The Wounded Muse

by Robert F Delaney

  As Jake realizes the knock comes from across the corridor, his muscles relax. He hears someone greet a guest. They laugh. They exchange some pleasantries and then their voices trail off into the faintest of muffled vibrations as the guest enters the room and the door shuts.

  There’s no use in trying to rest so Jake slides off the bed and stands next to Ben, who’s running commands on the computer he brought with him from Boston. PROPERTY OF MIT, says a label next to the power button.

  Jake watches as the program constructs a multicoloured diagram on the screen. A list of dollar figures, some in the millions, on the left side connect with bank names and routing numbers, ultimately leading to names on the right side of the screen. Each name on the right is written over a photo and a date signifying the beginning of that person’s term as an IOC member.

  The lines are rendered in varying thicknesses and different grey-scale shades, signifying, as far as Jake can tell, the strength of the connection. The thickest and blackest lines lead to the individuals Jake found to be the easiest as he confirmed the role IOC members played in the companies and organizations that wound up with money that originated in China. Each line a takedown, a time bomb that will spray the connected individuals with shrapnel. The entire diagram may as well show a meteor heading for the centre of Beijing, threatening to vaporize the massive sporting venues nearly completed. Jake imagines this diagram on the front pages of every major newspaper in the world except, of course, for those published in China.

  Ben saves some of the data onto a USB stick that he hands to Diane. She then prints out three sets of the diagrams on a portable printer she’s brought with her.

  “There’s more evidence than we expected,” Diane says as she hands a copy to Jake.

  4:12 p.m.

  Zhihong grabs his bag as soon as Changxing drops a scrap of paper with the American journalist’s address on his desk. He closes all of the documents on his screen, files he’s been parsing for the past six hours to see if he missed any references to Dawei. Maybe a footnote somewhere about where Dawei has been seen sleeping or where he goes for food.

  “Thanks,” Zhihong says, wondering what took so long. He can’t ask. That will reveal the anger Zhihong feels about having to wait until the worst of rush hour traffic starts. The answer won’t help anyway.

  The value of the script now means nothing. Zhihong will give Dawei whatever he can to ensure he’s safe and no longer needs to go back to washing dishes in Macau. He’ll make up a story Yue Tao might believe, a story about a friend of his parents, a friend who helped shield his parents from the wrath of the Red Guards during the mid-1960s when anyone with a higher education became an enemy of the state and an enemy of the people. The people and the state, always one in the same. A friend whose son fell on hard times. Zhihong knows his parents went through hell during the Cultural Revolution. They never talk about that time of endless upheaval and the silence always made their anguish over that period in their lives clear. A repression that will work in Zhihong’s favour because it fades and distorts the details of what happened.

  Zhihong’s parents are so old now that he needs to remind them of their neighbours’ names. Reality for them is as malleable as it is for a toddler. It would be easy to construct a memory by melding it with some indisputable details. Zhihong could easily create a background for Dawei that would have roots in his parents’ lives. Once that history sets, no one will question it. That will allow him to spare a few hundred kuai every month. Enough for Dawei to rent a room on the outskirts of the city. Somewhere outside the Fifth Ring.

  Outside, surveying the stationary traffic, Zhihong wonders why he didn’t come up with such a solution when Dawei showed up in Beijing two or three years earlier, looking for the companionship they had together next to the causeway in Macau. He now sees in sharp detail the damage he caused by breaking their bond. The strongest of bonds, free of family or career obligations, a connection that formed not in spite of their social distance but because of it. They had nothing to offer each other except an absence of judgment.

  Then Zhihong detached himself when circumstances made their meetings more complicated but not impossible. He made a choice, turning off his feelings when he should have hatched a plan. The kind of plan he’s conjuring up now. A plan to resuscitate the people they were when they shared their dreams and disappointments.

  As Zhihong approaches the subway entrance, he sees a crowd meandering, confused, like a trail of ants interrupted and diverted into random movement by something that’s fallen from above. From the chatter of angry commuters talking on their cell phones, he learns that the subway line is temporarily shut down. Work on the tracks, for the new subway cars meant to be running when the Olympics start, has caused some kind of power disruption.

  “Tian!” he shouts.

  “They’re sending buses,” says a woman next to him, picking up on his anger. “But how will they even get here in this traffic?”

  Zhihong scratches his forehead as he looks east, surveying the countless stationary vehicles stretching into the distance and disappearing in the brown haze. He starts jogging.

  5:47 p.m.

  Grimacing, Ben cancels a third attempt to send the data through the VPN he’s used to send earlier versions of their reports.

  “Dammit,” he hisses.

  The outburst riles Jake. This is the first time Ben has shown anything other than confidence. Diane doesn’t react. She’s been spending more time with him. Perhaps she’s seen him rattled before. Taking cues from Diane, Jake swallows his fear and sits still on the edge of the bed.

  “They’ve probably figured out how to trace my VPN’s,” Ben says. “The protocols are associated with MIT.”

  “What can you do now?” Diane asks.

  “I need to piggyback on another one.”

