The Canton Connection

by Fritz Galt

Here he was in the middle of the night in a crowded city somewhere in China.

  Chapter 30

  Repetition helped Jake get the feel of the place.

  City blocks were evenly spaced. The bus stopped frequently to let people get on and off. Most people returning home from work disappeared into large apartment complexes.

  By the time they reached downtown, Jake didn’t understand the country but at least felt more comfortable there.

  As the buildings grew taller and more grandiose, with pillars, fountains and porticos, he began to consider his financial situation.

  He leaned down and whispered in Wu’s ear. “How are we going to pay for all this?”

  “With money. The Chinese currency is called the renmenbi.”

  “I only have a few dollars,” Jake said. “How will we get more money?”

  “Relax,” Wu said. “It’s called an ATM machine. You stick your VISA card into it.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Jake could do that.

  “Where is this bus taking us?” he asked Wu.

  Wu had been studying a route posted by the side door and comparing it with an updating sign near the driver. “This bus heads for the railway station. I thought we could get our bearings there.”

  “Right.”

  They got off at the train station, a well-lit building that seemed open all night.

  The rain had stopped, but only added to the humidity.

  They ambled across the neatly laid stonework, Jake’s legs weary from the long day. The young and the old pulled rolling suitcases in and out of the building, a measure of calm on their faces.

  For a moment, Jake got the impression that the city ran like one giant UPS facility, with people constantly on the move and everyone knowing exactly where they were going.

  Inside the train station, they found a departures board. Thankfully it was in English. None of the destinations sounded familiar: Guangzhou, Donguan, Foshan, Zhaoqing.

  “So, what does this tell us?” Jake asked.

  Wu was scratching his head.

  That was troubling. How could such a large city have major train service to so many destinations that neither he nor Wu had ever heard of?

  “At least tell me this,” Jake said. “Are we in the north, the south, the east, the west, or the center of China?”

  Wu shook his head. “I don’t particularly understand the language people are speaking.”

  “You mean this might not be China?” Jake looked around the station. “If these people aren’t Chinese, what are they?”

  “I want to say they’re Cantonese,” Wu said. “But I don’t see Hong Kong on the board.”

  Jake would have noticed that.

  “So let’s ask someone,” he suggested.

  Wu nodded with determination.

  The first few people he tried to stop didn’t even break their stride. A sweeper didn’t understand what he was saying.

  Jake remembered his only other trip abroad. London had been a disorienting experience for the first few days until he got hold of a map. Once he could find streets on a map, it all fell into place.

  “Can we buy a map?” he suggested.

  Wu looked dubious. “I don’t see any stores open.”

  “Let’s at least get some money out,” Jake said.

  Wu agreed, and they went to the nearest ATM. There was an English option, among other languages. They made smooth withdrawals from their respective accounts.

  “You know what this means?” Wu said.

  “What?”

  “Now the U.S. can trace us and so can the Chinese.”

  Jake studied the machine. There was a camera behind glass. “You mean our faces?”

  “Yup. That,” Wu said, “and our credit cards.”

  Jake recalled his visit to the National Security Agency at Fort Meade. His contact, Calvin Stickler, had told him that China was a black box. Internal transactions and communications were beyond the reach of the NSA.

  “At least the Chinese know where we are,” Jake said.

  He looked at the red bills in his hands. They all had Mao Tse-Tung’s picture on them.

  The communist icon didn’t fit with the swank storefronts and modern skyscrapers, but it did prove that they were in China.

  “Why can’t you understand what people are saying?”

  Wu seemed to be growing impatient with Jake.

  “In China,” Wu explained, “there is a common written language, but the characters are pronounced differently in different parts of the country.”

  Jake nodded. “You mean the Mandarin/Cantonese split?”

  “There are far more dialects and languages than that,” Wu said. “You can barely count the number of ethnic groups.”

  Jake stared at the expressionless people streaming past. He failed to see the diversity that Wu was describing. “They all look Chinese to me.”

  “Then you speak to them.”

  Jake let it drop. He was exhausted. “Let’s just find a place to crash for the night. We can regroup in the morning and make a plan.”

  “That’s not so easy,” Wu said. “Hotels require passports and they check for visas. They photocopy everything and send it in. I don’t even have a passport.”

  Jake stared enviously at an enormous hotel opposite the train station.

  “We can’t be the only people in China without passports.”

  “They take identity cards, too,” Wu said.

  As if that helped.

  “So,” Jake said. “Essentially we’re undocumented immigrants.”

  “That’s right. And in a ‘Papers, please’ society.”

  “How about traveling?” Jake asked. “Do we need to show passports to get on a train?”

  “They’ll check your papers on the train.”

  Jake felt paralyzed.

  “We’ve got some cash now,” Wu said. “How about some food?”

  For the first time, Jake realized he was famished.

  Chapter 31

  Jake and Wu left the train station and found a food stall on the sidewalk.

  Wu tried his Mandarin again, and this time it worked.

