by Lyn Hamilton
I found myself in a window seat, with an old Chinese couple beside me. It was immediately apparent they hadn’t been on an airplane before. The seatbelt perplexed them utterly. I showed them how to use it. When the flight attendant brought drinks, they couldn’t figure out what to do with them. I showed them the tray, and how to operate it. They kept smiling and she, in the middle seat, kept patting my arm, and chatting away. I smiled and nodded. She got out a Thermos and offered me some tea. I declined, having rather gone off tea of late.
I noticed the old man straining to see past me and I offered, via hand motions, to change seats with him. At first he shook his head, but I offered again, and when I’d managed to get both of them out of their seatbelts, in his haste to look out the window he practically sat on my lap. I had to crawl past both of them to get to the aisle seat. The flight attendant had a rather bemused expression on her face, but then came and thanked me. At the window, the old man kept exclaiming and pulling on his wife’s arm so she’d lean over and look too. It was a very clear day, and I expect the view was extraordinary. Watching their enthusiasm, I almost forgot my worries for awhile.
The flight was not the end of our adventure together, however. There was still the escalator to be mastered. The woman was about to fall over backward before I realized that they didn’t know how to negotiate this newfangled contraption either. I lunged for her, keeping her upright, and then I held on to both of them until they were safely off the escalator. Then there was the marvel of the baggage carousel. I had to help them with their luggage because the old man grabbed one suitcase, a huge plaid number, and was dragged along by it, nearly falling over in the process. Somehow I’d forgotten how complicated these things are.
I was about to take my leave, having managed to get them both, along with their luggage, to the glass gates that separated the passengers from those waiting for them, when I saw something that made me feel ill. It was the man in black, now in uniform, and he was clearly looking for someone. I had a pretty good idea who that someone might be, and even had a notion or two about how he knew I’d be on this flight. I was not yet prepared to meet him.
I slipped in between the old couple, linking arms with them. The man in black, now in green, stepped toward us, but in an instant we were swept up in a crowd, twelve or fourteen people, I think, including babies, the welcoming party for the old couple. At first everyone looked at me with some puzzlement, but the old man was excitedly chattering away, and then the old woman said something, and I was suddenly being much fussed over. I was given a baby to hold while luggage was sorted, and the youngest couple, grandchildren of the travelers, parents of the infant in my arms, explained in English that the old couple, who had lived and worked on a farm outside Xi’an all their lives, was coming to live with the family in Beijing. The granddaughter thanked me for helping them, and especially for letting her granddad look out the window. She said, rather unnecessarily, that it was their first flight. I thought it was probably their last, too, and that they’d be talking about it for as long as they lived. She said the family had been worried about how they would manage on the airplane, but couldn’t afford to send someone to travel with them. She said they’d hoped that someone nice would look after them, and were grateful I had been there.
All the while, the man formerly in black watched me. Yes, he saw me, and he recognized me, but he didn’t make a move. That told me something: he wasn’t there in an official capacity, despite the uniform. I found that even more chilling than the alternative. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get away, but at least I had cover as far as the curb. I just hoped there was a taxi at the ready.
“Do you have a car arranged?” the young woman asked.
“I’m afraid not,” I said.
“Then we must insist upon driving you to your hotel.”
Normally I would have politely declined, but this time I decided that I should consider this my reward for good behavior and a timely one at that. Surrounded by my new friends, I sailed right past my pursuer. Mentally I informed him I’d be seeing him soon.
Ten
I kept my promise to Lingfei that I would not reveal the subject of her work. Our life together, however, was soon to come to an end. That is because the gathering storm finally reached Chang’an.
The buffoon, An Lushan, was proving himself a poisonous element in the empire. When Yang Guozhong was made first minister on the death of Li Lin-fu, An Lushan began to fear that he would lose the Son of Heaven’s patronage. I could see no reason that he should think that. The Son of Heaven regularly sent An Lushan women from the imperial harem for his pleasure, and still made sure that he was well rewarded financially as well.
Despite or perhaps because of royal favor, An Lushan was sent north to curtail the activities of the barbarians on the northern frontier. It is not possible to know the inner thoughts of someone like An Lushan. Perhaps so far from Chang’an he began to imagine plots against him. For whatever reason, he turned on the emperor whose favor he had so long enjoyed. With a large army, An Lushan began to march, not against the barbarians, but toward Chang’an.
It was possible that the armies of the Son of Heaven might have prevailed were it not for a disastrous decision. Our army was ordered to advance and engage An Lushan. We were defeated absolutely. This left the route to Chang’an undefended, and it became char that An Lushan would take the capital. The Son of Heaven, who had neglected affairs of state for so long, was forced to flee west. I was one of the eunuchs who went with him. You can imagine the terrible time that was, the chaos, the fear. Before I left I went to Lingfei’s home, but she wasn’t there. I did not even say good-bye.
