The Hua Shan Hospital Murders

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The second blast dwarfed the first. It ripped through the entire fourth floor of the People’s Fourteenth Hospital. It was hard to see how many were dead. What was not hard to see was the fear etched deep on the faces of the citizens of Shanghai and the edgy creep of panic rising like a waking dragon shaking off its lethargy and staring, wide-eyed and hungry, at the new day.

Wu Fan-zi ran past Fong into the burning hospital. An attractive Asian woman in Western dress was at his side. Fong ordered a cordon be set up around the hospital, activated the house wardens, and contacted Wu Fan-zi on his cell. “I’ll be back in a few hours. I’m leaving crowd control out here to a sergeant. You be careful in there.”

“Will do.”

“I want to be at your fifty-third birthday.”

“Me too.”

Fong hung up and took one last look at the gathering crowd – no Caucasians – then headed back to the Hilton. He was tired of being hit. He wanted to hit back.

Angel Michael had been angry. Out of control after the refusal of the head nurse. What should have been a gift, gladly received, became a murder. It enraged him. So much so that his work with the explosive at the People’s Fourteenth Hospital had been shoddy.

His pre-queued e-mails would have already reached stateside newspapers. But would they publish them after the false alarm at the Hua Shan Hospital? It was all getting messy. As he stepped into his luxury hotel suite, for the first time he wondered if he could pull it off – if he could bring back the light.

Instantly, Matthew felt a dull pain start in the nape of his neck. He waited helplessly as it moved upward until it sat directly behind his left eye. Then it exploded, obliterating his sight and releasing wave after wave of pain so intense that Matthew fell to the floor in agony. But even as the pain overwhelmed him, Matthew thought, “Why?” A line from an early Manichaean text floated up to his mouth: “I look for the light but I behold the darkness.” Yes but why, he demanded. An approaching wave of pain caught his attention then it crashed, releasing its crystalline fury. He was pulled down beneath the surface of the pain. Then he bobbed up to the air. He sensed the next wave gathering. But in the pause, the respite, a face came back to him. That woman at the Hua Shan Hospital. The one he’d seen speaking English to the Chinese man. The one who had bought the fresco that had been mistaken for his bomb – she was the one who had derailed his well-laid plans. A fierce wave of pain swamped him, but as he was dragged along the razor-sharp bottom, he saw the woman’s face and began to plot how to make her pay for what she had done to him. For, as Mani has said, “A bringer of the light must destroy those who would keep us all in the pitchy darkness.”

Wu Fan-zi knew that fire is a living thing. It consumes oxygen, constantly searches for food to sustain itself, and like all life, is programmed to maintain its existence and propagate. The fire beast inside the People’s Fourteenth Hospital was a wild thing trapped within the walls of the fourth floor of the old building.

Joan Shui crouched at Wu Fan-zi’s side in the stairwell. The firewall door to the fourth floor, the floor where the abortion surgeries were, was a mere twenty steps up from them and it was the only thing stopping the fire from racing into the stairwell. But the differential of the heat on the corridor side from the relative cool on the stairwell side was exerting tremendous torque pressure on the metal. The door was already buckling. It was getting harder to breathe in the stairwell as the blaze sucked all the oxygen it could to feed its fury. Wu Fan-zi touched the wall. It wasn’t hot but it was warmer than it should be. He pointed at the firewall door, “It’ll be behind that.”

“Crouching,” she said.

He looked at her and nodded. “Yeah, crouching.”

She nodded back at him.

“You understand,” he said simply.

“Yeah, I understand. I’ve been around fires since my father first brought me along with him to his work.”

“And his work was?”

“A fireman, what else?”

He laughed. A slow groan came from the door as one of its hinges was forced from the wall. Smoke slithered beneath the firewall door. “Ready to meet her?” he said.

“Sure, but I always thought of fires as he, not she.”

“To each their own.” He wrapped a kerchief around his face to cover his mouth. She pulled out a mouth filter from her bag and slipped it on. They looked at each other – only their eyes were visible. She thought he looked solid, like a brick. He thought, “What’s a spectacular woman doing here, at my side?” Then they ran up the last set of steps and threw themselves at the firewall door. It flew off its remaining hinges and crashed to the floor without offering any resistance. So much so that their force carried them some five or six yards into the corridor where they stood in a daze before they realized what had happened.

By then the fire had leapt behind them in response to the new source of oxygen from the stairwell. Joan took a step back toward the stairwell and was stunned by the intensity of the heat. She put up her hand to shield her face. Wu Fan-zi seemed immune to the extreme temperature. Overhead a beam creaked. Joan looked up just as it swung free from one side and headed straight for Wu Fan-zi’s back. She leapt at him, pushing him out of the way just in time. The beam sent shocks of sparks up the far wall and immediately cut off any possibility of their access to the north side of the building.

