‘Zhe tou da xiang hui bao zha.’
‘Thanks.’ Joyce shouted from the top of her voice: ‘Zhe tou da xiang hui bao zha.’
The crowd laughed. Several people applauded, apparently thinking that she was making some sort of witticism. The young man stuck out his bottom again and made a farting noise with his pursed lips. This elephant’s rump might explode with gas, is that what she meant?
Cheese. What to do? Joyce closed her eyes in despair. Darkness often helped. Visualisation—that was the answer. She remembered the advice she had received from one of her favourite teachers at school: when you are in a bad situation, calm yourself, visualise the situation you would rather be in, and then try to conjure up the routes that would lead you from your present position to the one you want to be in. She took a deep breath. Where was she now? Trapped. Surrounded. Hemmed in. Where did she want to be? Alone with the elephant, far away from the city, preferably near a veterinary surgeon’s clinic. What must she do to get from here to there? Move. Run. Gallop. Find a quiet spot. Escape.
She opened her eyes and jerked her hips forward. ‘Okay, we have to get going now. Out of the way, please. Out of the way.’ She gently spurred the beast on with her legs, the way she had watched Jungle Boy do on television, and it jerked forward, swinging its trunk to get people out of the way. ‘Which way?’ she called out to Wong.
‘Over there. I think is a park there. Not so crowded. We let it explode there.’
It took several minutes to travel a few dozen metres through the crowd towards the park gate, which Wong said was just past the two buildings on their immediate right—the Grand Theatre Gallery and the Shanghai Art Museum.
It was tough going. We talk of a sea of faces but actually human mobs are nothing like oceans—they have more of the quality of hot mozzarella. They stretch and become long strings. They pull against each other and they coagulate back into globules. They sometimes harden into tough little pools which won’t break up, and at other times they turn into groups of threads, sort of together and sort of separate. Chinese crowds have particular qualities of solidness, nay, of impassable stolidity. In every mob there are always individuals or lumps of people that are totally immoveable—even in the face of large objects (trains, trucks, cars, elephants and, on one memorable occasion in Tiananmen Square in 1989, a tank). As a result, movement was painfully slow.
The elephant actually trod on one man’s foot, causing Joyce to squeal in alarm. ‘Ooh, sorrysorrysorrysorry—CF, the elephant stood on that guy. I think he hurt him. We better do something. He’s probably got broken bones. Can you see if he’s hurt?’ But Wong took a resolutely Asian view of injuries to passers-by: if someone got hurt on the way, that was too bad. Since it was acceptable for cars to bash passers-by out of the way, why should an elephant not have the same right? The good of the masses was the important thing, and people in positions of importance (such as in an official limousine or on top of an elephant) could not be expected to pay attention to particular individuals in crowds they might encounter. It was the individual’s duty to look after himself.
Wong, McQuinnie and the elephant moved gradually through the thick mob—Joyce continuously looking back in horror at the people they injured—until finally they succeeded in making significant progress along the road. Towering above them on the other side of the road was the JW Marriott Tomorrow Square, a huge shiny skyscraper the top half of which appeared thicker than the bottom—like a huge steel knife stuck into the ground. It made Wong shiver. Police, evidently assuming this was some sort of sideshow scheduled to perform at the park, held up the demonstration to let them through. And so they lumbered at crawling pace to Entrance Gate Number Seven of the People’s Park, better known as Renmin Park. Joyce’s heart was in her mouth. ‘Dear God, I hope there are no people in the park today.’
It didn’t look very likely, considering the crowd at the gates—there was a stream of people coming in and out, some holding balloons, children with candyfloss, mothers with strollers.
Entering through the iron gates, they walked a few steps through a narrow passage and past a signboard on the left in Chinese and English: ‘Ethic or moral codes should be duly honoured, visitors are expected not to urinate or shit.’
In front of them the path diverged into three lanes: the middle one led to a lake, the ones on either side forming part of a ring road circling the park. All three were heaving. There were fence-to-fence people everywhere they looked.
