CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE HIDING MAN

Xi Luan Tu hoped it was like being a mist inside a fog – either that or this hiding in plain sight was just a way of fooling himself. No doubt the truth would be evident soon enough. He glanced over his shoulder. The southern alley entrance to what as a kid he called “the warrens” was just a quick bolt away. As boys, he and his brother had explored this massive underground network of tunnels and caves that stretched for miles beneath the streets of Shanghai. Almost every section of the Old City could be accessed by one of the hundreds of underground alleyways. Some of them were now being widened for use in Shanghai’s new subway system, but most of the passageways were still secret. The warrens ran beside, beneath and behind the buildings of the Old City. They had been used by thousands of Chinese people since their inception in the mid-1800s when the British, French and Americans had been given the only useful lands in Shanghai in the disgraceful Treaty of Nanjing. The Chinese had been forced from their homes and moved into the lowlands, the swamps by the river. At first, the warrens were a way for the Chinese to avoid the British and French rulers of their city. Year by year, Chinese hand by Chinese hand, they had expanded until they became an intricate underground world. A secret world. A world where white men were not welcome. Where a Chinese man could hide from the authorities. Tunnels, caves, stores of food and water, booby traps, false exits, culs-de-sac and abandoned subterranean pathways stretched, unmapped, for miles. Xi Luan Tu had grown up playing in the warrens. If things got too hot for him above-ground, he’d head for the warrens. It was his best chance – not to escape, because there were no escape routes out of Shanghai from the warrens, but to hide.

“How much?” the gruff man in front of his stand demanded as he pointed at the undulating carpet of life formed by the thousands of grub pupae that seethed in the barrel. Xi Luan Tu quoted him a reasonable price but not too low. He didn’t want his fellow market pupae-sellers to take too much note of the “new guy.” His forged vendor’s licence had been arranged by a follower whose father used to occupy the spot. If asked, Xi Luan Tu would inform a questioner that he was the nephew of the man who used to sell here and that he had recently arrived from Sichuan Province.

“Too much,” said the potential customer and moved on down the alley to the next grub pupaeseller.

The live things – he thought of them as grubs-intraining – continued their blind movements in the barrel. For three days he’d hidden in that very barrel while federal officers mounted sweeps in an effort to find him. Without the Dalong Fada exercises he would never have managed to maintain his sanity. The moment he lost the sense of himself as merely part of a much greater whole – the moment that he believed that he was the whole in and of himself – then the pain, the fear and misery took hold of him and led him toward madness.

He put his hands into the barrel of moving grub pupae and allowed their motion to become part of his existence. “Like spreading the molecules of yourself wide,” he thought, “and allowing all that space in.”

It was precisely as he completed that thought that two federal officers rounded the corner and headed right toward him.

Xi Luan Tu took another quick glance over his shoulder – he could beat them to the warrens’ entrance if he had to – and once there, he could lose them.


At the same time on the far side of the great city, Joan Shui was holding on to a lamppost and trying to stop the world from spinning. Wu Fan-zi seemed to be everywhere in the city. It was as if he’d just left a room whenever Joan entered or ducked into a doorway, as she approached or turned the far corner, as she turned onto a street. She’d been with her “fire-man” almost every moment of her first trip to Shanghai. Now she was here, shorn hair and all, and he was not.

She found herself drawn to the Hua Shan Hospital where she had seen him last. Where the bomb set by the American who called himself Angel Michael had ended Wu Fan-zi’s life. It was in there their hearts had met. It was in there they had seen each other. It was in there she lost him forever.

“Move along.”

Joan looked at the young man in the ill-fitting brown uniform with the insignia on his shoulder. Who was he talking to in that tone of voice?

“Move along, you!”

“Was he talking to me?” Joan thought. “I’m no stupid peasant who . . .” then she stopped even the process of that thought. It was good that he thought her nothing more than some stupid countrywoman who had come into Shanghai to beg on the streets. As long as people like him thought that way, she was safe.

“Move your fat ass!” he screamed at her.

Now that’s a bit much. Peasant yes, stupid maybe, fat ass never. But she bobbed her head and did a bit of waving with her dirty hands, as if she couldn’t understand his city accent then she put down her head and moved along.

She needed to find a phone kiosk.

She turned a corner and entered a crowded street market that ran down both sides of a narrow alley. The smell of rotting fish assailed her nose and swarms of fat flies circled her head then landed on, and seemed to taste, her filthy skin. She swatted them away only to be assaulted by the fish stink again. The gutted fish on the monger’s dirty wooden table weren’t even on ice. Those yet to be gutted swam in the brownish water of a rubber tub. A man wearing a nicely tailored suit approached the table and pointed at a large carp in the tub. The fishmonger reached into the brackish water and grabbed the fish by the tail. The thing thrashed in an effort to free itself from the monger’s grip but the merchant wasn’t about to let it go until the buyer gave his okay. They bartered briefly as the fish arched its body in protest. A price was settled on. The fishmonger stunned the thing with a smack of a short two-by-four then gutted it and wrapped it in old newsprint, using his right hand to get his money and his left to shove the guts beneath his table. The pile of guts was the source of the stink that attracted the flies. The gap-toothed fishmonger finished thanking the man in the good suit then screeched at Joan, “This not for you. This real fish. This for real people.” Then he made a gesture with his hands toward her, not unlike what he should have done to the flies that encircled his table. Joan resisted the impulse to tell this merchant exactly where he could put his comments and forced her way through the crowded market.

