by Peter May
Fuller said, ‘What I’m about to tell you, Councilman, must not leave this room. I know I’m taking a risk here, but you people need to know what’s happening. We’re going to need your full co-operation, not least because the Chinese community will be the first to suffer.’ The slurping of green tea had stopped. He had the full attention of everyone in the room. And he explained to them how for the last three months illegal Chinese immigrants crossing the border from Mexico had been injected with a flu virus which would be activated on consumption of a specific set of proteins, as yet unidentified. And that once activated, the virus was likely to spread like wildfire through the United States, leaving thousands of people dead in its wake. He said, ‘This thing gets out, and every Asian face in the United States is going to be a target for vigilante groups, whether they’re illegal immigrants or third-generation Vietnamese Americans.’
Outside, they heard the rain battering on the roof of the stadium. Sheet lightning flashed across the skyline of downtown Houston like bad stage lighting. The composure had left Soong’s face, along with all the colour.
* * *
The grey-painted stonework of the Catholic Annunciation Church on the corner of Texas and Crawford was stained dark by the rain. The intermittent rat-a-tat of a pneumatic drill echoed back at them off the walls of the buildings that crowded the intersection. Men in hard hats were digging up the road behind red and white striped drums, cutting through the remains of a railroad track that the city fathers had simply tarmacked over during a previous era of short-termism.
Fuller, Li and Hrycyk hurried through the downpour to the sprawling empty car park behind the stadium where Fuller had parked his Chrysler. Hrycyk pulled up the collar of his jacket and shouted above the noise of the drill, ‘American justice, my ass! Only two reasons those people in there want the immigrants back on the street. They want their pound of flesh.’
Li said, ‘You almost sound as if you cared.’
‘Sure I care,’ Hrycyk shouted. ‘I want to see the whole goddamned lot of them behind bars, or at the very least on a slow boat back to China. Community leaders! Those guys were all shuk foo, uncles in the tongs. You think they ain’t involved some way in bringing in the illegals?’ He snorted his derision. ‘If they ain’t, then you can bet your sweet life they’re exploiting the cheap labour these people represent. Lot of restaurants without waiters last night, shops without assistants today, sweatshops without machinists, whorehouses without whores.’ He gave Li a special leer.
Fuller said, ‘And what’s the other reason?’
Hrycyk said, ‘They don’t want us asking the immigrants a lot of questions. They might not know a lot, but I’m betting a good few of them have seen enough to incriminate more than one of the uncles in there in a whole range of illegal activities.’
‘What about Soong?’ Fuller asked.
‘He represents the Chinese community,’ Hrycyk said, no longer having to shout as the sound of the pneumatic drill receded. They splashed through the surface water gathered on the tarmac. ‘These people are the Chinese community — or, at least, the commercial face of it. He’s playing both sides, so that no matter what happens, he’s going to come out looking good. Typical goddamned politician!’
They jumped into Fuller’s car, shaking off the rain, and the windows quickly steamed up. Fuller turned to Li in the back seat. ‘What did you make of them, Li?’
Li thought for a moment. ‘I’ve seen them all before,’ he said, and in his mind’s eye he saw a parade of faces pass before him. Corrupt politicians and Party officials, businessmen on the take, civil servants with small salaries and big houses. ‘I’ve seen them on village councils and street committees, at Party gatherings and on public platforms. I’ve arrested more than a few of them in my time, and I’ve seen them in football stadiums with a gun pressed in the back of their head and the piss running down their legs.’ If not them, it was people just like them who had forced thousands of young men and women into prostitution and virtual slavery. The venom in his tone made Fuller and Hrycyk turn to look at him.
Hrycyk grinned. ‘I take it you weren’t impressed, then?’ Li didn’t think a response was required.
Fuller started up the engine of the Chrysler and said, ‘Washington’s diverting emergency funds to a massive operation along the Mexican border. They’re going to quadruple the number of Border Patrol guards and enlist the help of the local police departments. Every vehicle coming into the country’s going to be stopped, every truck searched with dogs and x-rays and carbon dioxide detectors.’ The windshield wipers scraped rhythmically back and forth, the vents blew out hot air to demist the car.
