by Peter May
As Li finally approached the girl, she seemed to cower below him. He stood for a long moment, then lifted his open hand as if about to strike her.
‘Li!’ Margaret screamed. She overtook Hrycyk and drew level with Li. ‘What are you doing?’ She looked at the strange, almost twisted expression on his face. She had never seen him look that way before. He stood breathing hard, unable to take his eyes off the girl. Margaret turned her gaze toward her and for the first time thought that there was something vaguely familiar about her.
Hrycyk caught up with them, several INS men running up behind him. His gun was in his hand, but hanging loosely at his side. Years of smoking and the strain of being a hundred pounds overweight, had taken their toll. Gasping for breath, he said, ‘For fuck’s sake, what is going on…?’
Li still had his eyes fixed on the girl, something like hatred burning in them now. He said, ‘She is Xiao Ling. My sister.’
Margaret looked quickly from one to the other in astonishment. She had met Xiao Ling only once, in a tearoom in Beijing two years ago. She doubted if she would have recognised her.
Hrycyk was unmoved. He nodded to his men. ‘Take her away.’
Li stepped in front of them. ‘I don’t think you understand,’ he said with a dangerous intensity. ‘She is my sister.’
‘I don’t care if she’s your sex-change uncle,’ Hrycyk told him happily. ‘She’s an illegal-fucking-Chinese-alien-prostitute, and she’s going to jail!’
III
The lights of Huntsville were spread out below like clusters of fireflies dancing in the warm Texas night. Margaret could follow the line of the Interstate snaking north by the headlights of the cars. But at this time it was not busy and there was little traffic. She saw the landing lights of the tiny Huntsville airfield, and on the other side of the highway the blaze of light around the perimeter of the Holliday Unit, where the Texas Department of Criminal Justice processed criminals also suspected of being illegal aliens. Some comedian had nicknamed it the Holliday Inn, and the name had stuck. Now the facility had been turned over exclusively for the use of the task force.
The small army helicopter touched down gently on the tarmac. A journey that would normally have taken an hour had been accomplished in less than fifteen minutes. Ducking under the downdraught, Margaret ran toward the lights of the terminal building, little more than a shed with windows. She crossed through the headlights of the car that was waiting for her and climbed in the back. The army driver turned and nodded. ‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘you wanna go straight there?’
‘Please.’
He engaged the shift and as he turned the car, its lights raked across the runway, illuminating rows of tiny single-engined aircraft lined up along either side. They drove slowly over a pitted road past playing fields, rows of bleachers erected to accommodate the faithful who came to watch the Huntsville Hornets on a Saturday.
They turned right past a filling station and the lights of the Hitchin’ Post restaurant before making a left and passing under Interstate 45. In less than two minutes they were on the access road to the Holliday Inn, which shimmered silver under the floodlights raised around its perimeter, light glinting on miles of shiny razor wire curled around the top of high mesh fencing. As they pulled into the brightly lit car park out front, Margaret could see the guard in the watchtower above the main gate following their progress. She stepped out into the glare of lights that bathed the prison in what felt like permanent day and walked toward the gate.
The guard called from the tower. ‘Stand below.’ Margaret did as she was told, and watched as he lowered a red plastic bucket on the end of a rope. ‘Put your ID in the bucket,’ he shouted. She dropped in her plastic photocard from the Medical Examiner’s Office, and he drew the bucket back up the tower. He took several moments to examine the ID before making a phone call. ‘You’ll get it back on the way out,’ he called. ‘Stand by the gate.’
As she reached the gate, she saw a black female officer approaching it through a corridor of fencing that led from the administration offices in H block. She unlocked an inner gate, before opening the outer gate to let Margaret in. They shook hands.
‘I’m Deputy Warden Macleod,’ the officer said. ‘You gonna have to get in one of these white suits to go in back. But I guess there ain’t much I have to tell you about that.’ She locked the gates behind them, and as they walked toward H block she said, ‘You people don’t hang around. They tell me they’re going to have the first hearings tomorrow morning. Usually it’s a week before we’re processing people over to Goree.’
