Li Jin watched the man called Oleg Krachev walk up the steps towards Kowloon Mosque. He k was the Russian because everything about him fitted the description. Even though the man he was looking at was somewhat older than he had expected, ht and potbellied, there was something about his stride that led Li Jin to focus on him. There was also that determined look, the blotchy skin from too much drinking and the fact that he looked so out of place. He looked her like a tourist nor a local expatriate.
Li Jin was about to move to the other side of the roof garden to watch Krachev emerge when his heart stopped beating. His body had responded even before he』d realized what his brain had registered. The small ese man he had seen in the shopping mall was walking up the steps, obviously following Krachev. How had the man found him? Li Jin realized that given the current situation, choosing the maze was a lucky break. If he played things well and remained calm, he could still emerge from his current predit unscathed. He quickly turned round and moved to the other side of the roof garden. The side overlooking the maze.
Krachev was walking slowly but with determination through the park in the dire of maze. Li Jin removed his binoculars from his backpack, another ht that he had corrected after fleeing from the shopping mall. Again, the gods were with him. He had walked past a shop selling cameras and huge telescopes and it had occurred to him that it would be difficult to track Krachev without a pair of binoculars. He had walked in and bought one haggling viciously with the small balding man behind the ter.
He traihe binoculars on Krachev. The man had some kind of on in the band of his suit trousers. The bulge was glaringly obvious. Li Jin realized then that he laying a very dangerous game ihe small man had obviously bee by the PLA to capture him and take him back to New a. They had probably realized that he had switched the processor and that the AI was an inferior product to Professor Yao』s creation. In fact, from the look of the man, who had also ehe park, he probably wasn』t here to take him back to New a. The man was a killer, plain and simple. This much was clear as he tracked the ese. That erect back, the fluid torso and only the legs suggesting movement, was somehow alien to the way everyone else walked. If the PLA had wanted him ba Beijing, they would have sent two men, not one. Definitely not one as small as this man. Small meant deadly.
Krachev disappeared into the entrance of the maze. Thirty seds later the ese man followed. Li Jin realized that the ese, the assassin, probably thought he was ihe maze. The man was following Krachev to get to him. Li Jin reeled wherained his binoculars on the assassin』s head. The gray lump on his neck suggested only ohing. The assassin was wearing one of Professor Yao』s prototype satellite-based cyberspaits. The ohat ied wirelessly with either a pair of glasses or directly with the brain, manipulating the thought patterns into some kind of virtual display. The professor had thought that this teology would never be used with a wet interface because the psychological effects on the subject would be horrendous aually fatal.
The prototype had beeo a PLA unit in Longmen, Shanxi province for testing and that had been the last Li Jin had seen of it. The assassin was obviously using the device to i with AIs and databases in Beijing. That was how the assassin had latched on to Krachev