The Lake Ching murders

CHAPTER TWELVE

Fong didn’t want to be late for Hesheng’s funeral rites, but he delayed his departure as long as he could. Even the thought of a boat ride made him queasy. But islands, by their nature, required the crossing of water. Finally he went down to the docks and gingerly boarded the boat that Chen had arranged to take him to the Island of the Half-wits. The boat rocked. They hadn’t even left the dock and Fong already felt sick. But any impulse to step out of the boat and back onto dry land was stopped because so much pointed toward the island – and Xian. “What did the Island of the Halfwits and Xian have in common?” he asked himself. “An isolated island in a big lake and the ancient capital of China’s first emperor. What could they possibly share?” The boatman pushed off and the voyage began. Although the morning had brought a cold wind, Fong found himself quickly slick with sweat.

He took a deep breath and made himself examine the boat. Something, anything to distract himself from the vaulting nausea in his gut.

The vessel was a Chinese-style gondola designed for fishing and carrying cargo. The boat’s owner stood at the stern and moved his oar back and forth to propel and steer the boat. In typical Chinese fashion, why use an oar and a rudder – just lengthen the oar and it can act as both. Also, typically Chinese, all the power needed was generated by human muscle. No motor here, just an angry-faced boatman.

As they got farther from shore, the water on the large lake became more choppy. Fong dearly wished he’d skipped the breakfast porridge. At one point he was sure that he was going to lose the contents of his stomach, but a terse threat from the boatman made it clear that if he did he’d have to clean it up – with his tongue. So Fong kept his mind off his stomach and held on tight.

“How long till we get there?” he asked through gritted teeth.

The boatman shrugged and reiterated his threat to make Fong lick up anything he “left” in the boat. Fong was about to reply that he was a police officer and the man had better remember that, but he was afraid to speak. He kept his peace – and his mouth shut.

Fong turned away and spotted a cormorant fisherman far off to the port side. The old fisher had just released one of his elegant birds and was preparing a second for the day’s work.

When young, Fong, like most Chinese children, had been told stories about the famous fishermen who used trained cormorants rather than hook, bait and rod, but he’d never seen one before.

He noted the lantern stands at the front and back of the fisherman’s boat.

“Do they fish at night?” he managed to ask.

“Night, day, winter, summer – they’re always there,” the boatman answered with a sour sneer. Fong assumed he didn’t like cormorant fishermen. Why should he? He didn’t seem to like anything else. Why should cormorant fishermen escape his venom?

As Fong watched, a mature cormorant hopped up onto the fisherman’s boat and waddled over to the old man. The man’s gnarled fingers reached out and stroked the bird’s long neck – from its beak down to the glinting metal ring at its base. The bird cooed and released a fish from its throat. The plump thing flapped on the seat of the boat for two beats then disappeared to the floor. The fisherman fondled the bird again and fluffed its feathers before committing the animal once more to the lake’s cold waters.

From a distance, the cormorant and the old fisherman appeared to be ideally fitted – two halves of a crossspecies partnership. At least that’s what the children’s stories would have one believe.

“There,” said the boatman in a guttural exclamation from behind Fong. He was pointing to the right.

The island had come up quickly. Fong looked at his watch. They’d been on the lake for just over an hour – a personal best that he had no desire to challenge.

There was no wharf on the Island of the Half-wits, just a rocky beach where several fishing boats rested at cocky angles. One was flipped over and two men were re-gumming the starboard side of the keel with a dark resin. Women sat on some of the larger rocks cleaning and dressing fish. Children walked beside baby cormorants that picked their way carefully among the sharp stones. The whole scene struck Fong as oddly domestic – like Shanghai on Sundays.

To the north along the rock-strewn beach, tendrils of smoke came from the fishermen’s huts. Past them, a gravel path led steeply upward to what Fong guessed was the farmers’ enclave.

As he approached, eyes followed him. Just like in the village west of the Wall. But something was different here and Fong felt it the moment he’d left the shoreline and headed inland. It was as if he’d left China. Not just modern China, but China altogether.

Like every other conquering power, the Communists made deals with local power elites. Over the years, Mao and his successors had reneged on, or renegotiated, a great many of those agreements. But China is a vast country and during the War of Liberation, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of virtually autonomous regions formed. On the whole, if a region was small and self-contained, the Communists left it alone. Clearly this island, the Island of the Half-wits, was such a place.

As Fong moved farther inland, the place got somehow older and definitely more foreign. Even the pattern of the farmers’ huts hit an odd chord in him. The only familiar objects were the pails of night soil hanging on either side of every doorway. As he passed them, their scents told Fong how long the material had been ripening.

Old skills never really die – they ferment.

Then he heard the braying of a horn and the slash of a cymbal.

Fong followed the sound to the back of the huts. A procession was forming. It seemed that the whole village had assembled. Not the whole island, he noted. The fishers stayed to themselves.

Four young men lifted a scarlet-sheeted body above their heads and started up the path. The red cloth was the most intense red Fong could remember.

A long line of vigorous, work-toughened men walked slowly behind the body. They were dressed from head to toe in white. The old man Fong had seen at the jail – Iman – led the procession.

Fong scanned the men. They shared similar facial features. Almost all were the same height, all had the same square body type – shit they even used the same shambling gait.