Shanghai was even more densely populated than Hong Kong. She didn’t think that possible, but it was. She finally found a phone kiosk and got in line. She needed to call the number she’d memorized from the e-mail. A half-hour and several nasty comments later, she finally got up to the kiosk, paid the two yuan and placed her call. An answering machine picked up and quickly gave an address then added, “Programmed cell phone there under curb. Pick it up and hit number three once.” Then the answering machine cut off.

Moving to Xinzha Lu, Joan found a bus shelter with a Shanghai street map and oriented herself. It took her two hot hours of walking to get to the address she’d gotten from the answering machine. She passed by the address twice before it was clear enough of people for her to lean down as if adjusting the bundle on her back, reach beneath the cement overhang above the sewer grate and extract the small cell phone that had been put there for her between two bricks. Once she had the phone, she faced another problem. Looking the way she did, it would be incongruous that she owned a cell phone. So she had to find a place to use the phone where no one could see her. Not an easy thing to do amidst Shanghai’s 18 million souls.

And prying eyes in this city could also report. She remembered the eyes of the man across from her in the fourth-class hard-seat train car. The way they bore into her and seemed to glory in the prospect of reporting her. “We Chinese enjoy the failings of our compatriots too much,” she thought, “and although this may be part of the Chinese character, it had grown exponentially under Communist rule.” More reason to promote an opposition like Dalong Fada.

She meandered, drawn by some force beyond her comprehension, to the Old City. Once there, the pace slowed. The dankness took over. There was little or no commerce here. Just lives lived in the shadow of the great. And alleyways. Dark alleyways that at this moment in Joan’s life were her friends.

She reviewed the codes in her head before she hit the number three on the phone. The welcome code was given in response. Then she identified herself. It took a moment for the man on the other end to speak. Then he whistled into the phone and said, “They’re bringing in the heavy artillery, are they?”

“I guess.”

“Do you know the Temple of the City God?”

“No, but I can find it.”

“Good. Go in the front entrance and buy seven sticks of incense. Kneel and hold them between your palms as if you’re ready to light them. I’ll find you.”

“How long will I have to do that?”

“As long as it takes.”

“But won’t it look suspicious if I hold the sticks and don’t light them?”

“Hold them for a while, then as if you haven’t decided on your prayer, put them back in your pocket and walk the grounds. It will not appear odd. Just another Chinese person anxious not to waste the cost of seven incense sticks on a frivolous request of the gods. Then come back as if you’ve made up your mind what you want to pray for and if I’m not there yet, go through the process again.”

“Until you find me?”

“Yes. Until I find you.”


Oddly enough, Joan didn’t feel funny holding the seven incense sticks. She had had a moment of dread when she realized that the little money she had been given might not be enough to buy seven sticks of incense. The irony of it almost made her do a very unpeasant-like thing – laugh out loud. Here she had US$25,000 in her bundle and yet it was possible she didn’t have enough money to buy seven stupid incense sticks. However, when she upended the cheap plastic change purse her contact on the ferry had supplied her, she found just enough.

With the sticks in hand, she opened one of the large wooden doors of the first pavilion. Before her was a pleasing room with hand-carved mahogany rails and three black lacquered screens. The floor was a much-worn marble. She walked through the quiet room and down a set of dark hardwood steps to the prayer chamber with its towering statues and kneeling pads. She waited for a moment then knelt. To her surprise, time seemed to slow down and sounds faded into the distance. She felt at ease.

She had never celebrated the passing of her lover Wu Fan-zi. And now, with the incense sticks in her hand, she had the opportunity.

She rubbed the sticks between her palms and in her heart sang his name.

Forty minutes later, a man knelt beside her with seven incense sticks in his hands. He touched his head to the ground then righted himself and rolled the sticks between his palms. As he closed his eyes he said, “The incense here is quite expensive, isn’t it?”

She began to rock on her knees. “Yes, it is.”

“Go up the stairs, out the back of the pavilion and look at the statue there. I’ll walk past you. Follow me.”


Chen came out of Fong’s office so fast that he didn’t even see Shrug and Knock until the poor man was prone on the ground. Chen immediately reached down to help him to his feet, “I’m terribly sorry. I hope your suit wasn’t ruined. If it needs cleaning I will supply whatever money is necessary . . . ”

“Get your stupid peasant hands off me! This jacket is new. It’s my favourite.” Shrug and Knock howled.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Chen said as he pulled the jacket off of Shrug and Knock then shoved his hands into the inside pocket while he continued to shake dirt off the jacket, both inside and out.

“Enough, you . . . ” Then Shrug and Knock let fly with a particularly demeaning comparison between Chen’s facial features and lower parts of other human beings’ anatomies, grabbed back his coat and walked back to his desk.


An hour later, Joan Shui was sitting across a table from her contact, who was clearly honoured to have her in his house. She thanked him for his help. She desperately wanted to ask to use his shower but she didn’t. Cleanliness could be dangerous. Her disguise of filth had protected her so far and she wasn’t going to change it now.

“Where is Xi Luan Tu?”

The man looked away.

“What?”

He took a deep breath then said, “He was supposed to contact us last week. All we know is that he is in Shanghai and he’ll contact us through the Internet.”

Joan’s heart fell.


Finally on the fourth call to the sixth name on Geoff’s list of numbers, Fong made contact – he thought of it as “getting through.” Through what he wasn’t quite sure.

“Are you the second wave?” the lightly lisped high Shanghanese female voice asked.

Fong flipped through the notes he’d made from Geoff’s CD-ROM to get the code sequence right. “Yes, I am here to drive away the storm.”

