The Man From Beijing

by Henning Mankell

  ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘Everything’s fine.’

  The connection was cut off. She tried to call again, but couldn’t get through. She sent a text confirming the change in plans.

  When she finished, she looked around and had the feeling that somebody had been in her room while she had been detained by the police. Her suitcase was open. Her clothes were not as she had packed them. The night before, she had tried closing the lid to make sure that nothing was catching. She tried closing the lid again now, but it was impossible.

  Then she realised – identifying an attacker was nothing more than a means of getting her out of her hotel room. Everything had gone very quickly once Chan Bing had finished reading the minutes to her. He must have been informed that whoever was searching her room had finished.

  It’s not about my case, she thought. The police are searching my room for other reasons. Just as Hong Qiu suddenly appears at my table out of thin air.

  There’s only one possible explanation. Somebody wants to know what I’m doing with a photograph of an unknown man outside the skyscraper next to a hospital. Perhaps that man isn’t such a mystery after all?

  The fear she had felt earlier now hit her with full force. She started searching for cameras and microphones, looking behind pictures, examining lampshades, but she found nothing.

  At the agreed time she met Hong Qiu in the lobby. Hong Qiu suggested they go to a famous restaurant, but Birgitta didn’t want to leave the hotel.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘Mr Chan Bing is a very trying man. All I want to do is to have a quick bite to eat, then go to sleep. I’m going home tomorrow.’

  The final sentence was intended as a question. Hong Qiu nodded.

  ‘Yes, you’re going home tomorrow.’

  They sat down by one of the tall windows. A pianist was playing on a small stage in the middle of the huge room, which contained both aquariums and fountains.

  ‘I recognise that tune,’ said Birgitta Roslin. ‘It’s an English song from the Second World War. We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when. Perhaps it’s about us?’

  ‘I’ve always wanted to visit the Nordic countries. Who knows?’

  Birgitta drank red wine. It made her tipsy on an empty stomach.

  ‘It’s all over now,’ she said. ‘I can go home. I’ve got my bag back and I’ve seen the Great Wall of China. I’ve convinced myself that the Chinese peasants’ revolt has made enormous strides forward. What has happened in this country is nothing less than a human miracle. When I was young I longed to be one of those marching with Mao’s Little Red Book in my hand, surrounded by thousands of other young people. You and I are about the same age. What did you dream of?’

  ‘I was one of the marchers.’

  ‘Convinced?’

  ‘We all were. Have you ever seen a circus or a theatre full of children? They screech with sheer joy. Not necessarily because of what they are seeing, but because they are together with a thousand other children in a tent or in a theatre. No teachers, no parents. They rule the world. If there are enough of you, you can be convinced of anything at all.’

  ‘That’s not an answer to my question.’

  ‘I’m about to answer it now. I was like those children in the tent. But I was also convinced that without Mao Zedong, China would never be able to raise itself out of its poverty. Being a Communist meant fighting against destitution and poverty.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘What Mao had constantly warned against. That restlessness and dissatisfaction would always be there. But the dissatisfaction was caused by various different expectations. Only a fool thinks you can step into the same river twice. Today, I can see clearly how much of the future Mao predicted.’

  ‘Are you still a Communist?’

  ‘Yes. So far nothing has convinced me that there is any other way to combat the poverty, still so widespread in our country, than working together with my comrades.’

  Birgitta gestured with one arm and accidentally knocked her wine glass, spilling a few drops on the tablecloth.

  ‘This hotel. When I wake up and look around, I could be anywhere in the world.’

  ‘There’s a long way to go yet.’

  The food was served. The pianist had stopped playing. Birgitta was wrestling with her thoughts. Eventually she put down her knife and fork and looked at Hong Qiu, who stopped eating immediately.

  ‘Tell me the truth now. I’m about to go home. You don’t need to play games with me any longer. Who are you? Why have I been kept under surveillance all the time? Who is Chan Bing? Who was that man I was supposed to pick out? I don’t believe all that nonsense about it being connected with my bag and a foreigner being the victim of an unfortunate attack.’

  She had expected Hong Qiu to react in some way, to drop some of the defences she had been hiding behind all the time, but she was unmoved.

  ‘What else could it be about, apart from the attack?’

  ‘Somebody has searched my room.’

  ‘Is anything missing?’ Hong Qiu asked.

  ‘No. But I know somebody has been there.’

  ‘If you like I can talk to the hotel’s head of security.’

  ‘I want you to answer my questions. What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing, apart from my wanting our guests to feel secure in our country.’

  ‘Am I really supposed to believe that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hong Qiu. ‘I want you to believe what I say.’

  Something in her voice led Birgitta Roslin to lose the desire to ask any further questions. She knew she wouldn’t get any answers. She would never know if it was Hong Qiu or Chan Bing who had been keeping watch on her all the time. There was an entrance and an exit, and Birgitta was running backwards and forwards down a corridor between them, with a blindfold over her eyes.

