At the New China Capital Airport in Beijing, Caldwell and Mei Lin sailed through immigration without a hitch except that an immigration officer took a lot of convincing that the console was indeed a computer. Caldwell had to switch it on and log on to cyberspace before the man was convinced. He’d never seen anything like it before and made a point of telling his colleagues that it was the weirdest and coolest computer he has ever seen. Mei Lin had explained to Caldwell that the first thing they needed to do in Beijing was to get their hands on some guns. This was not Hong Kong. Things were going to start getting dangerous.

“Believe me we won’t get far in Beijing without being armed, if only to heighten our powers of persuasion. The gun speaks a universal language. If you get caught hacking in Beijing or accessing forbidden areas, the consequences can be dire indeed. A gun may be your only hope to get yourself out of your predicament,” she explained. She knew the perfect place to get some weapons. You could even rent them by the hour.

“Perfect,” Caldwell said. He was not sure he really meant it.

After a long taxi ride, most of it on a spanking new ring road, they checked into the Zhongguancun Continental Hotel, a black obelisk bang in the center of Zhongguancun, Beijing’s version of Silicon Valley. Mei Lin informed Caldwell that Zhongguancun was just a short walk away from Tsinghua University, Beijing University and a whole bunch of other science parks at China’s cutting edge of technology.

Everything in Beijing was built to gigantic scale, making Caldwell feel totally Lilliputian. There were government buildings that filled the entire horizon, hulking great monoliths that were at once modern and traditional. The architecture was a frenetic fusion of East and West – ultra-modern architecture with Chinese characteristics. There were pagoda-like skyscrapers that disappeared into acid rain clouds. The curved roofs of office blocks modeled on ancient temples reflected sunlight in a billion different places, shining testaments to New China’s place in the world.

Beijing today was like New York or London three or four decades ago, except everything was grander, bigger, gaudier, wackier and crazier. In London or New York, corporate logos dominated the sky, perched on top of those cities’ greatest concrete and glass phallic symbols. In Beijing corporate brands not only covered everything, at night they filled the polluted yellow skies. The entire heavens became a flickering cinema screen paying homage to the corporate brands.

Mei Lin had opted for a two bedroom suite, saying that she did not feel safe in Zhongguancun, the technology Wild West of Beijing, where a woman could be dragged kicking and screaming through the lobby of a five star hotel and nobody would bat an eyelid. Caldwell had no complaints although he was a little apprehensive about having her so close. The closer Mei Lin got to him the harder it was going to be to plan his future after Fouler had given back what was taken from him. There had been an odd silence on the matter of their relationship but Caldwell reckoned that Mei Lin probably considered it all a thing of the past.

Nevertheless, he had no doubt in his mind that he’d fallen in love with her all over again and despite his reservations there was no point in denying it. He wondered whether he should let her know at dinner tonight how he felt, if only to get it out of the way. He’d rather have it out in the open than lingering, with so many important things at stake.

So at dinner over fusion cuisine Caldwell said the unspoken.

“Mei Lin, I have something to tell you.”

“Yes.”

“I think I am still in love with you. I just want to have this out in the open so that it is not an issue. I have never in my life met anyone who makes me feel the way you do and that day at the bus stop all those years ago still haunts me. Yet, I am not even sure I am capable of having a relationship, even if you were interested.”

Mei Lin said nothing. She just stared at her plate and pushed her salmon steak with lobster sauce and black beans around with her fork.

“Let’s drink to you,” she said shortly, picking up her wine glass.

“To us.”

“To us.”

The rest of dinner was spent in silence. Not an uncomfortable silence, yet a silence all the same. Caldwell felt a bit stupid for bringing up that touchy subject, but he also felt relieved that he had brought his feelings out in the open. The last thing he wanted was that kind of distraction. Now he could concentrate on thinking about the Tsinghua problem.”

“Maybe we take a walk,” Mei Lin suggested.

“Good idea, I may have had too much to eat.”

