by Fritz Galt
“I’ve just learned that the military is supporting his candidacy.”
“Is that so? Makes sense. He used to eat commies for breakfast. He was one of Chiang’s young colonels when they retreated from the mainland. After that, he was made head of internal security.”
“I wonder why he’s returning to politics.”
“Kind of a sad story, I guess. In fact, I received an invite to the Taoist Temple in Mucha tomorrow to hear his rededication speech. Frankly, I think he’s just making a spectacle of himself.”
“Nonetheless, may I go in your place?”
“What for?”
“To pay our respects.”
“Only if it’s worth something to you,” Bronson said.
“It won’t hurt to snoop aroiund. Thanks for hearing me out.”
“Just keep a lid on it. And keep the blabbermouth out of it. She’ll only mess things up.”
In Beijing, Eli Shaw smiled at the urgent cable from Taiwan.
What sort of trouble were the Pierces stirring up on that little island?
God, he missed the scrappy, make-do life of Taipei, where he had last lived with his family.
He ended up never bringing his family to the cold, lock-step life of Beijing.
Two molded clay figures on his office desk reminded him daily of what he had left behind. The two lumpy men, labeled “For Dad” by his twin five-year-old sons, looked featureless and remote.
On the one hand, the kids were missing out on the experience of living in China and the likelihood of witnessing their mother sink into depression. They had forsaken all that for life in the States, Little League games and knowing a happy, career-oriented mom.
What had happened to his ambition to raise a family overseas?
He frowned. No matter how much he bemoaned his family’s fortunes, the choice was no longer his to make.
His wife’s photo had once sat at the center of his desk facing him. Now it was stowed prudently in his office safe, out of view.
They were separated by more than just half the world’s circumference. His hope of reconciliation vacillated between the simplicity of a quick plane flight home and the tug of his professional life.
Sometimes he blamed the geographical and cultural divide as the sole cause of their ruined marriage. The distance had become a symbol of their separation.
Then, at clear moments, he realized that the real distance was measured in their true commitments. Commitment to their careers meant more than commitment to each other.
Late that afternoon, when a communicator had entered his office and dropped off the cable, he had felt relieved. As on so many such evenings, he had held off returning to his empty apartment, just a two-minute stroll away. If his career was going to stand between him and his sad personal life, then let there be plenty of work.
Just that morning, he had read about Natalie’s “reunification” speech. The Chinese press was abuzz with what it called a “new relationship with Taiwan and a new closeness to Washington.”
“Hogwash,” Ambassador Mallory had told his heads of section at a hastily convened staff meeting. “There is no such change in our policy toward Taiwan. I don’t know what the hell they’re trying to start down there, but it’s making me nervous.”
During the course of the day, the State Department had made no policy announcement, and Eli hoped the misunderstanding would disappear from the news.
In the meantime, he could visualize all the excitement and fear that the speech had generated on the streets of Taipei.
There were entire days in Beijing, the power center of the Chinese universe, when he never once thought of Taiwan, or Hong Kong or Tibet for that matter. Yet for people in Taipei, both the menace and opportunity of the People’s Republic of China were ever-present.
Natalie’s blunder might blow over, God willing. But what hornet’s nest was Mick stirring up?
On Eli’s first reading of the cable, it seemed like the commies were slipping messages to the outside world. His next impression was that the Americans finally had something on this Comrade Leng. Caught him red-handed with the Nationalists.
As he read it a third time, he began to see it from Taiwan’s point of view. Leng’s brother was highly placed in Taiwan’s military. What message would a negotiator for the People’s Republic of China have for the upper echelons of Taiwan’s military?
Were that week’s publicly negotiated concessions a fig leaf hiding larger concessions to Taiwan?
Or was Taiwan exposed, vulnerable and on the take, its noble experiment in Chinese-style democracy on the verge of collapse?
Turning back to China’s point of view, what did it matter? Developments in Taiwan had little effect on China’s stated goal of economic progress. If anything, a strong and defiant Taiwan made a useful foil for China’s nationalist leaders.
He stood up and pushed in his chair. Taipei’s troubles would have to wait.
He locked the printout in his safe and tried not to notice the picture frame lying upside down.
When not working late hours, he enjoyed summer evenings on the streets of Beijing. He often took long walks in the lingering light through the Legation District. The setting sun cast such a warm glow on those he passed.
Taiwan was nowhere near as relaxed. Taipei was a pressure cooker to Beijing’s coal-fired bread oven. Change would come to China, but it would take time.
And what a long way it had to come. As he strolled along Jianguo Men Wai Avenue’s crowded sidewalk, he had to run a gauntlet of crippled beggars and old people who thrust their grandchildren in his face with the child’s hand outstretched for money.
Above him, immense signs began to light up the night sky: Hitachi, Sony, Philips, homesteaders staking a claim on Chinese soil.
But Beijing had come a long way, baby.