Margaret said, ‘They’re not going to Goree. The Immigration Court there’s too small, and we can’t exactly evacuate a whole prison unit to keep these prisoners isolated.’
Deputy Warden Macleod looked surprised. ‘Where you taking them then?’
Margaret said, ‘The dean at the College of Criminal Justice has agreed to let us use their courtroom. It’s bigger, and they’re just going to shut down the college for the day.’
The deputy warden raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, that’s a new one on me.’
Margaret said, ‘They used it once for a real-life capital murder trial. Some guy from Conroe with financial problems. Kidnapped his neighbours’ kid for ransom, but ended up killing the child. They found him guilty and gave him the death penalty.’
The deputy warden whistled softly. ‘You know, I ain’t never been too sure that we got the right to take a man’s life, no matter what he’s done. I figure the Big Man’s the only one with the right to make that judgment.’
‘Then you’re in the wrong job, in the wrong town,’ Margaret said. ‘They say it’s going to be a record year for executions over at the Walls Unit.’
Deputy Warden Macleod pressed her lips together in an expression of silent disapproval.
In the main hall of H block, the floor was polished to such a shine Margaret could see her reflection in it. A large notice read: HARD WORK APPLIED WITH INTELLIGENCE AND RIGHT THINKING WILL LEAD TO SUCCESS. The deputy warden followed Margaret’s eyes. ‘Warden’s a religious man,’ she said. ‘We believe in encouraging all our prisoners to take the right path.’ Clearly a shiny one, Margaret thought. The deputy warden opened a door to their left. ‘You can get changed in here.’
After she had passed through the security ‘airlock’ gates leading to the rest of the prison, Margaret was met by another female officer in a Tivek suit and face mask. ‘All of the staff beyond this point are suited up,’ the officer said. ‘We got Department of Health people advising us on everything we do.’
They walked down a long, broad, tarmacked area between low prison buildings on either side, passing through locked gates in fences that cut the main drag into sections. ‘They call this Main Street,’ the officer said. ‘This is where the prisoners get their exercise.’
Almost on cue, a group of immigrants emerged from a building away to their left, led by a single officer in a protective suit. There were, perhaps, a dozen of them. They were sorry figures in their white prison-issue jackets and trousers, several sizes too big for their slight, Chinese frames. At least, Margaret, noticed, they looked cleaner.
The officer said, ‘We’re feeding them in batches. Never seen such a compliant bunch of prisoners. They just do what they’re told. No questions.’
They passed through another gate. This one had a sign attached to it. THE USE OF PROFANITY IS A DECLARATION OF STUPIDITY. And below it, in Spanish and English, NO HABLAN; NO TALKING. They were going to have to start thinking about getting Chinese translations, Margaret thought grimly. They had three hundred beds here. But it was never going to be enough. This place was going to start filling rapidly.
In the processing block, at the top right-hand side of main street, sad Chinese faces sat in a caged area waiting to be interviewed, fingerprinted, photographed and documented. They displayed no curiosity about the white-suited figures with their plastic face masks. That uniquely Chinese sense of fatalism that had served them through fiv
e thousand years of turbulent history, and most recently the insanity of the Cultural Revolution, had descended on them like a soporific cloud.
Li sat in an office on his own through the back. Margaret closed the door behind her and sat opposite him at a scarred desk. Somewhere, in the hours since she had last seen him, he had acquired a pack of cigarettes. The air was laden with his smoke, an ashtray overflowing in front of him.
‘I thought you gave up,’ she said.
‘So did I.’ His eyes met hers only for a moment before flickering away again.
They sat in silence for a long time before she said, ‘The news isn’t good, Li Yan. INS have been pulling in illegal Chinese immigrants all over — in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco…Seems most of them crossed the border from Mexico. Houston’s just a staging post for moving on.’ She paused. ‘Early intelligence from interviews suggests they’ve been getting “vaccinated” as they crossed the border for nearly three months now. That could mean as many as twenty-five thousand illegal Chinese infected with the virus.’