They walked along the brightly-lit streets of Zhongguancun, marveling at the lights, the holographic logos of major IT concerns dancing in the sky. The Zhongguancun architects had gone crazy in a macho game to see who could build the most outrageous building. Caldwell was particularly impressed by a two-tower glass building shaped like a dollar sign and the symbol for the New China Yuan. Despite the blistering cold and the heaviness in the air, Caldwell thought Beijing at night was easily the most romantic city in the world, putting Paris and Budapest in the shade. When a man in an ill-fitting suit on a street corner thrust a ruddy-faced Chinese baby, wrapped in a silver blanket, in his face and offered it for sale, Caldwell changed his mind about that.

“What does he mean, fifty thousand New China Yuan? He’s not really offering the baby for sale is he?” Caldwell asked Mei Lin, looking back as the cute ruddy face of the baby grew smaller, a pink blob in the distance.

“I’m afraid he is. Probably a cloned baby stolen from one of the nearby hospitals. They sell them to couples they see on the street without children. He must have mistaken us for one such couple.”

“Yeah, but on a street corner? Yikes!” Caldwell exclaimed, thinking about Kat.

“China is a country of paradoxes, stark extremes. You should know that.”

“I guess.”

“Your parents spent a lot of time in Beijing, right?” Mei Lin.

“Yes. Besides Xian, it was mostly Beijing and Hong Kong during the holidays. What about you?”

“My parents died when I was very young. I never really knew them but my grandfather said they were the most perfect parents anyone could hope for.”

“I’m sure. Otherwise how could they have had a daughter like you?” Caldwell concluded that that was easily the corniest line that he had ever uttered. Mei Lin blushed slightly and lowered her eyes. Caldwell noticed that she had straight naturally long eyelashes.

“So what is the plan for tomorrow?” She was deliberately changing the subject.

“I think we get ourselves some weapons and check out this Tsinghua place. I suggest that if we can locate Wang Lin or Li Jin, he’ll probably lead us straight to the labs where this computer is sitting.”

“Many of the Department of Computer Science and Technology classes are open lectures. We just need to get an ID on this Wang Lin kid and tail him. Li Jin is probably dead, like the professor.”

“So what if the server I saw was physically removed to another location?”

“Don’t you worry about that. We’ll find out for sure tomorrow. I think we better head back and get some sleep. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

***

Caldwell and Mei Lin entered the grubby Zhongguancun cybercafe through grime-stained plastic door flaps. The establishment was in the windowless basement of one of the last few buildings in the vicinity that hadn’t fallen victim to technology industry-fuelled property development. There was no signage, nothing to indicate the presence of the establishment. The proprietor, a longhaired teenage hippie with a wispy moustache, asked them what their pleasure was. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen years old.

“Hey man. How you doing? American? Yeah? No problem. We got VR suits man, state-of-the-art, totally immersive man. Public or private booth? We got sex suits, the real deal with full body immersion. Better than the real thing. We got X-tacy man from Xyberia. The latest version works wonders on your state of mind. We got the best digital stuff man, non-addictive, totally no side effects. Just a computer simulated high that will blow your mind.” The words erupted from the boy’s thin lips in rapid-fire fashion.

“We are not interested in that. We are looking for some shooters,” Mei Lin said.

“Hey, take it easy,” the boy said, his sharp single-lidded eyes darting around the cybercafe. “There are eyes and ears everywhere.”

“We don’t have time to mess about.”

“Hey, I like the lady. I am not saying I have anything to offer you but follow me. It’s too loud in here I can’t hear very well.” More furtive glances around the half-empty cybercafe. A couple of patrons were fast asleep at their terminals. They looked like they had pulled one too many all-nighters, burned too much midnight oil.

They followed him up a narrow flight of stairs through a doorway with a stained red velvet curtain into a badly-lit room. At any moment Caldwell expected the boy to pull out an old shoebox from one of the dusty cupboards lining the wall to one side of the room and offer them an ancient NORINCO firearm. Instead the boy’s hand disappeared into his shirt pocket and he pulled out a device which he quickly ran along their bodies. He checked the readout on the device.