  Hong Qiu accompanied her back to her room. Birgitta took hold of Hong Qiu’s wrist.

  ‘No more interference? No more muggers? No more people with faces I recognise suddenly turning up?’

  ‘I’ll collect you at twelve o’clock.’

  Birgitta Roslin slept fitfully that night. She got up at the crack of dawn and had a quick breakfast in the dining room. She didn’t recognise any of the waitresses or guests. Before leaving her room she had hung the do not disturb notice and sprinkled some bath salts on the mat just inside the door. When she came back she could see that nobody had beenin the room.

  As agreed, she was collected by Hong Qiu. When they came to the airport, Hong Qiu led her through a special security gate so that she didn’t need to queue.

  They said their goodbyes at passport control. Hong Qiu handed over a small parcel.

  ‘A present from China.’

  ‘From you or the country?’

  ‘From both of us.’

  Birgitta wondered if she might have been unfair to Hong Qiu after all. Perhaps she had only been doing her best to help the foreign visitor to forget the mugging.

  ‘Have a good flight,’ said Hong Qiu. ‘Maybe we’ll meet again one of these days.’

  Birgitta went through passport control. When she turned round, Hong Qiu had vanished.

  Only when she had settled down in her seat and the plane had taken off did she open the parcel. It was a porcelain miniature of a young girl waving Mao’s Little Red Book over her head.

  Birgitta put it in her bag and closed her eyes. Her relief at being on the way home at last made her feel very tired.

  When she arrived in Copenhagen, Staffan was there to meet her. That evening she sat by his side on the sofa and told him stories about the trip. But she said nothing about the mugging.

  Karin Wiman called. Birgitta promised to visit her in Copenhagen as soon as possible.

  The day after she got back, she went to see her doctor. Her blood pressure had gone down. If it stayed stable, she would be able to return to work in a few more days.

  It was snowing lightly when she emerged into the street agai
n. She could hardly wait to go back to work.

  The next day she was in her office by seven in the morning and began sorting through the papers that had piled up on her desk, even though she was not officially back at work yet.

  Snow was falling more heavily now, a layer growing thicker on her window ledge.

  She placed the statuette from Hong Qiu, which had red cheeks and a big victorious smile, next to the telephone. She took the surveillance photograph out of her inside pocket and put it at the bottom of a drawer in her desk.

  When she closed the drawer, she had the feeling that it was all over at last.

  PART 4

  The Colonisers (2006)

  In your fight for the total liberation of oppressed peoples, rely first and foremost on their own efforts, and afterwards – and only afterwards – on international aid. The people who have succeeded in their own revolution should assist those who are still fighting for their freedom. That is our international duty.

  Mao Zedong, conversation with African friends, 8 August 1963

  Bark Peeled Off by Elephants

  26

  Some thirty-five miles west of Beijing, not far from the ruins of the Yellow Emperor’s palace, were several grey buildings surrounded by high walls. They were sometimes used by the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. The buildings looked less than imposing from the outside and comprised several large conference rooms, a kitchen and a restaurant, and were surrounded by grounds where the delegates could stretch their legs or conduct intimate private conversations. Only those in the innermost circles of the Communist Party knew that these buildings, which were always referred to as the Yellow Emperor, were used to house the most important discussions about the future of China.

  And that is precisely what was happening one winter’s day in 2006. Early in the morning a number of black cars drove in at high speed through the gates in the wall, which closed again immediately. A fire was burning in the largest of the conference rooms. Nineteen men and three women were gathered there. Most of them were over sixty, the youngest about thirty-five. Everybody knew everybody else. As a group they formed the elite that in practice governed China, both politically and economically. The president and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces were absent. But delegates would report back to both when the conference was over and present the proposals they had all agreed upon.

  There was only one item on the agenda for today. It had been formulated as a matter of great secrecy, and all those present had been sworn to silence. Anybody who broke that oath need have no doubt that he or she would disappear from public life without a trace.

  In one of the private rooms a man in his forties was pacing restlessly. In his hand was the speech he had been working on for months, which he was due to deliver this morning. He knew that it was one of the most important documents ever to be presented to the inner circle of the Communist Party since China had become independent in 1949.

  Yan Ba, who worked in futurology at Beijing University had been given the assignment by the president of China himself two years previously. From that day onward he had been relieved of all his professorial duties and assigned a staff of thirty assistants. The whole project had been shrouded in maximum secrecy and supervised by the president’s personal security service. The speech had been written on just one computer to which only Yan Ba had access. Nobody else had seen the text he was now holding in his hand.

  Not a single sound penetrated the walls. According to rumour the room had once been a bedroom used by Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing; after Mao’s death she had been arrested together with three others, the so-called Gang of Four, put on trial and had later committed suicide in prison. She had demanded absolute silence in whatever room she slept in. Builders and decorators had always travelled in advance to insulate her bedroom, and soldiers had been sent out to kill any dogs that might bark within hearing range of any temporary accommodation she was staying in.

