Mandarin Yellow (Socrates Cheng mysteries)
Page 22
Socrates would follow that advice. He would first perform a rough comparison of the texts of both Secret Protocols to see if they differed from one another. He would do this by slugging the documents, a tried and true procedure used for centuries by proofreaders in the newspaper trade when newspapers were still printed on presses using slugs of movable type.
To do this, Socrates placed one document on top of the other, text sides up, and arranged them so only the first word of each line of the bottom document showed beyond the left margin of the top document. He then arranged the first sentences of both documents so the sentences lined up on the same horizontal plane.
If no changes had been made to either document that either added or subtracted words, the first and the last lines of the two documents would line up perfectly. But if words had been added to or subtracted from one document or the other, the last sentences of the documents would not line up.
This simple, quick test would not reveal the nature of any changes that had been made to the document. Socrates still would have to read both documents to find out the substance of specific differences. But the test would alert him to look for such divergences.
Socrates slugged both Secret Protocols and saw that the last lines of the documents did not line up. In fact, the two Secret Protocols not only were not the same, he noted, they weren’t even close. The last lines were at far different levels. Much had been changed in one Secret Protocol or the other.
Socrates, oblivious now to the Twins’ presence, ran his finger down the left edge of the top document, between the parallel sets of first words, line by line, and compared the first words of both documents. When he spotted a discrepancy, he knew something had been changed in that line or in its counterpart in the other document. When this revealed itself, he stopped slugging and read the offending lines in both documents to see what the differences were.
When he finished slugging both documents and had read all the lines that did not match their counterparts, Socrates was left with a good sense of how the two Secret Protocols differed. Now he needed to read each document from end-to-end so he could obtain a contextual understanding why there were two seemingly similar, but actually disparate, Secret Protocols.
He set one document on the table and began reading the other.
This document, purportedly created in 1937, provided that after Mao’s and Chiang’s armies defeated the invading Japanese enemy in the War of Japanese Aggression, the truce between Mao and Chiang described in the Xi’an Agreement would end, and their indigenous armies would resume fighting one another for control of China.
No shocking disclosure there, Socrates thought, except perhaps for the fact that the resumed combat between Mao and Chiang was not only anticipated in the document as likely, but seemed to be anticipated or required.
He glanced at the Twins. They stood side by side, not more than five feet away, watching him. He acknowledged them with a terse nod, then turned his attention back to the Secret Protocol and read its next section.
Socrates stopped reading when he completed this part of the document, and softly whistled his surprise. He thought about the implication of what he’d just read.
This section provided that after Chiang and Mao had restarted their internecine hostilities, Chiang would intentionally lose the resumed Civil War against Mao, and would flee from Mainland China with his army, family and other followers, to the offshore island of Formosa. Once there, a seemingly defeated Chiang would establish an opposition government-in-exile which would continuously claim legitimacy as the true ruler of Mainland China.
To bolster his claim to legitimacy as the rightful heir to Sun Yat-sen’s 1911 revolution and to the creation of the 1912 Mainland Republic, Chiang thereafter would unremittingly threaten to invade the Mainland with his army, destroy the Communist forces, and take down Mao’s government.
Socrates thought about this. Other than the requirement that Chiang deliberately lose the Civil War, the Secret Protocol’s description of what Chiang and Mao had secretly agreed to accurately reflected the way events had actually unfolded in China after World War II: Mao had won his staged victories; Chiang had fled to Formosa in 1949; the Communists had ruled Mainland China from then on; and, Chiang had constantly threatened to invade the Mainland, right up until the day he died in 1975.
Socrates paused to frown at Bing-hao who had interrupted his concentration by lighting a cigarette.
Why, Socrates wondered, would Mao and Chiang agree to such an elaborate deception?
Socrates found his answer in the next section of the Secret Protocol. What he learned blew apart much of what he thought he knew about China in the Twentieth Century.
WHAT SOCRATES HAD had just read amounted to nothing less than a detailed description of a massive embezzlement scheme entered into in 1937 among Mao, Chiang, Madam Chiang, Big Eared Tu, and Joseph Stalin, as one of the components of their clandestine conspiracy to fix the Civil War.
Under their secret arrangement, after Chiang deliberately lost the Civil War and fled to Formosa, he and Mao would engage in vociferous threats and posturing for the sole purpose of generating financial aid to Chiang from the United States Congress, aid that would be intended by the United States to sustain Chiang and his government-in-exile until the day he would make good his threat to return to the Mainland and wrest control of the country from the Communists.
In return for this choreographed enmity, Chiang and his wife would be permitted to skim millions of dollars each year from the inflowing financial aid and would keep the major portion of the stolen money for themselves. They then would give a small share of it to Big Eared Tu — Chiang’s financial benefactor — and to Stalin — Mao’s financial and political benefactor. None of the embezzled foreign aid would go directly to Mao. His agreed-upon payoff would be in the form of his assured military and social victories over Chiang and his unchallenged and continuing right to rule Mainland China.
