A Loyal Character Dancer

Chapter 3

The airplane was delayed.

Things were going wrong from the outset, Chen thought, as he waited at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport. He stared at the information on the departure/arrival monitor, which seemed to stare back at him, reflecting his frustration.

It was a clear, crisp afternoon outside the windows, but local visibility at Tokyo ’s Narita airport, according to the information desk, was extremely poor. So passengers changing planes there, including Catherine Rohn flying via United Airlines, had to wait until the weather improved.

The closed gate looked inexplicably forbidding.

He did not like the assignment, though everyone else in the bureau might have agreed, for once, that he was the very candidate for it. Wearing a new suit, uncomfortable in a tightly knotted tie, carrying a leather briefcase, struggling to rehearse what he would say to Inspector Rohn upon her arrival, he waited.

Most of the people sitting around the airport, however, appeared to be in high spirits. A young man was so excited that he turned his cellular phone over and over, switching it from hand to hand. A group of five or six people, apparently of one family, kept sending one and then another, in turn, to the departure/arrival monitor. A middle-aged man tried to teach a middle-aged woman a few simple words in English, but finally gave up, shaking his head with a good-humored grin.

Sitting in a corner seat, musing about Wen’s probable whereabouts, Chief Inspector Chen was inclined toward kidnapping by the local triad as the explanation for her disappearance. Of course, Wen might have met with an accident. In either case, the clues would be in Fujian. But his job was to keep Inspector Rohn safe and satisfied in Shanghai. Safe as she might be, how could she be satisfied? If the Fujian police did not succeed in finding Wen, how would he be able to convince her that the Chinese police had done their best?

As for the possibility of Wen having gone into hiding, it seemed unlikely. According to the initial information, she had been applying for a passport for months, and had made a couple of trips to Fuzhou for the purpose. Why should she voluntarily disappear at this stage? If she’d had an accident, by now she should have been discovered.

There was, of course, another possibility: The Beijing authorities wanted to back out. When national interests were involved, anything was possible. If so, his job would be pathetic at best, like a marble go piece placed on the game board to distract the opponent’s attention.

He decided not to speculate further. There was no point. In a speech on China ’s economic reform, Comrade Deng Xiaoping had used the metaphor of wading across the river by stepping on one stone after another. When there’s no foretelling the problems ahead, no planning can avoid them. That was the only course Chen could follow now.

Opening his briefcase, he reached for Inspector Rohn’s picture for another look, but the photo he pulled out was of a Chinese woman-Wen Liping.

A haggard thin face, sallow, hair disheveled, with deep lines around her lusterless eyes, whose corners seemed weighed down by invisible burdens. This was the woman in the recent picture used in her passport application. So different from those in her high-school file, in which, Wen, looking forward to embracing her future, appeared young, pretty, spirited, her red armband flashing as she raised her arms to the skies during the Cultural Revolution. In high school, Wen had been a “queen,” though that was not a term used in those years.

He was particularly impressed by a snapshot of her taken at the Shanghai Railway Station: Wen danced with a red paper heart bearing a Chinese character-loyal-in her hand. A long, graceful neck, terrific legs, strands of her black hair curled against her cheek, and a red armband on her green sleeve. She was in the center of a group of educated youths, her almond-shaped eyes squinting in the sunlight, with people beating drums and gongs in a sea of red banners in the background. Underneath the picture was a caption: Educated Youth Wen Liping, graduate of the class of ‘70, the Great Leap Forward High School. The picture had appeared in Wenhui Daily in the early seventies, when high-school graduates from cities, the “educated youths,” were sent to the countryside in response to Chairman Mao’s declaration: It is necessary for the educated youths to receive reeducation from the poor and lower-middle-class peasants.

Wen went to Changle Village in Fujian Province, as a “relative-seeking” educated youth. Soon afterward-in less than a year-she had married Feng Dexiang, a man fifteen years her senior, the head of the Revolutionary Committee of the Changle People’s Commune. There were different explanations for the marriage. Some described her as a too ardent believer in Mao, but others claimed pregnancy was the cause. She had a baby the following year. With her newborn infant bundled on her back, in sweat-soaked black homespun, laboring barefoot in the rice paddies, few would have recognized her as an educated youth from Shanghai. In the following years, she returned to Shanghai only once-on the occasion of her father’s funeral. After the Cultural Revolution, Feng was removed from his position. In addition to her toil in the rice paddy and vegetable plots, Wen started working in a commune factory to support the family. Then their only son died in a tragic accident. Several months ago, Feng had left on board The Golden Hope.

Little wonder, Chen observed, that her passport picture looked so different from those in her high-school file.

The flower falls, the water flows, and the spring fades, / It’s a changed world.

Twenty years gone in a snap of one’s fingers, Wen had graduated from high school just two or three years earlier than he. Chief Inspector Chen thought now that he had comparatively little to complain about in his life, despite this absurd assignment.

He glanced at his watch. Still some time before the airplane arrived. At a phone booth, he dialed Qian Jun at the bureau. “Has Detective Yu called in?”

