When Chi-Wen entered with the breakfast tray, Ni-Fu was asleep in the chair beside his bed. Watching his shoulders rise and fall, the words in The Old Man and the Sea came to mind:
They were strange shoulders still powerful although very old and the neck was still strong too and the creases did not show so much when the old man was asleep and his head fallen forward.
Like Manolin of Hemingway’s story, Chi-Wen loved this old man, this Santiago who had taught him so much and who had loved him unconditionally. Would he betray him now? Could he? All night he had wrestled with the question.
Ni-Fu’s eyes opened, meeting Chi-Wen’s intense stare and, like a guilty child, the young man looked away.
“I missed you, son.”
“And I you, Dr. Cheng.”
For the briefest moment a flicker of pain shadowed Ni-Fu’s face.
“Something wrong?”
The professor shook his head. “Nothing. Just a toothache. “Come,” he said, reaching out a hand, “sit on the bed and have tea with me.”
Ni-Fu studied his protégé’s face. “My granddaughter. They haven’t harmed her?”
“She’s fine. She’s safe.”
“Tell me about her.”
“She’s so smart,” he blurted, nearly spilling the hot water. “She’s a wonderful doctor.” His eyes glowed as he explained how Lili had saved the young boy’s life on the train. “In many ways she reminds me of you, Dr. Cheng.”
“Is she pretty?”
Chi-Wen blushed.
“So she’s found herself an admirer,” Ni-Fu observed sensing Chi-Wen’s feelings for his granddaughter. “You know why they brought her here?”
Sighing. “I know.”
Ni-Fu set aside his teacup. “When I began my work almost forty years ago, I never considered the possibility that a discovery to prolong life could be used for anything but good.” His laugh was bitter. “Call it the naïveté of youth. Or arrogance. Either way, I didn’t see this future: a few old men hoping to use it to cling to power.”
“Will you give them what they want?”
“What would you do?”
“Perhaps it would be best to let them have the secret now,” Chi-Wen spoke carefully. “They promised not to harm Lili if you did.”
“And you believe them?”
“I want to believe them.”
Ni-Fu placed a hand on Chi-Wen’s shoulder. “Don’t be misled. These are ruthless men. They’ll stop at nothing to get what they want. And they’ll sacrifice everyone who stands in their way — me, you, even my granddaughter.”
The implications hit Chi-Wen hard. More than anything, he wanted Lili to be safe. He looked into the older man’s eyes. “It just seems so hopeless.” He quickly recounted his aborted plan to get Lili back on the train to Guangchou and somehow out of China.
“They’re always watching. The moment we make a false move, they know.”
“Tell me, what’s the essential Chinese character?”
Chi-Wen shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Of course you do,” the professor pressed. “What is the essence of being Chinese?”
“Sometimes I feel, deep inside, that to be Chinese is to be weak.”
“Why?”
“Because for so long we’ve accepted so much pain and injustice without rising up, without complaining. To be Chinese is to accept your joss without question.”
Ni-Fu sighed. “No, my son. To be Chinese is to be strong. Otherwise we’d never have lasted over five thousand years. Forbearance and endurance are strengths; willingness to make sacrifices is strength. Even to have the imagination to try the craziest social experiments is strength. But,” he added, “it is also Chinese to hope.”
“Hope?” The word tasted bitter on Chi-Wen’s tongue, evoking a kaleidoscope of painful images from his past: Red Guards shouting slogans, his father’s public humiliation and private suicide, his aunt’s isolation, his own banishment from school to the countryside. He shook his head. “No, professor, for me, hope is dead.”
“Listen, son. You and your generation have been weaned from the concept of hope. I understand that. But it’s not dead!” Ni-Fu declared. “It’s still within you. Like the resiliency of a thin branch bent to the ground by the winter’s snow. When the snow melts, it springs back. That is your joss.”
“You really believe that?”
“I do. Absolutely.” Ni-Fu surveyed the room. “I think I know a way to rekindle hope.”
