by Andy Oakes
“Veteran revolutionaries only end up as monsters and ghosts. He is still active.”
“Yes, Senior Investigator. Comrade Citizen One is still active. He is still the PLA’s accountant, heading a team of hundreds. But he is very ‘hands-on’, active on the big projects and the entrepreneurial schemes. But also one who would still get his hands dirty. One who would still want to be involved in the small print.”
“Where is this Citizen One to be found? Beijing? At the Guard Army Garrison Headquarters?”
She smiled the smile of secret knowledge, the power and confidence that it brings.
“When I was researching for my thesis, I talked to an economist friend in Korea. He had visited a hotel here in Shanghai. A conference on fraud intelligence. He briefly saw a man during one session, sitting at the very back of the conference hall. An elderly tong zhi. To this day he is certain that it was Citizen One.”
Her tongue across her lips. Across rose petals.
“He talked to some of the hotel staff. It appears that this tong zhi was a permanent resident in the hotel’s penthouse. He had been living there since the 1980s.”
“He was reclusive. There is not a single photograph of him that exists. This you said yourself. So how can your economist have known him?”
“Difficult years the 50s, 60s, 70s. Purges, political upheavals, rivalries, the unity of the Long March unravelled. The trauma of the Gang of Four. But those at the Party’s top table had recognised that there would be difficult times ahead. They had also recognised their trusted protégé’s talents. They wanted him protected.”
The Big Man staring at her legs. Stockings, yes, he was sure she was wearing stockings.
“When he was fifteen years old he was taken to a whore, his first, and a tattooist in the old French Concession, the first of many through the years. On Mao’s direct order his right arm was tattooed from his shoulder to his hand …”
She anticipated the question.
“A pledge given by the Red Army, by Mao himself, and containing the characters of his own name, that Citizen One on pain of death, should never be harmed. He was offered protection for the entire span of his natural life, with that promise tattooed onto his very skin.”
Pausing briefly for added effect.
“The man at the back of the conference hall, he had a tattoo on his hand, extending beyond his cuff and up his arm. My economist friend saw it.”
“The hotel, Miss Lai, where Citizen One controls his empire from, it’s name?”
“I trust that you do not wish him any harm. Not that you could do anything, he is guarded around the clock.”
“The name of the hotel please, Miss Lai.”
“The hotel, it is the Heping. The Hotel of Peace, Senior Investigator.”
Walking to the door, Piao. The world reflected in a shiny brass doorknob.
“By the way, Miss Lai, your thesis, how was it received?”
She smiled with lips that should be kissed.
“Top of my year.”
“Of course. I would have expected no less,” he said, opening the door.
“What a wonderful thing education is.”
Chapter 40
Sacks of sugar, walnuts, Azuki beans, sesame seeds, propping up thick volumes of data.
Exhaustion like steel shutters across his eyes. Only a brace of warm Tsingtaos and China Brand after China Brand, holding sleep at bay.
FILE TWENTY. Fingers down the columns, characters, forming abbreviations. Names, organisations, committees? Hunting a grain of rice in a barn of wheat without success.
“Fuck this, Boss. It’s hopeless. Let’s call it a day.”
Just Piao’s sideways glance enough.
“Okay, Boss. Perhaps not.”
Turning pages and more pages before moving to the banks of official directories. The dizzy, misted heights of cadre rankings below Grade Ten. All with their own offices, a padded velour office chair and with windows overlooking the city. And a secretary, always young with large breasts and available for such a highly graded cadre.
Toppling the pile with his palm, taking a sad joy in watching pages slip over pages and cadre falling to a bare timber floor.
FILE TWENTY. Once more immersed in the code of abbreviations and trailing zeroes, but still the key missing. Walking through the door and onto the pier. Night, never blacker. Cyclical breaths as the Madam Psychologist at Ankang had demonstrated to him. Inhalation through nostrils … 1, 2, 3 seconds. Hold in lungs … 1,2,3 seconds. Exhalation through mouth … 1, 2, 3 seconds. At least ten times. Ten risings of her swelling breasts. Ten soft velvet falls. The most erotic experience that he had ever experienced.