“No, not yet.”

“The flight is delayed. I have to wait for the American and then accompany her to the hotel. I don’t think I will make it back to the bureau this afternoon. If Yu calls, tell him to reach me at home. And see if you can also speed up the report on the autopsy of the body in the park.”

“I will try my best, Chief Inspector Chen,” Qian said. “So you’re conducting that investigation now.”

“Yes, a murder victim found in Bund Park is another political priority for us.”

“Of course, Chief Inspector Chen.”

Then he telephoned Peiqin, Detective Yu’s wife.

“Peiqin, this is Chen Cao. I’m at the airport. Sorry about sending Yu away on such short notice.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“Has he called home?”

“No, not yet. He will call you first, I bet.”

“He must have arrived safe and sound. Don’t worry. I’ll probably hear from him tonight.”

“Thank you.”

“Take care, Peiqin. Give my best to Qinqin and Old Hunter.”

“I will. Take care of yourself.”

He wished that he could be with Yu, discussing hypotheses with his usual partner, even though Yu was not enthusiastic about taking on the Wen case-even less so than he was about the Bund Park case. Though the two men differed in almost every way, they were friends. He had made several visits to Yu’s home and enjoyed himself there, despite the fact that the entire apartment consisted of a room no more than ten or eleven square meters in size, where Yu, his wife and son, slept, ate and lived, next to the room which was his father’s home. Yu was a warm host who played a good game of go, and Peiqin was a wonderful hostess, serving excellent food and discussing classical Chinese literature, too.

Regaining his seat in the corner, he decided to do some reading about human smuggling in Fujian. The material was in English, as this topic was banned from Chinese publications. He had read no more than two or three lines when a young mother pushing a stroller came to the seat beside him. She was an attractive woman in her mid-twenties, with thin, clear features and a touch of shadow under her large eyes.

“English?” she said, glancing at the material in his hand.

“Yes.” He wondered whether she had taken the seat next to him because she had glimpsed his English reading matter.

She wore a white dress of light material, a caftan, which seemed to be floating around her long legs as she rocked the stroller with a sandaled foot. There was a blond baby sleeping in it.

“He has not seen his American daddy yet,” she said in Chinese. “Look at his hair-the same golden color.”

“He’s cute.”

“Blond,” she said in English.

There were many stories about cross-cultural marriages nowadays. The sleeping baby looked adorable, but her emphasis on the color of his hair bothered the chief inspector. It sounded as if she thought anything associated with Westerners was something to be proud of.

He got up to make another phone call. Luckily, he discovered a booth that took coins for a long distance call. Time is money. That was a newly popular, politically correct slogan in the nineties. It was certainly correct here. The call was to Comrade Hong Liangxing, superintendent of the Fujian Police Bureau.

“Superintendent Hong, this is Chen Cao. Party Secretary Li has just assigned me to the Wen case, and I don’t know anything about the investigation. You are really the one on top of the situation.”

“Come, Chief Inspector Chen. We know the decision has been made by the ministry. We will do everything possible to help.”

“You can start by filling me in on the general background, Superintendent Hong.”

“Illegal emigration has been a problem for years in the district. After the mid-eighties, things took a turn for the worse. With the Open Door policy, people gained access to the propaganda of the West and began to dream of digging into the Gold Mountains overseas. Taiwan smuggling rings established themselves. With their large, modern ships, the journeys across the ocean became possible, and hugely profitable too.”

“Yes, people like Jia Xinzhi became snake heads.”

“And local gangs like the Flying Axes helped. Especially by making sure people made timely payment to the smuggling rings.”

“How much?”

“Thirty thousand U.S. dollars per person.”

“Wow, so much. People could live comfortably on the interest of such a sum. Why should they take the risk?”

“They believe they can earn that much in one or two years there. And the risk is not that great because of changes in our legal system in recent years. If they’re caught, they are no longer put into prison or labor camp. Just sent back home. Nor are there political pressures on them afterward. So they are not worried about the consequences.”

“In the seventies, they would have received long prison sentences,” Chen said. One of his teachers had been put into jail for the so-called crime of merely listening to the Voice of America.

“And one of the factors is-you won’t believe it-American policy. When people are caught there, they should be sent back to China at once, right? No. They are allowed to stay for long periods and encouraged to apply for political asylum. So we have been overwhelmed. If the Americans can nail Jia this time, it will be a heavy blow to the smuggling rings.”

“You are so familiar with all the factors involved, Superintendent Hong. Detective Yu and I really must depend on your help. I don’t know if Yu has arrived in Fujian yet.”

“I believe he did, but I haven’t heard from him directly.”

“I’m waiting for the American at the airport. My coins are running out. I have to finish now. I’ll call you again tonight, Superintendent Hong.”

“Call me any time, Chief Inspector Chen.”

The discussion seemed to have gone more smoothly than he had expected. Normally, local police would not be so cooperative with an outsider.

Putting down the phone, he turned to the arrival/departure monitor again. The time posted had changed. The airplane would arrive in twenty minutes.