by John Burdett
“It would have been said that I was a Capitalist Running Dog, and they would have shot me. But I think the West won that side of the class war.”
“But your addiction to either/or strikes me as quite American monopolar, even British colonial,” Sun Bin says. “It lacks a sense of the plurality of the modern world.”
My eyes are flitting from one to the other, then to the computer and back again; at the same time I begin to see the China connection as an impenetrable wall. It’s like being told that the answer to your question is to be found in the Library of Congress without anyone specifying the department, never mind the full reference.
“You mean there could be a third party?” I say.
“Third, fourth, fifth, sixth.”
“Are there really so many skilled in the art of organ removal?”
Sun Bin seems embarrassed and looks away. Chan stares at me with his lips twisted. I have a feeling that I’ve transgressed some unwritten rule of local etiquette. Into the silence Chan says, “Hey, let’s take a walk down Nanjing Road.”
Sun Bin seems to have fallen into depression and says he won’t come. Chan grabs a cab at the ground floor of the apartment building, and within seconds we are stuck in a jam. Chan tells the driver it’s worth double the usual fare, which inspires the driver to take a few shortcuts. In the middle of the traffic jam, I ask why Sun Bin’s mood suddenly changed.
“Everyone has mood swings,” the inspector says, looking defensive.
“Okay.”
Chan sighs. “He’s shy of you because at least two of the suspect consortia are police. One of them is run by Sun Bin’s boss. He may have to give up on the case.”
“But if the Yips didn’t do these three in Shanghai, what was the point of dragging me over here?”
“Two reasons. The main one is I talked him into it. But he chickened out.”
“Chickened out of what?”
“My idea was that he would tell you everything. He wasn’t supposed to just show you three corpses at the morgue. He was supposed to show you more than a dozen others-logistically, not all of them could have had their organs removed by the Yips. Nor could any one single agency be responsible.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m explaining what Sun Bin was supposed to explain. In every major Chinese city today, right this minute, the recently dead are having their organs removed by a skilled team under the protection of one consortium or another.”
I let a couple of beats pass, unable to process this revelation. “And the other reason-there was some other reason why Sun Bin agreed to invite me?”
“He’s desperate to go to Bangkok to get laid. It’s tough in China at the moment, unless you’re rich. Sure, there are women who will sleep with you, but it’s a battleground-like sleeping with your enemy. He yearns for the sweet pussy of your medieval culture.”
Chan is indulging in one of his smirks. I think I’ve begun to read him better. “You’re lying, just to make some politically incorrect point.”
The smirk broadens. “Of course Sun Bin wants to go to Bangkok to get laid, but that’s not the only reason for getting to know you.”
“So?”
“You haven’t asked the only question worth asking.”
“Which is?”
“All these human organs looking for a body, and all these terminally ill patients looking for an organ-where is the surgery done?”
I shrug. “Here in China?”
He nods. “Sure, some of it is, at the lower end of the market, but what about the Yips? They don’t have a base on the mainland, probably wouldn’t want one-the government is too capricious, it could change its mind about them anytime and clap them in jail. Nor can they afford to expose their upmarket Western clients to some makeshift surgery in a garage that might be raided at any time by a rival consortium-or even by the police on a legitimate law enforcement exercise.”
“What are you saying? The Yips have a fully equipped surgery somewhere overseas, which they rent out to rival groups when they’re not using it themselves?”
Chan smiles.
Now we are shuffling along Nanjing Road amid a great herd of humans, the slow pace set by the law of density. Inspector Chan ostentatiously takes out a small pillbox and pops something into his mouth. I guess there must be a message here, something he wants me to know, or he wouldn’t take his medication so openly. I raise my eyebrows in case he is waiting for a prompt.
“Lithium,” he says. “But don’t tell anyone, or I’ll be forced to deny it and sue you for defamation.”
“You’re bipolar, and you haven’t told your superior officer?”
