The Snakeheads

by Mary Moylum

  “I’ll see what I can do. Is that all, sir?”

  “There is one more consideration. Right now, my office is being deluged with calls from the business community criticizing us for harassing a businessman who has created hundreds of jobs for Canadian citizens. Not to mention the various Asian communities that have called us with accusations of racism. Therefore, I’ve issued a press release with a little background on yourself.”

  “In other words, you’re using me to fight the racism charge.”

  . “Grace, please, I don’t need this kind of hostility. I’m walking a fine line here as it is.”

  “But is that one of the reasons why you assigned the case to me? You’re using me to deflect the racism charges?”

  Cadeux gave her a pained look. “Just bear in mind that the claimant is a very highly regarded man. And that the allegations of criminality are just that. Allegations.”

  “Until proven.”

  “But there is no proof, Grace.”

  “Yes. One more thing, sir.”

  “What else?”

  “It’s Piraro, the RCO. He’s not as thorough in his cross-examination as I would like. Is it possible at this late stage to replace him with someone who’s more knowledgeable about China?”

  “Piraro may not be a China expert. But his competence as a lawyer will do much to advance the case.”

  “I disagree.”

  “Damn it! Grace, I’m not going to replace Piraro now. I don’t need the bar and the public service union on my back. Now, call me at the end of tomorrow’s hearing and give me a synopsis of how things went, so I can advise you on how to proceed. And that’s an order.”

  As she closed the door behind her, she released a inaudible groan. That was all she needed. A micromanager.

  First Wa Sing, then her mother, now Cadeux. Who was next? The prime minister? Obviously there were a lot of players who were willing to rubber-stamp Sun into the country. The only exception to that rule, apparently, was Nick.

  The undercover officer assigned by Dubois to babysit her was standing in the lobby. “I’m parked in the underground. Never mind taking a cab and me tailing you. I’ll give you a lift home.”

  Grace waited for him to back the Chrysler out of the parking spot before jumping in. “Any developments on finding Harry Kitchin’s partner?”

  “Nothing. But we did track down Kitchin’s sister and brother. Both said that he had few friends. With criminals, friendship isn’t a deep thing. This partner of his is probably on the other side of the country by now.”

  Grace was silent for a moment thinking about this. Then she nodded, her throat relaxed. After all, the RCMP was always thorough in what they did. The officer’s reassurance eased back the knot of fear that had taken up residence in the back of her head.

  Later, at home that night, she called Nick again. Nothing. His answering machine had been disconnected. Since their weekend tryst, she had left umpteen messages with his secretary. No return phone calls.

  Okay, she got dumped. She was a big girl, she could take it … but shouldn’t she know why? Dark thoughts niggled at the edge of consciousness. What had he found out about her? Did he know about Wa Sing? Did he know about her social exchange with Sun Sui? Did he assume the worst — that she was going to go yes on the case? Damn him for his lack of faith in her.

  Harry was dead. That wasn’t supposed to happen. His best friend had been taken away from him. So what was the difference between the lady judge and him now? And where had that gook killer come from? Was Harry’s killer her bodyguard? What did it matter now? Murder was murder. They were even. Except that he was going to better the score. Now he had reason to hate the bitch. Yeah, he would hit the lady judge real good. He opened the glove box of the Chrysler he had just stolen, and pulled out a map. He had dumped the white van at a national park, near a garbage dump. It would be a while before anyone noticed that it was abandoned. When Harry was alive, he had the whole thing all thought out. Steal cars, use them for two weeks or so, dump them, and steal another one. It was a good plan. After this job he would abandon the Chrysler as well.

  He drove down her street and noticed that the house was pitch black. He kept the engine running as he got out of the car. The obese tabby was stretched out on the front steps. It would be nice to kill the cat too. He walked up to the front steps. Just then, the porch and living-room lights came on. He checked his watch. The timer was set for eight.

