The Message

by Mai Jia

  After a while, she appeared to come to a sudden realization, and she shouted in a panicky voice, ‘Oh my God, Colonel Hihara, it’s a trick! Wu Zhiguo… I think Wu Zhiguo must be Ghost!’

  ‘What rubbish!’ Hihara didn’t want to hear that. ‘Sit down and stop all this play-acting.’

  ‘But… Colonel Hihara…’ Li Ningyu shook her head painfully, as if she had a great deal to say and no idea where to start.

  ‘Confess.’ Hihara knew exactly what he wanted to say. In fact, he was just repeating what he’d said to Wu Zhiguo the previous evening. ‘You Chinese have a saying about how a clever man tailors his actions to the times – if you confess now, you’ll have the opportunity to atone for what you’ve done and you’ll be able to start over. You’re a clever woman, and as the saying goes, it’s never too late for the lost sheep to return to the fold.’

  He wasn’t threatening her, he was trying to persuade her. Hihara was not a naturally violent man; he preferred to speak softly and behave civilly rather than resort to intimidation. Besides which, his many years as an interpreter had given him a lot of practice at playing with words, so manipulating people into making indiscreet remarks was one of his strong points.

  Li Ningyu glared at him and said self-righteously, ‘That’s what I want to say too, Colonel: it’s never too late for the lost sheep to return to the fold! Go and get Wu Zhiguo’s body – don’t let them take it away.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s using his own body to take out a message.’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  Li Ningyu came over and stood right next to him. ‘Did you search the corpse?’

  Hihara narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re saying he’s hidden a message on his body?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thanks for the reminder—’ Hihara laughed ‘—but you’re wrong. I can assure you that I searched his body from head to toe, from nostril to anus; no orifice was left unchecked. If it had been you instead, I would have looked inside your private parts and innards – something could be hidden in there, wouldn’t you agree?’

  Li Ningyu turned her head away in disgust. ‘Come back to me when you’ve searched his body again. Perhaps there’s something in his stomach.’ She made as if to leave.

  ‘Stop right there!’ Hihara moved to block her exit. He waved his hand carelessly. ‘We searched everywhere and there’s nothing, nothing at all. Ha! Doing something like that would be childish – we’re well aware of those kinds of games, so nobody tries to play them any more.’ He began circling the inside of the pavilion, moving between the red-lacquered pillars as he talked to Li Ningyu in a slow, measured fashion. ‘You’re about ready to give up, aren’t you? Why would you hold out any longer? The best thing you could do right now is to confess.’

  Li Ningyu sat down abruptly on a stone bench. Before she’d said a word, she was already in tears. ‘Colonel Hihara, please believe me, I’m no Communist. If Wu Zhiguo says that I’m Ghost, then it means that he’s the one who’s been betraying you—’

  ‘I don’t believe the living; I can only trust the dead.’

  Li Ningyu was silent for a while and then she said, loudly this time, ‘Colonel Hihara, even if there turns out to be nothing in Wu Zhiguo’s stomach, I’m still sure he was a Red. He killed himself out of fear of being punished, but you’re treating it as if he died for a righteous cause – that’s an insult to your intelligence! There are lots of examples of Communist agents doing exactly that after they’ve been arrested.’

  Hihara came to a standstill and glared at her. ‘Right now it’s you who is insulting my intelligence, but you’re not going to get away with trying to confuse me like this.’

  Li Ningyu held his gaze. ‘Then may I ask you to explain, Colonel Hihara, why Wu Zhiguo had to bolster his accusations against me by committing suicide? Couldn’t he have used some other means to prove them?’

  She paused, but this was merely to marshal her arguments.

  ‘Look at it this way, Colonel Hihara: with Chief of Staff Wu dead, it’s actually better for me. There’s only one side of the story to tell, because all his evidence died with him. All I have to do is deny it. I can just keep my mouth shut and refuse to admit a thing. Therefore, if I really was Ghost, I’d be quite sure that Wu Zhiguo wasn’t dead. But I’m not Ghost, so why does he say I am? There’s only one possibility: that he was Ghost himself. He calculated that he wouldn’t be able to survive this and if he was going to die anyway, he might as well use his death to trick you. If he succeeded in tricking you to the point where you arrested and killed me, then no doubt he’d be laughing long and hard in the underworld.’

