The Man From Beijing

by Henning Mankell

  ‘We are both early birds,’ he said. ‘Neither of us has the patience to sleep any longer than is absolutely necessary.’

  ‘I’m sorry I hit you.’

  Ya Ru shrugged and pointed at a green-painted jeep on the road next to the tent.

  ‘That’s for you,’ he said. ‘A driver will take you to a place only half a dozen miles from here. When you get there you’ll see the remarkable drama that takes place at every watering hole as dawn breaks. For a short while beasts of prey and their potential victims observe a truce while they are drinking.’

  A black man was standing beside the jeep.

  ‘His name’s Arturo,’ said Ya Ru. ‘He’s a trusted driver who also speaks English.’

  ‘Many thanks for your consideration,’ said Hong Qiu. ‘But we need to talk.’

  Ya Ru brushed aside her last comment. ‘We can do that later. The African dawn doesn’t last long. There’s coffee and some breakfast in a basket.’

  Hong Qiu realised that Ya Ru was trying to make peace. What had happened the day before must not come between them. She went over to the jeep, greeted the driver, who was a thin, middle-aged man, and sat down in the back of the open vehicle. The road winding its way into the bush was almost non-existent, just a faint track in the dry earth. She fended off thorny branches from the low trees that lined the track.

  When they came to the watering hole, Arturo parked near the edge of a steep drop down to the river below and handed Hong Qiu a pair of binoculars. Several hyenas and buffalo were drinking, and Arturo pointed out a herd of elephants. The grey, lumbering animals were approaching the watering hole almost as if they were walking straight out of the sun.

  Hong Qiu had the feeling that this was what the world must have looked like at the beginning of time. Animals had come and gone here for countless generations.

  Arturo served her a cup of coffee without speaking. The elephants were coming closer now, dust whirling round their enormous bodies.

  Then the silence was broken.

  Arturo was the first to die. The bullet hit him in the forehead and split his head in two. Hong Qiu had no time to gather what was happening before she was also hit by a bullet that smashed her jaw, was deflected downward and broke her spine. The loud bangs made the animals raise their heads for a moment and listen. Then they resumed drinking.

  Ya Ru and Liu Xan approached the jeep, used their combined strength to overturn it and sent it tumbling down the steep slope. Liu Xan drenched it with a drum of petrol, stepped to one side, then threw a burning box of matches at the vehicle, which burst into flames with a roar. The animals ran away from the watering hole at high speed.

  Ya Ru was waiting in the back seat of their own jeep. His bodyguard settled down behind the wheel and prepared to start the engine. Ya Ru hit him hard on the back of the head with a steel rod. He kept on hitting until Liu Xan no longer moved, then pushed the bodyguard’s corpse into the fire, which was still burning with full force.

  Ya Ru drove the jeep into the thick vegetation and waited. After half an hour he returned to the camp and raised the alarm concerning an accident that had happened at the watering hole. The jeep had tumbled over the edge of the cliff and rolled down into the watering hole, where it had caught fire. His sister and the driver had both been killed. When Liu Xan tried to rescue them, he had also been engulfed by the flames.

  Everybody who saw Ya Ru that day commented on how upset he was. But at the same time people were impressed by his self-control. He had insisted that the accident should not be allowed to interfere with their important work. Minister of Trade Ke gave his condolences to Ya Ru, and the negotiations continued as planned.

  The bodies were taken away in black plastic bags and cremated in Harare. Nothing was written in the newspapers about the incident, neither in Mozambique nor in Zimbabwe. Arturo’s family, who lived in the town of Xai-Xai in the south of Mozambique, was awarded a pension after his death. It gave all six of his children the possibility of studying, and his wife Emilda was able to buy a new house and a car.

  When Ya Ru travelled back to Beijing with the rest of the delegation, he had with him two urns containing ashes. On one of the first evenings home, he went out onto his huge terrace high above the city and let the ashes drift away into the darkness.

  He was already beginning to miss his sister and the conversations they used to have. But he also knew that what he had done had been absolutely essential.