“Very clever,” the voice said.

Fong noted the word clever as a “go ahead, all is safe” code word and said, “We should meet.”

“We, no doubt, should.” A moment passed then she spoke. When she did, her voice was harder than before, “The Catholic cathedral on Caoxi Beilu, just after evening prayers.”

Fong didn’t know what time that would be but he could find out on his own. “How will I recognize you?”

“You won’t. I’ll recognize you.”

The phone went dead. For a moment Fong was at a loss: how could she recognize him? Then he got it – fuck! She thought he was Geoffrey Hyland, a white theatre director from Canada. He immediately punched redial on his phone. But the woman’s phone didn’t even ring. “A one-time cell phone,” he thought. “Damn.”


“Well?” Li Chou demanded of the young officer in front of him. “Have you succeeded?” The officer knew very well that Li Chou was not really asking a question but demanding results. The man nodded and held out a diskette that he slid into the D drive of the laptop on Li Chou’s desk. With a click of a mouse, a map overlay of Shanghai’s streets appeared on the screen. With a second mouse click, a point of light began to blink. The point of light remained in the middle of the screen but the street map overlay was in constant motion identifying the dot’s whereabouts.

Li Chou smiled. “How long will it last?”

“It draws power from their bug. As long as their bug’s bugging, our bug’s bugging their bug. They draw power from the cell phone; we draw power from them.”

“Power drawing power,” Li Chou thought. He liked that. Then he looked closely at the young man before him. Being a devious man himself, he assumed that this man would also have a hidden side – and more immediately important, a hidden agenda. Li Chou knew that the best way to defeat such agendas was to demand exact details. “How did you mange to bug Captain Chen’s bug?”

“Your man saw Chen enter central stores. I called my contact there. He informed me that Captain Chen had requested a bug. Well . . . ” the man shrugged, “my friend bugged their bug and gave me the software to follow it.”

Li Chou didn’t like it. This young man was too clever by half then by half again. He smiled but filed away his concern. He would not nurture potential competition in his ranks.

“Is there a problem, sir?” the man asked.

“No,” Li Chou lied easily. “You can leave.”

The man waited to get at least a nod of appreciation or a mention of a job well done – but none was forthcoming. He turned and left.

He wasn’t brave enough to slam the door.

Li Chou hit the Enlarge icon and immediately the scale of the street map changed. Li Chou checked the street coordinates. There was some sort of Christian temple right there.

He reached for his phone.


Evening prayers began just after sundown. A call to the Bishop of Shanghai confirmed the exact time. Fong had all the cathedral’s side doors locked so everyone had to use the main entrance. Just inside the front foyer, Fong had positioned four uniformed cops facing the entrance doors. He and Captain Chen waited outside on the front steps in the hope that a Dalong Fada member would enter the cathedral, see the cops and, as surreptitiously as possible, head right back out.

Fong reached into his pocket and touched the bugged cell phone with the wireless Internet connection he had retrieved from behind the toilet.

“Is this a religious place, sir?” asked Captain Chen.

“Yes, it’s a main Catholic church, Xujiahui Cathedral. It was built by the Jesuits. In English they call it St. Ignatius Cathedral.”

“We have nothing quite like this in the country.”

“No. But with all the beauty out there why would you need it?” Fong checked his watch. It was 8:30 p.m. The service had begun twenty minutes ago. Fong cursed himself for not asking the bishop how long it would go on.

All the people who came to this evening’s service had gone past the cops without comment and had stayed for prayers. Shanghanese were usually unfazed by the presence, even the large armed presence, of the police. Fong and Chen watched, but no one had turned around and come back out since the service began.


Li Chou looked at the six CSU detectives in his office. “Keep in cell phone contact with me. I’ll guide you. No one is to make any move toward the suspect until I order it. Got that?”

Nods from all six.

“Good. Let’s go.”


Fong and Captain Chen moved down to the bottom of the cathedral’s wide front steps. Time seemed to move two paces forward, one back and one sideways. Then the front doors of the cathedral opened. Fong checked his watch. Evidently evening services were a little longer than an hour. People began to leave the large building. Fong didn’t look at the faces. Unless his contact was already inside the cathedral she would arrive soon, looking for a tall white man with what Westerners called black hair but people in the Middle Kingdom knew was really red hair. “We Chinese have black hair,” Fong thought. “That’s why spoken drama from the West is called Hong Mao Ju, literally red-haired drama.”

Then he saw a small middle-aged woman make her way slowly up the steps. She had a slight limp, as if one leg were shorter than the other. Her face was pleasingly calm as she passed by Fong and entered the cathedral. A moment later she re-emerged, shielding her eyes from the remains of the setting sun. She strode down the steps with a quick but unhurried stride.

“Is the bug activated in the phone, Chen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long will it last?”

“It’s hooked into the power supply. Every time the cell phone charges, the bug fills its capacitor. So in theory it could last forever.”

Fong just heard this last as he raced to the curb.

The Dalong Fada woman had already crossed the six lanes of traffic and four of bikes on Caoxi Beilu with remarkable ease and was headed directly to the Xujiahui subway station entrance. Fong moved as quickly as he could through the traffic and raced down the stairs to the subway. He dug in his pocket for change, found none, flashed his badge at the ticket-taker then hopped the barrier, to a chorus of complaints from his fellow citizens.

The platform was almost empty as the train pulled out. Fong cussed and was about to turn away in disgust when the last car of the train moved past him revealing the Dalong Fada woman standing patiently on the opposite platform.

