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‘Calm down, child, I think they’re capable of anything. I’d just like to know
why
.’

‘This’ – Chen’s right hand made vague grasping motions – ‘what was he called again, the mercenary?’

‘Vogelaar. Jan Kees Vogelaar.’

‘Well, he would know.’

‘That’s true, he—’

They all looked at one another.

And suddenly it dawned on Jericho: of course! If Chen was right and the Mayé government really had been the victim of an assassination, then there could only be two reasons. One, public anger had boiled over. It wouldn’t be the first time an enraged mob had lynched its former tormentors, but something like that usually
happened spontaneously, and moreover used different methods of execution: dismembering by machete, a burning car tyre around the neck, clubbing to death. In the short time available, Jericho hadn’t been able to find out much about relationships in the crisis-torn West African state, but Mayé’s fall still seemed like the result of a perfectly planned, simultaneously realised operation. Within just a few hours, all the members of the close circle around the dictator were dead. As if the plan had been to silence the entire set-up. Mayé and six of his ministers had died in an explosion caused by a long-range missile, while a further ten ministers and generals had been shot.

But one of them had got away. Jan Kees Vogelaar.

Why? Had Vogelaar been playing both sides? A coup of this calibre was only possible with connections on the inside. Was Mayé’s security boss a traitor? Assuming that this was true, then—

‘—Andre Donner is a witness,’ murmured Jericho.

‘Sorry?’ asked Tu.

Jericho was staring into space.

—
Donner be liquidated
—

‘Could you perhaps let us in on your thoughts?’ Yoyo suggested.

‘
Donner be liquidated
,’ said Jericho. He looked at them each in turn. ‘I know it’s bold to try to read so much into a few scraps of text. But this part seems clear to me. I’ve no idea who Donner is, but let’s assume he knows the true background to the coup. That he knows who’s pulling the strings. Then—’

—continues a grave—

A grave what? Risk? A risk that Donner, after having gone underground, might divulge what he knew?

—that he knows all about—

—statement coup Chinese government—

‘Then what?’ repeated Yoyo.

‘Pay attention!’ shouted Jericho, worked up. ‘Let’s assume Donner knows the Chinese government were involved in the coup. And that he also knows why. He could flee. He’s probably not even called Donner yet in Equatorial Guinea, he’s somewhere in the – in the government? Yes, in the government! Or he’s high up in the military, a general or something. But whatever he is, he needs a new identity. So he becomes Donner, Andre Donner. If we had photos of those formerly in power and one of him, we’d be able to recognise him! He goes to Berlin, far away, and builds up a new existence, a new life. New papers, new background.’

‘Opens a restaurant,’ says Tu. ‘And then he gets tracked down.’

‘Yes. Vogelaar is given the commission of coordinating the simultaneous liquidation of the Mayé clan. One of them slips through his fingers, someone who could ruin everything. Think of the fuss they made trying to eliminate Yoyo just because she intercepted some cryptic material. Vogelaar’s backers are worried. As long as Donner is still alive he could decide to bust the whole thing open.’

‘The fact that a foreign regime brought the coup about, for example.’

‘Which wouldn’t be anything new,’ said Jericho. ‘Just look at all the places where the CIA has played a part: 1962, attempted coup in Cuba. Early seventies, Chile. 2018, the collapse in North Korea. No one had any doubt that they were involved in the assassination of Kim Jong Un. There are also some who claim China helped in Saudi Arabia in 2015, so why not in West Africa too?’

‘I see. And now Vogelaar has arrived in Berlin to eliminate the miraculously rediscovered Donner.’ Tu gave his neck a thorough scratch. ‘That really is bold.’

‘But conceivable.’ Chen gave a slight cough. ‘It’s perfectly clear to me anyway.’

‘So there you go,’ whispered Yoyo.

‘What?’ asked Jericho.

‘Well what do you think?’ she snapped. ‘Like I said! It’s the government. I have the Party at my throat!’

‘Yes,’ said Jericho wearily. ‘It looks that way.’

She put her face in her hands. ‘We need to know more about this country. More about Vogelaar, more about Donner. The more we know, the better equipped we’ll be to defend ourselves. Failing that I’ll just have to pack my bags. And so will all of you. I’m sorry.’

Tu studied his fingernails.

‘Good idea,’ he said.

Yoyo lifted her face from the grave-like shape formed by her hands. ‘What?’

‘To pack your things, leave the country. It’s a good idea. That’s exactly what we’ll do.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘What is there to understand? We’ll look for this Donner guy. He’s in grave danger. We’ll warn him, and in return he’ll tell us what we need to know.’

‘You want to—’ Jericho thought he’d misheard. ‘Tian, the man lives in Berlin. That’s in Germany!’

