Enigma of China

TWENTY-TWO

Twenty minutes later, Chen stepped into a public phone booth on Yan’an Road, took a quick look around, and then dialed the number of the cell phone he’d given Fang.

When she picked up, Chen blurted out, without pausing to greet her, “I warned you not to call your parents.”

Despite his warning, she’d called her parents in Shanghai from a pay phone near Dayu Temple, like a lonely, lost tourist.

“I’m all alone here, in the house he bought me, surrounded by nothing but memories of him, and the echoes of my own footsteps. I really can’t stand it anymore.”

“But their phone in Shanghai was tapped,” he said. “Now they’ve been able to narrow down your location to Shaoxing. It’s only a matter of time before they track you down to that villa. You have to move-as soon as possible.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere. Away from Shaoxing. I know things are hard for you, but you have to stay out of their hands. What happened to Zhou shouldn’t happen to you.”

“But how long do I have to hide and wait?” She went on without waiting for an answer: “Is there anything new in Shanghai?”

“We’re making some progress, but-”

“The other day,” she said, interrupting, “you asked me to recall anything unusual-anything at all-about Zhou before he was shuangguied. I thought this through several times, and I think there might be something, but I’m not sure.”

“Yes?”

“There’s a small bedroom attached to his office. He usually worked late, so occasionally he stayed overnight. One evening, after more pictures were posted on the Internet, he looked very upset. He wanted me to join him in that bedroom to, among other things, dance for him.”

“What? In a parody of the Mighty King of Chu?” Chen asked. Zhou must have known of the impending disaster and had reacted like the King of Chu, who requested that his favorite imperial concubine dance for him before he went off to fight his last-ditch battle.

“I’ve seen the movie based on that story. I think it’s called Farewell My Concubine. I’m no dancer, but he was so insistent that I did a loyal character dance for him. He hummed a Mao-quotation song, lighting one cigarette after another like there was no tomorrow…

“The next morning, when I first got to the office, he wanted me to take out a large plastic trash bag. That was odd because, as a rule, that was the cleaning woman’s job. He said he needed me to do it because he was going to have some important guests that morning. Sure enough, they showed up even before he got back from his breakfast at the bureau canteen.”

“Who was it that showed up that morning?”

“It was Jiang and his team from the city government. As soon as they saw he wasn’t in his office, they headed straight to the canteen and marched him away from there.”

“So Jiang’s team came before the city discipline committee team did?”

“Yes. It was all so sudden.”

“But what about the trash bag?”

“Before I dumped it, I took a look inside. It was nothing but ashes.”

“Perhaps he burned documents overnight. There was nothing else?”

“Well, it wasn’t just ashes; there were also some small broken plastic pieces.”

“Where did you dump it?”

“In a large trash bin outside the office.”

“Did the team from the city know anything about it?”

“No. The whole office was thrown into turmoil and no one paid attention to the trash bin outside. I went back and looked in the next day and everything was gone. The trash bin was empty.”

“Now,” Chen said, glancing at his watch, “what can you tell me about those plastic pieces?”

“They looked like pieces from a plastic pen. Perhaps he crushed it in agitation. It was bright red. I don’t remember having ever seen such a pen in the office before. It wasn’t something that struck me as unusual at the time, though.”

“Did you notice anything broken or missing from the office?”

“No, nothing.”

“Did you ever go back into his office after he was put into shuanggui?”

“No. I used to work in a cubicle outside his office. That morning they conducted a very thorough search, and they took away a lot of things, including the computers and all the files. Then his office was sealed up. My cubicle was ransacked, too, and a group of people came back and searched again about a week later.”

So the search on that first morning had been done by Jiang’s city government team. There was nothing surprising about that. Whatever they had or hadn’t found, Jiang hadn’t shared with Chen.

“About a week later. That was after Zhou’s death, right?”

“Yes.”

What were they looking for? Chen wondered. Whatever it was, they were still looking for it. Fang had touched on that possibility back when they had talked in Shaoxing.

Chen noticed that the screen on the phone was showing a message about the calling card running out of time.

“Sorry, there’s no time left on my calling card. I have to go, but I’ll call you again, Fang.”

* * *

Late that afternoon Chen arrived at the City Government Building. As a rule, he would show his ID, then breeze through the security checkpoint. The guard would merely nod at him, never bothering to ask him to declare the purpose of his visit. With his ID in hand, Chen simply signed his name in the register book.

Instead of taking the elevator directly to Zhou’s office, Chen went to a small canteen on the first floor and sat down with a cup of coffee. He pulled out his notebook and started making notes on events and observations over the last few days.

It wasn’t until five thirty that he stood up and went over to the elevator, taking it to the floor of the City Housing Development Committee. There was no one in the hallway. He hurried over to the director’s office. The door still bore a broken police seal.

The director’s position left vacant by Zhou’s death hadn’t yet been filled. The city government, it seemed, was being extraordinarily cautious, taking their time in making a decision about the crucial position.

Chen took another look around, then inserted a key, entered, and closed the door after him.

It wasn’t a really large office, but with the computer gone and the desk and chairs dust-covered, it looked rather desolate.

