Beijing Payback

by Daniel Nieh

  We make extra sure that the cabdriver, who is also some sort of Chen foot soldier, remembers to stick around with our luggage, no matter what he sees or hears. Then we hop out and amble over to the emergency exit at the back of Tower B. The towers sit on the west side of the East Second Ring Road, and everything to our left is hutongs and siheyuan-style courtyard buildings. The towers are to our right, and past them, the skyscrapers of Sanlitun. The contrast between the beautiful, occasionally crumbling single-story buildings from the Qing Dynasty and the beastly structures of concrete and plate glass jars me out of my sleepy taxi haze and brings me back to the real live fucked-up streets of Beijing, where we might die soon. More firecrackers explode in the middle distance. Construction workers from the provinces squat in clumps on the sidewalk, eating noodles out of plastic takeout containers. They watch us blankly as we walk by.

  Now that we’re out of the cab, I can ask Sun the question that’s been burning in my mind. “Is that true, what Flat Head Chen said about Dad working for him?”

  “I think it’s not true.” He slows his pace a bit and leans toward me. “I am not so happy that Mr. Chen asked us this favor. Old Zhao is very dangerous. He will not hesitate to kill us. We will have to be extremely careful.”

  I nod, although the idea that we weren’t previously being careful makes me want to giggle. If Sun is nervous, I ought to be petrified, but instead I’m feeling brave, hollowed out by my focus. After all, I didn’t choose to be here, and I can’t choose to leave. Coach Flat Head put me into the game with my team down ten. He gave me a chance to go after the guy who was behind Dad’s death. Might as well execute the play.

  A couple of office workers are smoking cigarettes outside the emergency exit. The door’s propped open, so we don’t even need the fob. They look at us a little strangely as we walk up, but no one says anything, and the guy standing by the door even scuttles out of our way when he sees us coming.

  Once we’re in the stairwell, I pull off my sunglasses. “It’s not good that we look like thugs,” I say, glancing around. “Shit!”

  I grab Sun by the arm and yank him under the staircase as all my bravery melts away. “He said there were no cameras in the stairwell, but look,” I hiss. “There’s one right above us.” I feel a rush of adrenaline and hot blood. A sinking feeling fills my abdomen as I picture Chinese investigators reviewing the CCTV footage and matching my face to some biometric database—maybe that photo from the airport. What the fuck am I doing here? How accurate is The Bourne Identity? I’m not prepared for this. I spent my life preparing for other stuff. I pull the balaclava over my face.

  “Maybe they’re new,” Sun mutters, pulling out his phone. “We’ll have to phone in the diversion now and run up the stairs. Chen said security will be distracted for at least twenty minutes. We will lose some time and perhaps the element of surprise. You understand the plan?”

  I check Dad’s Casio: 2:48. “Uh-huh.”

  Sun hits SEND.

  Normally, nineteen flights of stairs would be a warm-up for me, but not sleeping, getting pummeled by Ouyang, and being shocked with a Taser by Chen’s cops has taken some of the zip out of my step. Still, it feels nice to push myself, three or four stairs at a time, hauling around the landings with my hands on the railing: a straightforward game for once. Sun is right behind me, and I distract myself from the fire in my quadriceps by admiring how silent his footfalls are, even when moving at top speed. Or maybe it’s not his top speed. Maybe it’s just mine.

  I slow to a walk on the eighteenth floor to catch my breath: 2:52. Not bad. I don’t hear any alarms or shouting, so maybe the commotion is confined to the courtyard downstairs. Maybe we didn’t lose the element of surprise. Or maybe there are twenty guys with shotguns on the other side of this door.

  I draw the PPQ. Sun pulls the pin on the stun grenade but keeps the lever squeezed. He takes out the fob with his other hand.

  “Remember to cover your ears,” he says.

  “Right.”

  I’ve got the gun in my left hand, and my right hand is on the door handle. My face is hot and itchy under the balaclava.

  “Do it,” I say.

  He presses the fob to the sensor by the door, and the little LED goes from red to green.

  I pull open the door and raise the gun. A paunchy guy in a bomber jacket is standing in the corridor, flattening himself against the wall. He looks surprised.

