Dragon's Eye

by Andy Oakes

  On the operating table, the body now masked in tight folds of green canvas. A vulnerable rectangle of flesh running from sternum to lower stomach, from nipple to nipple. Four television monitors in the viewing gallery flicked into life. The conversations amongst the audience of viewing doctors and consultants, falling away. A close-up. Scalpel meeting skin in a firm paced glide. A single tear of blood following its path. The cut becoming a crimson plumb line. Becoming a track. An ugly puckered gape. Beside the surgeon an assistant, a thin wireless microphone across his mouth. A constant commentary relayed through to the gallery. Surgical techniques, cuts, clamps, medical procedures … every pass of the surgeon’s fingers set to a stream of emotionless words. Piao’s eyes moving from the crisp monochrome of the monitors and focussing on the ruddy wound stabbing the torso. Blood in smears and fine droplets across the surgeon’s gloves. One kidney and then a second, eased from the viscous cavity of the clamped incision. Taken gently, as if they were newly born kittens, from the surgeon’s hands and out of the theatre. The words rising like a wave inside Piao; hot, saline. Almost impossible to whisper them … when they needed to be shouted.

  “What’s going on here, he’s taken both kidneys. The surgeon’s killing him. Without a kidney he’ll die?”

  Wu removed his glasses. Eyes watering.

  “The surgeon knows what he is doing, Senior Investigator. He has performed this operation many, many times before. That is why so many of our best medical students and surgeons are attending this demonstration. We desperately need more surgeons skilled in these techniques in the People’s Republic.”

  “A demonstration? This isn’t a fucking demonstration, this is cold blooded murder.”

  “No, not murder, Piao. You can live for twenty-four hours without a functioning kidney. They will sew the prisoner up and take him back to his cell. Tomorrow he will be executed.”

  The words fouled up in a tangle of lost thoughts. Piao’s attention returning to the theatre below, the trolley already being wheeled out of the spotlight to a sterile side room. Silent … rubber across scrubbed white tiles. Another trolley, chrome bright, moving through the double doors past it. Almost touching. Already anaesthetised, a septuagenarian patient.

  “What is this?”

  The old man wiped his eyes, replacing his glasses. Waving the Senior Investigator’s next question away. Below, the precise dance unfolding. Bodies never touching, paths crossed, but not blocked. Re-sterilised steel. Re-adjusted lighting. The surgeon re-emerging from the sluice room. Monitors in a petit mal of activity. A slow zoom to focus on a blade of surgical steel meeting skin. The cut … the commentary.

  ‘The iliac vessels exposed retroperitoneally through an oblique incision, ten inches long, in the iliac fossa … the oblique muscles divided in the line of the incision and the peritoneum reflected upwards and medially.’

  Parallel lines on a monitor. Incisions in grey. Dissections in grey. Blood in nondescript midtones.

  ‘The renal vein anastomosed end-to-side to the external iliac vein and the renal artery anastomosed end-to-side to the external iliac artery.’

  Chess moves in steel.

  ‘The ureter is implanted in the bladder, ureteroneocystostomy … through an anterior cystotomy with a submucosal tunnel to prevent reflux. The right kidney being implanted in the left iliac fossa and vice versa, to facilitate the vascular anastomoses.’

  Lights fading up. Eyes moving from monitors to the theatre below. Incisions in red … dissections in red … blood in a blazing primary.

  ‘The wound is now closed, without drainage where possible. An indwelling catheter left in the bladder for up to five days. A ‘living kidney’, unlike the twenty to forty per cent of cadaver kidneys transplanted, will function immediately. Urine output over a twenty-four hour period will be expected to be in the region of five to two hundred and fifty one.’

  *

  Wu was already standing, moving up the small flight of steps to the exit. Piao at his shoulder, his words, a blow torch across the old man’s cheek.

  “Why, for fuck sake, tell me why?”

  The doctor turned.

  “He is General Zhang De, a Deputy Chief of Staff of the People’s Liberation Army.”

