Rock Paper Tiger

by Lisa Brackmann

  What I do know is that I have to go back to Beijing.

  Sure, I could try to run. Chengdu has an international airport. I could go to Singapore or Amsterdam or Bangkok. But what would be the point? They’d find me eventually, and I’d look even guiltier than I already do.

  And where would I end up? How would I live? What kind of life would that be, always running from place to place? Until I get caught.

  It doesn’t matter where I go. There’s nothing I’m going to learn that will rescue me. No one who can help. I’m not going to find the Uighur, which is just as well, because do I want that guy’s life on my conscience?

  No. I’ve had enough of that. I’m not playing that game any more. I’ll tell the Suits I’m done, and what happens happens.

  Lao Zhang’s art is in Beijing. If I’m going to take care of it, that’s where I have to go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I DON’T HAVE enough cash for a plane ticket, and I don’t want to risk using an ATM or a credit card. There’s an express train leaving tomorrow morning, but I don’t want to wait that long. Now that I’ve decided, I want to get back. To go home.

  So that’s how I end up on a slow train from Chengdu to Beijing. A thirty-two-hour ride, leaving Chengdu tonight.

  This way, I’ll arrive in Beijing early Wednesday evening, ahead of Suit #2’s Friday deadline.

  I’ll call him and tell him I’m back. I don’t have a clue what I’m going to tell him after that. A piece of the truth, I guess. That I tried. That I couldn’t find out what they wanted to know. That I’m not going to cause anybody any trouble. What else can I say? I’ll just have to bluff it out.

  Maybe it will help that I’m willing to face him. Maybe it won’t.

  I have a soft sleeper, at least, which will make the next thirty-two hours or so a little more comfortable.

  Even better, as the train pulls out of Chengdu, I have the compartment to myself.

  Okay, I think. Okay. I’m going to my doom; I might as well enjoy the ride.

  After the conductor comes and checks my ticket, I go down to the dining car and buy myself two large bottles of Blue Sword Premium Beer. Then I retreat to my quiet compartment, sit on the slightly dingy white seat covers on the bottom bunk, sip my beer, and stare out the window into the dark. There’s something comforting about the noise and the rhythm of the train, the wheels on the tracks, the occasional deep hoot of the horn. When I get bored with that, I climb up to the upper bunk. I finish my beer, feeling the exhaustion seeping into me like rainwater staining discarded paper.

  I pull the quilt over myself and fall asleep, rocked by the rhythm of the rails.

  I’m dreaming about something; I’m not sure what, but there’s clouds everywhere, and I’m still on the train, like it’s open to the sky, when I feel a gentle hand on my shoulder, hear a soft voice in my ear:

  “Ellie. Ellie. You should wake up now.”

  So I do.

  A hand covers my mouth. Gently. And when I open my eyes, I see John’s face, John’s eyes, staring at me.

  “Please don’t be upset,” John says quietly. “I hope you can not make a fuss. I’ll take my hand away if you promise to be calm.”

  I nod in agreement.

  John takes his hand away.

  And I open up my mouth and scream “Help!”

  John slaps his hand over my mouth again. He’s straddling me, so I can’t kick him; I try clawing at his face, but he does something, presses his fingers into a spot at the base of my neck, and it’s so painful that I’m practically paralyzed, and all the while, John is saying “Ellie, Ellie, stop. I don’t want to hurt you. Stop. Be calm. Just listen.”

  I stop. I stare at his face. His lip is bleeding, and there are red marks raked across his cheek.

  John slowly lifts his hand.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’m listening.”

  “You need to get off the train,” he says. “People are coming for you.”

  I almost laugh. “And you’re, like, what? Here on a friendly visit?”

  “I am your friend,” he insists. “We will stop in a few minutes at this town. We can get off there.”

  “Who’s after me?” I demand. “I mean, how do you know—?”

  “I hear a guy ask about who is in this compartment. This guy, he is a bad-looking guy,” John says, sounding very sincere. “He and some other guys, they are in the soft sleeper car next to this one. Maybe they are State Security, but undercover. Maybe somebody has paid them.”