Wu Fan-zi took it all in quickly. The stairs would be on fire before they could get back to them. He grabbed her hand and pulled her forward toward the south end of the building, toward the abortion surgeries, toward the source of the fire. The next five minutes were so intense that Joan could only remember the feeling of her hand in his. Her eyes were scalded with the heat and her hair was singed, but his choice to run toward the source of the fire saved their lives. A fire needs motion. Once it has eaten a field it must move on to another. Going to the source of a blaze can lead you to a calm behind the storm. Although Joan knew this, she had never been forced to put theory into practice. It was the single most terrifying thing she had ever done.

When they finally got to the second abortion surgery, they were stunned by what they saw. The whole room was tilted. The blast had been so intense that there was almost nothing left in the room. Kicking aside the remaining timbers of the doorframe, Wu Fan-zi ushered Joan into the scorched room and he immediately began to take in the blast site, noting details, trying to remember everything he saw. While he did so, she was drawn by some force she didn’t even begin to understand to the fetus in the cage. He saw her and quickly raced to her side.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded but couldn’t take her eyes off the thing in the cage.

“Look at me,” he ordered.

She tried but couldn’t take her eyes away from the thing – the being in the cage.

“Look at me,” he said again but with infinite gentleness this time. Then he reached over and pulled her head toward him. “Puke if you need to but don’t faint. I couldn’t carry you out of here and I’m not leaving you here.” Something cleared in her eyes and the slightest smile creased her lips. “You’re on fire,” she said pointing to his suit coat.

“Damn!” he said whipping off his jacket and throwing it to the ground. As he stomped out the embers, he swore, “Fucking hell.”

“Never been on fire before Wu Fan-zi?” she said with a quiver of hysteria on the fringes of her voice.

“Dozens of times – but my jacket! Do you know how hard it is to find a jacket that fits a guy built like me? Fucking hell.”

“Get me out of here and I’ll buy you three in Hong Kong. I know just the right tailor.”

Wu Fan-zi leaned in toward the cage. “What does the etching on the sheathing say?”

“It doesn’t translate well into Mandarin but basically it says NO MORE GAMES. THIS MUST STOP. THE LIGHT MUST COME.”

“The light,” Wu Fan-zi muttered, “. . . more with the fucking light.” He was on his hands and knees searching.

“What are you looking for?”

“Yes!” he said scooping up metal threads from the floor.

“More phosphorus?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“And there’s the window,” she said.

“He likes to watch.”

“No. It can’t be that. You wouldn’t be able to see much of anything out of a window like that – it probably leads to an airshaft or an interior courtyard. I think the window is just there to assure a good flow of oxygen.” She glanced at the titanium banner again. “He likes to bring the light,” she said.

“Maybe, but he fucked up this time. Too much something or other. The last time the building didn’t burn. This whole place is going to go up. Look at this with me. I don’t think there’ll be a second chance to go over this crime site.”

“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

“It’s why I ran into the building, yeah. And you?”

She didn’t say. She wasn’t sure why she’d run into the building. Then she looked at Wu Fan-zi and she was less “not sure.”

“Force centre beneath the operating table,” he said.

“Right. Uneven scoring. Much more force to the north side than the south.”

“Right. And so much explosive that it destroyed the planch.”

“Could be he got bad exotic.”

“Why wouldn’t he buy it all at once?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was too expensive.”

“Maybe.”

“It’s getting hot, what else?”

“The cage.”

“The etching on the metal wrapper.”

“The fetus.”

She wavered and he steadied her.

The fire whooshed up a wall across the way. “Fuck, back draft.” He turned to her. “Ready for another run.”

“With you? Sure.”

“Hold on and we’ll get out of here. If that window leads to a corridor or even an airshaft we have to head in the other direction.”

“Through the other abortion surgeries?”

“Yeah.”

“Hold on tight.” She grasped his hand and he pulled her hard through a flaming hole in the wall. Into a second surgery.

The voyage out was simpler than the one going to the surgery. Going out all they needed to do was avoid the fire beast. As well, since they didn’t need to go to a specific destination as they had coming in, they could keep veering away any time they encoun-tered fire. And fire had one significant disadvantage – it liked going up and they were going down.

When they stepped into the cool air outside the back of the hospital, she looked at him. “You’ve got ash in your hair.”

“Yeah, well you’ve got a little less hair than you had when we went in.”

“Then there’s your jacket.”

“Just an offering to the beast. You’ll get me a new one.”

She took his arm and squeezed him. “I’ll get you two and twenty if you want.”

They sat at a stone table in the hospital’s back courtyard staring into each other’s eyes. “It’s just the excitement of the moment, you know,” he said.

“Yeah, getting out alive is a bit heady,” she responded.

“Your hair’s still smoking.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I like it.”

“Really?”

“I’m a fireman, after all.”

With that she came into his arms. Her elegance and his rock squareness fit together with remarkable ease. Then his cell phone rang.

Fong’s charge into the lobby of the Hilton sent ripples of anxiety throughout the great building. His anger dared even the manager to approach him. So he didn’t. The cops in the lobby manning the phones were exhausted. No one had slept. The news of the second blast had spread a thick layer of impotence over their fatigue. But Fong didn’t care. Things were escalating out of control and he knew it. Only a break in the case could regain them the initiative, put some lead back in their pencils.