‘If they even let us out at all,’ said Yoyo.

‘One at a time.’ Tu raised his hands. ‘You lot have more reservations than a porcupine about to engage in sexual activity. As if I were suggesting fleeing headlong over the border. Think about it for a second, the police were just here in this very house. Do you seriously believe we would still be sitting here if they had wanted to
grab us? No, we’ll just go on a little trip, all official and above board. In my private jet, if you’ll allow me to extend the invitation.’

‘And when do you want to set off?’

‘Sometime after midnight.’

Jericho stared at him, then Yoyo, then Chen.

‘Shouldn’t we perhaps—’

‘That’s the soonest we can do it,’ said Tu apologetically. ‘I’ve still got a dinner that I can’t put off, not for love nor money. It’s in an hour’s time.’

‘Shouldn’t we try calling Donner first? How do you even know for sure that he’s still in Berlin? Perhaps he’s gone away somewhere. Gone underground.’

‘You want to warn him we’re coming?’

‘I just think—’

‘That’s a lousy idea, Owen. Let’s say he answers the phone and believes you. Then we’ve lost him. You won’t have time to catch your breath and ask questions in the time it would take him to disappear. And besides, what else are you going to do? If you sit around here in Pudong you’re just going to be making a dent in all my sofa cushions.’

‘So you expect us to go to Berlin,’ croaked Hongbing. ‘In the middle of the night?’

‘I have beds on board.’

‘But—’

‘You’re not coming anyway. Just the rapid response team: Owen, Yoyo and me.’

‘Why not me?’ asked Chen, suddenly outraged.

‘It would be too tiring for you. No, no arguments! A small, agile troop is just right for this kind of thing. Nimble and agile. In the meantime, I’m sure Joanna can drown you in tea and give you foot massages.’

Jericho tried to picture Tu as agile and nimble.

‘And if we don’t find Donner?’ he asked.

‘Then we’ll wait for him.’

‘What if he doesn’t come?’

‘Then we’ll just fly back.’

‘And who,’ he asked, fuelled by a dark suspicion, ‘might the pilot be?’

Tu raised his eyebrows. ‘Who do you think? Me.’

* * *

A few kilometres away and several metres higher up, Xin looked down on the city at night.

After a traffic jam had finally slowed the blasted dump truck down to a walking pace, he had jumped off, caught the metro to Pudong – given that there was no free COD in sight – put the last few hundred metres to the Jin Mao Tower behind him
at a running pace, and then crossed the lobby as if he had taken leave of his senses. He was on a mission to satiate his hunger for something sweet, and there was a chocolate boutique in the foyer boasting pralines for the price of haute couture. Xin had purchased a pack of them, half of which he plundered just during the journey upwards. Chocolate, he had realised, helped him to think. After arriving in his suite he had thrown off his clothes, rushed into the huge marble bathroom, turned the shower on and almost rubbed his skin away in his attempt to cleanse himself of the filth of Xaxu and the stain of his defeat.

Yoyo had got away from him yet again, and this time he didn’t have the faintest idea where she might be. The answer machine was on at Jericho’s place. Fuelled by a surge of hate, Xin contemplated blowing up the detective agency. Then he discarded the thought. He couldn’t afford to be vindictive in his current situation, and besides, after the disaster in Hongkou he didn’t have the appropriate weapons. What’s more, it was clear to him that there was no real reason to punish someone purely because they had exercised their God-given right to defend themselves.

Cleansed, enveloped in a cocoon of terry towelling and at an agreeable distance from the city, Xin tried to impose some order on the hornet swarm of his thoughts. First, he picked up the clothes lying all around him and dumped them in the washing basket. Then he glanced over at the ravaged box of pralines. Accustomed to subjecting his consumption of any kind of food to a master plan, and one which was intended to maintain the symmetry of what was on offer for as long as possible, Xin shuddered at what he had done. He normally ate from the outside, working his way in. There should be no excessive decimation, and the relationship of the components to one another had to remain constant. Just devouring everything on one side of the packaging was an unthinkable act! But that was exactly what he had done. He’d pounced on it like an animal, like one of those degenerate creatures in Quyu.

