“She’s ok,” Guy said, balancing Mei Mei on his right hip and using his left hand to guide his wife down the stairs.
We’re all just bloody great, he added mentally.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Detective Wang Yong-qi followed Shopei and Randy on foot through the hidden administrative quarters nestled behind the ambassadorial buildings. About five blocks from the US Consulate the tree lined International streets gave way to the more colourful businesses and residential units of Shanghai’s white-collar working class. It was on one of those streets that Shopei flagged down a taxi and climbed into the front seat, unaware that Senior Agent Jiu Kaiyu and his half-brother Ng-zhi were searching the sidewalks less than two blocks away.
Randy motioned for Wang to get into the back seat, then slid in beside him. Wang studied the young man from the corner of his eye. Neither the woman nor her friend had offered their names. The woman believed Wang really was Wu Tang, the husband of the injured woman, but her companion did not seem to be convinced.
The couple did not look like terrorists, despite what the Secret Service cop in the park had said, but Wang knew looks could be deceiving. He listened discretely, pretending not to understand the English conversation that passed between the couple.
“Where are we going?” he asked in Cantonese.
Shopei looked over her shoulder at Wang. “There is a shop a few miles from here. My Master has asked me to pick up some special outfits.” She gave the name and address of the shop to the driver.
The car stopped at a small store. The inside of the store was dark and quiet. Once Shopei opened the front door, though, the room sprang to life. Three employees stood up and straightened their tunics behind a glass counter, while a fourth ran to turn on the lights. The room was surprisingly large and impressive, given its deceptively understated storefront.
Inside shiny glass cabinets were rows of brilliantly coloured novelty items, many covered with rich silk tapestry and many more fashioned in the traditional lustrous enamels used in making cloisonné. Along the left wall were heavy rolls of uncut silk fabric in every colour and pattern. The right side of the store was dedicated to on-the-rack finished garments, most ready to wear and some waiting to be custom fitted by the store’s seamstress before sale.
“Come,” Shopei said to Randy, repeating herself in Cantonese to Wu Tang. She led both men directly to a display filled with white ceremonial outfits. Wasting no time, she held up several costumes to loosely measure length against the men. The pattern on the silk was not relevant. Time was of the essence. Master Long was not optimistic about Gui-Jing’s chances of surviving another night.
“Do you want to try those on?” the store manager said.
“No, thank you,” Shopei answered. “These two will do.”
“These are fine pieces. You will want them to fit nicely. Our seamstress can work on them today, if you are in a hurry.”
“That won’t be necessary. I can alter them myself.” In truth, Shopei had never held a sewing needle, but that didn’t matter. She paid the storekeeper.
The manager covered each outfit in plastic, not removing them from their hangers. Shopei handed one costume to each of the men. Then she quickly led them back out onto the street.
Confused, Wang followed the girl through the back alleys that led them ever deeper into the old city’s poorest streets. Were they taking him to a funeral, as indicated by the purchase of white outfits? He wondered what the relationship was between the pair. They did not seem to be lovers, yet they were obviously on some kind of intimate terms. They spoke to each other comfortably, like old friends, but the boy was a foreigner who spoke only English, while the girl was obviously native to Shanghai.
When at last they reached a crooked dwelling with a green painted door, Randy handed his outfit to Wang so Yong-qi now had both of his hands full.
The girl knocked several times, using a code. A moment later the door opened, a few inches at first, then fully, revealing a wizened old man dressed in a perfectly preserved white silk mourning tunic with patterns so intricate they must have been created by hand on an antique loom.
“Master Long,” the girl said, “we have brought Wu Tang.”
The old man studied Wang with his good eye.
“Please come in,” he said at last.
Wang entered the house, taking in the tiny kitchen table and the red curtain that cut through the living area, blocking a portion of the room from view.
“When was the last time you saw your wife, Mister Wu,” Long said.
“About a month ago,” Wang said.
“Why do you say ‘about’? Do you not know when you saw your wife?”
“Yes, of course. It was June first. It’s just I’ve been on the move since then. I’ve lost track of the days.”
“When we called, you were not in Shanghai. Where were you?”
“I was in Nanning. I was trying to reach some contacts to help Gui-Jing.”
Long nodded his head sharply. It was not clear whether he believed Wang’s story, but he had obviously gone as far as he could in convincing himself.
“Prepare yourself,” he said. “Your wife is not the way you remember her.”
Nor, thought Yong-qi, is her husband the way she remembers him.
Shopei pulled back the curtain and motioned for Wang to join her at the healing bed. He approached nervously, knowing once Wu Gui-Jing saw him, his masquerade would be over.
He stepped closer, taking in the woman’s battered face and the emaciated contours of her shoulder bones. Her eyes were closed, her face turned away in a peaceful repose. Only the jagged struggle of her breathing revealed the depth of her pain.
Who would commit such an act of violence against a woman? Of course, Wang knew his shock was unreasonable. He had seen many such atrocities committed against many such women, a number of them even younger than Wu Gui-Jing.
Slowly Gui-Jing’s eyes fluttered open, and she turned her bruised face toward the group.
“Have you brought my husband?” she said.
