The Message

by Mai Jia

  ‘Oh!’ Hihara sighed in amazement. ‘What a genius. Li Ningyu really was a remarkable woman to think of something like that. Thank God I had your sharp eyes to help me, Xiaomeng, or I might never have discovered the identity of Ghost. Who could have imagined it? She really was dug in very deep.’

  He gripped Gu Xiaomeng’s little hand tightly. He was bubbling over with delight and excitement; he was so grateful, he hardly knew how to express it.

  ‘That’s really amazing, Xiaomeng. I’m so impressed that you realized what she was up to – that takes a kind of genius too! All I can say is that I am proud, Xiaomeng, to have someone like you working for me.’

  He would have been only too happy to do Gu Xiaomeng’s packing for her. He sent her on her way, just as he had promised.

  4

  There was no need to be in such a hurry; Gu Xiaomeng had no intention of leaving.

  Although she’d earlier demanded to be released, when the time came, she didn’t want to go.

  Madame Gu asked me to guess why she refused to leave. I really had no idea and every guess I made was wrong. In the end, she had to explain. She said that Li Ningyu had instructed her that she should only leave if Hihara also released everyone else. If Gu Xiaomeng was the only person allowed to go and that evening the enemy failed to arrest K, then there was every chance that Hihara would suspect her again.

  So Gu Xiaomeng told Hihara, ‘Now that you’ve found Ghost, we can all leave. I’ll go with the others.’

  ‘No, you can go now,’ Hihara said. ‘Have you considered that Ghost might be more than one person?’ The old fox liked to think of every possibility. He patted Gu Xiaomeng’s hand, smiling gently. ‘Maybe I’m reading too much into all of this, but it never hurts to be careful. You’re too young to know how dangerous this world can be. Did you know that your Unit Chief Li was Ghost? No, you did not! So you will get to leave first – that’s your reward, just as I promised.’

  ‘I really appreciate how open and honest you’ve been with me, Colonel Hihara,’ Gu Xiaomeng said, ‘but I can’t leave like this. I’m not that stupid. I’m not prepared to run silly risks just so I can leave a few hours before the others.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Hihara asked.

  ‘Colonel Hihara, have you considered that if I leave ahead of the others and by some chance the Communists change the time or place of the Gathering of Heroes on the spur of the moment, what a difficult position that would put me in? How would I explain? How would I clear my name? Even if I jumped into the Yellow River, I could never wash myself clean!’

  ‘But you have me on your side,’ Hihara said. ‘There’s nothing to be scared of, I can vouch for your innocence.’

  ‘But you’re leaving in a couple of days. You can speak up for me now, but what about later? I’m not going anywhere, Colonel Hihara; you’re just going to have to put up with having me around for a few more hours. By spending a little bit longer here, I’ll be able to prove my innocence for the rest of my life – as far as I’m concerned, that’s worth it.’

  When she said that, I was completely confused. ‘So you didn’t leave? How did you get the message out then?’

  The old lady chuckled happily. ‘Who says I didn’t leave? Of course I got out of there, but I wanted to leave on my own terms. When I told Hihara I wasn’t going anywhere, I also asked if I might be allowed to phone my father, and of course he agreed. My father and I had various code words set up in the event of one of us needing to call the other, so the minute he picked up, I pretended that he was telling me I had to go and do something for him. I deliberately raised my voice: “What am I supposed to do? I’ve got important things to do here, I can’t possibly leave.” My father immediately played along, telling me I had to leave right away. I refused and he insisted, so it was stalemate.’

  Hihara was standing right next to her when she made her call; he understood what the problem was and started to make conciliatory gestures at her before she’d even put the phone down. He told her to tell her father she would do what he’d asked, that she’d be on her way immediately.

  So what was it that was so important?

  She told Hihara that her father needed the phone number of a certain official in Nanjing; she had his private number in her address book, but the address book was in her office. So Gu Xiaomeng had to go back to her work unit.

