Dragon's Eye

by Andy Oakes

  Barbara took the page to her desk, tracing out each individual digit of the number with her fingernail. The telephone number of the boy that now saw through Bobby’s eyes. Picking up the receiver. Dialling. And then silence. Silence marked and measured by the thump in her chest. Listening, and finishing the wine, warm and weak, but immediately craving something stronger. She cut the call off before it connected, knowing that if it had been answered, it would have been answered by him. Him. A ten year old boy. He would be blond … also knowing that. And with beachball blue eyes. Bobby’s eyes. She put the receiver down, moving to the drinks table, pouring a large Teacher’s into heavy crystal. Gold into silver. The ice cracking as the spirit made contact. Raising the glass to her lips and drinking it in one. Pleasure and pain, the Scotch. Fire and ice.

  Ask her.

  “Bobby Hayes, his heart, kidneys, and his corneas, who removed them?”

  The interpreter turned pages, eyes following the meander of her own fingernail; as certain, as convinced as a scalpel’s deep glide.

  “A consultant surgeon. A Doctor Charles Haven.”

  Eyes burning, Barbara turned to the window, but Bobby had gone. Just the circles left; tears of condensation bleeding through them.

  Dreaming … just dreaming?

  “Is there anything else, Madam Hayes?”

  Barbara placed her hand in a gentle print across the glass where Bobby had traced. She could feel him,

  “No, I’ve finished. I appreciate your help, thank you.”

  The door closed. The room empty. The world empty. Just tears filling it. Picking the sheets of data up from the desk as she left; the brief cover note with its faint smell of China Brand cigarettes. She could imagine him writing it. She smiled, placing them in her attaché case. Turning off the office lights.

  “Thank you, Sun Piao,” she whispered, as she moved toward the elevator.

  *

  Walking … a perfect day torn apart. A sky in tatters. Sun, but rain on its coat tails. You could smell it, feel it. Wanting it to come and pass, but it was digging its heels in.

  Barbara hurried her pace. Walking nowhere, but everywhere. Past familiar cafés. Seeming unfamiliar. Everything at odds. Only turning back to the office, resolve in her pace, when the tail of music wagged from the open doors of the bar.

  ‘The moment I wake up, Before I put on my make-up … I say a little prayer for you.’

  Sometimes everything, anything, takes on a meaning.

  *

  Pushing the intercom.

  “I need someone checked out, Carmichael. All the way. And traced. I need him tracked with a daily update. Whatever it costs. Whatever deals have to be made. He’s in China at present. I’m not sure where. If its Shanghai, it will be the Jing Jiang Hotel. If it’s Beijing, the Diaoyutai State Guest House …”

  Through the window, the sky moving toward darkness in a steady flow. Almost liquid. Yellows to mauves. Reds to purples.

  “Friend or foe?”

  Barbara’s eyes followed the curve of the Potomac, the George Washington Memorial Highway hugging its far shore in a lazy flex of traffic.

  “Foe.”

  She could hear his fingers already tap-dancing across the computer keyboard.

  “You said ‘him’, so it’s a male?”

  “It’s a male.”

  “ An American National?”

  “No.”

  She heard the slap of the keys slow, fall silent.

  “Not one of us, so what is he?”

  The sun falling like a stone toward the horizon. Barbara left with no certainty that it would ever rise again.

  “He’s English.”

  “As English as fish and chips. Scones and jam?” Barbara smoothed her hand across the glass, city lights blooming smeared beneath it.

  “No, Carmichael, as English as ‘Jack the Ripper’.”

  Chapter 40

  THE GHOST MONTH, GUI YUE … THE SEVENTH LUNAR MONTH.

  Do not be devout, for during this time the ghosts of hell will walk the earth. Do not be devout or it will be a dangerous time to travel. To go swimming. To get married. To move to a new house.

  Do not be devout, for during this time if your husband should die, your wife, your father or your mother, if your brother, sister, or your own child should die … you shall not bury them. You will preserve the body for a funeral, a burial, a month later.

  Long weeks. Longer days.

  So many things not to do if you are devout. So many things to do if you are.

  On the first and fifteenth days of the ghost month you will burn ghost money and incense … to appease, to pacify the spirits. On the first and fifteenth days of the ghost month you will prepare food, carefully, intricately, offerings to be placed on tables outside your home … to appease, to pacify the spirits. On the first and fifteenth days of the ghost month you will bathe, dress in your best clothes and visit the Taoist temple … to appease, to pacify the spirits.

