The Wounded Muse

by Robert F Delaney

  8:00 p.m.

  Dawei pounds on Jake’s door. It’s been more than a day since the confrontation in the American’s workplace at China World. That’s more than enough time to find the screenplay. He wouldn’t have just thrown something like that away. The idea that Jake could have been so insensitive, that the time they spent sharing stories with each other meant nothing and that the screenplay and the other items Dawei put in his care were thrown out like month-old newspapers, is too intolerable. Dawei pounds on the door again, and the silence that follows seems louder than the knocks.

  The person knocking at the door, Jake knows, is either Dawei or someone from the PSB. He remains seated on the couch, his knees drawn up to his chest. If it’s the former, the knocking will stop. Otherwise, someone will surely open the door with the assistance of the building’s management office and Jake will face questioning about how much work he’s been doing to support Qiang. Or perhaps the PSB will have found it suspicious that Ben has accompanied Diane and himself, separately, in meetings with two of China’s biggest banks. It seems like an obvious red flag but perhaps Diane has thrown the authorities off their trail with her act.

  If Dawei continues to wait, if he decides to sleep in the corridor, Jake will need to confront him. Ben and Diane are expecting Jake to be in his newsroom to confirm some information that will complete the evidence they’re compiling - the last, crucial step needed to produce a bargaining chip.

  After at least five rounds of knocks over several minutes, each knock louder than the last, Jake hears the person outside walk away. As the footsteps fade and the elevator dings, Jake wishes he could help. He wishes he hadn’t tossed the folder with the screenplay and the photos and the little card with the maple leaf, that charming symbol of friendship. To keep the shame at bay, Jake reminds himself, again, that more than two years have passed. This stretch of time should absolve anyone of such a responsibility. He finds more reasons to assuage his guilt. With the way rent has been rising over the past year, Jake, like so many others in Beijing, might have moved already. Nothing in Beijing is fixed anymore, at least outside of the cluster of monumental structures and compounds at the centre of the city. Those structures of past and present power, whose permanence only becomes more deeply entrenched as the pace of change everywhere else in the country speeds up. No one stays put, physically, psychologically, economically, spiritually or otherwise. Jake might even have given up and left the country, like many others forced out by the deafening roar of opportunity and change. How could anyone keep track of sentimental trinkets offered by mere acquaintances in the chaos of a perpetual earthquake?

  After several minutes pass, Jake tiptoes to the front door and puts his ear against it, listening out for any sign that Dawei is still waiting. Hearing nothing but the hum of the building punctuated by an elevator ding, Jake heads to the den to grab his backpack and picks up a baseball cap on the way out of the door. He slides his last unregistered SIM card into the slot on the back of his phone.

  *****

  Ben feeds four data sets into the CSAIL analytics platform, one of many similar projects kicked off in the wake of 9/11. There are IBOC and NICB remittance records, European clearinghouse data, transaction records from the two European banks Diane has worked for and a list of IOC member names.

  The CSAIL platform, still without a name for security reasons, uses a complex set of algorithms to create connections within a defined area of online activity. Working backwards and forwards, the advanced cognitive technology should work up a list of companies with connections to the IOC members. The technology is still experimental, its algorithms still being tweaked by researchers at MIT, but early results have proven so encouraging that CSAIL has already registered a company that will be used to market the platform commercially. Ben has helped to steer the patent process and negotiations over how much MIT will own of the product that will eventually emerge for intelligence-gathering purposes.

  At Diane’s suggestion, Ben tweaks his query, changing a few ors to ands and vice-versas, and adjusts the timeframe to end a month after the announcement made on July 13, 2001. Their cell phones sit on the table, batteries removed.

  Beijing Baisheng Co. Ltd. to Auriele Holdings, $650,000, August, 2001.

  Intermediaries: International Bank of China (Luxembourg) S.A., UBS.

  Details

  Beijing TongChang Agricultural to Trehaus Group, $785,000, June 2001.