He throws me a glance, then jerks his chin at the solid block of people moving slowly forward in front of us, each one of them in a tearing hurry that they are forced to repress, like snails fleeing a fire. “Can you believe it? I live in Hong Kong, but I can’t take crowds like this. I just can’t.”
I myself have felt the odd jolt of fear at being trapped on all sides by a slow-moving human tsunami, which might lift you up and dump you just about anywhere.
“I’m going to have to dive in here,” Chan says.
He’s referring to a Starbucks right on Nanjing Road. Inside, it seems almost as crowded as the street, but the Chinese patrons prefer to stand. Chan and I grab a spare couch; then I go to order two lattes, trying to separate merged flesh without being rude. Now I’m negotiating the press of customers with the tray and two lattes, catching sight of Chan from time to time between bodies; he has turned gray and looks awful. When I reach the couch again and sit next to him, he jerks a chin at the crowds on the other side of the window. I look on the solid block of people and remember how humid it is out there; the thought of going out into that urban “war of all against all” is daunting.
“I don’t know if I’m bipolar or if it’s something worse,” the inspector admits. “Schizoaffective disorder and cyclic major depression are also possibilities. The shrink said he wasn’t sure, but since lithium is the standard medication for all three, I may as well take it-or go to some expensive doctor who will end up prescribing the same thing after a lot of tests that would bankrupt me. No one gets cured of mental illness anymore. You are expected to make the drug companies richer by staying sick. Naturally, a citizen should feel privileged to be contributing to capitalism in however small a way.” He sips his latte. “Personally, I think I’m just lonely.”
“You don’t have a partner?”
“Me? I’m too confused. Look, I grew up in a genuinely modern city, where nobody even pretends to know who they are. I could be gay. I’ve thought about it. It’s true that I’m sexually aroused by young naked women, but on the other hand I can never convince myself that my sperm would be safe with them. Next thing you know she’s had your baby, never wants to see you again, but demands child support for the next twenty years as an alternative for having you indicted for rape. At least with a man you’re safe from that gambit.” He shakes his head. “Cops know too much.”
I freeze with the latte halfway to my lips because of the way he’s looking at me. “You can’t be serious?” I say.
“Why not? How d’you know it wouldn’t work? Your wife wouldn’t have to find out.”
“You are serious?”
He shifts his gaze. “Just speculating. What d’you think of Sun Bin?”
“Ah, in what way? His sexual attraction, professionalism, mental health-my whole image of a modern cop has expanded since I met you.”
“Yeah, you’re kind of old-fashioned, even quaint. He’s a homophobe. That’s another reason why he’s acting funny around you. He’s not sure if you and I do it together or not, and if we do, would we want him to join in a threesome-that kind of thing. He thinks anyone from Hong Kong is fey and likely queer.”
“Really?”
Chan jerks a chin at the window. “Look at that, will you? How can anyone take murder detection seriously, when the only rational reaction is to shoot half of them just
to clear the street?” He frowns. “This is the way your head goes, sooner or later. It has to. We weren’t designed for this.” He sighs. “So, you really want to talk about the case?”
“Yes.”
“What d’you want to know?”
“Everything you know.”
“What will you do for it?”
“Nothing.”
He grins. “Just testing. So, let’s start with the Yips. Their grandfather was one of the biggest gangsters in Shanghai before the revolution. He got out of opium and into heavy armaments when he saw the war with Japan was inevitable. He didn’t know a thing about armaments, just made a factory owner an offer he couldn’t refuse and made himself gloriously rich. When he saw Mao was about to win the civil war in forty-nine, he put the whole damned factory on a ship and set up shop again in Hong Kong. Naturally, he made sure he brought the factory’s general manager with him, along with the most skilled workers. But he kept up his connections to the Shanghai underworld, which quickly got itself party cards.