“It’s not complete, sir,” the middle-aged man in charge of the banking investigation said as he pointed to the hundreds of pages of printouts in front of him.

“It’ll never be complete, damn it!”

“Well sir, banking no longer sleeps so-”

“Just give me your best guess.”

The man reluctantly flipped through the pile to a red ribbon marking a page. “This man. Tator is his name. He had two large sums of money transferred here from overseas. Each a few days before a blast.”

Fong grabbed the page with the man’s Shanghai hotel address and threw it at two detectives, “I want him in my office in half an hour. And I want him shackled.”

The detectives ran out and Fong turned to the team in charge of finding the American tourist with the camcorder.

“Well!” Fong demanded.

“We’ve got it down to thirty-eight, sir. They all seem to fit the description and every American in Shanghai seems to have a camcorder.”

“Pick your top three and keep them in their hotel rooms. I’ll see them after I meet this guy Tator.” After the men were sent scurrying to round up the suspects Fong approached the Hilton’s front desk. “The manager,” he barked.

Quickly, a primly dressed young Caucasian male stepped out of the back office. Fong wondered if he were an Asian if he would have risen so high at such a young age.

“You know who I am?” Fong asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. You have a secured line.”

The man hesitated so Fong repeated his statement but this time more forcefully. “You have a secured line.”

The man nodded and turned. Fong followed him into an oak-panelled office. Oak in Asia! Senseless when there are so many exceptional hardwoods here, but so many Europeans never really see the beauty of Asia. The young man pointed at the phone and left the room.

Fong flipped open a small phonebook he carried in an inner pocket. He had to check for the number. After all, he’d never called the head of Shanghai’s Communist Party before.

The party boss took Fong’s call without hesitation. Fong didn’t really know how to begin so he just spat out the facts of the second firebombing as he knew them. He was only momentarily surprised when the party boss stopped him by asking, “Has there been newspaper coverage – foreign newspaper coverage?”

“I’ll check but I would assume that there will be, just as in the first bombing.”

“So what is it that you want from me, Traitor Zhong?”

Fong allowed the reference to his previous felony conviction to pass and said, “I want the airport closed and access to Shanghai by all other means curtailed.”

Silence greeted his request. Both men knew that granting the request would cost the great city tens of millions of US dollars a day. Finally the party boss asked, “For how long, Traitor Zhong?”

“Until we catch the arsonist, sir.”

“No, Traitor Zhong. Three days. You have three days at the end of which time either this maniac is caught or you return to that small village west of the Great Wall – I understand that you made quite an impression on the peasants there.” Without so much as a goodbye, the party boss hung up on Fong.

Fong muttered to himself, “If I don’t find this guy, you’ll join me west of the Wall, oh great party boss man.”

The party boss made a call – a single phone call – and all services in and out of the biggest city in Asia began the process of coming to a full stop.

The West always underestimates the degree of control available to the Chinese government and the country’s inherent efficiency. Communist China is not the comically inefficient former Soviet Union or the hopelessly ideological Cuba. The huge number of people living on the relatively small amount of arable land had always forced efficiencies on the Chinese.As well, the country had been on a quasi-war footing for years. So preparedness was a given.

The call went to the command centre beneath the new radio tower in the Pudong Industrial District, across the Huangpo River. The call activated a vast civic protocol – and this being China – there was no questioning the order that commanded all who received it to stop and wait exactly where they were until a further countermanding order arrived.

Within the hour all buses stopped and pulled over to the sides of the road on highways all around the perimeter of the city. All aircraft were diverted away from the Shanghai International Airport. No planes left. Trains literally stopped in their tracks. Ships throughout the vast river networks leading to the Shanghai Port Facility simply threw anchors over their sides and waited. On the access roads to the great city all traffic, whether car, bicycle, or foot was stopped and turned back to from whence it came.

In the third hour after the phone call from the party boss not a single person came into or left the eighteen-million-souled entity known as Shanghai. Within six hours of that, because there is little refrigeration in the city, food everywhere began to rot. Within seventy-two hours, the city would begin to go hungry.

But it was the newest parts of the stop protocol that had the greatest effect on Joan Shui as she and Wu Fan-zi retreated to her hotel room. The most recently added section of the protocol closed all long distance phone lines and totally shut down the thirty- four massive servers that handled all Internet and e-mail traffic in and out of the region.

“What does REJECTED FOR PUBLIC SECURITY mean?” asked Joan, holding out the phone for Wu Fan-zi.

He took the phone and listened. “You were calling Hong Kong?”

“Trying to report our new findings.”

He punched a local ten-digit number and it rang. He hung up.

“What?” she asked.

“Local calls work.” He dialled a Beijing number and quickly got the REJECTED FOR PUBLIC SECURITY message. “Try your computer.”

“It’s a long distance call to get to my server in Hong Kong.”