  Intermediaries: International Bank of China (Hungary) Close Ltd. Details

  Beijing NuanFeng to Simsek International $1.2M, May 2001.

  Intermediaries: PT NICB Indonesia, Citibank. Details

  Beijing RuiJia Biomedical Co. Ltd. to Bradshaw Ltd., $1.4M, June 2001

  Intermediaries: International Bank of China (Middle East) Dubai Ltd.

  Details

  Beijing JinSui Industries to Anotansov Bright & Assoc, $1.6M, July 2001

  Intermediaries: NICB Abu Dhabi, ING. Details

  …

  And the list goes on. Forty-three transactions caught by the query Ben generated for the trove of data from IBOC, NICB, and the two European financial institutions Diane has worked for, one in Switzerland and another in London, bringing the total to 31.8 million.

  “I guess they wanted to be sure the votes went their way before remitting, at least for some of them,” Ben says.

  “There might have been a lag. The orders might have gone through right before the vote. Just seems like a real last-minute push. How do you say, eleventh-hour effort?” Diane says.

  Several earlier queries turned up only a few transactions, which wouldn’t have given them the evidence they need. A few more tweaks to the query and perhaps they’ll find more.

  A waitress approaches their table.

  “Pardon me, but we’re closing soon. I need to trouble you to please settle your bill now,” she says, dropping the slip of paper onto the table.

  The restaurant has helped to cloak Diane and Ben’s activities, located as it is next to NICB’s headquarters. Running an analysis of bank transaction data won’t look out of place through the NICB wifi signal that Ben has hacked into. They’re not sure this measure is necessary but decided to take it anyway. Diane had made the final call, saying, if nothing else, the feeling of cover would help her concentrate better.

  “We’ll be gone in five minutes,” Diane tells the waitress as she pulls out her wallet.

  They need to run a few more queries to be sure they’ve caught all of the most obvious, and damaging, transactions. Then they’ll call Jake using an unregistered SIM card to feed him the foreign company names.

  Jake will use Toeler News’ database to verify the owners of each of the overseas companies and cross-reference them against a list of IOC members.

  TUESDAY, April 24, 2007

  8:47 a.m.

  Zhihong waits outside his supervisor’s office in a corridor running the length of the ministry’s east wing, a dividing line between those in classroom-like offices who work in open-plan clusters and those who work independently, who in turn answer to those occupying quieter corridors on higher floors. Zhihong should be on this side of the corridor by now, in his own office, at least according to the expectations of his wife and in-laws. The longer he languishes in the clusters across the hall, the more likely he is to stay there until it’s too awkward to continue working in Beijing. His only opportunities for advancement will be to move with the ministry to another city, where he’d have another chance to prove his value. Beijing always seeks to spread loyal ambition throughout the country.

  How quickly a loss of momentum in one’s career can affect so much of the future, like sitting inattentively in a train car that diverts to another track. Focus too much on the scenery outside instead of the track you’re on, and suddenly you’re just part of the scenery and nothing more. The dreams about producing films led Zhihong astray, they sent him down the wrong track. They kept him from socializing with the right people in the ministry and angling for work on the
right projects. They kept him out of the office suites he’s now sitting outside of, waiting to get more information that he hopes will not be about the Dawei he knows. Zhihong stands to lose either way. He hasn’t thought through what he’ll say if the homeless character in the PSB report turns out to be his ex-lover. He may provide useful information but the ministry won’t reward a gay man who was apparently using his connections as a government bureaucrat to shop screenplays to producers he’s meant to be advising. Everyone’s running some kind of hustle but Zhihong’s not in a position to make his inconsequential. All of this will come out if the Chen Dawei in the reports and the one from Macau are the same.

  The Dawei in this mess of a situation involving the documentary filmmaker might turn out to be someone completely different, the whole situation a complete coincidence. If so, Zhihong is just pestering his superiors for classified information and offering nothing in return, another useless interaction that will undercut any chance to move up in the hierarchy.

