Chasing the Monkey King

by D. C. Alexander

  “Lulu,” she said, rising up on her tiptoes so that Severin could see her whole face above the seat back.

  “Hi Lulu. I’m Lars. How old are you?” She held up three fingers. “Are you going to China?”

  Lulu nodded. “To visit my nainai.”

  “Your nainai? Is that your grandpa?” She shook her head. “Your grandma?” She nodded.

  “Do you like candy?”

  Lulu nodded again, and Severin pulled a hard starlight peppermint candy from his bag that he’d saved after his meal at the airport. At that point, the mother turned around.

  “Oh, please don’t give her that. She could choke.”

  “What? Oh. I’m sorry,” Severin babbled, his face turning red. “I don’t have kids. It didn’t occur to me.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, giving him a skeptical look, then getting Lulu turned around and buckled up.

  Probably worried I’m some creep, handing out candy to kids like a serial killer, Severin thought.

  Lulu burst into tears. “I want the candy,” she cried. “Candy!” Sleeping passengers all around them began opening their eyes, annoyed.

  Severin shrunk down in his seat, put his headphones on, and started once again listening to his favorite Sonata Pathétique by Beethoven. Then he raised his window shade to reveal bands of violet and indigo stretching across the horizon of the otherwise dark and vast Arctic sky, and a line of jagged, snow-covered mountains—maybe Alaska’s Brooks Range—drifting by below their starboard wing, lit purple by an anemic, distant, invisible sun hidden just below the curve of the earth. The music and the moving view conspired to improve Severin’s mood. He savored the beauty of the moment until Zhang ruined everything by plopping down in the empty seat next to him.

  “I thought I saw movement over here. You’re alive.”

  Zhang’s breath was an eye-stinging fume of sour airliner coffee and decaying bits of meat.

  “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s New Orleans seafood restaurant dumpster?” Severin asked.

  “Huh?”

  “You have rot breath,” Severin said. Did you floss after that steak last night? You need a Tic Tac or something.”

  “Good morning to you too.”

  “Is it morning?”

  “Actually, it’s still late afternoon of the longest day of your life. It’s as dim as it is out there because we’re taking the polar route.”

  “I’m not an idiot.”

  “What are you listening to?”

  “Ludwig van.”

  “Right. And I’m the king of Spain.”

  “Look at the now playing window on my iPod.”

  Zhang did. “Well I’ll be damned. Beethoven? You? Really?”

  “I love it. There’s so much more to it than what passes for good music today.”

  “That’s very Alex DeLarge of you.”

  “It’s what?” Severin asked.

  “Alex DeLarge. The sociopath Beethoven fanatic from the film A Clockwork Orange?”

  “Are you saying I’m a sociopath, or just making another point about my life being one giant retread?”

  “Maybe both. Anyway, I’ve been checking out the case files on my laptop.”

  “Do we have to talk about this right now?”

  “The new guy on the YSP case who Bergman and Vladimirovich had email the public version of the file to us either misunderstood what they asked him to do, wasn’t being careful, or just doesn’t get it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He sent us the full case file, including the proprietary information. The trade secrets. Not just the public stuff.”

  “That could get him fired.”

  “Well, I’m not about to report it to anyone. Anyway, it’s not like we’re from some competing company that’s going to use YSP’s business secrets to our advantage. No harm, no foul.”

  “I suppose that makes sense.”

  “At any rate, it gives us lots of information we can use to locate or contact YSP company officials. Names of the officers, owners, and key management.”

  “And YSP’s address?”

  “I’m sure it’s in there somewhere. Anyway, how hard could it be to find a factory in the one-horse town where it’s supposed to be located?”

  “You get a gold star for the day, Wallace.”

  “And YSP’s accounting records show what they paid Holloman, in case you’re curious what big-time D.C. lawyers make in these cases.”

  “Lay it on me.”

  “A flat fee of $35,000.”

  “For the whole thing? That doesn’t seem like that much.”

  “I know. For an investigation that generates hundreds and hundreds of pages of documents, takes many months to conclude, and requires that Holloman and his assistant fly to China for three weeks?”

  “I wonder what Holloman’s hourly wage is when you break it down that way,” Severin said.

  “Maybe he’s still trying to get established in the market for Chinese clients. Offering bargain prices to get his foot in the door,” Zhang said.

  “I would have thought he was pretty well established already. But what do I know?”

  They were both quiet for a minute. But Severin saw out of the corner of his eye an expression on Zhang’s face that made it look as though he were debating whether or not to say something. Severin hoped beyond hope that he wouldn’t, and that he and his foul breath would leave him alone so that he could try to get back to sleep.

  “So why aren’t you happy?” Zhang asked at last.

  “What?”

  “Back at Big Time Brewery, when I asked if you were happy, you said you were too smart and well-informed to be happy.”

  “Wallace, I’d love it if you would just leave me the f—”

  “I can tell you exactly what your fundamental problem is.”

