The Message

by Mai Jia

  [Transcription ends]

  Li Ningyu was in a ferment of anticipation, but her patience was severely tested as the rain passed and the skies cleared into a gloriously sunny afternoon. By the time it got to four o’clock, she was almost at the end of her tether. She knew that Turtle always headed off to collect people’s household rubbish at about five thirty; if he still hadn’t appeared by then, he wouldn’t be coming to the estate today. The Gathering of Heroes was due to take place tomorrow evening, so she had very little time left. At the very latest, her message would have to be taken out by noon tomorrow. But without Turtle, how was she supposed to manage that?

  Li Ningyu wracked her brains. She kept asking herself: how do I make contact with my comrades? In her confused state, the faces of her comrades floated before her eyes: first Turtle, then Warrior (Qian Huyi’s concubine), and then her brother, Mr Pan senior. Even Tiger appeared. Strictly speaking, she had never met Tiger, she’d just seen him once in the distance – it was dark and he was moving, so she only got a very vague impression. Her brother had met him, though, and described him as being as slim as a girl, narrow-waisted, and with the long, slender fingers of a surgeon. It had been difficult to imagine such a person as a successful killer, but she knew from her brother that once the campaign to eliminate collaborators and kill the Japanese had got started in Hangzhou, it was Tiger who’d killed the most people – hundreds, if not more. If she didn’t get her message out, both Tiger and someone even more important – K – would be killed by the Japanese devils. The prospect was terrifying.

  Fear coursed through her like a fever. Her limbs had no strength, her heart was pounding and her mind was a complete blank. She had never felt like this before in all the time she’d worked in the underground; fear and helplessness were crippling her. She was unable to make any attempt to establish contact with her comrades – all she could do was lie on the bed, quite shamelessly.

  It was this realization that prompted her to get up and walk around the room; perhaps she was trying to prove to herself that she could still do something.

  The room, like the bed, was extravagantly appointed and very big – so big, in fact, that she wondered whether she’d be able to make it to the other end. She was feeling faint; the stress of recent days had utterly exhausted her, her knees started to give way and with a thud she fell to the floor. Having been forced to her knees, she couldn’t stop herself from bursting into tears.

  Squatting down and hugging her knees, she sobbed like an abandoned child.

  [Transcript from the interview with Gu Xiaomeng]

  She was crying so violently, you’d have thought she’d been raped or something. She made so much noise that nobody in the building could remain undisturbed. I think to begin with she was crying for real, but afterwards she was putting it on. She was making such a racket because she wanted everyone to come. If everyone else came, then so would I, and that was exactly what she had in mind. She wanted to see me. She had to see me! She wanted me to do something for her.

  The first person on the scene was Secretary Bai, and then Police Chief Wang – they were there to take charge, to complain about the noise. Then came Section Chief Jin, who just wanted to see what was going on. I was the last to arrive. To tell you the truth, I really didn’t want to go because a sixth sense was telling me that she was going to ask me to do something for her.

  Just as I’d expected, the moment she saw me, she rushed over, threw her arms around me and hugged me. She was crying and sobbing all over me, screaming that she was innocent, she hadn’t done anything, and cursing Wu Zhiguo. Then she dragged in Colonel Hihara, Section Chief Jin, Secretary Bai, Police Chief Wang and had a go at all of them too. When they heard the kinds of things she was saying about Hihara, and about them too, everyone left. Which was precisely what she wanted – she was hurling abuse at them because she wanted them to piss off. Once they were gone, she could talk properly with me.

  What did she want? She wanted me to get her some paper and brushes to paint with. She kept crying and cursing, and at the same time she quietly told me what she was planning. I said I had no idea where I could get such things for her. She said that the officers’ club would have them and that I should get them when I went for dinner that evening. But if all else failed, a large piece of paper and a pencil would do. She told me she was going to paint a picture to take her message out.