  Zhihong taps his fingers on the armrest of the bench while he checks the time on his cell phone display.

  “Executive hours,” Zhihong mutters to himself as he sees the time tick past 9:00 a.m. The section chief might not be in for another fifteen or twenty minutes.

  The muscles in Zhihong’s stomach and legs begin to tense up as a voice inside, activated by a sense of practicality and self-preservation, pipes up. He needs to stand up and walk away. But another thought keeps him in place. Dawei couldn’t possibly be involved in a documentary about social causes. He wouldn’t even know anything about 1989 let alone want to make some kind of revisionist history about it.

  “Eh, Zhihong,” Changxing says as he approaches, flipping through the keys on a chain he’s just pulled out of his front pocket. “What’s going on?”

  At somewhere around 1.8 metres tall, Changxing makes Zhihong feel small physically as well as functionally. The extra height his boss has over most people in their section probably helped him gain the edge he needed to get his office. This isn’t just something Zhihong tells himself. He’s heard the same from intoxicated colleagues in conversations everyone knows must stay off the record and on occasions no one is supposed to mention, like the unauthorized trips to Macau.

  “I wanted to get a few more details on the investigation we’re running around the documentary filmmaker,” Zhihong says.

  “Do your contacts know something about this?” Changxing asks, looking up from his set of keys.

  “No. None of my contacts are aware of such projects being funded from Hong Kong.”

  “So why would you need more information?”

  “It’s the itinerant. The guy without a phone or address. I think I’ve heard his name before. I’m not sure of the context. Maybe it was in some conversations I’ve had with producers.”

  Changxing thinks for a moment and then looks down at his keys, pulling one from the bunch. He seems unsure about whether to provide any more details.

  Zhihong decides he needs to be less keen on the request, as though this is a routine step that everyone should be taking. A box to check. “It’s probably nothing,” Zhihong says. “I just wanted to be sure. I thought maybe if there’s a photo, I could…”

  “Let me see if there’s any more information available to us,” Changxing says in a tone that signals the end of their conversation.

  Zhihong holds his position, hoping for some indication of how or when this might happen. Changxing opens his office door and flicks a light switch just inside. Stepping inside his office, he looks back at Zhihong.

  “I’ll let you know as soon as anything else comes in,” he says. “In the meantime, keep polling your contacts in Hong Kong for any information on this or any other documentary films currently in production.”

  9:45 a.m.

  Jake slides the USB key into the port on his computer before the courier dispatched by Diane is barely two steps back towards the reception area. He’ll need a couple of hours at least to compile the information Diane and Ben need. This puts him on edge because of the laws of bad timing when it comes to breaking news. The likelihood of big news on Jake’s beat increases in direct proportion to the degree to which he’s preoccupied with other matters.

  As a safeguard, he’s alerted the editors that he’ll be busy conducting an interview for the rest of the morning. To keep the plan airtight, he’s also thought of an explanation for why this interview will never surface in any of his stories, just in case he’s questioned later. The interviewee will be fired, making the information unreliable. It’s a small fiction but part of a web of lies that’s becoming larger and, therefore, more of a threat if he gets caught up in it.

  Using the Toeler database, Jake calls up each of the companies on the list that Diane and Ben have compiled. He needs to clarify the connection between the IOC members who voted for Beijing and the companies that received funds remitted from the city, 65 in all. Diane and Ben’s CSAIL analysis turned up forty-three connections and Jake needs to confirm them. A few are obvious. Privately held Auriele Holdings’ Board Director, Fausto Torace, voted for Beijing. They won’t all be this easy, though, and Jake must confirm connections to at least half of the 56 entities to make it clear that the decision was bought.

  9:56 a.m.

