by John Burdett
“The Yips saw all that?”
“Yes. When it comes to business, they are very mature and well ahead of the curve.”
“But where does Manu fit in? He’s not exactly a poster boy.”
Chan nods. “Love.” He smiles at me. “In the future love still exists, but it is twisted, thwarted, cowed by market forces. Only the strongest, and richest, can afford it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“General Zinna. The Yips’ setup here would be impossible without overwhelming political power and protection. They could never get away with it in Hong Kong-or even China. That’s why I’ve been searching for this place for so long. That’s why I got so interested in you, after I heard you’d been to Monte Carlo with them. The General runs Phuket. Part of the deal is that they take care of Manu. As soon as face transplants become more aesthetically pleasing, he goes under the knife again. Next time he will choose whatever face he likes-maybe someone he sees on the street, or a movie star on TV. In the meantime he is the organization’s problem child, who has to be indulged.”
As he spoke, Chan took hold of my arm. His flashlight had picked out a bank of refrigerators of the kind with transparent lids that open from the top. Corner shops used to sell ice cream from this model. At first I cannot see beyond the frost. Chan obligingly opens the lid of one of them, takes something out, brushes it off, and plays his light over it. “Of course, it’s totally unusable. The flesh is dead, and all the cells will have been corrupted by ice. We’re talking about a form of insanity, after all.”
I am looking at the face of Mr. To, aka Wong; the moustache is a tad frosty. Chan gives it to me to hold, while he dips into the fridge and brings out two more faces. A quick brush with his forearm, and I recognize To’s two women assistants. All three look pretty glum with drooping mouths, but I guess that’s only to be expected.
“Let’s get out of here,” I tell Chan. “We have all the evidence we need now.”
“Not yet,” Chan says. “We haven’t finished here yet.”
He flashes his light around and finds another door, which opens onto a storeroom crowded with shelves.
“Embalming is big in the future-as a spinoff of the organ-transfer business.”
“I didn’t mind being brave when we had a good reason, but now we don’t need to be, and he could be-”
He stops me by holding up a hand and nods at a set of shelves where bell jars sit in serried ranks. There is no liquid in them, however. As he passes the light from one to another, I see that each bears a label in Chinese script. He reaches up to one of the jars and takes it down to lay it on a metal table. “The labels are all names of previous owners.” He lifts the top of the jar to pick up the embalmed penis. He reads the label: “An Chen Cheung.”
He closes one eye while he strokes the cock. “Alas, poor Inspector An Chen Cheung! I knew him well, Horatio. A fellow of infinite lust. Here hung those famous testicles-quite sterile now. Here rises that cock he used to give pleasure to so many. There was hardly a woman he would not share it with, when asked nicely-and he was a handsome fellow.” Chan smirks. He turns the set from side to side. “An Chen Cheung was a great cocksman-perhaps the finest on the force at the time.” The smirk grows. “They took him to Monte Carlo. Of course, they didn’t kill him there, they merely spoiled him. In the officers’ mess one day he bragged to us that they offered him their dubious loins simultaneously in a threesome, but I have my doubts. In all my studies of the Twins, I’ve never seen any real evidence of copulation with a living male organ.
“Anyway, poor An Chen Cheung’s mouth was bigger than his cock. He disappeared soon after the Monte Carlo trip-I always wondered.” Chan holds the cock at arm’s length to turn it under the beam of his contemplation. “He was a keen amateur sportsman. D’you think those mighty lungs are beating in someone else’s chest? Are those twin kidneys still together, or have then been divided by the market, with one in Mecca and the other in Tel Aviv? Is one purifying the piss of a Jew and the other an Arab? And how about that miracle organ, the liver? Did they cut it in half and send the pieces north and south, one to Vladivostok, the other to Melbourne? Isn’t globalism great?”
As a cop, I wonder most about the labels in Chinese. Chan reads my thoughts. “They must operate here in an atmosphere of absolute security. What do you know about this army general, Zinna?”
“The original gay bull-a control freak-uses the promotion carrot to seduce ambitious cadets. Very rich from the meth trade with Burma.”