  I shake my head, like that’s somehow going to clear it. But I’m pretty sure that this is one significant ration of bullshit.

  “Okay, John,” I say. “You’ve been, like, stalking me. You drugged me. You show up in my train compartment in the middle of the night. Why am I gonna believe anything you say?”

  “Because I’m Cinderfox.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  WELL, OKAY. IT’s not like I suddenly trust Creepy John, who did, after all, drug me and stalk me and wash Chuckie’s and my dishes, which is just perverse. But I’ve already let Cinderfox and his buddies lead me from one side of China to the other. Am I really going to stop now?

  Besides, I’m tired. It’s the middle of the night, and I don’t have time to think about what to do.

  “Okay,” I say, shouldering my backpack. “Let’s go.”

  John puts a finger to his lips and helps me down from the top bunk, slides the compartment door open quietly as he can. We step into the narrow corridor that runs along the sleeper compartments. One guy sits on the jump seat at the end of the car, toward the train engine, reading a magazine in the passage’s dim light. He looks up as we head the other way, toward the rear of the train.

  The train slows. Sways like a snake. We reach the end of the corridor, and John opens the doors that lead to the vestibule between the cars.

  Behind us, a compartment door opens and slams shut. I look over my shoulder. Two men. Jogging toward us.

  The steel plates where the cars are hitched together move in opposite directions, and I step wrong and stumble, see the diamond patterns in the metal outlined in grime as I start to fall. John hauls me up and drags me into the next car. Another soft sleeper. We push past a conductor as the train continues to slow, make it to the car after that. A hard sleeper. Passengers stir, grab their bags, their jars of tea, ready for a quick exit. We keep going.

  “Do you have your ticket?” John hisses.

  “I, uh—”

  “Just follow me.”

  Cheery arrival music plays. The ubiquitous woman’s voice comes on, announcing the stop. John pushes past a couple of peasants clutching faded striped totes and ripped canvas duffels, dragging me with him into the next vestibule and down the three iron steps onto the station’s platform.

  Knots of people push past us, getting on the train. I glimpse dreary cement, peeling white pillars, a vendor with a cart piled high with packaged noodles and sugared nuts and bottled water. John keeps his hand clamped around my wrist, and I follow him down the platform, toward the back of the train and the hardseat cars.

  “Ticket,” he whispers, steering me back toward the train. I try to remember where I put the fucking thing. In my wallet? My backpack? John already has his out to show the railway worker standing at the compartment’s entrance, the usual neatly made up young woman in a peaked blue cap. He starts up the three stairs, pulling me with him.

  “Your car is up front,” I hear the ticket-taker say.

  “Meiguanxi,” John mutters.

  “Xiaojie, nide piao,” she demands crisply, pointing at me.

  Your ticket.

  “Ta you, ta xianzai bushufu le!” John snaps. She has it; she’s not feeling well. Which is not too far from the truth.

  Pants pocket, I think, and there it is, my little pink ticket, stuck between a couple of ten-yuan notes.

  “Duibuqi,” I say automatically. Sorry. We board the train.

  The compartment to our right is a hard sleeper. Inside, only a
few passengers stir: a couple of new arrivals settling in, a group of guys playing cards in two of the lower bunks, a girl texting on her cellphone.

  We make our way through the car, go on to the next and the one after that. As we pass the toilet compartments, John jiggles the handles—locked, as they generally are for arrival at a station.

  In the third car, the door opens.

  John silently gestures for me to go inside. I do. He follows me, closes the door, and locks it.

  The two of us stand in the tiny cubicle, me with one foot on the step of the squat toilet, which by this time in the trip is spattered with piss and shit and hunks of sodden toilet paper.

  Did we lose those guys? Did they follow us back on the train? I don’t have a fucking clue.

  The train slowly starts to move.

  “We stay here,” John whispers. “Another stop in a quarter hour.”

  I clutch the iron bar by the toilet as the train lurches forward and picks up speed.