  The Senior Investigator immediately knowing the name, the reputation, and the series of litmus tests that determines a senior official’s real authority. The time and the place that a man joined the Communist movement. Was it before or after the Long March, the two year trek in 1935 and 1936 that shaped the People’s Republic? Did the cadre serve in Yanan, the Communist wartime cave headquarters, or did he work on a less prestigious assignment as an undercover agent in the Kuomintang or ‘White Area’? Was he a member of the Red Army or just a civilian party official? The ‘tests’. The rites of passage. General Zhang De passed them all.

  “His residence is within the shadow of the West Wall of the Forbidden City. He is a grade four cadre. The recipient of many commendations. He owns two Red Flags. A Japanese made colour television set. In his kitchen he has an American refrigerator. He shops at Number 53 Dong Hua Men Street, the ‘Peking City Food Supply Place’. The store is only for the Republic’s highest ranking officials. Members of the Communist Party Central Committee. The heads of the eleven Military Regions which command the People’s Liberation Army …”

  Piao had heard of the store. Large yellow croaker fish, big enough to feed a banquet table of twelve. Frozen prawns from the Bohai Gulf. Whole sides of Sichuan pork. Fat wives queuing for fat husbands. Yes, Piao knew of it.

  “… such a cadre as this general, when they become unwell they are powerful and insistent in their demands. They get what they require, what they want. They get what you have seen. Fresh ‘living kidneys’, harvested solely for them. Harvested just minutes before they will receive them …”

  Wu, silent as the streams of excited, enthusiastic medics clutching their notebooks, passed on their way to the exit. Looking down, ignoring their eyes. His whisper, as hot as crushed chillies.

  “… this is why I talk, just this. Not what you and your baboon did to me on the bridge, but what you have seen here.”

  The old man’s hand, worn skin, flicking toward the theatre below …

  “The prisoner, the boy. He was nineteen years old. His crime was that he stole two tractor tyres from the collective farm that he labours on. But it was not his crime that brought him here, to this. It was his kidneys for harvesting …”

  The old man, shifting from foot to foot. As if words were weights. Sentences shackles.

  “… his real crime was to be young and healthy with kidneys that cross-matched with a seriously ill high-ranking cadre. And that he was available …”

  Silent again, as another group passed, moving through the exit.

  “… with such kidneys as his, to steal a grain of rice would have been enough to get him executed. I am a moral man, this I do not agree with.”

  The Senior Investigator slumped into the nearest seat. Out of touch with his body, except for the vice slowly being tightened across his temples; his heart riding a tide of palpitations. Wu pulled open the door, his words in a fading trickle as he moved into the corridor beyond it.

  The door slowly closing behind him.

  “Walk away, Piao. Run away. Or perhaps it will be you who will provide the next harvest.”

  *

  The last image … an incision’s crimped edges being drawn together by bridges of suture. A furious line, as red as the narrow banded seal around a pack of Marlboro. So neat, the surgeon finishing the work himself in a balletic trip of catgut, needle, tweezers, scissors. Taking his time. An obsessive competence being exerted. To the last, displaying a flamboyance in the skills that he possessed … that were much more about the surgeon’s needs and less and less about the patient’s. Finally, laying aside his instruments, the job finished. Walking to the doors. Already removing his gloves, loosening the gown from around his neck. Pulling the hood from his head; the blond-silver hair, burn
ished steel in the light. Removing the full-face visor, behind it … Charles Haven.

  For an instant, no more, stopping and looking up toward the gallery. No longer the lizard, more a snake … a snake the instant before it strikes. He turned and walked through the theatre doors, its rubber on rubber applauding him. Piao found himself standing; no memory as to when exactly he had left his seat. Legs uncertain, but already moving him toward the steps, the door.

  *

  A torrent pouring from the tap, scalding hot. The steam in a constant plume across Haven’s face and the mirror … half of his features confused, indistinct in the fogged reflection. His arms parting the cascade, enjoying the burn of the water. Haven half turned, his face speaking of nothing.