“You have a plan?”
“I have a plan.” He motioned Chi-Wen to lower his voice. “You never know who may be listening,” he whispered.
“Ah, Dr. Quan.” Seng rose from behind his desk. “Come in, come in. I took the liberty of pouring your tea. It’s always better if it has a chance to steep a bit.”
Refusing to be mollified by Dr. Seng’s congeniality, Lili ignored his outstretched hand.
Seng said nothing, but Lili thought she saw a grin slip across his lips before he sat down. He motioned for her to take the chair opposite his desk. “How do you feel this morning?”
“Furious!” Lili snapped, staring directly into Seng’s dark eyes. Dressed in khaki Bermuda shorts and sandals, the round-faced man looked more like a scout leader than a medical director, a sharp contrast to Dr. Trenton’s immaculate appearance. “I feel deceived and manipulated.”
“I regret the need to deceive you in any way, my dear.” Seng’s voice exuded sincerity.
“If you regret it, why do it?” Lili angrily gripped the Victorian antimacassar protecting her armchair. “You knew my grandfather was alive when you visited L.A. Medical, yet you never told me.”
“Yes, and I’m sorry,” he said, his face softening. “I couldn’t risk anyone else knowing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It was shortly before I made the trip to Los Angeles, that I learned Dr. Cheng had any family.”
“Even if I believed you, it doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me the truth when we first met,” Lili retorted.
Seng held up his hand. “Please, I’m getting to that. There was a compelling reason. You see, your grandfather has been doing some very important research. In England he became an expert in pharmacology. When he returned to China he studied the use of Chinese herbs as medication.” Seng stopped to sip his tea, aware Lili was following every word. Better to tell half the truth. It made the lie easier to conceal.
“Through his work with Chinese herbs, your grandfather has been able to isolate several new drugs including innovative treatments for hypertension and diabetes. As you might imagine, the market potential for such discoveries is enormous.”
“And you’re afraid of espionage?”
“Precisely. Until we reach the manufacturing stage, there can be no leaks outside China.”
“I see.” Lili felt at a loss. Seng made it sound so reasonable. If her grandfather was involved in drug research, she could understand the need for secrecy. From her conversations with Dylan she appreciated the intense competitiveness of the research world. Still, she wanted to know more. “Why try to lure me to China with a story about a fellowship? Why not tell me my grandfather was alive?”
“The answer to the first question is easy. We value family above all. Even with our Communist practicality, we haven’t overcome the centuries-old tradition of ancestor worship. Your grandfather had recently become depressed; he felt he was aging with no family around him. When we learned there was a relative living in the United States, we hoped bringing you to him would cure his melancholy. The fact that you’re a doctor was a wonderful coincidence. Hence, the offer of the fellowship. Which,” he added, “is quite legitimate. There is much you can learn here about Chinese medi-cine.”
“And the answer to my second question?”
“Not telling you your grandfather was alive was a decision I made after meeting you, my dear.”
“I beg your pardon?”
His smile was indulgent. “If you’ll forgive my saying so
, Dr. Quan, you are an impulsive young woman.”
Lili looked away, refusing to acknowledge the truth of his words.
“I was afraid you might inadvertently share that information with others. The Americans believe Ni-Fu Cheng is dead. If they knew he was alive and involved in the work he’s doing, they might be inclined to lure him out of China. It’s already happened with a few of our best scientists. Our country needs to keep good people here.”
Lili didn’t know what to say. She’d come to this meeting filled with suspicion, expecting to hear about some international plot, not even sure she hadn’t been kidnapped. Now it seemed the Chinese were simply paranoid about losing the edge on their drug research. Getting her here had certainly been convoluted. Why? Perhaps because we are Chinese, Chi-Wen had said. Inscrutable Chinese? Was it as simple as that? Maybe. “What about my passport?”