The women followed the men. Once again led by an elder. Once again in white. The women were as rugged as the men and resembled them closely. They looked like they’d all sprung from the same set of loins. But there seemed to be no mental deprivation here. Only a sameness – and an undeniable vigour.

The rhythm of the cymbals increased and the procession picked up speed heading straight up the terraced hills toward the centre of the island. As they passed by terrace after terrace, the procession began to sing. The words were ancient. “Death is ancient,” Fong thought. “It invites us all with cymbal and horn – like a Peking Opera performance.”

By the time the body reached a dry terrace, two-thirds of the way up the mountain, Fong had fallen far behind. He knew they’d seen him, but when he crested the final rise he was surprised to find them lining either side of the path. The singing had stopped. The only sound was the blare of the mournful horn – and Fong’s wheezing efforts to supply his lungs with oxygen.

Fong walked slowly between the rows of faces. Up close he saw that some were so alike that he was sure he wouldn’t be able to tell one from the next even after concerted study. Then he was there – at the end of the line of islanders – facing the one called Iman. Behind the vital old man stood the four younger men with the crimson-swathed body of Hesheng on their shoulders. Suddenly, Iman snapped his head downward in a gesture of submission as old as the land upon which they both stood. “You honour us with your presence.”

Fong wouldn’t have been more surprised if the old man had whipped out his penis and sprayed his name in the dirt. Fong nodded slightly, careful to keep his head above the level to which Iman had lowered his. Iman’s eyes held Fong’s for a long moment.

The interment began.

Some of Fong’s acquaintances had passed away, but none of them had been formally buried. No one was put in a box and dropped into a hole anymore in the great Communist state. Even funeral ceremonies were frowned on.

A shallow grave had already been scraped from the moist ground. The body in its scarlet swathing lay beside the hole. The trumpet sounded and the cymbals crashed a-rhythmically. Then Iman raised his hands and cried out, “Take Hesheng back to you. We commit him to your care. We honour you, our ancestors, and now him, by committing him to your care. Take Heshing back to you, our ancestors.”

“Why are rituals always repetitious?” Fong wondered.

Iman paused. His mouth opened then shut.

Fong took a step closer, anxious to hear what Iman would say next. But he said nothing. “Why?” Fong thought. “A man of Iman’s advanced years must have recited the burial ceremony dozens, if not hundreds, of times.” Yet the man stood stock-still, clearly lost as to what to say next.

Finally, Iman signalled that Hesheng’s body should be put in the ground.

Fong backed off and climbed a slight rise at the back of the graveyard. He looked around him. The place was small. Few plots.

Then his eye landed on a grave directly beneath the wall. The soil on top had not yet settled. Night soil-laden dirt did that – took a long time to pack. He looked up. Above him was a hand-hewn terrace wall that no doubt held back an upper paddy’s water. In the rainy season it could overflow, depositing night soil in the graveyard. Night soil.

He looked at the grave. It had been dug recently.

He crossed over to it and picked up a handful of dirt. He let it run through his fingers. Memories of his youth flooded through him – and of the bag of dirt the specialist had taken as evidence from the sunken boat’s runway. Dirt on the stripper’s runway. Night soil-laden dirt. Like the dirt from this grave.

Fong felt a tendril of cold slither up his spine as a possibility – a shocking possibility – presented itself. Then he looked behind the grave’s headstone. And a piece fell into place. There on the ground stood a small column of free-standing stones, one balanced perfectly on the next. Four stones. Stacking stones. “The stones are a way of marking time, Detective Zhong. A way of noting its passage. One stone for each . . .”

“Of my visits,” Fong said aloud. Xian and the Island of the Half-wits – Dr. Roung the archeologist from Xian, and whoever was buried in this grave.

As he reached out to touch the head stone, a foot kicked his hand aside. “Don’t touch that!” The command’s sharp nasal tones broke the silence.

“I intended no . . .”

“Do you want her dug up again?” There was something odd in the voice. Fong caught a glint in the young man’s eyes that he’d seen before in violent men. A madness. A spiralling; anger that had no floor. Fong marked him closely. He looked like the other islanders, but there was something different about him. Something to be feared.

Fong stepped back. He didn’t want to fight this man.

“Jiajia!”

Both Fong and the younger man looked up. Iman strode briskly toward them. “This man is a guest on our island, Jiajia.”

There was a tick of silence. Jiajia gave Fong a hatefilled look then said, “Yes, Iman,” and stomped away.

Iman turned to Fong then glanced at the grave. “Her name was Chu Shi. She was Jiajia’s wife.” Fong nodded. “Death is hard on the young.” Iman made his face into a rough approximation of a smile then returned to the others who were lowering the crimson-sheeted Hesheng into the ground.

Fong watched Iman move – lope was the word that came to him. “When I get old, I want to be that healthy,” he thought.

Fong took a last look at Chu Shi’s headstone, and then at Hesheng’s. Hesheng’s name was on his and the date of his passing, but no other dates. There were no dates at all on Chu Shi’s grave marker.

Fong began down the terraced mountain, suddenly anxious to be alone with his thoughts.

As he approached the waiting boat he didn’t know which was worse – the shocking possibilities he’d found by Chu Shi’s grave or his imminent lake voyage back to Ching.

