The First Excellence: Fa-Ling's Map

by Donna Carrick

  The frightened parents wrapped white knuckles around their stroller handles, stampeding like a herd of buffalo after Cynthia and away from the relentless vendors.

  When they finally arrived at Tiananmen Square they were disappointed to find the site, which was normally open to the public, closed due to official Military business. The families hovered at the edge of the square watching the manoeuvres, each adult stirred by the global memory of the massacre that had taken place there on June 4, 1989.

  Finally, not wanting to draw attention to the group, Cynthia insisted they move on to the main attraction: The Forbidden City.

  Never had Fa-ling witnessed such a display of elegance and ornament. From the deep blue enamel of the exquisite cloisonné pieces, originally inspired, according to history, by visits from the French Royalty, to the polished sleeping quarters that once belonged to China’s last Emperor, it was easy to see how this testament to art and beauty had become little more than a grandiose prison to the boy.

  Such slavish devotion to wealth and position could never be a good thing. Despite the throng of smiling tourists pushing her onward, Fa-ling was weighed down by a great remembered sadness that had settled on her heart.

  It was a collective sorrow, one seldom admitted, but one experienced by many. Now, in the presence of so much history, Fa-ling had joined that unenviable number. She knew her understanding of the differences between East and West would never be the same.

  At the end of the palatial tour, Cynthia led her exhausted group through a winding alley, where they were once again confronted by vendors. These sellers, though, were less intimidating. They nodded and smiled, even managing to utter a few words of English to encourage purchases. Cynthia slowed, allowing the group to patronise the vendors.

  Eloise Golluck bought a set of golden piglets in honour of ‘the year of the pig’. They were suitable for hanging on a Christmas tree.

  Ting-lo was not interested in the goods. She kept both hands on Anna’s stroller. Adrian stood close to his family, creating a barrier between them and the pushing crowd.

  The Kitcheners had their hands full with three children as they waited for the group to finish shopping. Guy Kader held onto Mei Mei while Paula inspected a tray of local needlecrafts.

  Yvanna studied a hand-quilted silk blanket. Daniel squirmed in his stroller, obviously hot and uncomfortable. Feeling sorry for him, Chris unbuckled his belt and lifted him onto the ground. He held the boy’s hand to stop him from toddling off into the crowd.

  Yvanna turned to ask Chris whether their housekeeper would like the quilt. Her words came out as a gasp, though, when she saw a woman running toward Daniel. Before either Yvanna or Chris could react, the woman had grabbed their son and was already lost in the crowd. Chris ran shouting after her, but by the time he had pushed his way through the exit she was no where in sight.

  Stunned, he could only stare down the street, hoping to catch a glimpse of his son. When Yvanna clutched his arm, he knew the situation was hopeless.

  SIXTY-THREE

  Gege lay on the hotel bed with Daniel sitting on his chest. The boy had kept up a deafening howl for most of the way. Once they got into their rental car, though, Gege was able to calm him down. He bounced on the bed, enjoying the child’s laughter.

  “Leave him alone,” Miao said, snatching the baby from Gege. “We are not making friends with him.” She dropped him onto the other bed and tossed a yellow rubber toy at him.

  “He’s only a baby,” Gege said.

  “There is no point getting attached to him. Once we have the million dollars, we will have to dispose of him. Returning him to the Canadians is too risky.”

  “Once we have the million dollars, we can do what we want. We can start over in Hong Kong. No one knows us there. If we want, we can adopt him.”

  “Gege,” Miao said, her voice becoming soft, “we have to stick with the plan. People always get caught when they deviate from the plan.”

  Gege turned away from her. He knew better than to argue. His cousin was far more intelligent than he was. He wished, though, she had a warmer heart.

  When it came down to it, Gege knew it would be up to Miao to do what needed to be done. He did not have the backbone for it.