  Yan Ba checked his watch. It was ten minutes to nine. He would begin his lecture at precisely a quarter past. At seven o’clock he had taken a pill prescribed by his doctor. It was supposed to make him calm but not drowsy. He could feel that the nervousness really was ebbing away. If what was written on the papers in his hand became reality, there would be earth-shattering consequences throughout the world, not merely in China. But nobody would ever know that he was the person who had devised and formulated the proposals that had been put into practice. He would simply return to his professorship and his students. His salary would increase, and he had already moved into a larger flat in central Beijing. The pledge of secrecy he had signed would affect him for the rest of his life. Responsibility, criticism and perhaps also praise for what happened would go to the relevant politicians to whom he, like all other citizens, owed allegiance.

  He sat by the window and drank a glass of water. Big changes do not take place on the battlefield, he thought. They happen behind locked doors. Alongside the leaders of the United States and Russia, the president of China is the most powerful man in the world. He must now make some momentous decisions. The people assembled here are his ears. They will listen to what Yan Ba has to say and make their judgements. The outcome will slowly seep out from the Yellow Emperor to the world at large.

  Yan Ba was reminded of a journey he had made a few years earlier with a geologist friend. They had travelled to the remote mountainous regions where the source of the Yangtze River is located. They had followed the winding and increasingly narrow stream to a point where it was no more than a trickle of water.

  His friend had put down his foot and said: ‘Now I am stopping the mighty Yangtze in its tracks.’

  The memory of that incident had dogged him throughout the laborious months during which he had been working on his lecture about the future of China. He was now the person with the power to change the course of the mighty river.

  Yan Ba picked up a list of the delegates who had begun to assemble in the conference room. He was familiar with all the names and never ceased to be astonished that they were gathering to listen to him. This was a group of the most powerful people in China: politicians, a few military men, economists, philosophers and not least the so-called grey mandarins who devised political strategies that were constantly being measured against reality. There were also a few of the country’s leading commentators on foreign affairs and representatives from the security organisations. All were part of an ingenious mix that made up the centre of power in China, with its population of more than a billion.

  A door opened silently and a waitress dressed in white came in with the cup of tea he had ordered. The girl was very young and very beautiful. Without a word she put down the tray and left the room again.

  When the time came at last, he examined his face in the mirror and smiled. He was ready to put down his foot and stop the river in its tracks.

  It was completely silent when Yan Ba moved up to the lectern. He adjusted the microphone, arranged his papers and peered out at his audience, which looked shadowy in the dim light.

  He started talking about the future: the reason he was standing there, why the president and the polituro had called on him to explain what major changes were now necessary. He told his audience what the president had said to him when he was given his task.

  ‘We have reached a point where a new and dramatic change of direction is required. If we don’t make the change, or if we make the wrong one, there is a serious risk that unrest could break out. Not even our loyal armed forces would be able to stand up to hundreds of millions of furious peasants intent on rebellion.’

  That was how Yan Ba had seen his task. China was faced with a threat that had to be met by discerning and bold countermeasures. If not, the country could collapse into the same state of chaos it had experienced so many times before in its history.

  Hidden behind the men and the few women sitting before him in the semi-darkness were hundreds of millions of peasants waiting impatiently for a new life, like the lives the ex
panding middle classes in urban areas were enjoying. Their patience was running out, developing into boundless fury and demands for immediate action. The time was ripe; the apple would soon fall to the ground and begin to decay if they did not rush to pick it up.

  Yan Ba began his lecture by miming a symbolic fork in the road with his hands. ‘This is where we are now,’he said. ‘Our great revolution has led us here, to a point that our parents could never even have dreamed of. For a brief moment we can pause at this fork in the road and turn round and look back. In the distance is the destitution and suffering we come from. It is recent enough for the generation before ours to remember what it was like, living like rats. The rich landowners and the old public officials regarded the people as soulless vermin, fit for nothing apart from working themselves to death. We both can and should be astonished at how far we have progressed since then, thanks to our great party and the leaders who have led us along the right paths. We know that truth is always changing, that new decisions must constantly be made in order to ensure that the old principles of socialism and solidarity will survive. Life does not stop to wait; new demands are being made of us all the time, and we must seek out the knowledge to enable us to find the solutions to these new problems. We know that we can never attain an everlasting paradise to call our own. If we do believe that, paradise becomes a trap. There is no reality without struggle, no future without battles. We have learned that class differences will always manifest themselves, just as circumstances in the world keep on changing, countries going from strength to weakness and then back to strength. Mao Zedong said that there is constant unease under the skies, and we know that he was right – we are on a ship that requires us to navigate through channels whose depth we can never judge in advance. For even the sea floor is constantly shifting: there are threats to our existence and our future that cannot be seen.’

  Yan Ba turned a page. He could sense the total concentration in the room. No one moved; everyone waited for what came next. He had planned to talk for five hours. That is what the delegates were expecting. When he told the president his lecture was written, he had been told that no pauses would be allowed. The delegates would have to remain in their seats from start to finish.