Dr. Roung stood on the shore of the great lake and watched the sun set. In the distance he could just make out the figure of a lone worker in an upper paddy on the Island of the Half-wits. Well, not really the worker. Just the glint of the fading light off his broad trench-hewer. Then the glint faded. Like everything else on the island. A brightness, a hope, and then no more.

The island. The place that had changed his life. Lifted his eyes from his concentration on small pieces. Showed him new possibilities. Great possibilities. The chance not to recreate but to create – to create something that could last and last. Not for as long as the terra-cotta warriors, but long. Long and alive. Something that was his and could very well carry his identity, his very self, forward through time. As he thought the word – time - he elongated the vowels.

Far to his right was the shoal that had first brought him to this place. The shoal was also the structure on which the luxury boat had floundered and from which it had eventually entered, ice-covered and scorched, into the inky winter water. A lone fisherman with two cormorants on the gunwhales of his boat glided directly toward him. How did he always know? Everything.

This fisherman had discovered the artifact. One of his cormorants had returned to the boat with something caught in its throat. The fisherman had stuck his hand all the way down its lengthy gullet. What he came up with, after considerable tugging and much cursing, was a moss-encrusted object that he would have tossed back into the water, accompanied by the appropriate obscenity for wasted effort, had he not noted the dull sheen of metal. It was no doubt that hint of brightness that had first attracted the bird.

The old schemer pocketed the object and took it home. There he carefully chipped away the growth then polished the object which, after much attention, revealed itself to be a startlingly accurate depiction of a horse’s hindquarters and rear legs rendered in bronze. It was just over three inches in length and beautifully done – a fact that escaped the fisherman.

What didn’t escape him was the possibility that the thing might be worth something.

It took him several months of judicious asking around before he found out about Dr. Roung, the archeologist in Xian, and another few months before he made his way to the ancient capital. He’d never left the environs of the lake before. But profit was a powerful motivator.

One chilly morning, the smelly man was ushered through Dr. Roung’s office door. The archeologist had been examining the medieval Italian’s book about China that had so long puzzled him. He didn’t like puzzles he couldn’t solve. But he never considered conceding defeat. He took a last look at the book and returned it to the shelf. Without turning to face the fisherman he said, “My assistant tells me that you have something to show me?”

The fisherman looked around, not sure what to say or do.

The archeologist looked at the old man.

“Would you like a drink?”

The fisherman’s eyes widened. Dr. Roung never drank himself, but had found strong Chinese wine a useful enticement with the locals. He poured a glass. The man sat down.

Two glasses later, the man was ready to talk. “Excellency. Do you purchase ancient things? Small, ancient things?”

“From time to time I do.”

“It’s small, though,” the man said tentatively.

“Size is seldom an issue.”

The fisherman smiled then screwed up his face as if what he was about to say would cause him great pain. “What if it’s broken?” There was anxiety in the fisherman’s voice.

A brightness flashed for a moment across Dr. Roung’s face, then was gone. He took a breath. Then, with his anticipation concealed safely behind his eyes, he asked, “Cracked, you mean?”

“No, Excellency, broken – as if in half.”

The archeologist looked away from the fisherman. A few months earlier, he and his team had begun the third phase of the reclamation of the terra-cotta warriors. During the dig he had come across six small half-sculptures. All horses. All the front end – the emperor’s end. “Is it of a horse?” he asked as casually as he could manage.

The fisherman emitted a hiss.

“It is of a horse, isn’t it?”

The fisherman stumbled to his feet. “He thinks I’m a witch,” Dr. Roung thought. “Good.” He took a breath then said, “It’s worthless, old man.” He unlocked a drawer to his desk and took out the six half-horses and put them on the desk. “Worthless,” he repeated.

But the fisherman was canny. Over his many years he had done much bartering for fish and on occasion for cormorant chicks. “If they were worthless, why keep them under lock and key?” he thought. But he said nothing. Just bent his shoulders and turned toward the door.

“Show me your find, old man.”

“Why, Excellency?” The old fisherman locked eyes with the archeologist. “It has no value.”

“Show it to me.” Dr. Roung allowed a threatening tone into his voice. The fisherman heard it and backed off. Slowly he reached into his pocket and pulled out a dirty rag. Holding it in the palm of his left hand, he unwrapped the tiny thing.

The archeologist had to control his excitement. The perfect hindquarters were the first he had ever seen. His fingers itched to fit it together with one of the six frontquarters he had. His keen eye quickly eliminated the chance of a match with the first three of his horses. But horses four and six were real possibilities.

“Are there more where this came from, old man?”

The man scratched his neck, but didn’t answer.

“If you know where this came from, and are willing to show me, I’ll pay you handsomely.”

“How handsomely?” snapped back the old fisherman.

Dr. Roung stepped past the man and left the office. Moments later, he returned with a packet of kwais. He held out the bulging envelope and said, “More money than you’ll earn in ten years.”

The fisherman reached for the packet, but the archeologist pulled it away. He extracted ten 100-kwai notes and dangled them from his fingers.

The fisherman held out the small statuette.

The exchange was made.

“Now show me where you found this, old man, and the rest of the money is yours.”

