The Firemaker Read Online Free PDF

Yongli?’
    She nodded towards the door. ‘Out front.’
    Li crossed to the door, opening it a crack, and peeked out. Yongli stood by a hot plate and gas ring behind an ornate counter with a Chinese canopy. His white smock seemed to emphasise his height and his bulk, his round face solemn below his tall white chef’s hat. He gazed out at the early eaters in the twenty-four-hour Café China, his mind somewhere else altogether. He was on front-of-house duty tonight, cooking dishes from the day’s Special Menu in view of the customers who ordered them. But the serious diners were not yet in and, for the moment at least, he was idle, his mind free to wander. Li watched him affectionately for a moment, then issued a short, sharp whistle from between his front teeth. Yongli’s head snapped round and his face lit up when he saw Li. He glanced about quickly to see if any of the managers were watching, then hurried over to the door, pushing Li back into the kitchen with an irresistible force. ‘Well? Well? Come on, tell me. What happened?’
    The smiled drained from Li’s face and he lowered his head and shrugged. ‘The Commissioner said it was Party policy to “discourage nepotism in all its insidious forms”.’
    All the animation left Yongli’s expression. ‘Aw, come on, you’re shitting me, right?’
    Li retained his grave demeanour. ‘It’s what he said.’ He paused, and then a big grin split his face. ‘But it didn’t stop me getting the job.’
    ‘You bastard!’ Yongli grabbed at him, but Li backed off, grinning stupidly.
    ‘Hey!’ Yongli shouted out to the kitchen. And heads lifted. ‘Big Li got his promotion!’ And he grabbed a couple of stainless-steel ladles and started working his way up a line of hanging pots and pans, beating out a tattoo on them as he went. A cheer went up from the staff, and there was a spontaneous round of applause. Li flushed and shook his head with embarrassment, still grinning like an idiot. Yongli reached the end of the row. ‘So the next time you get lifted by the cops,’ he shouted, ‘you can just say, hey, don’t you know who I am? I’m a pal of Big Li Yan. And they’ll let you go faster than hot coals.’ He turned a huge, sparkling-eyed, maniacal grin on his friend and stalked down the aisle towards him, taking Li’s face in two giant hands and planting a big wet kiss on his forehead. ‘Congratulations, pal.’ And the two embraced, to further applause from the kitchen staff.
    They had been best friends since meeting on their first day at the University of Public Security nearly fifteen years before. Two kindred spirits, each instantly recognising the other. Big daft boys, then and now. It had broken Li’s heart when Yongli had dropped out in their final year. His results had been deteriorating in almost precise correlation to his pursuit of women and karaoke bars and a lifestyle he could not afford. It was the essential difference between them. Li took his career more seriously than his pleasures. But to Yongli the pursuit of pleasure was all. And he had jumped at the chance to train as a chef with a Sino-American joint venture.
    ‘The money’s fantastic,’ he had told Li. And, compared to the subsistence existence of a Chinese student, it was. Even after his promotion, Li would earn substantially less than his friend. Yongli’s training had also included lessons in English, six months at a hotel in Switzerland learning how to cook and present European food, and three months in the States finding out how Americans liked to eat their steaks. There he had learned how to fully indulge his hedonistic inclinations, returning with a great appetite for all things American and a three-inch addition to his waistline. In many ways Li and Yongli had grown apart, their paths in life taking very different courses, and their friendship now was sustained more by its history than by its present. But the warmth between them was still strong.
    ‘So.’ Yongli pulled off his