Socrates glanced up at the Twins. They were watching him intently from only a few feet away, having quietly moved in close to him while he concentrated on the Secret Protocol. Socrates ignored their proximity to him and turned back to the document.
He next read through a paragraph which explained that Madam Chiang Kai-shek’s role in the conspiracy would be to tour the United States on Chiang’s behalf and exploit her American education, her physical beauty, and her learned charm, all in an effort to spread goodwill and generate millions of dollars in funds from Congress and private funding sources, all under the guise of supporting Generalissimo Chiang’s government-in-exile and ultimately defeating the Communist rule of China.
Socrates skipped the balance of the document which seemed to be legal boilerplate and mulled over the implication of what he’d just read. The genius of the scheme it described was that as long as Mao and Chiang maintained the public illusion of their mutual hostility and the ever-present possibility that Chiang might invade the Mainland, United States aid dollars would keep rolling in. And as long as the aid flowed to Formosa, the Chiangs and their fellow conspirators could continue to loot and share among themselves millions of dollars in stolen aid.
In spite of the simple logic of Chiang’s plan, Socrates found himself reluctant to believe what he’d just read. The entire arrangement was so audacious in its conception and so contrary to the teachings of established history in the West that his instinct was to dismiss it as creative historical revisionism by someone, for some reason, that he did not know and could not imagine.
And yet, Socrates had to admit, the Secret Protocol did have a strong ring of truth to it based on how public events had actually unfolded in China after World War II, at least as the West understood China’s history.
Perhaps the events described in the Secret Protocol actually occurred, Socrates thought. As outrageous as it seemed, Socrates recognized that the Secret Protocol might be an accurate reflection of the motivations, as well as the actions, of Mao and Chiang, without altering the West’s conception
of China’s history from the late 1930s through the 1950s. Socrates’ head spun with possibilities.
He set the document on the table next to the Xi’an Agreement, and looked over at the Twins. They continued to hover close by, intently watching him. They seemed content to allow him to keep reading and didn’t object when Socrates said, speaking in haltering Mandarin, “I’ll read this one now,” as he held up the other copy of the Secret Protocol.
Socrates quickly read through the second document, skipping words he didn’t know, not trying to puzzle out their specific meanings from their context. He was interested in an overview of what this version of the Secret Protocol said about the conspiracy. He didn’t need to understand the meaning of every word in this version of the instrument in order to identify the ways it differed from the other Secret Protocol.
The first thing Socrates noticed was that this document and the other Secret Protocol seemed, at a casual glance, to be very much alike, even though the results of his slugging exercise had indicated they were not alike.
The second thing he noticed when he read one document completely through, followed closely in time by a full reading of the other, was that the two Secret Protocols were anything but alike in any way that mattered.
Socrates thought about this. Although the substantive differences between the two documents were unmistakable, when read and considered as a single unit, the two Secret Protocols formed a well-wrought mosaic whose ingrediants disclosed the motivation behind the burglary at THREE PROSPERITIES CHINA ARTS GALLERY.
That motive was not at all what Socrates had anticipated, but now that he understood what it had been, almost everything else fell into place for him, including why the gallery’s director and the cultural attaché had been murdered.
SOCRATES PUSHED BACK his chair, stood up, and walked across the room, away from the Twins. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his cell phone, and pushed the speed dial button he’d set up for Detective Harte. The call was forwarded to the desk sergeant.
“The detective’s in a meeting right now,” the desk sergeant said. “Is there a message?”
“Get him out. Tell Harte it’s Socrates Cheng, and it’s important we talk right away. Tell him I know who broke into the gallery and why. I also know why the director was murdered and that . . . .”
The blow came without warning. It slammed directly into Socrates’ kidneys. The pain was excruciating, like predator’s teeth ripping into raw nerves and tearing off chunks of naked flesh. Fire raced down Socrates’ back and loins until it reached his testicles and crushed them in its savage grip, dropping him to his knees. A wave of nausea swept over Socrates as he collapsed. The room swirled as he lay on his side doubled up, a thirty-eight year old fetus imitator.
When the punch landed, Socrates’ cell phone rocketed from his hand, hitting the wall and dropping onto the carpet at exactly the same moment Socrates’ chin hit the floor.
The passing seconds seemed an eternity as Socrates fought nausea and struggled up onto one knee, balancing himself with both palms on the floor. His kidneys and testicles screamed at his futile effort to stand.
Socrates saw movement from the corner of his eyes. He tensed and looked up just in time to glimpse Bing-hao’s upraised arm as it swung down and smashed a steel-hard rubber truncheon against his forehead. Everything in Socrates’ life went dark.
SOCRATES OPENED HIS eyes and slowly lifted his head. He was on the floor, on his stomach. His lower back and groin screamed pain. His head throbbed. He fought back the urge to throw up.
He rolled his wrist over toward his face and looked at his watch. He’d been out for almost forty minutes. He looked around, turning his head, but not his body. The table’s nearby legs, the only objects within his limited field of vision, shimmied like distant air currents above a macadam highway on a hot summer day.