Seng opened his top desk drawer and showed her a packet including her passport and travel papers. “Here they are. Stamped and approved. You can have them any time.” He spoke in the velvety voice of a seducer. “This drawer is never locked.” Buying her confidence was worth the small price of losing control of the documents. Besides, it didn’t matter. Now that she was in Xi’an, it would be impossible for her to escape.
Lili looked at him, chagrined. Her mind had worked overtime, invented conspiracies and international plots. It seemed all her presumptions had been wrong.
“You keep them. I’m sorry for being difficult,” she said quietly.
“No need to apologize, my dear. I’m glad you’re here. Come,” he said, standing. “Let me take you on a little tour of the hospital and then we’ll join your grandfather on rounds.”
Langley, Virginia
Welcome to Busybody. Please Log on.
He sat at the keyboard console facing the fourteen-inch computer screen and punched in a six-digit security identification number.
Thank you. Enter password.
It was a new program — still highly classified. But he’d managed to “borrow” the secret code from a colleague from Data Control who owed him a favor.
Thank you.
He was in! Once the negative was fed through the scanner and the image digitized, Halliday quickly accessed the extensive database stored in the CIA’s mainframe computer. Photos of anyone ever fingerprinted anywhere in the world had been cross-referenced with identity information.
No file found.
Shit! Then he remembered. His colleague had told him the computer system did not use the new fuzzy logic technology. It required that the photo be taken at precisely the right angle to make the ID. He found another snapshot and fed it through the scanner.
No file found.
He checked his watch. Five minutes. Jesus H. Christ! If he stayed on the system much longer he’d be caught. Starting to sweat, he scanned the last photo.
Thank you.
Thank you. Third time’s always a charm.
Seconds later, the answer flashed on his terminal. He stared at the screen. So that was it! Well, he supposed he shouldn’t be shocked. After all, Halliday had been willing to double-cross the CIA. Why shouldn’t DeForest do the same to him?
Xi’an, China
The line coiled around the outpatient clinic like a snake, its tail lengthening every few minutes. Some of the sick sat on wooden benches outside the examination room, waiting for the doctors to open the doors. The small area could barely accommodate the number of patients who, Lili noticed, seemed to be accompanied by at least one family member.
“That’s because in China, no one would dream of going to the doctor alone,” Dr. Seng explained. He checked his watch. “Ten o’clock.”
As if on cue, the dispensary doors opened and the crowd surged forward, destroying the uniform contour of the snake. Unperturbed, a doctor dressed in a white coat over Bermuda shorts began to question one old man who’d come with his wife and eldest son.
“Zhong yi huo zhe xi yi?”
“He’s asking whether he prefers Chinese or Western medicine,” Seng translated. “Whatever the answer, the consultation will be very similar.”
Seng introduced Lili to Dr. Yang, a slender, bespectacled man in his fifties who invited her to join him at his examination desk as he interviewed the old man.
“I spent one year at the University Medical School in San Diego,” he declared in excellent English, “so I like to mix Chinese with Western medicine.”
The patient’s chief complaint was cough and fever. Yang asked about smoking history, pain, night sweats, weight loss, character of his cough, all the while making notes on a small chart.
“The client, not the clinic keeps the record,” Seng told her.
After each question, there was a long consultation between the man’s wife and son whose comments were apparently contradictory. Yang patiently smiled, nodded and kept writing. After a short examination, he diagnosed mild bronchitis and asked the patient what therapy he would like. “For colds you can have nose drops, ear drops, throat lozenges, vitamins for overall strength. For bronchitis, I recommend an herbal mix and an injection of antibiotics, with some nose drops and vitamins.”
The old man agreed to the combination therapy and Lili followed him and his family to the pharmacist who filled the tonic prescription, mixing a variety of herbs, bones, meals, and dried flowers on a tall pile of newspapers, deftly twisting a sheet into a series of cones, one cone per infusion. “Two injections a day of this antibiotic,” he said, handing the patient a cardboard box filled with ten glass vials of saline and ten capsules of powder.