  Ma Li lamented what had happened in a state of silent dismay. But deep down, she never did believe the story about the car accident.

  31

  On the table was a white orchid. Ya Ru stroked a finger over the soft petals.

  It was an early morning, a month after returning from Africa. In front of him on the table were the plans for a house he had decided to build on the edge of the beach outside the town of Quelimane in Mozambique. As a bonus to the big deals agreed to by the two countries, for an advantageous price Ya Ru had been able to buy a large area of unspoiled beach. In the long term he intended to build an exclusive tourist resort for wealthy Chinese, increasingly large numbers of whom would be venturing out into the world.

  Ya Ru had been standing on a high sand dune, gazing out over the Indian Ocean. It was the day after the deaths of Hong Qiu and Liu Xan. With him were the governor of Zambezi Province and a South African architect who had been specially called in. Suddenly the governor had pointed towards the reef furthest from the shore. A whale was basking there and blowing. The governor explained that it was not unusual to see whales along this stretch of coast.

  ‘What about icebergs?’ wondered Ya Ru. ‘Has a lump of ice from the Antarctic ever drifted as far north as this?’

  ‘There is a legend,’ said the governor. ‘Many generations ago, just before the first white men – the Portuguese sailors – landed on our shores, it’s said that an iceberg was spotted off this coast. The men who paddled out in their canoes to investigate were frightened by the cold given off by the ice. Later, when the white men came ashore from their big sailing ships, people said that the iceberg had been a harbinger of what was soon to happen. The white men were the same colour as the iceberg, their thoughts and actions just as cold. Nobody knows if it’s true or not.’

  ‘I want to build here,’ said Ya Ru. ‘Yellow icebergs will never drift past this beach.’

  After a day of frantic measuring, a large plot of land was marked out and transferred to one of Ya Ru’s many companies. The price for the land and the beach was barely more than symbolic. For a similar sum Ya Ru also bought the approval of the governor and the most important officials, who would ensure that he received the ratification documents and all the necessary building permission without undue delay. The instructions he gave the South African architect had already produced a set of plans and a watercolour sketch of what his palatial house would look like, with two swimming pools filled with water pumped up from the sea, surrounded by palm trees and an artificial waterfall. The house would have eleven rooms plus a bedroom with a roof that could slide open to reveal the starry sky. The governor had promised that special electrical and telecommunication cables would be laid for Ya Ru’s remote property.

  Now, as he sat contemplating what would become his African home, he decided that one of the rooms would be arranged as a tribute to Hong Qiu. Ya Ru wanted to honour her memory. He would furnish this room with a bed made for a guest who would never arrive. Irrespective of what had happened, she would remain a member of the family.

  The telephone rang. Ya Ru frowned. Who would want to speak to him this early in the morning? He picked up the receiver.

  ‘Two men from the security services are here.’

  ‘What do they want?’

  ‘They are high-ranking officials from the Special Intelligence Section. They say it’s urgent.’

  ‘Let them in ten minutes from now.’

  Ya Ru replaced the receiver. He held his breath. The SIS only dealt with matters involving men at the very top of
the government or, like Ya Ru, men who lived between the political and economic power brokers – the modern bridge-builders picked out by Deng to be of crucial importance for the country’s development.

  What did they want? Ya Ru went to the window and looked out over the city in the morning haze. Could it have anything to do with Hong Qiu’s death? He thought of all the known and unknown enemies he had. Was one of them trying to exploit Hong Qiu’s death in order to destroy his good name and reputation? Or was there something he had overlooked, despite everything? He knew that Hong Qiu had been in touch with a prosecutor, but he belonged to quite a different authority.

  Hong Qiu could naturally have spoken to other people he didn’t know about.

  He couldn’t think of any explanation. All he could do was listen to what the men had to say.

  After ten minutes had passed he put the plans into a drawer and sat down at his desk. The two men Mrs Shen showed in were in their sixties. That increased Ya Ru’s uneasiness. The officers sent out were usually younger. The fact that these two men were older indicated that they were very experienced and the matter they wanted to discuss was serious.