  Boldly, he paced the streets in her neighbourhood, daring the police to find him. He looked into the faces of the people passing by. So arrogant, their eyes, so judgmental. The kind of people he despised. He imagined what it would feel like to pump a round into their faces.

  As he drove away, he plotted his revenge. This time he would have to plan. No more nasty surprises. Back on the highway, BJ checked his speed. The last thing he wanted was to be caught on a traffic violation. He tapped on his steering wheel along with the radio and smiled to himself as he thought of half a dozen ways of icing the bitch.

  Day two of the hearing. Grace was impatient to get to exclusion and the evidence of Sun’s criminality, but she couldn’t until they had wrapped up on inclusion issues.

  Verster announced at the beginning, “I’d like to close off on religious identity.”

  “It’s a peripheral issue,” Grace warned, “so don’t take all morning, counsel.”

  “I’d like to enter the Amnesty International documents as exhibit C-24, if you’d indulge me, your honour. This document also covers the legal issue, return to his country of former habitual residence, Hong Kong. Paragraph 4 states that Hong’s Kong’s reversion back to China, freedom of worship is no longer taken for granted. The Mainland authorities have intensified efforts to suppress unsanctioned religious activity. As my client stated yesterday, he’s an Anglican by faith. Therefore the next page also pertains to him. ’Scores of Christians have been arrested in a brutal crackdown on worshippers within its borders and beyond …’”

  “Counsel, this isn’t kindergarten class. We can all read, thank you.”

  “I wanted to bring those points to your attention.”

  “Mr. Piraro, do you have any questions to put to the claimant regarding this document or the religious issue?”

  “Only one.” Turning his attention to the claimant, the RCO asked, “Since coming to Canada, what church have you attended?”

  “The United Church on Beverly Street.”

  “Do you attend service?” asked Piraro.

  “Unfortunately not. I’m either too busy or out of the country.”

  Piraro announced, “I’ve no more questions but I’m willing to make observations at this point on the religious identity.”

  With a sigh, she said, “Go ahead.” Grace found Piraro so incompetent in his cross-examination, she wondered when exactly he was called to the Bar.

  “The claimant may very well be a practising Christian, but he has not met the burden of proof on religious grounds. Therefore, his claim that he has would suffer persecution as a practising Christian if he were to return to either China or Hong Kong is not proved.”

  Verster banged a fist on the table, and jumped to his feet.

  “I’d like to point out the documentary evidence in Tab 11 which states that the harsh treatment of Christians dates back to the 1950s when Mao Tse Tung’s Communists expelled the last papal representative, driving Christians underground. Turning the page at the top, it continues, stating that religion and religious activity are perceived by the Communist Party authorities as a vehicle for political organization, dissent or outright opposition to the party’s rule. Your Honour, the operative word here is perception. One doesn’t have to be a practising Christian, only a nominal Christian, to be targeted by the Communist authorities. Therefore on religious grounds alone, the IRC should find my client to be a genuine asylum seeker.”

  “Noted,” said Grace. It was a good point. But that didn’t mean that the claimant squeaked in under the religious issue. His reli
gious identity was a peripheral issue. The central issue was his political opinion.

  After lunch, Sun answered his lawyer’s questions in a straightforward manner. “I have a daughter but I wanted a son. In the culture I come from the bureaucrats are corrupt. Everything can be achieved through bribes. Even two or more children. I know this because my friends have paid bribes to the officials at the Family Planning Agency to look the other way. I was prepared to pay the bribe money. What I wasn’t counting on was the events of Tiananmen Square and my own role there. I didn’t expect the authorities to make an example out of me because of the background of my own parents and grandparents. I had assumed that with Deng the Cultural Revolution and the past were behind us. I thought we were moving ahead as a country. I was wrong in my assumptions.”