The park, Wong noticed, had been beautifully designed— he couldn’t have done it better himself. The path in front of them gently meandered, gracefully revealing a perfect scene: a pond-side viewing area, shaded by a large tree and focused around a body of water surrounding a wooden house on stilts. There were water-lilies standing tall out of the pond on one side of the bridge leading to the structure, and dragonflies standing on nothing over the surface of the water on the other: a perfect blend of the natural and the urban.
This was something that the Chinese and Japanese did so well, and no one else seemed to understand. Other peoples seemed to assume that environments had to be either human (flat and urbanised, with featureless green lawns and football pitches), or natural (protected wilderness areas where matted vegetation grew into impenetrable forests). But in ancient oriental garden design there was an attempt to do something really, really important: to find and recreate the perfect human–natural environment, the paradisical spot that is imprinted in every human being’s race memory. This was why feng shui (and vaastu) were so vital.
‘Oh no.’ Joyce scanned as much of the park as she could see from her high seat: there were people in every corner. Indeed, in many places the crowds were so thick that it was difficult to see any grass. She looked down at Wong and noted the look of despair on his face.
The feng shui master was deeply torn about what to do. Try to save the elephant? Try to save the community? Try to save themselves? Only the first and third options made sense to him, but he had no idea how to effect them. Perhaps someone else could solve it. ‘I think we go back to the hotel. Tell people. Leave the elephant and get out of here peedy-queue. Go back to hotel and phone. Is not our problem. Is problem for the authorities. They can fix it, maybe.’
‘No way,’ said Joyce. ‘The authorities will shoot the elephant first. They like killing things. Then they’ll run away and let it blow up. There’s no time left to dig the bomb out of the elephant and switch it off. How long do we have left?’
Wong looked at his watch. ‘Forty-three minutes. Bringing elephant to park wasted a few minutes, did no good.’
‘Well, it was your bloody idea.’
The feng shui master felt as if he could hear the tick-tick-tick of the bomb inside the elephant. It appeared to be getting louder and stronger and faster as the countdown headed to zero.
But then he realised that what he could hear was the thud of his own panicking heart.
10
‘Okay, where is it?’
‘Where is what?’
‘This is not funny. Ah warn you, Miss Ling, ah do not have a sense of humour. People like me don’t. We have them surgically removed when we join the US government.’
‘My name’s Linyao. Ms Lu to you.’
‘Where is the elephant, bitch?’
‘Search me.’
He cursed under his breath and reached for the radio. ‘Dooley to SL-One. Dooley to SL-One. Come in.’
‘Cap’n?’
‘This is an emergency, I want you to locate an—’ he paused, momentarily—‘an elephant. Repeat: an elephant. It’s loose somewhere in this building. It’s been—’ another embarrassed pause—‘er, stolen, taken, kidnapped, whatever, from the back stage area.’
‘An elephant? Did you say—’ ‘You heard me.’ Dooley spun around just in time to see the shoulders of a thin young man named Ari Tadwacker moving up and down.
‘Something funny, Tadwacker?’
‘No, sir. Nothing, sir.’
Dooley turned hi
s attention back to Linyao. ‘You’re coming with me.’ He grabbed her violently by the arm and pulled her down the corridor into one of the dressing rooms. When they were alone with the door shut, he yanked her arm again to spin her around to face him.
She squealed and tried to shake herself free. ‘Let go of me.
Who do you think you are?’
‘Who do you think ah am?’
‘You’re a security guard.’
Dooley’s teeth ground themselves together. This was a situation he hated. He wanted to say who he really was—one of the top, top men in the Secret Service, a legendary United States institution—but he couldn’t. For the truth of it was that the name of his organisation was oddly, ridiculously, painfully unquotable. As a child, the words ‘Secret Service’ were inestimably glamorous, conjuring up images of clandestine operations involving James Bond-like special agents on missions with cool gadgets and women in bikinis. But from the moment he joined the service at the age of twenty-eight, he had found the name of the organisation just plain embarrassing.
