Rare Earth

by Paul Mason

  “They get any evidence?”

  “Only camera footage. Driver reckons they swapped the tape but he doesn’t know which one it is. They’ve got three boxes of tapes at the hotel.”

  “You seized anything?”

  Tong shook his head.

  “Good. Where are the control room staff?”

  Tong explained that, at the outbreak of the riot they had shut down communications with Provincial HQ, killed the station’s video surveillance system and put the whole control-room team into Kevlar to reinforce the riot squad in the cell-block.

  “Can we bring the cafeteria up on that?” Xiao gestured to the 30-foot video wall that dominated the control room. Hard Man Han hit a few keys on the computer and it flickered into life, heavily pixellated and bright grey.

  They were sitting side by side, staring into space, silent. A Chinese girl, dressed nondescript. Skinny, bland, no Western bling about her; no Versace. Two washed-up looking Western men. One tanned and wrinkled, grey hair, chin on his chest, denim shirt, denim jeans, big wrist-watch. The other sandy-haired, balding, wind-burned, snipe-nosed; a gold chain around his neck: alert and fidgeting. Finally a glamorous blonde: no youngster, mid-thirties maybe. Plunging neckline, skin a little wrinkled at the eyes from too much sunshine. Annoyed.

  The SOP says put the frighteners on the men, charm the women. Work on the Chinese citizen first, obviously, but nothing beyond threats and emotional blackmail. Work out who has most to lose. Get the tapes. Get a written apology and if possible a written self-criticism. This gets you out of the shit with Provincial HQ and avoids having to call in the State Security Police.

  “Here’s the plan,” said Xiao. “Tong takes over the disturbance in the cell block. No gas. Negotiation. These are quarry boys right? Get the union down here, pronto. Get the imam down here too. I want them back in the cells by midnight and somewhere else by sun-up. Han,” he paused to breathe, “one of your boys is going to take the rap for hospitalising that kid. Just like D’Angelo Barksdale, understand? And no more torturing on my sauna nights!”

  Han bowed his head.

  “For now, you handle the journalists and this ugly trout outside. Has she denounced them yet?”

  Han shook his head.

  “Me and you will do the questions. You go hard, I go soft. Soft on Sharon Stone, hard on these two losers. As for Supergirl here, the so-called Chinese citizen, we need to find out who she is and why she’s helping foreigners to disgrace our country. But no calls to the opposition!” he meant the State Security Police. “We do everything with traffic records and residency: nothing political. If they hand the tape over, result. If not, we tear the hotel apart and stick them in solitary until we’ve watched every tape they’ve got. And remember: no calls to the opposition.”

  He looked Han and Tong in the eye, seeking their agreement, probing silently for any other details or transgressions they might have forgotten. Then he remembered something himself:

  “And book me a call to that dog-fucker Zheng. How are you supposed to maintain social order when you’ve got foreign journalists - foreign journalists! - without any kind of...”

  He shook his head and chuckled:

  “Propaganda Chief Zheng’s going to really enjoy Tibet.”

  “Yeah,” said Hard Man Han: “or maybe Xinjiang. They really love the Communist Party there.”

  ~ * ~

  8

  The digital clock said 05.15; Xiao, his jaw dark with stubble, blew the steam off a bowl of green tea and blinked at the video wall. Outside it was already 28 degrees and humid. The command centre was buzzing now; every workstation occupied by a day-shift cop with the night-shift crouching in the floor space amid discarded riot-vests and helmets, their chopsticks working on a delivery of steamed buns.

  On the big screen, in pin-sharp colour, was a Ruifeng van, seen from a surveillance camera high on the side of the hotel.

  At 05.16 the driver entered the vehicle, started the engine and stuck a techno-pop CD into the sound-system. Then he leapt out of the vehicle, scratched his balls, adjusted his aviators, puffed at his cigarette and took a sly glance up at the camera.

  “You getting this?” Tong growled into the bud microphone nestling against his cheek.

  “We see it,” said a static-laden voice from the plainclothes surveillance car.

  Next, Carstairs came out of the hotel lugging a trolley full of equipment, followed by Georgina and Brough, who were bickering. She was swigging mineral water and toting a large handbag, he was swigging from a can of Coke and carrying a day-sack. Chun-li came last, face obscured by sunglasses, scrolling absently through the emails on her phone.

  By 05.32 the driver had come back from a corner shop with a six-pack of Coke, a bottle of Jack Daniels, some sachets of breakfast milk, an armful of stale cakes and a carton of Zhongncmhai cigarettes. The doors slammed shut and the van moved off.

  It was a fine day in Tang Lu and the street life was beginning to stretch and yawn. Road sweepers were brushing at the night’s grey dust. A dumpling seller was lounging against his greasy cart, having a smoke, waiting for the rush-hour to begin.