Moving back into the bakery. FILE TWENTY, pages still open. Suddenly a snag of recognition.
“I need data focusing on Party structure, committees, ministries, also the directories on foreign legations, foreign governments.”
“Still in the truck, Boss. Why, you got something?”
Stumbling back through the bakery.
Easing the large tomes to the floor beside Piao. Column one, his fingernail underlining a run of characters … DPRK. The Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea. A Directory, under twenty more. Government structure. Ministries. Party and government committees. Foreign legations, embassy structures, personnel. Column two, YHS. Under the heading Supreme People’s Assembly, a sub-heading, Standing Committee. Under that, a name, YHS … Chairman, Yang Hysong-Sop. In the third column a sum of ten million US dollars, donated by Comrade Hysong-Sop, in the name of the DPRK. Ten million dollars into the tai zi’s account.
Three lines down, T-RK. Taiwan – Republic of China. Piao hunting through the wall of directories. A hard covered folder embossed with a busy flag and snagging characters. Piao’s finger travelling along, ministry by ministry. Stopping at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, under the Vice Minister’s name. OH … Ouyang Hwang. Eyes back to third column. Another ten million US dollars.
The process repeated. RPS, the Republic of South Korea. CKM … Cho Ki-Moon. A high ranking cadre from the Ministry of State Security. Recognising more abbreviations. V, Vietnam. S, Singapore. Recognising more initials. THD, Trinh Hong Duong. SR, Ser Retnam. High cadre, each entry beside them carrying a ten million dollar price ticket.
The Big Man grinning.
“Told you, Boss. Fucking drugs. An international auction.”
Pages turning.
“No, not an auction, dollars for something else and none of it going to the PLA.”
Pages turning.
A page hidden in pages. Beside the regular payments couriered to Citizen One, irregular payments to the Russian, Kanatjan Pasechnik. Below this a series of characters whittled into more abbreviations. Yaobang shrugging his shoulders; just letters, with no hook of recognition.
“Could these be our Arab friends, the ones on his mobile printout?”
“Terrorism as well as drugs, Boss?”
The Senior Investigator not replying, his eyes caught by the abbreviations, GSCS, on the final page of the printout. Feeling his pulse rate rise. A sheen of sweat push through the pores of his forehead.
“GSCS, what country is that, Boss?”
“It is the country of our birth. GSCS stands for the General Secretary of the Central Secretariat.”
“Fuck, and ST, Boss?”
“Su-Tu. Comrade General Secretary Su-Tu. The top of the pyramid.”
*
“How are you, Wizard?”
No move to grasp his pen or to establish eye contact.
“How are you, really?”
Shy fish eyes behind aquarium lenses … a glance. Fingers toying with the pen. Finally, picking it up. Finally, words onto paper.
They’ve taken my voice. Who I am. They’ve killed me with silence.
Piao, a hand carefully raising the lowered chin.
“I am sorry.”
Tears, in complete silence. Piao holding the Wizard to his chest. And then the noise, a cry from the stomach, fro
m the throat, a tongueless cry that filled the room with its distress, resonating through the Senior Investigator. A raw, primal sound, so shocking in its honesty.
Piao nodding, the Big Man knowing. Leaving the room, pacing the corridor beyond the steel wire enforced glass and admiring the nurse’s legs. How he loved sturdy legs.
The Senior Investigator drying Rentang’s face and his spectacles. Holding the tissue to the Wizard’s nose. Blowing. Falling back onto the stained pillow. His face, misery and fear. Waiting for words, Piao’s words. A sense of them tucked under his tongue, ready. But the Senior Investigator raising a finger to his lips. With his other hand, fast words written onto white paper.
A day is a lifetime in our People’s Republic.
