Too much had
happened for him to take unnecessary risks.

"Have you
spoken to him yet?" Li Yuan asked, anger burning in his eyes.
"Did the bastard lie through his teeth?"

The young boy's
anger was quite something to be seen. Tolonen had never dreamed he
had it in him. He had always seemed so cold and passionless.
Moreover, there was an acid bitterness to the words that struck a
chord in Tolonen. Li Yuan had taken his brother's death badly. Only
vengeance would satisfy him. In that they were alike.

Tolonen removed
his uniform cap and bowed to him. "You must be patient, young
master. These things take time. I want solid evidence before I
confront our friend Berdichev."

The
eight-year-old turned away sharply, the abruptness of the gesture
revealing his inner turmoil. Then he turned back, his eyes flaring.
"I want them dead, General Tolonen. Every last one of them. And
I want their families eradicated. To the third generation."

Tolonen bowed
his head again. I would, he thought, were that my T'ang's command.
But Li Shai Tung has said nothing yet. Nothing of what he feels, or
wants, nor of what was said in Council yesterday. What have the Seven
decided? How are they to answer this impertinence?

Yes, little
master, I would gladly do as you say. But my hands are tied.

"We know
much more now," he said, taking Li Yuan's shoulder and steering
him across the room to where two chairs had been placed before a
screen. He sat, -facing Li Yuan, conscious not only of the boy's
grief and anger but also of his great dignity. "We know how it
was done."

He saw how Li
Yuan tensed.

"Yes,"
Tolonen said. "The key to it all was simulated vision."

He saw that it
meant nothing to Li Yuan and pressed on. "We discovered it in
our raid on the SimFic installation at Punto Natales. They had been
conducting illegal experiments with it there for more than eight
years, apparently. It seems that the soft-wire they found in Chao
Yang's head was part of one of their systems."

Li Yuan shook
his head. "I don't understand you, General. SimFic have been
conducting illegal experiments? Is that it? TheyVe been willfully
flouting the terms of the Edict?"

Tolonen nodded
but raised a hand to fend off Li Yuan's query. This was complex
ground, and he did not want to get into a discussion about how all
companies conducted such experiments, then lobbied to get their
supposedly "theoretical" products accepted by the ministry.

"Setting
that aside a moment," he said, "what is of primary
importance here is the fact that Pei Chao Yang was not to blame for
your brother's murder. It seems he had brain surgery for a blood clot
almost five years ago—an operation that his father, Pei Ro-hen,
kept from the public record. Chao had a hunting accident, it seems.
He fell badly from his horse. But the operation was a success and he
had had no further trouble. That is, until the day of the wedding.
Now we know why."

"You mean,
they implanted something in his head? Something to control him?"

"Not to
control him, exactly. But something that would make him see precisely
what they wanted him to see. Something that superimposed a different
set of images. Even a different set of smells, it seems. Something
that made him see Han Ch'in
differently.
..."

"And we
know who carried out this . . . operation?"

Tolonen looked
back at the boy. "Yes. But they're dead. TheyVe been dead for
several years, in fact. Whoever arranged this was very thorough. Very
thorough indeed."

"But SimFic
are to blame? Berdichev's to blame?"

He saw the
ferocity on Li Yuan's face and nodded. "I believe so. But maybe
not enough to make a conclusive case in law. It all depends on what
we find at Hammerfest."

SHE CAME AT HIM
like a madwoman, screeching, a big sharp-edged hunting knife in her
left hand, a notched bayonet in her right.

Ebert ducked
under the vicious swinging blow and thrust his blade between her
breasts, using both hands, the force of the thrust carrying her
backward, almost lifting her off her feet.

"Gods. . .
." he said, looking down at the dying woman, shaken by the
ferocity of her attack. "How many more of them?"

It was five
minutes to six and he was lost. Eight of his squad were dead now, two
left behind in the corridors, badly wounded. They had killed more
than twenty of the defending force. All of them women. Madwomen, like
the one he had just killed. And still they came at them.

Why women? he
kept asking himself. But deeper down he knew why. It gave his enemy a
psychological edge. He didn't feel good about killing women. Nor had
his men felt good. He'd heard them muttering among themselves. And
now they were dead. Or good as.

"Do we go
on?" Auden, his sergeant, asked.

Ebert turned and
looked back at the remnants of his squad. There were four of them
left now, including himself. And not one of them had ever experienced
anything like this before. He could see it in their eyes. They were
tired and bewildered. The past hour had seemed an eternity, with no
knowing where the next attack would come from.