  Death, it is a sensitive issue. Do not talk of it … do not hint of it. Longevity, you talk of. Death is taboo. Be careful, so careful when pronouncing the number ‘four’ … in Chinese it sounds so like the word for death. Do not give a clock as a gift, it is a sure sign that somebody will die. Should you write a will, it will be impossible for you to find a witness to your signature upon it. If you give flowers, always give red flowers, never white … white, the colour associated with death. The purchasing of life insurance, this is to be avoided. And if you are to take a holiday or to move home, always seek out the many wonderful geographical names that litter the People’s Republic, as confetti does at a wedding. Happiness Valley. Paradise Road. Heaven’s Gateway. The Boulevard of a Thousand Joys. When visiting the United States of America, go to the many beautiful National Parks that the country has to offer. Except one, always avoiding one … Death Valley.

  And on the seventh day of the seventh moon, falling during the heart of the ghost month … qingren jie, lovers day. Cards. Chocolate candies. Restaurants. A day of love in a month of ghosts.

  Do not be devout … too devout. It may pass you by, the ghosts stealing it away.

  Chapter 41

  BEIJING, THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA.

  A man moving against a wall of sheet mirror-glass. Moving through the traffic of Chang’andongjie … an artery of a city chewing on the fumes of one million cars, ten thousand buses, fifty-five thousand taxis, one and a half million motorcycles. Still distant, but unmistakably, Charles Haven.

  Closer. Outline firming. Features, shifting, settling into place. Eyes, surprisingly blue. Furiously blue. And hair, blonder than Piao had remembered.

  Memories of memories of memories. How they fool. How they convince.

  The Senior Investigator lowered the pocket binoculars and rubbed his eyes. Sleep, not so much a natural act now, more a butterfly that refused to be netted. Watching as the Englishman pierced the shadows of the pavement, entering the Bank of China. Days now … trailing him on a leisurely journey. Hospital to hospital. Bank to bank. Government office to government office. The boredom and weariness building. Paralysing. Disabling. Flowing through the Senior Investigator’s arteries into his muscles and the cortex of his brain. Doing a job that would have required the deployment of thirteen PSB officers if it had been a Bureau operation.

  Surveillance … an art in which mistakes cannot be erased. Piao, pulling every trick from a deep bag of experience. Changing his jacket frequently, extremes of colour. Glasses, sunglasses … worn, not worn. Sometimes a tie, a collar. Sometimes a tee shirt, a vest. Hanging different keepsakes in the windscreen of the hire car and changing them frequently. Lucky charms. A Dragon. A miniature football shirt. On the top of the windscreen itself, see-through plastic stickers with different boy’s and girl’s names on it.

  Peng & Ye. Yan & Miao. Zhou & Lili.

  Changing them frequently also. Anything to deceive the quick glance of the target being followed. Hints that his eyes would catch that would pacify any suspicions
. Operating at an almost subliminal level. Subtle messages, whispering to his sub-conscious …

  See, you are not being followed. His jacket is a different colour. The windscreen of the car has different names upon it … Hong & Wei. A dragon hanging from the rear-view mirror, not a plastic Coca-Cola bottle. See, he wears a tie, not a tee shirt. And sunglasses. Relax … see for yourself, you are not being followed.

  *

  It was an hour and a half before the Englishman emerged to an afternoon dying on its feet. Hot rivers of traffic from Qianmenxijie, Tiananmen Square, Dongdandajie … south, towards the Park of the Temple of Heaven. An hour and a half, waiting … sweat, in slow trains down the back of his shirt. Watching the bank’s revolving doors revolve. Parents, children in tow, leaving the Palace of Museums. Three hundred and ten thousand objects dedicated to the political indoctrination of the people.

  An hour and a half, Piao thinking only about a gap in time and place in which he could kill a man.

  Keeping a respectable distance. Parking beyond the line of trees, the perimeter fence. Through binoculars, smudges focusing into hard edges … watching as Haven returned to the Diaoyutai State Guest House. Walking up the steps of one of the many villas dotted around the leafy grounds of what was the site of the Imperial Residence some eight hundred years previous, the villas … reserved only for the most noteworthy of foreign guests. Immaculate. The Englishman looking as if the day had not held in its teeth a humidity that almost bled sweat. A day in a life, marking its passage by the grubby rings of grey soot that it bequeathed to the inside of shirt cuffs and to shirt collars.