  Miao used the Blackberry Paula Kader had given her to log onto the African account. It was Paula’s loan shark who had used his mob connections to put her in touch with Miao and Gege. Miao’s family was loosely tied to a Chinese crime syndicate. Despising the stigma of his criminal background, her father turned his back on all of that, becoming an honest craftsman who made and painted delicate pieces of pottery for sale to tourists.

  Miao was tired of living within her family’s means. One of China’s current generation of ‘Bad Girls’, she ran with a fast crowd for whom money was not an issue. As soon as the deal was struck with Paula, Miao came up with a deal of her own, one that would allow her and her hopelessly romantic cousin to escape from their dreary Nanning existence.

  When Paula gave her the number of the offshore African account where the ransom was to be transferred, Miao immediately used part of the ‘deposit’ to set up her own offshore account. The ransom demand would be written in Chinese, via a note delivered to the woman who called herself Cynthia, a name that was no doubt easy for the Westerners to pronounce.

  There was no time to waste. She notified the teenaged son of a relative to go ahead as planned. The teenager would carry a sealed envelope addressed to Cynthia to a local bicycle courier, who would unwittingly deliver it to the hotel where the adoption group was staying.

  The letter said: One million US dollars for child. Transfer by three o’clock this afternoon and wait for instructions. Below that message was the necessary banking information to make the transfer. The entire communication was in Chinese characters.

  It was glowingly simple. According to Paula’s plan, the money would be deposited directly into an account owned by the loan shark. The amount would be sufficient to cover her entire debt, make a handsome payment to her Chinese accomplices and still leave her with some pocket money. Not that Paula needed extra money — she had no intention of ever gambling again — but on the other hand, there were some hot investment properties coming up on the market…

  Miao’s plan added only one twist. Instead of depositing the money into the loan shark’s account, she would have it deposited into an account of her own. The arrogant Canadian had not seen the double cross coming. To her, Miao and Gege looked like a couple of hicks, tools she could use to her advantage. It had not occurred to her they might have their own agenda.

  Paula insisted from the start the boy be returned to his family. Miao suspected her of paying lip service to the boy’s safety in order to minimise her own guilt in the matter. Miao felt no such obligation toward the child. In a country whose population was measured in excess of a billion, Buddhism had taught the common people to accept death easily, both their own demise and the deaths of others. After all, death was merely the end of one experience and the beginning of another, higher, existence.

  Miao sent the email and then carefully erased the Blackberry’s history. Her education in computer programming was serving her well. Then she stretched out on the bed and stroked Gege’s back.

  “We need to stick with the plan,” she said.

  **

  Cheng’s surprise at seeing Shopei outside of the hospital was matched by Yong-qi’s. The girl had watched the brown car pull out of the parking lot, standing at the cafeteria window unsure what to do next. She had the locator in her pocket, but didn’t know how to use it. It was with relief that she spotted Detective Wang running out of the building after the killers.

  Shopei approached the two men and placed the electronic device onto the table.

  “How does this work?” she said.

  **

  Paula Kader was nervous. After more than a week in China, her “Cool Hand” attitude had lost its edge. She had one motto when faced with any challenge: stick with the plan. In si
tuations involving enormous risk, the winners were invariably those people who were capable of staring danger in the eye, following their decisions through to the bitter end, and never flinching, even in the face of certain disaster.

  She knew she should stay in her room. The police had been called — yet another team of tin-pot bureaucrats who pretended to know much more than they really did, carrying their authority in front of them like a weapon. This batch, though, was more professional looking than the young Nanning cops had been. At the very least, she thought, they were older.

  Paula was losing her nerve. That’s what it came down to. Her last conversation with the Chinese couple, Miao and Gege, had not gone well. Beyond the obvious language barrier, she had the feeling the pair was hiding something from her. Reading body language was a skill essential to any gambler. There was something in the way Gege would not meet her eyes that set off alarm bells in Paula’s mind.

