‘What’s up?’ Yoyo asked irritably.
‘Didn’t you hear the question?’ Tu pointed a fleshy finger at the officer, who impassively wrote something down in his tiny book.
‘Yes, I did,’ she said cautiously.
‘And?’
‘He really only—’
‘He’s insulting me! That guy insulted me!’
‘I only asked you why you dodged the German authorities,’ the agent said very calmly.
‘I didn’t dodge them!’ Tu snapped at him. ‘I never dodge anybody! But I do know which people I can trust, and police officers are rarely among them, very rarely.’
‘That doesn’t necessarily speak in your favour.’
‘It doesn’t?’
Edda Hoff’s waxy face showed signs of life.
‘Perhaps you should bear in mind that it is to Mr Tu and his companions that we owe evidence that your authorities for a long time failed to provide,’ she said in that special toneless voice of hers.
The man snapped the book shut.
‘Nonetheless, it would have been better for everyone if you’d only cooperated with our German colleagues from the start,’ he said. ‘Or did you have reasons for not wanting to?’
Tu jumped up and brought both fists down on the table.
‘What are you insinuating?’
‘Nothing, just—’
‘Who are you, in fact? The bloody Gestapo?’
‘Hey.’ Jericho took Tu by the shoulders and tried to pull him back into his chair, which was like trying to shift a parking meter. ‘No one’s insinuating anything. They have to check us out. Why don’t you just tell him—’
‘What, then, what?’ Tu stared at him. ‘That guy? Am I supposed to tell him how the police threw me about for six months of my life, so I still wake up drenched in sweat? So that I’m afraid to go to sleep because it might all start up again in my dreams?’
‘No, it’s just—’ Jericho paused. What had his friend just said?
‘Tian.’ Yoyo rested a hand on Tu’s fist.
‘No, I’ve had enough.’ Tu shook her off, escaped Jericho’s clutches and stomped away. ‘I want to go to a hotel. Right now! I want a break, I just want to be left in peace for an hour.’
‘You don’t need to go to a hotel,’ said Edda. ‘We have guest rooms in the Big O. I could have one prepared for you.’
‘Do that.’
The MI6 man set the book down on the table in front of him, and twisted around towards Tu as he headed for the door. ‘The questioning isn’t over yet. You can’t just—’
‘Yes I can,’ Tu said as he left. ‘If you really need an asshole to put under general suspicion, use your own.’
Jericho would have liked to ask Tu, otherwise so relaxed and controlled, and to whose house the Chinese police had paid regular visits only a few days before, what had provoked his rage to such an extent, but the nature of the investigations hurled him from one conversation into the next. His friend disappeared with a remarkably solicitous Edda Hoff, the MI6 investigator went on his way. For the few seconds that elapsed before the arrival of Jennifer Shaw, he felt a festering unease, particularly since Yoyo, the guardian of dark secrets, was staring ostentatiously into the distance, joining in with Tu’s misery.
‘And once again you know more than I do,’ he said.
She nodded mutely.
‘And it’s none of my business.’
‘It’s something I can’t tell you.’ Yoyo turned her head towards him. Her eyes glistened as if Tu’s outburst had caused new cracks in the dam of her self-control. It was slowly starting to seem to Jericho that the whole Chen family, along with their wealthy mentor, were on the edge of a nervous breakdown, in constant danger of exploding under the pressure of traumatic bulges. Whatever it was that troubled them, it was starting to get on his nerves.
‘I understand,’ he growled.
And he actually did understand. The phenomenon of being tongue-tied even when you wanted to speak was one that he was all too familiar with. He silently looked at his fingers, which were cracked, the nails jagged, the cuticles ragged. They were not attractive. He was clean, but not well looked after. Joanna had said that. For a long time he hadn’t been able to tell the difference, but at that moment he wouldn’t have been able to shake hands with himself. He neglected himself. Yoyo didn’t love herself, and the same went for Chen, and, to a startling extent, for Tu, the rock on which all egocentricity was founded. Were there any heads left in which the past wasn’t mouldering away?
Jennifer came into the room.
‘I heard you don’t feel like talking any more.’
‘Wrong.’ Yoyo rubbed her eyes. ‘We just don’t like people who don’t know our history sticking their great fat noses into it.’
‘SIS has finished stock-taking.’ Jennifer handed out thin piles of paper. ‘You’re credible, all three of you.’
‘Oh, thanks.’
‘Actually you could join your friend Tian. I’m very grateful to you, seriously!’ Her blue-green eyes said precisely that, and a tiny bit more.
‘But?’
‘I’d be even more grateful to you if you’d go on supporting our investigation.’
‘We’re happy to if you’ll let us,’ said Jericho.
‘Then I assume that’s resolved to our mutual satisfaction.’ Jennifer sat down. ‘You’re familiar with the coded message, you have been able to speculate in greater detail than we have about its missing parts, you have had contact with Kenny Xin, you know about Beijing’s involvement in African coups d’état, Korean mini-nukes, a conspiracy operating past all state institutions – would you like to hear something you don’t already know, for a change? Does the name Gerald Palstein mean anything to you?’
‘Palstein.’ Jericho scoured his memory. ‘Never heard of him.’
‘A chess piece. A rook, more of a queen, moved by circumstances. Palstein is the Strategic Planner for EMCO.’
‘EMCO the oil giant?’
‘The collapsing oil giant. Formerly number one among the companies following conservative paths that are currently perishing from an overdose of helium-3. Palstein’s task was supposed to be to save EMCO, and instead he has little more to do than cancel plans for exploration, close down one subsidiary after another and consign whole tribes to unemployment. In political terms not much is happening. It’s all the more remarkable that Palstein won’t admit defeat. In opposition to the senior board members, he took an interest in alternative energies years ago, and particularly in us. He would have liked to join us, but at the time EMCO thought we were working on things like time travel and teleporting. They didn’t take the whole business, helium-3, the space lift and so on, seriously, and when the reality of what we were doing finally kicked in no one took them seriously. But Palstein seems quite determined to win the battle.’
‘Sounds like Don Quixote?’
‘That would be to underestimate him. He isn’t one to tilt at windmills. Palstein knows that helium-3 is unbeatable, so he wants into the business. The only possible way is through us, and EMCO isn’t exactly broke yet. But a lot of people would rather see the remaining millions being put into protection for the workers. Palstein, on the other hand, maintains that the best protection is the continuing existence of the company, and says the money should be put into maintenance projects. Maybe that’s what earned him the rifle bullet.’
‘Just a moment.’ Jericho paused. ‘There was something about this on the web. An assassination attempt on an oil manager, that’s right! Last month in Canada. Nearly got him.’