“My server’s local.” Wu Fan-zi punched in his access codes on her laptop. “Give me the e-mail address of your office.” She did and he typed it in and hit the send button. Instantly his “in” box dinged. He opened the returned message: REJECTED FOR PUBLIC SECURITY.

“Can they do that?”

“Not meaning to be flip, but they just did, Ms. Shui.”

“So, Big Brother really is listening over on this side.”

“Not listening, rejecting.”

She smiled. “So we’re sort of isolated.”

“Yep, only eighteen million people to play with.”

Her smile grew. “That might be enough, if . . .”

“If what, Ms. Shui?”

“If you, Mr. Wu, are one of those eighteen million.”

He opened his wallet and withdrew his Shanghai residency permit and let out a deep sigh. “Hey – lucky me – I’m one of the eighteen million.”

“No,” she corrected him, “I’m the lucky one to be with the one of the eighteen million who is standing – now sitting, right here.” Their hands touched. She was tempted to say something smart. He was tempted to ask why him. But neither spoke – although their bodies did a lot of talking in the next hour.

Fong’s cell chirped. He spoke into it sharply, “Dui.”

“We’ve picked him up, sir.”

“Bring him to my office and officer . . .”

“Sir.”

“As I said before, I want him shackled.”

Fong sat in his office on the Bund and straightened his Mao jacket. It was a useful thing to wear when interviewing Westerners. It tended to scare the shit out of them.

For a moment Fong allowed himself to remember the pockets he’d sewn into the lining of his jacket when he was in internal exile west of the Wall. Then he stood up and shouted, “Dui! ”

A young German couple was guided into the room. They stood very close together. He was shackled hand and foot. Fong flipped open their file. “Mr. and . . .?”

“My wife, Mrs. Helen Tator.” His English was fine although the accent caught Fong off guard. He totally ignored the shackles that bound him.

Fong allowed a smile to come to his lips.

“What can we do for you, sir?” The man’s voice was icy.

“You are in Shanghai on business?”

“Yes, I’ve been here for two weeks. My wife just arrived yesterday. It’s her first time in China. I doubt she’ll wish to return.”

“Really,” Fong said pushing that aside. Fong glanced down at the file in front of him to get the figures right. “You had seventeen-thousand-five-hundred American dollars transferred to your account in Shanghai on Monday of last week Mr. Tator and the funds were removed in twenty-five-hundred-dollar increments.” He looked up. “There’s only five thousand dollars left.” Mrs. Tator was obviously shocked. She went to say something but Mr. Tator shot her a look. Fong watched the body posture of the two change. They were no longer putting on the show of being together.

“She must be quite a woman,” Fong said simply.

“Who must be?” asked Mrs. Tator sharply.

Fong smiled – she did speak English. He’d had it up to his eyeballs with being nice to wealthy Western businesspeople who thought they had every right to do whatever they fucking well wanted to in Shanghai. “Why, Mrs. Tator, the woman your husband was paying twenty-five-hundred dollars a night.” The moment he said it he was sorry that he’d ventured into this territory. Revenge was never as sweet in actuality as it was in anticipation.

“Why did you do this, Inspector?” Mr. Tator’s question was surprisingly simple and honest. Almost the question of a child asking a parent about some misdeed – like leaving Mommy for another woman. “Because some foreigner is setting off bombs in our hospitals and he must be getting his financing from outside the country,” spat back Fong, more angry with his own rash behaviour than with the Tators.

“And you thought I was this person,” said Mr. Tator. “Just for the record, Inspector, I have been paying that money to a registered agency of the government of the People’s Republic of China in an effort to secure an infant. It is why my wife is here. It is why I am here. It is what the money was used for. We are unable to have a child of our own.” He reached into his pocket and produced a series of Interior Ministry receipts and put them one after another in a straight row on the desk in front of Fong. “Do you have any more questions for me, sir? Or have you done with insulting me and my wife?”

Fong waved his hands and the officers unshackled Mr. Tator. Fong started to apologize but the look of pure racial hatred on Mrs. Tator’s face stopped him. Just for an instant he considered doing what he could to stop the adoption. Then he saw Mr. Tator’s eyes. They were pleading with him not to.

“Please,” he said, “I will be very good to this child. I will.” Fong noted Mr. Tator’s use of the first person pronoun. “I know my wife, officer. I do.” His plea reminded Fong of another case where a man thought he knew his wife. Fong was just a young cop long before he was in Special Investigations. A house warden had called. There had been screaming heard coming from a small room and the door was locked. Fong had broken down the door easily enough but what greeted him was not so easy for him to forget. A child had been impaled against a wall with a kitchen knife through his side. The mother stood beside him covered in blood, her eyes wild. The father stood against the far wall, his sister behind him cowering. When Fong entered, the mother immediately grabbed a cleaver and headed toward him. The husband leapt on his wife’s back, tackling her to the ground. Fong took the cleaver from her. Hatred roamed the woman’s eyes – and madness, most palpable. The boy was rushed to the hospital and survived. The husband pleaded with Fong to allow him to care for his wife, that she was sick, that he knew his wife – didn’t need to be in jail – needed to be looked after. Fong had relented. Three days later the husband was found dead in the alley behind the building.

