The creature wandered diagonally across his chest, stopping for a few seconds to graze his nipple, as if to smell it with the mandibles. Was it confused? It could have jabbed in its death venom by now. He held his nerve.
Much good it did him. The bug was still on his chest, confused by the aerosol scent under his arms, to either side of it. It didn’t know which way to go. It backtracked slower than ever over to the left side of his chest and if it stayed there…
He had only one idea. He had to try it now. The was no time…
Stone threw back the sheet. The click. The shell flipped open and the gossamer wings sprang out momentarily, hovering. Stone’s body jackknifed. He caught the bug in the sheet and threw it to the floor, looking around for something to kill it with. Stone heard the door to the apartment slam.
Pulling on his jeans and boots, he stamped hard onto the fluttering device beneath the sheet, felt it crack open beneath his heel, then flipped on the light and scanned the place for more insects as he made for the door.
Stone slipped out of the apartment door and down the corridor and looked up. The elevator was descending past the fourth floor. Stone took the stairway, leaping down a flight at a time.
He’d missed the elevator by a few seconds. Darted outside, looking left and right. A figure walking away, fifty metres from him. Stone began to jog. The man glanced round and broke into a run, making for the shadows underneath the elevated highway again. He was fast, this guy, but Stone was faster. He was gaining. He could have him by the time they went under the highway — possibly sooner.
Stone closed to within twenty metres of him, then dropped his pace. Using his fitness. He would keep the guy an even twenty metres in front and run him until he was exhausted. When the fellow turned to fight, Stone would have him retching from exhaustion.
Stone ran on bare-chested through the hot night air of Shanghai. There was no traffic. They ran back across a dual track road, then into side streets. The man was turning, doubling back, trying to lose him. But Stone was too close for that. This guy was not getting away.
Onto the riverfront, the Bund. Again the man turned back. It was that or jump in the river. Stone followed into a side street. A dead end. This was it. There’d be a weapon, of course. Stone would have to strike fast and hard.
The fellow jogged to a stop and turned. Exhausted, feeling for the knife in his back pocket. Stone kept momentum. His foot landed a high, flying kick in the man’s chest, thumping him to the ground. Stone grabbed the knife. Then took him by the collar. Not much of a hit man, this guy. But then all he’d done was to bribe the superintendent into giving him a key and shove the robot bug inside.
Stone shouted questions at him in his crude Chinese, but got nothing. ‘Ni wei shenme? Shei yao mousha..?’ The bastard was gasping for air. Probably couldn’t understand Stone’s ragged Chinese anyhow. Stone dragged him over to the wall in frustration and slammed him up against it. Let’s see if he understood a blade in his throat.
Something stepped between them, shoved Stone backwards. Then fetched the gasping man a wide, swinging blow with the back of the hand. There was a torrent of words in violent Chinese, like a ten second interrogation. The voice was Ying Ning’s. The guy didn’t answer. He looked suddenly furious and threw a fist at her. Not so exhausted that he wanted to take this from a woman. Only to be kicked hard between his legs and take another contemptuous blow from the back of her hand.
Stone stood back to enjoy the show. Incensed at being struck by a woman, the guy lashed out again. Again, his blows were parried and his feet taken from under him by a very neat martial art move, so fast Stone could barely see it in the dark. Ying Ning was hot-shit at Kung Fu or whatever she was using. She stood over the man and spat hard in his face.
Perhaps the spitting and the back-handed slaps were part of her own brand of martial art. The art of Ying Ning. It was effective, anyway, Stone would give her that.
Ying Ning fired more questions at the man, but got no answers. After a minute or so she stood back, hand on jutting hip and spat copiously at the man’s face once more. Suddenly like the whore in the Snake Market again. She lit a cigarette and turned round to Stone.
‘Come, Rockhead,’ she said, and strolled back to the motor scooter, rolling with her trademark insolent swagger. She threw Stone her helmet to hold, gestured to him to get on the back. ‘We go to your apartment.’
‘Who was he?’ asked Stone.
‘Too scared to speak,’ she said over her shoulder. She was holding the cigarette, glowing red in the fingers of her throttle hand as she went along. It was an electric motor, almost silent, and they could speak easily. Finally she spoke, ‘He try to kill you, Rockhead?’
‘Yes.’
‘Maybe you should kill him. He was weak. Should be safer, I think.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to kill people,’ he said.
Stone’s mind went bizarrely to the therapist and his “rules for living” after leaving the army. Don’t kill any more people was one of his rules, though it wasn’t one the therapist was expecting.
Ying Ning snorted. ‘You killed plenty people, Rockhead,’ she said. ‘I see in your eyes. You should kill him, before he back next time and kill you.’
There was a lot more to this girl than over-active saliva glands and a talent for social networking.
At the apartment block, the night porter nodded politely to Stone, showing no surprise that he was returning with a woman. Like he’d shown no surprise when Stone chased an assassin from the building. On second thoughts it was understandable since the guy had given the assassin a key in the first place.
In the elevator Stone turned to Ying Ning.
‘Who is trying to kill us?’ asked Stone. ‘This wasn’t a professional. It wasn’t the Chinese government, and it wasn’t Special Circumstances this time. And yet he used the robot bug, just like the one in Hong Kong.’
Ying Ning shrugged. She had a look as if to say the threat of death for her was an every day thing, and she was OK with that. She'd take things as they came. Stone had seen that look before a few years ago. In the mirror.
‘When did you first kill someone?’ he asked.
‘I was seventeen, a factory girl,’ said Ying Ning. Didn’t miss a beat. 'My boss said I had to work late. Told me to come to his office, and then he raped me. I cried for days, but I had to work, and he was laughing. It took him a month to try it again. I killed him with a screwdriver.’
She had a look on her face as if to say andI never looked back…
— oO0Oo-
Stone checked the apartment again. He had no intention of going to sleep and risking another exotic adventure with a Japanese hornet. He took out the computer and placed it on the table. He’d use the time to figure out what Semyonov’s riddles and rhymes had meant. He had a sudden desire to research variations in the earth’s gravitational field on the Internet.
Only a couple of minutes later, the door opened from the bathroom and a figure emerged into the half-light. Stone continued at the computer, but felt the cat-like, velvet steps coming towards him. Ying Ning. She was standing behind him, silent.
‘Worried I’ll kick you out for snoring?’ he said, still looking at the screen. ‘Go ahead and get some sleep. You’ve had a long day following me around Shanghai. I promise I’ll stay handy with the fly swat.’