  Ya Ru stood up, bowed and invited them to sit down. He didn’t ask their names, as he knew that Mrs Shen would have checked their identity papers very carefully.

  They sat down in armchairs around a low table in front of the window. Ya Ru offered them tea, but the men declined.

  It was the elder of the two men who did the talking. Ya Ru detected an unmistakable Shanghai accent.

  ‘We have received information,’ said the man. ‘We can’t say where the information came from, but it is so detailed that we can’t ignore it. Our instructions have become stricter when it comes to dealing with crimes against the state and the constitution.’

  ‘I have been involved in tightening up on action against corruption,’ said Ya Ru. ‘I don’t understand why you are here.’

  ‘We have received information suggesting that your construction companies are seeking advantages using forbidden methods.’

  ‘Forbidden methods?’

  ‘Forbidden exchange of favours.’

  ‘In other words, bribery and corruption? Taking bribes?’

  ‘The information we have received is very detailed. We are worried.’

  ‘So you have come here at this early hour of the morning to tell me that you are investigating irregularities in my companies?’

  ‘We would prefer to say that we are informing you of the suspicions.’

  ‘To warn me?’

  ‘If you like.’

  Ya Ru understood. He was a man with powerful friends, even in the anti-corruption authority. And so he had been given a head start. To eradicate the trail, get rid of proof, or demand explanations if he was not personally aware of what was going on.

  He thought of the shot in the back of the head that had recently killed Shen Weixian. It was as if the two grey men sitting opposite him were emitting a cold chill, just as, according to legend, the African iceberg had.

  Ya Ru wondered again if he had been careless. Perhaps on one occasion or another he had felt too secure and allowed himself to be carried away by his arrogance. If so, that had been a mistake. Such mistakes are always punished.

  ‘I need to know more,’ he said. ‘This is too vague, too general.’

  ‘Our instructions don’t allow us to say more.’

  ‘The accusations, even if they are anonymous, must come from somewhere.’

  ‘We can’t answer that either.’

  Ya Ru wondered for a moment if it might be possible to pay the two men to give him more information. But he did not dare take the risk. One or perhaps both of them might be carrying concealed microphones recording the conversation. There was of course also a chance that they were honest and didn’t have a price – unlike so many government officials.

  ‘These vague accusations are totally without foundation,’ said Ya Ru. ‘I’m grateful to have heard about the rumours that are evidently surrounding me and my companies. But anonymity is often a source of falsehood, envy and insidious lies. I make sure that my enterprises are beyond reproach, i have the confidence of the government and the party and have no hesitation in maintaining that I am sufficiently in control to know that my managing directors follow my directives. Obviously I’m not able to claim that there are no minor irregularities; my employees number more than thirty thousand.’

  Ya Ru stood up as a signal that, as far as he was concerned, the meeting was over. The two men bowed and left the room. When they had gone, he rang through to Mrs Shen.

  ‘Get hold of one of my security chiefs and tell him to find out who these two are,’ he said. ‘Find out who their bosses are. Then summon my nine managing directors to a meeting three days from now. Everybody must attend, no excuses accepted. Anybody who doesn’t turn up will be fired on the spot. This has to be sorted out.’

  Ya Ru was furious. What he did was no worse than what anybody else did. A man like Shen Weixian frequently went too far and in addition had been rude to the state officials who cleared the way for him. He had been an appropriate scapegoat, and nobody would miss him now that he was gone.

  Ya Ru spent several hours of intensive activity working out a plan for what to do next and puzzling over which of his managing directors could have secretly opened up the poison cupboard and given away information about his dodgy deals and secret agreements.

