Part 27 (1/2)

The girl came just then with another pot of steaming tea, and she poured them both a cup.

'Xie xie,' Parker said. Parker said. Thank you Thank you.

Theo almost choked on the hot liquid. 'Well spoken, Alfred.'

'Well, I thought I'd learn some of the lingo while I'm here. Comes in useful in my line of work and anyway, you see, old chap, there's someone I want to impress.'

Theo watched his friend turn quite pink.

'Alfred, you sly dog. Who's the lucky lady? Anyone I know?'

'Yes, as a matter of fact, she is. The mother of one of your pupils.'

'Not Anthea Mason, surely.'

Parker looked put out. 'Of course not. The lady is called Valentina Ivanova.' Just the mention of her name painted a shy smile on his lips.

'For heaven's sake, Alfred,' Theo said sharply, 'you must be mad. You're asking for trouble.'

Parker blinked behind his spectacles, taken aback by the unexpected heat of the response. 'What do you mean, Theo? She's a wonderful woman.'

'Oh, she's beautiful, I grant you that. But she's a White Russian.'

'So? What's wrong with that?'

Theo sighed. 'Oh, Alfred, everyone knows those women are desperate to marry a European. Any European. The poor creatures are stuck here, no papers, no money, no jobs for them. It must be h.e.l.l. That's why half the prost.i.tutes in the brothels of Junchow are White Russian women. Don't look so shocked, it's a fact.' He softened his tone. 'I'm sorry to burst your bubble, my friend, but she's just using you.'

Parker shook his head, but Theo could see his confidence draining away. The journalist removed his spectacles and started to clean them thoroughly with a virginal white handkerchief. 'I thought you'd understand,' he said gruffly without looking up. 'You of all people. About all this love business. The way it makes a chap feel quite . . .' He paused.

'Ill?'

Parker attempted a smile. 'Yes, I feel ill.' He replaced his spectacles and stared, immobile, at the carefully refolded handkerchief between his fingers. 'I see her face everywhere,' he said softly. 'In the mirror when I shave, on the blank page when I type up my pieces, even on old Gallifrey's desk blotter - he's my editor - during deadline conferences.'

'You've got it bad, old fellow. She has certainly hooked you.'

'I thought you'd understand,' he said again.

'Because I'm with Li Mei, you mean? No, Li Mei is not with me for my money, I promise you that. For a start I haven't got any, more's the pity, and anyway she comes from a wealthy Chinese family that has turned its back on her because of me. So it's a very different situation. I warn you, steer well clear of Valentina Ivanova. She'll just walk away the moment you take her back to England.'

Parker's mouth was taut. He pushed aside his cup untouched. 'I did wonder what a beautiful and accomplished woman like that would see in a chap like me.'

'Oh, Alfred, get a grip on yourself. Like I said, you're a first-cla.s.s diamond.'

Parker shrugged stiffly.

'Look, why not just enjoy her company? Take her to bed for a few months and get her perfume out of your blood, then you don't . . .'

'Theo, you may possess a heartless heathen soul,' Parker said without rancour, 'but I do not. I am a Christian, you see, and as such I try to follow His commandments. So no, I won't bed her and then abandon her.'

'More fool you, my friend.'

There was a silence between them. A girl came offering sugared dumplings on a tray, but they both waved her away. Behind them a man shouted in triumph as he won his game of mah-jongg. Theo lit a cigarette. His throat ached; he'd smoked too many recently.

'Leave her now,' he said quietly, 'before you get in too deep. I'm saying this for your own good. And don't forget there's the daughter as well. Not easy, that one.'

Parker ran an uncertain hand over his high forehead, trying to hold his thoughts together. 'I don't know, Theo, maybe you're right. It seems to me that love is such a destructive force. Love of a person, love of an ideal, love of a country. It just wipes out everything else and causes havoc. And as for the daughter, don't even mention her to me. That girl is beyond help.'

23.

Chang stood in the dark. Still as stone. They were there, all around him. He could hear them. The rustle of a sleeve, the brush of thigh against wall, the sc.r.a.pe of shoe on gravel. It had been a risk. To show himself at the funeral. It meant they would track him down, he knew that. But it would have brought dishonour on him if he had shunned Yuesheng's final moment. Yuesheng was his blood companion and he owed him respect, especially as it could so easily have been Chang's own body lying dead in the cellar that night when the Kuomintang attacked. So now the Black Snakes were here. Death lay in the shadows, awaiting its feast.