Hrycyk was unimpressed. ‘Now that’s what I’d call shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. We’ve been screaming for an increase in Border Patrol for years.’ He hissed his frustration. ‘Jesus, we been telling them long enough that people-smuggling was bigger than drugs. It’s the goddamn drug runners who’re bringing the people in, for Chrissake. They’re experts at moving stuff in and out of the country. They’ve been doing it for decades.’
‘Well, whoever’s bringing them in,’ Fuller said, ‘that’s who’s injecting them. And I don’t figure it’s any of the people we just sat around the table with. Whatever else they’re involved in, I don’t think it’s that. Did you see their faces when I told them what was going down?’
‘Sure didn’t look too happy,’ Hrycyk conceded.
Li stared through the rain running down his window and somehow couldn’t convince himself that the faces which had expressed such shock in Soong’s suite were anything more than masks, like those he had seen on trips to the Peking opera with his uncle.
II
From her window, Margaret could see the sky breaking up, shredded by light and patches of pale blue. Dark, tumescent clouds edged by fine patterns of gold, sunlight bursting through the gaps, delineated like rods of platinum striking toward the earth. Even in her anger, she could not help but admire its magnificence.
‘So I don’t have a leg to stand on?’ she barked into the phone. ‘He can just throw me out on the street because I changed the locks without his permission?’ She sucked in air through her teeth. ‘I hope you’re not thinking of charging me for that information.’ She gasped her disbelief at the response. ‘Well, thank you! Next time I need a lawyer, I’ll know who not to call.’ She slammed the receiver back in its cradle. ‘Damn you!’ she shouted at the ceiling, at the sunset, at the liquid gold reflections in every west-facing window in medicine city.
The phone rang and she snatched it back to her ear, surprised by the heat of her anger still retained in the plastic. It was Lucy. ‘I think you should know, Dr. Campbell, that they can hear you at the end of the corridor.’ And before Margaret had time to respond she added, ‘And you should also know that hell and damnation are very real to some of us.’
‘I know that, Lucy,’ Margaret said. ‘They’re very real to me, too. Was there any other reason you called?’
‘Mr. Li is here.’
Margaret was at the door even before Lucy had time to hang up. The afternoon had felt interminable. She had been unable to concentrate on the mountain of paperwork which had piled up in her in-tray during the last few days. There were two bodies in the morgue awaiting autopsy — a murder and a suspect road accident — and she had spent an hour phoning the hospitals trying to enlist pathologists to do post-mortems out of hours. She held the door open for Li and waited until he was in and she could close it behind her before she threw her arms around him and pressed her face into his chest. ‘My God, Li Yan, where have you been? Why are you never there when I need you?’
She felt his initial surprise, and then he held her at arm’s length, concerned. ‘Where’s Xiao Ling?’ he asked.
‘I had them set up a cot bed for her in an office downstairs. She’s sleeping.’
‘What’s wrong?’
And she felt her fear returning, and her hands started shaking as she took him step by step
through the nightmare of their drive down from Huntsville. His face was carved from stone. Grim and thoughtful. ‘What did they want, Li Yan?’ she asked when she had finished. ‘One of them had a gun, I’m sure. Only, when I tried to confront them they just drove away. Xiao Ling looked liked she’d seen a ghost. Like she knew them. She called them something…’ She searched her memory for the words Xiao Ling had whispered. ‘Ma ja…something like that.’
‘Ma zhai?’ Li said.
‘That’s it. What does it mean?’
Li frowned. ‘It means “little horses”. It’s what they call members of the Chinese street gangs here. We picked up a couple when we raided that cellar in Chinatown. They’re the enforcers, the ones who beat and intimidate the illegal immigrants into coming up with the money for the snakeheads. And usually they are the ones sent to collect protection money from the shops and restaurants on the gang’s turf.’ He paused. ‘Are you sure Xiao Ling recognised them?’