  What if they did not return the boy? That would be inconceivable. For the first time, Paula allowed herself to weigh the suffering caused by her actions. She had seen the joy with which Yvanna and Chris Brahn had welcomed their new son. Hell, she had even begun to feel her own brand of love toward her new daughter, Mei Mei.

  Paula was not stupid. That the boy might be in danger was a real possibility, and one she should have come to terms with from the start. In her desperation to recover her own losses, she had not allowed herself to consider the obvious. Stealing the child was one thing, but Miao and Gege would be fools to risk being caught in the act of returning him. From their point of view, doing so added no real value to the plan.

  Paula tucked her passport and hotel room key into her pocket. There was no time to lose. Now that the possibility had been considered, she could no longer deny her own responsibility. She could not be a party to murder. If Gege and his cousin would not see reason, then the entire plan would have to be scrapped. She was prepared, if necessary, to turn herself in.

  She pulled on her running shoes.

  “Where are you going?” Guy asked. “We were told to stay in our rooms.”

  “I’ll be right back,” she said, shutting the door behind her.

  Guy glanced at Mei Mei, who was asleep in her crib, clutching the white teddy bear with the tiny red maple leaf on its chest Paula had brought for her from home. He didn’t need to think. He knew what to do.

  He pulled on his own shoes. Ignoring the elevator, he ran down the stairs, confident he would make it to the hotel lobby before Paula did.

  He followed her away from the hotel. When she flagged a taxi, he thought he’d lost her, but realised she’d discovered a cab-stand. He got into the next taxi in line, pointing wildly at the car in front of them and hoping the driver would understand he should follow.

  “Where you going?” the man asked in English.

  “Just keep that car in sight,” Guy said.

  “Like in movies.” The driver laughed, but he obeyed, skilfully weaving through the circus that was traffic in Beijing. Fortunately, they only had to follow Paula’s car for a short distance. The chaos of the roads would have made it impossible to track her much further.

  She got out at a busy corner and made the rest of her way on foot toward a hotel frequented mostly by Asian businessmen and women. Guy followed her into the lobby and saw her board an elevator. He ran, reaching the elevator in time to see what floor it stopped at, then got onto another. He hoped to confront Paula in the hallway of the fifth floor, but when the elevator door opened she was nowhere in sight.

  She had to have entered one of the rooms, but which one? He could knock on every door until he found her. Another option was to simply wait. Eventually she would come out and head back toward the elevator.

  Guy pressed his ear against the first door, hearing no sound from inside. The hotel walls were thin. At the next door he heard what had to be a television, a pre-fabbed female voice rattling off what sounded like the Chinese news.

  At the sixth door he paused, straining to make out a muffled sound. He was about to give up and move on to the next door when suddenly he heard a shriek escaping from a room from down the hall. It was a woman’s voice, as familiar to him as the back of his own hand, shouting out a single word: No!

  SIXTY-FOUR

  At the Royal Star Hotel, four of the adopting families as well as Fa-ling had gathered in the lobby after being summoned by Cynthia. She was not able to locate the Kaders. That was strange — she was sure they had heard her ask everyone to stay in their rooms until the police arrived.

  Cynthia was beyond worrying about her own future. After all, maybe she didn’t deserve to be a guide. She had lost two babies in less than two weeks, one in Nanning and one in Beijing. In Nanning she had been lucky. The child had been returned miraculously unharmed. The lazy police had no doubt scrapped their initial reports, so they wouldn’t have to follow up on the case later. No harm, no foul…

  She doubted she would be so lucky in Beijing.

  Her mind had already made its way to the most likely scenario. In Nanning the kidnappers had taken Baby Harlan by mistake. The real target had been Baby Brahn all along. Cynthia was no fool. She could smell money on people, after all those years of longing to escape from her own poor existence. She had known from the first day that Yvanna and Christopher Brahn belonged to a class of people for whom money was like air, something to be used without forethought.