The fisherman guided Dr. Roung to the lake. The archeologist had never been there before. He didn’t even know there was a large lake so close to Xian. The water was clear, and there, just off the side of the fisherman’s tippy boat, not four feet down, was a large mound. Clearly it had been man-made. The formation of the stones was very similar to those he’d unearthed with the terra-cotta warriors. It was possible that the shoal was in fact the tip of another tomb. He took out the hindquarters that the fisherman had given him. Qin period for sure. Could this be the tomb of one of the first emperor’s generals? That was who had the back end of the horses. The emperor Qin Shi Huang had kept control of the movement of troops by having these split horses made. The emperor kept the front half of each. The hindquarters were given to various generals. When a messenger arrived bearing the emperor’s part of the horse that completed theirs, the general supplied troops. Troops were power. Control of power was everything.

The archeologist saw that the fisherman was clearly uncomfortable. “Ah, he wants his money,” he thought. But he was wrong.

The obligation of hospitality is real in rural China. Despite not wanting anything to do with the archeologist, the fisherman was duty-bound to offer him a meal. Grudgingly he asked, “Would your Excellency honour my humble home by taking some food?” The archeologist was duty-bound to accept the offer.

Dr. Roung noted the landmarks to be sure he could find the shoal again, then nodded.

It was on landing that first time on the Island of the Half-wits that he saw her. Chu Shi – Jiajia’s intended. She was stooping to fill her wooden pails with water from the lake. With square shoulders and weathered skin, she was far from the elegant Han Chinese women that he’d known. Her hands were big and rough. But there was depth in her eyes.

Then she smiled at him.

He felt himself falling, somehow the ground beneath him had suddenly shifted and he was plummeting down a great chasm.

The old fisherman stared at him, a faraway look in his eyes. A knowing, no, an understanding look.

“Who is she, old lecher?”

For a moment the old man seemed openly offended and then he softened, “Not one of us. One of the farmers. One of the half-wits. They keep to themselves, Excellency.” His voice was off-centre. He took a step forward and said as casually as he could, “Perhaps Excellency would like to meet . . .”

“I will double your fee if you arrange it.”

The fisherman’s face creased with a slow, oddly sad smile that exposed his rotted teeth. “Give her this,” said Dr. Roung, holding out the small statue that he’d just bought from the fisherman.

That’s how it had begun. He requested and received permission from Beijing’s powerful minister of the interior to start excavating the sunken shoal to cover his approaches to the island – to Chu Shi. The fisherman arranged the meetings with Chu Shi but each time he seemed a little sadder, a little more wistful.

The love between Dr. Roung and Chu Shi had been fast, secret and more important to him than anything that had happened before. With her he seemed to understand things. He felt part of the great flow of the blackhaired people. He felt her connect him to the past and the future. He began to dream of their child – somehow living forever.

He had kept the ministry in Beijing abreast of his progress at the shoal, which he had intentionally slowed. Then, in the sixth month of his work, he was surprised to receive a personal communication from the minister of the interior herself asking to be kept strictly up-to-date with his work and a request that he find out what he could about . . . the farmers on the island.

He didn’t know what to make of the request, but he didn’t care. It offered him an official reason to visit the island regularly.

It was on one of these sanctioned visits that he found himself alone with Chu Shi in her family house.

“This is my room, but this is my father’s home.” Her eyes twinkled.

“It could be ours when he passes on.”

Chu Shi turned away from him, the dim light of the hut somehow making her even more alluring.

“I meant no offence.”

“I know,” she said still looking away from him. Then she turned back and smiled.

“What?”

“It’s odd to be alone in this place. Usually there are so many others.”

“Little privacy, huh?”

“We islanders are not prudish.” Her smile broadened. “You may have noticed that.”

He smiled. “I have.”

“Good,” she said. “Now take off your pants – Excellency.” Her voice danced around the final word but her eyes devoured him.

Their bodies fit together as if they had been made from one piece that had been separated by the Maker.

Later, lying naked and enwrapped, he ran his fingers along the rise of her hip. “Do you have the gift I first gave you?” She nodded and reached across him. His fingers traced the strong muscles of her back as she extracted the small statue of the horse’s hindquarters from her clothing on the floor. She lay back and, smiling, placed it on her left breast. Then looked at him.

He rose from the bed, naked, and crossed to his pants on the far side of the room. He put on his delicate French glasses then knelt and dug into his pockets. She loved to watch him. He was so different from the islanders. So different from Iman’s favourite, Jiajia, to whom she’d been promised, and who constantly sought her attention.

He returned, knelt over her and repositioned her statue. Then he opened his hand and showed her his matching statue of the horse’s frontquarters.

She bent her head forward to get a closer look, but he held her still and placed his bronze figure on her right breast.

She shivered. She’d never seen anyone look at anything the way her lover looked at her now. Finally, after what seemed forever, he gently moved her breasts together. The figures slid toward each other. They touched, then interlocked – perfectly – every plane of one fitted to every plane of the other.

She was about to giggle when she looked up. He was staring deep into her eyes. “Do you see how they lock together.”

She nodded, a little lost.

“I want us to marry. To have children.”

She moved so quickly that he was lucky to catch the bronze pieces before they crashed to the ground.

As she shoved a leg into her pants she said, “It’s not possible.”

“Why?” he demanded.

She turned to him and held his eyes. “Because, here, on this island, we marry our own.”

Then she was gone.

He held the completed bronze horse in his fingers for a longish moment. Then he detached the hindquarters and left them beneath her pillow.