  A glint from a brass and glass door, and Haven was gone.

  Piao parked, walked. The Qianmen Hotel two blocks away.

  Three hours sleep. A shower, as cold as misery. Shaving, cutting himself. Blood in a flow, and unable to staunch it. Fuck, fuck … why won’t it stop! In the mirror, half misted, a face staring back. Hardly recognisable. Tracing the scar around his ear. Across his stomach. Its ache in red seams down his back. Feeling and looking like the jigsaw of an old man. Plunging his face into the washbasin. Ice and hotel soap. The water flowing over its rim. Again, again … vigorously washing his face, his hands. Wanting, needing to wash so much away. Until the pain, the decisions, the shadows of acts not yet carried out … were gone. The hotel soap in a crudely printed wrapper. The hotel soap making him smell of pink roses. All day, of pink roses.

  *

  Picking up Haven’s car on Salihelu. Prompt, 10:30am, as usual. Black, German … Mercedes. The morning light, like sliced lemons across its paintwork. Hot, humid, the air already with a sting in its tail. Thoughts of a shower, ice cold. A kill, flame hot … orbiting the Senior Investigator’s attention. Through the glare, following the Englishman to fixed points in a day, measured by pools of boredom …

  11:00 to 12:15

  – On Beichizidajie, the Public Security Department.

  12:35 to 1:45

  – Capital Hospital, north on Dongdanlu.

  2:00 to 2:55

  – Lunch at Fengziyuan, ‘The Horn of Plenty’.

  3:15 to 4:10

  – The Jianguomenwai Diplomat Compound off of Ritanlu.

  4:30 to 5:20

  – Beijing University and Qinghua Technical College.

  The black Mercedes pulling north towards Nanhai, negotiating the junction at Qianmenxijie. Traffic in a smoked shuffle as the sun fell through the concrete tangents and aerial forests of the city. The Senior Investigator on autopilot. Brief glimpses of Haven in his interior of leather and glass. Piao trying to see him as stone … just a target to knock down. But failing miserably. Only imagining the swift act. The blur of action. Form, colours, in a haemorrhaging wash.

  A knife … yes, a knife would be best. A series of ‘pops’ as it pierced jacket, shirt, skin. Resistance, as it pushed through flesh. Grating bone. Seconds, it would be, the knife up to its hilt, his fist against the silk of the Englishman’s shirt … before the bleed. Seconds, to stare into a man’s eyes whom you are killing. Seconds, to contemplate what noise it would be that would prise his lips apart, as the wave of blood rolled up his shirt. Cream to crimson.

  Knowing how it would be. Intimately. With certainty.

  It was dark when the Mercedes pierced the sanctuary of the Diaoyutai State Guest House … and was lost to sight. Dark, as the Senior Investigator drove across a city splintered in harsh neon light.

  *

  As straight as an arrow, the Fuxing Road … leading onto Xichang’anjie, Dongchang’anjie, Jianguomenwai. Out of the city, into the city, out of the city. Spearing Beijing, pinning it in place. A tarmacadam stick through the belly of a wriggling fish. Lanes of traffic, racing hot … angry.

  Piao put his foot down. The Mercedes four cars ahead, on Qiamendajie, feeding onto the carriageways, moving east. A seamless dip into madness. Chromed psychosis. Jamming into the next lane, horns all around him. Swarming motorcycles in wild flight. No rules in this driving, just muscle. In the Mercedes, its air-conditioned wave, Haven, running a hand through his hair. He was going to be late. Ten, fifteen minutes, but late all the same.

  Fuck this traffic. Fuck Beijing. Fuck China.

  Across the carriageways, low enough to see the rivets, a jet, sprinting up from Capital Airport. Gaining height now as it stretched south-west towards Wuhan. The great cotton growing plains of Hebei would be under its wings … the invasion route of the Northern Barbarians as they made their way to the Yellow River Basin, tempted by the shining lights of civilisation. The ancient capitals of the Celestial Empire, Luoyang and Kaifeng … the silver jet’s footsteps. The Yellow Mountains, Heavenly City Peak, Immortal Peak, Flying Dragon Peak … umbilical cords of recognition. Piao lit a China Brand, drawing on its bitterness. Pulling his gaze from the sky and back to the tarmac. Better to concentrate on the road. Silver jets fleeing to silver cities, were for silver people. For him, the piss puddled longs. The tattoos of cabbage leaves squashed underfoot. The streets choking in their own smoke.