Li looked at her. He heard the despair in her voice. He knew what it meant. These were numbers that it would be almost impossible to deal with. But right now he found it hard to care. He tried to focus on what she was saying. ‘…and because they’re illegal, they’re not going to come forward, no matter what kind of appeal we make. Even when they get sick. Jesus…!’ She stood up, unable to contain her frustration. ‘These poor bastards really are the ideal delivery system for a bioterrorist attack. I mean, how are we supposed to deal with these numbers? We’re going to have to build a quarantine facility, never mind the legal implications of trying to keep them all locked up. And your government’s not going to want them back. Christ, can you imagine what’s going to happen when this all gets out? As it will. There’s going to be panic. There’s going to be vigilante groups hunting down and murdering Chinese — whether they’re illegal immigrants or not.’
She stopped and looked at Li. And she knew that no matter the scale of the nightmare, Li was battling his own demons. She sat down again and took one of his hands in hers.
‘Have they let you see her yet?’ He shook his head. ‘But do you know? Have they told you?’ she asked. ‘Was she one of the ones that got vaccinated?’
He looked at her, and she saw the pain in his eyes. All he could bring himself to do was nod. And she knew that for him, the nightmare had just got very personal.
Chapter Seven
I
It was nearly one a.m. when her driver turned into Avenue O to drop her off at the house, the lights of Huntsville twinkling in the valley below. She had left Li, finally, waiting to talk to Xiao Ling. And now, almost overcome by fatigue, all she wanted was to sink into her own bed and shut out the world for a few hours of precious respite. Tomorrow the waking nightmare was set to continue. Nothing in her most terrifying dreams could possibly compete.
But the night was not yet done with her.
As the car turned the corner, she saw half a dozen large cardboard boxes and several bulging suitcases piled out on the sidewalk at the front of the house. A Ford Bronco sat at the curbside, a figure slumped in the driver’s seat.
‘Jesus,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘What now?’ She opened the door and told the driver, ‘Wait here a minute.’
In the moonlight she saw that the boxes were filled with all her personal bits and pieces, clothes swept out of her closet and half stuffed in suitcases taken from under her bed. Since she had been there, she had not spent enough time at the house to accumulate much. Most of the detritus she had acquired on her journey through life was still in Chicago, at her mother’s home. Which was just as well. No doubt if the Huntsville house had not been a furnished rental, all the furniture would have been out on the sidewalk as well.
She stormed angrily over to the Bronco and pulled open the driver’s door. Professor Mendez almost fell out into the street. He awoke with a start, clutching at the steering wheel and blinking in confusion.
‘Felipe!’ Margaret grabbed him to stop him sliding out of the seat. ‘What in heaven’s name are you doing here?’
He seemed disoriented. He squinted out at the headlights of the car that had brought Margaret home. Then he looked at Margaret as if seeing her for the first time. ‘Margaret?’ And suddenly some mist lifted from his mind. ‘Margaret. I was waiting for you to get back. I must have fallen asleep.’
‘Why?’ she asked, somewhat disoriented herself. ‘I mean, why were you waiting for me?’
He said, ‘I knew, when you told me the other night that you would stop by, that you would not.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘So I thought I would be the one to do the stopping by.’ He snorted. ‘But, then, when I got here, there was an appalling man dragging all your things out of the house on to the sidewalk. I asked him where you were, and he said he didn’t know and he didn’t care.’
‘Bastard!’ Margaret hissed.
‘So I asked him what the hell he thought he was doing with all your stuff, and he told me it was none of my goddamned business. He was your landlord, he said, and he was evicting you. When I remonstrated, he gave me a mouthful of abuse and left.’ He paused. ‘Looks to me like he changed the locks.’