  ‘I’ll be right back; at most it will take me an hour,’ Gu Xiaomeng said.

  Hihara laughed. ‘There’s no need for you to come back, it’s a waste of your time. Do as you’re told and get out of here.’

  Hihara quickly arranged a car for her.

  ‘No, it’s not enough just to get me a car, you have to send someone with me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To prove that I’m not involved in your case, what else?’

  She insisted that he send Police Chief Wang with her. Then she’d be in the clear.

  Hihara said that wasn’t necessary, but Gu Xiaomeng was adamant. Curling her lip, she announced in a high-pitched voice, ‘Colonel Hihara, you just said that the world is a dangerous place and it never hurts to be careful. I have no intention of messing things up for myself now, so I will be coming back, and I insist on having Police Chief Wang go with me; otherwise, I’m not going!’

  ‘All right, all right, go then.’

  That morning, just after nine o’clock, Wang Tianxiang got behind the wheel and drove Gu Xiaomeng off the Tan Estate.

  As you can imagine, she did not forget to take three medicine capsules with her. Not the original three, of course, but others that Li Ningyu had given her the night before.

  As you can also imagine, Li Ningyu had reminded Gu Xiaomeng exactly how she should get the capsules to Turtle.

  She should either drop two empty capsules at one of the intersections on the main road through the base and then place the third, the one containing the message, on the edge of the rubbish bin in front of their building; or, if she saw Turtle in person and the situation allowed it, she could simply drop the third capsule right in front of him. The second option was much safer and simpler, as well as quicker, but she would have to be lucky.

  That day, Gu Xiaomeng’s luck was in. As the car drove onto base, she could see Turtle sitting smoking on the steps of the auditorium; they had to turn past him in order to get to her office. It was all so simple – she just dropped the tiny medicine capsule to the ground without making a sound; it was only rubbish anyway. Even if Turtle had been surrounded by people keeping him under surveillance, he could have picked it up and taken it away without anyone thinking twice about it. After all, who could have imagined that a message of such importance would be hidden inside an ordinary medicine capsule?

  SEVEN

  1

  The final round of interviews took place on a very special day – it was Declassification Day for Madame Gu’s former work unit. Her daughter told me that whenever anyone stopped working there, they were obliged to hand over everything that they’d written while they were in that unit, including their personal diaries and so on. These were kept by the work unit until the time for secrecy was past, then returned to their owners in an annual practice that had begun in the 1980s and was known as Declassification Day. Every year Madame Gu’s daughter would go to the work unit on behalf of her mother to see whether anything belonging to Madame Gu had been included. This morning she had gone as usual, and she’d collected something for her mother.

  It was in a blue silk bag and appeared quite heavy. Because it had already been declassified, Madame Gu was quite happy to open it in front of me. There was a framed cabinet photograph and a handful of letters. The photo was of a man of about sixty wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. You could tell he was someone important.

  Madame Gu looked at the picture and muttered, ‘He must have died.’

  Her daughter nodded.

  ‘He was eleven years younger than me,’ the old lady said.

  ‘They said he got terribly sick and passed away,’ her daughter r
eplied.

  The old lady shook her head. ‘Oh well, he’s gone. That’s fine, everyone’s dead, I’m the only one left now.’ She got up, tottered off and headed up the stairs.

  Her daughter seemed to be under the impression that Madame Gu wouldn’t be coming downstairs again, so she carefully asked whether I’d finished my interviews or not. I said no, I still had a couple of minor questions.

  When the old lady heard that, she turned around and waved me away. ‘No, it’s all over, I’ve said quite enough. I regret having said as much as I did. Our interviews are finished, everything is finished. It’s all over, so you don’t need to disturb me any more. Go away now – my daughter can take you back.’

  She deliberately didn’t say goodbye, just wished me a good journey home. I decided that the quite unnecessary care with which she chose her words had to be a kind of professional disease.