Well-dressed young families treated their children to a whiff of pizza by pressing their noses against the front window of Pizza Hut. Other families strolled the wide sidewalk licking ice cream cones with studied boredom.
Locals now had the freedom to drift in and out of the Friendship Store, a government-owned store once reserved for foreigners and foreign currency. When once that part of town had relied on foreign visitors, it now thrived on Chinese consumers with money to burn.
Sometimes he couldn’t believe it was the same country from five years before.
In those days, only the occasional car would speed down the twelve-lane boulevard. It would have been driven by a foreign diplomat or by a chauffeur driving a Chinese government official.
This evening, the lanes were choked with start-and-stop traffic, almost entirely red-painted cabs. In that highly competitive market, some cabs even offered female guests to provide customers with stimulating conversation.
He passed a stand of old men reclining on their trishaws, a modern bicycle version of the old rickshaws.
He closed his eyes. The old and the new had also coexisted in Taipei. However, there the culture leapfrogged into the 21st Century from hand plow to Xerox machine, with no time to learn the finer points in between. He remembered people spitting betel nut juice out their limousine doors.
In Beijing, new ways pushed old ways aside more gently.
Was the ponderous hand of the politburo less relevant in the newly relaxed atmosphere? Could the shopworn slogans still incite people to take up arms against Taiwan? Perhaps out of necessity, the two governments were beginning to loosen their death grip on each other.
He stopped by a table selling newspapers and pulled out two renminbi coins, a small amount of Chinese currency, for the evening news. A familiar, red-faced peasant handed him the paper and shot him a toothless grin.
Crossing a wide intersection, he dodged a torrent of studiously oblivious bicyclists and taxi drivers who yielded for nothing and nobody as they turned right on red. He headed down a side street toward the diplomatic compound, an irregular row of aging redbrick apartment buildings built by the Chinese for foreign diplomats. Twilight h
ad finally faded and shadows of trees darkened the street.
As he neared the guard booth, he saw the silhouette of a uniformed Chinese soldier illuminated by a spotlight. The stiff young man stood on a round dais keeping Chinese and would-be asylum seekers out of the compound. Eli slipped past him without exchanging a word.
The apartment blocks were respectable, but not stately. They were old, not historic. The cars owned by diplomats acted as calling cards for the nationality of the diplomat: the Peugeot, the Toyota, the Lada, the Ford pickup.
Eli climbed the front steps to his apartment building and unlocked the front door. As he mounted the two flights of wooden stairs to his apartment, he heard the whoosh of garbage falling down a trash chute.
He unbolted his apartment door. He could tell that his maid had been there that day because the dust had been moved and his television was still warm.
He kicked off his shoes and crossed the creaky floor to his chair, where he collapsed.
He stared at the ceiling and imagined a conversation with his wife about old times in Taipei. It was a conversation he would never have, except in his imagination.
What he would have were the flat plains of China, and living under a heavy-handed government that reached into every aspect of his life.
He tried again. This time, he closed his eyes and tried to conjure up the wild, jungle-covered mountains of Taiwan. For a sweet moment, he smelled the sulfur vents and listened to the rustle of sugarcane in the wind.
He found himself reciting the cryptic message in Mick’s cable, this time from Taipei’s perspective. It would be unusual to find a message about PRC support in the pocket of a soldier on Taiwan.
The term that struck him most was “Shanghai Class A.”
Okay, he was curious. He would make one last official call for the day.
He pulled his personal address book out of his pocket. The name “Stephanie Williams” seemed too hot: like forbidden fruit, like the most popular girl in a high school.
Trembling, he dialed the Shanghai number. It was her unique, personal number. He experienced a spiritual communion with all the worthy suitors to whom she had given her number.
He was being forward and felt thrillingly unprepared as he waited for her to pick up the line.
At last, “Wei?”
He smiled. It was a low, tired voice with a lazy American accent.
“Hi, Stephanie,” he said softly.
He disregarded the two other clicks on the line.
“Is that you, Eli? What a pleasant surprise.”
“Do you mind? I was just curious about something.”
“Okay. You win. It’s size 35 Double D.”
“Not what I had in mind, but I’ll make a mental note of that. My real reason for calling has to do with something in Shanghai called ‘Class A.’ Do you know what that might be?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I’m not at liberty.”
He waited for a moment while she thought about it.
“I really don’t have a clue,” she said at last. “But I would like to help you out. How about I check around and get back to you?”
“Sure. Make a few calls tonight, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ve got nothing better to do,” she said with a sigh.
“Me too.”
He hung up and walked into his kitchen with the happy thought that Stephanie was at loose ends just like him.
He turned on the light and heard a rodent scramble across the floor. He had long since given up that fight.
He turned to his calendar, but not to study Mt. Baker and other mountains of the Pacific Northwest. He put his finger on the dates in the message. August 8 was tomorrow. August 15 was a week later. The range of days represented a Friday to a Friday, not exactly a business week, a school week or a government week.
He wasn’t at the office. Why was he working?