Fong ran through the underpass and came up on the platform. He pushed his way through the densely packed crowd ignoring the colourful insults hurled at him and took a position right behind the Dalong Fada woman.

The train came into the station. The Dalong Fada woman stepped in and held onto one of the vertical central posts with her small left hand. Over her right shoulder she had an open red-white-and-blue nylon bag. Fong came up behind her and found a handhold above hers. As the train lurched forward, he slipped the cell phone into her bag then made his way around the pole to look at her.

Instantly, fear bloomed in her eyes. “It’s in your bag,” Fong said as casually as he could manage.

Her fear receded. She said nothing.

Fong smiled then pushed his way through the throngs in the car, pulled open the door between the cars and stepped into the next car.

He got off at Caoxi Beilu station, took out his cell phone and called Captain Chen. “She on your screen?”

“Yes, sir, I’ve copied the software to track her onto my PalmPilot and the signal from her cell phone is coming through just fine.”

“And our Li Chou?”

Chen laughed aloud, something that Fong had never heard from the man before. He wasn’t sure exactly what to make of it. “Where are you, sir?”

Fong told him.

“Shall I pick you up?”

“Is there any hurry?”

Chen checked the screen of the PalmPilot, “The cell phone’s still in motion so I don’t think so.”

“Fine,” said Fong and snapped his phone shut.

Chen looked at the screen of the PalmPilot and then at his cell phone. He thought of Fong’s warnings about understanding the politics in the office. Then he thought of his obligation as a husband to Lily and a guardian to Xiao Ming and made a call.


The younger Beijing man picked up and listened for a moment. “This was the wise thing to do.” He hung up the phone and turned to the older Beijing man. “He’s doing just what we expected.”

The older Beijing man nodded, “As Mao said: allow a man to marry and have a child and he is lost to the Revolution.” The younger man hadn’t heard Mao quoted in quite some time. No one quoted Mao anymore. But it was the wistful tone in the older man’s voice that drew his attention.

“Perhaps, but more to the point, they’ll lead us right to Xi Luan Tu.”

The older man didn’t reply; he just looked out the window at the miracle that was modern Shanghai.


Xi Luan Tu saw the limping woman make her way down the alley. He wheeled his barrel of grub pupae through the rusted gate at the back of the old Sovietstyle apartment block, where he slept on a basement mattress with twelve others. It was the appointed hour and he’d been waiting there every day at that time for the past two weeks. He watched her limp by, knowing she would make at least three passes before she made her drop.

He hadn’t seen her for years. What had once been the slightest imbalance had progressed to a fullfledged limp. She was no longer young. Then again, neither was he. She didn’t look in his direction. It surprised him they had sent her. He questioned the wisdom of their choice. Her second time round came quicker than he thought it would. And her third that much quicker again. This time, she paused in front of the seventh garbage can in the row of cans – the assigned one – dropped something wrapped in newspaper into it – then made her way, this time quite slowly, along the alley. Just a good citizen who didn’t litter – not an old lover anxious to see her former mate.

Xi Luan Tu wanted to chase after her but knew better. He put a tight metal mesh over the barrel with his grub pupae and locked it in place to an iron ring in the cement wall. Then he took out a cigarette, a snake charmer – he still liked the old brands – and lit up. If she was just a conscientious citizen then he was just a workingman enjoying a butt after a long day’s work.

He smoked the harsh thing down to the filter as his eyes scanned the alley for watchers. He smoked a second then lit a third. Lots and lots of people, as there always were, but no one with any seeming interest in either him or the seventh garbage can in the row. He finished his third smoke then headed toward the row of garbage cans.

He executed the pickup with casual precision.

Five minutes later, crouching behind his barrel of grub pupae, he activated the cell phone he’d picked up from the seventh garbage can and made Internet contact – the first of many steps to get him out of Shanghai.


Two minutes after that, Chen contacted Fong, “I believe she delivered the bugged cell phone.”

“Do you have an address?”

“Is shrimp dumpling made with shrimp?”

Fong knew that Chen intended this as an affirmative answer to his question although in Shanghai it was extremely unlikely to find shrimp or anything even like shrimp in a shrimp dumpling. “Good, Chen. I’m at Dong Tai Lu in the Old City.”

“I’ll be right there,” and after a brief pause added, “sir.”

Fong heard the momentary pause and the slightly pushed end of Chen’s speech but didn’t know what to make of it.


Xi Luan Tu didn’t sleep well that night. He knew he was approaching some very complicated decisions. He wondered about leaving Shanghai. If it were right. Then he wondered about his ability to withstand the pain of torture. Then he wondered at the ingenuity of his brother to arrange all this. Then he wondered at the movement itself that had grown from so few only fifteen years ago into the second strongest force in the People’s Republic of China. That thought calmed him and as the dawn crept closer he nodded off.


Chen snored as he slept in the front seat of the car. Fong glanced over at the small screen on the PalmPilot. The bugged phone had not moved all night. Fong assumed that nothing of any real event would happen until the replacement money and the documents for those that Geoff had to burn were finally delivered to Xi Luan Tu. He assumed that the bug would lead them to that hand off. “Then what?” he asked himself. “Then we follow,” he answered his own question. But when the question “Why?” popped into his head he simply ducked it. He had absolutely no answer to “Why?” He had, often in the past, successfully followed what Westerners call hunches but he knew were insights. But this was not one of those occasions. He knew, in his heart, that he was following that cell phone because he didn’t have anything else to follow. That he had no real clues as to who murdered Geoff. No one with motive. No one who he even needed to interrogate further. Once again it occurred to him that he may have overlooked something obvious, something important.

