Jericho parked the bike two floors down in the underground car park of the complex and withdrew into the back corner of a bistro, where he ordered coffee. Although he wasn’t even slightly hungry, he also asked for a cheese baguette, bit into it, scattered crumbs on his T-shirt and trousers and noted with some satisfaction that it didn’t all come right back up again.
How far would Zhao go?
This temporary equilibrium was much more bitter than the coffee that he was gulping down. No car. No loft, because it was uninhabitable for the time being. In the sights of a hitman, with his back to the wall. No option but to run away. Forced to act, except that he didn’t think he was capable of action. There was no way back into normality, except by getting to the bottom of things. Understanding how the whole drama played out. Find out who had commissioned Zhao.
Jericho stared straight ahead.
Hang on, though! He wasn’t entirely incapable of action. Zhao might have forced him onto the defensive, but he had something the hitman didn’t know about. His secret weapon, the key to everything.
Yoyo’s computer.
He had to find out what she had discovered.
Then he would track her down again, to take her back to her father. Chen Hong-bing. Was it a good idea to call him? Tu Tian had established the contact, but in point of fact Chen was his client. The man had a right to be informed, but what would he say to him? All fine, Yoyo’s in great shape… No, honourable Chen, it isn’t the police who are after her, just a hardened hitman with a weakness for explosive devices, but hey, don’t worry, she’s still got both arms and legs and her whole face, haha! Where is she? Well, she’s on the run! Me too, see you soon.
What could he say, if he didn’t want the man to die of a heart attack?
And what if he did get the police involved? Of course he would have to give them a bit of background, not least concerning Yoyo. Which risked drawing attention to the girl. They would ask what part she’d played in the massacre, look at her data, establish that she was on file, even that she had a criminal record. Impossible. The police were out of the question, even though Zhao wasn’t a cop, regardless of what he might have told Yoyo in the control centre:
I’m trained to kill people. Like all policemen, like all soldiers, all agents.
All agents?
National security is a higher good than individual human lives.
The Secret Service, on the other hand, had already blown plenty of other things sky high, particularly when they got involved in matters of national security. Zhao could have been bluffing, but what if he actually had the blessing of the authorities?
But what about calling Tu?
That looked pretty pointless too. Jericho forced himself to think clearly. First switch on Diane. He looked around. The bistro was two-thirds full, but the tables around him were free. Here and there young people were writing on their laptops or making phone calls. He set keyboard and screen in front of him and connected both to the hard drive in the rucksack. Then he jammed in the headset earbud and linked the system to Yoyo’s computer. A symbol appeared, a crouching wolf threateningly showing its fangs. Below it appeared some text:
I’m inviting you to dinner.
Okay, then, thought Jericho.
‘Hi Diane,’ he said quietly.
‘Hi, Owen.’ Diane’s velvety timbre. The consolation of the machine. ‘How did you get on?’
‘Fucking awful.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’ How honest that sounded. Okay, then, it wasn’t dishonest. ‘Can I help?’
You could be made of flesh and blood, thought Jericho.
‘Please open the file “I’m inviting you to dinner”. You’ll find access data in Yoyofiles.’
Silence fell for two seconds. Then Diane said:
‘The file is locked four times. I’ve been able to use three of the tools successfully. I haven’t got the fourth access authorisation.’
‘Which tools worked?’
‘Iris, voice and fingerprint. All assigned to Chen Yuyun.’
‘Which one’s missing?’
‘A password, by the look of it. Shall I decipher?’
‘Do that. Have you any idea how long the decoding’s going to take you?’
‘Afraid not. At the moment I can only speculate that the coding includes several words. Or one unusually long one. Is there anything else I can do for you?’
‘Go online,’ said Jericho. ‘That’s it. See you later, Diane.’
‘See you later, Owen.’
He logged on to Brilliant Shit. If his assumption was correct, the Guardians’ blog was being used as a dead letter drop, and regularly checked.
Jericho to Demon, he wrote. I’ve got your computer. He added a phone number and an email address, stayed logged in and stored the blog as an icon. As soon as someone saved a message in it, Diane would let him know straight away. By now he felt a little better. He bit into his baguette, topped up his coffee and decided to contact Tu.
A call came in for him.
Jericho stared at the display. No picture, no number.
Yoyo? So quickly?
‘Hi, Owen,’ said a very familiar voice.
‘Zhao.’ Everything inside Jericho shrank to a tiny lump. He paused for a moment and tried to sound relaxed. ‘Or should I say Kenny?’
‘Kenny?’
‘Don’t pretend to be more stupid than you are! Didn’t that fat asshole call you that before he kicked the bucket?’
‘Oh, right.’ The other man laughed quietly. ‘As you wish, then – Kenny.’
‘Kenny who? Kenny Zhao Bide?’
‘Kenny’s just fine.’
‘Okay, Kenny.’ Jericho took a deep breath. ‘Then wash your ears out. Yoyo’s slipped through your fingers. I got away from you. You won’t get any further as long as one of us has a reason to feel threatened by you.’
A sigh of resignation came through the receiver.
‘I’m not threatening anybody.’
‘Yes, you are. You’re shooting people and blowing up buildings.’
‘You’ve got to look the facts in the face, Owen. You put up a decent fight, you and the girl. Admirable, but not especially clever, I’m afraid to say. If Yoyo had cooperated, everyone might still be alive.’
‘Ridiculous.’
‘It was your people who started all the shooting.’
‘Not at all. They only started shooting because you’d killed Xiao Meiqi and Jin Jia Wei.’
‘That was unavoidable.’
‘Really?’
‘Yoyo would hardly have talked to me otherwise. Later I did everything in my power to avert any further bloodshed.’
‘What do you want, Kenny?’
‘What do you think I want? Yoyo, of course.’
‘To do what?’
‘To ask her what she knows and who she’s told.’
‘You—’
‘Don’t worry!’ Kenny cut in. ‘I’m not planning on killing even more people. But I’m under a certain amount of pressure, you know? Pressure to succeed. These are the times we’re living in, everyone constantly wants to see results, so what would you do in my place? Come away empty-handed?’
‘You’ve got your hands pretty full. You’ve destroyed Yoyo’s computer, and the complete infrastructure of the Guardians. Do you really think any of them wants to mess with you again?’
‘Owen,’ said Kenny in the voice of a teacher who needs to explain everything three times, ‘I don’t know anything. I don’t know whether I destroyed Yoyo’s infrastructure, how many computers she transferred the data to, whether everyone she confided in died in the control centre. What about that huge bike-riding baby? What about you? Didn’t she tell you anything?’