  Ben looks toward the door.

  “There must be someone else in this hotel using a VPN,” Ben says. “I need to find one.”

  “Can I do anything to help?” Jake asks.

  Ben squints and rubs his eyes. He then looks at his and Diane’s phones, which sit next to the television, their batteries removed. He picks them up, phones in one hand and batteries in the other.

  “Take these,” he says.

  Diane starts shaking her head.

  “Ben,” she says. “He might already be in enough trouble.”

  Jake’s heart begins pounding again.

  “We have no choice,” Ben says, looking at Diane. “I need more time. They’re going to figure out where we are.” He looks back at Jake. “Take these, I don’t know, anywhere but here. As far as you can get in ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Put the batteries back in them and switch them on.”

  Diane looks out of the window, silently shaking her head again. A shake of resignation this time, not resistance. Jake sees in her expression the implications of Ben’s request and accepts it. Now numb, Jake steps outside of himself to avoid the instinct of self-preservation and into the skin of some clone he’s conjured up with his imagination, a more heroic version of himself. He takes the phones.

  “And do the same with your phone when you get to wherever you’re going.”

  Jake places the phones and batteries in the front pouch of his backpack.

  “Wait,” Diane says.

  She hands one set of the documents she’s printed out to Jake and another one to Ben.

  “Each of us should have these documents on us,” she continues. “It will show them, very clearly, what we know.”

  “It’s damning, but it won’t make any difference until I upload the data to my servers in the U.S.,” Ben says.

  “Then hurry up,” she says.

  6:15 p.m.

  The sweat running down the centre of Zhihong’s back makes the fabric of his shirt stick to his skin. The rough polyester fabric chafes. In the shade of the Third Ring’s China World overpass, he stops jogging, removes his jacket, folds the garment and slides it into his briefcase.

  He’s covered
well more than half the distance to the American journalist’s apartment building. People file in and out of the China World subway entrance. The line must be running again but it won’t help him now. He’s only about a kilometre from his destination. It will take just as much time, if not more, to get down to the platform and then, once at the next stop, to figure out which exit leads most directly to the building he wants.

  Zhihong’s cell phone vibrates. The call is surely from Yue Tao who will be wondering where he is. It’s dinnertime and they’ve agreed to eat at a new Korean restaurant in their neighbourhood, at least forty-five minutes away in the opposite direction. What could he possibly say? Another story he’ll need to create. This is what it’s like to live a lie. Constant fabrication and subterfuge. The need for total recall about alternate realities. Always teetering on the edge of being discovered. The luck will eventually run out. It’s mathematically impossible to come out on the good side of the odds indefinitely. Even if he’s lucky, he’ll be exhausted.

  As he lands on this conclusion, Zhihong decides he will come clean with Yue Tao. He will let the words “I’m a homosexual” drop like bombs, shattering the dream she’s been trying to construct. There’s no other way to deliver this message. He could try to ease the pain by telling her that he respects her too much to keep up the charade. He could try to shift some of the blame to her reluctance to entertain any other suitors. They needed to marry right after graduation from university and, it seemed, there were no other options for either of them. Why was that? Zhihong had no way to counter her determination.

  But no. There’s only the three words he will say. Any others will be meaningless. There’s no way to plan for this crisis. People, no matter how well you know them, will surprise you with their reactions to life-changing circumstances. She might stand stoically and tell Zhihong that she knew all along. She might also shriek and demand that he never come home. So many possible outcomes but they will all be the same.

  Yue Tao has been fretting about how their financial circumstances will keep them from their dream of an ideal home. She’s about to confront a factor that’s much more damaging.

  Zhihong moves to take the call but the phone stops vibrating. The screen shows that she’s already sent several texts.

  6:28 p.m.

  Ben finds a VPN signal on the fifth floor. Leaning against the wall, he sets in motion a series of commands that will access the keychain of the network’s user.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” he whispers to himself as a gyroscope icon spins on his screen.

  Ben hears a ping sound from the elevators at the centre of the corridor. He watches closely as two young Asian women carrying shopping bags emblazoned with fashion labels step out. Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Prada are the few he recognizes. Then another ping, this one very thin and tinny comes from his laptop, indicating Ben’s successful VPN access.

  Ben slides down the wall and places his laptop on his knees while he logs into his database.

  6:31 p.m.

  Jake keeps his head down, looking at his blank cell phone screen to avoid the surveillance cameras built into two opposite corners of the elevator’s ceiling as he and the other passengers descend. He’s planning to head back into the subway corridor and come out on the south side of Jianguo Road. He’ll put the batteries back in the phones once he’s in the Jianwai Soho development, a sprawling set of pure white towers that have been under construction, growing phase by phase for at least five years.

  The elevator stops on the fifth floor and a group of eight or nine people pile in, yammering in southern-accented Mandarin about the restaurant they’re heading to.

  “Reasonably priced Peking Duck. Just inside the Fourth Ring. It’s so frustrating,” one says, “how difficult it is to get good Peking Duck in Wuhan.”

  The rest of them nod in agreement.