When a girl at a party asked you what you did, you couldn’t reply: ‘I work for the Secret Service and my rank is Special Agent.’ It made people laugh. It made you sound like you were an eleven-year-old boy playing a game. It made you think of Maxwell Smart talking into his shoe. There was no way for an adult man to say it without sounding like he was joking. In off-duty social situations, he preferred to mumble that he worked for the government. Then people would ask for more detail, and he would brush them off in such a way that they would end up impressed. ‘Nothin’, ah’m jest a civil servant.
Ah just do my bit. Cog in the wheel. Don’t really want to say too much about it, know what ah mean? Heh-heh. What do you do?’
That little heh-heh said it all. But the truth was that the existence of the Secret Service was not in itself secret. They had ‘Secret Service’ emblazoned on their vehicles and on their badges. Their office address was in the phone book. Hell, they even had a website. When he had transferred from the service’s financial side to the presidential side, his work title became less embarrassing, at least when talking to other government agencies. He and his colleagues referred to their group as the PPD, a nice boring set of initials, or sometimes as ‘the Detail’. This was distinctive and also wonderfully suitable, as checking details—over and over and over again—was a key aspect of what they did. For it was the details that sometimes blew up into major problems, as he was finding out to his cost today.
‘Okay, ah’m gonna ask politely one more time. Where’s the elephant? How did your friend get it out of here? Ah don’t like bombs wandering around in the same building and the same city as my President is wandering around in, got it?’
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t looking. I was with you. She was behind the curtain. I think she used magic. Megiddo’s magic.’
Dooley gritted his teeth. ‘Okay, we are alone, so ah can use unofficial methods of interrogation. Ah warn you, lady, I can make Abu Ghraib look like Sesame Street.’
He grabbed the lapels of Linyao’s jacket and heaved her off her feet. ‘You talking?’ he asked.
She said nothing.
He flung her heavily across the room. She hit a chair, which toppled over, and then fell to ground, knocking against a table. A flurry of coloured acrobat uniforms flopped on top of her. Landing heavily, she slammed her head against the floor and couldn’t resist a yelp of pain.
Dooley strode across the room and gave her a sharp kick in the ribs. ‘Usually ah follow Miss Manners’ rules, lady, but ah have one rule which overrides all other rules. And that rule is this: ah perteck the President. And if ah have to break all the other rules to keep that one, ah’m ver’ happy to do it.’ He placed the heel of his boot against her chin. ‘Where’s your friend?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t see.’
There was a knock on the door.
‘What?’ Dooley shouted.
It creaked open and a face appeared. ‘I found the stagehand who operates the moving bits of the stage.’ It was Agent Tadwacker, holding the arm of a man in blue overalls. ‘He says there’s a revolving wall on the left part of the stage which is how they make the elephant disappear.’ The two men who entered the room tried desperately not to look at Linyao crumpled on the ground in the corner, but she kept drawing their eyes.
The stagehand spoke in broken English. ‘Missa Megiddo and his people—they take out elephant with trick. The curtain come down. Go to the left. Elephant go with it. They press button and stage back part turn round. Elephant go backstage. Go in cargo elevator.’
Dooley turned back to Linyao. ‘What’s your girlfriend’s name? And where is she going with the blasted thing?’
She glared at him.
He pulled out his gun and pointed it at her.
‘Her name’s Joyce,’ Linyao said. ‘Joyce McQuinnie. And I have no idea where she’s going. Where do people with exploding elephants go to in Shanghai? This sort of thing doesn’t happen a lot in this country, officer. It may happen in yours.’
Dooley turned to face the stagehand. ‘Where’s the cargo elevator go to?’
‘To loading bay, underground car park.’
‘Let’s go.’ To Linyao: ‘You stay here. I want to talk to you later.’
On the way Dooley made a series of calls on his radio. He put Carloni in charge of rechecking security at the theatre— every damn inch—and Felznik in charge of informing all the other units who needed to know that a breach of security had taken place, and Tadwacker in charge of getting a group of men to fan out to find Joyce and the elephant. He himself took the most unpleasant job of all—telling the President’s men that there had been a possible compromise of the venue and the meeting would have to be cancelled or moved. There was no other choice. There was an explosive device inside or near the building: precise location unknown. POTUS must not approach. The Secret Service was ordering the show to be cancelled.