Kneeling, exploring the area under the bed, the same areas that he had searched just twenty-four hours earlier. The power sockets, behind the cupboards. On his tiptoes, exploring the light fitting. Behind a picture frame. Some seconds, his hand obscured by canvas and roughly traded brush strokes. Coarse trees reaching up to an impossibly blue sky. When he withdrew his hand, it came with fingers pinched around brightly coloured wires and a minute circuit board. The paraphernalia that makes up a UHF transmitter: a bug.
Slow, deliberately written words. As Rentang read them, hearing the Senior Investigator’s tone within each character … as he was meant to.
Perhaps, in the People’s Republic, Wizard, it is better not to have a tongue.
The second note already sitting beside the first.
Those who have taken your voice … it is now time to kill them with the loudness that words have.
The Wizard, fingers eager to take possession of the pen. Of words, of vengeful actions.
How?
It was a long note that Piao wrote. A long series of notes. A death. An assassination. Surely such sentences deserve long notes? Rentang smiling, his mouth a dark cave of silence.
When?
Written fast. Eagerness driving Piao’s fingers.
When you hear from me. If you do not hear from me, exactly sixty days from now.
From a tongueless mouth, a smile. From pen, words.
Will it work?
For the first time his eyes averted, the Senior Investigator. Pen over paper, slower. More uncertain.
I know how they think. I can live in their heads.
And if it doesn’t work?
Sometimes a few trees survive the most destructive of hurricanes, and live long enough to bear blossom and fruit.
Eyes rising. A nod, followed by another nod, hand shaking hand.
The Senior Investigator gathering up the pieces of paper and putting them into an ashtray. The flare of a match. Paper curling, burning. Grinding the ashes to powder just to be safe.
*
Two hours, the gathering of virtual documents into virtual files. Stills, monochrome, grey frayed-edged. Images of loosely knit reticulation. Video, starts and stutters. File after file. Data, as black garbed troops gathered, awaiting the order.
Into the Senior Investigator’s palm, a CD-Rom, still warm from the laser’s invisible etch.
Only as Piao was leaving did the Wizard reach for the pack of freshly printed papers wedged between the bedside cupboard and the discoloured wall. Fanning the pages of the report with his fingers … their breeze of laser printed ink seeming to revive him. A report of precise, trenched characters. Handing it to the Senior Investigator. And to accompany the note he was writing, silent mouthings in unison with the pen’s scratch.
This, the front of FILE TWENTY. The only section on his hard drive that was password protected. Important. Yes?
One glance enough to recognize the slashed and boxed characters that made up the names of the authors of the report. Each a scientist, a biologist … each with a daughter whom life no longer possessed.
Smiling, the Wizard, as he watched the Senior Investigator read the words that his pen could form, but that his mouth could not.
I know, was Mao a communist?
Chapter 41
2.45 a.m. The Maglev train station, Longyang Road.
“There. There, Boss.”
Pointing through the back of the mirror glass to a pale man standing on the platform amongst the commuters. Unmistakably him, the father of one of the dead girls. The scientist who they had watched bury her.
Over an announcer’s clipped phrases and the on-rush of air smelling of burnt electricity, the Senior Investigator’s words.
“No dead heroes, yes?”
The Big Man buckling his shoulder holster. A nod as they walked out onto the central platform, moving through the commuters. Air, noise, building with every footstep. Litter dancing skyward, falling back to the platform as the Maglev train slowed, coming to a gentle halt. The scientist moving forward. The Maglev train’s doors opening, but the scientist just standing there, arms by his sides as people moved to and fro. An announcement over the crisp PA system, and only just before the Maglev train’s doors closed, a last body breaching the gap to the platform. His shadow cast over the scientist. Smoothing down his expensive jacket, the PLA Officer Huan, the hard boiled egg compared to Tsung, the egg with the crack.
The Maglev train visibly rising higher on its magnetic cushion, before accelerating swiftly through the platform and into the night. And with it, the Senior Investigator moving forward, the Big Man flanking him. A fraction of a second of recognition, the tai zi’s hand snatching something from the scientists and running. Commuters barged violently aside as he raced back down the platform to where the tracks entered the station through rectangular concrete portholes. A scream from a knot of tourists as Yaobang raising his pistol, double handed. The sprinting PLA in the Big Man’s sights, but Piao pushing his Deputy’s pistol down.