As he put on his clothing he wondered what he would do next. What life would be like without Chu Shi.

He did his best to wrap up the excavation of the shoal. It was proving much more difficult than he had originally thought. He faced little resistance from the ministry.

Then the foreigners arrived. Foreigners from several countries. Elderly men asking questions. Asking about the family backgrounds of the islanders. Not from the fishermen; only from the farmers.

He dutifully followed the foreigners to the island and then reported their activity to the interior ministry. He was surprised to get an urgent message ordering him to continue excavating the shoal and to go to the island and report back everything that he could find about the interaction between the foreigners and the farmers of the island.

Despite Chu Shi’s rejection, he obeyed the orders from Beijing and went to the island. He talked to as many of the islanders as he could. On his way back to his boat he saw Chu Shi in the darkness down by the beach. He was about to approach when a young man broke from the nearby thicket and ran into her arms.

Jiajia, Iman’s chosen. Her betrothed.

The weather turned suddenly cold as he returned from the island. Early for it. He bundled up as he sat in his room and wrote to the Ministry of the Interior.

MADAME MINISTER:

Two weeks ago, the Islanders, after an initial resistance, accepted sizeable sums of money from the foreigners in return for which, Iman, their leader, agreed to give the foreigners the family histories they wanted.

Why the foreigners would want the islander’s family histories is a mystery to me.

Now the foreigners want to take blood samples from the islanders. Iman categorically refused and violence was only narrowly avoided as the foreigners had to be escorted off the island by local police.

Work on the shoal is proving almost impossible. Could I request, with all respect, a return to my work in Xian?

C.

Madame Wu received the communique just as she was finishing another long day in her office. Her old eyes read the words and sensed their meaning. The man’s love affair was over and now he wanted to go home. He may be exceptionally talented, this one, but he acts just like every other male.

Madame Wu felt her assistant’s steely eyes on her. Had she spoken aloud? No. Absolutely not. She returned the stare and the man backed off. “Perhaps it’s time to get myself a younger, prettier assistant. It had been a long while since someone young and pretty had been her companion.

“Madame Minister?”

“Respond that he is to stay at Lake Ching until I tell him that it is time for him to go. As well, tell him that he is not to presume. That all normal formality shall be used in all his communications.”

The man quickly left the office.

Madame Wu turned to the window. Police were already on the island to help the foreigners. So the danger was near. For a moment she thought about her son. Then about her mother.

So many ghosts these days. But this is an important time. A time of change. They were dangerous times for individuals. The good of the country came first. The future needed to be addressed – no – forged. What could she care for a dead mother and a son who was lost to her.

Two days later the archeologist was surprised to see the old fisherman approach the shoal. He was wrapped in rags to keep out the cold. “What now, old man?” he yelled.

“They’re scaring off the fish!” the old man barked.

“Who is?”

“The visitors! Don’t you know anything!”

Dr. Roung was about to rise to the bait when something told him to hold his temper. “Are the foreigners back, old man?” It came out awkwardly – half-question, half-accusation.

“Worse than that.” What could be worse to this man than foreigners? “Government people. Beijing government people.”

This was new. “Take me.” He reached into his pocket and threw a few bills at the older man. The fisherman did a good impression of a cabbie who thought his tip was too light.

Chu Shi wasn’t happy to see him when he entered her hut. “I’m a married woman now.”

“I know.”

She started to leave, but he reached for her. At first he thought she was going to scream. Then he thought she was going to hit him, and then, somehow, their clothing lay in piles on the floor and he flowed into her as she sang his name over and over. When they were done, she handed him his clothing and his expensive imported glasses. They dressed slowly staring at each other.

Then suddenly she was crying.

He held out his arms to her, but she shook her head.

“I need answers to a few questions.” A look of shock crossed her face. It was almost comical.

“You came here to ask me questions?” she blurted out.

“No. It’s the only way I think I can get to see you again.”

“Don’t try to see me again.” But her fingers were interlocked with his.

“Who are the new people on the island?”

“Government people,” she answered.

“Police officers?”

She looked away. When she spoke, her words came out slowly as if their very sounds were dangerous. “No. Different. Government people from Beijing.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“What do they want, Chu Shi?”

“They threatened Iman that if he doesn’t agree to give blood samples to the foreigners they’ll remove our people from the island. They claim we never had any right to be on the island in the first place.”

“Will Iman give in to the demands?”

“He already has.”

That night in the cold, haunted silence of his room in Ching he wrote again to Madame Minister Wu.

This missive she received while attending a formal state banquet for the Japanese ambassador and several of that country’s leading industrialists. Toasts were exchanged. History forgotten. A swollen future embraced.

“Just like before the liberation,” she thought as she raised her glass. “Foreigners everywhere, owning everything.”

Madame Wu sipped the heated saki. The air conditioning puffed out the silk of the woman’s blouse across the table from her.

Silk!

Throughout her youth, Madame Wu had been forced to carry silkworm eggs strapped to her body. It kept the eggs warm. Many nights she was awakened by her mother screaming at her not to roll over in her sleep and crush the precious eggs. Other nights she awoke feeling a feathery movement on her skin. One ounce of eggs produced twenty thousand worms. They’d hatch in the night. She hated having to stand naked and still as her mother picked them off her.

