“So it claims.”
“Why don’t I recognize any of the dishes? Who’s General Tso and how does he rate a chicken? And what’s chicken and pineapple?”
“Chicken with pineapple, no doubt.”
“Why would anyone put chicken with pineapple?”
“Maybe because it tastes good.”
“Maybe because they aren’t really Chinese and just fooling you people that they are.”
“Counterfeit Chinese restaurant, you think? Should report them to the authorities. But we’re in Alberta. They don’t actually have government ministries here. Of course if we were in Ontario there is a ministry of restaurants and rest rooms that might take an active interest. Maybe the heritage ministry? Defaming of multicultural food practices may be a federal offence . . . I’ll have to look into that.”
A Chinese family came in – mom, dad, grandma, all the brothers and sisters. They spoke Cantonese to the proprietor. Fong looked at them — so many children. So many children for a Chinese family. He couldn’t put that together. He was about to dismiss them as not being really Chinese when the grandmother flipped over her plate and read the manufacturer’s insignia there – tinked it hard on the table to test its durability and then announced with stunning finality: “Cheap.” So they were Chinese after all.
Across the way two young blonde-haired women spoke loudly to each other. “Are they speaking English?” Fong asked.
“Sort of English. They’re Australians.”
Fong listened to their conversation. They laughed like men. They were loud and aggressive like men and seemed to think the entire restaurant really ought to be privy to their conversation. “Why are they like that?” Fong asked.
Robert looked at them for a moment. “They’re faraway from home. They’ve got to prove they belong. That they have a right to be here. That they are young and alive.”
That sad note again. Fong noticed that Robert had moved more food around his plate than he had eaten. He had also taken two tablets of something before they began.
Robert noticed Fong examining him. “Don’t.”
Fong’s head snapped back as if he’d been caught looking in a woman’s open window. “Sorry.”
“Where to next?”
“Calgary, then we fly to Vancouver.”
“Your handler might pick you up in Calgary.”
“I want him to. It’s safer if Beijing is watching.” He paused, then said to himself, “I think.”
The old assassin moved slowly down the snowcovered street and turned into an alley that he had scouted earlier. He sat on the cold pavement and drew his knees up to his chin. Then he allowed his mind to float.
“I hurt him, Master,” Loa Wei Fen had said to him.
He smiled and canted his head slightly.
“But Master, he’s hurt.”
Slowly he had nodded then turned to Loa Wei Fen, noting how his skin shone with sweat, his hairmatted – his eyes so, so beautiful. He nodded again. “You only hurt him, Loa Wei Fen.”
“Yes, but he’s . . .”
“. . . the enemy. We are not here to hurt an enemy. We are here to eliminate them.”
“Master . . .”
“Kill him, Loa Wei Fen. Do what you’ve been trained to do. Kill him.”
The boy on the ground began to beg. To claim that they were both students. Friends. Loa Wei Fen had turned to him for advice, but he had remained very still. This was a choice that every member of the Guild faced. If Loa Wei Fen failed to vault this hurdle then he would have to be “put down” and the obligation would fall to him as the failed boy’s master.
But Loa Wei Fen did not fail. Later that night the boy had, for the first time, come to his master’s bed.
Robert drove and Fong took it all in. They followed the road as it made a wide left-hand curve around a river. Across the way, deep in a valley, was a huge factory with seven massive chimneys bellowing plumes of white smoke into the cold clear air. Fong looked at Robert. “Lime. It refines lime.”
“For cement?”
“Cement and cleaning drains, I guess.”
As they passed it, Fong turned to get another look. The scale of it was so large, yet it was made tiny by the surrounding mountain.
They snaked their way with craggy peaks on either side. But it wasn’t the peaks that fascinated Fong. It was the trees that somehow had gained a purchase on the barren rock.
“Hope,” he said aloud.
“What?” asked Robert.
But Fong didn’t respond. Life from rock was hope. A thing in short supply these days.