“Unionist eh? Honkie chick eh? Just need to be sure you are not from the New China Police or the PLA. Can’t be too careful in this town. There are eyes and ears everywhere.”

The scanner disappeared into his pocket as quickly as it had appeared. He waved his hand along a section of the wall. The motion was so fast that his fingers were just a blur. A door set flush with the wall slid open, to reveal shelves of ammunition that would have made a small country proud.

“Step with me into my boudoir,” the Beijing teenager said with a mock bow. They followed him in and the wall closed behind them. When the boy bowed, Caldwell noticed from the back of his ears that he was packing some heavy duty wetware. It was nothing like the personal jukebox implants favored by the kids in the Union, this thing looked like the grills on a Harley Davidson, only flesh-colored.

“Cool ware you’ve got there,” Caldwell complimented.

“Oh this,” the boy said, both hands instinctively going behind his ears, lovingly massaging the rough flesh-colored grills. “Latest Cybernaut from Japan, made under license by Great Wall Computronics. Cost a fraction of what it does elsewhere. This thing is the bee’s knees. All the music, you need, all the software you want right there in your head. Saves you a whole lot of console time.”

There were guns all over the walls. In the middle of the room was a stack of steel storage units that looked like overgrown filing cabinets. The boy walked through the room pulling out these steel trays. And inside hanging on hooks or arranged in felt-lined recesses, held in place with heavy-duty Velcro, was all manner of weaponry, many of which Caldwell had never set eyes on before. One of them immediately caught his eye. It was the same weapon that the Yakuza had used in The Puzzle back in the Union. The one Agent Jones and Agent Jackman had confiscated that morning in the Docklands.

“What is this one, er, what’s your name?” Caldwell enquired.

“Call me Mozi,” the boy said matter-of-factly as he pulled the gun from its holding place.

“This baby is called The Tube. Japanese import named after the underground in London. So called because these tiny self-propelled bullets are like mini-rockets with a specially-coated head. Can go straight through solid rock, like the tube in London, right? Bullets will drill straight through a man’s skull, before he can even blink, without slowing a beat.”

“That I know. My friend was killed by one of these,” Caldwell said, more for his own benefit than anything.”

“Is that the truth?” wondered Mozi aloud as though Caldwell had told him some far-fetched cock and bull story but he was giving him the benefit of the doubt anyway. “Flavor of the month with the Yakuza I gather. Your friend Yak by any chance?”

“Is that the truth?” Caldwell repeated, observing the gun and ignoring the boy’s spot on reference to the Yakuza. The weapon consisted of a long tube, half fiberglass, half polymer, with a stubby hand-carved crystal stock. The bullets, all thirty-six of them, were hooked up to the outside of the tube by an intricate lattice of springs and coils that seemed to abide by their own laws of physics. They were encased with a thin covering of sturdy translucent polymer. This gun had been fired before. The polymer had gone all milky like the windscreen of a car at a car wash. At the back of the bullets were these mini propulsion units like you have on a scud missile. Caldwell handed the gun back to Mozi.

Mei Lin walked over to a tray of diminutive handguns. She picked up a compact pistol with a polymer frame. The gun was small and almost disappeared completely in her palm when she closed it.

“Polymer frame mini Glock pistol, named after Austrian entrepreneur Gaston Glock. Synthetic polymer is stronger than steel, the traditional material for these things, but its eighty-six percent lighter and the manufacturer claims it is virtually indestructible. Kind of like the hard-on I usually wake up with in the morning. Like said hard-on, the Glock changed handgun history because it operated on completely different principles,” Mozi expounded. Caldwell could swear the kid was reading the specs of some database in his head.

“Ha ha. OK, why would you recommend this?” Mei Lin asked, amused at the boy’s loose tongue.

“You are referring to the Glock or my hard-on? Oh, I get it. Glocks offer great reliability and accuracy. You can choose different trigger pulls and the trigger is the only thing you need to operate the gun so folks like our Union friend here wont blow their load by mistake. The pull on this baby is consistent every time you squeeze the trigger. Its like having the same orgasm every time,” Mozi explained, looking at Mei Lin suggestively.