  This evidence had been covered in his narrative. Her mind wandered. From Inner Mongolia to the Yellow Sea, from Shanghai to Tibet. Beijing’s one-child policy meant a country where hundreds of thousands of baby girls were either killed or sent abroad for adoption. The one-child policy was domestic law. The Chinese government was harsh. But it was also two-faced, apparently. One face of the government wanted to kill Sun Sui, while the other wanted to lure him back with promises of wealth and privilege. But was it so different here? She suddenly saw an image of Jean Cadeux’s face, irritably telling her that government ministers wanted her to go easy on the claimant … and then Nick’s face, as he told her about the death of his friend Walter, and Sun’s possible role in that murder …

  His oral evidence was consistent with his written narrative. Nothing new here.

  “Counsel, I’ve a few questions of clarification,” Grace interrupted.

  “You may put them to my client.”

  “Mr. Sui, in your narrative, Captain Lei helped you escape from prison. He was a friend of your father. Could you tell us about the relationship between Captain Lei and your father?”

  “Captain Lei was a former student of my father at the university. Their relationship dated back at least twelve or thirteen years. After he graduated, he often returned to the university to play in the ping-pong championships.”

  “Where did your father get the two million yuan on his lecturer’s salary?”

  “My wife borrowed the money from her eldest brother. She then passed the money to my father, who then delivered it personally to Captain Lei.”

  The claimant delivered his testimony straightforwardly and without hesitation. So much for trying to trip him up and rule against him on credibility. She glanced over at the Piraro and noticed that he was doodling on the legal-size pad. In a curt voice she asked, “Mr. Piraro, do you have any questions to put to the claimant?”

  “None.”

  “Before you make arguments on this issue, counsel, I’ll reveal to you the thinking from the bench. I’m well aware of the documentary evidence on the one-child policy. The purpose of this one-child law is to contain the country’s population growth. Basically the claimant will have to further show why he should be entitled to international protection after breaking the laws in his own country.”

  Claimant and counsel exchanged stricken looks.

  “I’ll prepare those on closing.”

  “Fine by me. At tomorrow’s hearing, counsel, you’ll conduct examination on the claimant’s life in Hong Kong. Particularly in the area of asset accumulation.”

  “Your Honour, my client can’t attend tomorrow. I was wondering if we could reconvene on Monday.”

  “What’s wrong with tomorrow?”

  “He has a doctor’s appointment.”

  Again? Grace critically stared at the claimant. He didn’t look sick to her. She was ticked with counsel and claimant. “Very well.” She swallowed to regain a normal pitch, then, thinking, fuck with me and this is what you get. Voice tightly under control, she went on, “When we resume, I’d like you to canvas the claimant’s residency in Hong Kong. From there, the minister’s representative will open the exclusion issue of the claimant being a high-level crime figure at the helm of a multi-million dollar smuggling empire.”

  “But Your Honour …”

  Before he could finish his sentence, Grace had risen. “This ends our hearing for today.” She flicked off the recording devices and stepped down from the bench.

  Nick listened to the phone ring twelve times. He made no move to answer it, because it might be Grace, and he couldn’t talk to her. He hoped she was all right, that she was taking care for her safety. The story of the carjacking made his blood run cold whenever he thought of it. But he knew she’d be careful, she was no fool.

  He read the card again. He had in fact read the card a dozen times. Each reading brought her closer to him, while taking them further away from each other. To see her loopy handwriting, to read her message announcing her love for him was exquisite torture. All of the distance he had put between Grace and himself closed again, when he read her words of how much he meant to her … until Dubois’s words came back to him. And he remembered the roll of twenty-four prints sitting in his desk drawer.

  “General, it’s me.”

  Li Mann Vu recognized the voice of the Red Prince on his cellphone. “Yes. How are you?” he asked neutrally.

  “Have you done it?”

  “No. I’m afraid to say that I botched it. There was a surprise. Seems that she was stalked by two men. They pounced on me and I had to kill one of them.”

  “Stupid! Fucking stupid of you!” The Red Prince swore into the phone. “Kill them both in case they can identify you. We can’t afford to fail. Do you want their government to send in tanks in against us?”