“His son, his only child, was sent to one of those British schools for colonial quislings, which turned him into a pedophile-a total no-no as far as the old man was concerned. So the son takes to drink after he’s managed with great effort and years of trying to sire twin daughters, who are allowed to do what they like from the age of about zero. They’re intellectually very gifted, but wild and compulsive gamblers, and the first big gamble of their lives-the big win that brings them all they dream of at that time-is to seduce their father when they are about thirteen years old.
“Naturally, the poor creep is instantly addicted to their little game-at the same time loathing himself from the bottom of his heart. They quickly drive him deeper into drink-and death. They teach anatomy after graduation for about a minute, then get restless and decide to use their grandfather’s connections. Some of the mob from that time are still alive. Some are quite senior in the party. One is a party cadre in Correctional Services.” Chan looks at me, waiting for comment.
“I see.”
“No, you don’t. You’re stuck in the parochialism of a medieval culture. I’m trying to teach you third-millennium social reality here. Today everyone has to have an edge-even beautiful, highly educated women from the upper strata of Hong Kong society. And for those two that edge was always going to be crime.” He stares at the street and adds in a sad tone: “Chinese are connoisseurs of power-we’ve been victims of it for five thousand years.”
“You’re not going to tell me these cases are really all about rival consortia with the best guanxi?”
“Those consortia have created identities. Those identities are at war-identities usually are. Any Chinese would understand that. Of course, what the war is really about… I guess you need to be not only Chinese but mainland as well. Shanghainese may be the only ones properly wired for this case. There are theories by Chinese academics to the effect that psychologically we Chinese are never far from the Warring States period, when the country was in total anarchy.” He sips his latte.
“How exactly do the Yips get away with it?”
“I told you,” Chan says. “They’re with the Ministry of Correctional Services. You see, good doctors are a scarcity in China-no way they want to waste them on the dead. A reasonably gifted person with good digital coordination can be trained to remove organs without damaging them in about a week. When two pure-blood Chinese girls with degrees in anatomy turned up, boasting connections with high-level party cadres, were they going to say no?”
“No to what?”
“A couple of freelancers who preferred to do their own organ removal in order to maintain quality control for their gweilo — sorry, farang — clients.”
I watch a local make her way to the counter, to see how it should be done. She uses her head as a wedge to break apart clumps of humans-none too gently as far as I can tell. “You mean they saw a business opportunity in the resale value of organs of executed felons, constructed a five-year plan, then borrowed money to set up shop, purchase equipment, and develop contacts-generally followed the capitalist blueprint for wealth down to the last detail?”
“Exactly right,” Chan says. “Except, as usual, you have a bourgeois medieval running dog tendency to miss the macro point.” He shakes his head at the crowds.
I think about his hidden meaning. “You mean it wasn’t-isn’t-just executed felons whose organs the Yips find irresistible? It’s the freshly dead in general?”
“Do you think it is only the legally condemned that national and regional governments execute?”
I have not stopped staring at the crowds. Now I gulp and nod. The full ambit of the Yips’ empire has begun to dawn. “Regional governments as well? Political rivals? Self-financing executions by a crack two-girl team?”
“Even Mao couldn’t run China without allies. For allies, read ‘regional warlords.’ If Beijing is making money out of executed criminals, d’you think the regional bosses restrain themselves?”
I shrug.
“And have you thought what a perfect alibi a twin can generate-assuming nobody knows you’re a twin? How intimidating that might be to an eyewitness, to hear respectable, independent witnesses from another hemisphere say, ‘Yes, I definitely saw her in Paris or New York or San Francisco on that day when such and such an atrocity was committed in Beijing, or Shenzen.’ ”
“They made themselves irresistible to the wet department of every national and local government ministry?”
“Now you’re getting close.”
Chan seems to be silently urging me to work out the rest. The clue, again, comes from the crowds, who now look twice as desperate as before. “There are business rivals?”
“Worse. Take it a little further. Bear in mind, the Yips have been doing what they do best for almost a decade. They know how to turn ‘I win, you lose’ into win-win.”