  “My fundamental problem? This should be good.”

  “You’re not feeding your soul.”

  “And you’re not the Dalai Lama.”

  “You hate your job. You hate your apartment. You sabotage your relationships. You have no friends. You’re disconnected.”

  “And you’re telling me this because?”

  “Maybe the universe sent me to help you.”

  “Good.”

  “You need to rediscover a modicum of spirituality. A way to reconnect with humanity. We’re all on the same ship, you know.”

  “Where’s the ship’s bar?”

  “Let me ask you something. What are you going to do when we go home?”

  “I don’t know. Go beg for my old job back I guess.”

  “You aren’t going back to that crap job.”

  “What else am I going to do?”

  “Anything. You hate it there.”

  “It pays the rent.”

  “Barely. Listen to you. You’re just treading water. What, are you going to do that job, living paycheck to paycheck, until you die? Is that your life plan?”

  “I don’t know, Wallace. What’s your life plan?”

  “See, this is part of your problem. Part of why you’re unhappy. You need to at least do something you can derive meaning from. Think how much meaning we all derive from what we do. You need to do something you love.”

  “I don’t love to do anything.”

  “Something you like, then.”

  “I like to sleep. In fact, I’d really like to sleep right now.”

  *****

  Several hours later, Severin woke once again—this time to the jostling of considerable turbulence—to see the magnificent snow-capped cone of Mount Fuji passing underneath them. If they were over Japan, it wouldn’t be too much longer, he thought. He was dying to get up and stretch his legs. But the final stretch felt much longer than it was, and ongoing turbulence kept the seatbelt sign on for the duration. Severin grew so restless he could hardly sit still.

  *****

  At last, they were descending into Shanghai from the north, over flat lowlands comprised of innumerable rec
tangular rice paddies that had probably existed for hundreds, even thousands of years. Diffused sunlight glinted off the pooled water they held. It occurred to Severin that in crossing the vast Pacific, he was jumping from a society in which school history texts measured long stretches of time in decades or centuries to one in which texts measured them in millennia. Even the air, thick with an orange humid haze, looked old.

  By the time they parked at the gate at Shanghai’s gleaming Pudong International Airport, Severin was so fidgety he thought he would lose his mind. He deplaned without so much as a glance in Zhang’s direction, then followed the mob to customs. There, doing covert breathing exercises in an inadequate effort to keep himself calm, he stood in line, half expecting to feel a hand grip his shoulder from behind as a team of Chinese counterintelligence operatives—having finally caught their elusive and long-sought-after quarry—prepared to take him away to somewhere terrible. And suddenly he realized his insistence that Zhang buy his own plane ticket and go through customs separately was pointless. Like a fool, he’d mailed their passports and visa applications in the same damned envelope. The Chinese already knew they were traveling together.

  The line moved forward, person by person. He could feel another one of his episodes coming on. His heart was pounding. Skipping beats. His face was flushed. Was anyone looking at him? If they were, they’d surely see the fear in his eyes.

  Finally, it was his turn at the customs officer’s window. Severin felt his armpits sweating. The officer looked him in the eye. Did he have a photo of Severin tacked to the side of the window? Something his superior had given him at their morning briefing. “When you see this guy coming off Flight 484 from the U.S., push your alert button.” Could the officer tell his façade was about to crumble under the pressure of his now hardly-contained terror? They were trained to recognize the signs, weren’t they? But suddenly Severin’s passport was laying on the narrow counter in between himself and the customs officer, and the officer was already summoning the next person in line with a disinterested wave of the hand.

  *****

  His immaculate, brand new cab sped along the new expressway toward downtown Shanghai, toward a wall of skyscrapers that had marched, with jaw-dropping rapidity, far further east, toward the airport, compared with the last time Severin had been there. Gleaming glass and steel buildings, each one more impressive than the last—symbols of an ancient nation’s resurgent pride, confidence, and capability. With an unexpected sense of awe, it struck him that China had to have risen, at least in terms of economic development, farther and faster than any other country in the history of the world—surpassing even post-war Germany and Japan.

  As they crossed a high bridge over the Huangpu River, Severin looked to his right. There, in the distance, he saw The Bund—a riverfront strip of venerable if eclectic Romanesque Revival, Beaux Arts, and other Western architectural-style buildings that could easily have been mistaken for the older quarter of any number of European cities. A once-impressive vestige of the era of western colonial occupation, now utterly dwarfed and outshone by the nearby forests of magnificent, shining New China skyscrapers that seemed to stretch for miles in every direction.

  Severin had to repeatedly shake off his sense of wonder and remind himself to peek out the back window to check for a tail. But after a few looks, he decided it was an impossible task. For, as he remembered from previous trips to China, there were so many cars and trucks of the same make, model, and color on the road that, barring unique signage, dents, or other markings—which professional surveillance personnel would be sure their chase vehicles did not have—the effort to single any of them out was futile.

