False Horizon - Alex Archer [91]
Hsu Xiao said nothing, but Annja could feel the rage boiling off of her. She wanted to strike Tsing down badly.
Vanya must have sensed it, too, because she spoke quietly in Chinese to Hsu Xiao and it seemed to at least calm her down somewhat.
Tsing smiled. “I’ll bet you really want to have a go at me right now, don’t you? Make up for all those times I forced myself upon you? All the times you pleaded with me to stop because you didn’t like it and yet I continued because you were mine. All along it must have driven you nearly insane not being able to slice my throat with those ridiculous claws of yours. But you hadn’t yet found out what you needed to know, had you?”
Hsu Xiao said nothing.
Tsing leaned back against the wall and looked at Annja. “You see, Hsu Xiao was a plant. She needed to know if I had any inkling of the location of this place. It was imperative that I didn’t, I imagine. Because if I’d caught wind of it, then I could have taken steps to ensure that that woman there,” he said, pointing at Vanya, “couldn’t go ahead with her plans.”
Annja frowned. “Who exactly are you, Mr. Tsing?”
He smiled. “Me? Why I’m just your average Chinese businessman. That’s all. Nothing special about me.”
Vanya laughed. “Tsing is the resident Chinese intelligence officer in charge of Katmandu. It is his responsibility to report on anything that might jeopardize the control China has over Tibet from this side of the border.”
Tsing shook his head. “Now, really, was it necessary for you to reveal that? I believe she might have readily accepted my other explanation, but no, you had to go and ruin it. Shame.”
“Annja is too intelligent to fall for that. It doesn’t add up.”
Tsing smiled at Annja. “Vanya is upset because I report to the very people she would no doubt like to see removed from power—one way or another. And it was my job to make sure our operations in the area were safe and secure.”
He got up and walked around the courtyard. “Imagine my surprise then when the transponder we placed in the plane we loaned you and Mike started beeping from this very mountain. It was rather amusing, actually. And at first I couldn’t believe it. You see, I’d seen the map, and never imagined that you would find yourselves here rather than the exact position the map shows. But then the universe is a strange thing, isn’t it? And whether through luck or serendipity or what have you, you and Mike, and even that little insignificant speck of dust called Tuk, found yourselves here.”
Annja saw fury blaze across Tuk’s face. “So you knew about this place all along?” she said.
Tsing smiled. “My dear, I helped build this place. It is here because I sought out a special location for us to conceal our activities. My government has been trying for years to come up with a means to dispose of certain elements of our waste. We’ve tried all manner of things and nothing worked.”
“So you came here.”
“We came here because one of our scientists had an idea. He said that if we could harness the heat from the waste and channel is just so, we could turn a frozen landscape into a tropical one. The idea was a bit far-fetched but it grew to gain support and the initiative was launched several years back. It was incredibly expensive, but we thought that if we could achieve what the scientist claimed, we might actually turn this place into a tourist spot.”
Annja’s eyebrows shot up as high as they could go. “You wanted to bring tourists here atop a pile of nuclear waste?”
Tsing chuckled. “I know it seems crazy, but really, look around. You must admit that we did an amazing job building it. Look at the incredible statues.