  On the other hand, despite Ting-lo Harlan’s excellent sense of style and fashion, Cynthia could spot a fellow social climber. Adrian’s wife, she knew, had come from humble Chinese roots, not much different from her own. To Ting-lo, Adrian’s middle class Western existence would have looked like a fantasy. Just the same, it wouldn’t provide the kind of money the kidnappers were after.

  If they’d gone to the trouble of following Cynthia’s group all the way to Beijing, then they knew exactly what they were doing. They’d had the Brahn baby in their sights all along.

  Cynthia said none of this to the police. To do so would have been to break one of the most deeply ingrained rules of her culture and class: keep your mouth shut. She suspected the Brahns had already figured it out. Cynthia remembered how Ting-lo had carried on after the abduction of Baby Anna. She had been inconsolable, crying non-stop even while the police were questioning her.

  Yvanna Brahn, on the other hand, while obviously worried, displayed none of that uncontrollable emotion. She huddled quietly with her husband, holding Chris’s hand and speaking to him in low whispers. It seemed to Cynthia the Brahns knew what was going on.

  A ransom note would follow. It was only a matter of time.

  The Beijing police spoke no English, a fact Cynthia used to her advantage. It would eventually come out that the Kader family was missing from the hotel, and Daniel Brahn’s abduction was a replay of what had already occurred in Nanning, but Cynthia hoped to slow the information from making its way into the public record. She knew it would not help the police to recover Baby Brahn. It would only serve to throw doubt onto her own integrity.

  After all, the one thing both incidents had in common was that she had been in charge of the group. She, Xintiao, known to the Canadians as Cynthia, was the common element in both situations. She had set the itinerary, she had hired the buses and she alone had been responsible for the safety of the Canadians.

  At one point she saw Fa-ling glance toward her. Cynthia had forgotten Fa-ling spoke both Cantonese and Mandarin. The young woman must have noticed the errors of omission in her translations to the police. Fa-ling had a keen set of ears, and they were now tuned in to everything the guide was saying.

  Before the police could question Li Fa-ling, the hotel concierge came running through the lobby toward Cynthia.

  “Miss,” he said in English, “please, there is a letter for you.”

  Cynthia felt her face blanch. Such a dramatic event as the hotel manager running toward her waving an envelope could only bring the focus of the police more sharply onto her. If they did not already s
uspect her of something, this would draw their attention. She did not enjoy the privilege of being a tourist. As a citizen of the Republic, she would be at the mercy of the local law enforcers. She hoped the real kidnappers would be discovered quickly, before it became convenient to blame her for the crime.

  She took the envelope from the concierge. Under the circumstances, he did not expect a tip, and she did not think to offer one. She ripped it open, staring at the contents in disbelief.

  As she read the words, her head began to feel light and her eyes blurred. She slumped onto the lobby couch. Fa-ling rushed to her, whispering in Cantonese so the police would not understand.

  “What does it say?” Fa-ling asked.

  Cynthia showed her the letter.

  “Oh!”

  Fa-ling took the paper from Cynthia’s hand and passed it to the elder officer. Although spoken Cantonese differs greatly from the official Mandarin language, the characters for both are identical. The elder officer showed the paper to his junior before pulling a clear plastic bag from his tunic and slipping the note inside.

  “What does it say?” Chris Brahn demanded, approaching the officer. Cynthia stepped between them, her eyes pleading with Chris not to become aggressive with the police. The Beijing force was nothing like what she imagined the Toronto police to be. The Brahn’s money would not smooth the way for Chris, rather it would become an excuse for undue persecution, or worse, blackmail.

  “It’s a ransom note,” Cynthia said. “I will translate it for you.”

  “I think you’d better come with us,” the elder officer said, touching Cynthia’s elbow. Her heart began to beat rapidly, palpitating in her chest as if to mock her given name. The name Xintiao, which meant ‘Heart Palpitations’, had been bestowed upon her by her grandfather. He told the story often of how the first time he held the infant in his arms his heart began to pound.