Fong turned to Mr. Tator. “If anything happens to that baby-”

“It won’t.”

Fong nodded.

After the Tators were escorted out of his office, Fong sat for some time. He was tired. His fatigue was clearly affecting his judgment. He wanted to lash out but he didn’t have a target for his rage. Then the phone on his desk rang and a glimmer of hope danced across his face.

They’d found the white guy with the camcorder.

Robert Cowens, Devil Robert to most of his Chinese associates, stood very still watching the Chinese children. They swarmed around the Caucasian guests just as they had the other times he had visited Shanghai’s famous Children’s Palace. He looked at the mass of children, then up to the small balcony on the south side of the vast entrance hall in which he stood. It didn’t take much imagination to see Silas Darfun’s ghost looking down at the assembled Europeans who had come to ogle his Chinese children. Well, why shouldn’t old Silas’s ghost be here – this place had been his home. After all, it was the very house in which he had adopted and raised his street urchins – and others, if Devil Robert’s father was correct. The house was actually a mansion built in the late twenties. It sat on the triangle of land at the crossing of Ya’nan Lu and Nanjing Lu. The property was surrounded by a twelve-foot-high, broken-glass-topped wall of field stone. On the southern wall along the much travelled Nanjing Lu side, a governmental “photo” lesson was on display for the populace. In the ten simple photographs a corrupt official is captured and tried and apologizes to the people of China and is executed. Throughout the city these graphic reminders that your government is watching you are on display. The forty-two-room mansion, sitting gracefully behind the wall, was classic English Victorian – rendered entirely in dark Asian hardwoods. Lofty ceilings and stained glass added an air of cathedral to what was actually a rural British palace design. Needless to say, a rural British palace – complete with extensive gardens – was a complete anomaly in Shanghai’s urban crush.

The tour guide’s English was better than usual for the People’s Republic of China. A lot better than the first guide Robert had when he initially ventured into the castle keep of his enemy.

Robert felt a small hand grab his fingers. Looking down he saw a round-faced five- or six-year-old Han Chinese boy tugging at him. The boy opened his smiling mouth and shouted: “Well Come t’China!!” Three or four times. Robert finally replied in Mandarin, “Shei, sheh.” The boy’s smile grew and he shouted in Mandarin to his companions, “This stinky one thinks he speaks Chinese.” The others laughed. Then Robert’s little snot pulled hard on his hand and yelled, “Come! Dharma Club.” They surely meant drama club, but it certainly did sound like Dharma Club. “You come Dharma Club.”

Robert and about half of the large group of Caucasians were “Shanghai’d” up a wide set of steps and shepherded into an expansive room that had a raised stage at one end. Unlike the other art rooms that he had seen on previous trips, the “Dharma” room seemed to be run by the children, not the teachers – the phrase inmates not wardens came to mind. The first twenty minutes of the children’s performance took just under half of forever. Bad dharma does that.

Robert knew that in the Children’s Palace children were taught in the discipline most appropriate to their talents. Those with musical skills were trained to play instruments. Those with physical gifts were trained in dance. Those with drawing skills were trained to paint. From the dharma performance it was clear to Robert that when a child had an artistic bent but no particular skill – or shame – they were guided toward the dharma program.

The dharma performance ended with perhaps the most unique rendering of the old Broadway hit Oklahoma that anyone, anywhere, had ever heard. As it crescendoed toward an ear-splitting conclusion a Caucasian woman, somewhat older than Robert, came out from the wings and gestured to the children. They looked at her and ended the song as if someone had unplugged them. Amomentary blessed silence followed but was quickly shattered when the dharma kids stepped forward and demanded a standing ovation. Which they got.

Having gotten all they could from this group of stupid foreigners, the children began to disperse. Robert moved toward the Caucasian woman. She was busy shooing the children on their way, no doubt to get the next unsuspecting victims of the Dharma Club. Her features were heavy, Eastern European. Her nose was wide, as if it had been badly broken at one time and never reset properly. Her eyes were light brown but sunken and her hair was a stark grey – unusual in a world where grey hair is dyed, even by men. In fact, it is about the only officially sanctioned vanity in the People’s Republic of China, probably because so many leaders of this huge country are at the age when hair dying would be a concern.

Robert approached her.

“Do you teach the children?”

The woman looked up at Robert. Her smile was wide and kind. Something crossed her face. Was it fear? Finally she said in Mandarin, “I am sorry but I only speak the Common Speech.” They were almost completely alone in the room now.

“Fine,” replied Robert taking a step closer to her. He continued in his patchy Mandarin, “I could use the practice.”

She gave no indication that she was surprised he spoke the language but was clearly growing agitated about something.

“My name is Robert Cowens,” he said.

She nodded and looked past him, over his shoulder.