To do such a thing at the last possible moment meant the highest possible level of pain—a level of corporate, official agony that was almost unbearable. The amount of planning that went into a visit by the US President to anywhere—even the local donut shop—was huge. To change any aspect of the trip (such as an ingredient in the hors d’oeuvres) was a significant deal. To have allowed something to happen that caused the whole thing to be cancelled was a rare occurrence that destroyed careers and made grown men weep—or throw themselves off buildings. The only light at the end of the tunnel would be to (a) make out that any security breach was entirely due to the shortfall of the Chinese partner security agency; and (b) to claim that any creditable action in the matter, such as the discovery of the problem, was entirely due to the American partner.
He called Agent Lasse over. ‘Get me Captain Zhang. We’d better let the Chinese know that we have a problem.’
Commander Zhang Xiumei of the People’s Armed Police already knew that trouble was afoot. She and her team were technically sharing security duties at the Grand Theatre with the American Secret Service. But the Chinese team worked in a more subtle, low-profile way. There appeared to be fewer of them on the ground, but in fact there were more of them: you just didn’t see them. Her men had already told her that the Americans were in a panic over something, and she was waiting for the call when it came.
Her reaction to the news she was given was predictable enough—the same utter disbelief that had been Dooley’s reaction. But her way of expressing it was very different. She lowered the phone and showed no emotion whatsoever, other than a slight tightening of the forehead. She stood in perfect stillness, statue-like, while considering the information she had been given. Could this be some sort of elaborate American joke? She had often pondered the mysteries of American humour, and had several times seen Hollywood comedies which left her cold. Western humour appeared to be largely verbal, and mostly focused on people saying things which meant the precise opposite of what was clearly stated.
‘There’s a bomb in th
e elephant.’ She replayed the line in her head. She knew all the words in the sentence, but had no idea what it meant. The whole was not greater than the sum of the parts. In fact, while the parts each meant something, the whole meant nothing. She knew what a bomb was, and she knew what an elephant was. But why say there was a bomb inside an elephant, when such a thing could not be?
Her fundamental attitude towards Westerners was wariness and distrust. This had been triggered by an experience she had had twelve years ago, when she had first had a conversation in English with a group of British soldiers who were in China on some sort of information exchange visit. The words of the discussion had been entirely straightforward—indeed, they could have been lifted out of her English language school textbook. Yet the reaction to the conversation was bizarre, and revealed to her the enormous wealth of hidden associations behind the simplest Western phrases.
‘Like yer uniform, Miss.’
‘Thank you for the compliment.’
‘It’s real then?’
‘Yes. It is a People’s Armed Police issue uniform.’
‘Not a pirate copy from Shenzhen?’
‘No. It is authentic, from the quartermaster stores. Miniature replicas on dolls are available, if you would like to purchase one.’
‘I heard Chinese military uniforms came in two sizes: too big and too small.’
‘No, they come in four sizes: small, medium, large and extra large.’
Why this straightforward conversation should have left the British troops doubled up with helpless laughter left her baffled, even after she had looked up several of the words in the Chinese–English dictionary. She had tried the largest dictionaries she could find, in case there were alternative meanings or associations which were not initially clear to her. Later, she had phoned her English language tutor and recited the entire conversation for him. The teacher—a fifty-year-old Shanghainese named Wu Jian Min—had been as baffled as she was.
‘There’s a bomb in the elephant,’ she repeated to herself. ‘We should cancel the opening show because there is a bomb in the elephant.’ The English language appeared to have an infinite number of metaphorical phrases, most of which had no obvious connection with the thought they expressed. Heavy raindrops were cats and dogs. A superlative item was the knees of the bumble bee. Clouds had silver linings. Babies were born with silver spoons in their mouths. What was the metaphorical meaning of ‘a bomb in an elephant’? It surely couldn’t refer to a real bomb in a real elephant. Nor could it refer to really cancelling the actual pre-summit show. Both would be ridiculous. She phoned Teacher Wu.
The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics Page 19