  “Why am I not surprised to see you, Senior Investigator Piao?”

  “Because I am self-destructive, stubborn.”

  The Englishman smiled, turning off the tap, facing Piao. His eyes alive, missing nothing. Taking in the door, the windows … assessing if the Senior Investigator was alone. Smiling again, satisfied.

  “You received my little gift?”

  Piao reached into his inside pocket, removing the box of polished wood … opening it. Black velvet. At its heart, the gold of the cigarette lighter catching the light in its grasp. Sliding it across the work surface towards Haven. The Englishman dried his hands and removed his gown, before allowing himself to take back the box.

  “Your investigation …”

  “It is over,” Piao cut in, moving to the door that led into the corridor; gently prising it open by half an inch. A crack of strip lighting, polished floor … and two men, thick set, leaning against a beige wall. A joke about a passing nurse’s fat arse, still on their lips. Snorting laughter. The strain and bulge of their market stall jackets over shoulder holsters. Piao let the door slip closed.

  The Englishman ran his manicured fingers across the top of his skull, his hair falling perfectly into place.

  “You have come to arrest me?”

  No fear. Eyes unblinking and the colour of ball bearings.

  “No, not arrest you.”

  “Then, Investigator, Barbara Hayes and I will be leaving on our flight for New York which leaves in …”

  He checked his watch.

  “… exactly four hours’ time.”

  “No you will not, Mr Haven. Even in China, men who kill four people do not catch aeroplanes and just fly away.”

  The Englishman dropped a crumpled ball of used tissues into a bin by his feet.

  “I can get one hundred thousand pounds to you within forty-eight hours, Senior Investigator. It will come through Liping. Of course, I will expect to be on my flight to New York. No delays. I will also expect you to hand all material relating to your investigation of me to Liping. He will know what to do with it.”

  “As he did with the bodies of Bobby Hayes, Ye Yang, Heywood and Qingde.”

  Haven turned slightly, light from the window tracing his cheek in crimson.

  “For someone who is self-destructive, you have done well, Senior Investigator. You can end this a wealthy man …”

  He pushed the polished wooden box across the worktop, against Piao’s fingers.

  “… and you get to own the cigarette lighter that you always wanted.”

  Piao pushed the box aside, the Englishman’s eyebrows rising to form question marks.

  “You don’t want the lighter, do you … or the money?”

  “No.”

  “Liping told me that you would be like this, that you would not be bought off. I didn’t believe him.”

  The Senior Investigator eased the door open once more.

  “You should have believed him …” he whispered as he stared through the crack. The two men, CID or Bureau, still leaning against the wall. Another joke on their lips. Piao had heard it before. It was funny, but only when riding on the crest of six bottles of Tsingtao wave.

  “I am curious to check if I am correct. The Americans and Qingde, they were smuggling cultural relics for you. Men of Mud. Ye Yang was pushing the price up. A tough woman. A stupid woman …”

  Haven adjusted his collar. His tie.

  “… with the aid of Liping’s security men, you went to the workshop in the snowfields, seized them and took them back to Shanghai. Back to a hospital operating theatre. You waste nothing. To just kill them in the snowfields would have meant wasting their organs. Hundreds of thousands of dollars on the transplant black market …”

  Seconds. Seconds. Watching the Englishman. Fastening his cufflinks.

  “… raping them of their organs. On your operating table, letting them die …”

  Watching him. Buttoning his jacket. Smoothing down the lapels.

  “… they would have been alive when you operated on them. Living organs would fetch more dollars …”

  Haven lowering his mouth to the drinking fountain. The water on his lips, hardly wetting them.

  “… and then they were mutilated. Thorough. Carrying it out yourself …”

  Haven smiled.

  “… it would have been very freeing. None of the rigours of the precise surgical techniques that you are normally bound to. Freeing …”

  Watching him. Lacing his shoes. Precisely. An operation of fingers surely too delicate to fashion violence. A sense of the Englishman’s anger, but of it immediately being cut short by him re-adjusting his tie.