The sun began to set as they left the foothills heading east towards Calgary. Fong reached up and tilted the rear-view mirror towards him so he could watch the mountains retreat behind him.
“You like mountains?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Yes, as I said, I don’t know. Their scale worries me. But their scale is also exciting.” He wasn’t sure he could talk about trees growing out of rocks with Robert Cowens. What would lawyers understand about such things?
Robert nodded and continued to drive.
In the rear-view mirror Fong saw the mountains rising out of the plains as if someone had said, “Start here. This is a good spot.” He wasn’t anxious to think who that someone might be so he turned the rearview mirror back towards Robert. Through the front windshield he saw the moon rising over the far reaches of the highway. As if in Canada you could actually drive to the moon. Yes. This road leads you to the moon.
The traffic thickened as they passed Canmore. SUVs and vans were everywhere. Was that about big families too, Fong wondered. A few kilometres past Canmore, Fong yelled at Robert to stop.
Robert pulled the car over to the shoulder and hit the brakes. Fong was out before the car came to a full stop. Before Robert was out of the car, Fong had raced across the highway and was running back up the wide, grass, highway divide. Robert finally caught up to Fong. In the fading light at first he couldn’t make out what had caught Fong’s eye. Then he stepped a little closer and he saw.
Fong was standing over a full-grown male wolf that had been hit by a car while it must have been trying to cross the highway.
Fong knelt and touched the fur. A coarseness met his hand and a thick musk odour filled his nostrils. He sunk both his hands into the fur and touched the hot skin.
It was only then that Fong felt the pulse.
The animal’s great head lifted from the ground and turned towards Fong. Fong was within the reach of the savage teeth. The lips pulled back as if to snarl, then the jaws opened wide. A spray of blood shot from its mouth. And a sound, low, like a woman’s moan, filled the cold night. The animal momentarily was lit by the headlights of an oncoming car then thrown back into darkness. Every passing light drew the great animal’s amber eyes. A lull in the traffic brought a moment of rest and the wolf’s eyes turned up to the night sky. A low growl came from the beast and the animal turned its massive head and looked right into Fong’s eyes. Fong met the animal’s gaze. A car roared by. In the strafing headlights, Fong saw the retreat in the wolf’s eyes – a glaze slowly sealing in his life. Fong leaned in close to the animal and whispered in his upturned ear, “Fly. Fly to your new life.”
The ancient animal exhaled deeply. The dank earthiness of his breath filled Fong’s nostrils. Fong breathed in the animal’s breath. He realized that he
was the last thing this great beast would ever see. He reached towards the face. The animal’s mouth opened and closed twice. Then a calm filled the animal’s eyes. The immense head came slowly to the ground. And he lay still. So very, very still.
It was only then that Fong realized that Robert was at his side.
“He’s dead?”
Fong stood. Behind Robert was a huge billboard for ski goggles.
“Will someone bury it?”
“The hawks will get to it first.”
“Hawks.” Fong nodded and thought again of
flight in the presence of death.
When they were back in the car, Robert asked, “Why did we need to go to Banff to meet?”
Fong shrugged. “I’ve never been to Banff. I wanted to see it. Besides it’s very highly thought of by the Japanese.”
Memories of his own early kills flooded the old assassin, but it was always the image of Loa Wei Fen that kept floating to the surface. Just before dawn the image of the boy turned to him and said in a child’s voice, “If you loved me you will kill the man who took my life.”
“I promise,” he said to the cold dawn as he rose and walked towards the bus station as fully refreshed as anyone who had just risen from a full night’s rest in a featherbed in the Fairmont Hotel.
CHAPTER FIVE
CALGARY
The French tourist sat in Captain Chen’s office at Special Investigations on the Bund. She was anxious to register her report and cause as much trouble as possible. She had already contacted a French doctor and was anxiously awaiting the results of a battery of tests that cost more than most Chinese workers made in a year. The man across from her, this Captain Chen, was as ugly a human as she had ever seen. He smiled. Or at least that’s what the French tourist assumed that curvature of his lips intended. She sat. He sat. They both waited. Captain Chen spoke only country-accented Mandarin. And the French tourist, naturally enough, spoke only French. So they waited. The office was dingy. The officer was ugly. The French tourist was as angry as . . . as a French tourist can get.
