Regine’s eyes open wide after reading a few lines. “Oh my God, I heard about this piece and tried searching. You know, they’re really jamming the websites now, aren’t they?”
Jake scrawls a phone number on the left margin. “Here’s Diane’s cell number if you need more info for your story.”
“Darling, you’re a star,” Regine says, drawing out the last word as she scans the document.
“I’m still fighting with one of my regional editors to write this,” Jake says. “You know us. If it’s not going to make someone money, it’s not news. I’m going to put copies of this all over the press room later today to be sure the story gets out.”
“Are you going to provide Diane’s cell to everyone?” Regine asks.
“That’s only for you. You get the head start and direct access to Diane. You now owe me a drink,” Jake says as he pulls his laptop bag strap around one shoulder.
SUNDAY, April 22, 2007
The signal on the monitor set to GlobeCast, one of several screens high on the newsroom wall, cuts out. Something has bothered the censors. They have seven seconds to react to the foreign satellite feeds, those available only in five-star international hotels and grade-A office complexes. The authorities have been intervening more on these conduits to the outside world lately. Jake hadn’t thought much about it. The years he’s spent in China wore down any sensitivity to these controls which had become both obvious and meaningless. But this time, amid the stress of recent events, in the silence of a vacant newsroom, the dead signal draws Jake’s attention.
Jake is tempted to check out the GlobeCast website, to see if he can find whatever story has tripped the wire but stops himself before he reaches for the mouse. It’s Sunday and he doesn’t want to be in the newsroom any longer than necessary to finish a story he got on the sidelines of the conference earlier in the day. He’s even turned down the volume on all of the monitors to concentrate on bringing his story to a close. The GlobeCast signal resumes, just at the start of a report featuring chaos in the aftermath of another explosion in Baghdad.
And then the BBC monitor goes black. They generally don’t tamper with BBC as much, at least not lately, since relations with the UK have been on an even keel. Jake now won’t be able to focus on his story until he finds out what new story is bothering the powers that be. He clicks on the BBC website and one headline captures his attention.
Interview Footage of Former China Leader Suggests Beijing Let Top Reformer Die in 1989.
Jake reads on to learn that the interview excerpt by an unidentified documentarian in China surfaced on a Taiwanese television network. The footage was obtained, the report says, by mainland Chinese dissidents living abroad. Jake clicks on the video but it won’t play so he skims the story and sees a still from the video. The image shows a frail, old man with a serious expression. The lighting is harsh and the framing awkward. According to the report, the interviewee claims the CCP party leadership withheld medical care to Hu Yaobang, the reformer whose death sparked the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Hu suffered a heart attack and, the report alleges, the hardliners let him die.
Jake refreshes the screen to get the embedded video working and this sends the load-wait circle into motion. Frustrated, he clicks over to his Firefox browser and calls up BBC only to see the same. When he clicks back to the default browser, he sees that BBC has timed out. And the same on Firefox. The censors have cut access to BBC.
“Dammit,” Jake mutters. There’s only so much room for China in the global headlines. The interview story might knock Kendra’s op-ed piece, and all the other stories about Qiang, below the fold. He’ll check in with Regine to see when she plans to publish her story.
Don’t overreact, Jake tells himself. Less than a year away, the Olympics Games have stoked interest in China. Maybe the two stories will build traction for each other.
Jake takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes, trying again to focus on his story, and realizes he needs a diversion. He stands, stretches out the fatigue of the past few days and heads through the reception area. The glass door slides open when Jake waves his badge in front of the security box and he walks down the corridor to the men’s room. From 43 stories up, he looks at the sun hovering just above the Fragrant Hills as he empties his bladder. All he needs to do is add an ending to his report and he’ll be able to have the last few hours of the weekend to himself.
On his way back to the office, Jake notices a shadow moving in the reception area and wonders which of his colleagues has come in. Strange. According to the schedule, Jake is the only one working this weekend. The government often drops important news outside of business hours when they think journalists won’t be paying attention. But if something big was announced, an editor would have alerted him.
Once he’s in front of the door, swiping his badge to open it, Jake sees Dawei standing next to the modern, white leather couch, scanning the magazines on the coffee table. His disheveled appearance clashes with the clean order of the Toeler News reception area which is framed in with large, off-white panels. Dawei must have been waiting in the corridor, just out of sight, or perhaps around a corner, for the newsroom’s door to slide open. It takes a few seconds for the glass pane to slide shut again. It occurs to Jake just then that he handed his name card over to Dawei when they had first met. Had Dawei kept it all of this time? Or maybe Dawei followed him from Jake’s apartment, where he stopped briefly to drop his luggage and change into a t-shirt and jeans.
Dawei looks up at Jake when he hears the door slide.
“Did you find that screenplay?”
The invasion infuriates Jake. Dawei is now more than a nuisance. He’s a threat. Jake told him clearly that he was going to be away for several more days and would look when he returned. Dawei staked him out anyway. There’s now no trust between them so there’s no point in any civility.
“How did you get in here? Do you know you’re…” Jake doesn’t know the word for “trespassing” in Chinese so he switches to simpler language. “Do you know you’re not allowed to be in here?”