  It was quite unbelievable. Think of the situation she was in: she couldn’t set foot out of doors, she couldn’t phone anyone, she was under continual surveillance, and yet she still hadn’t given up, she was still trying to think of ways to get her message out. I told her that I didn’t think a painting would work, that they were bound to think of that, but she assured me that she knew what she was doing and as long as I could get her the paper and brushes, she could get her message out. I wanted to see exactly what she was capable of, so I agreed to help her.

  [Transcription ends]

  It was entirely by chance that when Gu Xiaomeng went back to her room and started turning things out, she found a piece of paper in one of the cupboards, hidden under the spare blankets. In fact, this was no ordinary piece of paper, it was a movie poster, but the back was white and completely unmarked. Gu Xiaomeng showed it to Li Ningyu and she decided that it would do. A pencil wouldn’t work, though, because the paper was good quality and very glossy, so on the spur of the moment Li Ningyu decided to do her drawing with a fountain pen. She used her own pen.

  When Madame Gu said that, I was amazed. That had to mean that the painting I’d seen in Mr Pan senior’s house was a fake! I immediately found the photograph I’d taken of the picture on my computer and showed it to her. ‘Are you saying that Li Ningyu didn’t paint this?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Madame Gu spoke without the slightest hesitation. ‘I’m afraid you’ve been taken in by a complete fraud. The old man has been lying to you from start to finish. In your book you said that the paper and brushes that Li Ningyu used were left behind by Qian Huyi’s daughter – how could that possibly be true? You know perfectly well that after Qian Huyi and his family were murdered, the building was completely refurbished. How could her paper and brushes still be there? Someone would have walked off with them long before.’ She shook her fist at the audacity of the man. ‘I was right there – remember! And he knows bugger all about it.’

  ‘But—’ I looked at the picture on my screen and then asked a truly pointless question ‘—who painted this?’

  ‘I have no idea. That tricky old bastard must have found someone to do it for him. All I can tell you is that I’ve never seen it before.’

  She looked at the photograph and pointed out various things. ‘You see that? It’s obviously a fake. They’ve painted the blades of grass far too regularly, there’s not the slightest attempt to conceal the pattern. It really is quite laughable! I saw what Li Ningyu actually drew, and it was a whole lot more realistic. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to keep it. Hihara took it away.’

  However, Hihara hadn’t been able to take away the old lady’s memory of the picture. She began listing the various similarities and differences between the fake one and the real one. Some of the differences were tiny, but she could still discuss them in great detail – the painting seemed to be engraved in her memory. While she was doing this, Mrs Chen was constantly glancing at me and making signs to tell me that my time was up.

  SIX

  1

  ‘This must be about it,’ Madame Gu said with a smile when I turned up again the following day. ‘I’m sure we’ll be finished today.’

  It’s true that there wasn’t much left to talk about. Just the events of that last evening: the final struggle between Hihara and Li Ningyu.

  The old lady’s account was pretty much as I’d recorded it in my novel. There were only two things that I’d got wrong: Chief of Staff Wu Zhiguo wasn’t actually present that evening, and the people dressed up as the Red Army didn’t just attack the western building, there was also an attack o
n the eastern building, in which they set fire to one of the garages. It was a much bigger operation, and made a lot more noise, than I had described.

  ‘That bit when you have Wu Zhiguo coming to the meeting is too bizarre,’ Madame Gu said. ‘Hihara had told everyone categorically that he was dead, so how could he possibly come back to life then?’

  I disagreed, but I put it as politely as I could. ‘If Hihara was still considering the possibility that Wu Zhiguo might be Ghost, he’d surely want him to run the gauntlet of the fake Red Army as well.’

  Madame Gu laughed. ‘And you think he wasn’t being tested? I told you, both buildings were attacked at the same time.’