  Hihara laughed. ‘If you’ve any other bright ideas, do share them.’

  Li Ningyu stared briefly at a patch of forest caught in a shaft of evening sunlight, then carried on. ‘I’m sure you must have found some evidence against Wu Zhiguo before you arrested him yesterday evening. But let’s not talk about that right now. From my own point of view, if he wasn’t dead, if he hadn’t killed himself, I would never have considered that he might be Ghost. As I told Secretary Bai, lying about that telegram was just Wu Zhiguo trying to cover his back – I could quite understand why he wouldn’t want to admit to that. But now that he’s dead, his blood letter does make me think that he must have been Ghost. That’s because I know it isn’t me, so only Ghost would say that it was.’

  Hihara tried to say something, but Li Ningyu didn’t give him the chance. ‘I can put it this way: if he died in order to prove his innocence, that you could believe. But he isn’t just trying to claim that he’s innocent, he’s also wanting to drag in a scapegoat, he’s trying to get me killed, and that means you can’t believe a word he says. I’m the only one that can be sure that I’m not Ghost – you don’t know that – and so he can trick you. I say that I’m not Ghost, but without any evidence, why should you believe me? Of course you don’t. That’s exactly what he wants, because now you’re suspicious of all of us. He’s using your suspicions against us, and it’s a gamble, but it doesn’t matter if he loses, because he was going to die sooner or later anyway. But if he wins, he’s going to win big: he’s going to have defeated you and got me killed, and that’s great for him.’

  She leant back against a pillar, increasingly sure of her argument. ‘As to why he’s accused me rather than any of the others, it’s obvious – it’s because what I said about him brought him into all of this. I hope you will do a full investigation, Colonel Hihara, and not let yourself be led astray by that bastard. If he knew I was Ghost, there’s no way he’d be dead now – he’d be waiting to see me come to grief, to watch you arrest me and have his hatred of me bear fruit. How could he possibly kill himself when that would allow me to get the last laugh?’

  ‘Have you finished?’ Hihara clapped admiringly. ‘What a fine speech! Everyone says that you’re normally totally silent, but evidently you can be very eloquent when you try.’

  Seeing that she was about to interrupt him, he stopped her. ‘Now it’s my turn to say something.’

  He paused and fixed his eyes on hers. ‘If I told you that, in fact, Wu Zhiguo is still alive, and, to use your own words, that I’ve been trying to trick you, what would you say to that?’

  Li Ningyu appeared momentarily overwhelmed by this revelation. Her gaze seemed to lose focus and she had to steady herself against a pillar. A breeze whistled through and ruffled her hair. But within seconds she came to her senses again and replied, ‘In that case, I take back everything that I’ve said.’

  Hihara inhaled sharply. ‘So you don’t think he’s Ghost?’ he shot back, his tone aggressive. ‘If it isn’t him and it isn’t you, then who? Section Chief Jin Shenghuo? Little Miss Gu Xiaomeng?’

  ‘I’d need evidence before I could tell you that,’ Li Ningyu replied thoughtfully. ‘As I just said, I concluded that Chief of Staff Wu was Ghost because he’d used his suicide against me. But if he hasn’t killed himself, my deductions are wrong. I still can’t be sure
that he isn’t guilty, but I also can’t say that someone else is. I’ve said right from the beginning that I’m not going to accuse anyone without concrete evidence.’

  Hihara thought about that for a moment, then straightened up and stared down at the courtyard below. ‘You’ve done very well up till now,’ he said. ‘I like you a lot, you’re very intelligent and you can make a good case. But I’m going to have a lot more fun if I can arrest you, because I’ve always really enjoyed the sense of accomplishment that I get from arresting Communist agents, you know?’

  He was telling the truth in this. He could see that there was no point in persisting with this particular role; it was time to bring his little drama to a close. If he could, he would have happily expunged all record of these events, since he had gone to so much trouble and put so many people out, and all to no avail.

  *

  Both Wu Zhiguo, locked up in the eastern building, and Police Chief Wang Tianxiang, waiting in the officers’ club, realized that something had gone awry between Hihara and Li Ningyu.

