The Hua Shan Hospital Murders

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Joel sat in his Washington office at the FBI building and thought about the e-mail from his old Yale roommate, Larry. It was well past midnight. The silence in the room was only interrupted by the sound of the night-shift data processors down the hall. There were three stacks of newspapers on his desk. The first reported the initial bombing in far-off Shanghai of an abortion clinic, complete with its grotesque photograph and the warning: THIS BLASPHEMY MUST STOP. The second stack of newspapers was from two days later. The stories in these papers were all about information of an imminent second bombing but that no bombing had taken place. The papers, with much self-righteous posturing, had refused to run the photo, which they all agreed this time was grotesque, and all were angered that this may be some kind of a hoax. Then the third stack of papers wrote about a fire in a Shanghai hospital that was reported by their stringers in the city. But there had been no previous e-mail. No cage. No note. No message of any sort.

Joel sat back in his chair. It was all pretty confusing but what was clear was that Shanghai and hence the People’s Republic of China were reeling. And that was good as far as Joel was concerned. A China offbalance was a China vulnerable. And no vulnerable nation, no matter how many people it had, could endanger the United States. A weak China was a good China, as far as Joel was concerned.

Joel thought about the e-mail from his Yale buddy, Larry, again. Clearly, there was an arsonist on the loose in ol’ Shanghai, probably a religiously inspired arsonist. Joel knew the profile of such individuals quite well.

He turned off the overheads in his office and stared at the lights of the Capitol. How to proceed? Joel felt as if the ball were now in his court. What could he do to force this nutcake into striking again? Joel allowed a smile to come to his lips. If even a little of what he surmised from his former roommate’s e-mail was true, Joel thought he knew just how to egg this lunatic on to another effort. He lit a smoke, picked up his phone, and called his contact at the New York Times.

* * *

When Angel Michael read the headlines in the International Herald Tribune claiming that the bombing in the People’s Fourteenth Hospital was nothing more than an industrial accident, rage seethed through him. He tried to breathe it away but found himself almost faint from anger. The paper made the point that there had been no cage, no note, and that much more than the abortion surgeries had been incinerated. It put the entire thing down to bad building codes in the People’s Republic of China.

He couldn’t believe it. Matthew looked at the people on the streets. There were open signs of fear on almost every face – on the buck-toothed youth who sold apples from the small wooden kiosk at exorbitant prices, on the man who fixed shoes from his sidewalk perch, on the old man on the ratty plastic chair with his feet in slippers, on the hunched-over figures on their bikes, on the traffic cops in their raised booths at intersections, on the men lifting, on the men carrying, on the men bent beneath their labours – even on the newly rich Tokyo-suited businessmen.

The women betrayed their fear differently. They peeked out warily beneath hooded eyes.

Mani had talked about the pervasiveness of fear before the coming of the light. And the light was coming. He, Angel Michael, was bringing it. He mounted the bicycle that he had bought from a street vendor when he first arrived in Shanghai all those months ago and he joined the unbroken stream of cyclists, twelve abreast, on Yan’an Lu. He settled into the pace and moved slowly toward the centre of the procession. He had no particular destination, so he didn’t have to be on either end to make a turn. He just rode and felt the wind in his face. It helped him to think.

Things were obviously getting complicated. The hospitals were now guarded and he had planned for this. But it was also evident that the city had been closed down. To check this he had tried to order train tickets to Beijing – no go. He had tried to phone a department store in Nanjing and his call had simply gone dead. Even his computer refused to link him to an outside server. So they had him surrounded. Him and eighteen million other souls. As he pedalled he thought, “I can still complete my mission.” At least he thought that until he picked up the note from his explosives supplier at the usual drop location.

It was typically cryptic: “Price has gone up – four times what you paid last time. Times are tough. Tomorrow by the great tower in the Pudong, the usual time. Don’t be late. This is our last meeting – ever.” Four times what he had paid the last time! He didn’t have anywhere near that kind of cash on hand and he only had until the “usual time” tomorrow to raise the money. He had to work quickly or the light would never come to this dark corner of the planet. He knew it was risky to raise that kind of money quickly. It could attract attention. But he had no other choice.

He flipped open the cell phone and made a call even as he pedalled.

Chen delivered the bad news to Fong. “Over eighty percent of the hospital workers have viewed the VHS tape. They were able to identity most but not all of the faces, sir.”

“Was the receptionist there?”

“Yes, he was very helpful in identifying hospital workers but he couldn’t ID anyone as the man who had left the message on his desk.”

“How many left unidentified?” Chen took a deep breath. “Spit it out, damn it,” Fong barked.

“Eleven.”

“Eleven!”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Is there a way of getting photos of the eleven who weren’t identified from the VHS tape so we can show them around?”

Chen smiled and withdrew eleven photos from his pocket.

“You are good with technology, aren’t you Chen?”

“Yes sir. I find technology very interesting.”

“Good.” Fong spread out the pictures on his desk. Four were women. Two were elderly men. Even if he arbitrarily left out those six, he was still looking at five faces of a possible serial arsonist. He stared at the faces. They stared back at him.

Matthew stared at the two Tibetans in front of him. He could sense their thinly veiled hatred, racial hatred. He’d had lots of experience with that. “Your hatred’s okay,” he thought. This is just about business.

They showed him several large sandstone carvings. One was an entire lintel piece. Another was an exquisite freestanding statue. Both were too large for him to lug around Shanghai. He needed something contained – something valuable but small. After much angry gnashing of teeth and colourful expletives, Angel Michael turned on his heel. He was surprised that they didn’t stop him. He pulled open the door and a small Tibetan woman stood there smiling. She had an expensive briefcase in her hands. She deftly flicked open the locks. The leather lid opened slowly revealing two antique swolta knives on a velvet cloth. Between them was an immaculately kept Buddhist scroll decorated with images of monks in a farmer’s field. Angel Michael pretended indifference but it did not last long. The find was special and both knew it. He tilted his head to one side and named a price. She laughed and quoted one back. He cried. In less than twenty minutes he had in his hands the means to get the rest of the money he needed to bring light to these poor benighted souls. Even as he paid out the last of his yuan notes Angel Michael was thinking ahead – to the buyer. Maybe it was time to meet the famous Devil Robert. Perhaps he was exactly the buyer for three such items.

Matthew had trailed Devil Robert several days ago down to Good Food Street. At first he was shocked to see him in the company of Tuan Li. Then he let it go. Matthew didn’t care who was in whose company or what race screwed what race. It was a matter of indifference to Matthew. But he saw the value of having Tuan Li at one’s side. After all, who would dare accuse the famous Tuan Li, national treasure of the People’s Republic of China, of stealing from the motherland.

He had watched Tuan Li twirl noodles on her chopsticks and feed them to the white man as if he were a child. Well, perhaps he was a child but a very useful child with a very full bank account if even part of the rumours were true about Devil Robert.

Then he stopped himself. Why take the risk of a new buyer? He placed a local call to the Mandarin Guest House. A voice answered in Cantonese. Angel Michael smiled and responded in Cantonese. Within fifty words, a meeting had been arranged and the basics of a deal was agreed upon that would allow Angel Michael to buy all the explosives he needed to bring back the light.

As Matthew got back on his bicycle, the tendril movements behind his eyes that signalled the onset of pain began. He made himself concentrate on the movement. He knew the pain behind his eyes and the releasing of the light within him were linked. How he didn’t know. But he had faith that Mani knew since he had known almost everything else of importance to Matthew. And, perhaps, that knowledge was in the sacred scrolls of the faithful, which had been hidden in the Silk Road deserts in an effort to keep them safe from the attentions of Rome all those years ago.