by D. L. Kung
She told the computer to display 32 and it played out again, bright letters blinking against the green screen.
ZCZC
CCRD
MMCD
.CDAM
PRO MCDERMOTT, NEW YORK
COPY RAYMOND, HONG KONG
EX DAMATO, SHANGHAI
AM IN SHANGHAI ON STORY. EXPLAIN LATER. SORRY FOR DELAY. RETURNING AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. BESTEST, VIC.
ENDIT
NNNN
Of course. That was it. She saw it so starkly now, she chided herself for not noticing it the first time around. CDAM was Vic’s old code, one she’d seen at least once a day for a year—last year. Since the beginning of this year, his code had been CVIC.
She should have seen it right away, but it was so familiar and she’d felt so relieved last week to see any signs of life from Vic, she hadn’t scrutinized the address codes.
The only people with regular access to the code directories were employees who sent messages on the system. She didn’t think about it much. At the beginning of the year, they reprogrammed their computers to automatically type the newest code at the push of a function button on the keyboard.
So now she was sure: Vic hadn’t sent any message from Shanghai.
Who had?
Who had access to the codes and yet was marginal enough to get it wrong and yes, someone who was out of their office during Christmas week when she forwarded the revised directory, someone who’d invented Vic’s message from Shanghai to allay her fears for his own purposes and deflect attention from himself and Vic’s apartment?
Why the charade? Claire leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes again as the pain surged from the fracture. And was his ruse worth dying for only to turn up as a rotting corpse washing up out of the China Sea under her horrified eyes?
***
She woke again at two in the afternoon in a tangle of damp sheets. Her breakfast tray was still on the bedside table—the cereal a sludgy clump of lifeless, milky gunk and the orange juice separated into fibers dried to the side of the glass. The South China Morning Post lay next to her, unread. Xavier refused to learn how to empty or restart the dehumidifier. Well, if she refused to repair his worn clothing, why should he empty a gallon of fog from a plastic bin?
She sipped some cold coffee and read Xavier’s note left on the pillow next to her head saying he would drop back at seven.
Her headache was gone, but her spirits had sunk lower. Outside the bedroom window there was a cold haze obscuring the garish pink walls of the buildings opposite. The whole colony sat in a dreamlike blanket of gray.
Rain was better, she thought, pounding, driving rain was more decisive, more cleansing than living in a perpetual cloud. She closed her eyes again.
***
By evening, Xavier’s mood had lifted. He’d wrangled a verbal go-ahead for the Sichuan project so the payment could go through to Chengdu.
‘How’s the bump? Should I call you Bumpo?’ Xavier waggled his eyebrows like Groucho Marx as he took off his jacket.
‘If I get to call you Grumpo.’
‘I’m not grumpy anymore. I just get depressed sometimes.’
‘So maybe I’ll call you Slumpo.’
‘Actually,’ Xavier reached under her and lovingly grabbed a handful of her bottom—‘I think your name should be Rumpo.’ He started kissing her, gingerly avoiding any pressure on her head, as she said, ‘You know a good cure for headaches?’
‘Mmmm, mmmm,’ he said.
His body was starting to feel like home, she thought, like something she had a right to, something she wasn’t discovering anymore, but knew and needed.
Later, he got up and padded around in a sarong from the pile she kept in the back of her closet. He showered, then settled in the living room to watch the evening news. Was she up to a sip of Classico? Xavier had a few more calls to make as the day in Hong Kong sighed to another wet close and his European colleagues were starting their day.
She was indeed ready for some wine.
She was so happy he was going to stay one more day, though to relax in the comfort of his companionship was to increase her unease when he struck off again for another two or three weeks. She knew how hard the loss of accustomed companionship could hit her. The first months after Jim had vanished from Hong Kong had been like the loss of—not merely the laughter they shared— but of her ability to laugh at all.
