Read The White Mountain for Free Online

throat.
    â€˜Who sent you?’
    The man pushed his face up at DeVore’s and spat.
    DeVore wiped the bloodstained phlegm from his cheek and reached across to pick up the assassin’s blade. Then, as the man’s eyes widened, he slit open his shirt and searched his torso for markings.
    DeVore turned, looking up at Lehmann, a fierce anger in his face. ‘He’s not Triad and he’s not Security, so who the fuck…?’
    The third man came from nowhere.
    DeVore had no time to react. It was only accident that saved him. As Lehmann turned, he moved between DeVore and the man, glancing against the assassin’s knife arm. The knife, which would have entered DeVore’s heart, was nudged to one side, piercing DeVore between neck and shoulder.
    The assassin jerked the serrated knife out savagely from DeVore’s flesh, but before he could strike again, Lehmann had lashed out, punching his nose up into his skull. The man fell and lay still.
    DeVore sank to his knees, holding one hand over the wound, a look of astonishment on his bloodless face. This time Lehmann didn’t ask. With a single blow he finished off the second man, then turned and did the same to the third. Then, lifting DeVore on to his shoulder, ignoring the shouts of protest from all about him, he began to carry him towards the exit and the safety of the transit, praying that their man in Security could hold his fellows off a minute longer.
    As for DeVore’s question, he had his answer now, for that last man had been a Hung Mao , a face they’d seen often in the past: one of several who hadalways been there in the background at their meetings with the Ping Tiao . A guard. One of the ones who had defected to the Yu .
    So it was Mach, Jan Mach, who’d tried to have them killed.

Chapter 68
    WILLOW-PLUM SICKNESS
    O n the open, windswept hillside the small group gathered about the grave. Across the valley, cloud shadow drew a moving line that descended, crossing the water, then came swiftly up the slope towards them.
    Ben watched the shadow sweep towards him, and felt the sudden chill as the sun passed behind the cloud.
    So it is , he thought. As swift as that it comes .
    The wooden casket lay on thick silken cords beside the open grave. Ben stood there, facing the casket across the darkness of the hole, his feet only inches from the drop.
    Earth. Dark earth. It had rained and tiny beads of moisture clung to the stems of grass overhanging the grave. In the sunlight they seemed strange, incongruous.
    It was still unreal. Or not yet real. He felt no grief as yet, no strong feeling for what he had lost, only a vacancy, a sense of his own inattentiveness. As if he had missed something…
    They were all in black, even Li Yuan. Blackness for death. The old Western way of things. His mother stood beside the casket, her face veiled, grieving heavily. Beside him stood his sister, and next to her Li Yuan’s Chancellor, Nan Ho.
    A cold wind gusted from the south across the hilltop, blowing his hair into his eyes. A sea breeze, heavy with brine. He combed strands back intoplace with his fingers, then left his hand there, the fingers buried in his fine, thick hair, his palm pressed firmly against his forehead.
    He felt like an actor, the ‘boy in black’ at the graveside. An impostor. Neither loving nor dutiful. Cuckoo in the nest. Too distanced from things to be his father’s son, his brother’s brother.
    Had he ever even said he loved him?
    Two of Li Yuan’s men came and lifted the casket on its cords.
    Ben moved back as they lowered the casket into the earth. A cassette of death, slotting into the hillside.
    And no rewind… no playback. Hal Shepherd existed only in the memories of others now. And when they in their turn died? Was it all simply a long process of forgetting? Of blinded eyes and decaying images? Maybe… but it didn’t have to be.
    The earth fell. He closed his eyes and could see it