The Year of the Hydra

by William Broughton Burt

  Before I can conjure a reply, I realize that Edward’s forefinger has found the center of my belly. An instant later I am enclosed in a fireball of ruby-tinged light that fades to total darkness before gradually brightening once more—to become the sparkling green and debilitating blue of Ana Manguella’s eyes.

  Sidebar Ends

  Chapter Forty-Five

  “There,” says Ana, withdrawing her forefinger from my belly. Again I find myself on a eucalyptus-scented fire escape in Shenzhen.

  “Sorry for the sidebar,” says Ana. “There’s an outside group interfering with some very delicate earth cycles, and we’re having to check out every lead. As soon as you feel grounded, you may go.”

  I look around dizzily. “Where the hell did you just send me?”

  “You didn’t leave this spot, Julian, and no time elapsed. You were looked into, nothing more. I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m rather abruptly on my way. All the best to your soul group, and I do hope you’re able to help your sister.”

  “Wait,” I say, taking hold of Ana’s wrist.

  She gives me a cool look. I let go in a hurry.

  “Sorry. Do the Chinese have Tree?”

  Ana sighs. “Yes, they’ve got her, and no, there’s nothing I can do to help you. I’m sorry.”

  Before I can decide on my next question, the woman in the raincoat has turned and hurried away. Half a moment later, she is down the stairs and halfway across the patio below.

  “Thanks for not breaking my back just now,” I call to her. “I know it crossed your mind.”

  Turning, Ana Manguella gives me a half smile before covering her head with the hood of the raincoat. A moment later, she has disappeared down the glistening sidewalk.

  So.

  They have Lillian and Tree. I close my eyes and try to focus on something / anything intelligent to do. As usual, nothing comes to me. Re-opening my eyes, I start down the stairs. Before I’ve reached the second step my eyes catch sight of something on the sidewalk below. Or, loosely speaking, someone. Sans earring, Agent Barnes is walking briskly along the same stretch of sidewalk just graced by Ana Manguella, and in the same direction. Either our girl is being tailed by the Truth Guy or we have ourselves a coincidence.

  I think for another moment just in case there’s something heroic to be done and I’m man enough to do it. Could be, I decide, and most definitely not. Anyway it’s not entirely clear which of the two more urgently requires protection from the other. I wait a few minutes, watching the sidewalk for any other of the usual suspects, asking myself meanwhile what happens should Phoebe fail to show at the appointed time and place. Not to worry, I conclude. She’ll be there. The woman has a thing for me.

  Finally I decide it’s more-or-less safe to descend to the wet street below. I flag the first taxi that passes, this one equipped with a reasonably functioning fare meter. By the time I’m dropped at the rendezvous, though, it’s spitting out bubblegum. The sun, meanwhile, has penetrated the clouds. The sidewalk is almost dry. After paying the cabbie, I survey the busy intersection, hoping to catch sight of Phoebe’s Buick. Nothing doing.

  Concealing myself in a doorway, I check the analog watch on my wrist. A woman like Phoebe, I remind myself, has carte blanche to be forty minutes late anytime anywhere, and she knows it quite well. Further minutes pass. I’m beginning to cast about for a plan C when all at once the Buick appears at the curbside. Elated, I forget my bruised kidney long enough to dash to the passenger side of the car, rip open the door, and cast myself inside—very nearly crushing Phoebe Sternbaum’s daughter.

  Beneath me, five-year-old Ling screams in C-sharp. Very sharp.

  “Uh, Phoebe,” I say, removing my great white ass from her daughter’s face, “you didn’t tell me that Ling was coming along.”

  Phoebe doesn’t reply.

  “Phoebe?” I shout over Ling. “You didn’t tell me that—”

  “Plenty time I introduce you now,” says Phoebe, not turning. “Is my daughter, Ling. She so nice to meet you.”

  The Buick hangs a left.

  “Uh, Phoebe? Your husband isn’t going to take this very well. He’ll call the police, okay? They’ll put out an APB, which stands for Absolutely Positively Busted.”

  Ling continues to bawl, her eyes tightly shut. I don’t think she likes me very much.

  “Phoebe?” I try again. “I can’t have the police involved in this. If you bring Ling, I can’t come with you.”