  After putting Jin Shenghuo, Gu Xiaomeng and Secretary Bai in the Jeep, Police Chief Wang hadn’t even taken them as far as the estate’s main gate – he simply parked in front of the main building, on the assumption that everything would be over pretty quickly. For a long time nothing happened, and then it was nearly dinnertime, so he allowed everyone to get out of the Jeep and go to the dining hall to wait. They waited and waited, until in the end Wang Tianxiang became so concerned that he put Staff Officer Jiang in charge of the three and went back to the rear courtyard to check for himself.

  In the distance he could see first Hihara and then Li Ningyu walking down the slope from the Pavilion of Cooling Breezes, looking completely relaxed and at ease. It was obvious that nothing had happened.

  Wu Zhiguo, who was cowering anxiously behind the shutters of the east building and peering out through a crack, was watching them too. When he saw that Li Ningyu was unconcernedly combing her hair, behaving as if she were by herself, the ground began to spin beneath his feet. He felt himself shrivelling up in terror, until he was no bigger than a single strand of hair, about to be snagged by Li Ningyu’s comb and yanked out. At any moment he would find himself falling, discarded, lost in space and time.

  The sun was setting just at that moment, and rays of golden sunlight bathed her beautiful mahogany comb, making it glitter and shine until you might imagine that Li Ningyu was invested with divine, superhuman powers.

  6

  In the event, it became apparent that Li Ningyu was not possessed of superhuman powers. At dinner that evening she was laid low, even before the hot dishes were served, by one of the cold starters, which contained only a tiny amount of chilli.

  It was a stomach ache.

  She was in such pain, she was curled up like a shrimp, contorted in agony, unable to sit up straight. Even if she’d been pretending that her stomach hurt, there was no way she could have faked the huge pearls of sweat beading her forehead.

  Gu Xiaomeng demanded that Hihara take her to hospital. ‘Even if she is Ghost,’ she said, ‘you can’t just leave her to die.’

  ‘Miss Gu,’ Hihara said cheerfully, ‘you’ve got it quite wrong. If she is Ghost, I need her alive more than ever.’

  Of course Hihara needed her alive. But as to whether she should go to hospital or not, he left that to Li Ningyu herself to decide. If she insisted on going to hospital, then he would assume this was a self-inflicted illness. She might be claiming it was caused by a chilli, but she could easily have swallowed some kind of poison in order to create an opportunity to make contact with the outside world. And if she asked to be taken to a particular hospital, he could be sure that there would be other Communists working there undercover.

  But Li Ningyu not only refused to go to hospital, she even made light of her pain. ‘I’m fine,’ she said to Hihara and Gu Xiaomeng. ‘I’ve had this problem for ages. I’ll take some pills and I’ll be okay in a bit.’ And indeed, just like anyone with a long-standing health problem, she knew exactly what to take for it: Dr Hu’s Stomach Soothers and Hu Patent Stomach Pills. Both of these were produced locally and were widely available; they could be bought at any pharmacy or clinic. She didn’t ask Hihara or Wang Tianxiang to lift a finger – she just asked Staff Officer Jiang to go and get them for her, which required nothing more than a short walk to the Gushan road.

  Staff Officer Jiang took his motorbike, so he was back very quickly. When he returned, everyone was still eating, but Li Ningyu was resting to one side, waiting for her medication. Gu Xiaomeng went to the kitchen herself to fetch some hot water, and helped Li Ningyu up so she could swallow her pills.

  The medication seemed very effective. Not long after she took it, Li Ningyu’s forehead, which had been creased in pain, relaxed again, and the sweat mostly disappeared. By the time everyone had finished dinner, not only was she feeling much better, she could also walk. Although she couldn’t stride out as normal with her head in the air, she was at least able to walk unaided. Even so, Colonel Hihara wanted Staff Officer Jiang to give her a lift back to the rear courtyard on his motorbike. But she refused.

  ‘I’d better walk back with everyone else,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to give you any more cause for suspicion.’

  Hihara laughed. ‘Is that why you refused to go to hospital?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So proving your innocence is more important to you than your life?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Well then, let’s go,’ Hihara said with a smile. ‘We can walk back together.’