“The sick person takes care of the medicine himself,” Seng explained to Lili as the group proceeded to a small room off the pharmacy where the injection nurse waited.
Without pretense of privacy, the man was instructed to climb up the three steps onto a high chair and pull down his pants to expose his thigh. The nurse selected an enormous syringe from a huge sterilized pile lying on the white tray, fitted it with a reusable needle, mixed one capsule of antibiotics into a vial of saline and injected the medicine very, very slowly.
When Lili wondered aloud at the possibility of an allergic reaction, Seng told her Chinese antibiotics were weaker than Western drugs because doctors in China were afraid of overmedicating. “People here rely so much on natural remedies, they tend to be more sensitive to Western medications.”
As Seng led her down the hall, he expounded on the philosophy behind Eastern medicine. “We Chinese know that general health is primarily a matter of interior harmony in which all parts of the body work smoothly together, guided by a tranquil mind. We know, too, that a disorder in one part of the body can bring pain to another.”
They entered a room where several patients lay supine on benches, each as placid as a walrus despite the long, thin needles stuck into various parts of their flesh.
“We believe there are hundreds of points along the nervous system that can be stimulated to trigger responses in other parts of the body, helping to bring all the elements back into balance and restore natural order. This is the belief underlying acupuncture, a practice over two thousand years old.”
“It’s funny, I guess,” Lili confessed. “But I’ve never actually seen acupuncture performed.”
“You’ll have ample opportunity to learn the technique here.” Seng pointed to one of the benches where a young man lay with one pant leg rolled up above his knee, three threadlike silver pins implanted in his tibia.
Lili watched a doctor, bent low, palpate his ankle until she found a spot and pressed it with what looked like a ballpoint pen, leaving a pin in place, shot in by a spring. She twisted it very gently until it entered about an inch before exploring the hollow of his heel, seeking a location for yet another pin.
Lili noted that the man showed no sign of discomfort, but lay completely quiet and still, as if under sedation.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked.
“Headache,” Seng reported after consulting the doctor. “I can assure you
he’s already been evaluated for various causes,” he added, responding to Lili’s look of skepticism. “We’ve ruled out eye problems, high blood pressure, and infection. He’s scheduled for a CAT scan in a few days. Meanwhile the acupuncture treatment will relieve tension.”
“A CAT scan? I guess I just assumed you didn’t have any modern technology.”
Seng shook his head. “CAT scanners, respirators, and computers. These days we are always willing to learn from the West all that is clearly useful and worthwhile.” He looked at her. “But you in the West do not seem prepared to learn anything from us, which is a pity, since in some ways we might be wiser than you are.”
Lili felt the same discomfort under his piercing gaze that she’d experienced in Los Angeles. “I didn’t mean —”
Seng held up his hand. “I understand what you meant. When you look at things in China, you are still seeing them with the eyes of a visitor. It will take time to adjust your focus to understand our way of thinking. This case, for example,” he said, indicating the acupuncture patient, “it’s not the Eastern way to insist on a single ‘why’ or to try to prove conclusively what ‘is.’ In medicine, as in our way of life, we leave room for a variety of feelings and beliefs that together make a completeness.”
Completeness. Yin and yang. Like tai chi ? Like Lili and Chi-Wen? A momentary muse. They had reached the end of a long corridor. Without thinking, Lili reached for the handle of one of two doors placed at a ninety-degree angle to one another and discovered it was locked.
“This one,” Seng said, leading her through the door that connected the inpatient and outpatient clinics. “It’s time to meet Dr. Cheng.”
Beijing, China
A long, crooked stack of ash toppled from the end of Deng Xioping’s Panda brand cigarette and splashed across the lapels of his crumpled jacket. The head of the Communist Party removed the glowing stub from his mouth, holding it between tobacco-stained fingers that trembled with age. At the same time, he covered his mouth with his other fist to smother the sudden rasp of his chronic smoker’s cough.
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