Decoded

by Mai Jia

  It goes without saying that what the thief had desired to take was the safety-deposit box. That would have been a disaster. Now it seemed as though there was nothing to be worried about: what had happened was regrettable and that’s all; a pity, but not something to dread.

  Ten minutes later, the carriage had become peaceful once again. Vasili and the professor had done much to console him and the emotional upheaval of losing his case had gradually receded. He felt calm. However, once he settled back into the dark of his berth, the peace of just minutes ago seemed to be swallowed by the night, shattered by the clacking of the train upon the tracks. It made him sink into a sea of regret.

  Regret is a frame of mind; to recollect means to use one’s brain, to mentally exert oneself.

  Was there anything else in the leather attaché case?

  He turned it over in his mind.

  Since all he now had was an imaginary briefcase, he needed to use his imagination to pull open the zipper. But as soon as he began this train of thought, his mind was invaded and harassed by feelings of regret and pity, turning his mind blank, making it impossible to open the zipper. All that was in front of his eyes was a large dizzying expanse of gloom. This was the outside of his leather attaché case, not the inside. Gradually, the feeling of regret began to subside and his thoughts returned to what was inside. His thinking was urgent, focused; much like the forcefulness of water running off melting snow – rising, pooling together, rising again, and again pooling together. Finally, he tore open the zipper and there was a blast of blue light that blazed in front of his eyes. It was as if an assassin’s hand had just flashed before him, making him stumble backwards into his bunk. He screamed, ‘My god, Vasili!’

  ‘What is it?’ Vasili had jumped up out of his berth; in the dark he could see Rong Jinzhen shivering.

  ‘My notebook! My notebook! . . . ’ Rong Jinzhen’s voice trailed off.

  As it turned out, he had put his notebook in his briefcase.

  [Transcript of the interview with Director Zheng]

  Think about it: as a solitary person, a man generally sunk in deep contemplation of something or other, Rong Jinzhen gave the impression that he often heard fantastic, astonishing sounds. These reverberations would seem as if they had drifted in from somewhere far, far away, as if emanating from some spiritual realm. But they would never fully manifest themselves, they wouldn’t wait for him, they would always fall short of what was hoped for, and yet, without warning, he would encounter them on the fringes of perception. They would come uninvited, appear within his dreams, in the dreams within dreams, behind the words in a book he was reading – cryptic, always in new forms, mysterious in nature. What I would like to say is that these sounds – inspirations, really – would seem to spring from somewhere between heaven and earth, but in truth they came from Rong Jinzhen; they were ejected from his soul, they radiated out from his being, flickering once and then disappearing. He had to write them down immediately or they would be lost. As fast as they came, they left, even their shadows vanished. Because of this, Rong Jinzhen had got into the habit of always carrying a notebook on his person, everywhere he went, at all times; the notebook seemed as if it were his shadow, quietly striding alongside him.

  I know it was a 64-page blue leather notebook; the title page contained a top-secret number as well as Rong Jinzhen’s personal serial number; inside were his notes and scribblings made over the last few years when he was working on BLACK. Normally, Rong Jinzhen would put the notebook in his top left-hand pocket, but this time, since he had to carrying along any number of official credentials and papers, he decided to bring a leather attaché case with him, placing the notebook in with them. The leather case was one that had been given to him by our director upon his return from a trip overseas. It was made of very fine calf ’s skin, very delicate and lightweight, with a wide elastic strap that you could carry in your hand and hoop around your waist, making it into an extension of your clothes. His notebook was inside. Certainly, Rong Jinzhen never suspected that anything would happen – he didn’t believe he could lose it, he most likely felt as though it would always be there . . .

  [To be continued]

  Over the past few days, Rong Jinzhen had gone through two notebooks.

  He used up the first one four days ago. On that day, he had left the conference early and returned to his room feeling rather angry because of a particularly idiotic and dim-witted presentation. Panting with rage he reclined on his bed and stared out the window. From the outset, he noticed that the sky outside was slanted; he blinked, and yet it still spun. He began to realize that his line of sight was becoming blurred: the window, the sky, the city, the setting sun, everything was quietly slipping away, and in its place there emerged a flowing atmosphere and the sound of the setting sun scorching the sky – he saw the firmament as a formless and swirling mass with hot embers drifting through space on into nothingness. The heavens burned and darkness swelled up, eventually engulfing him. At that moment he understood, and he felt his body transform into an electric current. He glimmered, his entire body began to float; he had become some form of energy. Like a blazing flame he began to burn, to swirl, to evaporate, to drift into nothingness. Then at that instant, a clear sound rang out, like the graceful resonance of a butterfly flapping its wings . . . this was the sound of his fate, the sound of nature, the flash, the blaze, the spritely imp – he had to record it.

  This was the moment he had used up an entire notebook, and later he felt rather pleased about what he had written. It was the wrath he had felt that had ignited him, the ire towards that mindless presentation that had inspired him. The second notebook he had filled out in the wee hours of the previous morning. Whilst dreaming and swaying back and forth in unison with the train’s movements, Rong Jinzhen had dreamt of Professor Johannes. They had spoken at length in his dream, and upon waking, Rong Jinzhen immediately reached for his notebook to record their conversation.