The worms had to increase their weight ten thousand times before they spun their cocoons. Since noise was harmful to their growth, the house was a place of silence. But in the silence was intense anger.

It was always a relief when the worms finally began to spin their cocoons from the loose stalks of straw that the family had provided. The two or three days needed to spin were the happiest times in the house. But it was short-lived. Once the cocoons were spun, the chrysalis had to be killed.

Boiled.

Her mother’s hands, an angry red from fishing the cocoons out of the boiling water and carefully unravelling the still-wet pouches, were the stuff of her childhood nightmares. And it had all been done for a silk factory owned by the very Japanese they were toasting here tonight.

Traitors.

The men who run this country are traitors to the people of China – to the memory of her mother.

But they will not get away with it. Her family will see to that.

The Japanese ambassador was speaking. Something about business bringing our two great countries together. Madame Wu sipped at her saki again. She grimaced. The taste made her angry. Yet another foreign thing to be swept out of the country. Then she looked at the saki and a slow smile crossed her features.

Dr. Roung was surprised when the case of wine arrived with the note from the Interior Minister:

Please present this to the Islanders with my compliments on their new business venture. Enclosed please find a requisition order to cover your expenses for the banquet that should accompany my gift. – M.W.

He stared at the case of ceremonial wine. Then at the note from Madame Wu. This was definitely her writing style. But something was wrong. Why send a case of wine from Beijing? Although he didn’t drink himself, he was pretty sure this wine was available in Xian. But before he followed this line of inquiry he saw that this presented another opportunity to see Chu Shi – and all reason vanished before the onslaught of desire.

It took little persuasion to get the islanders to accept Interior Minister Wu’s offered banquet. Shortly, the archeologist was dressed in his best clothes, his thinsulate vest beneath his coat, and on his way to the island.

The light was dying as he crossed the lake. Through the murk and far to one side, he saw a cormorant’s head pop out of the water and crane around. “As if searching for him,” he thought.

It was bitterly cold. He looked past the cormorant and scanned the horizon for the fisherman who always seemed to be there. Always seemed to know when he was coming. But he couldn’t see him or the lanterns of the boat, although he knew some fisherman had to be near. A cormorant was a valuable asset and never allowed too far from the boat. Of course, should the bird decide to fly away, its newfound independence would soon give way to starvation. The metal circlet on its neck made it impossible for the animal to swallow fish – its only natural food. Once the circlet was in place, the bird could only receive sustenance from a narrow lengthy dropper, and that could only be manipulated by a man’s hand. “We’re all on a leash of some sort,” he said aloud. His boatman ignored him. Just another city person who talked to himself.

The banquet was set in the large communal hall halfway up the central terraced hill. The building was a storage place for the upper level crops at the three harvest times. In the winter it was seldom used.

Tables had been made from planking set on crude wooden cubes. Lanterns were lit and hung from poles. Dung burned in the metal braziers. The place, like so much of the island, literally smelled like shit. But the archeologist didn’t mind. Chu Shi had just come into the room with her husband, Jiajia. She wore a woven shawl to keep out the chill of the night. Her eyes were focused on the floor.

Something was different with her. What?

The room was filling quickly. The whole island seemed to be here. Just the farmers not the fishermen, he corrected himself. Food was piled high and savoury on the central table. The braziers and lanterns added to the smoke from the islanders’ harsh cigarettes which featured such fanciful names as snake charmers, bullet proofs and smacks.

He rose. All eyes turned to him. He delivered Madame Interior Minister Wu’s congratulations to the islanders on their business acumen then opened a bottle of her gift, the ceremonial wine. He filled glass after glass as they were presented to him. When the last bottle was almost emptied, he looked up. Even the young had glasses in their hands. They awaited him. He raised his glass and was about to speak when he saw Chu Shi. She seemed very close to him although she was far across the large crowded room. The smoke in the room made him dizzy. He lifted his glass a little higher and shouted, “To the future.”

The room filled with cheering. Glasses were emptied and exclamations filled the air. He took the opportunity to tip his glass over onto the hard mud floor. He was no drinker. The wine seeped into the ground like a brown slug seeking the dark.

It felt as if the evening zoomed by. He didn’t get to speak to Chu Shi. Before he knew it, he found himself back on a boat, frozen stiff, heading toward Ching.

He spent that night, that seemingly endless night, wrestling with his loneliness.

Two days later he was by the shoal, leading the beginning of the excavation of the south end of the mound when he looked up to see the old fisherman sitting in his boat not twenty yards away. His birds were on the gunwales, not in the water. He wasn’t fishing. The archeologist took the paddle from the floor of his own boat and made his way out to the fisherman.

“What?”

“There’s sickness.”

“Where?”

“The farmers. Many are sick. Deep sickness.”

“Influenza? What?”

“She may die.” There was no need to name Chu Shi. To Dr. Roung’s surprise, the old man’s sadness seemed to be aimed at himself. As if he was to blame somehow. Without another word, the fisherman grabbed his oar and headed toward the island.

Dr. Roung sat dead still, his boat bobbing gently, the creepy-crawly of fear dancing on his spine.

Three days later, on December 1, the archeologist was shocked into waking by a hand pressing down hard on his chest. Four men were in his room. Islanders. Before he could speak, Iman stepped forward. “Chu Shi is dead.”

Dr. Roung didn’t know what to do.

