The White Mountain by David Wingrove Read Free Book Online Page A

Yuan turned away, recognizing at once the implications of the thing. Willow-plum sickness… He had a vague recollection of reading about the disease. It was one of those many sicknesses the Hung Mao had brought with them when they had first opened China up, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But this was worse, far worse than anything those ancient sea traders had spread among the port women, because this time his kind had no natural immunity to it. None at all.
    He turned back. ‘Are you certain, Surgeon Yu?’
    â€˜As certain as we can be, Chieh Hsia .’
    â€˜Good. Then I want you to isolate each victim and question them as to who they have slept with in the past thirty days. Then I want all contacts traced and isolated. Understand?’
    He looked past Yu at his Chancellor. ‘Nan Ho… I want you to contact all the heads of the Minor Families and have them come here, at once. By my express order.’
    Nan Ho bowed. ‘Chieh Hsia …’
    And meanwhile he would call his fellow T’ang. For action must be taken. Immediate action, before the thing got out of hand.
    Karr was buttoning his tunic when Chen came into the room, barely stopping to knock. He turned from the mirror, then stopped, seeing the look of delight on Chen’s face.
    â€˜What is it?’
    Chen handed Karr a file. ‘It’s our friend. There’s no doubt about it. These are stills taken from a Security surveillance film thirty-two hours back at Nantes spaceport.’
    Karr flipped the folder open and flicked through the stills a moment, then looked back at Chen, his face lit up. ‘Then we’ve got him, neh?’
    Chen’s face fell. He shook his head.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜I’m afraid not. It seems his man, Lehmann, picked him up and carried him out of there.’
    â€˜And no one intercepted him? Where were Security?’
    â€˜Waiting for orders.’
    Karr made to speak, then understood. ‘Gods… Again?’
    Chen nodded.
    â€˜And the Security Captain. He committed suicide, neh?’
    Chen sighed. ‘That’s right. It fits the pattern. I checked back in their surveillance records. The computer registers that a man matching DeVore’s description passed through Nantes spaceport four times in the past month.’
    â€˜And there was no Security alert?’
    â€˜No. Nor would there have been. The machine was reprogrammed to ignore the instruction from Bremen. As he was wearing false retinas, the only way they could have got him was by direct facial recognition, and because they rely so heavily on computer-generated alerts, the chance of that was minimal.’
    â€˜So how did we get these?’
    Chen laughed. ‘It seems there was a fairly high-ranking Junior Minister on the same flight as DeVore. He complained about the incident direct to Bremen, and when they discovered they had no record of the event they instigated an immediate enquiry. This resulted.’
    Karr sat down heavily, setting the file to one side, and began to pull on his boots. For a moment he was quiet, thoughtful, then he looked up again.
    â€˜Do we know where he’d been?’
    â€˜Boston. But who he saw there or what he was doing we don’t yet know. Our friends in North American Security are looking into it right now.’
    â€˜And the assassins?’ Karr asked, pulling on the other boot. ‘Do we know who they were?’
    Chen shrugged. ‘The two Han look like Triad assassins, but the third… well, we have him on record as a probable Ping Tiao sympathizer.’
    Karr looked up, raising his eyebrows. ‘Ping Tiao? But they don’t exist any longer. At least, that’s what our contacts down below tell us. Our friend Ebert is supposed to have wiped them out.’
    Chen nodded. ‘You don’t think…?’
    Karr laughed. ‘Even Ebert wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to work with the Ping Tiao . DeVore