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CHAPTER 1
THE LIGHTS OF Beijing, city of twenty-two million souls, stretched as far as the eye could see and shimmered and danced in the July heat, adding a touch of magic to the darkness. Shang Li loved this city, his home, and paused at one of the viewpoints on Qiaobai Road to admire the sight of one of the most populous places in the world. All those lights, all those people, mostly living in harmony, striving to improve their lives, working, resting, playing.
The city hadn’t swallowed up the surrounding hills and mountains yet, but offshoots could be found in the intricate folds of the green surrounding valleys. There were reservoirs and power plants, quarries and industrial parks, and shops and restaurants to serve the workers. One day, Li suspected, the city of patriotism, innovation, inclusiveness and virtue—its core values—would extend even further. He wasn’t normally a cheerleader forofficial designations, but thought his city’s values a model for all to live by. He was a true patriot, always strived to do better, harbored no hate in his heart, and tried to be virtuous. But if everyone else in the city below lived by those values, he would be out of a job.
He couldn’t linger over the view so resumed his journey along the deserted winding road. He had been summoned by colleagues who wouldn’t have wasted his time if there was nothing to see. He’d instructed them to alert him only if the target of their surveillance did anything out of his ordinary routine. His colleagues knew how much importance he set on family time. He’d been halfway through dinner with his wife Su Yun and their children Mai and Han when Jinhai had called.
Li slowed his gunmetal grey Changan CS75 SUV as he approached the signpost for Yunhu Forest Park, making a left onto an otherwise deserted track. It cut through a copse of trees so thick even the pervasive glow of the city lights was obscured. He drove for two hundred yards until the track reached the edge of the vast Miyun Reservoir, which stretched away into the darkness. He turned off the headlights as he followed the bank for another five hundred yards before slowing as he rolled into a large parking lot. There was one other vehicle there, a blue LDV 9 van, parked near the perimeter fence, overlooking Zhonghang University. The distinctive red-roofed campus buildings stretched away to the south and west, looking eerily unpopulated at this time of night.
Li stopped next to the van and got out of his vehicle. The warm July air hit him along with the strong scent from the pine andjuniper trees edging the northern side of the lot. He hurried to the van, opened the side door and climbed in to find his three-man surveillance team crowded in the back. Kha Delun, a former army lieutenant who’d been discharged due to a leg injury, was on comms, and Ling Kang, ex-Beijing Police, operated the controls of a surveillance drone. Jiang Jinhai, the head of the team, watched the drone footage on-screen. He had joined Li’s unit from Guoanbu, the Ministry of State Security, and was a quiet, methodical man.
“What have you got?” Li asked, sliding the door shut behind him.
“Zhou drove all the way out here to stand around an empty university campus,” Jinhai replied, gesturing at the screen. “It’s not exciting, but it’s certainly out of the ordinary.”
Li nodded. He had asked to be notified of anything unusual and this certainly qualified as odd behavior from David Zhou, one of Beijing’s richest and most powerful men, currently standing on his own in a courtyard between three lecture halls. Flecks of grey in his perfectly styled short hair spoke of his years of experience, but his trim physique gave no hint of his age. He had weathered well, despite Beijing’s demanding and pressurized business environment. He wore a dark tailored suit that would have looked at home on a Milan catwalk, and seemed to be checking his surroundings nervously. It had to be someone or something important that had brought him all the way out here without his personal protection team.
“What’s he doing?” Li asked.
Jinhai shook his head and shrugged.
“Waiting,” said Kang.
“But for what?” Li wondered.
What would bring David Zhou out here? They’d been following the man for a while now and knew his habits. He spent his days in the office and in the evenings took business meetings in some of Beijing’s finest restaurants. His life isn’t completely mundane, Li told himself, thinking of Zhou’s visits to the strange old woman in Pinggu District, one of Beijing’s poorest neighborhoods. Those trips seemed to support their client’s theory that David Zhou was a man with something to hide, as did tonight’s solitary excursion.
Li noticed movement on-screen and felt the tension rise as the others too registered a shadow moving toward Zhou from between two campus buildings. A man emerged from the gloom. He wore dark trousers and a black hooded top with rolled-up sleeves. The two figures nodded tersely to each other.
“Zoom in on his left wrist,” Li suggested, and Kang changed the zoom on the drone camera to focus on the hooded man’s arm.
There was a distinctive tattoo of twin dragons entwined around a third, more ferocious firebreather.
“Does anyone recognize that?” Li asked.
The others shook their heads, and he wondered whether the tattoo was just a one-off or a symbol with underlying, as yet unknown, significance.
“I wouldn’t have come if I’d known it was you I’d meet.” Zhou’s words to the newcomer were broadcast through the van’s speaker system.
Li moved closer to the comms unit to hear the conversation being picked up by the directional microphone pointed at their target. Who was Zhou meeting? Why the secrecy?
“You had to come,” the hooded man replied. “You know the game is almost over. One of us will define China for a generation.”
“It will not be you,” Zhou responded angrily. He started to back away.
“You’re wrong,” the hooded man countered. “Your being here tonight has handed me victory.”
On-screen, Zhou stopped in his tracks and turned to face the other man, face creased in puzzlement. “How?”
Li heard a sound outside the van. An animal?
The side door suddenly slid open and a masked figure tossed something into the cabin.
“Grenade!” Li yelled, but there was nowhere to take cover.
The masked man slammed the door and the central locking snapped shut.
Li thought of Mai and Han, his wonderful children, and of his beautiful Su Yun. He prayed they would not feel his loss too deeply.