  In the dormitory at the Happy Girl Massage Parlour, Long Tall Daisy was lying in her bunk, sleepy but awake, trying not to listen to the argument going on in Mrs. Ma’s portakabin, out at the back. It was some young guy yelling at Mrs. Ma, and she was screaming back in her usual way and drumming the floor with her heels. Daisy caught the half-awake eye of Crystalmother, her colleague in the next bunk, who mouthed quietly: “go to sleep”. And with the dawn filtering through the grey lace curtains, eventually, she did, dreaming of whales swimming deep in the green of the Southern Ocean.

  On the banks of the Yellow River fishermen were digging for worms. They would fill a plastic box full of bait and go staggering off in the dawn to search for a stretch of river where the industrial scum was not so thick, and a bit of shade to sit in.

  High in the Helan Shan an unmarked police coach full of detainees and riot cops-ratio 1:1 - was chugging slowly up a mountain road, its air filled with relief and cheap tobacco smoke. The union had done a deal to relocate the cell-block rioters to a quarry on the Gobi Desert side.

  At 05.40 the cameras above Tang Lu’s main boulevard picked up the van. In the control room everybody’s eyes were on the video wall.

  “Do you have visual contact?” Tong droned to the surveillance car.

  Hard Man Han, who had shaved and put on a fresh uniform, fired up his own comms sub-net.

  “They’re five minutes from the intersection. They go anywhere near that factory again and we roadblock them at the corner of 19 and Shenyang. Full search and seizure.”

  “Got that,” came the reply from the SWAT-team leader. They were lying-up in an alleyway: five SUVs, three motorbikes and an ambulance, with a team of ninja-clad female cops ready to deal with any histrionics from the blonde.

  The control room’s lead operator, a female sergeant with a punk hairstyle, frowned and pushed a button, whispering intently into her headset. She raised her hand:

  “Superintendent Xiao. There’s an urgent call from the proprietor of the Happy Girl Massage Parlour. She says she wants to speak to you in person.”

  “Tell Mrs. Ma I’m busy. I will take her urgent call in thirty minutes,” said Xiao .

  Xiao, Tong and Hard Man Han stiffened, faces lit by colours of the video screen. On the desk in front of them was a small grey plastic videotape: it had a white label with the word SONY printed on it, and a figure “3” scrawled in marker pen.

  The tension in the room rose as the van neared a t-junction. Xiao heard the punk sergeant fobbing off Mrs. Ma for a second time, pleasant but firm.

  And now the tension eased as the van swung east.

  “They’re going for it,” Han whispered.

  The screen switched to another camera. The van was approaching the main route back to the Yellow River.

  “Stay back, don’t spook them,” Tong muttered.

  Now the
van was picking up speed. It was on a long, straight road that would take it to a bridge across the river, into Inner Mongolia and out of Xiao’s jurisdiction.

  “That’s it, boss, yes?” Han breathed.

  But Xiao’s eyes were mesmerised by the screen, refusing to blink despite his exhaustion.

  “Switch to the district camera network,” he snapped.

  The picture went grainy and monochrome but the van was there, a miniature vehicle in a fish-eye landscape of desert.

  “Can we zoom that thing in?”

  “Sir we can do a digital zoom, but it will be pixellated,” said the punk sergeant, “and Mrs. Ma is insisting to be left on hold. She’s quite disturbed,”

  “Digital zoom!” Xiao yelled.

  Now his cellphone was going off. It was Mrs. Ma trying to reach him on his personal number. He hit the fake, plastic ruby that functioned as the red button. Busy.

  The digital zoom showed a camera lens protruding from the passenger window of the van as it coasted along.

  “What are they doing?” said Xiao

  “Taking skyline shots of Tang Lu Industrial Suburb,” said Tong, picking up the tape and tapping it against a computer monitor, “famous throughout China for its strict adherence to ISO 9001 emissions standards.”

  The cops exchanged weary smiles. Only Georgina had kicked up any kind of trouble about the tape. She had banged the table, leaned across it with her shirt half-open, gone through the whole gamut of outrage, seduction, persuasion and then threats, including words that Xiao, even with no English, understood were profanities.

  But eventually, around midnight, it had been Georgina who’d told them where to find the tape: in a box in her hotel room. Tape three.

  Only Chun-li had puzzled them. PhD in genetics, freelance translator and life coach; single, owns a Lexus and a flat in central Beijing, teaches tai chi; no known links with Falun Gong or democracy campaigners.

  Skinny, deadpan, asexual: she’d refused to engage with Xiao’s paternalistic banter. She had defiantly explained her right to help the journalists do their jobs. She’d demonstrated a thorough knowledge of Decree Number 477 and had mentioned other laws that Xiao had never heard of.

  “People like that make me sick,” Han had sneered, coming out of the interrogation room.

  “If that’s the new China, you can stuff it,” Xiao had said.

  “Sir it will be five minutes until the cameras at the bridge pick them up, do you want to take this call from Mrs. Ma?” said the punk sergeant.

  “No I don’t!” Xiao replied, petulantly. “I am starving. Who’s got my breakfast?”

  “Here chief,” one of the riot squad piped up: “pork and shrimp.”

  Xiao grabbed some chopsticks and snatched a carton of bite-sized dumplings, still steaming, and ripped open a sachet of soy sauce, getting his mouth and fingers filmy. The pork calmed his mind and he forgot to be furious about Chun-li.