At a relay station west of the city, generals killed First Minister Yang and forced the emperor to order the execution of his beloved Yang Guifei. The Son of Heaven had to agree, anguished though he must have been. The Son of Heaven then began a terrible journey to Chengdu, where, in despair, he abdicated in favor of one of his sons.
An Lushan, who had seemed to be in the ascendancy, instead became painfully and desperately ill, and died. Some said it was murder, others merely his just desserts. The rebellion was over. Still, it was a very long time before I returned to Chang’an.
An obsession in the early days of archaeology and anthropology was the hunt for the origins of man and the so-called missing link between Neanderthals and us. Scientists scoured the globe in an effort to find this elusive creature. One of the most exciting finds in this regard occurred right outside Beijing, near a village called Zhoukoudian, where a tooth dating back to something between two hundred and thirty and five hundred thousand years ago was found in 1921. The tooth was followed by thousands of bones. It was different from examples of early man found elsewhere, and some thought it the link they all were seeking, naming it homo erectus Pekinensis, or more popularly, “Peking Man.” The story of Peking Man is fraught with intrigue, the skull and bones disappearing as they were being transported for safekeeping as the Japanese invaded. Some said they were ground up as an aphrodisiac, others that they were merely misplaced. Still the story has a spellbinding quality to it, even if they were wrong about it.
It was not lost on me that there was a missing link in all of this for me as well, something that would bring together the two threads, Dory and her silver box and Golden Lotus and indeed everything that had happened over the past several weeks, just one fact that would cause everything to make sense to me, which at that very moment it did not. Yes, I could see where there were intersections between the two, but they could easily be coincidence rather than cause and effect. I did know of one piece of information that I lacked, and that was the name of the man in black, and his relationship, whatever it was, to this whole affair, but whether this was my missing link or not, I had no idea. There was only one way to find out, and that was to ascertain who he was, if only because it was one of the few avenues left for me to pursue. Dr. Xie had said the man in black was army but not army, which is to say he was one of those people who terri
fied others into doing what he wanted, ruling his fiefdom through fear was the way Dr. Xie had put it. That sounded like Golden Lotus to me. And someone or something had sent Burton to Xi’an.
As scary as the prospect of getting within even a mile of the man in black was, he had already shown that he was not about to confront me in a public space, so that meant I just had to make sure I was never alone with him. After some thought, I decided that if you can’t learn someone’s name by any other means, and heaven knows I’d asked everyone I thought might know, then as a last resort, you ask the neighbors. These neighbors would not only yield useful information, but they would also afford me some cover. That at least was my plan.
First, though, I had to find the neighborhood. I knew my chances of locating the little store where Burton had eluded le—eluded me, that is, until the lovely old woman with the bound feet pointed me in the right direction—were not good. I’d been quite lost by the time we got there, concentrating as I was on keeping Burton’s taxi in sight rather than keeping track of where I was. I thought, though, that I could find my way in reverse from the Drum Tower.
That is precisely what I did. There was a woman outside the hotel sweeping the driveway. This was beginning to seem not only repetitious but suspicious as well. I found another way out of the hotel, and thence to the Drum Tower and from there into the hutong neighborhood. There were several wrong turns involved, and a lot of backtracking, but in the end I found the doorway with the five posts, the elaborate guardians of the gate, the rather impressive roofline that turned up at the ends, and the long wall that took up most of the lane. This time the man in black was not in the doorway; indeed, he was nowhere to be seen.
I went along the lane to see if I could find someone who might know the name of the lucky residents. My first efforts met with no success, mostly because I couldn’t find anyone who spoke English. At last, though, late in the afternoon, I found a little bar with a rather voluble proprietor on the lane that runs along the north side of an artificial lake not far from the Drum Tower. To prime the proverbial pump, I bought an overpriced glass of imported wine, and went on and on about how lovely the neighborhood was. She told me the area was now rather hip, at least I think that’s what she said, and while it was good for business, she was afraid the neighborhood might be spoiled. I said there looked to be some really lovely homes in the area. She said most of them were pretty small, and most didn’t have toilets.
I mentioned one I’d seen with five posts in the entrance gate, and said whoever lived there must have a truly beautiful home and be very important. She said she expected I was talking about the Zhang residence. I told her I’d seen someone in army uniform at the front gate, and asked if the army was guarding the place. She said no, the army officer lived there. I expressed surprise that someone in the army could afford such a magnificent home. “Zhang Xiaoling,” she said. She didn’t look as if she liked him. “Zhang Yi important man, much money. Zhang Xiaoling, the son, he spend money. Big car. He is no good.”
So there it was, the missing link, one word, Zhang. Dory Matthews, born Zhang Dorothy. Yes, I knew perfectly well that Zhang is one of the most common names in China, maybe even the most common and certainly in the top ten. I didn’t care. This was one coincidence too many. Satisfied, I paid the hip price for my wine and headed off to find a taxi at the Drum Tower. It was time to give George Matthews a call. He had a lot of explaining to do on behalf of both himself and his late wife.