This evening, she’d make an exception and cast off the self-protective shell of a professional single woman. She took a quick shower and, wrapping herself into a fresh silk kimono printed with orange blossoms, snuggled over to Xavier’s shoulder and fiddled with a broken belt loop on his corduroys. There would be an hour or so to go before Cecilia’s call. She was anxious to hear the news of P. C. Wong and whether Cecilia had any lead to Cha Ling’s whereabouts. There had been a few clicks on the answering machine from the previous evening. She worried it was Cecilia trying to reach her while she lay in pain on the floor of Vic’s flat.
It was curious that Cecilia hadn’t left a message of any kind.
She finally roused herself to cook dinner, a supper of warm tortillas wrapped around chicken stewed in bay leaves and onions charred just long enough in vinegar till they were both tangy and sweet. Xavier preferred his own Swiss cooking, but maybe he sensed this was comfort food for Claire, something learned in the prehistoric times of communal living as an Asian Studies major at Berkeley. Rather than protest, he fleshed it out with a platter of bread and his favorite cheese.
The telephone rang at eight. Grabbing pen and paper, Claire ran to her desk.
But it wasn’t Cecilia.
‘Claire Raymond? I am Nancy Chew. How are you?’ The voice was nervous and giggly. Chinese women often tittered from insecurity.
‘I’m better than I was last night. I was attacked right after you left. Who was it? Who did you see? What do you want?’ Claire was furious—and curious.
‘I have to talk to you. You can help me, I think. I am in trouble now. I don’t want you to be my enemy.’
The girl sounded confused. Odd, Claire thought, it wasn’t the first time a Chinese had appealed to her for help, relying on the slightest thread of goodwill or contact. She recalled a Shanghainese who met her once as part of a group interview and who turned up in Hong Kong years later asking for thousands of dollars for overseas study, and the local stockbroker who refused to give her any quotes for publication but without warning one Monday morning requested US passport sponsorship.
Even so, this call astonished Claire. To feel resented or disliked was unpleasant enough, Now, to be blithely phoned the next evening with a suggestion Claire had some obligation to Nancy was too bizarre not to follow up.
Inquisitiveness conquered anger. She didn’t have the luxury to get personal. She owed it to Vic. She’d always figured Nancy knew more than she was saying about Vic’s whereabouts. Nancy searching Vic’s flat only heightened her suspicion. The police already suspected Nancy of complicity in Hager’s murder. Maybe winning the girl’s trust would unravel the tangle.
Or get Claire killed too.
Nancy suggested noon the next day in one of the dozens of little restaurants lining Jaffe, Lockhart, and Hennessey roads. Claire knew the ‘Shanghai 369 Restaurant,’ a remnant of post-war refugee flight to Hong Kong.
After they said good-by, Claire lingered at her desk. She doodled on some scratch paper lying in front of her screen, diamonds and squares opening and closing, a growing fence of boxes rimming the margins. The pages were printouts of an old story sent to New York just before Chinese New Year.
How straightforward life had seemed then, but a simple life was a cheat. Fifteen years of fieldwork had taken their toll. She’d concentrated more and more on single-minded ventures out into the world for ‘the story,’ only to retreat back to the apartment, her piano, her files and newspapers, meetings with other China watchers and lunches with friends. Her biggest problem—once her contact books were full of addresses and
phone numbers from Bangkok to Beijing, and her clip file contained inches of work and even a few scoops—had been Vic.
Why was her growing guilt finding such fertile soil? Because her world had become so neat and hermetic that she had left little room for a newcomer who needed her support and tolerance? He’d only been trying for a scoop to prove he was her equal. He hadn’t wanted her help, which she had offered, perhaps too often—no.
He wanted her admiration, approval, and carte blanche as a trusted colleague. She’d denied him all three. Had her happy confidence forced him to embark on some dramatic adventure for which he was tragically unprepared?
She gazed down at Magazine Gap Road. The crawling white line of headlights of bumper-to-bumper traffic was thinning out. The curve of backlights, one livid stream of cars, turning westward onto Robinson Road was still tight as a red ribbon. Robinson was a single-lane artery to the dormitory neighborhood of Pok Fu Lam. It would take another hour to clear. Even from half a mile above, the asphalt’s glistening surface reflected the lamps of each individual car and truck.