  You could say that on the trail to deciphering some secret cipher or other, passing through the narrow passageways of the genius, Rong Jinzhen never cried out in distress, nor did he exert himself praying for assistance. Instead, from beginning to end, he made his way on crutches: one was diligence, the other was solitude. His loneliness hardened his mind and soul, his diligence made it possible for him to reach out to the stars and take hold of good fortune. Luck is crafty: you cannot see it, you cannot touch it, nor can you say for sure what it is. You cannot understand it, nor does it wait for you. If you pray for it, it will not come. Luck is sublime and mysterious, perhaps the most mysterious thing in this world. But Rong Jinzhen’s good fortune was not mysterious, it was very real, it was hidden away between the lines in his notebook . . .

  But now his notebook had been spirited away!

  Realizing what had happened, Vasili became agitated, nervously moving about. He went first to see the head of the train’s security, to alert him and his staff to prevent anyone from disembarking; then he used the train’s telegraph machine to wire Unit 701 and report the situation. Unit 701 in turn reported to General Headquarters, who then reported to their superiors – on up the chain of command it went until reaching the most senior director. He issued forth the following directive: ‘The missing documents involve national security; all departments are instructed to provide whatever assistance is necessary. The files in question must be recovered as quickly as possible!’

  How had Rong Jinzhen’s notebook been lost? It involved sensitive institutional secrets and it contained explicit information on the problems they had encountered in their attempts to decipher BLACK. Rong Jinzhen had used it to record his thoughts – these most important ruminations on the intricacies of BLACK. How could it have been lost?

  Lost!

  It had to be recovered!

  The train had picked up speed. It was hurrying to the next station.

  Everyone knew that the next stop was A City. You could say that Rong Jinzhen had met with calamity just outside his fron
t door, as if it had been long predestined, set in stone. No one would have imagined that so many days could have gone by without anything happening – and now this! It was terribly unexpected, to get all the way home only to have a leather briefcase go missing (not even the safety-deposit box). The culprit behind all of this could not be considered to be someone especially villainous, rather just a damnable thief. It was all like a dream. Rong Jinzhen felt weak and confused; a pathetic, hollow web of intrigue had entangled him, was torturing him. As the train roared ahead, he felt worse and worse. The train wasn’t heading for A City, it was heading to hell.

  Once it reached its destination, the train doors were all locked. The orders had been given an hour ago by the Intelligence Service. But common sense told everyone that the thief in question had already left the train. He had disembarked once he had taken the briefcase, and that was in B City.

  It is well known that if you want to conceal a leaf, the best place to do so is in a forest. If a person wants to conceal himself, the best place is in a crowd, in a city. Solving this case was not going to be easy. Establishing the particulars was going to be harder than hard. To give you an example, to give you a general idea of the features of this case, consider the following.

  According to the records of the ‘Special Investigative Team’ at the time, this case involved, directly and indirectly, the following departments:

  1. Unit 701.

  2. A City’s police force.

  3. A City’s PLA detachment and military reserves.

  4. A City’s railway authorities.

  5. All of A City’s affiliated government ministries.

  6. B City’s police force.

  7. B City’s PLA detachment and military reserves.

  8. B City’s railway authorities.

  9. B City’s health authorities.

  10. B City’s Administrative Bureau.

  11. B City’s Construction Administrative Bureau.

  12. B City’s Communications Bureau.

  13. B City’s Reporters Club.

  14. B City’s Postal Authorities.

  15. All of B City’s affiliated departments; and a countless number of other small work units and departments. The terrain to be covered included:

  1. A City’s train station.

  2. B City’s train station.

  3. The 220 kilometres of track between A City and B City. 4. B City’s seventy-two registered guest houses.

  5. B City’s 637 dustbins.

  6. B City’s fifty-six public toilets.

  7. B City’s forty-three kilometres of sewers.

  8. B City’s nine rubbish tips.

  9. The homes of all of B City’s residents.

  More than 3,700 men were directly assigned to carrying out this job, including Rong Jinzhen and Vasili.

  All 2,141 passengers on board came under direct scrutiny, as well as the 43 employees working on the train and the more than 600 plainclothes military men in B City. The train was delayed for five hours and thirty minutes.

  The intelligence services in B City used up 484 hours on this case, equalling ten days and four hours.

  According to what people said, this was the largest and most mysterious case G province had seen: tens of thousands of people had been disturbed, whole cities were thrown into upheaval; the scale and depth of this operation had never before been seen.

  5.

  Returning to our main story (this is after all Rong Jinzhen’s story, which still isn’t over but rather is just entering a new phase). As soon as Rong Jinzhen stepped off the train and onto the platform in A City, he spied a delegation from Unit 701 approaching him – at the head was a rather exasperated and intimidating looking Director (not Zheng the Gimp, who had yet to be promoted to the post, but rather the predecessor of his predecessor). This was as it should be, thought Rong Jinzhen. Walking up to him, it was clear that the Director had lost all the respect he had once had for Rong Jinzhen. He looked at him with cold, menacing eyes.