  “This is it, boss,” said the punk sergeant.

  The camera system on the bridge was impressive, covering all angles, zoomable and in full colour.

  “Let’s have split-screen,” Tong suggested, flirting with the punk sergeant now. But her face was creased with worry. She beckoned him closer with her eyes as she clicked and dragged the images:

  “This Mrs. Ma is saying something really weird, involving violence. It’s not clear. She keeps screaming at me to put her onto the Super.”

  “Put her through to that phone,” Tong knocked a polystyrene bowl of soup across the desk as he reached for the handset.

  “Hey boss, don’t miss the moment,” said Hard Man Han through a mouthful of pork.

  Xiao watched as the van coasted slowly across the bridge. The cameraman was still taking shots out of the passenger window as a last gesture of defiance, but who in the control room gave a shit? The Yellow River is a beautiful sight at dawn.

  “That’s not our car is it?” said Xiao.

  There was a black Honda bearing the blue number plates of an official vehicle creeping onto the bridge behind the van.

  “Nope,” Han punched the comms button to make sure. “You guys are not trying to follow over the bridge?”

  “No, Sir,” came the answer.

  “Boss!” It was Tong, looking pale now.

  Han ordered: “Operator: go in tight on that Honda and gimme a scan of the number plate.”

  “It’s a P-number,” said the punk sergeant, “Propaganda Department.”

  “Five, four, three, two...” Somebody in the room had started a jovial countdown as the van sped towards the provincial border, which turned into a group handclap as Xiao took the videotape between thumb and forefinger, flipped it open, snapped out the tape and wound it into a ball around his fist.

  He took his lighter and struck a flame beneath the knot of tape. It went up with a “whuum”, triggering the fire alarm and making flames flicker for a moment up the arm of his tunic. He patted them out, clowning around, and there was a bigger, less ironic, cheer.

  “Kill that fire alarm right now!” Tong yelled, leaping up from his seat, white with anger: “Stop the alarm and seal the premises!”

  He was shaking.

  “What’s the matter?” said Xiao, rubbing the hair on the back of his hand where the fire had singed it.

  “You,” Tong bawled at Hard Man Han: “Get that SWAT team on the road. You!” to Xiao’s driver, munching dumplings in the corner, “Get an unmarked vehicle.”

  “What’s the matter?” Xiao grabbed Tong by the epaulettes and shook him hard. Tong went into that robot voice cops use to deliver bad reports:

  “Shortly before daybreak, Mrs. Ma, proprietor of the Happy Girl Massage Parlour, was approached by a male, late twenties, Han Chinese, to organise the murder of three Western journalists and two Chinese, plus the retrieval of specified items of video and computer equipment. Mrs. Ma’s team of bodyguards were importuned to perpetrate the crime.”

  Some light went out of Xiao’s eyes that moment that would never return. Tong continued:

  “Mrs. Ma, a loyal citizen, refused, ordering her security team to resist all entreaties from this male, which during the next hour they did. This male...”

  Tong’s breast sagged as he summoned up the effort to continue,

  “...climbed to the roof of the Happy Girl Massage Parlour, where he waved a pistol, engaged imaginary persons in conversation and threatened to shoot himself. At this point Mrs. Ma attempted to call the control room but our lines were busy. He has now disappeared.”

  “Get me that blue-plate Honda back on screen!” Han yelled at the punk sergeant.

  She dragged an mpeg into the workspace.

  “Have you run the number?” said Xiao.

  “Registered to Propaganda and allocated to the departmental deputy. Male, 27. Birthplace Beijing. Resident Peach Garden Loft Apartments, Tang Lu Industrial Suburb. Two drunk-driving offences...”

  But Xiao was already striding through the door, buckling on his holster. A cloud of white dumpling cartons, seized from the hands of his colleagues and thrown into the air, seemed for a second frozen, static in the space behind his head.

  ~ * ~

  PART TWO

  “There are deities just a few feet above our heads.”

  Chinese folk-saying

  ~ * ~

  1

  Grandfather Li could not be physically in the car - borne by it or propelled-so in order to be there in the passenger seat, at the edge of Li Qi-han’s peripheral vision, he had to adopt a sitting position and fly himself along independently at the same speed, anticipating his grandson’s every gear change, swerve, and braking manoeuvre in order to stay within speaking distance.

  Grandfather’s Type 51 from the Korean War was wedged beneath the dashboard, together with two clips of vintage 7.62mm ammunition, which Li had bought on the black market. Grandfather was looking at the Type 51 as if he would like to pick it up for one more time, though he could not. He had shot three American prisoners with it
at the Battle of the Changjin Reservoir; in the head - according to Li family folklore.

  Grandfather Li didn’t know whether he was supposed to speak to Li Qi-han; whether it was in the rules of the afterlife or not. Li Qi-han didn’t know whether the voice he was hearing was from the spirit world or from some part of his brain he had never before encountered. They were both, in this sense, in uncharted territory.