  I thought about that and had to agree that Chief of Staff Wu’s reactions would therefore also have been closely monitored. However, Madame Gu said that was all secondary; the most important thing was what happened later, and I hadn’t got my account of the fight between Hihara and Li Ningyu right at all. I hadn’t managed to capture Li Ningyu’s spirit. The old lady kept emphasizing one point: the reason Li Ningyu behaved the way she did that evening, including trying to strangle Hihara, was because she’d already decided to kill herself.

  ‘Other people might not have realized that,’ she said, ‘but I immediately saw what she was up to. She was going to use her own death to prove that she wasn’t Ghost, and then, just as you said, she was hoping that the enemy would hand her body back to her family, along with her few possessions, including the painting. I hadn’t yet seen the painting, but I was sure that was where she’d hidden her message.’

  ‘When did you first see the painting?’ I asked.

  ‘After Hihara beat her up. It was after we got her upstairs.’

  2

  At that point, Li Ningyu barely looked human – there was a huge open wound on her forehead, the bridge of her nose had been broken, knocking it out of shape, she’d lost some teeth, both cheeks were badly swollen, and she was bleeding all over the place.

  As the nurse bandaged her up, Gu Xiaomeng began to feel nauseous with the horrible smell of blood and disinfectant. She went over to the window for a breath of air and saw that the picture Li Ningyu had done was lying on the table there. She was curious – and nervous – so she took a look.

  It was such a simple picture, it didn’t seem possible that it could be hiding a secret message. She presumed the message must be on the back, on the movie-poster side, so she waited until the nurse had left, then immediately turned it over to check. She examined it from a distance and close up, she examined it from every angle, she turned it this way and that, but she still couldn’t find anything.

  As she flipped the poster to and fro, the paper crackled quite noisily, and it was this that alerted Li Ningyu. When she saw what Gu Xiaomeng was doing, she motioned to her to bring the picture over, and then told her in a whisper exactly where the message was.

  [Transcript from the interview with Gu Xiaomeng]

  When she told me that the grass was a message in telegraphic code, I was amazed!

  Oh, you have to admit, it was a good idea, a very neat trick, something nobody else had thought of before or since – she was a kind of genius in her way. That was Li Ningyu for you. As I said, she was the best underground agent I ever came across – she outclassed everyone else. I have no idea how she thought of it, but I am sure, I can swear to it, Hihara would never have found it in a million years. Nobody who didn’t know where to look would ever have discovered it.

  The problem was that we couldn’t be sure the enemy would return her body and all her things to her family. And even if they did, this was the last day of the investigation; so as far as the enemy were concerned, there was no urgency. If they didn’t return her possessions right away, then Li Ningyu would have died in vain.

  When I started whispering all this to Li Ningyu, she made a massive fuss about needing to go to the toilet. I knew she was worried about bugs, so I helped her in there. As a matter of fact, by that time the enemy had stopped listening in on us – it was the last evening, after all, and Hihara was in such a rage that he’d abandoned all of that, he wasn’t bothering with trying to trick us any more. He was just keeping us under lock and key, waiting for the moment he could issue his instructions and have us all put to death.

  [Transcription ends]

  Once they were safely inside the bathroom, Li Ningyu explained her idea to Gu Xiaomeng.

  ‘If I had the slightest hope that I might be able to get a message out in my picture,’ she said to Gu Xiaomeng, ‘why would I tell you about it?’

  As Madame Gu told me, ‘Li Ningyu was always several steps ahead – nobody had a hope of following her thought processes.’

  Li Ningyu told Gu Xiaomeng about the notes she was going to leave for Hihara and Commander Zhang, the aim being that this would look as if her suicide was an attempt to prove her innocence and show them that she wasn’t a Communist and couldn’t possibly be Ghost.

  ‘Do you think Hihara will believe that?’ Li Ningyu asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I agree. That won’t allay his suspicions. He’ll search my body, search all of my belongings, and when it comes to this drawing, he’ll be sure there’s something hidden in it somewhere, so he’ll pay it particular attention.’

  ‘But he won’t crack the code.’