  2

  I was born in the 1960s and grew up in Zhejiang province, on the east coast, right by the sea, so when I was a child, if there were strange lights in the night sky, we used to imagine it was secret agents being parachuted in by Taiwanese planes. Taiwan was the first place in China that I became aware of – I learnt its name even before that of Beijing or Shanghai. I assumed it was very close by, just out of sight over the horizon, and I was certain that when I grew up, I would go and see it for myself. But for my generation it was to prove a great deal easier to go to other parts of the world than it was to go to Taiwan; if you wanted to go to America, or Argentina, or Iceland or Australia, that was fine, but going to Taiwan was not, for all that it was supposed to be a province of China.

  Since it was so difficult to get there, I was of course determined to see as much as I could during my visit to Madame Gu. I arranged a five-day tour that would take me to some of the big sights: the museums and pagodas of Kaohsiung, the cities of Hsinchu and Taoyuan, Alishan’s scenic mountain railway, the human rights memorial on Green Island…

  However, it didn’t matter where I went, nor how beautiful the scenery was, I just couldn’t get the old lady’s voice out of my head. When I came back after my few days away, I had five major questions noted down on my pad and a number of minor queries. The five major questions were as follows:

  How did Turtle pass on the intelligence to his superiors? He was under round-the-clock surveillance and the whole situation had blown up because Warrior had been arrested with a message that he’d passed to her, so how could he guarantee that this new piece of intelligence wouldn’t be intercepted?

  The old lady had repeatedly stated that when she discovered that Li Ningyu had forged her handwriting she was absolutely furious, and the only reason she decided not to turn her in was because she was afraid Li Ningyu would expose her in retaliation. But by this time Li Ningyu was dead and couldn’t blackmail her any more, so why did she still help her?

  After it was all over, Hihara took everyone who’d been under house arrest at the Tan Estate away, together with Commander Zhang and some of his staff. Where did they go? None of them were ever seen again, so what happened to them? Were they all killed?

  Who killed Hihara?

  Why did Madame Gu hate old Mr Pan so much? Had there been some sort of quarrel?

  These questions just wouldn’t let me rest; they obsessed me. Thanks to them, I had no interest in sightseeing; all I wanted to do was go and talk to Madame Gu. I got in touch with her several times, and each time she refused my request for a further interview. But I wouldn’t give up. I was determined to have another go. On the fourth day, feeling pretty desperate by now, I decided to get a taxi and make my way out there uninvited. Even though I knew it was wrong, I did it anyway.

  Madame Gu was resting after lunch in a shady nook in her garden. Having me turn up unexpectedly like that was such a shock that she couldn’t quite summon the energy to get rid of me. She just shook her head and sighed, muttering complaints to herself.

  I didn’t apologize, because I knew that would make her wonder what I was up to. It wouldn’t get my questions answered. Instead, I seized my opportunity and took control of the conversation.

  ‘I’ve come back because I think some of what you said doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.’

  ‘What?’

  My challenge had worked. Madame Gu was hooked.

  ‘I told you the truth.’

  I pressed on.

  Just as I’d hoped, she took my questions very seriously; she answered each one of them, large and small, very carefully. But when it came to the final one, on whether she was angry with Mr Pan senior for some reason, she got very cross and refused to respond. All she said to that was, ‘Don’t mention him – it just annoys me!’

  I was convinced that the two of them must have fallen out, but what could it be that even after all these years she could neither forget nor forgive? As a middle-aged man, I had come to believe very strongly in the words of the philosopher: time will erode every human emotion, even the deepest and most elemental feelings of love and hate. Perhaps I should have shared those words with her, and perhaps she would have felt better for telling someone about it. But in the end I didn’t have the heart to put more pressure on her. In many ways, I was only too happy with how far I’d managed to get with those interviews, and something told me that certain things were probably better kept under wraps and not exposed to the light of day.