The knock on Fong’s Calgary hotel-room door surprised him. He opened the door. There standing politely in the hallway were three modestly dressed Chinese men. One elderly, one in advanced middle age and one in his early twenties. They were all the exact same size and their facial features were comically similar. Only their eyes varied. The eldest had deep sadness buried there, the middle-aged one had controlled anger and the youngster had rage. “Inspector Zhong,” began the young man, “we wonder if we could have a moment of your valuable time.” The voice was controlled, the English clearly that of a native speaker.
Fong ignored the young man and bowed slightly to the elderly man. “Can I be of assistance, Grandpa?” he said in Mandarin.
“If you would be so kind,” replied the old man with remarkable dignity.
“Have you been in the Golden Mountain a long time, Grandpa?”
“Forever.”
Fong stepped aside and the three men entered his room. Fong glanced into the corridor before he closed the door. He might have been wrong but he was pretty sure that he saw a figure duck back into a doorway some way down the hallway.
The French tourist lit her third cigarette as she completed her tale of woe. The translator slowly related the woman’s story to Captain Chen. He nodded. The basics of the story were pretty straightforward – and troubling. A tourist out for a walk in one of the several crowded street markets in one of Shanghai’s many densely packed alleyways had been assaulted by someone with a hypodermic needle.
Through the interpreter Chen asked to see the wound. The French tourist hesitated for an instant, then pulled her blouse aside far enough to reveal a rather large, already infected hole, just below her navel.
Chen turned to the interpreter, “Tell her thank you and ask her if she has seen a doctor.”
Her response was quick and angry. “Of course I’ve seen a doctor and not a ridiculous Chinese doctor. A real doctor. A French doctor.”
“I want her to see Lily,” Chen told the interpreter.
After a flurry of angry protests, the Frenchwoman threw up her hands, then followed the interpreter in the direction of the Special Investigations forensic labs that were still located above the abortion clinics in the Hua Shan Hospital, just down the road on Jiang An Lu.
Robert picked up the phone in his hotel room and dialed. A familiar voice from his past said, “Balderson.” Polite, although gruff, Canadian – Western Canadian.
“Evan, is that you?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
For a moment Robert hesitated. He hadn’t been in touch with his old college RA for almost five years. “It’s Robert Cowens.”
Without a moment’s hesitation Evan replied, “You haven’t called for five years and over six months and then all of a sudden, up you pop.”
“Has it been that long?”
“How the fuck would I know? You think I have nothing better to do with my time than keep track of your comings and goings, like the stupid girl with the candle in the window in Moonfleet?”
Evan taught English literature and assumed that everyone he spoke to had read the same books he had. He’d almost lured Robert into graduate work in literature but the clarion call of money had led Robert to the law instead. Evan had never really forgiven him.
“Foreclosed on any widows lately?”
“No, I’m trying to cut back.”
“Good idea.” Evan evidently still had a beard, the sound of which scraping across the mouthpiece was clear in Robert’s ear.
“How’s Meredith?”
The sigh from Evan was enough to tell Robert that Meredith, the love of Evan’s life, had sunk deeper into the veils that MS had looped around her consciousness.
“Sorry.”
“Yeah,” said Evan, then added, “She has her good days – her vehement days.”
Robert didn’t know what to say about “vehement” days. Meredith came from very old Family Compact money. She could be very tough, Robert knew, but “vehement”? About that he didn’t know much, so he ignored the comment and said, “I need your help, Evan.”
“You finally finished that novel you started at my insistence and need a publisher?”
“No, I need an entree.”
“To what?”
“This’ll sound strange, but I need access to the business establishment of Vancouver.”
