He held the thought in mind a moment longer, then frowned. At the table the small men were still haggling and bargaining over nothings—Lo Han's crude arrogance matched by K'ang's petty greed. He looked past them and saw how the eyes of Lo Han's henchmen had strayed to him, troubled by his changed expression. Turning away, he went to the door and tugged it open, ignoring the looks of query from K'ang and Lo Han. Outside he nodded to Soucek and walked on, conscious of his questioning glance.
Soucek caught up with him at the corridor's end. "What is it, Stefan?" he whispered, concerned.
Lehmann turned, facing the tall, cadaverous man, taking his upper arms in his hands, but for a moment he said nothing.
He knew that they had their rules, their limitations, even here where there seemed to be no rules at all, only brute force. All human life set limits to its actions. There was always a point beyond which they would not go. But he, who valued nothing, had no such rules, no limits. He was beyond good and evil. For him nothing mattered but the accomplishment of his will—the fulfillment of his singular desire.
And if that were so, why then should he wait? Why did he not act at once, not fearing the consequences? Knowing that the consequences were likely to favor him. It was this that he had been thinking as he stood there behind K'ang—this that had made him frown. He squeezed Soucek's arms and stared into his pale green eyes.
"Are you with me, Jiri?"
Soucek nodded, seeming to grasp at once what was happening. "Right now?" he asked.
"Why not? The two together. They might suspect treachery from each other, but not from us. They'll think we fear an,all-out war between the long. But with the two of them dead . . ."
He let go of Soucek's arms.
The tall man smiled. It was clear that the idea appealed to him strongly; that the thought of killing K'ang scratched a long unsatisfied itch. He drew his gun. "Okay. I'll take Lo Han's henchmen."
It was both clever and sensitive of him. In effect he was saying, You, Lehmann, are the leader. To you goes the honor of killing K'ang and Lo Han.
Lehmann nodded slowly and pulled the huge pearl-white gun from its webbing holster.
"Yes," he said, his voice cold, brittle like ice. "Let's do it now."
lehmann STOOD there in the Oven Man's doorway, a tall, unnaturally gaunt figure dressed in white. At his feet lay the corpses of three of the runners who had attacked them. Two more lay dead inside the room. The rest had fled, throwing down their hatchets, as if it were Yang Wen, the God of Hell himself, that faced them.
The killing of Lo Han and K'ang A-yin had shocked the local tong bosses. But shock had quickly led to the realization that there was a power vacuum. A vacuum that needed to be filled, and quickly. Within the hour, two of them met and decided to act. A messenger had been sent to Lehmann to set up a meeting to arrange a truce, but the meeting was merely a pretext. The bosses had decided to deal with Lehmann before he became a problem.
Lehmann had known that. In fact, he had counted on it. He had turned up with three men, unarmed, knowing how the tang bosses would try to play it. Fifteen runners, armed with silver hatchets. These would administer the "death of a thousand cuts"—a warning to all other potential usurpers.
But Lehmann had had no intention of dying. He had other lessons in mind.
An hour before the meeting he had set up small groups of men in the approach corridors, making sure they understood that they were not to intercede in any way, merely show themselves when the tong runners beat their retreat. Then, when the runners had shown up— hard-faced, arrogant little shits, dangerously overconfident— Lehmann had set his men behind him and faced them alone, taunting them, belittling them, until, one by one, they had come at him.
Soucek stared at him now, remembering.
Lehmann had straight-fisted the first runner before the man had even known the blow was on its way, the force of the punch sending the man staggering back. He was dead before he fell.
The second runner had been more cautious, but Lehmann had taken the hatchets from him as if he were a child, then had lifted him one-handed and snapped his neck. He had stepped over the corpse and made a beckoning gesture with his left hand.
Come on...
Three more had tried, the last with a kind of fateful resignation, as if mesmerized by the power of the man who stood before him. If man it was. And then, as one, they had broken, running from the figure in white, whose thin, emaciated limbs were paler than ice, and whose eyes were like tiny windows into hell.
He had heard the catcalls of the men in the approach corridors; the jeers and mocking laughter as they goaded the fleeing runners. And then had watched them return, to find Lehmann as he was now, framed in the doorway to the Oven Man's room.
Soucek looked about him, finding his own awe reflected in every face, there in the wide, admiring eyes of every man. He turned, facing Lehmann again, then knelt, abasing himself, laying down his neck before the man, not quite knowing why he did so, only that this was what he ought to do. And, all about him, the others did the same, letting Lehmann move between them, pressing his foot against each exposed neck. Marking them. Making them his men. His absolutely. Even unto death. Just as Li Yuan had done on the day of his coronation.
And when Soucek stood again, it was with a sense of Tightness, of utter certainty. There was no going back from this. From here on there would be no half measures. It was Lehmann or nothing. And with that sense of Tightness came another—a sense of destiny. Of things beginning. It was like being in a dream, or at the beginning of a myth. From this time on they walked a special path. And wherever it took them—to Heaven or down into the very depths of Hell—he would walk it behind the man. For that was how it was from this moment, for all of them gathered there. It had begun.
IT WAS AFTER FOUR when Emily got back. She kicked off her shoes and went through to the bathroom, humming softly to herself. Reaching up, she placed her hand against the side of the shower unit. Good. It was hot. That meant the servant had remembered to come in earlier. She pulled the dress up over her head and let it fall onto the chair at her side, then slipped out of her chemise.
It had been a memorable evening, and an unexpectedly enjoyable one. She stepped into the shower, casting her mind back over the evening's events as she soaped herself beneath the steady fall of water.
Michael Lever really wasn't so bad, now she had come to know him better. Not that she had always felt that way. When she had first joined MemSys she had viewed the Levers with a distant loathing, not distinguishing much between father and son, seeing only the rapa-ciousness of the parent Company, ImmVac, and the unheeding damage it did in its eternal quest for profit. But now . . . Well, the past six weeks had taught her much. Systems were systems and they ought to be opposed, but it was not so easy with people. You had to take each person as you found them. And in many respects Michael Lever was a good man—honest, reliable, capable of instilling a fierce protective-ness and loyalty in those about him. Was it his fault that he'd been bom heir to ImmVac?
Before now she hadn't been sure. She had wondered whether there really was any difference between father and son, but tonight, listening to him talk about what he wanted for the future, she had seen another side of him—one she had never guessed existed. That desire for change—that burning need in him to do something for the ordinary people of America . . . was that real or was it merely rhetoric? Despite the warmth of the water, she shivered, just thinking about it. His passion—that fierce, uncompromising fire she had glimpsed when he'd turned to her briefly—had seemed real enough. But how far would he go along that road? As far as she was willing to go, or would his courage fail him in the face of genuine change? Would he shy away from taking that ultimate step?