Read Online Night Heron by Adam Brookes - Free Book Online

amused.
    “You may use the bathroom now,” he said.
    The girl in the red heels took him inside. The trappings of a beauty salon were present: sinks, hairdryers, scissors. But the girl led him through a beaded curtain and down a dark corridor that smelled of disinfectant. On one side, doors with small glasspanels through which Peanut could see beds and embroidered sheets.
    “What’s your name?”
    She turned. “Beautiful Peony.”
    “For heaven’s sake. What’s your real name?”
    She blinked. “There’s the bathroom.” And tottered away, her tiny frame silhouetted in the gloom.
    Peanut locked the door and stripped and eased his bulk into a pink shower stall. The shower gave little more than a cool trickle, but he was content standing there. The water, gray with the dust of Qinghai and the filth from the train, seeped down the drain. He scrubbed out his underpants and shirt in the sink. He pulled a plastic razor from the carrier bag and began to work the grainy tablet of soap into a lather on his chin, then stopped.
    From the salon, raised voices.
    He turned off the tap and listened.
    A scream?
    Peanut pulled on his damp underpants and his running shoes, retrieved an item from the carrier bag, and made his way back down the corridor, stopping just before the beaded curtain.
    Chef appeared to be having his hair washed. He was seated in a reclining hairdresser’s chair, leaning back over a sink. But at his throat, well, that was a meat cleaver. Someone was screaming. The hand holding the meat cleaver belonged to a short, thickset kid. He wore a baseball cap with some sort of red design on it and a black leather jacket. He was looking towards another man, this one in a parka and sunglasses, a little older, wavy hair, tall, wiry. Peanut watched and listened.
    “You’re overdue.” It was Sunglasses talking. “
Shoubuliao.
” We can’t have that.
    Beautiful Peony was in a corner bent almost double with fright, clutching at another girl whose hair was dyed orange and who was crying. A woman, middle-aged, barrel-shaped—Chef’swife? The madam?—was trying to remonstrate with the two men. Let him go. We can pay.
    The two men looked hard and quick, but young. Peanut hummed a little to himself. My good fortune today, he thought. He took a breath. And pushed through the beaded curtain.
    After the reception at the residence they had gone out for a raucous dinner. Yunnanese food, complex mushroom dishes and a rice wine served in bamboo beakers that did early, serious damage. Harvey had found a lean Australian tennis coach from one of the big hotels and the two were drunk and bawdy. Milam from the
Los Angeles Times
was there, and the Reuters reporter, Mackenzie, the two of them rapturously attendant upon Ting, who sat sparkling-eyed between them. Mangan caught her eye, and she allowed her face to light up in a comical aren’t-I-lucky expression, just for him. A dreamy French intern from one of the agencies dragged up a chair next to Mangan and sought advice about her career, which he failed to give. When they all pushed on to some new bar, Mangan slipped away and walked home alone to Jianguomenwai.
    It was four in the morning when he was woken, irritated, by a soft, insistent pinging from his computer. He sat on the edge of his bed, chilled. The
ping
again, crisp and synthetic in the silence. He walked into the front room. The message icon was blinking.
TREEFROG: Dood!!!!!!!!
    TREEFROG: You there bro
    TREEFROG: WAKE UP BRO
    TREEFROG: WAKE UP MANGMAN TALK TO DA FROG
    Mangan rubbed his eyes and sat down. The kid was at a college somewhere on America’s east coast. Was it a he? It sounded like a he.
    Mangan had been introduced to Treefrog by a human rights activist. Treefrog, apparently, was a hacker of some repute. He had made it his personal business to map China in cyberspace. With a juvenile glee and, as far as Mangan could tell, a vicious precision, Treefrog felt out the digital borders of the Chinese state, and then