‘She must have. How else would she have known what they were?’
He nodded.
‘So what did they want?’
Li said, ‘If they had wanted to hurt you, they would have.’ He took a moment or two to think about it. ‘So they must have wanted to scare you. Because that is what they did.’
‘Yeah, and they were pretty good at it, too.’ Her attempt at a smile fell short of its objective. Li drew her to him, brushing the hair from her face and softly kissing her forehead. She looked up into his face. ‘But why would they want to scare me?’
Li’s face coloured slightly. ‘Not you, Margaret,’ he said. ‘Xiao Ling.’ And he remembered Hrycyk’s words as they left Minute Maid Park just half an hour ago. I’m betting a good few of them have seen enough to incriminate more than one of the uncles in there in a whole range of illegal activities. She had worked in the Golden Mountain Club. She had been favoured by the bosses, she’d said. She must have seen things, heard things that someone was very anxious she did not convey to Li. ‘She must know something,’ he said, and he told Margaret about the club. ‘I’m going to take her to Washington tonight. She’s not safe here.’
Margaret felt a depression wash over her at the thought of Li going. Everything in her life seemed to be in a state of flux. And the residue of fear from the encounter with the ma zhai was still powerful enough to leave her feeling vulnerable, even raw.
‘When will you be back?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. My first responsibility is to Xiao Ling. Once she is safe in Georgetown with Meiping to look after her, then I will consider what my options are.’ But he knew they were limited. He could either throw himself on the mercy of his Embassy and ask to be allowed to take her back to China with him, or he could let her take her chances through the American court system while he continued to play an active part in the investigation. Neither option left much room for Margaret. He knew she was afraid. He looked at her. Fear made her seem smaller, more defenceless. It was only the power of her personality that ever made her seem bigger, stronger than she really was. But then he hardened his mind to her. It was only two nights ago that she had told him she thought they should keep things between them on a professional basis. ‘I must book a flight,’ he said. ‘Can I use your phone?’
She nodded, but before he could lift the receiver, it rang. Margaret answered it, and he saw immediately that something was wrong. The colour drained from her face leaving it chalk white, and her eyes were a pale, bloodless blue.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and hung up. He could see her hand trembling. She looked at him and he saw the cold, gold sunset reflected in her moist eyes. ‘Looks like I’ll be on that flight with you,’ she said, almost in a whisper. ‘That was a pathologist from AFIP. Steve’s virus has gone active.’
III
The Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner sat up off the freeway in a low, anonymous brick building opposite a Best Western Hotel. It was surrounded by neatly trimmed lawns, and clusters of shrubs and trees circled by carefully tended flower beds. The pathologists there still called it the Gillette building, even though it was some years since Gillette had been forced by animal rights protesters to abandon it. The laboratories where the company had tested its products had been perfect for the purposes of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, and the smoked, plexiglass windows and sophisticated electronic entry system had made it ideally secure.
It was dark when Margaret arrived. One of the pathologists from the team which had carried out the autopsies at Ellington Field led her up stairs to the second level and along anonymous hushed corridors to Steve’s office. Overhead fluorescents flickered on and threw a man’s life into sharp relief. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ the pathologist said. ‘Anything you need, holler. I’m just down the hall.’
Margaret stood blinking in the harsh light, depressed and alone. This was Steve’s space, where he spent so much of his life, and he was in every corner of it. But his physical absence was haunting.
Water sprinkled across a tiny arrangement of rocks on a desk pushed against the far wall, a soothing, peaceful sound in the stillness. Good feng shui, Margaret thought. Beside it, a favourite microscope, and a twelve-inch plastic model of the human body, torso and head, with removable internal organs brightly coloured. There were miniature cardboard drawers built one on the other, each carefully labelled. Tiny glass sample slides and piles of transparencies. On a shelf above, all his plaques and medals and framed certificates, a lemonade bottle with a DNA label on it. On the wall there was a painting of the astronauts who had achieved the first successful moon landing, smiling out stoically from their bulky NASA space suits. A bed pan in use as a flower pot made her smile. There were, she saw, a number of pot plants around the office, breathing fresh oxygen into the still air.