  Filled with terror, Rong Jinzhen cowered away from those eyes, but he could not escape the Director’s voice: ‘Why didn’t you place such sensitive and secret documents in the safety-deposit box?’

  Everyone on the platform was fixated on the scene and saw what happened. There was a quick flash of something across Rong Jinzhen’s eyes that died away almost immediately, just like a tungsten filament burning out; then everything seemed to freeze as Rong Jinzhen went rigid and collapsed to the ground.

  When the early morning light shone in through the window, Rong Jinzhen returned to the conscious world, and his eyes opened upon the hazy face of his wife. For one brief moment, he had fortuitously forgotten everything. He thought he was at home, in his own bed, and his wife had just woken him from some disturbing dream, her face looking anxious (perhaps she performed this duty quite frequently). But soon the white walls and the smells of medicine brought him fully back to reality; he realized he was in hospital. The shocking memory of what had happened returned and he heard the imposing voice of his Director: ‘Why didn’t you place such sensitive and secret documents in the safety-deposit box?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why . . . ’

  [Transcript of the interview with Director Zheng]

  You must believe that Rong Jinzhen did not deliberately try to lose his attaché case. In fact, he was always very vigilant. Therefore if you said that this mess was the result of him lowering his guard, or because he was treating the whole thing too lightly, or that he was somehow neglecting his duty, well that would be awfully unfair. But not putting his notebook in the safety-deposit box was a lapse in judgement on his part; his vigilance had certainly left him then.

  I remember clearly that before they set off on this trip, Vasili and I had repeatedly requested – had urged him over and over again – to place any secret documents (including anything that could identify him as a member of the intelligence service) in the safety-deposit box. And he had assured us that he would do so. On the trip back, according to Vasili, Rong Jinzhen had been very careful, he had placed all sensitive materials in the safety-deposit box, including a book of maxims written and given to him by the Director-General of the Intelligence Service, to secure anything that might expose his identity, especially his particular position, or compromise him. Virtually everything was placed in the safety-deposit box except for his notebook. As to why he left the notebook out: well, that has become an age-old and profound mystery. I believe, unconditionally, that it wasn’t because he intended to write in it that he made sure to leave the notebook out; that’s not possible. He didn’t take risks like that; he didn’t have the courage to do so. It’s as though there really was no reason for him not to put the notebook away, and although he tried to figure out why after it had been stolen, he couldn’t imagine a reason. What is strange, however, is that before it went missing, he didn’t really seem to be conscious of having the notebook with him (and even after it disappeared, he didn’t immediately think of it). Like a woman failing to notice that she has a needle slipped into the cuff of her shirt until it pricks her; normally you just wouldn’t think of it.

  But for Rong Jinzhen, his notebook was most certainly not an overlooked needle – there was no reason for him to think of it as being something worthless. No doubt his original intention was to remember it, to think much about it, to ensure that it was not forgotten, to enshrine it within his very being itself. This was because for Rong Jinzhen, his notebook was his most important and most valuable possession. To use his own words: his notebook was the vessel for his soul.

  If this was the case, how is it that he had neglected to put away his most precious possession?

  That is a most impenetrable riddle . . .

  [To be continued]

  Rong Jinzhen felt a profound sense of remorse about what had happened, and as though he had stumbled into a mysterious labyrinth, vainly searching for an answer to the riddle as to why he neglected to put his notebook away. At first, the
darkness that lay within his mind was nearly impenetrable and brought about an acute feeling of vertigo, but gradually he adapted to it, and the darkness became his means of discovering the light. In this fashion he brought himself towards a most important thought: ‘Perhaps it was because I had prized it too much, had hidden it too deeply in the heart of my heart, that I had failed to see . . . Perhaps I had subconsciously come to understand that my notebook was no longer my solitary companion, no longer a real concrete thing, just like my glasses . . . Something so necessary can so easily be lost! For so long my notebooks had been part of my life, they had become part of my blood, a bodily organ . . . I never felt them, just like a person is never truly aware of his heart or his blood . . . It is only when sick that a person becomes cognisant of his physical body; only when your glasses go missing that you discover that you need them: that’s what happened with my notebook . . . ’

  Rong Jinzhen leapt from his bed as though he had been electrocuted. He got dressed and made haste to leave the hospital. He was like a fire consuming its fuel, a man desperately trying to flee. His wife, this young women who stood a half a head taller than him, had never before seen her husband act like this: she was shocked, stupefied; all she could do was chase after him.

  Because his eyes were not accustomed to the darkness of the staircase, he stumbled quickly down the steps, finally tumbling out onto the ground floor. His glasses fell with him, and although they didn’t break, the delay allowed his wife to catch him up. She had just hurried over to the hospital from Unit 701 because she had been informed that due to the stresses of travel, her husband had taken ill and had been sent to hospital, and was in need of care. This was her reason for hurrying over, but she had no idea as to what had really happened. She urged her husband to return to his bed to rest but he resolutely refused.