  So many places never to see, an itch that you can never hope to reach.

  Ahead, a Toyota pick-up, mud and chrome dented fenders … pulled violently across two lanes, separating Piao from the Mercedes. Horns, brakelights, a flock of motorcycles startled into a weaving dance. In slow motion, one going down. Angle between bike and road surface pressing more acute. A hand taken off of the throttle and held up, warding off fast metal. Wheels coming down fast. The Senior Investigator floored the brake. Arms locking, bracing as they bit hard.

  “Shit. Shit.”

  Thumping the wheel with both palms. Fumes, heat haze … rubber tainted. And through it, watching the Mercedes drift away. Haven lost. Tail-lights in a fade from scarlet to palest pink. Fading, fading, gone.

  Forty minutes for a paramedic crew to fight through traffic, knotted and growling. For a motorcycle and a pick-up truck, to be removed from the lanes. For the road to be swept of glass, mud, twists of metal trim, and sawdust put down. Piao having to drive halfway to Tongxian, shadowing the Great Canal, before being able to head back west towards the city centre. Midday now, and the shadows shortening. The highway cutting between Baliqiao and the distant city … a sweep of greyed spikes, points blunted by a mustard haze of pollution. At the debris littered junction with the Wenyuhe and the Chaobaihe, the traffic slowed, staggered, stopped. No apparent reason, just the secret life of heavy traffic. The Senior Investigator lit another cigarette. Winding down the side window. Smoke escaping across the outside of the windscreen. Looking around, the heat haze rippling metal and flexing concrete. Through car windows, faces, puffed and pink. Releasing the handbrake as the string bead traffic loosened and slowly broke up. Clear road glimpsed between bumper to bumper. As he eased the gas, black seeping into the corner of Piao’s vision. A car, squat and glossy … cruising. Opening out into a sprint of jet laced in tart lemon splinters of reflection. A Mercedes, in the next lane, easing next to him. Its driver in a nonchalant sideways glance at Piao. Palm on
chin, the Senior Investigator in a vacant sideways glance back at the other driver, before the realisation.

  Haven. Fuck it … Haven.

  A high tension wire hooked up, eye to eye. The Englishman shorting it. Foot clamped down on the accelerator.

  Piao. Fuck it … Piao.

  A dash of black sprinting into silver, as the Mercedes gunned. A second, two, three … before the Senior Investigator reacted. A buzzing, deep, hot, invading his inner ear, as he careered his car across the lane. Fifty metres ahead, the Mercedes, lost in exhaust and skidded rubber. A smell, heady, sickening … like burnt caramel. Like a belly full of too much toffee apple. Everything accelerating, as if he was stationary, but the world itself was racing. Headlong. Unbalanced. Everything now with a razor edge. Everything now liquid, and with the hue of mercury. The game over. Ripping the adhesive names, Zhou & Lili, from inside the windscreen. Tearing the miniature club football shirt from the rear-view mirror. The game over. Unshocked, as he realised, without even a hint of hesitation … that at last he could kill.

  Ahead, the traffic building. A wall of heat rippling metal. The Mercedes slowing fast. Brake lights bleeding ruby, as it skewed across the lane choking in its own smoke. A door flung open. A figure in white momentarily glancing back. Running. Running, against the stream of heavy traffic moving with resolve in the opposite direction. White against red. White against blue. Black … yellow. A curtain shimmer of heat leaving the tarmac. Pluming from bonnets, roofs. Shrinking him. Swallowing him. Piao also running. Under the soles of his shoes, the burn from the road. Instantly, sweat in a sheen across his face, his arms. Sprinting, drawing every ounce of energy to his legs; already starting to labour. Shins, ankles, knees, turning to rusty iron. Calves, thighs … concrete. A running man chasing a running man down a broken corridor of slow-moving glass, plastic, chrome. The gap between them measured in dirty number plates and worn treaded tyres. Each windscreen burning from a sun held at midday … cadmium. Everything feeling as if it were in the process of being gilded.