“Did you find the script? I need that script,” Dawei says, slapping the back of the seat next to him, the sharp sound announcing his occupation of the entire space.
Jake wants to grab Dawei by the throat and throw him out of the office but the surveillance camera will pick all of this up. If this turns into a physical altercation, there’s no telling where this matter will end up. Security guards? The PSB? Courts? It’s not worth it.
“I left Beijing shortly after you came by my place on Friday night. I just got back and came here to get some work done. You saw how many things I need to go through to find some document you gave me, what, two, three years ago.”
Dawei stands. “Y…y…you need to find that screenplay. Please find that screenplay.”
Dawei’s tone shifts from anger to desperation and he uses the polite form of the second person. Maybe he realizes that he’s overstepped his bounds. Nevertheless, Jake feels responsible for the unauthorized entry of a stranger into this workplace. Someone unhinged and possibly violent.
Jake picks up the phone that sits on the reception desk.
“You need to leave. If you don’t, I’m calling security downstairs and I’ll tell them to look at the video that shows how you got in here.”
Dawei is silent. Jake has neutralized him but knows this is only a temporary reprieve. He knows he’ll never find this document that’s become so vitally important. And that’s the problem. Dawei has nothing, which is perhaps what’s driving this delusional pursuit of something, the one thing besides the clothes on his back and whatever other items take up room in his backpack. This is tragic, Jake tells himself, but not his fault.
“I tried calling you y…y…yesterday and today. You didn’t answer.”
Jake now remembers getting a few calls from numbers he didn’t recognize. At the time, he had forgotten that he asked Dawei to call. Other events weighed more heavily on him,
of course, like conferences to cover, stories to file. All the while trying to manage the dissemination of news that will free someone he can’t stop thinking about. This lost screenplay business can’t possibly be a real problem for anyone.
“I was in transit. I was probably in the airplane at the time. I’m on the ground now. I’ll answer.”
Dawei knows that the answer is bullshit and Jake doesn’t care. Anything to make this obsessive lunatic go away.
Dawei heads towards the exit and then stands still in front of it. Jake swipes his badge over the security box. The glass pane slides open and Dawei, head down and muttering something Jake can’t understand, leaves.
*****
Sparks fly from the top of another steel structure that’s been rising from what was, until less than a year ago, several blocks of decaying worker housing. Jake watches as a crane fastened to the side of the building lowers a rectangular piece of glass panel cladding that swings like a pendulum. He hears the voices of the construction workers shout out shrill warnings. “Careful! Watch out.” Several workers on the ground pull cables fastened to either side of the glass panel, bringing it under control.
Construction is supposed to stop by this hour but everyone knows the edicts to finish all major projects before the Olympics start trump the regulations. The soldering and fastening will continue through the night, just like it does at all of the construction sites along the Avenue of Everlasting Peace. Having decided to walk home to clear the drama of the weekend from his head, Jake now realizes it would have been more peaceful inside a cab.
He feels his phone vibrate and he looks at the display. It’s a text message from Regine.
No luck getting a hold of Qiang’s sis. The phone is switched off. U sure you gave me the correct number?>
Jake dials Diane’s number and it connects to nothing. He throws up him arm, looking to hail a cab. “Fuck,” he mutters as he sees all of the traffic at a standstill. He then tightens the straps on his backpack and breaks into a jog towards Qiang’s apartment building.
Jake faces the door with the same fear he felt just a few weeks earlier. There will be silence when he knocks. Jake hates this fucking door which had only ever led him to frustration before the detention and dread since. He has no choice but to knock. He pounds on the door with the meaty side of his fist. No response. He pounds again and listens more closely. This time hears the silence on the other side broken by the sound of footsteps approaching the door. Hope and dread collide as Jake wonders who will open it. He stands frozen. The light through the fisheye peephole disappears as a person on the other side of the door looks through. The lock clicks and the door swings open. Diane stands there looking at Jake with bloodshot eyes. She’s been crying.
“Come in.”
“What…”
“Did you know that Qiang was working on some documentary about 1989? About Hu Yaobang?” she asks. “They played me a recording of a phone conversation he had with that…that… American woman in Washington, the one who’s caused so much of this trouble.”
It can’t be, Jake thinks. This can’t be about the interview footage that the BBC is running. He would have known if Qiang was working on something so sensitive. In any case, Qiang always had nuanced views about 1989 and never seemed interested enough in the events that led to the crackdown. How would he have gotten involved in such a project? He can’t swallow this revelation that Diane has thrown out like a grenade.
“This is completely out of my control now, Jake. Qiang’s work was more involved than I thought. 1989? Hu Yaobang? What was he thinking?”
Bewildered, Jake puts both hands on his forehead and looks around the apartment for some bearing on the situation.“Qiang never said anything to me about working on a Tiananmen Square project,” he says. “How do you know this evidence isn’t just something trumped up by the PSB?”
“They showed me footage of an interview Qiang shot with the same official, in the same setting, with material about the redevelopment of properties in Beijing. Qiang was sometimes in shot and his voice is asking questions.”