He sank down into the sprawling armchair in front of the floor-to-ceiling window and watched as dusk enveloped Shanghai. The city was sprinkled with multicoloured lights, an impressive spectacle despite the lousy weather, but all Xin could see was the betrayal of his aesthetic principles. Jericho, Yoyo, Yoyo, Jericho. The transgressions in the box needed to be corrected. Where was Yoyo? Where was the detective? Who had been driving the silver flying machine? The box, the box! Unless he created order there he would drift right into insanity. He began to rearrange the remaining pralines according to the Rorschach style, starting from scratch again and again until an axis ran through the box, a stable, regulatory element, on either side of which the remaining pralines mirrored each other. After that he felt better, and he began to take stock of things. There was no longer any point in following Yoyo and the detective. In just a few days everything would be over anyway, and then they could talk all they
wanted. They were no longer important. The operation was the priority now, and there was only one person who could still endanger the plan. Xin wondered what conclusions Jericho had drawn from the fragments of the message that he, Kenny Xin, had sent to the heads of Hydra after tracking down the Berlin restaurant of a certain Andre Donner, recommending his immediate liquidation. Unfortunately he had attached a modified decoding program to the mail, an improved, quicker version. Every few months, the codes were exchanged for new ones. The fact that Yoyo had intercepted this very email had been the worst possible luck.

And there was nothing that could be done about it.

Andre Donner. Nice name, nice try.

He dialled a number on his mobile.

‘Hydra,’ he said.

‘Have you eliminated the problem?’

As always, their conversation was transmitted in code. In just a few words, Xin reported on what had happened. His conversation partner fell silent for a while. Then he said:

‘That’s a mess, Kenny. You’ve done nothing you can be proud of.’

‘Those that live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,’ responded Xin illtemperedly. ‘If you’d implemented a safe algorithm, we wouldn’t even be in this situation.’

‘It
is
safe. And that’s not the issue here.’

‘The issue is whatever I consider worthy of being the issue.’

‘You’ve got a nerve.’

‘Oh really?’ Xin roared with laughter. ‘You’re my contact man, or had you already forgotten that? Just a glorified Dictaphone. If I want to hear a lecture, I’ll call him.’

The other man cleared his throat indignantly. ‘So what are you suggesting?’

‘The same thing I’ve already suggested. Our friend in Berlin has to be got rid of. Anything less would be irresponsible. And besides, the address of the restaurant is in the goddamn email. If Jericho comes up with the idea of getting in touch with him, then we really have a problem!’

‘You want to go to Berlin?’

‘As soon as possible. I’m not leaving that to anyone else.’

‘Wait.’ The line went dead for a moment. Then the voice came back. ‘We’ll book a night flight for you.’

‘What about backup?’

‘Already on its way. The specialist is setting off in advance as requested. Try to be more careful with the personnel and equipment this time.’

Xin curled his lip contemptuously. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘No, after all, I’m just the Dictaphone,’ said the voice icily. ‘But he’s worried. So make sure you
finish
the job this time.’

On 21 April, Sid Bruford and two of his friends made a pilgrimage to an event in Calgary, where EMCO had proposed to outline a future that no longer existed. No one harboured any illusions that Gerald Palstein would announce anything other than the end of oil-sand mining in Alberta, which meant that all hopes were now focused on strategies for redevelopment, consolidation, or at the very least a social security plan. It was in hope of this that they were standing there, aside from the fact that it was only right and proper to be present at your own burial.

The plaza, a square park in front of the company headquarters, was filling slowly but steadily with people. As if mocking their misery, a bright yellow sun shone down on the crowd from a steel blue sky, creating a climate of new beginnings and confidence. Bruford, unwilling to abandon himself to the general bitterness, had decided to make the best of the situation. It was part of the dance of death to make fatalism look like self-confidence, to stock up on the required quota of beer and to avoid violence wherever possible. They talked about baseball for a while and stayed towards the back of the crowd, where the air was less saturated with sweat. Bruford held up his mobile and circled, trying to capture the atmosphere around them. Two pleasingly scantily clad girls came into sight, noticed him, and then started to pose, giggling. A complex of empty buildings stretched out behind them, the headquarters of a now-bankrupt firm for drilling technology, if he remembered rightly. The girls liked him – that was as sure a bet as the closure of Imperial Oil. He had handsome, almost Italian-looking features, and the sculpture of his body was his incentive for wearing little more than shorts and a muscle shirt, even in frosty temperatures. He lingered on them with the phone’s camera and laughed. The girls teased. After a few minutes he turned back to his friends for a second, then when he looked round at the girls again, he realised that they were now filming him. Flattered, he began to play the fool, pulling faces, swaggering around, and even his friends felt encouraged to join in. None of them was behaving particularly maturely, or like people who had just had their sole source of income taken from them. The girls began, amidst fits of laughter, to enact scenes from Hollywood films, prompting the boys to respond to their pantomime repertoire, calling out the solutions to one another boisterously. The day was shaping up to be more fun than expected. Besides, whenever
Bruford examined his reflection in the mirror he always thought he would be better placed in the film industry than the Cold Lake open-cast mine. Perhaps he would even be grateful to EMCO one day. His mood soared up to the April sun on the wings of Icarus, with the result that he almost missed the small, bald-headed oil manager climbing up onto the platform.