“Not in here, there are too many people and there is nowhere that the princeling can go, he’s trapped.”
Passing the pale scientist, his hands extended as if ready to embrace arrest.
“I. I am sorry …”
A nod from the Senior Investigator.
“Go home father. Go home to your wife and to the memories of your daughter.”
A few seconds’ hesitation before he moved, with the wave of commuters, down the platform and into the neon-lit night. Not once looking back.
Ahead, the tai zi moving from platform to the tunnel and out onto the single track, braced by columns thirty feet above street level. His speed slowing, to a half-running, half-balancing scurry. Yaobang following him out onto the track, but the Senior Investigator’s arm across his chest, stopping him.
“A train’s coming. He will have to come back.”
Backtracking, Piao and the Big Man, into the fluorescent sanctuary of the station. Watching as the PLA, Huan, continued to negotiate the single concrete track oblivious of the Maglev train bearing down on him. Only as the track started its fine oscillating hum, transmitted to his calves and knees, did he look up; his shadow thrown against the station’s superstructure in blue-yellow transfixing beam. A siren from the Maglev train cutting through the night. Panic in the PLA’s stride as he glanced over his shoulder back to the station judging the distance. Too far, too late. Shielding his eyes from the arc headlights of the Maglev train as fear reached deeply inside of him, seizing him in its icy talons. Another blast from the rapidly advancing train as the PLA reached a narrow rat run beside the track. Panicking as the Maglev train, its track in thunderous tremble, bore down upon him. Clambering over the waist-high balustrade as the train shot past; slicing through the air. Fingers wrenched from steel, his grip lost, leaving him scrabbling for purchase, a handhold to anything solid. But already falling.
*
Although after 3 a.m. in the morning, a small group had surrounded the broken figure of the PLA, each wondering how such a large amount of blood could ever have been contained within such a compact body. It was not necessary to feel for a pulse. Such an injury to the head communicated to the Senior Investigator that life no longer resided within the PLA.
; “He’s got an important father this tai zi with fucking important friends. More shadows to avoid.”
A nod, affirming a truth.
“When the ambulance arrives, go with it, direct it to the First People’s Hospital. We have a doctor there who owes us a favour. They have a small refrigerated unit in the basement that they used to use for their own dead before the new mortuary opened. They rarely use it now. A body could be ‘lost’ for days. Weeks. It will buy us time.”
“If the doctor allows it, Boss.”
“Use all of your considerable persuasive charms on him. If that does not work ask him if he would like a tour of Virtue Forest. That normally has the desired affect.”
“Hope it’s all worth it, Boss?”
Piao knelt beside the princeling, carefully unwrapping torn fingers from what lay at the heart of the PLA’s palm. A small plastic container, the Senior Investigator wiping the blood from it, holding it up to the streetlight and rolling the contents of it around and around, before pulling out the stopper and pouring the seedling onto his palm.
“It is from the plains around Lake Dongting and Lake Poyang. Facility – 4. Righteous Mountain. Where the girls’ scientist fathers worked.”
“Told you, Boss, cannabis seed.”
“It is what was for sale in file twenty. What Vietnam, Korea, Taiwan, were all wanting to purchase.”
A seedling worth more US dollars than could fill the back of the cousin’s Liberation truck. The Senior Investigator’s nose to hand, smelling the seeds. No drugs these, just the smell that every village in the People’s Republic would know with backbreaking certainty.
“It is not drugs.”
“Then what is it, Boss?”
“Oryza sativa, that is what this harvest is called.”
Carefully pouring the seeds back into the container. And remembering a question …
“What will I see at the Maglev train station, tai zi?”
Sealing the container, with its stopper, and remembering the answer.
“Dollars. Millions. And … power. Great, great power …”
Stepping fully into the light.
“So what is this stuff, Boss?”