  With a screech, Phoebe halts the car at a curb, imperiling half a dozen bicyclists. She switches off the engine, sets the hand brake, and gives me a fierce stare. “You go you don’t go I don’t care I just go without you. But nobody go without my daughter.”

  We stare at each other. Ling meanwhile reaches for high-D. She’s very nearly on the money.

  “Next you’re going to tell me you forgot the cash,” I say.

  “Hah-row use credit cards,” says Phoebe.

  “Did you get the credit cards?”

  “Har-roh have always with him.”

  I stare through the windshield, mulling over my alternatives. It doesn’t take me very long.

  “Okay,” I say. “But you have to drive on back roads. Do you understand back roads?”

  “I know this,” says Phoebe, cranking the car and slamming the gearshift. “You think everybody stupid but you.”

  I spot a cell phone kiosk. “Wait. Park the car. I need to buy a phone. I need to buy three phones.”

  “Buy what?”

  “Just stop the car. It’s all part of the master plan. And could you do something about your daughter?”

  Phoebe mutters a little Cantonese through her teeth.

  This is going to be a really pleasant ride.

  By the time we exit the car, Ling has transitioned from hysterical to totally composed. “Is she always like that?” I ask Phoebe, guiding our travel party toward the phone kiosk. “Sudden extreme mood changes? Psychotic episodes? Maybe I should know now.”

  “What you want buy?” asks Phoebe irritably.

  “Three phones small enough to carry here,” I say, patting one of the cargo pockets of my khakis. “Service all over China.”

  Phoebe helps me select a small flip-phone and establish service under a false name. I choose Lowell P. Nightsong. The phone company assigns me a number with five nines and a pair of fours. Decent poker hand. Phoebe doesn’t go for it.

  “So unlucky,” she says. “Have two fours. Four is mean death, and nine mean the end. Nobody China want this number.”

  “What would a lucky number be?” I ask.

  Phoebe shrugs. “Eight is mean get rich.”

  “What is mean stay alive?” I want to know.

  It takes the kiosk owner several tries to acquire a number with neither fours nor nines. It costs triple. Now he’s showing me how to place a call, which with my large hands is comically difficult. I always knew I was avoiding phones for a reason.

  “Okay,” I say to Phoebe, pocketing the phone, “I need two more.”

  “Just get them here,” she says.

  “Not here.” I spot a sign on a nearby department store window and begin walking. Inside I acquire a second phone under another false name—I decide to go with Ted Williams—choosing the smallest model available and paying way extra for no fours or nines. Ditto a third phone purchased at a nearby supermarket. The third kiosk owner is unable to obtain a phone number without nines. I wind up with three of them and one four. That makes me only slightly dead.

  “Let’s stop here,” I tell Phoebe, leading her and Ling toward an ATM machine. “I need you to withdraw some cash. As much as it’ll give you.”

  The ATM is balky, as expected, but in the end spits out 33,939 yuan, exactly triple Phoebe’s request. Good thing. Neither of Phoebe’s other cards work at all. By the time we walk away, the ATM is flashing sporadic error messages. I grab all three cards from Phoebe’s hand and drop them into the slot of a nearby mailbox.

  “What you do?” she crie
s, her hands covering her face.

  “You can’t use those cards again,” I say, walking toward the car.

  “You crazy!” shouts Phoebe.

  “And no more phone calls,” I add over my shoulder. “Turn your phone off now so we can’t be tracked. In fact, take the battery out. Understand battery?”

  “Understand asshole tell me everything I do,” mutters Phoebe, unlocking the Buick.

  Ignoring her, I activate the least expensive of my three phones and, walking away from the car, dial Tree’s number.

  “Hello?” answers a man’s voice. The accent is Chinese.

  “Where is Shatrina Carter?” I demand.

  “She cannot come to the phone now,” comes the careful reply. “May I ask who is calling?”

  “You may kiss my pit bull’s ass,” I answer. “Is that in your phrase book?”