  Three days later his managing directors assembled in a hotel in Beijing. Ya Ru had chosen the location with care. It was there that he used to call a meeting once a year and fire one of his directors in order to demonstrate that nobody was safe. The group of men gathered in the conference room shortly after ten in the morning looked distinctly pale. None of them had been informed precisely what the meeting was about. Ya Ru kept them waiting for more than an hour before putting in an appearance. His strategy was very simple. First he confiscated their mobile phones, so that they were unable to contact one another or be in touch with the outside world, then he sent them out of the room. Each of them had to sit in a small room with one of the guards summoned by Mrs Shen at his side. Then Ya Ru interviewed them one at a time and told them without beating about the bush what he had heard a couple of days previously. What did they have to say? Any explanations? Was there something Ya Ru ought to know? He observed their faces closely and tried to detect if any of them seemed to have prepared what to say in advance. If there was such a person, Ya Ru could be sure that he had found the source of the leak.

  But all the directors displayed the same degree of surprise and indignation. At the end of the day, he was forced to conclude that he hadn’t found a guilty person. He let them go without firing anybody. But all of them received strict instructions to look into the security of their own set-ups.

  It was only some days later, when Mrs Shen reported on what his investigators had discovered about the men from the security services, that he realised he had been following a false trail. Once again he’d been studying the plans for his house in Africa when she came in. He asked her to sit down and adjusted the desk lamp so that his face was in shadow. He liked listening to her voice. No matter what she told him, be it a financial report or a summary of new directives from some government authority, he always had the feeling that she was telling him a story. There was something in her voice that reminded him of the childhood he had long since forgotten about, or been robbed of – he couldn’t make up his mind which.

  ‘Somehow or other it seems to be connected with your dead sister Hong Qiu. She was in close contact with some of the top men at the State Security Bureau. Her name keeps cropping up whenever we try to link the men who came to visit us the other morning and others hovering in the background. We think the information can only have been circulating for a short time before she died so tragically. Nevertheless, somebody at the very highest level seems to have given the go-ahead.’

  Ya Ru noticed that Mrs Shen broke off. ‘What is it you’re not telling me?’
/>
  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Nothing is sure. Has somebody at the very top authorised this investigation into my activities?’

  ‘I can’t say if it’s true or not, but rumour has it that those in authority are not satisfied with the outcome of the sentence passed on Shen Weixian.’

  A shiver ran down Ya Ru’s spine. He understood the implications before Mrs Shen had time to say any more.

  ‘Another scapegoat? Do they want to condemn another rich man in order to demonstrate that this is now a campaign and not merely an indication that patience is running out?’

  Mrs Shen nodded. Ya Ru shrank further back into the shadows. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You may go.’

  Mrs Shen left the room. Ya Ru didn’t move. He forced himself to think, although what he wanted to do most of all was run away.

  When he had made the difficult decision to kill Hong Qiu, and that the murder would take place in Africa, he had been sure that she was still his loyal sister. Of course, they had different views, they often argued. In this very room, on his birthday, she had accused him of taking bribes.

  That was when he had realised that sooner or later Hong Qiu would become too big a danger to him. He now saw that he ought to have acted sooner. Hong Qiu had already abandoned him.

  Ya Ru shook his head slowly. He now understood something that had never occurred to him before. Hong Qiu had been prepared to do the same thing to him as he had done to her. She hadn’t intended to use a weapon herself – Hong Qiu preferred to proceed via the laws of the land. But if Ya Ru had been condemned to death, she would have been one of those declaring it the right thing to do.

  Ya Ru thought of his friend Lai Changxing, who some years previously had been forced to flee the country when the police raided all his companies early one morning. The only reason he managed to save himself and his family had been that he owned a private plane that was always ready to take off at a moment’s notice. He had fled to Canada, which did not have an extradition treaty with China. He was the son of a peasant who had made an amazing career for himself when Deng created a free market. He had started by digging wells but later became a smuggler and invested all he earned in companies that within a few years generated an enormous fortune. Ya Ru had once visited him in the Red Manor he had built in his home district of Xiamen. He had also taken upon himself major social responsibilities by constructing old people’s homes and schools. Even in those days Ya Ru had been put off by Lai Changxing’s arrogant ostentation and had warned his friend that he could be heading for a fall. They had sat one evening discussing the envy many people felt with regard to the new capitalists, the Second Dynasty, as Lai Changxing called them ironically – but only when talking in private with people he trusted.