Jake feels like he’s stuck in quicksand. Everything Diane has said adds up to the fact that Qiang was working on some piece about 1989 in addition to the one about redevelopment. Anything he says now to try to refute this will be meaningless. If Diane is giving up, there’s no hope.
“Even if that interview was shot by Qiang,” he says, “does that give the authorities the right to erase him? He’s your brother, for God’s sake, Diane. What about all that stuff you said before about…about filial piety? Where is your sense of filial duty now? Was that just bullshit?”
“Don’t you see, Jake? This just shows there’s no way I can look out for him. Not when he can’t see when he’s gone too far. Whether or not you think that line shouldn’t exist doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter whether or not I think he went too far. The fact is that he should have known how sensitive that subject is here.”
Jake stares out the window, unable to look at Diane because she has just turned into another obstacle between him and Qiang. She is now exactly the person his first impression suggested. Completely willing to submit to authority when she should be fighting.
“Listen to me, Jake,” Diane says as she grabs Jake’s hand with both of hers. “You need to just forget about all of this.”
As he moves to push her away, Jake feels Diane trying to work something into his hand. A small, round object.
“Qiang is certain to be charged with something soon,” she continues as she closes Jake’s hand around the paper. “I will make sure that he has some kind of legal representation but there’s nothing more I can do.”
Diane holds his hand shut and squeezes them with more strength than Jake would have expected from her petite arms. The covert delivery, like sudden reinforcements in a hopeless gun fight, shifts the moment back to hope. Knowing the authorities are listening in, Jake searches for something natural enough to say, something about resignation and submission. Something that might make sense for this performance. Something vague, because he doesn’t know what circumstances now prevail. The note in his sweating palm will provide the answers.
“What can I say?” Jake says as he withdraws from Diane, keeping his hand with the note clenched. “You’re saying our only option is to hope that this evidence turns out to be false?”
He backs further away from her. “Or maybe all I can do is hope that this is all some bad dream?”
They stand in silence for a few moments.
“Just go back to your job and your life and maybe this will one day get resolved,” Diane says. “I will do as much as I can for Qiang but I need to work within the system. I also need to refocus on my work. I’ll be no help at all if I’m out of a job. I have some work meetings lined up tomorrow and then I’ll need to head back to Shanghai.”
Jake slides his hand into his pocket and leaves the note inside.
“I don’t know how to swallow any of this, Diane. I’ve been completely powerless and I don’t see that changing anytime soon,” Jake says, shaking his head. “I guess this is in your hands.”
Diane nods, like a director prompting an actor, signaling that Jake has nailed the scene.
Back at his apartment, Jake shuts the bathroom door and pulls the note out. He puts the toilet seat down and then sits as he unrolls the note, written in perfectly clear block lettering.
Jake, I was detained by the PSB for the past day. Long story short,: the video with the party official who made revelations about 1989 has made it very unlikely that they’ll release Qiang. They’re looking for the sources of funding for his projects. They suspect that I might be part of that network. They don’t seem to know that you have helped out on some of Qiang’s work (subtitling, I think). If they find that out, they’ll drag you into this. I need to shake the PSB enough to carry out the plans we’ve made with Ben. If they think I’m going to agitate things further, I’d still be in detention. Ben is now staying elsewhere and has his pho
ne switched off but please call him later today, (outside of your apartment, using the untraceable number), to finalize your plan to interview people at IBOC tomorrow. He should receive the ID we talked about. It’s vitally important that we get him into the building. I have a meeting at NICB tomorrow afternoon and Ben will be with me for that.
MONDAY, April 23, 2007
8:40 a.m.
Jake stares down at the atrium’s granite koi ponds lined with bamboo trees sprouting from beds of river rock. As the woman behind the information desk takes down their details and prepares badges for himself and Ben, he falls into a trance. The odds seem long for what he and Ben are about to attempt and Jake has trouble believing it could be so easy to steal data from such a secure environment. To keep calm, he projects his concerns into the gurgling water.
The koi ponds are arranged in a series of steps, each with a notch that allows water to flow down from the altar-like information desk where Jake and Ben are being processed, down to the atrium’s street-level entrance. The morning sun reflects off one of the twin towers of grey-tinted glass soaring above them, sending a cascade of geometric reflections throughout the atrium’s cream-coloured marble.
Taking a deep breath, Jake looks back at the woman behind the desk who writes their names with deliberate precision, cross-checking each letter against those on the IDs in what seems like an elementary school lesson. Jake needs to get Ben settled while the bank’s employees are logging in. There’s no Chinese version of the name on the business card Ben has handed over so she struggles to transcribe the characters. It has the name of a Toeler News journalist based in Kuala Lumpur, someone who recently left the company. Jake figures there’s no chance the former reporter, Thomas Jantzen, will suffer any repercussions. Ben had a colleague at his workplace create a fake ID with Jantzen’s name and it arrived yesterday afternoon, just in time. It will be clear soon enough that Jantzen was in no way responsible. In the whirlwind of recent events, the boundaries of right and wrong aren’t very clear.
The Wounded Muse Page 23