“We have,” Shopei said. “Tang is here with us.”
Gui-Jing struggled to focus her eyes, at last resting them on Wang’s face. She smiled and raised her hand.
“Husband,” she said. “Meditate with me.”
“Gui-Jing, I am here,” Yong-qi said. As he kneeled at her side his eyes filled with tears, a reaction he could not understand, given that Gui-Jing was not his wife, nor his sister, nor anyone else he knew.
Of one thing, though, he was certain. Wu Gui-Jing was not an ‘enemy of the state’. She was just a human being who, like millions of others, searched in vain to find meaning in the endless struggle that is the human existence.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Cynthia looked nervously around the hotel lobby. She had tried to convince the couples to go to their rooms, but only Caroline and Harold Kitchener had excused themselves, saying they had to get their three daughters to bed. Given what had happened that evening, they would not leave their children alone.
The other four couples alternately paced and sat with their babies. Adrian had not spoken since they arrived back at the hotel. His shoulders drooped and his long face was drawn and sombre under his blonde hair.
He felt powerless for the first time since he had met Ting-lo. She was a strong woman, self-possessed and competent in her own right, and yet she always had the ability to make him feel like a man. She was easy to please, appreciating every good deed he offered. In the years they had been together, he had always known how to cheer her up when she was down. That is, until tonight.
What could a man do to ease this kind of pain? Ting-lo no longer had the strength to be composed. She had not stopped crying since that terrible moment at the restaurant. Who could blame her? She had held it together in the face of Tang’s violent end. Somehow she had been able to bury her pain for the moment and carry on because she knew — they both knew — Anna would need them.
Now, though, Ting-lo had reached
her limit. She couldn’t speak, except to whisper over and over in his ear that she was being punished, she must be a bad person, because after all of their effort and hope she still was not allowed to be happy.
Adrian clenched his fists.
Fa-ling sat on an armchair apart from the others. She was desperate for sleep, having rested only a few hours the previous night. There was no way of knowing how long it would take for the officer to round up a police sketch artist, if in fact he had not forgotten all about the case. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine she was playing her clarinet — or rather it was playing her, drawing breath of its own volition to create a melody that would lift her into the clouds, allowing her to float into a still, deep sleep.
Thirty minutes later Cynthia touched her shoulder. It took Fa-ling a moment to restore her sense of reality. Once she remembered where she was, and why, she rubbed her eyes and greeted the officer.
The sketch artist was an older man with crooked teeth and a bad left arm that made Fa-ling remember her childhood injury. She rubbed her own arm to improve the circulation and followed him away from the others to a couch near a better light.
He smiled at her accent but had no trouble understanding her, having perhaps more patient ears acquired through maturity. Fa-ling was impressed with the way he drew specifics from her, helping her to remember tiny details she didn’t even know she had stored away. Slowly she was able to raise the kidnapper’s face up into the remembered glow of the street lights and transfer it onto paper through the artist’s pencil.
When he was done, she nodded. She was shocked to see the result of her own hazy memory portrayed so perfectly on paper. Looking at the kidnapper’s face, she realised that, despite his height, he was really just a boy of nineteen or twenty at most. His eyes had a frightened look, as if he had been caught playing at something he shouldn’t.
Fa-ling thanked the artist for his time and rejoined Cynthia.
“OK,” Cynthia said to the officers, “now I really must get these people to bed. They have told you everything they know. Unless you have any more questions, please excuse us.”
“Ma’am,” the officer said to Ting-lo, “we will do our best to recover your baby.”
“Please bring Anna back to us,” Ting-lo said in Cantonese. “She must be so frightened. Please don’t let anyone hurt her.”
Paula Kader left Guy’s side to speak with Ting-lo.
“Take a couple of these,” she said, handing two tiny pills to Ting-lo with a bottle of water. “They’re mild muscle relaxants. I use them for the jet lag. They will help you to get some sleep.”
“I don’t want any pills,” Ting-lo said. “I just want Anna.” She started to cry again. Adrian took the pills from Paula.
“Swallow them,” he said firmly. “I need you to sleep tonight. We’ll have more of this to deal with tomorrow.” He put the pills onto Ting-lo’s tongue and held the water bottle to her mouth.
“Thank you,” he said to Paula.
“You’re welcome.”
Fa-ling looked at Paula Kader with new eyes. In practical matters at least, Paula was able to step in with tangible assistance if not with emotional support.
Henry, the hotel concierge, led the officers and police artist to a room where they made photocopies of the sketch as well as the orphanage picture of Anna. They gave a handful of the images to Henry, who hung them up around the front desk.
Then, after offering more reassurances they would do everything they could to bring Anna Harlan back, the officers left the hotel with the artist in tow. They wasted no time, but made their way directly to their favourite massage parlour. It was late. There was nothing they could do to save Anna, really. They left the weary, middle-aged sketch artist alone to nap in the car while they had a couple of drinks and spent some time with their usual girls.
THIRTY-NINE
It took almost no time for Gui-Jing to fall asleep again. Her injuries were far too advanced to allow for any real meditation. When she appeared settled in repose, Wang Yong-qi gently released her hand and tiptoed away from the bed to join the others at the kitchen table.