  “… a mistake. The only part of the murders that you did not perform yourself was the disposing of the bodies. That you left to Liping’s security officers. They chained them to four others and disposed of them in the Huangpu. The incinerator was on the other side of the city. The river nearer …”

  No reply. But watching the Englishman’s eyes. Waiting for a fray in the fabric. But nothing … just a clock ticking out its life. A confidence about the man. A sense that he was strapped firmly, safely, into a harness of insurance. Knowing something that the Senior Investigator did not. Piao reached into his jacket. Fingertips finding the polished steel sleeping in its shoulder holster. Cold. Re-assuring.

  “… and the four prisoners that they were chained to, legally executed in Virtue Forest. Their organs were infected, but still taken by you for the blackmarket. No tell-tale links between the two groups. Just coincidence. No deep meaning in this to Liping’s men, chaining these two separate groups together and disposing of them in the river, rather than incinerating them. For men like these there is more meaning in the bottom of a bottle of Tsingtao. But for you, Mr Haven, a mistake. The first, the only, mistake …”

  Watching him. But nothing to see of Haven, except the preened exterior. But inside Piao, the anger rising. A wave of hot tears and the compulsion to act them out.

  Just shoot him. Here. Now …

  “… the Minister Kang Zhu, Comrade Officer Chief Liping, they were understanding of your mistake. Smiling Chinese faces pouring more drinks. But what is there for a westerner to read in the smile of a Chinese?”

  Nothing in the Englishman’s eyes. Baptisms of truth, and yet nothing.

  Just shoot the fucker.

  “… and all of the time they were thinking the unthinkable. What if the threads were tracked back by one stupid, misguided person …”

  The Englishman turned to the window, moving toward the briefcase that sat close to the door. Friends in high places will only put up with so many mistakes. Was he still a favoured foreigner, or had he become a loose end to be tied off? The Investigator, just his being there … said no. Someone was aiming Piao in his direction. A clockwork toy, just doing what it does. He would have to watch his own back now. But always a step ahead, that was how Haven worked. Not waiting for revelations. Never surprised by surprises. A step ahead.

  Piao spread his arms, his contact with the pistol in his jacket, with steel … lost. Naked. Naked and vulnerable.

  “… I have given you the invitation to talk. To be known. To be found out. You have not found the words, but neither have you found the outrage. A serial kill
er who wants to be known, but not found out. But the ocean does not advance and recede in the same instant …”

  Piao pulled the pistol from its holster. Grotesquely dark. Rude. Black. An instant smell of light machine oil, polished metals … and death. Slipping the safety. Finger firm down on the Type 67’s spitcurl trigger. Haven’s eyebrows arching in surprise. Moving back against the wall, hands falling into each other. A cradle of fingers not as relaxed as the pose suggested.

  “… I am going to walk you out of here. My pistol will be in your back. One fucking move from your men and I will put enough pressure on this very sensitive trigger to put a hole in you the size of a mooncake …”

  Moving forward, the tip of the 67’s silencer, grazing against the fine material of Haven’s jacket.

  “… your men will follow, I know that, but it will not be so difficult to lose your CID in the longs of Hongkou …”

  Pushing the pistol firmer against the Englishman’s ribs.

  “… and then we will drive, and drive. North. Two, three days from now we will turn up at a small village and report to the local office of the PSB. At first they will not believe what it is that I have to say. Murders. The smuggling of cultural relics. In a village where the theft of a pig or a shovel is a major crime, this will cause much excitement. Everybody will want to be a chairman. Many telephone calls will be made. Officials will be drawn in from the next town, from the nearest city …”

  Piao prodded the Englishman with the pistol.

  “… when wolves in their sleep smell the closeness of the deer, they awake with a great hunger. It will be their obligation to examine the case. It is cold in the north, the weather breeds people who are patient. Truths will come slowly, but they will come.”

  The Englishman’s checked his watch, hand moving to the door knob.