Everything looked normal down there, while nothing was normal for Claire. Would she be attacked again? End up like Hager on a beach in Sai Kung? She wished Xavier wasn’t leaving so soon. Could she trust Nancy—even in a public place?
This might be paranoia, but the pain behind her ear was real.
Vic’s disappearance and Hager’s death were real.
Like any correspondent, Claire had covered stories that included disease, murder or corruption: the cholera epidemic in Bangladesh, the murder of a dissident Taiwanese writer, and the poisonous cronyism of the Thai military elite. No matter how nasty the dramatis personae, she dashed off endit, headed down to the bar, and joined the other journos finished for the night.
This was different. There was no easy endit rewarded by a drink at the bar. The clock might be ticking on her, too. And if an ‘accident’ removed her from the masthead, what would she be to the callous guys back in New York?
She could just hear them: Hey, these things happen. No body, no report from the Chinese police. Just a story without a finish. D’Amato was hot in Chicago but maybe not overseas material after all. In the end, a bad hire. She imagined McDermott’s boss at the end of an advertiser’s lunch in a glancing moment with the publisher’s right-hand man, nodding for a second or two with genuine regret over Claire. The moving on: and that Bangkok guy? Pretty lurid story . . . Some marginal character. Only filed for us a few times . . . Most of his stuff needed rewriting . . . That was the trouble with stringers. They never got a handle on house style . . . In the end, it was always easier to send someone out of New York. Maybe we ought to update the stylebook? Good idea. Clark or Stern could handle that, maybe later this year . . . More nodding, more obligatory regret. Anyway, most of the Asian space is going to the Tokyo bureau because of the LDP scandals and the economic slide. More understanding nods. Closing Hong Kong might save money. Holding off until after March budget talks was a good thing. We’ll have to open a full bureau in Beijing after the handover anyway. Saving money is always good. Let’s drink to saving money.
A phone call broke into Claire’s pessimistic train of thought.
‘I’m still in Punyu,’ Cecilia nearly shouted over the rural line. She sounded excited. ‘I saw Mr Wong, but I did not dare speak to him. He is a gaoji ganbu, a high-level cadre. He has a driver and a big car, I think a Mercedes, with a telephone inside. He looks very li-hai, very fierce. He was with Chen. I don’t think they saw me. I followed them across the street from the Huan Ji company offices. They had tea at a restaurant.’
‘Did you look at his offices?’ Claire asked.
‘He works at the county judiciary.’
‘The county judiciary?’
‘Yes, I don’t want him to notice me. I think he is very powerful. I don’t like his face,’ said Cecilia.
‘That’s fine, I understand. Don’t take any chances. It may not be worth it,’ said Claire. She didn’t say anything to Cecilia about last night’s attack on Cheung Chau. That might give Cecilia the jitters again.
‘Anything on Cha Ling?’ asked Claire.
‘I told people that I was tracing a relative in Cha Ling, that we’d lost touch with him during the Cultural Revolution. I asked for directions to the village. People looked at me with a very strange expression and told me there is no such village, even as far as Guangdong City. Then they shut up and shooed me away. I think I will come home now. I am sure people are talking about me behind my back and even my relatives are nervous. Someone came to their house and asked if they had a guest from Hong Kong.’
‘Come back tonight, right away. That’s enough. Good work. Come home.’
They said good-night and hung up. Her fears were confirmed. Someone was checking up on Cecilia’s movements.
Claire gazed past the traffic toward the distant dark hills of Kowloon shrouded in heavy fog. Somewhere, miles beyond the high-rise ghettos of the New Territories, up the busy banks of the Pearl River and a few minutes’ drive from the wooden dockside of Lin Hua Shan, Cecilia was making her brave and lonely way back to the safety of the colony.
She was a Hong Kong girl on the mainland, traveling with nothing more than her knapsack, a nearly worthless Hong Kong ID that carried no weight with Chinese officials and, Claire feared at the base of her spine, the shadow of evil on her heels.