  “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound,” I say. Three doors on the left and two doors on the right—all closed.

  “Where’s the Frenchman?” He narrows his eyes and shakes his head. Real tough. I exchange a glance with Sun, who’s flat against the stairwell wall, and he makes a hurry-up gesture.

  “Hey!” I call down the hallway. “Uh, who knows the capital of South Africa? Who wants to play golf with my uncle?”

  The guy looks bewildered, but sure enough, two other guys file out of the middle door on the left side, trying to figure out who the hell is shouting random shit. They see their friend first, then follow his eyes to me standing in the stairwell, then throw their hands up into the air.

  “Okay,” I say. Sun releases the lever, counts to one, then lobs the stun grenade underhand so it lands around their feet. I slam the door closed and cover my ears.

  BAM!

  When I run in after Sun, the three stooges are staggering around with their hands on the wall, their knees, their heads. Sun rushes the first and sends him sprawling to the floor with a baton blow to the upper back. I zip-tie his wrists and ankles and clean out his pockets while Sun proceeds to knock the other two onto the ground. He’s checking the offices and I’m finishing the last set of ankles when someone says, “Bié dòng!—Don’t move!”

  Look who it is, back from San Dimas: the head of security of Happy Year restaurants, standing at the far end of the hallway with a long-barreled revolver leveled at my head. Fighting down the urge to look around for Sun, I slowly raise my hands.

  “Jump toward my voice,” Sun whispers from somewhere behind me and to my left. “Three seconds.”

  Two. One. The knife whines past me toward Ponytail’s head. He drops to the floor and fires a shot that obliterates part of the doorjamb as I dive backward into the office.

  “Bonjour, Victor!” exclaims Gregoire. He’s had his ass kicked since yesterday: the skin around his eyes is puffy and colorful, and he’s bleeding from a cut on his lip. His left hand is in a cast that leaves just the tips of his fingers exposed. But he’s grinning like a madman as he helps me up from the ground. Meanwhile, Sun has snatched the pistol from the back of my pants and wheeled back to the door. I hear a close bang and a farther one from Ponytail’s revolver—he has us pinned. From an open window I hear a chorus of angry shouts and pained shrieks that must have something to do with our diversion.

  “Explain to him,” Sun calls over his shoulder. He’s crouched in the doorway, fixated on Ponytail’s position. “Then we go.”

  “Right. Gregoire. You need to take the emergency staircase down to the ground floor. There are two cabs waiting in the lane behind the building. Get in the second one. Go somewhere safe. The driver has an envelope with the stuff we were gonna give you. Got it?”

  “Yes sir, Mister Victor, sir,” he says, snapping off a goofy salute.

  “Are you all right?”

  “All right? But Victor, I am superb! All this?”—he waves his hands generally to include myself, his bruised face, and the gunfight going on behind us—“Trop sensationnel! I will win the Londres for sure. You have punched my ticket, mon frère!”

  Sun startles me out of my astonishment with a harried request for the time. I tell him: 2:56.

  “You will take the gun and keep him off the corner while I go down the hallway. Six bullets left. Don’t use them all. And don’t hit me,” Sun says. “Gregoire, get ready. Here.”

  Sun hands me the gun and we swap places as quickly as possible. I can see the toe of Ponytail’s shoe nosing around the corner at the end of the hallwa
y like a dare. Then he pulls around and I dodge back as his shot pulverizes another fist-sized chunk of the doorjamb. I crouch low, whip as little of my body around the corner as possible, and send him back around the corner with a wild shot.

  “Go now!” I say, taking aim just past the wall where Ponytail vanished and firing off another shot. Sun sends Gregoire toward the staircase and then darts past me, low to the ground. I fire three more, pinning Ponytail back as Sun picks his spot, lying on his stomach by the far wall, holding the Taser in front of his face with both hands. Then I wait, huddled in the doorway. An eternity of about ten seconds passes, and then Ponytail peeks half his face around the corner, and half his face is enough.

  Sun keeps the Taser going for the full five seconds as he stands up from the floor and Ponytail crashes down onto it: 2:59. I’m jogging up the hallway as Sun kneels over Ponytail and tries to pry the revolver from his shaking, convulsing hands.