“We are not foolish people, Excellency. We know about you and her.”

“Then why didn’t . . .”

“We stop it?” Iman completed the archeologist’s question. For a moment he was lost in thought. Then he shrugged. “The others are getting better, but she died from the sickness.”

Dr. Roung’s head filled with questions as he felt himself falling down a great pit of blackness. Then Iman closed off the light at the top of the pit. “She died carrying your child.” He didn’t see Jiajia’s blow coming. It caught him full on the face. Only Iman’s presence saved his life.

He was not allowed on the island for the burial. No one from outside was allowed on the island anymore. Rumours on shore spread that the islanders blamed the sickness on the foreigners with whom they had done business. That giving blood had caused the sickness. That all business deals were off.

Blood was sacred to the islanders in many ways.

Fires burned constantly on the uppermost parts of the island. Rumours became fact when two of the islanders’ foreign business partners arrived and were chased away at gunpoint.

Twenty-four hours later, special assault units of federal soldiers were helicoptered onto the island. Stories. An exhumation. The foreigners insisted. The islanders resisted. The army backed the foreigners. Several islanders were shot. The islanders came out in force and fought a pitched battle with the federal forces. Then another helicopter, this one a small, modern, single-passenger model without markings, landed on the far side of the island. Away from the fighting. Iman and his best fighters stood silently waiting for the rotors to stop their lethal circling. When they did, the door slid open and Madame Minister Wu stepped out.

She looked at him, identified herself and canted her head slightly to one side.

He matched her gesture – this would be a meeting of equals.

Quickly, a small fire was built on the sandy beach and the two sat facing each other across the flames.

Jiajia stepped forward.

“Was it this young man’s wife who died of this foul contagion?”

“It was, Madame Minister.”

“My condolences, young man. Now let me have words in private with Iman.”

Jiajia started to protest then stopped as he saw the flecks of rage the flames of the fire brought to life in Madame Wu’s eyes. He turned and left the ring of light.

Madame Wu picked up a stick and poked at the fire. Iman watched her closely. Finally, she raised her eyes and said, “He is reckless in his grief.” Iman nodded but said nothing. Madame Wu smiled. “But such men can be of use in times such as we are living through. Don’t you agree, Iman?” Again he nodded. “Good,” she said. “Now let us plan a response to these indignities the foreigners have heaped upon you and your people.”

“We are already seeing to that,” Iman said in a cold flat voice.

“By fighting with federal assault troops? Folly, old man. Folly.” Before Iman could respond she added, “There is a better way of dealing with this . . . situation.” She caught his eye. “Let them dig up the dead girl.” Iman leapt to his feet. She shouted, “Sit down.” He did. “One must get one’s revenge when the enemy is not ready for it.” She slipped a small, beautifully bound copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War from her pocket and held it out to Iman. “Have someone read you the chapter on spies.” She checked to see if Iman was offended. He wasn’t. She went on, “Pay special attention to the part about lulling the enemy into a false sense of security – friendship even.”

Iman took the book.

“I’m sure you will agree with me that letting the foreigners dig up the dead girl is the best way to proceed.”

Madame Wu rose and walked out of the fire’s circle of light. She didn’t want him to see the hatred on her face.

As she allowed herself to be helped into the helicopter it occurred to her that having come all this way, maybe she should see her son, Chen. Then she dismissed the thought as bourgeois and sentimental. They’d been apart all these years. Why bother seeing him face to face now? She barked an order and the pilot engaged the engine. The rotors began to howl. She put her head back against the plush seat and closed her eyes. The islanders would do as she suggested. They were people of the land, just as she was.

Jiajia put down the minister’s copy of The Art of War. He had just finished the brief chapter on spies. For a moment he looked at the cover of the book – so fancy, so decorated – so unlike war. He shook his head and strode out of his mud hut – at one time their home, his and Chu Shi’s. He reconsidered Sun Tzu’s advice as he walked quickly up the steep path to the graveyard. It seemed to him that Sun Tzu’s instruction on the waging of war was flawed. It assumed a dispassion, a cold logic. He crested the final rise and stepped into the graveyard. He stood over Chu Shi’s grave for a long time then he hawked up a wad of phlegm and spat it right at her heart.

Jiajia kicked at the grave’s night soil-clotted earth then began to tear at the dirt with his fingers. As he did, he planned. Not as The Art of War had suggested. But then again, Sun Tzu was waging a military campaign. Not seeking revenge.

Jiajia flung aside clods of the thick dirt until he unearthed the edge of the crimson burial shroud. He leaned back his head and howled Chu Shi’s name.

Revenge was not dispassionate. It was not cold and logical. It was human – and hot.

The next day Iman ordered the islanders to put down their weapons. A dead girl. A pregnant dead girl was dug up and transported to the mainland where her body was hacked to pieces in a secret foreign ritual.

So went the story.

Dr. Roung knew better. He didn’t know what had changed the islanders’ minds to allow it, but he knew that Chu Shi must have been exhumed so that an autopsy could be done. Probably in Xian. He assumed that the foreigners insistence on the exhumation and autopsy had something to do with their business deal. But again he didn’t know what. And he said nothing. Did nothing. Just sat in the darkness of his Ching room wondering over and over again why the ceremonial wine had been shipped from Beijing. That night he awoke in a cold sweat, his mind crawling with fear. Fear that he knew the answer to the question. It was just past 6 a.m. He went out into the freezing darkness.