  *****

  The cabs disgorged them in the large circle drive of the Portman Ritz Carlton Hotel. As they passed through the sliding glass doors, the abrupt transition from humid, still Shanghai air—smelling of a mix of cooking food and the sulfurous, metallic emissions of nearby factories—to the lightly perfumed, crisp, refrigerated air of the hotel slapped them from their post-flight daze. Severin marveled at the hotel’s opulence as he checked in. Once upstairs in his 24th floor room, he placed a call to Zhang who, curiously, turned out to be only two doors down on the same floor. Were they on the same floor because it just happened to be tailored to the needs of Americans or other English speakers? After all, everything in the room—from the fire alarm evacuation instructions right down to the room service menu—was in English. Or was there a less innocent reason for their proximity to one another in a hotel that must have had at least 600 rooms? Were they, by chance, on a special floor and in special rooms wired for surveillance, complete with microphones, pinhole cameras, and tapped phones? He wasn’t about to take any chances. He scanned each of their rooms with his smartphone camera and the SDR kit on Zhang’s laptop. Finding no signs of surveillance, he told Zhang to meet him in the bar downstairs in half an hour. “And for pity’s sake, brush and floss your teeth.”

  Before going downstairs, Severin repeated the trick of placing a paper wedge in the crevice between his door and doorframe, messing up his bed, and hanging the do not disturb placard from his doorknob.

  EIGHTEEN

  Severin found Zhang in the bar at the appointed time. He already had a tall, bright yellow, creamy looking drink in hand.

  “What’s that pretty thing you’re sipping on, Man Pretty?” Severin asked as he scanned the bar to see that there were no other patrons.

  “A mango milkshake.”

  “You gonna go ride your tricycle after you finish it?”

  “This is the best milkshake I’ve ever had in my life.”

  “Let me taste that thing.” Severin took a sip. “Damn. That’s a damned good milkshake.”

  “Get you one.”

  “I think I’ll make mine a Scotch. My neck aches from that flight.” He waved the bartender over and ordered a smoky double Ardbeg.

  “How can you drink that stuff?” Zhang asked. “Tastes like a bus station ashtray.”

  “I like it. It’s great with raw oysters.” His drink came and he took a long sip. “So. Notice anything weird on the drive in from the airport?”

  “No. But I wouldn’t know what to look for. By the way, this is a seriously fancy hotel. Are you sure it’s kosher with Thorvaldsson that we’re staying in a place like this? I mean, it must cost a lot.”

  “The cost is surprisingly low. And Thorvaldsson insisted that we stay in top-notch places. So I say we relax and enjoy it.”

  When they finished their drinks, Severin suggested they take a walk to keep themselves awake until a locally appropriate bed time.

  *****

  They made their way east, down the historic, tree-lined Nanjing Road, toward the heart of the great city. The sidewalks were thronged with people. It was like an American city, but with all those slight differences you notice overseas. Slightly different cars, clothing styles, smells, traffic signage. Skyscrapers, their tops barely visible through a pervasive gray-orange haze, towered above them. In the space of five blocks, they passed multiple construction sites—each of them crawling with poor migrant laborers in quilted jackets and dirty work pants—wedged in between immaculate banks, cafes and boutiques serving thoroughly groomed businesspeople in smart suits.

  “Once again, assume you’re being watched 24/7,” Severin told Zhang. “Don’t discuss anything of a sensitive nature on any phone, in your hotel room, or in cars. Walking outside is best. Let’s work out an innocuous code phrase we can use when one of us sees the need for a talk.”

  “How about if I ask you what the temperature is supposed to be outside today.”

  “Perfect. Now then, we need Chinese cell phones.”

  Before long, the road turned into a wide pedestrian mall somewhat reminiscent of Times Square or the famous shopping districts of Tokyo. Narrow, vertical, brightly lit signs adorned with Chinese characters made of elaborate neon lights. Vivid reds, blues, greens, yellows. All the paraphernalia of American or European malls: Zara, Louis Vutton, H
&M, Christian Louboutan and, of course, McDonalds. All the western institutions intermingled with massive Chinese department stores, jewelers, restaurants, tea shops, cafes, and label-specific stores of high fashion. A shopper’s paradise. But Severin hated shopping.

  They came to a sparkling new mall where they found a cell phone store. With what struck Severin as an absurd amount of discussion and haggling for the amount of money involved, and after unhappily learning that they had to register their passport numbers in order to get them, Zhang procured two Chinese smartphones and a one-month service plan with unlimited voice and data minutes.

  “So now our passports are linked to these phones?” Zhang said.

  “So it seems. Better be careful what we say on them. Big brother may be listening.”

  “How Orwellian. By the way, I’m hungry again,” Zhang said as they left the mall.

  “You eat like a horse. How are you not 400 pounds?”

  “What do you feel like?”

  “I wouldn’t mind going back to the hotel and eating in the bar,” Severin said. “Get a couple drinks. They had a Reuben sandwich on the menu. Might be our last chance to get Western food for a long time.”