He was in a cobbled square in the old town, his back pressed to a studded oak door, inset under an arch. Black figures flicked from one street to another, crouched and coming fast from all directions. Movement in doorways. Sharp eyes seeking him. No moon to highlight the blades in their fists but he had no doubt that they were there, hungry for blood.

He counted six of them in all, but could hear more. One was standing tight against a wall no more than ten paces to his right, guarding the entrance to a narrow hutong hutong, an alleyway that led deep into the maze of back streets. He had a harsh way of breathing. With a silent leap and an upward slam of his heel, Chang put an end to it, but before the body had even touched the ground, he was into the hutong hutong and running, low and lithe. Above him in an upstairs window a light flooded on and a shout sounded from behind, but he didn't turn. and running, low and lithe. Above him in an upstairs window a light flooded on and a shout sounded from behind, but he didn't turn.

He moved faster. Ducked into deeper darkness. Feet skidding on rotting filth. He led them on through the alleys, stringing them out as they fought for speed, so that when the fastest man found himself at a crossroads twenty feet ahead of his companions, he had no idea what flew out of the shadows and thudded into his chest, snapping ribs like twigs, until it was too late and he couldn't breathe.

Chang swept through the darkness. Winding and twisting. Ambus.h.i.+ng. One man lost the use of a leg and another the sight in one eye. But a nighttime honey wagon, the cart piled high with human manure and the stench enough to choke a man, blocked his path and he was forced to swerve left down a slope that led nowhere.

A death trap.

Sheer walls on three sides of a rough courtyard. One way in. One way out. Six men spread behind him, breathing hard and spitting venom. Three of them carried knives, two wielded swords, but one held a gun and it was pointed straight at Chang's chest. He said something guttural and a sword carrier stepped forward. He came at Chang and the long blade sang through the air. Chang stilled his breathing, drew on the energy racing through his blood, and in one fluid movement swept a leg under his attacker. A sting of pain skittered down his side, but he took three rapid steps and leaped into the air at the back wall, struggled for a fingerhold, slipped, caught again, and then swung his heels over his head in a full arc. On the roof but not safe. A bullet tore past his ear.

A howl of anger down in the courtyard and the man with the gun seized the swordsman's weapon and sliced it down in a blow that disembowelled the sword's owner. The wounded man fell forward to his knees, clutching at his writhing innards as they spilled from his body, a high wailing scream rising from his mouth. A second blow from the sword silenced the scream and sent his head rolling into the gutter. The gun pointed once more at the roof. But Chang was gone.

Lydia had time to think. The stretch of twenty-two yards at the centre of the pitch was wearing thin, but around it the turf spread out like a s.h.i.+mmering lake of green. The gra.s.s was trimmed with precision and treated with a respect that baffled her because the men seemed to pay more attention to its welfare than they did to their children's. But she loved to watch cricket. She liked to imagine this same scene taking place on the other side of the world in England. At this very moment in every town and village the weekend was being besieged by men in white flannels strutting around with pads and bats, knocking h.e.l.l out of a small hard ball. It was so wonderfully pointless. Especially in this heat. Only people with nothing to do all day could think up a game so bizarre.

Men in white.

To one nation it means a game. To another it means death. Worlds apart. Oceans adrift. But what happens to someone caught in the middle? Do they drown?

'More tea, dear? You look miles away.'

'Thank you, Mrs Mason.' Lydia accepted the tea, drew her thoughts away from Chang An Lo, and helped herself to another cuc.u.mber sandwich, which she added to the plate balanced on the arm of her deckchair.

Polly's mother was wearing heavy sungla.s.ses and a wide-brimmed hat trimmed with roses from her garden, but neither quite hid the bruise around her left eye or the swelling on her cheekbone. 'I tripped over Achilles, Christopher's lazy old cat, and banged into a door, silly me,' Lydia had heard her laugh to the other wives, but it was obvious from their expressions that no one believed the lie. Lydia looked at her with new respect. To come here today for the match and face up to this humiliation with such a firm smile and a steady hand as she dispensed tea, that took courage.