  We’re standing inches apart from each other but barely say a word. I listen to the rhythm of the wheels on the tracks and think of how seductive the sound is, how much I’d like to find a bunk and crawl into it and sleep. Just sleep.

  Somebody comes and rattles the door handle once, but they leave.

  Fifteen minutes go by. It feels like hours. The train slows.

  “Okay,” John says, unlatching the door. We step out into the passageway.

  The omnipresent woman’s voice announces the stop. Some town that, if I heard correctly, is called “Treasure Chicken Village.” I think: that can’t be right.

  We exit the train. No one follows us. No one I see, at least.

  A little station, not much more than a platform and tracks, dark except for flickering halogen lights. Steam rises from the train, smelling of diesel and rain. The station is pushed up against the base of a hill or maybe a mountain, a dark mass that rises to some indeterminable height.

  A few people climb onto the train. A couple of ticket-takers stand around in their blue uniforms and peaked hats, looking bored.

  “This way,” John says.

  I follow him past the red-brick station building, glimpse a couple of people inside, sleeping amongst their bags, stretched out across the orange plastic seats beneath the dim fluorescents.

  We follow the tracks a ways at a half-jog.

  “Where are we going?” I ask in a whisper.

  “Don’t know.”

  Up ahead, there’s a break in the hills, and a road, a darker black against the gray.

  We pick our way along the side of the road in the dark, heading downhill. I’m glad that I don’t have any real luggage. Only my little daypack and my shopping bag. “I can carry that,” John offers. He too has a small backpack. He’s wearing that cheap leather jacket. I keep glancing over at him in the dark, trying to get a glimpse of his T-shirt to see if it’s that same Beijing Olympics one. I don’t know why I care, and, anyway, I can’t tell. Everything’s faded to grays and blacks, the color leached out by night. It’s quiet except for an occasional car or truck rattling up the hill to the train station.

  “Okay, Cinderfox,” I say. “That night. The night of the party. What the fuck was that about?”

  John gives me his best wide-eyed, innocent look. “That night? You were sick.”

  “Would you stop bullshitting me?”

  I’m surprised at myself, at how loud my voice is. How strong. It’s like somebody took the gag out of my mouth, like I’m waking up after a long sleep.

  “You put something in my beer. You drugged me and you asked me a lot questions. How come?”

  John hunches in his leather jacket. I think maybe he’s blushing. “We just need to know, can we trust you?” he mumbles. “Some people think maybe you are not reliable. Maybe you would betray us. Maybe you don’t really care so much for Upright Boar.”

  I feel a surge of bile in my throat. “Did he think that?”

  “Upright Boar?” John shakes his head. “No. I don’t think so. He worry about you. He does not want to ask you to do something that is too hard for you. He only says we should ask you if you can do this favor for him.”

  I stop. Just stop. Stand there in the middle of the road in the dark, somewhere out in the Chinese countryside.

  “And that was your way of asking?”

  John hangs his head. “Not everyone agrees with Upright Boar.”

  I want to sit down, find some patch of grass or boulder at the side of the road and sit there like Little Mountain Tiger in front of the red gates of the Yellow Mountain Monastery. Wait there until I get some real answers.

  But apparently this is as good an answer as I’m going to get.

  “What’s wrong with you people?” I mutter. I straighten my pack and start walking.

  John grabs my arm.

  I whirl around, my hand closed in a fist, and I start to swing, but he pulls me down with a little move that knocks me off-balance, and I land on top of him by the side of the road. We’re face to face, and he says, “Car!” and points uphill, toward the train station. I roll off him, and we scuttle into the brush, bellies down on the dirt.

  I hear a car engine, and headlights sweep past us, slowly, silhouetting the bushes in front of us so they look like black paper-cuttings.

  Finally, the engine noise recedes and the road is silent again.

  “Sorry,” John says, his face inches from mine.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  “I thought it could be those guys,” he mutters.

  “It was a car. We’re on a road. Where cars drive!”

  I stand up. My leg wobbles and I stumble a little. John scrambles to his feet, steadies me. I shake him off. Dust off dirt and grass and head down the road.