  After a hesitation, I hear, “My name is Wu Shu Rong. I am a detective with the Shenzhen Police Department. Professor Carter we think is possibly in some kind of danger. Therefore we have placed her in our protection. Please may I ask—”

  I hang up then dial two phone numbers from my wallet. The first connects me to the US Embassy in Guangzhou, the second to the coordinator of Lil’s and Tree’s teaching program. I give the same information to each: Shatrina Carter is missing and probably wrongfully detained. I give them the name of Wu Shu Rong, in case it turns out to mean anything. Clicking off the call but leaving the power on, I toss the phone onto a pile of turnips in the back of a passing truck.

  That done, I turn and hurry toward the waiting Buick. It’s like I said. This secret agent stuff’s overrated.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  I turn to glance at Phoebe’s daughter in the back seat, asleep with her mirror in hand. Ling has a thing for a small, round make-up mirror, pink, that she holds in her right hand and consults frequently, bringing it very close to her face, her small lips moving silently. Ling has Phoebe’s high cheekbones and strong features, along with the fair complexion and hazel hair of her Western father. This entire day this girl has uttered fewer than a dozen words, all of them Mandarin, though I’m told she’s as proficient in both Cantonese and English, having picked them up from her father and grandmother, respectively. What Phoebe has told Ling about this little adventure of ours I can’t begin to guess, but thus far the latter seems to be taking it at least as well as the former. She may yet turn out to be a reasonably well-balanced child when no one is sitting on her head.

  I glance at the gas gauge, disturbingly low, but I say nothing. Gas stations are very few along China’s rural roads, as Phoebe is fond of pointing out, as are restrooms of any and every stripe. Phoebe’s pretty fond of pointing that out, too.

  The sun is now an orange lantern behind Phoebe Sternbaum’s haloed head, and the banana groves of Guangdong are far behind us. We’re now three tiny grains in China’s vast rice bowl. It would be really nice to have a map and a compass. More pressing just now are gasoline, a restroom, and a hot meal at a roadside inn with beds but without bedbugs.

  Suddenly and for no apparent reason, Phoebe whips the steering wheel to the left and forsakes our rural highway for a rough one-point-five-lane road through hard-scrabble feed corn. A minute later she’s stopping at an unmarked crossroads and looking in each direction. I’m looking, too, and I can tell you there’s absolutely nothing to see except ugly.

  Phoebe decides to take a left.

  I’m holding a bit of my bodyweight on my hands now, as my bladder is quite swollen and Phoebe is the typical woman driver. Utterly oblivious to what she’s putting her passenger through. Men understand that non-drivers have no steering wheel to steady themselves and so take pride in finessing the controls, reading each nuance of the road so as to never displace a hair on the precious passenger’s head. A woman, given the least opportunity, will crash your head against the roof of the car and the side-glass within the same breath and never muster the curiosity to notice.

  Not that I’m becoming irritable. With so much of this journey still before us, and two females sealed into this tiny capsule with me, irritability would be a poor life choice.

  At each and every red light, Phoebe shifts into park, applies the parking brake, switches off the engine and stares fixedly at the light. I’m a little surprised she doesn’t take the keys out of the ignition and put them in her purse. The moment the light turns green, she’s scrambling madly to crank the engine, disengage the brake and shift into gear before we are into late autumn.

  Not that it irritates me.

  When Phoebe backs downhill out of a parking place, she uses the reverse gear. I’m careful to say nothing. No sly references to Newton. Not a word.

  The Buick meanwhile takes us ever deeper into the feed corn. I give a glance to the right side mirror, wondering whether anyone could be stupid enough to follow us here, and of course no one is. All that icky business seems quite far behind us now. If we can just conjure a little gasoline, I’d say we’re a slam dunk to make Beijing. What happens once we’re in Beijing could still constitute a bit of a problem.

  Phoebe, grim-faced, continues to burn our remaining gas. I distract myself by wondering which bad guy does what and to what general end. Bellamy, for example. Is he the kind of bad guy who just stands in the bushes while his friends go through your underwear drawer or does he, like John Fulbright, occasionally morph into something truly appalling? And I don’t even want to speculate on Agent Velázquez’s power-tool collection. On balance, I’d have to say this country has more Peter Lorres per square meter than pinkos, and personally I’m beginning to tire of it.