***
Fresnay dropped by an hour later. Rain beating against his legs as he rode his motorbike up from Mosque Junction had soaked his pants up to the waist.
Xavier handed him a glass of red wine. Claire pulled out a wooden platter from the kitchen and unwrapped hunks of cheese from Oliver’s Delicatessen. While she changed into some fresh jeans, the two men chatted about the day’s news, both domestic and public.
There’d been more riots at the territory’s overcrowded Vietnamese refugee camps and Fresnay, who preferred to stay in his scholarly den bent over provincial Chinese radio transcripts, had spent the day in uncharacteristic action. Caritas staff had yanked him from his monastic retreat to help with the resupplying of Vietnamese families. Their meager belongings had been lost in a frenzy of burning and looting by rival gangs from another section of the miserably cramped compound of Nissen huts.
There were, he told Xavier and Claire, no Hong Kong Chinese helping the cleanup. The Cantonese locals wanted the Vietnamese refugees booted out of the territory—whether into the depths of the sea or back to the uncertain desperation of Vietnam, they couldn’t care less.
Only the Royal Hong Kong Chinese police, standing back and braced for another eruption of anger, were a reminder that the camps were located in Hong Kong rather than Songkhla, Thailand or Galang, Indonesia.
They turned on the nine o’clock news to see if there was footage of the riots or the Caritas operation.
Instead, they saw shots of the Hong Kong governor in a stiff three-piece suit awarding medals of good conduct to local high school students standing at attention. The governor was grinning broadly. The pimply and awkward students in white short-sleeved uniforms smiled nervously.
The newscaster lit into the weather report with gusto. Xavier and Fresnay cursed with one breath at no mention of the riots in the entire broadcast. The locals were tiring of having Vietnamese misery forced on them day after day. After all, come the handover to Beijing, Hong Kong would itself turn into an island of six million refugees ejected from an illusion of security and freedom. Small wonder they were frantic to buy their way to a new life in Canada or Australia or the US.
There would be no camps for them even if Hong Kong dollars and Cantonese determination had their way.
‘It’s really coming down. I’d better get going,’ the priest sighed. He downed the last of his wine and grabbed his biker’s helmet, then lingered for a moment near her front door.
‘Claire, I’ve been looking for Cha Ling in all our reference books and maps, everything from phone books to atlases to county newspapers.’
‘Cecilia just called to say there’s no such village. But the Chews know it exists. Vic told Nancy he was headed there.’
‘I even checked the Guangdong province postal directory. That’s the one place the government can’t hide anything. After all, the mail must be delivered, no matter where you are in China. I can’t find a thing. I admit I’m frustrated. I’ve always maintained great faith in bureaucrats, whether sitting in the Politburo or the Curia!’
He pulled the helmet down over his unruly ponytail and rubbed his hand along an unshaven chin.
‘I’ll tell you one thing and please don’t laugh. There’s something definitely fishy about a Chinese place we’ve heard of that turns out not to exist, officially, not even for the Communist Party’s own postman.’
Chapter Twelve
—Saturday morning—
The telephone hammered at her head, one hammer, a second hammer, and a third, before she could rouse herself. She had had a bad night full of anxious dreams and half-awakenings. The dehumidifier humming in the corner had sucked out the last hint of moisture from the air. Her mouth parched, she longed for grapefruit juice but had to silence that telephone first.
John Slaughter wanted to visit her at ten. He hoped her injury wasn’t causing too much discomfort and that a house call wouldn’t be an imposition. She muttered that it wasn’t a problem and only after replacing the receiver, realized Slaughter was working through the weekend.
Claire sensed a showdown, but from which direction? She prepared a plate of cookies and a pot of Earl Grey tea, and pulled out her better china—white rimmed with gold, a set of seconds bought while vacationing in London. The feel of the delicate porcelain and the clink of the spoons on the saucers consoled her. The swelling behind her ear had gone down.