  Then a man comes charging out of the far doorway in a blur of flashing metal: the man with the thick glasses from Ai’s photo—Zhao, swiping at Sun with a pair of Japanese swords. Sun dives past him and rolls through the doorway, and Zhao spins around and lunges after him.

  I mutter obscenities to myself as I sprint down the hall. A lot of grunting and yelling reaches my ears as I turn the corner. Sun is scampering around a large, extravagant office, evading Zhao’s attacks. The older man’s stance is wide and low, and his moves, though not particularly fast, are coordinated and elegant. His face is small and alert, with pale skin and almost no eyebrows. He can’t match Sun’s agility, but it isn’t pretty: Sun vaults off the desk and crashes into a bookshelf, hurls a few hardcovers at his assailant, then rolls onto the enormous red rug that occupies the center of the room.

  “Shoot him!” he yells at me.

  I take aim and squeeze out my last bullet, just as Zhao turns to look at me, and it’s loud. The shorter sword pings out of Zhao’s left hand and tumbles to the ground. So does Sun, clutching his neck with both hands. He makes some sick, wet, gasping noises, and blood runs freely between his fingers and down his chest.

  “No!” My legs, my arms, my brain functions all stop. My scream reverberates through my skull. The PPQ thuds onto the red rug.

  Zhao glances down at Sun, then turns back to me and raises his remaining sword, shaking out his other hand. He sees the gun on the floor with the slide jammed back and his face brightens.

  “Méi qiāng le—No more guns,” he says, speaking over Sun’s groans. His voice is deep and sonorous.

  I snatch the PPQ back off the ground by the barrel, the better to use it as a club or a missile.

  Zhao cocks an eyebrow. “No more bullets, anyway.”

  Holding the blade in front of his body, he comes toward me at an angle, blocking off the doorway. I stagger backward, feinting the throw a few times to slow him down.

  “You made a mistake by coming here, Li Xiaozhou. Flat Head Chen is using you,” Zhao intones. He’s stalking me around his massive desk, but not with any sense of urgency. Time is on his side. Ponytail’s convulsions are settling down, Sun is bleeding out onto the carpet, and in a few minutes, security guards will rush out of the elevator.

  I violently shake my head to rid it of his words, narrow my focus to the pattern of his steps. I’m looking at his feet when I notice, among the bric-a-brac Sun knocked off the desk, the silver coin.

  “Old Ai—you killed him, didn’t you?”

  “We learned he was supporting you and Sun Jianshui after we interrogated his driver. I think he calls himself ‘Biceps’?” Zhao sneers. “Of course, I had to hold Brother Ai responsible for the death of Brother Ouyang. We can’t have that kind of discord within our organization. It’s all extremely regrettable.”

  My blurry gaze flits from his feet to Sun, from Sun to the door, then back to his feet, as I try to choose words that will keep me alive for a few more minutes.

  “You seem really overwhelmed with regret,” I say.

  Zhao chuckles. “You’re very young, very foolish, Li Xiaozhou. I didn’t kill your father, you know. I would have, although to do so would have brought me immense pain. Instead, we had a long talk on the phone and he saw how foolish he had been acting. He’d been living in his fantasy world again, a place where a fish can fly up out of the ocean and live with the birds. He had a bad habit of dreaming too much. But I reminded him where he came from. Who he really was. After that, I don’t know. Perhaps he had enemies in America. Perhaps you would know better than I.”

  I’m gripping the PPQ so tightly that I can feel every marking along the barrel bite into the palm of my hand. Sun’s groaning grows more urgent, and as the totality of our failure sinks in, the awful, childish urge to cry builds in my face. Come on, Sun. Hang in there. I don’t care what happens to me, I don’t give a fuck about Flat Head Chen or Zhao or anything else right now, but if you die here—“Mustard, mustard,” he groans.

  Mustard.

  I snap back into focus and draw Zhao around the room to where we started. I feint the throw again and vary the length and angle of my backward steps to get him where I want him. “You’re wrong, and you’re disgusting,” I say. “You’ll pay for killing Ai and my father. And you’ll pay for Ice.”