I nearly made it. I really did. As I approached the Drum Tower, the drums began to beat loudly and rhythmically. There was a cab in the distance, I had my arm out, and then I felt myself being pulled roughly into the backseat of a car. I tried to call out, but with the din from the drums, I knew no one would hear me. The car pulled away the minute I was in it, the man who had grabbed me pulling the door shut as we careened away. In the driver’s seat was Mr. Zhang, Zhang Xiaoling if I had understood my informant properly, formerly known to me as the man in black. His henchman, in the backseat with me, had a gun. He fastened my seatbelt as the car screeched away.
I attempted the requisite protests to no avail. The two men spoke to each other in Chinese and said nothing to me. I tried to keep track of where we were. As far as I could tell, we were heading west. Soon we were in an area that looked a bit suburban, more small town than urban core. There were no signs on the roads that I could read.
A short while later, we were heading into hilly country. I’d seen the hills surrounding Beijing when I’d flown in, but still did not have any sense of where we might be. I looked for clues, but there were no highway numbers, just signs that said, in English, things like “Do not drive tiredly.”
Zhang obviously knew where he was. He was driving very fast, and there was no opportunity for me to release the seatbelt and try to get out of the car. Night was falling. I could see the dark outlines of hills, but very few lights now that would indicate a town anywhere near. The road to our left dropped off fairly precipitously, and there were no lights on that side of the road. There were a few cars out, but very few, and those that were soon disappeared behind us as Zhang aggressively passed them all.
It was on a curve that all hell broke loose. Zhang was once again trying to pass another car when a truck appeared on the curve in the oncoming lane. Zhang jerked the wheel hard, just clipping the bumper of the car he was attempting to pass. Our car’s right tire hit the shoulder and we spun out of control, first to one side of the road and then the other. We kept hitting rocks and trees near the shoulders, and I could hear and feel pieces of the car being ripped off. I thought we were dead.
The car spun one last time and then started sliding backward toward the drop on the lefthand side of the road, but instead of going over the side, the car slammed against a wall of stone and came to a stop, engine still running. Neither Zhang nor the man who was holding me captive had been wearing seatbelts. Zhang was slumped against the wheel, blood pouring from a head wound that I could not help but hope was fatal, and the man beside me had also hit his head on the roof of the car, I think, and looked to have been knocked unconscious. I couldn’t see his gun. Buckled in, I was dazed, but not hurt. It took me a second to pull myself together and move, but then I was out of the seat-belt, and out the door. The headlights of the car, still on, faced down the hill, so I headed uphill into the darkness. The oncoming vehicle and the car that had been clipped by Zhang had disappeared. I wondered why, but didn’t have time to think about it.
I tried to be quiet, but it was dark. I kept tripping on brush, and my breathing sounded very loud to me. I kept climbing, though, trying to put as much space between me and those horrible people before they came to their senses. I saw the headlights of another car, which stopped, its beam on the wrecked car. It was a police vehicle, at least it looked that way to me, and for a minute or two, I thought I’d made a terrible mistake moving away from the road. Zhang, who apparently was not badly hurt, got out of the car and spoke through the window to the occupant of the police car. In a minute, the car pulled away. Zhang had obviously pulled strings again. I heard him call out to the man with the gun, who by now had hobbled out of the car as well, and I was reasonably sure, even in the darkness, that he was looking up the hill. He may have been dazed, but he’d seen which way I’d chosen.
I kept climbing, trying not to crash around like a wounded animal, always on the lookout for some place to hide myself. At last I came to what I thought was a ridge, and staying down so that I wouldn’t show up against the dark sky, went over the top of it. I fell into a ditch or a small gulch of some kind. Something loomed above me, and I almost screamed. It took me a minute, but I decided what I could see above was the outline of roofs against the dark sky. There was even a very slight glow coming from one of the buildings. It was then I heard a shout from the road below, and the sound of someone coming after me.
I seemed to have found myself in a little town built on the side of a hill. I stumbled up stone steps wondering where I would hide. I
tried a door or two that didn’t open, and then found one that did. There were no lights inside. I was in a little courtyard with buildings on three sides. There was a large cart of some kind, loaded with something I couldn’t make out. I heard someone cough nearby.
In my haste I banged against the edge of the cart, and let out an involuntary gasp. I could hear footsteps outsides whose I didn’t know. I tried one of the doors that led onto the courtyard, and it opened. In a second, I was inside. I was in a storage area of some kind, I thought, as I felt around in front of me, one that smelled of cat urine. It certainly wasn’t someone’s living room. There were sacks piled up and I crouched down behind them, only to feel something furry rub against my legs. I stifled a scream. There was a purr. Apparently I’d found the cat. A few minutes later, I could hear what I thought to be someone knocking loudly on doors. Whoever it was came closer. Then I heard steps in the courtyard, and then the ominous sound of a key turning in the lock of the building in which I’d hidden. I was trapped.