Midnight In Madrid

SEVEN

ZURICH, SEPTEMBER 6

The autopsy had just concluded in Zurich when a representative of the Consulate of the Republic of China arrived at the headquarters of the cantonal police. The man entered the building and approached the receptionist at the front desk very quietly. She only knew he was there when she looked up and jumped slightly, seeing a handsome but unsmiling face and dark eyes looking down at her.

“Hello,” he said, with great courtesy. “I’m John Sun. I’m here to visit the body of the unfortunate Lee Yuan.” He was immaculately dressed and infinitely polite. He spoke enough German to get by. He also spoke excellent English. And, with a big gracious smile, he exuded more charm in a minute than most men can muster in a lifetime. All the women in the office noticed. He was there, he said, to identify and claim the body. He had his Swiss government issued ID, standard issue for foreign diplomats in the country. No one looked at it too carefully.

The receptionist passed him along to a policeman who worked the records room. The policeman had studied in England for a year, so the language was a convenient fit. Sun got on well with his Swiss contact.

The visitor had a business card in English, Chinese, and German, as well as his consular ID. His documents confirmed his name as John Sun.

Sun joined some of the ladies for their lunch break. He hung around the police installation waiting for the release of the corpse. One of the younger women, a single blonde girl named Hana, remarked-blurted out, actually, in Sun’s presence-that Sun looked very much like the sexy Chinese movie star Jet Li, who had killed about a hundred guys. Li had also, she said, bedded many beautiful ladies in dozens of films from Hong Kong to Hollywood.

The visitor expressed embarrassment over such flattery. He insisted that his own life was much more prosaic. Back home in China, before joining his nation’s foreign service, he said, he had been a teacher and a gymnast.

That afternoon, Hana brought up a picture of Jet Li on her workstation computer via the Internet. She said she’d love to take him home, cook for him, and “seduce him with European culture and keep him all to myself.”

The other women crowded around, admired the picture, and agreed. After that, they referred to Johnny Sun as their “movie star.”

As a movie star in Zurich, however, he had a short run. He appeared only one more time, early that same evening to manage the shipping of Yuan’s remains “back to his family in China.” Sun was again infinitely courteous and thanked everyone at police headquarters. He wore a black suit and a funereal black tie for the pickup of the deceased. He arrived with his own vehicle and two Chinese helpers for the occasion.

Hana made an attempt to turn her school-girl fantasy into reality. Cornering him alone for a moment, she invited him to dinner at her place, he could pick the day.

He declined with grace and regret. His immediate responsibility, he said, would be to accompany the body of Yuan back to China. They-he and the corpse-would be leaving within a few hours.

So John Sun disappeared as abruptly as he had appeared. It was a strange irony: they hadn’t known much more of John Sun than Lee Yuan, and they both had vanished as quickly as they had appeared.

“The mysterious East,” one of the women said.