A car passed by and Fong slid down in his seat. The car turned the far corner of the market and sped away. Fong sat up in his seat. Is it possible that the two Beijing keepers were in that car? No. It’s just all this waiting. It’s made him jumpy, given him way too much time to think.

And there was lots to think about. Why was the commissioner so quiet in all this? Why was Li Chou at least seemingly being cooperative? Why was there no diplomatic pressure from the Canadians to solve this murder? Or did they think it was a suicide? Had no one even raised the possibility with them that Geoff’s death was a murder?”

The PalmPilot beeped. Slowly the street map overlay began to move. He nudged Chen who awoke with a start, as if he had just had a guilty dream. “What time is it, sir?”

“Just before dawn, Captain Chen.”


As Fong turned on the ignition and put the car in gear, a phone call was placed. “They’re moving, sir,” was all the voice said. The elderly Beijing man stretched. The younger Beijing man was surprised how fresh his elderly companion was.


In the predawn cool, Fong and Chen moved carefully through the outdoor street market while the merchants set up for the day. The blip generated by the bug in the cell phone had moved then stopped here in the market. It had been still for a full half-hour. As Fong and Chen moved slowly south through the market toward the blip, others were moving too – toward them.


At the height of the market’s morning rush, a peasant woman with a shabby bundle on her back and an awful haircut approached Xi Luan Tu’s barrel of grub pupae.

“They’re for birds,” he said, “not humans.”

“Do you think I am such a fool as to eat grubs?” she barked back.

He noticed her southern accent and the exact use of the complex idiom such a fool. Then he saw her hands. Dirt-encrusted palms, ragged fingernails – but soft fingers. Not a callus to be seen. Not workers’ hands. He shallowed his breathing, ready.

“Are you of the second wave?” he asked.

“I bring the storm,” she responded.

“Ah,” he said and handed her a large paper sack and began to ladle grub pupae into it.

As she had been instructed, she yelled for him to stop. No one really took note – just another woman trying in vain to get a good bargain at the market.

She unslung her pack, knelt down and opened it. He knelt down beside her with the bag of grubs between them.

In her mind, she’d reviewed the scenario she’d read on yesterday’s Internet contact several times. She took a deep breath to clear her head then reached into the grub-filled bag and pulled out a handful of the nascent things. She was surprised they were so slimy but it was their movement inside their casings that almost drew a cry from her throat.

“These are the finest . . . ” he began to protest.

She harrumphed and threw her handful of the squirming things at the side of the barrel. He squacked a protest, turned to the barrel while still making a racket and grabbed for the grub pupae. As he did, she shoved the open bag of grubs into her bundle and pulled out another brown paper bag containing the $25,000 in US currency, the passports and the four sets of identification papers that she’d taken from her bundle. He whirled back on her and shouted obscenities, grabbed the bag as if he were taking back his precious grub pupae and told her to get out of his sight.

No one paid them any mind. Joan shouted a particularly colourful obscenity and then stomped away. She felt relieved that the switch had gone so smoothly although mildly disconcerted to think of the hundreds of grub pupae now perhaps loose in her pack.

She moved quickly, looking for the way out – back to her life in Hong Kong.

She passed out of the grub-seller section of the market and turned the corner. Immediately she was assailed by the sound of thousands of birds. Everywhere she looked, wrens, finches, canaries and kingfishers perched in bamboo cages that were piled by the walls of the buildings – sometimes four or five stories high.

She leaned back to get a better look and felt something hard and cold against her neck. A voice she thought she recognized said, “Don’t make a fuss. We don’t want to hurt you.”


Chen was surprised when Fong put his gun to the nape of the neck of the peasant woman with the bad haircut, who had done nothing but try to buy some grub pupae. But he wasn’t surprised to see, out of the corner of his eye, the two Beijing men running, followed by a dozen federal cops all heading right for the tall middle-aged man standing behind the barrel of live grub pupae.


Xi Luan Tu saw it all happen before him and executed the escape plan he’d worked out months ago. He grabbed the brown paper bag with the money, ID and passports, patted his pocket once to assure himself he still had the cell phone, kicked over his barrel of grub pupae then charged around the corner and threw himself right at the mountain of fragile bamboo birdcages. Instantly, hundreds of the delicately balanced things crashed to the ground and split open – freeing their tiny captives. Amidst the screams of their owners, the birds moved as one living thing, claimed their freedom then headed directly for the mass of grub pupae on the ground. The shouts of anger and the hundreds of dive-bombing birds gave Xi Luan Tu enough cover to head toward the warrens.

A volley of gunshots cut through the mayhem. A window shattered. An old man screamed in pain. Xi Luan Tu sped down the alleyway that accessed the warrens. As he made the last turn, he slipped and crashed to the pavement. He heard the skip of bullets off pavement all around him. When he regained his feet, a sharp pain on the outside of his left thigh almost threw him back to the ground. Then he heard a bullet splat into the alley wall beside his head and he forgot about the pain in his thigh or the blood that was flowing freely down his leg and pooling in his sock. He summoned all his strength and raced toward the safety of the warrens.


On the first gunshot, Fong grabbed the peasant woman with the bundle and shoved her into the safety of a doorway. More shots. Birds screeched, people screamed.

“Do you know who I am?” Fong hissed.

Joan nodded.