It would be unrealistic to think that he’d be able to find something critical in just one short visit, after the office had already been thoroughly searched. Still, he had to come and try.

Instead of digging into every nook and cranny, Chen opened the door to the attached bedroom, sat down in the leather swivel chair, and tried to imagine himself as Zhou on that night.

In spite of his efforts, a mental image of Fang dancing kept cropping up. Perhaps it was too dramatic to ignore the echo of the ancient story of an imperial concubine dancing for her lord, knowing that it would be her last before she committed suicide. It was a scene much celebrated in classical Chinese literature.

Making a beauty willing to die for you, / the King of Chu was after all a hero. These were two sympathetic lines by Wu Weiye, a Qing dynasty poet.

Like the King of Chu, Zhou had refused to give up, though he was aware of the approaching doom.

The parallels were eerie, but the details confounded Chen.

In the case of the King of Chu, his favorite concubine danced and then killed herself so that she wouldn’t be a burden to her lord in his last battle. Fang didn’t do so, nor did Zhou want her to.

The King of Chu still wanted to fight, clinging to the belief that he could break through the opposing army, that he had enough forces left at the camp east of the river to back him up. Zhou must have believed the same.

Chen again started to go over the sequence of events that fateful night, this time more closely. While she was dancing, Zhou hummed a Mao-quotation song and lit a cigarette-

Chen wondered whether there could be something in Zhou’s choice of the Mao-quotation song, but he quickly brushed aside that idea. It could be simply that the melody was familiar to Zhou from his youth, or because Fang was dancing the loyal character dance…

The chief inspector again lost the thread of his thoughts.

He, too, wanted to light a cigarette. He took out his pack before he realized that he must have left his lighter back at the security checkpoint. That might be just as well. Theoretically, the office should be left intact and undisturbed. Still, his glance swept the office, falling involuntarily upon a lighter next to the mini marble bookstand on the desk.

He wasn’t sure if that was the lighter Zhou had used that night. After all, a heavy smoker might have kept several of them around. Chen went over and picked it up. It wasn’t a fancy, expensive lighter, but it was intriguing due to its torchlike shape, bright red color, and a Mao quote engraved in gold: “A spark can set the whole prairie ablaze.”

He struck the tiny wheel atop the lighter. No spark. He tried harder. Still no luck.

It was probably another sign that he shouldn’t smoke in the office. He shrugged his shoulders and slumped back down in the swivel chair with a thump.

He stroked the lighter again distractedly.

Why would Zhou have kept a useless lighter in his office?

A hunch gripped him.

Chen jumped up and started pacing around, and then sat back down again with the lighter clasped in his hand.

Setting the lighter down on the desk, he took out his Swiss knife, and with the screwdriver blade, he managed to open up the bottom part of the red lighter.

As the bottom fell off, Chen glimpsed an object inside.

Not a butane reservoir but a flash drive, with part of the plastic shell cut off to fit it in.

Finally, one of the crucial missing pieces had appeared.

That night Zhou had still wanted to fight-like the King of Chu-with something in hand that might save him from total destruction. Something that could ensure that people above him, far more powerful, would provide enough help to enable him to survive the engulfing storm.

“A chain of crabs bound together on a straw rope-” What Fang had said to him in Shaoxing came back to him.

What she said was an idiomatic expression that referred to a common sight in the food market. A peddler would bind live crabs together with a thick straw rope, making it easier for customers to carry without worrying about any of them escaping. As a figure of speech, however, it meant something quite different. “Crabs” usually meant evildoers. What bound them together wasn’t a straw rope but their common interest-the schemes or secrets they shared. They had to protect or shield each other; no one could betray another, or one fallen would bring everybody else down.

Zhou must have threatened the people above him by telling them that the bell wouldn’t toll for him alone. Zhou had in his hands evidence, which he hid in a place known to no one else, in the lighter in his office. However, Jiang came earlier than expected, surprising him in the canteen and taking him into custody there. In all the confusion, the lighter had been left behind in his office.

Eventually, the threat he posed led to his death in the hotel. He might have said something, and his coconspirators had had to silence him once and for all. But they still had to find the evidence he’d left behind, or they’d never be able to sleep in peace.

The arrival of the Beijing team at the hotel, with the possible showdown looming in the Forbidden City, only served to make them more desperate.

What Fang saw in the trash bag that morning, the tiny pieces of broken plastic, could have either been parts of the broken butane reservoir, or parts of the shell of the flash drive.

Chen didn’t think he had to read the flash drive there and then. He had to get out of the office immediately.

Luckily, there was still no one in the hallway. He made it to the elevator and then to the lobby without anyone seeing him. He walked by the security guard with barely a nod.

Outside, it was surprisingly warm in the People’s Square. Chen again began sweating profusely.

The square was swarming with people, as always. Several groups of people in their fifties or sixties were dancing or exercising to music blaring from CD players on the ground. They were enjoying the moment, with the sun setting and the City Government Building still shining in the fading light.

Behind the people filling the square, there was a line of limousines waiting patiently along the driveway in front of the magnificent City Government Building.

Amidst them all, a lonely figure was standing in a corner, absentmindedly clicking a red lighter in vain.