Wingrove, David - Chung Kuo 02 by The Broken Wheel (v3.1)[htm] Read Free Book Online

Fu or Chai.
    A mystery . . .
    Sun Li Hua
stared down into the old man's vacant face and took a deep breath,
filled suddenly with a sense of grim satisfaction. Yes, old man, he thought, you humiliated me once, before your sons. Refused to promote my brothers. Held down my family. But
now you're dead and we will rise in spite of you. For another has
promised to raise the Sun family high, to make it second family in
all of City Africa.
    He turned away,
smiling beneath the mask of grief. It had been so easy. Fu and
Chai—what simpletons they'd been! He thought back, remembering
how he had drugged them and taped them murdering the copy of the
T'ang. But they knew nothing of that, only that they were being
sought for a crime they had no memory of committing.
    Trust—it
was a fragile thing. Break it and the world broke with it. And Wang
Hsien had broken Sun Li Hua's trust in him some years ago.
    He glanced
across and saw himself in the wall-length mirror opposite. Do I
look any different? he wondered. Does my face betray the change that's taken place in me? No. For I was
different that very day, after he'd spumed me. It was then I first
stuck the knife in him. Then. For the rest was only the fulfillment
of that first imagining. He turned and saw Fischer standing
there, watching him from the doorway. "Well, Captain, have you
found the murderers?"
    "Not yet,
Master Sun, but we shall, I promise you."
    Fischer let his
eyes rest on Sun a moment longer, then looked away. It was as DeVore
said: Sun Li Hua was the murderer. While Sun had been in his office
Fischer had had his lieutenant take a sample of his blood under the
pretext of giving him a sedative. That sample had shown what DeVore
had said it would show, traces of CT-7, a drug that created the
symptoms of acute distress.
    His shock, his
overwhelming grief—both had been chemically faked. And why fake
such things unless there was a reason? And then there was the camera.
There was no way of proving it had been tampered with, but it made
sense. Apart from himself, only Sun Li Hua knew the combination; only
Sun had the opportunity. It was possible, of course, that they had
simply not seen Fu and Chai go into the room, but his lieutenant was
a good man—alert, attentive. He would not have missed something
so obvious. Which meant that the tape of the murder had been
superimposed.
    But whose hand
lay behind all this? Hung Mien-lo? It was possible. After all, he had
most to gain from Wang Hsien's death. Yet he had seen with his own
eyes how fair, how scrupulous, Hung had been in dealing with the
matter. He had let nothing be rushed or overlooked, as if he, too,
were anxious to know who had ordered the T'ang's death.
    As he would need
to. For he would know that whoever killed a T'ang might kill again.
    No. Would kill again.
    "Captain
Fischer . . ."
    He turned. It
was Wang Ta-hung. Fischer bowed low, wondering at the same time where
Hung Mien-lo had got to.
    "Yes, Chieh
Hsia ?"
    "Have you
found them yet?"
    He hesitated. It
had been almost thirty minutes since they had begun searching for
Sun's two assistants and still there was no trace of them.
    "No, Chieh
Hsia. I'm afraid—"
    He stopped,
astonished. A man had appeared in the doorway at Wang Ta-hung's back,
his hair untidy, his clothing torn. In his hand he held a bloodied
knife.
    "Wang
Sau-leyan!"
    Ta-hung spun
around and cried out, then took two faltering steps backward, as if
he feared an attack. But Wang Sau-leyan merely laughed and threw the
knife down.
    "The
bastards were hiding in my rooms. One cut me here." He pulled
down his pau at the neck, revealing a thin line of red. "I
stuck him for that. The other tried to take my knife from me, but he
knew better after a while."
    "Gods!"
said Fischer, starting forward. "Where are they?"
    Wang Sau-leyan
straightened up, touching the wound gingerly. "Where I left
them. I don't think they'll be going far."
    Fischer turned
and looked across at the doctors. "Quick, now! Come with me, ch'un