  I steal another glance at the gas gauge, purposely avoiding seeing the odometer, which probably displays a nice row of nines just about now. The gas gauge seems to have bottomed out. My thoughts drift to Lillian, and I feel a stab of anguish. I’ve tried finding her a time or two. In the glow, I mean. It doesn’t seem to be glowing these days. Or maybe I’m just not very psychic after all.

  Phoebe decides to hang another left. Good move. One more and we’ll be within sight of our own tailpipe.

  We pass an untidy farmstead enclosed by a crumbling wall. Through the open gate is a view of meandering chickens and rotting scrap lumber. The Wang Chang Snopes family.

  “That sign was say buy some petrol on this road,” mutters Phoebe, “but I don’t see. You tell me go the back roads, now you see back roads has nothing everywhere.”

  “Look,” I say, pointing to a homemade sign attached to a utility pole. “What does that say?”

  “It say don’t come here.”

  I look at her. “Don’t come here?”

  Phoebe shrugs. “I think something about the SARS. Don’t worry about this.”

  I nod, infinitely comforted. We’re running out of gas just as night falls on the Mississippi of south-central China where the pitchfork-to-human ratio is exactly one-to-one, they’re posting warnings in the feed corn, and I’m supposed to worry?

  Before Phoebe can hang another left, we encounter a crude wooden barricade, beside which two men sprawl in folding loungers rigged with makeshift canopies. At our approach, their heads jerk up. When Phoebe stops the Buick, the two men jump to their feet and make shooing gestures. Phoebe motors her window down and gives them a blast of impatient contempt. That’s the Chinese way of asking someone a question.

  “Ask them where we can buy some gas,” I suggest. I suggest it three times but she’s busy arguing with the men, who seem to be getting more and more animated. One of them picks up a length of steel pipe, and Phoebe shifts into reverse.

  “Did you find out about buying some gas?” I ask as Phoebe spins the Buick in a diorama of dust.

  “Those men so stupid,” she says bitterly. “I tell them, ‘Just go buy some petrol bring it here we give you money lots of money.’ Everybody in China understand money but those men just stupid understand nothing.”

  Now awake in the back seat, Ling says something in Mandarin. I recognize the word for bathroom. Her mothe
r gives a terse reply. Again the Buick encounters the sagging farmstead we’ve just passed. Wang Chang Snopes and kin. The car slows to a stop just outside the open gate, and Phoebe switches off the engine.

  “I talk to these people,” she says miserably, removing her earrings and bracelet and placing them inside her purse. With a tissue she removes most of her lipstick and gives me a here-goes-nothing look.

  I watch Phoebe disappear through the gate. Immediately comes the startled yipping of a young dog. Two other dogs join in. Maybe I should move to the driver’s seat. Actually I see that Phoebe has taken the keys.

  “Where is my mother?”

  I’m surprised by the perfect English issuing from the back seat.

  “Talking to some people,” I tell Ling without turning. “We need gas. Petrol. Fuel. Essential oil of dinosaur.”

  We need a good many things, including a good defense against pitchforks. Or, it occurs, these could be progressive farmers. Maybe we’ll be passed through a hay-baler and stacked on a wooden pallet.

  “I need a bathroom,” says Ling.

  “Just a little longer,” I reply over my shoulder.

  Your mother insisted on taking the back roads.

  Frankly I’m feeling a little guilty about dragging a five-year-old into all this, whatever this finally turns out to be. I’ve more or less rationalized involving her mother. Here after all is a physically and emotionally abused woman in fear of wrongful death at the hands of a philandering husband who doesn’t floss. Chances are, given the context, I’m the best thing to happen to Phoebe Sternbaum in quite some time.

  I wonder what’s taking the girl so long. Daylight is fading quickly and it’s hard to bale hay in the dark.

  Ling speaks once more.

  “Pardon?” I ask, half turning my head.

  No reply. I turn fully to gaze into the back seat. Ling lies curled, eyes closed, fast asleep. Strange. I don’t remember now what she said.

  Phoebe bursts through the farmyard gate, followed by a populous Chinese family. No pitchforks, I note with satisfaction. In fact, everyone is smiling. Even better, there’s a gasoline can in the hands of a boy wearing a John Denver tee.