The Hua Shan Hospital Murders

CHAPTER TEN

Larry arrived at his suburban Connecticut home the second night after the meeting in Virginia and fell to his knees in the darkened front hall. He hadn’t slept since the meeting and its startling news about Angel Michael’s activities in Shanghai. Already newspapers were full of lurid stories. Amassive right-to-life campaign swung into action supporting the Shanghai bombings with startling figures on the rate of abortion in China. These figures were immediately rebuked by pro-choice advocates. Abortion was back on the front page – just as the old man who Matthew called his father wanted at this time of a crucial Congressional election.

That first night Larry’s wife had suggested they pray. He had done his best but he was unable to clear his head of the images that had taken root there. A woman on a table – a fetus in a cage beneath. Larry had no doubt that abortion was murder and that it was the most open manifestation of the wrong turn that society had taken. That it must be stopped before it ushered in the devil himself.

And Larry knew of the devil and his awful works. Until the meeting two nights ago in Virginia he was certain that his profoundly retarded CP-wracked daughter in the next room was the devil’s price for his momentary lapse into faithlessness. But since the meeting he was less sure of that – of anything. He caught an image of himself in the hall mirror. His classical “Yalie” looks were deserting him. Yalie looks he thought appropriate for a Yale man to have – even faded or fading Yalie looks.

He opened the door to his daughter’s room. For a moment he questioned why he hadn’t climbed the stairs to see his wife. Then he put aside the question. He knew why he was going into his daughter’s room. She lay on her side, twisted, so her body faced the wall. Her head craned back toward the door as he entered. Her eyes, as always, were open and full of pain. Didn’t she ever sleep? Didn’t she ever get relief?

Larry whispered a prayer for forgiveness – but not to God – to her. Then he knelt by her bed and recited his prayers. But for the first time since his relapse he wondered if there really was anyone up there to hear him – or if He was there, if He cared. His daughter’s hand touched his face. He looked up into her dark eyes and searched for a message – anything that said her life was worth the price of her pain.

Then he thought back to his wild days as a student at Yale. To a beach house in West Haven – and a roommate, Joel, who had become an FBI agent. Yes, Yale produced more CIA guys, but it also produced its share of high-ranking FBI agents. He hadn’t seen his roommate for years, but Joel was his class rep so he communicated periodically by group e-mail.

Larry’s daughter rolled over and let out a cry. Her back arched in a vain effort to move away from one of her many sources of pain.

“Like a woman on a surgery table,” he thought. Then he wondered why that thought had come to him. Then he wondered if he should call his roommate – and tell him what? That I’m part of an international conspiracy? No – that this blasphemy must stop!

Yes. This blasphemy must stop. Of that he was sure. The only problem was which blasphemy. Of that Larry was unsure.

His wife found him the next morning asleep in the chair beside their daughter’s bed. The girl’s sheets and blankets were wet; her face was constricted in yet another spasm of pain. As she watched her daughter’s features contort she thought for the thousandth time, “I should never have let Larry talk me out of having the abortion.” Then she apologized to whatever powers could hear her secret thoughts.

Larry’s e-mail note to his college roommate was a botched attempt at circumspection. Not exactly an I-have-a-friend-who letter – but close.

In his austere office in the FBI building, Joel dredged up an impression of his ex-roommate before he proceeded. If even a small fraction of what Larry implied in his e-mail was true, Joel knew he could be in the centre of an immensely complicated international incident. There were just too many people in the Washington office who salivated every time something awful happened to the Chinese. And among those salivating were many who were both powerful and very, very pro-life.

So Joel carefully deleted Larry’s “what-if” e-mail, then its backup, then any history link, checked for cookies, then applied the deep erase available to him as a ranking FBI official. He thought of it as a cleanser. In fact, that’s exactly how it’s marketed on hundreds of porn sites on the Net – Boy Are You In Trouble, Pal – But Buy This Cleanser and She’ll Never Know What You’re Up To!!!

And he forgot about it.

Forgot about it until four days later – when he picked up his morning copy of the Washington Post.