  The bowl of hot noodles was spicy, but filling, once Jake got the hang of using chopsticks to fish out the flat, thick noodles. The sweat produced by the soup overcame the heat of the night, and Jake’s skin felt relatively cooler. It was kind of a poor man’s air conditioning system.

  Food restored his energy and helped him concentrate on the mission at hand.

  “We don’t know Walsh’s whereabouts,” he said, trying to get comfortable on his low plastic stool. “But I have a hunch he’s in China with Stacy.” He looked around at the beautifully illuminated high-rise buildings, none more than ten years old. “But where are we?”

  Wu had a word with the food stall owner.

  “She only knows food vocabulary in Mandarin,” he reported.

  “Keep working on that. In the meantime, our job is to find Walsh and Stacy and prevent them from causing irreparable harm to the internet.”

  “If that’s what they’re trying to do,” Wu said.

  “I have my doubts, too,” Jake said. “Someone at the CIA confirmed that China had a lot to lose if the internet was compromised, but he said there were politicians in the provinces that might want to make a name for themselves.”

  Wu studied Jake. “What else did the CIA say?”

  Jake thought back to his meeting at Langley with the burly Bill Brewster who had so calmly fielded questions about everything, until he learned that there was such a thing as an A root server.

  “The guy I talked to,” Jake said, “told me that China had no interest in undermining the internet. China just wanted to get a leg up on its competition in the world economy. The government could tap into its reserve of private hackers to steal state and industrial secrets.”

  “I’ve heard about China temporarily re-routing all web traffic through their servers,” Wu said. “Scary stuff.”

  “But it�
��s not the central government that we should be concerned about. Local politicians might be out to control the national agenda. He said our embassy and consulates would be up on all that information.”

  “Maybe we should start there,” Wu said. “But the government has a warrant out for my arrest.”

  An idea was forming in Jake’s mind. “We have information to trade the CIA,” he told Wu. “We know about Walsh and Stacy. For that information, the Agency will let us talk directly to the embassy.”

  Wu looked bemused. “Just how do you talk to an embassy?”

  Jake didn’t know, but that wasn’t going to prevent him from trying. He reached for his cell phone and turned it on. He went back through his list of contacts and found Bill Brewster.

  Wu was staring at him. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to call Langley.”

  “Not with that,” Wu said, indicating the phone.

  “What’s wrong with this? It might cost a little for the international call, but…”

  “Got an international SIM card?”

  “No.”

  Wu shook his head. “Read me off the number. Your phone isn’t going to work in China.”

  Jake read off the number. So he was prevented from sleeping, traveling or calling. What could he do in China?

  The call went straight to Bill Brewster, who answered at once. Wu handed the cell phone over to Jake.

  “That you, Bill?”

  “This is Bill Brewster.”

  “Jake Maguire from the FBI. I met with you earlier in the week.”

  “I remember.”

  “Thanks for taking my call,” Jake said. “I’ll be brief.”

  “And then you’ll head back home. We’re on the case already.”

  “How do you know where I am?” Jake said.

  “How do I know you’re in Shenzhen, China? That’s where your cell phone is calling from.”

  Jake forgot he was dealing with the CIA.

  “And what’s the other thing you said?” Jake said. “You’re on the case already?”

  “You bet,” Bill said. “I have to thank you for alerting us to the A root server problem. I’ve got people in Beijing working on it this very moment.”

  “That’s great, but I need some information from you.”

  “I don’t exactly want to be accused of aiding and abetting a suspect at large.”

  Now Jake was a suspect? “Where do you get your information?”

  “Buddy, you’ve made the top ten of the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Everybody knows about you.”

  Apparently Jake was frowning, because Wu wanted to know what Bill Brewster had just said.

  Jake covered the phone. “The FBI added me to their Most Wanted list.”

  That seemed to trouble Wu as much as it did Jake.

  Wu wanted the phone shut off at once.

  But Jake turned in his stool and kept talking. “I can tell you who’s behind the hacking of the A root server,” he said quickly. “It’s a deputy with the U.S. Marshals Service.”

  “We know all that.”

  “It’s not Simon Wu,” Jake said.

  “Knew that, too.”

  Jake was confused. How had the CIA obtained all this information? He thought he was the only one left working on the case.

  “You’re talking about Oscar Walsh, right?” Bill said.

  Jake hesitated. “How did you find out it was Walsh?”

  “Several ways. One, the Justice Department cleared up the problem with the murder suspects’ fingerprints and notified us. Second, that told us Walsh was the murderer. And third, his trip to China registered on our travel alert system.”

  Jake felt like a Johnny-come-lately, and the party was mostly over. “I, er, figured that out about the fingerprints.”

  “I guessed that was you.”

  Jake covered the phone and whispered to Wu. “Walsh is on a trip to China.”

  That didn’t seem to make Wu happy.

  “So why am I on the Most Wanted list?” Jake asked.

  “Beats me,” Bill said. “But the fact that you fled the country for China doesn’t argue in your favor.”

  It appeared that everyone suspected him of something.

  “What do you really think?” Jake asked, hoping to find some empathy on Bill’s part.