That was just before the frigid dawn of December 22. Seventeen foreigners had less than a week to live.

Half an hour after Fong’s return from the island funeral, the hollow sound of his banging on Dr. Roung’s workshop door echoed through Ching’s soft spring night. Fong’s shouts went unanswered. Finally an old woman came around the corner of the building.

“Gone, flat-head.”

“What?”

“He’s gone.” The old woman cocked her head to the side and stared at Fong’s mouth. “Where’d you get your teeth?”

“Where did Dr. Roung go?”

“To Xian. Where else?”

Where else indeed. The island and Xian. Always the island and Xian. And finally the link between the two – four stones stacked neatly in a tower behind a dead girl’s headstone – to mark time.

Fong turned on his heel and headed back to the Jeep. Over his shoulder he heard the old woman shout, “You really ought to complain. Those teeth look awful.”

When he got into the car, Chen asked him, “Did she say something about teeth?”

“No,” Fong said harder than he should have. Then he spat out, “Have you found out if there was an exhumation order executed on the island?”

“Yes, there was.” Chen referred to his notes. “It was done December 21. How did you know . . .?”

“Seven days before the murders on the boat.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was there an autopsy performed?”

“Yes, the same day.”

“Where? Don’t answer that – Xian? Right?” Chen nodded. Fong cursed under his breath. “I want the autopsy report sent to Grandpa.”

“They won’t send it.”

“What?”

“I’ve already asked for it. They said it’s confidential.”

Fong knew the word confidential in China’s bureaucratese meant “volatile.” “Will they let him see it if we go to them?”

“Yes, they’re okay with that.”

“Fine.”

“How did you know there’d been an . . .?”

Fong thought back to the grave on the island. The soil was still unpacked. The fecal material resisting decomposition, as it always did when disturbed . . . He shrugged. Why not tell Chen? Because admitting a knowledge of night soil would allow access to his past. And he wasn’t prepared to discuss his personal history with anyone.

Chen reached in his pocket and pulled out a fax. “This arrived for you while you were on the island.”

Fong spread it out against the dash:

HEY HO SHORT STUFF. BIG COOKINGS HERE IN XIAN. WHAT GUESS FOUND I? NO GUESS? TWO BAD. DNA PATENT FOUND I. DNA PATENT GIVEN TO DEAD AMERICAN LAWYER, DECEMBER 25TH – THINK NOT CLOSE TO PARTY TIME? – DO I? I DO. DO. DO. DO YOU?

Fong shivered.

They were nearing the edge.

He brushed some liquid from his chin. It was deep red. Somehow he’d cut himself and was bleeding. He looked at the red smear on the back of his hand. Blood without. Blood within. This all has to do with blood.

“Fax Lily. Tell her we’ve got to know exactly what the DNA patent was for.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And get Grandpa ready.”

“For what?”

“Our trip to Xian. He needs an outing.”

The alarm sounded loudly at the nurse’s station. She’d been in Inspector Wang’s room only moments before. Maybe he’d accidently rolled over on the button.

Maybe he was finally dying.

The thickness was lining his mouth and had gotten up into his nasal passages. It was now extending down into his lungs, covering every inch – every tiny sack that could bring him air.

He struggled and thrashed as best he could. He grabbed the button and pressed with all his might. Then he stopped. Stopped fighting. Stopped fighting what he thought was the end. Images floated up at him. Sharpedged crime scene lights threw everything into high relief. The pop of a sulphur match and the delicious flavour of cigarette smoke. Then a face close to his. Zhong Fong. He’d never had a son. Never married. Lived his whole life as an unbeliever. But here on the very brink of his time, just before he leapt from this earthly plane, he sent out a blessing. A final gift to Zhong Fong. Not as tactile as the telegram he’d arranged to get through despite all regulations against outside contact with the traitor. But more important. Or at least that’s what the specialist thought – as his last act upon the Earth.

The white-clad nurse leaned in close to the old man’s mouth. He was trying to speak. His lips forming soundless words. She read his lips as she had so many times before. But what she read made no sense. “Bless you.” His lips formed a name she’d never heard before. “Make me proud. You are my pride. Deduce that it was me . . .”

The nurse recalled this man asking for communications experts a few months back. Just after he’d returned from Xian. Then documents from Shanghai. All quite a fuss. For what? She knew he’d been to Xian because he’d brought her back a small kneeling figure of an archer. He’d flirted in his wordless way. But despite all the time she’d nursed him, she didn’t know much about him. In fact, she had no idea who this man was. Only that he was important enough to have a private room in a politburo hospital. That he had three serious gunshot wounds when he first arrived. Two in his back and one that had pierced his voice box. And the doctors were administering a treatment to him she’d never seen before.

But all that didn’t matter now because he was quickly growing cold. If she’d known any Shakespeare, she might have quoted Measure for Measure: “This sensible warm motion” was quickly becoming “a kneaded clod.”

But she didn’t know any Shakespeare. Why should she?

Then again, those lines wouldn’t fit a man – not dead – but put into a kind of suspended animation. Something new. Another way to cheat time. And all, of course, done without the knowledge of either Inspector Wang Jun or his doting nurse.