For a moment, Fong didn’t know what to do then he said, “Do you trust me?”

Joan didn’t move.

“Well, here are your choices. You trust me and help me or I hand you over to the federal officers who will arrest you for treason.”

Joan looked at Fong. “If you put it that way . . . ”


The Beijing men stood behind a stall that sold polished driftwood about halfway between Fong and the alley entrance to the warrens. The younger Beijing man barked orders to the local militia he had stationed strategically in the Old City. He paced as they began evacuating buildings and then entered the warrens from four different access points. The older Beijing man stood patiently to one side and allowed his fingers to trace the pleasing curve of one of the polished pieces . . . and he watched. He assumed Xi Luan Tu had a fifty-fifty chance of avoiding the troops in the warrens. But the Dalong Fada leader had no chance of avoiding Fong because of the bug in the cell phone – so the older Beijing man waited for Fong, his uncomely Captain Chen and the peasant woman with the awful haircut to make their move. Their move would betray Xi Tuan Lu’s whereabouts. His finger snagged as a splinter of wood entered a full two inches into his right ring finger. He didn’t wince but rather slowly backed his finger off the splinter. A thin line of blood dripped down his finger and pooled in his palm.


Fong turned to Chen, “Captain Chen, Joan Shui. Joan Shui, Captain Chen.”

Chen didn’t know what to do, whether he should shake hands or what. Before he could make up his mind, Fong asked, “We still have him?” Chen showed him the PalmPilot with the street overlays. “Not all that useful with Xi Luan Tu underground in the warrens.”

“We’ll have to follow the best we can. I think it’s time to throw our friends off the track, don’t you, Captain Chen?”

Chen hesitated for a moment as if he were unsure of the meaning of Fong’s question. Fong saw it and a shiver of fear went up his spine. Chen smiled and took out his cell phone. He punched in 555 555 555 1, listened for a tone, got it, then punched the pound key twice. Then he flipped his cell phone shut and said, “Problem turned into opportunity, sir.”


Li Chou had heard the shots and screams from the market. The blip on his laptop began to move like someone running then stopped. He had his men in position and was about to give them directions when all of a sudden the street map overlay on his receiver began to move at tremendous speed. “Hold on,” he shouted into his cell phone. Finally the street map slowed then suddenly stopped. Li Chou looked at the thing. Shook it. The blip didn’t move. He hit the Enlarge button to get an exact address then dialled the snitch in central stores. He quickly told the man what had happened.

The man really didn’t know what to make of Li Chou’s information but asked, “The blip is stable now?”

“Yes.”

“And you can identify the cross streets?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s where the bug must be.”

Li Chou contacted his men on his cell phone and shouted orders to them, hit the siren, U-turned across eight lanes of traffic and sped toward the arrest that he knew would send Zhong Fong back to the wasteland west of the Wall.


While Li Chou’s siren pierced the din of Shanghai’s constant traffic jam, the young Beijing man stayed above-ground and on a makeshift map charted the unsteady progress of his troops in the warrens. Beside him, the older Beijing man kept his eyes on Fong, Chen and the peasant woman, who was with them now.


“Money and passports and ID papers,” Joan answered Fong’s question. “I brought him all those things. Maybe you should arrest me.”

“Maybe I will,” said Fong.

Joan looked at the blip on the PalmPilot. “How did you bug him?”

“It’s in the cell phone I brought him.”

“Do you know who he is, Zhong Fong?”

Fong nodded but said nothing. The blip had stopped moving. He looked at Chen who nodded. Then they moved quickly.


The older Beijing man sat up straight and tapped the younger Beijing man. He pointed at Fong and Chen and the peasant woman who were running across the alley not twenty yards ahead of them.


Li Chou whispered directions into his radio transmitter. His men responded with whispered affirmatives when they had reached their assigned positions around the Park Regent Hotel in the fashionable embassy district in the south end of the city. Four of the six had reported. He awaited the last two before he made his move.


The tunnels got steeper and steeper while Fong, Chen and Shui made their way deeper and deeper into the heart of the warrens. Chen guided them as best he could by the blip on the screen of the PalmPilot. Fong knew the ins and outs of most of Shanghai, but this underground world was foreign to him. As a child, he’d ventured into the warrens only a few times. Although he was never wealthy, Fong’s family had controlled night-soil collection throughout the Old City and he had some standing as a part of the family’s age-old business. The warrens were for those who had nothing. Not people like him. It was their domain, not his. The last time he’d gone down there he was twelve years old. He’d been robbed, beaten and only escaped worse through the unexpected kindness of one of the older ruffians.

They passed by filthy mattresses on the wet ground and other evidence of human habitation. The blip had not moved for over ten minutes. Xi Luan Tu must have gone to ground. On occasion, the shouts of the militiamen echoed to them from a distance, but even these thinned out in the last few minutes. Twice Fong had put his hand up for them to stop and crept back to see if they were being followed. He was convinced that he’d heard footsteps but could not find anyone on their tail.

They’d reached a turn in the tunnel. To their right the tunnel widened and headed toward the river. Directly in front of them was an almost sheer wall of rock. Chen put his fingers to his lips, looked at the blip then signalled that he was confused. Fong looked at the screen. It indicated straight ahead – somehow on the other side of the rock face, not down the tunnel. Fong was about to cuss all technology when he saw a wet sheen on the rock face. A sheen he recognized all too well. He reached up and touched the sticky slickness of fresh blood.


The two Beijing men stood in the darkness of the tunnel and took out their firearms. Modern, German, lethal.