  3

  Other things, however, did need illuminating, and my first and second questions fell into that category.

  Regarding my first question, Madame Gu said that when Hihara failed to arrest K and the others that evening at the Agate Belvedere Inn, he decided that Ghost must have had an associate and Commander Zhang was the prime suspect. So he had Turtle arrested and he interrogated him that same night, hoping to find out who Ghost’s contact was. But Turtle would rather have died than reveal his secrets (and in fact had nothing to say about this, since he didn’t know who had dropped the capsules for him), so Hihara probably never found out exactly what had happened. Hihara then went back to Shanghai. Turtle remained under lock and key, and Gu Xiaomeng eventually managed to smuggle herself in to see him. By that time, Turtle didn’t have many more days to live. It was at that meeting that he told her many things, including how he had managed to pass the message on.

  Turtle always proceeded according to the level of urgency indicated in the message. This sometimes required that he go to the nearest post office and phone his superior directly. ‘That was risky,’ Madame Gu explained, ‘because it might give the enemy the phone number of his contact, which would then blow the cover of that entire string of agents. But sometimes there was no alternative. In this instance, Turtle didn’t have a moment to waste; he had to put his head in the noose. And he was lucky: the enemy hadn’t stationed their people too close, in case Turtle spotted them, so although they saw him making the call, they didn’t hear what was said. That was how the message got out, and how we made sure that Li Ningyu didn’t die in vain.’

  I immediately moved on to the second question. As Madame Gu listened to me, her expression changed; she was clearly deeply moved and very upset. When she started to speak, she couldn’t keep the sobs from rising in her throat, and that made me feel bad for having brought it up. But once she’d rubbed her face with a hot towel and had a sip or two of water, she calmed down. She then recalled once again for me everything that had happened on Li Ningyu’s last night.

  The two young women were in the bathroom. Li Ningyu had finished explaining to Gu Xiaomeng about the suicide notes and the code in the painting and was now trying to make her promise to take the message out for her. She knelt down on the bathroom floor and handed Gu Xiaomeng the three medicine capsules. But then she refused to get up again.

  ‘She said that I had to swear I’d help her get the message to Turtle, and until I did so she would stay on her knees.’

  The old lady shook her head vigorously, as if she were right there, caught up in those long-ago events, as if she could still see Li Ningyu
kneeling in front of her.

  ‘Every time I pulled her to her feet, she knelt down again, and that happened a good few times. I really didn’t want to swear that I’d help her – why should I? She was begging me for help and then asking me to promise I would actually do it. What the hell…? She was absolutely insistent. She kept falling to her knees, and her kneecaps were getting more and more scraped, until in the end there was blood everywhere.’

  Madame Gu picked up the hot towel and gave her face another dab.

  ‘It got to the point where I just couldn’t stand it any more, so after a while I said I would. I promised her I would do it.’

  She paused, fiddled with her dentures. Out of regret, or irritation, or something else, it was impossible to tell.

  ‘You want to know why she did it like that? By the next day she wouldn’t be able to blackmail me any longer. She’d be dead and I’d be free to go back on my word. If I didn’t help her get the message out, then her death would have been in vain. So she had to move me, she had to arouse my sympathy, because that was the only way to get me to help.

  ‘To tell you the truth, afterwards I did hesitate, because it was dangerous. But when I hesitated I remembered what she’d looked like kneeling on the floor and refusing to get up, her face wet with tears, the blood soaking through the legs of her trousers. It was so awful, so distressing. In the end, we’re all emotional beings, and sometimes that’s just how it happens. My memory of those moments proved more important than my earlier hatred and fear of her. I decided to do what she’d asked of me because I felt sorry for her.’

  Madame Gu made a point of emphasizing that she’d acted as she did because she felt sorry for Li Ningyu and not because she’d been won over to her cause. She seemed determined not to aggrandize her own role in what happened.