Robert quickly glanced at the door that had drawn her eye. It was half open and there was a long shadow of a human figure cast into the room. Was she being watched? He looked back at her. She took a step to get past him but he stepped in her path. A small whimper came from her – like it had from his mother when she was frightened. Like that which had come from his brother as he screamed, “No, Mommy! No Mommy no.”

She pushed past him and ran toward the door.

Robert turned to follow but the door burst open and fifty or sixty little dharma bums rushed in shouting in unison, “Well Come t’China,” as they dragged in their latest helpless victims. In the melee Robert lost sight of the woman.

He finally made his way through the crowd and out the door. On the landing he looked in both directions but there was no one there. He ran to the balustrade and leaned over. There, three flights down, the middle-aged white woman was running down the stairs.

“Rivkah!” he shouted.

She stopped, just for a moment, then yelled in English, “Go away!” Then she turned and ran with tremendous speed down the remaining steps. Robert did his best to follow her but the place was a maze of rooms and hallways and locked doors. Eventually he gave up and approached the house matron. The young woman’s English was good, if starchy-stilted, “You say you saw a Caucasian woman with the students of drama, Mr. Cowens?”

“Yes, that’s what I’ve been saying to you.”

“Like yourself, Mr. Cowens, she must have been a visitor to Shanghai’s Children’s Palace.”

“No. She works here.”

“No. This cannot be. Only Chinese work here, Mr. Cowens.”

He suddenly realized that she kept repeating his name so that she would remember it. She no doubt reported to some police agency. He turned and walked away from her. Over his shoulder he heard her voice. This time it was confident and proud. “China is a country of great mystery – do be careful – Mr. Cowens.”

She watched his back as he retreated. This time it was a Caucasian woman. Last time he’d ranted about some white child. Before that he made a fuss about Old Silas buying children or some such nonsense. Crazy Long Noses were to be reported. She hadn’t bothered the other times, but enough was enough. Now if only she could remember who crazy Long Noses ought to be reported to.

The camcorder man stood in his five-star hotel suite with his plump wife to his right and his video camera held tightly beneath his left arm. He was still wearing his white shoes and white belt although Fong assumed the man had changed his golf shirt and pants since last he had seen him.

“We didn’t do anything wrong and besides we are American citizens and this is outrageous,” said the woman.

For a moment Fong wished he’d worn his Mao jacket.

“We should call the embassy, Cyril,” the woman continued.

“Now just settle down and let’s hear what the little Commie bastard has to say for himself.”

“Cyril! Watch your language.”

“He doesn’t speak any English, Sadie, look at him over there, he must be waiting for his translator or something.”

Fong considered Charlie Chan-style bowing and scraping but decided to pass up the fun stuff. “I’m more than capable of translating for myself, thank you very much. As a courtesy I contacted the hotel with our request.”

“Yeah, right – so you did.” Cyril coughed into his fleshy fist. “Something about my video camera.”

“Exactly. You were on the steps of the Hua Shan Hospital two days ago, weren’t you?”

“Where?”

Fong said the name slower, then with the wrong emphasis, then with the wrong pronunciation, finally with the wrong tones. That did it. The man’s face lit up.

“Yeah, sure I was. The big place with lots of steps.”

“Big place with lots of steps – that’s it,” Fong thought but he said, “The very place.”

“There was a fire there or something right?” said the man with an all too knowing smile on his corpulent lips.

“Yes, there was,” Fong said slowly.

“I got some of it on tape. I’ll be selling it to the highest bidder. Gonna pay for this whole trip from that one piece of footage. Everywhere me and the missus go, I take my video camera. Paid for two trips so far and this could well be numero three.”

Fong held up a finger and moved to the window. He took out his cellular and called the only person he knew who knew much about American culture – Lily. “Do Americans buy videotapes from each other?”

“No, Fong.”

“But this guy says he’s going to sell the videotape to someone.”

“The news networks probably.”

“What? The news networks buy amateur videotapes?”

“Think Grassy Knoll, Fong – it was worth tons of dollars.”

Fong had no idea what a grassy knoll was or why it would be worth money. He glanced over. The guy was getting nervous.

“Thanks, Lily,” he said and hung up. Then he turned back to the American couple.

“You took pictures of the crowd outside the Hua Shan Hospital. Right?”

“Right I sure as shootin’ did, every little ol’ face is right in here,” he said tapping the camera at his side.

“These pictures are of no value to anyone.”

“Not true, little man. Definito not true.” The man stepped aside to reveal a table strewn with newspapers from all over America. They featured stories about the bombing of the first abortion clinic. The papers must have cost the man a small fortune to buy in Shanghai. Fong didn’t even know that the Cleveland Plain Dealer could be bought here. He wondered what they plain dealt in Cleveland. Then he wondered what plain dealing was. Then he wondered what Cleveland was.

“Yep, and just imagine what CNN will pay for it.”

Fong took a breath. The pure, unadulterated, unapologetic greed of capitalists sometimes took his breath away. “I can confiscate that camera, sir.”