"Mozi, dude. Can you cut the dirty stuff out?" Caldwell implored. He liked the boy’s sense of humor but for some strange reason he didn’t appreciate the fact that it was aimed at Mei Lin.

"I can cut it out but I wont. Thats how I speak man. Take it or leave it. Besides the cute lady finds it funny, doesn’t she?" Mozi asked, grinning cheekily at Mei Lin.

“Sure. So you reckon we should take the Glocks?”

“Absolutely. No-brainer, really? This thing has three automatic safeties. When you pull the trigger the safeties sequentially disengage, re-engaging automatically when the trigger returns to its position. Some reckon the Glock is the safest pistol on the market, kind of like saying Durex is the safest condom on the market. There’s got to be some truth to it but how do you prove it?” Mozi flashed Mei Lin a naughty grin. Caldwell decided that there was no point saying anything to the teenager.

“Sounds good,” Mei Lin said examining the Glock.

“There’s more. The trigger system is one of the killer applications. There is nothing to cock, no hammer, no external safety to disengage. The metal components of Glocks used to be treated with Tenifer. Metal finished with Tenifer becomes as hard as a diamond. Think of Tenifer as Viagra for guns. Of course these Glocks are all-polymer. Go through customs virtually undetected,” Mozi continued, clearly relishing the fact that he was getting on Caldwell’s nerves. Caldwell didn’t quite like the look of the Glocks. The idea of actually shooting someone with one had suddenly lost its appeal.

“Do you have any sound guns?” Caldwell enquired.

“You guys just fooling around right? Thought you guys were going to cause some serious mayhem in Beijing?” Mozi asked, his cool black eyes jumping from Caldwell to Mei Lin.

“Look, do you have a sound gun or not?” Caldwell insisted. There was no way he was going to kill anyone in China.

“We don’t do sound guns. Those are for punk-ass wimps man. We don’t do that shit.”

Caldwell smiled. The boy had a lot of spunk and you couldn’t help but like him.

“Beretta then. Something small, that can easily be concealed,” Caldwell conceded.

“Now we are talking. We got the Beretta Mini Cougar, a compact pistol, NATO qualified, fiberglass-reinforced techno polymer, chrome-plated barrel blah blah. Not as easy to get through customs though and not as idiot-proof as the Glocks.”

“OK we’ll take the Glocks then,” Mei Lin interrupted.

“OK, whatever you say. Your call. Gaston Glock would be pleased with your choice.” Mozi shrugged, grabbed two Glocks from one of the trays and rummaged in another tray below for spare magazines.

“These hold fifteen rounds each. Will you be needing any more ammo?” Mozi asked Mei Lin, who took one of the Glocks from him.

“Another sixty rounds will be fine. We need the guns for forty-eight hours,” Mei Lin said, expertly removing the empty magazine from the handgun and replacing it with a loaded one. Mozi eyed her suspiciously.

“No can do on the Glocks. Need to pay outright for these. Just toss them when you’re done. The hutong kids will use them for target practice before popping their parents.”

“How much?”

“For you guys 190,000 New China Yuan each, including bullets.”

“Will give you 80,000 New China for both, including bullets,” Mei Lin countered.

Mozi briefly considered Mei Lin’s offer before breaking into a smile.

“You drive a hard bargain. Can see you’ve done business with us before Ms. ...”

“Never you mind,” Mei Lin said. She counted out eight ten thousand note bills and handed them to Mozi. The notes disappeared into the depths of the teenage gun dealer’s bomber jacket. Mei Lin placed the Glocks, the spare magazines and the bullets in her bag. Mozi waved his palm across another section of wall and the door slid open. Hidden sensors in the wall.

“I must tell you something Ms.,” said Mozi as they headed back down the narrow stairs into the bright lights and white noise of the cybercafe.

“What?”

“You are a mighty fine woman. I could teach you a thing or two about lovemaking.”

“I could teach you a thing or two about manners,” Mei Lin said affably as they walked out into the cold morning air. Caldwell could swear she was enjoying the attention.