“Right.”
“But why the labels on the jars?”
“Ever hear of good old-fashioned male triumphalism? You think women haven’t always wanted a piece of that? These are trophies, my friend.”
“Do they use all of them?”
“Sure. Can’t you imagine the fights? ‘I think I’ll have An Chen Cheung tonight,’ says Lilly. ‘I’ve been thinking about him all day.’ ‘Oh, no you don’t,’ says Polly, ‘I’m having him. Why don’t you have Tom, Dick or Harry-have all three if you like.’ ” Chan looks at me. “Or something like that.”
Chan’s features have started to twitch. “Where’s your lithium?” I say.
“I left it in my other bag, in the big house.”
I’m thinking that this would be a good moment for Chan to take his medication. Too late. His gaze has morphed into the thousand-mile stare, a cold sweat has broken out over his face, and his lips have started to tremble.
“It’s such a shame society has poured its disapproval over those of us with the bipolar gift. I’ve seen things, Detective, that no ordinary cop can see.” He is shivering.
“Like what?”
“Like dawn on Andromeda.” His teeth are chattering. “I’ve seen this new millennium laid out before my eyes in all its tragic futility. I’ve seen our species descend to insect level in a prolonged orgy of narcissism which we will continue to call progress until we’ve descended into such a state of functional barbarism that we are all eating one another. I’ve seen the organ market rise in importance until it’s bigger than oil. I’ve seen hearts and lungs for sale on eBay. I’ve seen women turn into men and vice versa. I’ve seen the average human reduced to a babbling idiot, so far gone he demands to be exploited. The false is to be preferred over the real-trash trumps excellence-truth is something that only interests religious fanatics-science has to be applied to titillation and video games if it is to receive funding-soccer is the only world religion with any influence-the age of the little man, and woman, will be worse than anything perpetrated by a tyrant. I’ve seen the war of all against all-and I’ve seen the end. As the prophet said, nine-tenths of humanity will be destroyed.
“Why did I become a cop? Certainly the law has no interest for me, and detection is extremely boring most of the time-you are never permitted to prosecute the real villains. Only now and then the criminal world turns up a prophet through whose eyes one may discern what happens next. What criminals do today, the respectable do tomorrow. Look how popular fraud has become on Wall Street. From that point of view, you could say I’m the luckiest cop on earth. I have in-depth knowledge of the minds of two of our greatest modern prophets, two spoiled girls who read the future better than any Internet entrepreneur and are probably billionaires as a consequence.”
He inhales. “Like so many vocational cops, I was propelled by the heroic impulse. Make the streets safe for… et cetera. Bang up the bad guys… et cetera. Make sure they never again… et cetera. How cute. Now I’m forty-five years old. At my age guilt and innocence get turned on their heads. No authentic hero ever reaches fifty. I was sure the Yips would have a commodity shop like this-I saw it underground somewhere-but was it a paranoid fantasy? Was it my illness talking?
“Now there is only one more detail I need to know, then I’m out of here. I’ve come here to die, Detective. They can have my liver, my kidneys, my face, my cock-small prices to pay for liberation from their brave new world. What’s your excuse for getting yourself car
ved up this day?” He glares at me with his lower lip trembling. “Did you ever read the Gospel of Judas?”
“No.”
“You should. It’s revolutionary. In it Jesus muscles Judas into arranging for his crucifixion sooner rather than later so he can escape the cloying human form and dissolve in a spiritual lake so pure not even angels have seen it. See, Judas was the only disciple who really understood him. I thought Christianity was strictly for children until I read that.”
There is a click. The lights go on. Now the vast underground chamber is washed in neon. Chan’s reaction is instant: he raises both arms. I follow his lead. Whoever made the click makes no further sound, so Chan and I are left to turn slowly around.
Close up, Manu is hard to look at. It is like seeing two different men in the same body: the perfect manly form of the tall, disciplined soldier holding a giant combat rifle, which is pointed at us; the maimed and frozen face.