  We walk a while in silence. I don’t want to look at John, but I’m aware of him next to me, carrying my shopping bag. He doesn’t want to look at me either.

  “How do you know Upright Boar?” I ask.

  “The Game.”

  “You met online?”

  He nods. “I get an invitation,” he says. “From the Great Community. I play for a while. For a long time.” He shrugs. “Finally they accept me.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I know some. But not many. Just the screen names.”

  “Why?” I ask. “Why did you join them?”

  For a few minutes, all I hear are our footsteps, and then a distant train whistle.

  “I have a sister,” he finally says. “She is, you know, a blogger. Just writes about her thoughts and her feelings. And then about some historical incidents. Just things she has learned. She lived in London for a while. And when she came home to China, she still is thinking like that overseas person. Like she can say what she wants.”

  “She got in trouble,” I conclude.

  “Yes,” he says very quietly, like he’s still afraid of being overheard. “This is … maybe six years ago. One day, the PSB comes and takes her away. I am her brother. I think it is my duty to look after her. I think, there must be a mistake. She is not challenging the government. She is just talking. I talk like this with my friends, all the time. We don’t know why her. No one will tell us. She isn’t charged with anything. We cannot see her. We cannot talk to her. I go to the PSB. I go to the Ministry. To the Municipal Government. I fill out forms. I am only following the Chinese Constitution. I do all these things.”

  He laughs. “I am young. I am graduated from college. I have a good job. I am making money. I have a fiancée. A nice apartment. A car. I believe in a prosperous future. I believe in China. I think: this is a mistake, and I can correct it.”

  I want to laugh myself.

  “So what happened to your sister?” I ask.

  “She is in our home town now. She was gone for two years. Two years!” He stops in his tracks and swings my shopping bag in the air, in utter frustration. “For the first two months, we can’t find out anything. Then they charge that she is disturbing the soci
al order. I got a lawyer. They followed him. Called his office and made threats. He still tried to present her case, but it doesn’t matter. The court says she is guilty. They send her to labor camp. Then one day they just let her go. They don’t say why. They just let her go. No apology. Nothing. And I think, where is the justice? Where is the right? Not with my government. But some of her friends here in China and some of her foreign friends, other bloggers, they are writing letters, they are writing every day, and I think, who are my friends?”

  He stares at me. I can only imagine his face, his expression, because it’s too dark to see it. “Do you understand, Ellie?”

  I shrug. “I guess.”

  We start walking again.

  “I am Chinese,” he says, almost to himself. “I am a patriot. I love China.”

  At the bottom of the hill is a cluster of lights—a gas station, some square darkened buildings. I guess this is Treasure Chicken Village.

  “What happened to your fiancée?” I ask.

  I can see John’s face now, and he looks embarrassed, almost hurt, like a kid who’s been slapped and told he’s a fuckup.

  “She does not like that I am angry. Spending so much time on my sister’s case. I explain, this is my family. Don’t Chinese people care about family any more? But my fiancée says, your sister is a bad social influence. Maybe she needs this lesson. And anyway, if you complain too much, you won’t have success.”

  Then it’s his turn to shrug. “Actually, she is a bitch.”

  I laugh. I think this is maybe the funniest thing I’ve heard in years. I just keep laughing until I’m out of breath and my stomach hurts and I have to stop and rest my hands on my thighs for a minute.

  John gets that scrunched-up, confused look on his face. “Is that word … does that offend you?”

  “Fuck, no,” I say, catching my breath.

  “Because she really is a bitch,” he explains earnestly.

  “I believe you.”

  And I do. Finally.

  Up ahead, the road widens into a square. A collection of anonymous buildings are strung out around us along a few anonymous streets: Treasure Chicken Village.

  There’s not a lot to see in Treasure Chicken Village—and, since it’s after midnight, what there is to see is mostly closed: a market, a restaurant, a car-repair place. The main street has a fresh asphalt glaze; my sneakers stick on the blacktop, and the air smells like oil. There’s what looks to be a karaoke bar that’s open; a neon sign glows outside of it, at least.