“I told you, Cyril, this is a Communist technocracy. They can do what they want. Call the embassy now.”

“No need.” Fong crossed to the door and opened it. A slender grey-suited Caucasian male stood there. Everything about him said State Department. He introduced himself as the head of the US consulate in Shanghai.

“We’ll make a copy of your tape folks and you can keep the original. Inspector Zhong only wants to look at it.” Several men entered with a second video camera and a set of cables. Cyril gave over the camera and the technicians quickly began to make a copy.

“Okay, I guess, but I want your copy destroyed as soon as you’re finished using it. I don’t want a second Zabruter tape floating around. That poor fella had the devil’s own time getting his due.”

After the technician finished making the dub he gave it to Fong who took it and headed toward the door. At the door he stopped and turned to Cyril. “Were there any other Caucasians in the crowd outside the hospital?”

“Caucasians? Oh, you mean whites?”

“Yes, I guess I do. Were there any whites besides yourself and your wife outside the hospital?”

“No. Just a sea-full of Chinamen – and women – Chinawomen, well Chinapeople, I mean.”

* * *

Waiting for the elevator, Fong thanked the consular man for his help.

“No problem. We want this arson at the abortion clinics stopped as much as you do.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yes, Inspector Zhong, I’m sure about that. America is a big country. We do not all wear white shoes and vinyl belts.”

“No, I know you don’t.”

The embassy man looked at Fong. “Something else you want from me, Inspector Zhong?”

Fong wanted to ask about Amanda Pitman with whom he’d spent five days and nights in Shanghai almost seven years ago. She’d written a book that had a lot to do with his release from Ti Lan Chou Prison. But asking would reveal his past to this tall white man. “No, nothing,” Fong said.

The man nodded his head once then scratched his chin. “Couldn’t be about that lady writer, could it?”

Fong was shocked that he knew. But then of course the Americans would have known. They had been part of it, after all. The two men stood in the hotel corridor waiting for the elevator. The door opened and they stepped in. As soon as the elevator began to move, the consular official pulled the auto stop button on the panel. Fong looked at him.

“The American anti-abortion movement must be seen in context,” said the American consular official.

“Why is it, do you think,” asked Fong, “that American misdeeds must be seen in context while what you perceive as Chinese misdeeds must be seen as absolute wrongs? Evils, even?”

The American consular man acknowledged the asymmetry with a lift of his hands and a nod of his head. Both men knew that those with the most guns wrote the rules of engagement.

Fong shook his head. “So in what context should I understand the American anti-abortion movement?”

“Contexts, not context.”

“Fine, contexts – in what contexts should I understand the American anti-abortion movement?”

“First as a manifestation of the fourth great religious revival in America. This one is led by Evangelical Christians and sits on several tenets: all life is sacred from the moment of conception; everyone must take Jesus as their own personal savior if they are to be saved; and life without faith is like a beautiful pen without any ink.”

Fong looked hard at the man. Could he really believe this last bit of drivel? Fong was tempted to toss the man a lead pencil and suggest there was really no need for ink or pens, no matter how elegant they might be. But he didn’t. He’d dealt with Americans before and found them whimsical on several levels.

“The second context,” the man continued, “that ultimately supports the first is not religious at all.”

“Well, we can both be thankful for that surely.”

The man shook his head. “I doubt that. The second context is terribly pragmatic and very political.”

“Great,” Fong thought. “That’s what we need, politics on top of superstition – the great soup of confusion.”

The man took a breath then said, “We have a serious problem in America.” He paused, evidently hoping that Fong would ask him what that problem was. Fong chose not to be helpful and kept his mouth shut. Finally the man gave up waiting for Fong’s prompt and said, “We have way too many children giving birth to children. Both the child mother and the child itself often quickly become wards of the state. At first the numbers were small but by the middle eighties the statistics became frightening. All our efforts to promote abstinence, to offer free birth control and yes, free abortion, did not stem the tide of kids giving birth to kids. It also became very clear that the children of children also tended to give birth to kids while still being children themselves. The inevitability of exponential math was about to break the bank – then along comes the religious right with its message of salvation to young women if they keep their knees tight together. And, it worked. Everything else, all rational pleas had failed but the terror of hell stemmed the tide.” He smiled sheepishly and raised his hands then added, “And as you well know the American government backs winners.”

Fong stared at the man. “Are you telling me that the bombings in my city are backed by the American government?”

“Not directly, no.”

“But indirectly?”

“There are large sums of money sent to support evangelical movements – yes – and some of that money could have been used in these bombings.” He paused then said, “I’m sorry. The American government is sorry . . .”

“. . . and no doubt the American people themselves.”

The consular man looked at Fong but was unable to discern if Fong was being sarcastic. “We’ve found the cell the bomber works for.”

“Where?”

“In Virginia.”

“So, who is this man?”

“He’s referred to as Angel Michael in his chat room contacts.”

“Yes, but who is he?”

“We don’t know.”