  ‘Do you think anyone can crack it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You could.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. Haven’t I already told you what it says?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. I’m not going to tell him.’

  ‘Oh, but you must!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s the only way. You have to betray me, you have to show that I am indeed Ghost. That’s the only way that he’ll be able to trust you completely, and then you’ll be able to get out of here…’

  Outside the window, an owl hooted a brief warning. The all-enveloping darkness could no longer conceal the shadows of the impending death. Inside the room, Li Ningyu explained in an undertone exactly what should be done after she died. Gu Xiaomeng listened intently. She could feel the hairs on her scalp prickling, because it seemed as if she were talking to a ghost.

  3

  The next day, everything happened exactly as Li Ningyu had planned it. At just after six in the morning, Secretary Bai was the first to discover her body curled up on the floor with blood trickling from every orifice. In his wake came Section Chief Jin and Gu Xiaomeng. Half an hour later, Colonel Hihara and Police Chief Wang hurried to the scene. Gu Xiaomeng was wiping away her tears while at the same time putting Li Ningyu’s possessions in order.

  Hihara immediately ordered them all to leave the room, and he and Wang Tianxiang then conducted a basic search. About ten minutes later, they came out to have breakfast. Hearing them approach, Gu Xiaomeng rushed out to intercept Hihara on the stairs; this time she didn’t look upset at all. Glancing quickly to left and right, she slyly made her report. She said that when she was collecting Li Ningyu’s things she’d found a drawing and she thought there was something odd about it and would like to have another look. Hihara had already been studying the picture and was bothered by the fact that he couldn’t make anything of it, so when he saw that Gu Xiaomeng might be able to help him, he was very happy to agree.

  After breakfast, Hihara went to get Gu Xiaomeng and ask her what she’d found. Gu Xiaomeng was careful to appear unhurried.

  ‘Colonel Hihara, I’ve made the most amazing discovery. You’re not going to believe it!’ She was spinning it out, playing her fish on the end of her line.

  ‘Oh really? Do tell.’

  ‘I know who Ghost is.’ Hihara opened his mouth to respond, but Gu Xiaomeng got in before him. ‘You’re not allowed to ask anything yet. You have to promise me something first and then I’ll tell you.’ She was being deliberately provocative and arrogant – an act that she’d become very good at.

  ‘Okay, what do you want?’

  ‘If I tell you, you have to give
me a reward.’

  ‘Of course, what do you want?’

  ‘I want you to let me go, I want to get out of here.’

  ‘That’s fine. No problem. We’ll let you go.’

  Of course, making promises came easily to him. But Gu Xiaomeng wasn’t going to let him get away with just empty words; she crooked her little finger and wanted Hihara to hook his own around it in a pact.

  Why not? Would it bother him – an officer in the Imperial Japanese Army – if he broke his word?

  So they hooked their little fingers together, he swore to keep his promise, and their deadly compact was reframed by Gu Xiaomeng as a children’s game.

  Only then did Gu Xiaomeng point to the grass in Li Ningyu’s drawing and gently explain what it meant. As her beautiful lips formed the words, a shocking secret stood revealed. As if by magic, the grass transformed itself into a string of Arabic numbers:

  6643 1032 9976 0523 1801 0648 3194 5028 5391 2585 9982

  It was written in standard international Chinese-language telegraph code, in plain text. Transcribing this was easy enough for Gu Xiaomeng; it was what she did for a living, after all, so she could read it off straight away. The numbers metamorphosed into this message:

  For urgent dispatch!

  Call off the Gathering of Heroes immediately!

  To prove that she wasn’t lying, Gu Xiaomeng recommended that Hihara bring in Section Chief Jin to check the message. Jin Shenghuo had been a Section Chief for many years, so he’d lost the familiarity that comes from daily practice and he couldn’t just read off the message at first glance the way that Gu Xiaomeng could. But he could decrypt it one word at a time, a little more slowly. The message he got was exactly the same as Gu Xiaomeng’s.