He removed his jacket and tie and hung them in his closet. Then he returned to the kitchen. The previous night’s spaghetti stared at him in the refrigerator.
He shoved it into the microwave and started it heating.
“No PRC support.”
He removed the cork from a new bottle of imported burgundy and poured a glass. “Cheers.”
Stephanie was only several hundred miles away.
On a par with other provinces, the city of Shanghai was ruled directly by the central government in Beijing. They paid taxes directly to Beijing, and Beijing appointed all her officials. Shanghai was the export capital of the country, a growing, bustling cash cow for the nation.
What was the central government not going to support in Shanghai?
Was Shanghai trying to make a political move against China’s central government? If so, how would a Chinese national government official know what Shanghai intended to do?
A beep announced that dinner was ready.
He scraped the noodles out of the Tupperware container onto a plate of bone china and carried the plate and utensils into the living room. There, he pushed the evening paper to the far side of the coffee table and sat down on the couch to eat.
Only then did he glance at the news headlines. Several articles had Shanghai as their dateline. One story read: “Shanghai Unveils City Rail Plan” and another read: “Shanghai Stock Index Sets New Low.”
He skimmed both articles and set the paper aside to eat his dinner.
The jingle of his telephone interrupted him just as he was reaching for his glass of wine. He paused to take a sip, then picked up the phone. “You have reached the answering machine of Eli Shaw. Please state your message after the tone.”
“It’s me,” Stephanie said. “I might have an answer for you. Try Class A stocks. Those are the renminbi-denominated stocks in the Shanghai Securities Exchange that only domestic investors can buy. They comprise most of the shares sold. Class B stocks, which are U.S. dollar denominated, can be bought by foreigners.”
“Must we always talk about sex?”
“Don’t you know anything about investments up there?”
“Oddly enough, I was just reading about the stock index in tonight’s newspaper. Are Class A stocks the shares that took a nosedive today?”
“That’s right. The floor dropped out of the market. The A Share Index reached a low of 350 points today. Shanghai companies are on the brink of bankruptcy. It’s an inauspicious start for our would-be capitalist buddies.”
“Too bad. Anyway, this information might help, kiddo.”
“Is that all? I was just warming up.”
“I’m hot all over, but I’ve gotta go.”
“So does this mean good-bye?”
“No. Just good night and sweet dreams.”
“Will you respect me in the morning?”
He laughed and hung up.
It was far too early to go to bed.
He finished his dinner and chased it down with the wine. He stood up, opened his closet door and removed his suit jacket.
Within minutes, he was back at San-ban, the chancery of the American embassy.
Chapter 16
Towing Rover through swells as high as five feet, the Dolphin could manage no more than six knots per hour.
It was dark by the time Alec spotted the port.
When they finally tied down, his first concern with the storm coming was to protect Rover.
“Start the crane,” he ordered.
The diving crew kicked the platform’s diesel engine to life.
Within five minutes, they had hoisted Rover high over the wooden dock. She hovered there, held midair by the crane that rose and fell with the waves.
Timing the landing would be tricky as the top-heavy load increased the platform’s rolling motion. Additionally, wind whipped Alec’s T-shirt, and clouds of fog obscured his view of the dock. He would have to wait for the waves to subside before ordering the final descent.
At last, the wind shifted behind the Dolphin and they experienced relative calm. Through the fog, Rover appeare
d relatively still.
“Ease her down.”
Her pontoons hit the dock with a crunch. She had landed. Alec rushed onto the dock to disengage the crane and tie her down.
Then he stood and wiped the perspiration off his face. His bones ached.
“That’s it for the night,” he announced, and looked at the roiling waves. “I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.”
The research team and divers dispersed in silence onto the foggy hotel grounds.
Alec followed the scent of diesel fumes to where the Dolphin was being refueled. There, a deck hand was operating the pump.
“Where’s May-lin?” Alec asked.
The man tilted his head toward a hut on the dock.
Alec could only see two legs under a fog bank.
As he approached the hut, he heard tension in her voice.
“Professor, he’s not responding. No, he’s only interested in the science, not the money. I can’t be telling him. It would spoil my project.”
“May-lin?”
She turned with a start. He approached through the mist. What made her so jumpy?
“He’s here now,” she said, and hung up. Her hand trailed down the phone cord, then fell limp by her side.
“Who’s here?” he asked. He could see her eyes now. They darted around looking for escape.
“You, of course.” She looked directly at him, her eyes moist.
“Was that Professor Lien?”
She nodded.
“Why were you talking about me and money?”
“You would not understand,” she said. She buried her face in her hands and began to weep.
Two men approached from the ship. Alec whirled about. It was the stuffed-shirt captain and his mate. They each grasped one of her arms.
“What’s this?” Alec said.
She shook her head and didn’t resist as they dragged her back on board the ship.
“Where are they taking you?”
She didn’t respond.
What had she gotten herself into?
The misty shield now reached the ground. It obscured the water and the ship. All he heard were fading footsteps on the damp wooden planks.