“Do you have any . . .?”

“Nothing. No picture, no passport number – nothing.”

“What does the name mean – Angel Michael?” Fong asked.

“It’s a biblical reference.”

“Everything with you people comes from that most questionable of books.”

The consular man let the slight pass. “When Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, Angel Michael was placed at the entrance with a flaming sword to prevent them from coming back. He is closest to the Greek deity Prometheus who stole fire from the gods . . .”

“. . . and brought it to man.”

“Yes.”

“So have you arrested the group in Virginia?”

“No.”

“Why not – no, let me guess – it’s political?”

The consular man nodded then said, “Not something you, as a Chinese official, wouldn’t understand.”

Fong turned to the man ready to fight but the man was taking out a piece of paper from his briefcase and handing it to Fong. “A man named Larry Allen reported the group’s activities to us at the consul in Shanghai. He also told us of the last contact they had with Angel Michael before you closed down the Shanghai servers. Here it is.”

Fong looked at the document: “One more should bring the light to this dark place. One more could release the light. Just one more and the light will be free at last.”

“Is this some sort of evangelical talk?”

“Our experts say no. This Larry Allen confirmed that his group is at a loss as to what this means.”

“What do your experts say?”

The consular man took a deep breath then said, “They think it’s Manichaean.”

“What?” he said, but his mind wandered back to his conversation with the bishop of Shanghai.

“Manichaean. It’s a famous heretical sect of Christianity that the Catholic Church has tried to stomp out for years.”

“And it uses an equilateral crucifix,” he thought. But he said, “Where is this Larry Allen now?”

“We don’t know. He disappeared with his daughter the day before yesterday. Right after he contacted our consulate here.”

“Great.”

“We’re trying to find them.”

“Are you really?” said Fong as he pushed in the auto stop button and the elevator continued downward.

Twenty minutes later, Fong, Captain Chen, Lily, and Wu Fan-zi were back in Fong’s office watching the amateur video. Chen slowed down the image every time the camera panned the crowd.

“He has to be there,” Fong said leaning for support against the large plate-glass window that overlooked the Bund promenade.

“Go back again, Chen,” said Fong. “There has to be a Caucasian in the crowd.”

They went over and over it, but every face, no matter how blown up or zoomed in on, was clearly Asian.

Fong began to pace. “There was phosphorus at the second blast site wasn’t there, Wu Fan-zi?”

“Yeah.”

“Anything else important?”

“Hard to tell. But basically it was the same as the first. A cage. A fetus. This time the warning said “Zai yi ci bao zha jiang gie zhe ge hei an de di fang dai lai guang ming, zai yi ci bao zha jiang shi fang guang ming zhi yao zai lai yi ci bao zha, guang ming jiang zui zhong de dao shi fang.” Fong sat at his desk, his head in his hands. Wu Fan-zi continued, “But no other real leads to follow. If there were more clues at the site we didn’t see them before the fire forced us out and that section of the building collapsed.”

“Great,” said Fong. Then without lifting his head he shouted, “Run the tape again, Chen. But slower this time. He has to be there. He has to.”

Halfway through Chen stopped the video. “What about the guy with the camera, himself?”

“Thought about it, Chen. He arrived by JAL six hours after the bombing at the People’s Twenty-Second Hospital.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Chen. It’s good thinking. But now help me find a fucking white guy in that crowd of people outside the hospital.”

“Are you sure he was there?”

“Yes.”

“How can you be . . .?”

“Because this turned up in the sector search outside the hospital that Chen conducted,” said Fong placing a transparent evidence bag on the table. Through the plastic everyone could see the note that Angel Michael had dropped.

“What does it say, Fong?”

“THIS BLASPHEMY MUST STOP. THE LIGHT WILL COME,” said Fong.

Wu Fan-zi muttered, “Same fucking words we found etched in the sheathing.”

Fong nodded. “Play the tape again, Chen, he has to be there.”

But no matter how slowly Chen went – the faces stayed Asian.

“Asians,” said Fong standing and moving toward the plate-glass window. The new Pudong Industrial District shone hard and bright across the Huangpo River. “All Asians. But he’s an American. All Asians. No Caucasians and how would a Caucasian get in and out of the hospitals without drawing attention to himself anyway?”

“He could have Chinese working for him,” Lily answered.

Fong touched the glass. “No he couldn’t,” Fong thought. He caught his reflection in the window. He was beginning to look like an old man. Maybe it was just the exhaustion. Or maybe it was the fear that he was nowhere with this case. “And this guy’s going to strike again – and soon,” he whispered to the window. “One more should bring the light to this dark place. One more could release the light. Just one more and the light will be free at last.”

“Fong?” Lily prompted.

Suddenly Fong lashed out at his image in the plate-glass window. The thick pane shattered from the impact of his fist. Lily shrieked. Wu Fan-zi ran to his old friend but Fong pushed him aside. “Don’t you all understand! We have a mad man on the streets of our city and we have nothing – not a single fucking clue who he is.”