Above a cluttered bookshelf, a large sheet pinned to the wall was mounted with half a dozen photographs of Plasticine heads that Steve had moulded from the skulls of Jane and John Does in an attempt to identify them. A hobby, he had told her. Pinned to the drawer of a metal filing cabinet were photographs of his little girl, Danni, taken on a beach somewhere. Just three years old. Plump and smiling in her little red bathing costume, she was grinning at the camera and splashing the cold sea water. Margaret could almost hear her screams of delight. And then, in the corner, Steve’s computer, Danni’s smile saving his screen from burnout. Her soft, brown hair was tied up in a ribbon and her mouth half-open in a smile breaking into laughter. Margaret reached out and touched the face, but felt only the cold glass of the screen. Tears formed in her eyes and she blinked furiously to stop them. And through the blur, she hunted around in the drawers of his desk until she found his personal stereo and headset, and looked up to see the rows of audio tapes on the bookshelf above.
There were around two dozen of them, and she had no idea which ones to take. As she fumbled through them, reading the labels which he had so clearly marked in blue felt tip pen, she was almost overcome by a sense of desperation and failure. He should have had these two days ago, and now she wasn’t sure if he would ever hear them again. Although they were before his time, he appeared to have all The Beatles albums. There were tapes of opera arias, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Eric Clapton’s Pilgrim, The Eagles, Handel’s Water Music, Christina Aguilera. Like Steve himself, impossible to categorise. He was unique, and fleetingly she wondered if they might have had some kind of future together had they met some other time, some other place.
She decided to take all the tapes, and emptied a plastic carrier bag she found in one of the cupboards and swept the cassettes into it off the shelf.
She found the picture of Danni, in its little silver frame, tucked in beside the computer monitor where he could look at it any time he chose when he was working at the keyboard. It wasn’t really silver. It was soft, polished pewter, with art nouveau patterns worked into the border. Danni looked out from it with her trademark smile.
‘You’re a little late, aren’t you?’ Margaret swung around, startled, to fin
d Dr. Ward standing in the doorway, his lips pinched and white, dark eyes filled with hostility. ‘I was expecting you two days ago.’
She shook her head and found it hard to defend herself. ‘I was called back to Houston.’
‘And did it not occur to you to make other arrangements?’
There hadn’t been time. She should have made time. She didn’t know what to say.
‘I’m going up there now.’
‘Don’t you want to know how he is?’
‘I’ll find out for myself.’ But her defiance wavered with uncertainly. It was more than three hours since she had received the phone call. She hesitated. ‘How is he?’
He said, ‘From the onset of first symptoms — sore throat, swollen glands, rising temperature — they’ve been pumping him full of antibiotics and rimantadine.’ Margaret had read about rimantadine, one of a new generation of antiviral drugs, reputed to be up to 70 percent effective in inhibiting secondary infection in cases of influenza A virus. ‘So far he seems to have responded well. But the prognosis is uncertain.’
Margaret lifted the bag of cassettes and slipped the pewter frame into her purse. ‘I’d better go, then.’
As she pushed past Ward in the doorway he said, ‘For the first twenty-four hours he was asking for you all the time. But he hasn’t mentioned you once today.’
Margaret stopped and looked into his face. Why did he want to hurt her? Because she knew about his human frailties, had touched his imperfection? Was it guilt, or anger, or just plain bigotry? ‘I guess he must have other things on his mind right now,’ she said, and hurried out.
* * *
Margaret pushed her rental car up to eighty on the freeway. It was a big car with soft suspension that rolled gently but too much on every bend in the road. She had passed Gaithersburg about twenty minutes earlier, and as she crested a rise, she could see the lights of Frederick spread out below her. Traffic was light, and another fifteen minutes took her onto the Seventh Street exit, to skirt the northwestern edge of the town to Fort Detrick.