Li Chou got the “In place!” from the last of his men. He took a breath. Referred one last time to the laptop. The blip had not moved. He counted to ten then yelled, “Now.”


Climbing the rock face proved easier than it looked. Well-concealed but numerous handholds and footholds had been cut into the rock at appropriate intervals. This was evidently a much-travelled route. At the very top of the rock face was a small opening. Fong led; Joan and Chen followed. The opening narrowed so that even someone as slender as Fong had to squeeze to get through. But once through, a large tunnel travelled for ten yards then opened into a substantial cave. Along the walls of the cave were dozens of large barrels. Chen consulted the PalmPilot then pointed to a large barrel stencilled in white paint with: TO BE DELIVERED TO HU FAT CHOI SPADINA ROAD TORONTO CANADA.


The raid on the Park Regent Hotel’s coffee shop went off like clockwork. Li Chou’s men scared the shit out of all eight customers, the two cooks and the young skimpily clad waitress. Li Chou then consulted his laptop and pointed beneath a table at the far side of the restaurant. When he threw back the white tablecloth, the man beneath yelped a complaint.


Chen pried the barrel’s upper ring loose and all the slats fell to the floor, revealing the calmly seated figure of Xi Luan Tu.


Li Chou lifted Shrug and Knock in one angry sweep from beneath the table, then shook him. The electronic button that fell from his coat hit the table then bounced to the floor and rolled into a corner. On Li Chou’s laptop the street map overlay moved ever so slightly to indicate the movement.

Li Chou’s face was hot, angry and naturally, fat.


Fong held out a hand to Xi Luan Tu. The man took it and rose to his full height. Fong locked eyes with him.

“Take your hands off him, Traitor Zhong!”

Fong turned. There in the mouth of the cave stood the younger Beijing man, his gun pointed right at Xi Luan Tu’s head.

Joan took a step in front of Xi Luan Tu.

“Bad move, peasant girl,” said the younger Beijing man, cocked his gun and pulled the trigger.

Fong threw himself at Joan and covered her prone body with his.

The sound of the gunshot in the cave was incredibly loud. Joan let out a small whimper. The echo of the shot slowly faded and faded and faded until all that remained was a profound silence.

One by one, Fong, Joan and Chen lifted their heads, then stared at the mouth of the cave. The younger Beijing man’s body slumped against the wall, a large exit wound in his forehead. Slowly, from the tunnel darkness, the elder Beijing man emerged with a firearm in his hand. He looked at the body of the younger Beijing man then turned to Fong, “We need to talk.”


Twenty minutes later, they were in a safe house just across the Huangpo River. It was the same safe house where the elder Beijing man conducted the counterterrorism seminar on the night that Geoffrey Hyland had been murdered.

“So who goes first?” asked Fong.

“Goes?” the older Beijing man asked.

“Yes. Who explains their actions first?”

“You, Fong,” said the older Beijing man.

“Sure,” said Fong noting there was none of that Traitor Zhong stuff. “I figured out that Geoff had more information.”

“As I hoped you would.”

“Fine. It led me to a cell phone that I was to deliver to a contact that would bring it to Xi Luan Tu. I bugged the phone and followed it.”

“Why?”

Fong lied smoothly, “To find out if any of this bullshit has anything to do with Mr. Hyland’s murder.”

“Ah,” said the older Beijing man.

“Yeah, ah. Your turn now,” said Fong. The older Beijing man nodded. “Start with how you managed to follow me?”

“We knew you were a talent, Detective Zhong. We assumed you would succeed. We put you under surveillance. It took sixteen watchers but was simple really. Does that answer your question?”

Fong didn’t know if that answer was okay or not, but before he could ask another question the older Beijing man turned to Joan, “How about you, young lady? Why are you in Shanghai?”

Joan took a moment, reached up to straighten her hair only to realize that she no longer had enough hair to need straightening and said, “Beijing needs to be kept in check. There is no opposition in this country now that Hong Kong has been taken over. Only Dalong Fada can offer that opposition.”

To Fong’s surprise, the older Beijing man slowly nodded his agreement. Then he sat heavily and began to talk.

Fong usually had little time or sympathy for the views from the past. The mantle of righteousness taken on by the elders of China had deeply soured his response to them. But this was different. This man had clearly crossed the line. And what came out of his mouth was as revolutionary as Fong had heard in some time. The man laid out the need for a countervailing force to the power of Beijing, which was, like Joan, what he saw in Dalong Fada. He then said, “I think the religious side of Dalong Fada is stupid and potentially, like all religious movements, dangerous. But better a Chinese solution than a foreign one because, make no mistake, the West is anxious to put a stop to any recklessness coming out of China. But you must also understand that there will never be democracy in this country.” He looked to Fong, then to Chen, then to Joan and finally to Xi Luan Tu. No one deigned to respond to that. “It’s really quite simple. At base level this is all about survival. We need to assure the steady supply of food for our people. In a city like Shanghai where there are eighteen million people and little or no refrigeration. The very task of getting food, before it spoils, to the people is daunting. Any disruption would cause chaos. And we all know that chaos must be avoided at all cost.” This last met with at least some acceptance in the room.

“So you saved Xi Luan Tu to guarantee a real opposition to the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party?” asked Fong.

The man nodded. “Twenty-five-million followers of Dalong Fada qualify as a real opposition, wouldn’t you say?”

Joan watched the man with the basic wariness that all Hong Kong residents felt toward the powers in Beijing.