  Jake feels protected by the mundane conversation among the crush of people around him. The elevator stops again on the third floor. A trio of Western tourists, parents in their fifties with a teenaged daughter, stare into the crowded car, unsure of whether to enter. The parents wear polo shirts – hers pink and his red – and khaki shorts. Americans, for sure. Jake wants them to enter. After a few seconds, they step away and the descent to the lobby continues.

  Jake walks along the polished marble floors of the hotel’s lobby towards the escalator down to the lower concourse, surrounded by soaring imperial red columns topped with gilded gold capitals, all designed as an homage to the Forbidden City. He sees a group of PSB officers coming through the giant, revolving door from the outside, at least six of them, and more officers are just outside, waiting for the next opening to swing through to the outside. To appear no different than a tourist, Jake looks away from them, up at the columns and the ornate, cross-hatched ceiling design. He then merges into a group of tourists leaving their bags in front of the concierge desk. Once he’s in the middle of the group, Jake looks out to watch the officers as they proceed to the elevators. The next group of five or six officers head to the reception desk.

  They’re almost certainly here for Ben and Diane, Jake thinks. If he’s right, there’s no point in the diversionary tactic he’s planning with the phones. Do they know what room? Should he try to get to room 712 before them? What would be the point? Should he just run? And run? And run? There’s nowhere to hide. At least there’s nowhere to hide for long.

  6:32 p.m.

  Several police officers mill around in front of the apartment building as a maintenance worker inspects a track embedded in the ground at the entrance. The worker operates a grouting tool that produces a deafening howl. A handwritten sign in Chinese, “MAINTENANCE IN PROGRESS”, hangs on the right-side pane of glass, taped on a slight angle as if the person hanging it didn’t bother to look twice. The left-side pane of glass is missing.

  A security guard just inside stops Zhihong.

  “I don’t recognize you as a resident of this building,” the guard says, yelling over the power tool’s racket. “Do you live here?”

  “Um. No. I’m visiting a friend.”

  The answer is lost in the noise. “What?”

  “I said I’m visiting a friend,” Zhihong says, yelling this time.

  “Which friend? What unit?”

  The stern tone rattles Zhihong. It occurs to him as he reaches into his pocket for the paper with the address that one of the units might be a crime scene. Could the police presence have something to do with Dawei and the journalist?

  Zhihong leaves the paper in his pocket. He doesn’t want the guard to snatch it. The power tool stops.

  “Um. Oh right. I was supposed to call him when I arrive to find out which unit,” Zhihong says apologetically.

  “Sir, whom have you come here to see,” the guard asks, this time more impatiently before looking over at two police officers who’ve just exited the elevator with a handful of men in plain suits. It’s obvious to Zhihong from the way they interact that the men in suits are working in some branch of law enforcement or investigations.

  Several more people enter the building and the security guard moves to stop them, most likely to ask for their IDs. One of the police officers asks the maintenance crew how long it will take to replace the broken door pane. In the flurry of interactions, Zhihong steps back outside. He continues walking down the path leading to the outer gates of the development and stops at a bench he feels is a safe distance from the journalist’s building yet still with a line of sight to its entrance.

  Zhihong’s suspicion that the police activity somehow involves Dawei and the American solidifies into certainty. His phone rings again. It’s Yue Tao. He connects and puts the phone to his ear.

  “Hong? Hey, are you there?”

  Zhihong waits a moment. “I’m here.”

  “Hong, where are you? What’s wrong?”

  “Um. It’s a friend. He’s hurt badly.”

  “Hong, you’re scaring me. What friend?”

  “Let me call you back.”r />
  6:33 p.m.

  Prompted by a tour leader brandishing a travel agency flag, the group Jake was using as a form of shelter has decamped and swept, cluster by cluster, into the China World Hotel’s giant revolving door entrance. They are now lining up to board a tour bus waiting outside, just beyond the police cars. Jake stands exposed in front of the tour group’s bags, arranged in rows like cars in a parking lot. Several bellhops get to work lugging the bags to the bus.

  Now vulnerable, Jake looks again towards the east side of the lobby, to the escalator that leads to the lower concourse, wondering whether it makes sense to flee.

  Sooner or later he will be dragged out from whatever spot he manages to find. Why prolong the agony, he wonders? Just cut to the consequence instead of calculating what consequences await.

  As he mulls the thought, three more police officers emerge from below. One looks at Jake and then down at a set of papers on a clipboard.

  Jake looks away and starts walking towards the revolving door.

  “Bie dong!” shouts one of the officers. Don’t move!

  6:35 p.m.

  Someone knocks. Diane stands up, hoping it’s Ben returning with a thumbs up but knowing it’s more likely to be the police. Ben has a key card. Why would he knock? She hears the person on the other side of the door slide the magnetic card through the lock. She rolls her fingers into fists and then looks at the manila folder on the desk next to her printer. It appears that she will be the first one to lob the explosive material contained in the lists and diagrams. All of the waiting and placating that started with her first visit to the PSB almost a month ago will end as she pivots to face the authorities on her terms.