“You’re a fuckin’ lawyer, surely you know . . .”
“I don’t – not in Vancouver.”
Evan laughed. “This couldn’t have to do with your religious affiliation, could it?”
“In a town where we’re often referred to as Hebrews and the phrase ‘he jewed me’ is in common parlance, what do you think?”
“I think you’d need the help of a guy like me whose last name is Balderson. Care to tell me what this is all about?”
Robert surprised himself when he answered, “Business, just business.”
A few more clever quips from both and Robert hung up the phone. Then he stood very still and asked himself a very simple question: “Why didn’t I tell Evan what I needed from him?”
“As I said,” Fong reiterated, careful to avoid the young one’s angry eyes, “I can be of real service in this regard but ultimately the foreign office will have to pursue the Canadian government to get you an official apology.”
There was a brief pause and then the middle-aged man said, “As a Communist you should be more practised at lying. Hence, you should be able to lie better than that.”
The grandfather snapped a look at his son and the man retreated. Fong glanced at the younger man.
“Are you married, Inspector Zhong?” asked the old man.
“Not now.”
“But you have been?” the grandfather persisted.
“Twice. My first wife died.”
“And your second?”
Fong wasn’t thrilled with this line of questioning but decided to get through it as quickly as he could.
“We’re divorced. We share custody of our five-yearold daughter.”
“Xiao Ming,” stated the father. With a sneer he added, “We have our sources too, Inspector.”
The grandfather stepped in front of his son and said softly, “Swear. Swear on the love of Xiao Ming that you’ll give every effort to get Beijing to force Ottawa to formally apologize to the Chinese community of this country.”
“And if I so swear?”
“We’ll give you all the contacts you need to complete your work here,” the son said. Fong noted
how carefully that was phrased.
“It might interest you to know, Inspector Zhong,” said the grandfather “that the Chiang family has had dealings in this country for a long time.”
So their sources were good enough in the Middle Kingdom to interest them in the Chiangs, Fong thought. The old man continued, “The Chiangs were, in fact, the official agent of the Canadian Pacific Railway in China. They lured coolies to this country. They made money as those men died. They made money from their deaths. They even invented the name ‘coolie.’”
Fong bowed slightly.
“So do we have your word?”
Fong bowed again and said, “On the love of my daughter, Xiao Ming.”
Then the young man handed over a thick sheaf of paper. “Every sin they committed against the Black Haired People is documented here.”
The sins were vast. The document’s introduction read:
Between 1881 and 1885 fifteen thousand Chinese males, virtual slaves, were brought over from China by the central government of Canada to build a railway so that the renegade province of British Columbia wouldn’t join the United States. Ironically an American railway engineer, Andrew Onderdonk, was put in charge of the project. He wanted Chinese workers because they were cheap and “If they could build the Great Wall of China they could build a railway.” The Ching dynasty permitted Onderdonk to venture up the Zhuijiang River delta and take workers from the poor villages there.
The Chinese were shipped to Canada in such tight quarters that they had to intertwine legs to find a place to sit. Four hundred grams of rice were served up to sustain ten men. Many starved to death on the long voyage. When they finally arrived in British Columbia they were divided into groups of thirty men and put through a long forced march over mountains, with heavy packs on their backs, to get to the site of the work. It was winter and few had anything more than the clothing they wore in the subtropical villages from which they came. Waking to frozen bodies was a part of a coolie’s life. The Chinese workers carved thirteen tunnels through the mountains with only pick and shovel as tools. They moved over 11 million square metres of rock and gravel. From Yale to Lytton they built six hundred bridges, hauled a thousand tons of steel and 40 million boards. Scurvy took many. Starvation took more. Over a thousand Chinese workers died in the Fraser Canyon section of the railway alone. In total over six thousand Chinese died in the building of the railway – more than one a mile. The workers were charged fifteen US dollars to ship their dead home to the waiting burial grounds in Xinhui.
The Golden Mountain Murders Page 7