  EIGHT

  1

  A chill wind was blowing in from West Lake, through the all-enveloping darkness, bringing with it a curiously muddy smell. Ghost gazed out of the window in a mood as black as the night. Personal safety didn’t matter any more – indeed, that had long been disregarded. What mattered was K’s safety and that of the other comrades. It was becoming increasingly obvious that without a direct message from Ghost, the Party would not receive the necessary information. If Ghost couldn’t get a message out, then the Gathering of Heroes would be ambushed and K and the others were doomed.

  How to get a message out?

  As an experienced undercover agent, Ghost was only too aware that in any mission the odds were stacked against a successful outcome. Having Turtle appear at the Tan Estate earlier had been a great boost. Even though in the end they hadn’t been able to make contact, at least Turtle knew where Ghost was. Ghost was sure he would come back again tomorrow. It might then be possible to use their knowledge of each other to silently communicate that something was very wrong. Ghost was already fully prepared; what was needed now was for Turtle’s steps to turn in the right direction.

  2

  ‘So who is it that you’re now thinking is Ghost?’

  ‘I don’t yet have a definite answer to that.’

  ‘I still think it’s Wu Zhiguo. You don’t want to be hoodwinked by him, Colonel Hihara…’

  Commander Zhang was on the phone to Colonel Hihara, keen to get the latest on the investigation. In his view, there was no question that Chief of Staff Wu Zhiguo was Ghost.

  ‘As I’ve said, when you review Wu Zhiguo’s past in light of… ah… the current situation, it looks most suspicious.’ The Commander cleared his throat and went on to reiterate what he had on the ECCC Chief of Staff.

  As a young man, Wu Zhiguo had participated in the anti-imperialist May Fourth Movement; he’d then studied at the Whampoa Military Academy before joining the Nationalists and taking part in their Northern Expedition campaign to reunify the country. When the Communist Party split from the Nationalists and Chiang Kai-shek started to arrest and execute Communists, Wu Zhiguo disobeyed orders and deserted both his unit and the Nationalists. For a while he ran a business shipping freight along the Grand Canal, mostly in the Hangzhou–Jiaxing–Huzhou region. But then, not long after the Japanese had established their puppet government under Wang Jingwei in Nanjing, Wu Zhiguo assemb
led a unit of former soldiers, came to Hangzhou and joined the puppet regime himself, throwing in his lot with Qian Huyi, Commander Zhang’s predecessor at the ECCC.

  ‘To tell you the truth, Colonel Hihara,’ Commander Zhang said, ‘ever since he took charge of the ECCC’s insurgent-extermination campaign, pretty much everyone he’s arrested or killed has been a Nationalist – there have been very few Communists. That’s really very strange, but I didn’t take it nearly as seriously as I should have. The situation now suggests that he never actually left the Communist Party and that joining forces with Qian Huyi was a cover. He just wanted to make use of Qian Huyi and the ECCC to get his revenge. He’s been using us to kill Nationalists, and what does that mean? He must be a Communist.’ Commander Zhang was now quite worked up. ‘I should have realized that long ago, but I was completely taken in by his display of loyalty. I have caused great trouble to the Imperial Army through my lack of care and attention.’

  After the Commander had hung up, Police Chief Wang provided further corroborative evidence. At the start of the year, Wu Zhiguo had made it his mission to eliminate a small anti-Japanese militia unit active in the Huzhou region. ‘They were a top team of Nationalist special agents,’ he said. ‘Wu Zhiguo could have eliminated them at any time, but he decided that this was the moment. Why? Because Chiang Kai-shek had just massacred thousands of Communist soldiers in the Wannan Incident. It’s clear how it all hangs together: Wu Zhiguo targeted the Nationalist agents in revenge.’

  It sounded convincing, but Hihara still couldn’t quite make up his mind. Sometimes he wondered at himself: why did he put so much trust in what Wu Zhiguo said and so little in the evidence against him? But if the ECCC’s Chief of Staff really was Ghost and had been working secretly in their midst for years, he surely shouldn’t have blown his cover so easily. Hihara had seen Ghost’s shadow a number of times now, and from the clues he’d picked up, the traces he’d found of Ghost’s modus operandi, Wu Zhiguo simply didn’t seem to fit the pattern.