  The junior PSB analyst on Qiang’s case puts two photos together and sees a similarity. Taken the previous day, one photo shows Jake entering IBOC’s headquarters and another shows Diane entering NICB. The American named Ben is with both of them, wearing different outfits. In the earlier meeting, he’s wearing an ill-fitting corduroy blazer with patches on the elbows, sunglasses and a baseball hat. In the afternoon meeting at NICB with Diane, Ben’s hair is more slicked back and he wears a well-tailored suit.

  The analyst pulls up supporting phone records and transcripts on Jake and Diane. Jake went to IBOC to conduct an interview about the bank’s policy lending; Diane went to NICB for a business meeting.

  Ben has a very close connection with Qiang. They even formed a “civil union,” in the U.S., State of California. A marriage, essentially. California sanctions such relationships between members of the same sex.

  It’s understandable that Ben would want to be in Beijing to help Jake and Qiang’s sister. Qiang and Ben have a history. They were a couple. Estranged now, according to the briefing documents, but perhaps they’ve maintained close ties. It makes no sense, though, that Ben would be attending meetings with both of them at the headquarters of two major commercial banks.

  The instructions on these matters are clear. The analyst must be able to follow the subjects throughout the day, provide a description of their activities and explain the objectives of each of their activities, however mundane. All explanations need to be backed up with phone records, emails or transcripts of conversations picked up in phone calls or through recordings taken in apartments and offices.

  Any questions surrounding the narrative that can’t be explained through the documentation compiled by the PSB require further inquiry. These questions must be flagged for senior analysts.

  The analyst reaches for his desk phone and begins dialing his supervisor.

  11:49 a.m.

  Jake, Boeing’s doing a briefing with the Chinese media. They didn’t…

  Jake can only see the first line of the message.

  “Fuck,” he says to himself. “No.”

  The message interrupts Jake’s search for the twenty-third connection between Beijing money and IOC member votes. A briefing by Boeing. The timing of this shit. How fucking typical.

  The message comes from his company’s Asia transportation industry teamleader who probably got a tip-off from a former Toeler News reporter who now works for a local PR company. A tactic PR types use to keep good relations with the media. There’s a steady trickle of burned out reporters who drift to “the dark side,” and so nothing is airtight in the nexus of people working on media and communications.

  Jake hasn’t clicked on the message yet. Once he does,
the teamleader will see that he’s read it. The first line tells Jake everything he needs to know.

  Foreign companies operating in China often organize events for the local press, separate from those they arrange for the foreign media. The companies, or rather the PR firms working for the companies, provide “taxi money” in red packets for the Chinese reporters, usually well in excess of what’s needed to get from one end of Beijing to another in the heaviest of rush hour traffic. The money comes with no strings but the message behind the exclusive “we’re-giving-it-to-you-first” press events is clear. Foreign companies use the Chinese-only news briefing tactic in spite of their codes of ethics and best practice guidelines. They do it at arm’s length. Boeing, BMW, PepsiCo and General Electric can blame the PR companies and then apologize to the foreign reporters, telling them there wasn’t much news in the event anyway.

  The only way to combat the practice is to know when the Chinese-only press briefings are taking place, get to them immediately and put the most critical spin possible on whatever message the company is trying to deliver. Of course, this has to happen today. The God of breaking news is a sadist.

  The transportation team leader is no doubt waiting for a response from Jake who’s wondering how to get out of this task. The other reporters are out covering other press events.

  Jake feels the vibration of his cell phone before the call even comes through, like a forward echo. The team leader who has placed the call knows Jake is in the newsroom and logged into his system. The display on Jake’s phone shows the number of the Tokyo newsroom.

  11:49 a.m.

  From: Anton Sutler/TOELER NEWS

  Jake, Boeing’s doing a briefing with the Chinese media. They didn’t invite any of the foreign press. You know why, right? Can you get to the Kempinsky Hotel ASAP

  And he takes the call.

  “I’m just reading your message now, Anton,” Jake says as he connects. “The timing could not be any worse.”