  “We aren’t in China. Not even Vietnam is like that,” Li Mann Vu snorted.

  “I don’t care where we are. All I know is, for an old soldier, you’re losing your edge,” the Red Prince said derisively.

  Changing topics, Li Mann Vu said, “I heard on the radio that the dancer who escaped from that immigration raid has turned herself in. And she’s dancing in your club again.”

  “Yes. After the club paid a stiff penalty for her actions. We’ll have to dock her pay to recover the money.”

  “How much did you pay in penalty? Five hundred dollars? A thousand? For someone who’s already made over $300 million smuggling three thousand people into North America this year alone, you’re acting very petty towards someone who’s got nothing.”

  Not deigning to reply to that, the Red Prince asked, “Where are you right now?”

  “I’m in a motel in Ottawa. On the outskirts of town.”

  “Stay and finish the job. Kill her!”

  “What about Toronto and taking out that immigration officer?”

  “All in good time. I want her killed first.”

  “After I kill him, I want a vacation. Harvest season is coming up. I need to get back to my village. Besides, the village is counting on my return.”

  “So am I. I want you in China. Preparations must be made before the first cargo ship sails from Fujian next year.”

  “Not before I go home.”

  “And I’m telling you that there’s a lot of work we’ve got to have in place before that flotilla of migrant smuggling ships makes its way to North America. There’s a lot of money riding on that. Just think of your share of the profits. But before we see any of that, we need to work out the details. Like where’s the best place to bring the illegals ashore.”

  Li Mann Vu sighed into the phone. “I need three weeks in Vietnam. Then I’ll go to China. Don’t ask me to do anything else right now.”

  “Don’t call me at my hotel. The immigration officer and his police friends have me under watch, and my line is tapped. And the cops have confiscated both my cellphones. Right now, I’m trying to get another one.”

  “Where’re you making this call?”

  “I’m at a pay phone at the IRC right now.” The Red Prince chuckled. “Right under their noses, but they don’t dare wiretap their own phones.”

  “In other words, I can’t reach you?”r />
  “No. Just wait for my calls.”

  After Li Mann Vu hung up the phone, he lit a cigarette and thought about his life. First he had been a soldier. That was honourable. Now he was an enforcer. Not so honourable. A lot of people feared him. Some even hated him. Like he hated the Americans.

  He lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply. Let me count the ways on how I hate the U.S. government. They had helped rebuild the economies of their former enemies in Germany and Japan. But not Vietnam. His people had won the war, and lost the peace. The U.S. continued to punish them with an economic embargo. Half the country did not have enough to eat, and the other half was dying from the corrosive effects of Agent Orange.

  Like Agent Orange, over the years, the hate had corroded his insides. He felt nothing. Worse, he could no longer distinguish right from wrong.

  chapter twenty-five

  Jean Cadeux barged into her office without knocking. He stretched his lips into something that only he would pretend was a smile.

  “What the hell are you trying to do, Grace? Do you want the General Accounting people to can the entire Commission? Or maybe a Senate inquiry into professional misconduct?”

  “What’re you referring to?”

  He spat the words out. “I’ve been informed that you’re having an affair with the minister’s representative who is assigned to the Sun case. Is this true?”

  Oh shit! thought Grace. She’d been found out. What could she say in her own defence? She momentarily took refuge by staring out the window and tried to let the blue skies and cirrus clouds inhabit her. They didn’t.

  She turned her attention back to Cadeux. What a slimebag!

  Was he spying on her? Had he seen her in Montreal holding hands with Nick? So what? Just because she was in public office didn’t mean she wasn’t entitled to a personal life. She wanted to tell him to fuck off, and despite all she’d been through recently, she managed to restrain herself. “Where did you hear that, sir?”

  “Never mind where I heard it! It’s a clear violation of conflict of interest guidelines. I’m not inclined to be tolerant of this, Grace. I could very well lose my own job!”