Scene 20

When Maille woke up, it was pouring with rain, and humid. Hardly had he left the hotel-refrigerator than he found his clothes sticking to him like wet dough wraps. He rode on the underground to Jianguomen station, from where it was just a few steps to the old observatory that had been the centre of Chinese astronomy for centuries.

Maille stepped into the courtyard of the museum. It had stopped raining, though raindrops were continuing to sprinkle from the surrounding trees that topped the museum-roof by several metres. In the middle of the pavilion stood the celestial globe with the dragon, smaller than the model in the airport, but probably the original – though who in China could possibly be sure about that. It was quiet in the courtyard, there were no visitors there, nor any attendants – the observatory was evidently not one of the major tourist attractions in the town. Maille circled the globe; then he noticed a little olive-green portrait of Mao Zedong fluttering from the claws of a dragon: a little banknote, a Yuán or a Kuài, a «bit». That had to be the message from Zhang: astonishing that nobody else had found it.

Maille picked out the little piece of paper and went into one of the exhibition rooms to take a closer look at it. On the back of the note, above the waves of the river pictured on it, a series of microscopic signs were discernable. Maille had to hold the note up against the light of a lamp to make out exactly what was written on it: «Hing has K.», was what it held – not a surprise, really. Underneath however was written: «Find evidence in Sweden» – followed by a couple of numbers, probably GPS-coordinates. Had Zhang garnered this information from the dossier that he had been able to briefly study on the Chinese Wall? Amazing that the agent had managed to remember anything at all after having received such a blow on the head – leave alone the numbers! Or, had he come across this information in quite another way?

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