“You don’t mean… a whole profession of competitive organ extractors using the Yips’ business model, cutting corners and cutting prices, but needing to pay off the Yips for-expertise, foreign contacts, offshore surgeries?”
“Correct.”
“All of them contractors to national and local government?”
“Not exclusively, but it’s a good way to start, the way a lot of lawyers start their professional lives working for government prosecution departments, before they go private.”
“And by selling the organs, of course-”
“You make your victim pay for his own assassination. The Yips had to stop charging for nonjudicial killings, which were thrown in as a loss leader.”
“Because of the competition?”
“You got it.”
“But they stayed way ahead of the game because of their superior access to Western markets, their perfect upper-class English and other linguistic skills, their contacts in high society?”
Chan looks toward the sidewalk, which is invisible due to the number of people on it. “But with a whole army of consortia breathing down their necks. Look how good Sun Bin’s English is, and he’s never had a native teacher, or even a lesson. Learned it all from books and television. It’s despair that creates genius.”
“Geniuses like the Yips?”
“Correct. But none of it stacks up unless you posit something special the Yips have to offer-something that makes them attractive to their competitors.”
“The luxury ‘offshore’ clinic?”
“Right.”
“So nobody really knows who removed the organs from those three on Vulture Peak?”
“I know who I think didn’t do it.”
“The Yips. What makes you so sure?”
“They took you to Monte Carlo. Suppose we speculate that somehow they heard about an atrocity that had occurred on Vulture Peak. The timing of the deaths is unknown-the bodies could have been lying there for days. What better witness to an alibi than the cop who would likely be investigating the case? That’s why I thought you were such a sucker. There’s also the added advantage of may
be being able to find out from you how the case stands from moment to moment. Expect more invitations to exotic jaunts.”
“So why did they need an alibi? No Thai cop knew anything about them.”
“Because they run Vulture Peak,” Chan says, watching me watching the crowd, which has now ground to a halt in front of the cafe, blocking the exit right up to the door itself. “They knew that if you were worth ten cents as a cop, you would find that out sooner or later. That banker, To/Wong, had guanxi with the top brass of the Ministry of Correctional Services. He was in the Yips’ own camp. On the other hand, anyone who wanted to set them up…”
“You mean they got word of the murders, but at that moment had no idea who did them? All they knew was that they would be suspects if anyone found out about their ownership of Vulture Peak?”
“It’s a theory that fits.”
“But they didn’t invite me to Dubai. Vikorn sent me there to meet Lilly Yip.”
“Exactly,” Chan says.
Throughout this conversation an intense frown has appeared and disappeared on Chan’s face. It is less than thirty minutes since he took the lithium, so I suppose the medication has not yet reached the bloodstream. I have a feeling that he is going to lose coherence any minute.
“Are you okay? You keep frowning.”
“I already told you I’m nuts. I’m frowning to stop myself talking. If I let go of my will for even a second, I’ll be babbling like a madman. You’ll start to hate me.” He gives me a look. “No wonder I can’t find a partner, huh?”
“Well, before you lose your mind, tell me something. How is it that these warring tribes from the most populous nation on earth are interested in my boss, Colonel Vikorn? Why would anyone in China care so much? Why him for governor?”
Chan stands. I think he is going to the bathroom to talk to himself until the lithium starts to work. “You really think they would stop at governor of Bangkok?” he says, and starts to push through the crowd to reach the bathroom.
I sit with our half-drunk lattes for five minutes, taking in his last words. Then ten. I suppose I should go to the bathroom to check on him, and in any other city I might have done, but here the effort of crossing the jam-packed room is daunting. After fifteen minutes a man in a black suit and white shirt with a thin black necktie emerges from the throng. I think he might be the manager, but I’m not sure. “Your friend needs help,” he says in English. He has enunciated the words perfectly, as if he consulted a talking dictionary before approaching me.