  “What I think is you took off with Stacy Stefansson and you aren’t coming back.”

  Jake was floored.

  “What’s happening?” Wu whispered.

  Jake put a hand over the phone again. “He thinks I’m in league with Stacy.”

  Wu rolled his eyes.

  Bill explained. “First of all, you’re romantically inclined toward her. Then, your superiors ordered you off the case, yet you persisted in meeting with her. And now, you’re in China with her. It all adds up, buddy.”

  “Okay, hear me clearly,” Jake said. “I’m not ‘romantically inclined’ toward her. I was taking the lead in investigating and protecting her, and she’s the one who fled to China. I’m here to find her and stop her before she gives away the key to the internet. After all, why do you think I’m calling you?”

  Bill hesitated on the other end of the line. The last argument seemed to hit home. Jake wouldn’t risk calling the CIA if he wasn’t still working on the case.

  “What information do you need?” Bill said at last.

  “I need to know the local scene from your operatives here. Who stands to gain from all this? I need you to hook me up with the embassy.”

  “Get yourself to Guangzhou, and I’ll set up a meeting with the consulate.”

  “Where’s that?” Jake said.

  “Guangzhou is the Mandarin name for Canton, an hour or so north.”

  “An hour north by what?”

  Bill came back in a hushed voice. “I wouldn’t linger around the Shenzhen Railway Station much longer.” And he hung up.

  Jake quickly hit the off button and handed the phone back to Wu. “He knows where we are. Others may, too. Let’s scram.”

  They stood up and Jake’s knees creaked as he straightened his legs. He wasn’t made for low stools.

  He and Wu blended in with clumps of people departing the station. They crossed streets several times and ended up between a couple of name-brand hotels.

  “What did the CIA say?” Wu wanted to know.

  “It looks like Bill is willing to cooperate,” Jake said. “He’ll arrange a meeting if we can get to Canton. He said it’s an hour north by train.”

  “Canton,” Wu said, brightening up. “Then I know where we are.”

  “Good,” Jake said. “That makes one of us.”

  “Just follow me,” Wu said. He turned and aimed for the front door of a fifty-story hotel.

  Jake followed him into the gleaming foyer.

  Wu headed for the elevators and punched the up button.

  Inside the elevator, Wu hit the button for the top floor.

  “Where are you taking me?” Jake said.

  “You’ll see.”

  Jake’s ears hurt by the time they reached the top. There was a restaurant with a piano bar and panoramic views of the city.

  Wu strolled like a proud owner to a floor-to-ceiling window and pointed at the horizon.

  The lights of Shenzhen reached to a defined point, where there was a strip of darkness, then lights glittered on water beyond that.

  “That’s Hong Kong,” Wu said.

  Jake sucked in his breath. They were that close.

  Now he knew where Shenzhen was. They were in southern China.

  “Care for a drink?” Wu suggested, easing up to the bar.

  “Sure. I’ll have a Mai Tai.”

  Chapter 32

  Jake lingered over his rum longer than he needed to if he were simply there for the refreshment.

  Wu was using the restroom, so Jake sat by himself twiddling the speared pineapple and lime and looking around the room.

  He found comfort in the familiar vapors and the orderly scene
of a bar. He knew the traditions, the lingo, and where he stood.

  But once he returned to the streets of Shenzhen, he would be out of his element. For a methodical person like him who planned out his next move well in advance, the past two days had been anything but planned.

  He felt like a fast-moving car hydroplaning on a wet highway. He had control over very little in his life. How was he going to cope?

  “Excuse me,” came a smooth, urbane voice.

  Jake turned to look at the source. A short, well-dressed young man was moving toward him. He had a handsome, almost Western face, perhaps because his eyebrows were almost nonexistent. He had a frilly dressed young Chinese babe on one arm.

  “I know you,” the man said.

  “I don’t think we’ve met,” Jake said, shifting his eyes to the young lady. “But I wish we had.”

  “You’re quite famous,” the man said with an unswerving gaze.

  Jake was confused. Why was the guy so sure of himself? Maybe all Westerners looked alike to him.

  “Say,” Jake said. “Where did you learn such good English?”

  “I was educated in Hong Kong since I was twelve,” the man said.

  “Very nice.” Jake looked at the young woman. “And you?”

  The man turned toward the woman and translated in a complex language.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said. “She doesn’t speak English.”

  “Not a problem.”

  “She’s originally from Hunan.”

  The man reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a business card. “My name is Eric Li,” he said in his polished way.

  Jake took the card and looked it over. It had a dragon’s head in a triangle. Jake’s mind shot back to Han Chu’s half-naked body slumped in the bushes. The same dragon head and triangle had been tattooed on Chu’s chest.

  Eric Li was a member of the same Triad gang.

  “I don’t need your card, Mr. Maguire,” Li said. “You’re already well known.”

  Jake looked up from the card. How did this guy know him?

  Wu was just returning from the john.

  “Hello, Simon,” Li said, and extended a hand.

  Wu looked at Jake questioningly, and shook the hand.

  “How do you know my name?” he said with a frozen expression.