White Jade

Chapter Twenty-Three

In a corner office on the fourth floor of the Ministry of State Security in Beijing, Senior Investigator Yao Aiguo studied a folder of reports. It was a hot day. The windows were open to the humid, smog-filled air outside. A small black electric fan fluttered the papers on his desk.

A large portrait of a beaming Chairman Mao hung on one wall of the office, across from a picture of the current President and Party Chairman. The room was painted a dingy yellow. It was sparsely furnished with a few wooden chairs, the desk where Yao sat and some filing cabinets. A picture of Yao and his parents provided the only personal note in the room. A cheap print of the famous mountains on the Yangtze River, now submerged under the waters of the Three Gorges dam, rounded out the decorations.

Yao looked at the latest report from the West and picked his nose. He looked at the result and wiped it off under his chair.

The reports from San Francisco about Colonel Wu bothered him.

Yao looked out his window at the heavy traffic crawling along on the broad avenue below. Motorcycles and scooters wove like manic squirrels in and out through thick clouds of exhaust smoke spewing from the trucks and busses. The leaves of the trees lining the boulevard hung wilted and defeated in the stifling heat.

An agent reported a meeting in a restaurant between Wu and his sergeant, Choy. Wu had sent Choy after a book belonging to a capitalist banker. The banker was dead. Yao had a thick file on the man, Connor, a heavy investor in Chinese industry. According to the report, Wu was responsible for the death. Why had Wu killed the American and sent someone after the dead man's book?

Inquiries had been made at the Consulate regarding Choy and the death of an American police officer. Now Choy was on his way back to China. It was all spread out in the papers on his desk. The eyes and ears of the Te-Wu, the Chinese Secret Service, reached across the Pacific as easily as to the next room.

Wu was supposed to be in San Francisco to probe the Chinese community there about money being funneled from America to the independence movement in the Tibet Autonomous Region. But Wu walked in the shadow of General Yang.

Why would Yang concern himself with a rabble of monks and peasants who had no possibility of achieving their revisionist goals? That kind of intelligence wasn't important enough to send a high ranking officer to investigate. Something wasn't right.

Few people in China had the authority and resources Yao wielded as a Senior Investigator of the Secret Service. He never gave up on an investigation until it was finished. He lived by the words of Sun Tzu, and it had made him one of the most successful agents in the two thousand year history of the Service.

If one waits patiently by the banks of the river, the Master had said, sooner or later the bodies of one's enemies will float by.

When they did, Yao would be there to pluck them from the water and make sure they were dead.

For Yao, it was simple. Loyalty to the nation and the Communist Party formed the foundation of a stable society. Yao thought society was even more important than family, the bedrock of Chinese culture. The greater good of the nation was the standard that must be followed. Yao's given name meant Love of Country. He considered himself a patriot and guardian of the greater good.

He reached for another file, this one on General Yang. In the People's Republic, no one was above investigation. All top military leaders received periodic scrutiny. If there was nothing irregular, there was no need for concern. If there was, measures were taken to correct the situation.

Yang's file gave no indication he was anything but an outstanding example of the professionalism now infusing the People's Liberation Army.

The file noted that Yang had founded a social and cultural group called the White Jade Society. Membership consisted of high-ranking officers and senior government leaders. Such societies were common. Belonging to a group of powerful associates was expected for someone in Yang's high position. The General was a man of influence in today's China.

He studied the file. Yang was Chief of Military Intelligence, the most powerful position on the General Staff, important in the daily oversight of China's considerable military might. He was also a member of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party Central Committee. Anything to do with the Commission was political at the highest level and therefore dangerous. Yao would have to pursue his inquiries with care.

Yao's success as an investigator was based on obsessive attention to detail and a highly developed ability to think like his quarry. Why did Yang want Connor's money? Connor had been wealthy beyond belief. Yao made a note to follow the money trail.

Wu would never kill such an important man without orders, so there had to be some direct benefit to Yang. Money had always been a corrupter of men. If money was behind this, Yao would root out and expose Yang's complicity, but somehow it didn't feel right. Yang would not be able to spend that kind of money without being discovered and punished.

If it wasn't money, what else would motivate Yang? Wu had sent his Sergeant to fetch a book. What was in it? Had he been successful? Yao would assign a team to Choy when he arrived home. General Yang was in Beijing and surveillance would begin immediately. Colonel Wu was in San Francisco, but that was no obstacle. Yao would contact his agent in the Consulate and give him instructions.

Yao looked out the window. He decided to elevate Yang and Wu to priority level. Until he found out what they were doing, they were under suspicion of being enemies of the State, distinguished careers or not. Yao trusted his instincts. He would find out what was going on, it was only a matter of time.

He put his hands behind his head, leaned back and looked out into the hazy air of Beijing. Yang was up to something treasonous, he could feel it. Yao breathed deeply of the smog and felt the exhilaration of the hunt beginning.