  “Disgusting, maybe. It’s all pretty disgusting, isn’t it,” Zhao says agreeably, gesturing with his sword out the window at his spectacular view of smog-choked skyscrapers. “But I wouldn’t be so sure about wrong. Americans love telling people what’s right and wrong. Well, is it wrong for your corporations to hoard all the blueprints while Chinese workers make their products? Is it wrong for my country to lend your country a trillion dollars to make wars for oil? You think a liver is worse than a Treasury bond?”

  He’s getting a little fired up, coming at me with a few vicious horizontal swipes as his rich voice rises and an ugly smirk spreads across his face.

  “Right and wrong. What garbage! It’s only supply and demand that matters, Li Xiaozhou. That’s the real lesson we learned from you Americans. Did Flat Head Chen tell you he’s right and Ice is wrong? He has a competing operation in Seattle! Supply and demand—that’s why he sent you here. And you say I’m wrong and you’re right.”

  No, your right. Another two steps to your right. There you go. Empty the mind, exhale first, follow through.

  Sun scissors his legs around, sweeping both of Zhao’s heels out from under him and sending him twisting down to the floor. That’s when I hurl the gun at his head, hard, and it catches him square on the temple as he hits the ground. His eyeballs roll upward as his lids fall shut. His hands jerk open and closed, and beside him, on the red rug, his sword rocks back and forth on its round hilt.

  “You’re okay?!” I snatch off Sun’s balaclava, then mine.

  He nods, grimacing, pale.

  “Your bullet hit my hand. Those swords are very sharp, very dangerous. I fell down to give us an advantage,” he says, scanning the carpet. “Ah.”

  He bends down and picks the tip of his left ring finger off the rug.

  “Oh, fuck, man.”

  “It’s okay.” He keeps his eyes on Zhao as he wraps his hand in a torn-off piece of T-shirt. “What time is it?”

  I glance at my watch. “Three-oh-five.”

  “Mm.”

  We look at Zhao, who has stopped shaking and now rests peacefully, his face devoid of cunning and hatred. Scarlet blood drips from his ear onto the rug. Sun kneels over him and puts an ear to his nose.

  “He’s not breathing,” he says.

  I become aware that my lungs are heaving and my shirt is soaked through with cooling sweat. “Good,” I say.

  “Not good enough. Beijing’s hospitals have improved,” Sun says in his matter-of-fact way as he climbs to his feet with the long sword in his hand.

  I stare at him until I need to look away so my face does not get sprayed with blood.

  Part Three

  United States of America

  33

  I wake with a start, throwin
g my arms up in front of my face. The flight attendant jerks back, looking offended. Sun pushes my hands back into my lap.

  “He not thirsty,” he says in English with an apologetic smile. She turns her head away smartly.

  I’m hot, sweaty, breathing heavily.

  “Easy,” Sun says.

  I close my eyes, see blood, open them again. “In fact, I am extremely thirsty,” I say.

  “Here.”

  He passes me his ginger ale. My hands are so shaky that I have to hold the cup with both of them. I take a cool, fizzy sip and close my eyes again, play back the tape—the end of Zhao, Sun’s one-handed disassembly of the three guys in the hallway, who were cutting each other out of their zip ties with a scissor, the harried descent down the stairs, catching our breath in the back of the taxi, the bizarrely mundane stop at a pharmacy. We changed clothes in the bathroom of an upscale mall, and then Sun instructed me on how to clean and bandage his finger. He diligently dabbed my face with concealer and foundation. The airport was crawling with cops, uniformed and plainclothes, but we went through the sixth security lane and the ninth customs desk, just like Flat Head Chen told us to, and nobody so much as blinked an eye at us.

  At the gate I forced myself to slow down my mind, to count my breaths for ten minutes before calling Lang from a pay phone. I told him that Rou Qiangjun killed Dad and that he was staying at the pregnant-lady house on Beacon Street.

  “Where the heck are you?” he said. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you.”

  “I’m in Beijing. It’s a long story. I promise I can explain everything. I’m at the airport now, and I’m landing at LAX at six tonight. But Rou Qiangjun is a flight risk. I really think you should arrest him as soon as possible.”

  “Yeah, look, Victor, that’s not how it works. What flight did you say you were going to be on?”