The effect on Chan is electric. The expressions that come and go on his face bring vividness to the word bipolar. Now he has wrinkled his own features and is slowly lowering one of his hands. He points at Manu. “Translate,” he hisses at me. Then: “I love you.”
“He loves you,” I tell Manu in Thai. There is no reaction from that Halloween mask. Only the eyes move. They glow with the dark energy of an edge dweller.
“I’ve been looking for you all my life,” Chan says. “You are more of a pariah than I’ll ever be. You are weirder than me, you live in an extreme atmosphere. I envy you above all men. There is no darkness you have not penetrated with your fearless gaze, no illusion you have not torn apart with your incredible ugliness.”
I translate. Manu makes a gurgling sound in his throat. His eyes are sparkling, and I wonder if the gurgling is not a form of laughter.
“I understand you because I’ve aspired to be like you, but I don’t have your courage. If I looked like you, I wouldn’t have the strength to carry on. I would have done myself in right after the operation, when they gave you the mirror and came out with a whole lot of stupid excuses.” Manu jerks the gun upward, as if encouraging Chan to continue. “But in my small way I too live on the other side. I’m a crazy bipolar-ask this guy here-he had to rescue me from a public toilet when I was having one of my raving sessions. See, I’m not so different. You could say I’m worse-if they could look at my mind they’d find it even weirder, uglier, stranger, more inhuman even than your mug. I admire you. The integrity of your suffering and isolation is beyond anything I’ve ever come across. You are urban man in his most pure form. I would be honored to be executed by a real man instead of slowly ground down into another clapped-out cipher. Why not make me your slave, keep me here with you in your underground lair, oh King of Hades? Or kill me right now if you like.”
Manu shakes his head and turns his back. He moves like someone pottering around at home. We watch him go to the fridge where the faces are kept and lift the lid.
Chan does not take his eyes off that deformed figure. “You have to get into his mind,” he whispers. “He’s learned that without a face, he doesn’t exist. Therefore he is invisible. Now he is making himself visible to us.”
Manu has pulled out a face-it is To’s-and slapped it over his own with one hand. It remains there for a moment while he turns to look at us. The gray flesh does not resemble anything living, more a macabre mask with drooping mouth. He cocks his head coyly, as if asking if we like his new looks. Then he turns back to the fridge, pulls off To, and puts on the face of the older woman who was To’s secretary. He pirouettes and poses coquettishly.
“He’s using us as a mirror,” Chan explains. “Be polite.” Chan starts to clap, and nudges me. I also clap; the lonely sounds are quickly lost in the huge chamber. Manu takes off the dead face and stares at us. He seems perplexed. Chan has twisted his features into those of a groveling sycophant. Out of the corner of his mouth he whispers: “He is going to become fascinated with me. I’m going to prove to him that I love him. That’s your signal to run. Get the fuck out of here. This isn’t your moment. This case belongs to me. Translate what I say until I tell you to go.”
Chan drops to his knees. Manu’s gurgling is an attempt to communicate, but I cannot work it out. Something in the sounds resembles Thai words, but there is too much distortion to be sure. Now my mind has flipped to Om: I think of her making love to this monster, perhaps spending the night with him, seeing his face on the pillow, listening to the air passing through the hole that once was a nose. And now I understand what Manu is trying to say. “He wants you to kiss him,” I explain.
Chan stands, embraces Manu, kisses those busted lips, and sinks his tongue into that mutilated mouth. Manu is holding the gun by the barrel while the stock rests on the ground. This would be a good moment to rush him. “Don’t rush him,” Chan says out of the side of his mouth. “Get the fuck out. Run. He’s too far gone to care if you escape or not. I’m his next face. That’s all he knows right now.”
But there is no need to run. Manu seems pleased with Chan. He steps back from him and balances the gun against his stomach with one finger still on the trigger. With a single jerk of his head, he tells me to go. When I turn to find the stairs, though, he shakes his head and points to a door at the opposite end of the operating room. I have the feeling he is laughing at me.
