Read Online Afterburn by Colin Harrison - Free Book Online Page B

the top edge of the wall. But before being able to look over, he fell back.
    "Go!" he ordered the attendant. "Get help, get a key!"
    The man in the stall groaned, his respiration a song of pain. Charlie threw his jacket to the floor and stepped up on the seat again, this time jumping exactly at the moment he pulled with his arms, using the ancient knowledge of a boy, and then yes , one and two, he was up, right up there, hooking one leg over the wall, his head just high enough to peer down and see Sir Henry Lai slumped on the floor, his face a rictus of purpled flesh, his pants around his ankles, a piss stain spreading across his silk boxers. His hands clutched weakly at his tie, the veins of his neck swollen like blue pencils. His eyes, not squeezed shut but open, stared up at the underside of the spotless toilet bowl, into which, Charlie could see from above, a small silver pillbox had fallen, top open, the white pills inside of it already scattered and sunk in the water—scattered and sunk and melting away.
    "Hang on, guy," breathed Charlie. "They're coming. Hang on." He tried to pull himself through the opening between the wall and ceiling, but it was no good; he could get his head through but not his shoulders or torso. Now Sir Henry Lai coughed rhythmically, as if uttering some last strange code—"Haa-cah . . . Haaa!-cah . . . Haaa! Haaa!"—and convulsed, his eyes peering in pained wonderment straight into Charlie's, then widening as his mouth filled with a reddish soup of undigested shrimp and pigeon and turtle that surged up over his lips and ran down both of his cheeks before draining back into his windpipe. He was too far gone to cough the vomit out of his lungs, and the tension in his hands eased—he was dying of a heart attack and asphyxiation at the same moment.
    The attendant hurried back in with two waiters and Sir Henry's bodyguard. They pounded on the stall door with something, cracking the marble. The beautiful veined stone broke away in pieces, some falling on Sir Henry Lai's shoes. Charlie looked back at his face. Henry Lai was dead.
    The men stepped into the stall and Charlie knew he was of no further use. He dropped back to the floor, picked up his jacket, and walked out of the men's restroom, expecting a commotion outside. A waiter sailed past with a tray of salmon roses; the assembled businessmen didn't know what had happened.
    Mr. Ming watched him enter.
    "I must leave you," Charlie said graciously. "I'm very sorry."
    Mr. Ming rose to shake hands.
    "My daughter is due to call me tonight with important news."
    "Good news, I trust."
    The only news bankers liked. "Perhaps. She's going to tell me if she is pregnant."
    "I hope you are blessed." Mr. Ming smiled, teeth white as Ellie's estrogen pills.
    Charlie nodded warmly. "We're going to build a terrific factory, too. Should be on-line by the end of the year."
    "We are scheduled for lunch in about two weeks in New York?"
    "Absolutely," said Charlie. Every minute now was important.
    Mr. Ming bent closer, his voice softening. "And you will tell me then about the quad-port transformer you are developing?"
    His secret new datacom switch, which would smoke the competition? No. "Yes." Charlie crinkled his face into a mask of agreeability. "Sure deal."
    "Excellent," pronounced Mr. Ming. "Have a good flight."
    The stairs to the lobby spiraled along backlit cabinets of jade dragons and coral boats and who cared what else. He hurried past Tiffany glasswork and mahogany paneling. Don't run, Charlie told himself, don't appear to be in a hurry. But he was holding his coat-check ticket before he hit the last step. In London, seven hours behind Hong Kong, the stock market was still open. He pointed to his coat for the attendant and then, after dropping thirteen floors in the club's elevator, nodded at the first taxi waiting outside. The back door opened mechanically, and he jumped in.
    "FCC."
    "Foreign Correspondents' Club?"
    "Right away."
    It was the only place