“So,” Master Long said, pointing at a chair he had found in the garden’s tool shed, “have a seat. Tell us about yourself. What is your name?”
“I am Wu Tang,” Yong-qi said, pretending not to notice the accusation in Long’s voice. “Gui-Jing is my wife.”
“You are not Wu Tang,” Long said. “If you must continue the pretence, then there is nothing to discuss.”
“Very well. My name is Wang Yong-qi. I am a detective from Nanning. I have some bad news, but I fear Wu Gui-Jing is too weak to hear it.”
“We are strong,” Long said. “Let us have your ‘news’.”
“Last night, in the Golden Lion Hotel in Nanning, your Mister Wu Tang committed suicide by setting himself on fire and throwing himself out of a sixth floor window.”
“I see,” Long said. He was silent for a moment, watching Shopei as she translated the conversation to Randy. “Did anyone witness this ‘suicide’?”
“There were no eye witnesses.”
“Can we be certain it was a suicide?”
“We cannot. My partner and I have reason to believe it might be more a case of ‘assisted suicide’, especially given Mister Wu’s religious activities. We have worked on a handful of similar cases recently and have come to suspect several such Falun Gong suicides may have been staged. However, there is no proof.”
“So you had Tang’s cell phone because you took it from the scene of his death?” Shopei asked.
“That’s right. He had few belongings with him in the room. He was not carrying any identity papers. We did not know his name until you called. What was in his room is now in my personal custody, including his telephone. I am having his calls logged to find out what he was doing in Nanning. Do you have any idea why he checked into a five-star establishment like the Golden Lion Hotel?”
“From what little I know of Gui-Jing,” Long said, “I am surprised to hear her husband could afford such luxury. When Lim first brought her to me he described her as a pretty girl, young and bright, but certainly a peasant. He said she had little formal education and no influential family connections that might help her to escape the country.”
“When the suicide occurred, did the other guests hear anything?” Randy asked.
Shopei translated the question and Wang nodded.
“What did they hear?” Long asked.
Wang Yong-qi rubbed his eyes. He was functioning without sleep. There was little chance he and Cheng would be able to solve Wu Tang’s murder. However, his best hope of learning more about Tang lay in opening up further to the people in this room. To that end, Wang told them everything he knew about the so-called suicide.
“Detective Wang,” Shopei said, “I do not know whether we can trust you. However, we have a situation we cannot possibly deal with on our own, so we will take a chance that you are honest.”
Shopei looked at Master Long. He nodded.
“Detective,” she continued, “allow me tell you about my day.”
Shopei told Wang Yong-qi about the attack two weeks earlier on her father, Tan Lim, who had been a guard at one of the state ‘re-education centres’ outside of Shanghai. Then Yong-qi listened as she recounted the horror of finding her mother, father and brother dead in their family apartment. She did not falter, but told the entire story, including her brother’s plan to bring their cousin, Randy Chan, to Shanghai to write a story exposing these human rights abuses to the American public.
“Was your family involved with the Falun Gong?” Yong-qi asked.
“Never,” Shopei said. “My father was a student of our own Master Long. We have always been Buddhists, on both sides of my family. When my father went to work for the centre and saw what was going on, he was moved to help the prisoners. Master Long put him in touch with an underground organisation dedicated to helping prisoners of conscience to escape from China.”
“H
ow extensive is this underground ‘freedom’ organisation of yours?” Wang Yong-qi asked.
“I have no way of knowing that,” Long answered. “I suspect there may be many of us, but we do not have contact with each other. I am but a small part of a larger unit. I have been assisting for many years, caring for victims of torture and trying to heal wounds in preparation for escape. Ultimately, I never know where my patients will end up. Above all, these people long for a sense of security.”
“Pardon me,” Yong-qi said, “but my partner, Cheng Minsheng, is waiting for me outside.”
Shopei looked at Randy, then at Long.
“We were not followed,” she said. “I am sure of it.”
“No,” Wang said, “you are right. We were not followed. However, Cheng has been able to track me using this.” He pulled the tracing device from his pocket and laid it on the table.
“Can we trust this ‘Cheng’?” Long asked.
Yong-qi met the old man’s gaze directly.
“I have always trusted Cheng,” he said.
FORTY
Jiu Kaiyu tapped his knee in frustration. He glanced at Ng-zhi, who stared stoically into the darkness at the front gate of the American Consulate building. They had been staking out the building for hours, taking turns jogging up the street to use the facilities at the Lucky Monkey restaurant. The floor of the car was littered with takeout boxes. Ng-zhi was a difficult man to keep adequately fed.
“Let’s go,” Kaiyu said.
Ng-zhi turned the key in the ignition. It was obvious they were wasting their time. There had been no sign of Randy Chan. Either he had slipped out of the city, or he was still here, maybe even in this very neighbourhood. Either way, unless they got a call saying Chan had showed up at the Consulate, or unless he turned his cell phone back on, Kaiyu and Ng-zhi were out of luck.
The First Excellence: Fa-Ling's Map Page 17