The circumstances of his situation came back to him in a rush. He panicked and bolted upright into a sitting position, causing a stabbing pain in his head and back. He cautiously looked around for the Twins. He was alone.
Socrates lifted his hand and tentatively flattened his palm against his forehead where the truncheon had hit him. He sported a tender lump the size of a small egg, but his skin hadn’t split open. Lucky me, he thought. He wouldn’t need stitches this time.
He managed with difficulty, because he was dizzy and nauseous, to leverage himself up onto his feet by leaning his weight into the palm he flattened against the seat of a nearby chair.
He wasn’t surprised the Twins had taken off and left him alone in the private dining room, but he was surprised no one had looked into the room, found him unconscious, and helped him. At least he’d like to think no one had looked in and then ignored him.
He thought about the events just before the Twins had cold cocked him, and about the Xi’an Agreement and the two Secret Protocols.
He assumed the Twins had taken the three documents with them. Any rational person would have. But, he realized, he was dealing with the Twins, not with mature, rational beings. He looked around for the documents. All three sat on the table just as he’d left them right before he started his call to Detective Harte.
Socrates rolled each document into a long, loose cylinder shape so he wouldn’t accidentally damage it. Then he retrieved his cell phone from the carpet and redialed Detective Harte’s number.
“It’s about time you called back, Cheng. Were you playing me, dragging me from a meeting, then hanging up? I was pissed, though not for long. The meeting sucked.” Harte chuckled. “That was an interesting message. Anything to it or was it bullshit?”
“I know who committed the burglary and the identity of the murderer of the director and cultural attaché. And I know why the burglary occurred and why the director and cultural attaché were killed,” he said.
“Okay, I’ll bite, Cheng. Why was it done? And who’s the bad guy?” He waited for an answer. Receiving none, Harte said, “And by the way, what’s a DOA in a Chinatown alley got to do with any of this?”
“Not who’s the bad guy, Detective, it’s bad guys,” Socrates said, “plural, not one. Three bad guys, but maybe not all three as guys. Maybe as two guys and a wannabe woman.”
Socrates realized he probably sounded like someone who had just been smashed over the head and still was suffering from its effects.
“What the hell are you talking about, Cheng? You’re not making any sense,” Harte said.
Socrates breathed deeply and tried to organize his thoughts so Harte could follow them. “The Li Twins,” he said, “Bing-hao and Bing-luc, are who. With their elder brother’s instigation and with help from their Triad.
“One of the Twins — Bing-hao — disguised himself as a woman when he murdered the gallery’s director,” Socrates said. “The hair from his wig was what was in the director’s fist when I found her.”
“What’s your proof?”
“The Mandarin Yellow fountain pen and the rest of the stolen art and historic documents are at the Twins’ apartment on H Street. At the White Plum Blossoms apartment building. The same building as their father’s penthouse, but on a lower floor. Your proof’s there.”
“I’ll need more than that to get a warrant, Cheng. I need probable cause. Help me out here.”
“The Twins admitted most of it to me,” Socrates said. He talked Harte through the scenario in the Golden Dragon’s private dining room, but held back a few things for now such as the Twins’ adamant denial they’d been involved in the murders.
When Socrates finished, Harte asked him some questions, then said, “Are the Twins at that apartment building now? What about their older brother?”
“I don’t have a clue where any of them are,” Socrates said.
“You’ll have to come in to the 2D as soon as possible,” Harte said, “and do an affidavit for the warrant.” Harte waited for Socrates to agree to come in, then said, “Is there anything else you want to tell me, Cheng, anything else you should tell me?”
“HARTE HERE,” THE detective said into his desktop phone.
“Detective, it’s me, Socrates Cheng.” Socrates cradled his cell phone between his shoulder and neck as he strained to see his watch. Five hours had passed since he’d gone to the 2D, signed the affidavit, and then headed home. “Did you get the search warrant?”
“We got it,” Harte said, “for all the good it did.”
Socrates detected an edge to his voice. “I don’t understand. Did you pick up the Twins and Bing-wu?”
“We got him, the big brother, not them other two,” Harte said. “ Those two are in the wind. We tracked them to the Chinese Embassy. According to our contact at the State Department, those two took asylum, even renounced their U.S. citizenship. I wouldn’t be surprised if by now they’re on a slow boat to China, not that it matters anymore where they are. They’re history, useless to us.”
Socrates hadn’t expected that, but it explained the Twins’ willingness to confess their roles in arranging the burglary. It didn’t explain their refusal to admit their roles in the murders.
“I’m not following you, Detective. How’d this happen?”
Harte cleared his throat and paused as if trying to decide if he wanted to discuss this with Socrates. After several seconds, he said, “We went to their apartment and recovered the stolen items you told us about. At least you got that part right.
“We’ll sort through what we picked up and compare everything to the list of stolen items the gallery gave us,” Harte said. “If anything’s missing, we’ll hit the pawn shops and usual fences. Eventually, we’ll get most of it back.”