“But it’s the only form of democracy we’re ready for in the Middle Kingdom at this time. It’s a crucial small step, like opening some free markets and allowing freedom of movement for most people within the country. Both freedoms are much more widespread than they were only ten years ago, but they aren’t absolute. How could they be and have us avoid chaos? Can you imagine the eighteen million people in this city suddenly all forced to pay for the spaces that they live in? Can you imagine them trying to reshuffle almost sixty years of price control into a completely open market?”

Fong nodded, thinking back to the insider’s offer sheet in his desk in his bedroom.

The elderly Beijing man coughed into his hand then continued, “It would lead to riots and then would come Revolution. And make no mistake, before that Revolution came to a conclusion, millions of Chinese would lose their lives, most from starvation. I needn’t add that outsiders would soon take advantage of our weakness and we would be back where we were at the beginning of the twentieth century with foreigners controlling our country.”

Fong thought that through. He agreed with most of it. “What about Mr. Hyland?”

“What about him?”

“Did you or your younger half have him murdered?”

The older Beijing man shook his head slowly then opened a portfolio that he withdrew from the desk. From the portfolio he removed twelve eight-byten photographs and lined them up on the desk.

They showed Geoff arrested, tried for treason, disgraced in front of a large crowd, then put on an airplane in chains. Once again, the faked photos were expertly done. If Fong hadn’t seen Geoff hanging from that rope he could well believe that this was a real account of what had happened to his old rival. “This was Beijing’s intent. They didn’t care about Mr. Hyland. All they wanted from him was to lead them to Xi Luan Tu. Which is exactly what you did for us, Zhong Fong. But their intent and mine were not the same. I wanted to be led to Xi Luan Tu to tell him that he has much support in high circles, not for his religious practices which, as I mentioned, I find obscene, but for the very practical need for political ballast in the People’s Republic of China. And now you have led me to him and now he has heard what I have to say.”

Xi Luan Tu nodded, as if engaged for the first time in the conversation. Then he got to his feet and headed toward the door.

Joan leapt up and said, “We need to get you out of Shanghai. That’s what the money and the Internet access were for.”

For the first time, Xi Luan Tu spoke, “That’s what they were for, for you Ms. Shui, and I thank you for your efforts. I thank all of you. But I am not leaving Shanghai. I cannot leave Shanghai.” Fong began to protest but Xi Luan Tu cut him off, “Do you know a writer named Alan Paton, Zhong Fong?”

Fong shook his head.

“He was a world-renown South African novelist who wrote at great length against the sins of his countrymen and the Apartheid regime. Over and over again, reporters from outside South Africa would ask him why he didn’t leave. Do you know what he answered?” He waited for a response but no one spoke. Finally Xi Luan Tu said, “Mr. Paton said that a man without a country is not a man. All of us in this room know that Shanghai is like a country. In fact, it is bigger than many countries. Shanghai is my country. I will not leave it. Again I thank all of you for your efforts. I really do. But now I must leave you. I have no doubt we will all meet again.”

“Mr. Xi?”

“Yes, Captain Chen?”

“You’d better give me that phone.” Xi Luan Tu gave it to Chen who quickly removed the faceplate and extracted the small electronic bug. For a moment he held it in his hand then dropped it to the floor and stomped on it. The thing flattened without a sound. Then Chen held out the phone to Xi Luan Tu, who took it and headed toward the door. No one made a move to stop him and he did not hesitate in his going.

It left the four of them alone in the safe house – looking at each other. It was Chen who finally broke the silence, “So we are back to a straightforward murder investigation.”

The older Beijing man nodded.

“And you and yours didn’t murder Mr. Hyland?” Fong asked the Beijing man again.

The Beijing man just pointed to the object-lesson photos. “We didn’t want him killed. We wanted him to be an example to foreigners who meddle in the affairs of our country.”

“Why doesn’t Beijing know about you?” Fong asked.

“Beijing runs just like the rest of China – like the rest of humanity. It survives in boxes. Compartments. It’s how we live our lives. Not everything influences everything else. Our work doesn’t necessarily influence our politics. Our politics don’t necessarily influence our home lives . . .” He stopped and looked at Fong, “What?”

“Compartments. Work not necessarily influencing our home lives – or our love lives.”

“What are you talking about, Fong?” asked Joan.

“Are you heading back to Hong Kong right away?”

“I don’t know . . . ”

“I could really use a woman’s eyes to help me on this.” He didn’t wait for her response but turned to Chen. “Remember the woman I arrested in the bar for murdering her boss?”

“You mean for murdering the man she loved?”

Fong looked hard at Chen. “Yes, that is what I mean, Captain Chen. Arrange for Ms. Shui and me to see her – the woman who killed the man she loved.”

“To check on something?”

“Yes, Captain Chen, to check on something I’m pretty sure I overlooked.”

“Zhong Fong.” It was the elderly Beijing man. “I would appreciate the courtesy of you sharing the results of your investigations with me.”

“Why?”

“Politics is just an attempt to understand the workings of the human heart. If your findings increase my knowledge of that, then I can be of more help to our people.”

Fong nodded. “What’s your name, sir?”

“Sheng.”

Sheng was not a name you heard often. It literally meant “in the year of peace.” Fong thought, “What a good name for a man. Yet this man had shot his partner without a word of warning.” Fong took another look at the man. The man stood very still as if he understood Fong’s thoughts. “Peace in a dangerous world at times requires action – complicated action,” Fong said. The man nodded. “Well, where can I find you, Sheng?”

“I’ll be here in this house for at least a week.”

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