29
At the far end of the room, I find a door that leads to a tunnel. It is brightly lit with sparkling white tiles and extrasmooth concrete. It is far longer than I expected. I must have run more than two hundred yards when I come to a door locked from the inside. It is wider than most doors. When I open the locks, I find I’m in a garage. After a moment of reorientation, I realize it is the garage belonging to the mansion. When I examine the door, I see that when shut it fits snugly into the wall and becomes invisible. I walk to the garage’s entrance and find a button on the wall. The door folds upward. Daylight. I climb up to the balcony, go to the great glass sliding doors. Inside, the miniature stream is still tinkling over the feng shui master’s lucky pebbles. When I attempt to take out my cell phone, I drop it three times. I sit on the floor and press an autodial number.
“Master, where are you? I’ve been so worried about you.”
“Vulture Peak. Do you have the plans?”
“I have all the docs. It looks like they covered for the tunnels by obtaining a permit for full internal renovation and landscaping.”
“Bring them anyway,” I say, and hang up.
Now I hear the throb of chopper blades through the open doors of the salon. When I go out to look up at the sky, I see a small black dragonfly coming closer. I walk through the house to the front door and stand in the road to watch it land on the hillock. A diminutive figure in smart casuals with a small backpack emerges. It is Sun Bin. I wave at him, and he runs toward me. My teeth are chattering when I explain what has happened. He seems only half surprised.
“D’you have the plans to the underground system?” he asks.
“No, they pretended it was for internal renovation and landscaping. No tunnel plans registered.”
He nods. “There has to be centralized surveillance connected to the Net. That must be how the Yips keep control.”
“Chan’s down there,” I blurt, despite having told him minutes ago.
Sun Bin spares me a glance. “He has been planning this for years. He has his own agenda.”
“Which is what?”
“Martyrdom, of course. That is his heroic nature. He was the most successful commander of special forces in the history of the Hong Kong police. He is a tactical and strategic genius. He can talk down would-be suicides and hostage takers like no one else-he understands criminals better than any cop I ever met. An enormous IQ of a hundred and sixty or something, but he uses it mostly to torture himself. He is capable of total identification with the perp.” Sun Bin scratches his temple. “In other words, he’s a total crazy. Sometimes he’s Jesus Christ, sometimes Judas Iscariot. Whatever happens, it is because he has dec
ided to make it happen that way. He used you as he used me. He’s a kind of Sherlock Holmes on his last case-he confided to me once-but then he was in one of his bipolar moments, so it’s difficult to be clear.”
“Are you ever clear about anything?”
He shrugs. “For sixty years it was dangerous to be clear about anything in China. It still is. How do you break the habit of a lifetime? Tell me, how realistic is it to be clear about anything?”
“He planned it all?” I repeat, feeling morose. “What happens next?”
“Watch,” Sun Bin says.
As he speaks, we hear the throb of chopper blades. In my confusion I assume it is Sun Bin’s ride taking off; then I remember it took off as soon as he landed. When we go out on the balcony, we see another black dragonfly in the distance, coming closer. We go to the front door and watch from the road.
The chopper swings around to face into the wind as it lands on the big H. The first we see of a passenger is a long shapely leg. Another woman gets out on the other side. The gale from the blades sends the Twins’ long hair fanning out behind them like black wings; they are squinting. Lilly-or Polly-bends into the bubble to say something to the pilot. They both carry large designer bags, which they hoist onto their shoulders as they run to the other house. We watch while one by one they bend to look into the biometric security device. The gate opens, they disappear. I’m thinking: This has happened before. This is what happened when To and his two assistants were slaughtered. Now that the clerk has disappeared, the whole network is put on high alert and summoned to Vulture Peak.
Sun Bin shakes his head at the chopper and retreats into the house. He takes a tablet laptop out of his backpack and lays it on a coffee table in the salon. It is the same laptop that I saw in that condo in Shanghai. He doesn’t switch it on. “We need to look for an Ethernet jack. There has to be one somewhere.”
“Why?”
“Because the people who use this house have to know everything that’s happening in that underground network.”