‘Oh, no…’ Margaret turned and ran up the path to the door, fishing the keys out of her pocket. Mendez got stiffly out of his Bronco and followed her. By the time he reached the door she was cursing. ‘He has!’ she said. ‘The bastard’s changed the goddamned lock.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Mendez said. ‘So I figured I’d better hang around until you got back — not least to make sure that no one stole your belongings.’ He smiled his apology. ‘Guess I wasn’t much of a guard dog, falling asleep on the job.’
Margaret stood with her hands on her hips, mind reeling, not the faintest idea what she was going to do. She could have wept. ‘I’m going to sue him,’ she said, frustration bubbling to the surface. ‘He had no right.’ And, absurdly, ‘What if it had been raining?’
‘It still might,’ Mendez said. Then quickly added, ‘Look, why don’t we get it all into the back of the Bronco, and you can stay the night at my place. In fact, you can stay as long as it takes you to get things sorted out. As long as you like.’
‘Oh, Felipe,’ she said, and she threw her arms around his neck, almost overcome by gratitude. It was one less decision she had to make. One fewer burden to carry into tomorrow. ‘What on earth would I have done if you hadn’t been here?’
‘Probably have worked your charms on the military man in the car,’ Mendez smiled. ‘In fact, you still could. He can help us load up before he goes.’
II
Li’s chair scraped across the floor as he stood up, the sound of it reverberating dully around the naked white walls. Xiao Ling was led in by a heavy-set Hispanic guard holding her by the arm. He let go of her and said, ‘She’s all yours.’ And he left, closing the door behind him.
Under the glare of the fluorescent light, everything about her looked burned out. She was drowned by her white prison clothes, her face pale and colourless with all its earlier make-up washed away. Her eyes were dull and lifeless. Only her hair appeared to have retained its colour and vitality. Li pulled back the hood of his Tivek suit and removed his visor, in defiance of the regulations. He knew that although she carried the virus, she was neither infected nor infectious. She was his sister, and he was not going to talk to her through a piece of plastic.
‘Why?’ he asked. A single word, a single question, conveying a whole world of misunderstanding.
She gave an almost imperceptible shrug, and without meeting his eyes said, ‘Can I have one of your cigarettes?’
He nodded and lifted the pack from the table and held it out. She took one and he lit it, watching her closely all the time. She pulled up the chair opposite him and sat down. ‘Why won’t you look at me?’ he said.
‘Why, why, why,’ she said listlessly. ‘Is that all it’s going to be? Questions? Recriminations?’ She blew a je
t of smoke into the air, and then turned defiant eyes on him for the first time. ‘I don’t have any answers, except…I don’t know. I don’t know, Li Yan. I don’t know why any of it happened. It did, that’s all. And even if I could tell you why, you probably wouldn’t be happy with the answer.’ She took another desperate pull at her cigarette, and he saw that her hands were shaking. ‘I thought you might have asked me how I was. But maybe you don’t care.’
He stared at her, trying to sort out the cocktail of conflicting emotions in his head. ‘How are you?’ he said, finally.
‘Like shit,’ she said. ‘In my head, in my heart, in my body. Satisfied?’
He sank slowly back into his chair, placed his hands on the table in front of him and looked at them for a long time. His memory of the last time they had been together, at his apartment in Beijing, was still very clear in his head. Pregnant and with Xinxin in tow, she had arrived in the city for an ultrasound scan. If it was a boy, she had told Li, she was going to have it, in defiance of the government’s one-child policy. If it was a girl, she would abort. She had left to go for her scan, and he had never seen her again. When he arrived home that night, he found Xinxin alone in the apartment, crying hysterically; a five-year-old girl left on her own. Her mother had gone, leaving a note saying she was headed south, to the home of a friend in Annhui Province, to have her baby boy. She knew, she had written, that Li would see Xinxin was taken care of.
It had changed Li’s life. The child’s father, a farmer in Sichuan, refused to take her back, saying she was her mother’s responsibility. Li had become, in effect, a surrogate father, and for almost a year Margaret was her surrogate mother. He had never married, never felt the urge to father children, and yet here he was, the sole adult responsible for a young child. His blood. His life. And he loved her with every last part of himself.