by John Gapper
“I’ve examined your reports, Song Mei,” Pan said as they walked. She gave a thin smile and nodded approvingly. “They are excellent. You are fulfilling our expectations when we recruited you.”
“Thank you, Deputy Secretary. I try to do my best.” Mei had seen Pan’s mouth move and heard her words, but they felt disconnected. She always wondered how she’d been recruited to the Commission. It remained a mystery. A letter had come one day asking her to an interview, even though she hadn’t applied. She had been “recommended,” it stated.
“You performed excellently at Sun Yat-sen University.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“I am impressed by your achievements. You did not have an easy upbringing, but you show great character.”
Mei nodded. It felt foolish to keep thanking the woman. Mei had worked insanely hard to ace her exams, spending long nights memorizing facts. From childhood, she’d been driven by the fear of not escaping Guilin, of spending her life in a backwater. She’d known she had to break out.
“Sit here with me,” Pan said as they reached her office, indicating a leather chair in the corner. The springs sank uncomfortably under Mei when she sat, and she had to hitch herself upright.
Pan’s office was featureless—ugly desk, steel cabinet that seemed to date from the 1949 Revolution, Party certificates on the walls, Party mementos on the shelves. There was a photograph of Pan with a Politburo member in the Great Hall of the People, and a pair of tiny flags commemorating a friendship event with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. If she had any pleasures in life apart from doing the right thing, they were not visible.
“Secretary Lang asked you to help him last night.”
Pan’s eyes fastened on her and her smile dimmed, the pleasantries over. Mei came to attention with a jolt.
“Yes, Deputy Secretary.”
“He clearly understands your potential and wishes to encourage you. Tell me what happened.”
Mei picked her words carefully, trying to seem cooperative without giving too much away. “He asked me to attend a crime scene in Dongguan. A young woman had died, I’m not sure how.”
“What an interesting mission.” Pan’s smile returned and she nodded, endorsing the Wolf’s decision. “Who was the girl?”
“I don’t know. I was not told.”
“And now the police have closed the case. Ah well, nasty things can happen in Dongguan, I’m sad to say. Some girls do not do behave themselves in the city. You are not too shocked?”
“No, I am okay.”
“Secretary Lang has had a distinguished career, serving the Party. I expect you know that,” Pan said.
“I believe so.”
“We can learn much from him. He had to overcome obstacles, as you did. There was an incident early in his career involving his wife. It could have set him back, but he regained the Party’s trust.”
Pan nodded significantly, and Mei nodded back. A lesson was being imparted, but she was mystified as to what.
“Even good men can be led astray. Their brains do not always guide them. Women hold up half the sky, Mao said. Sometimes, we carry more of the weight, don’t we?”
“Yes, we do.” Mei tried to smile in a complicit way, but Pan seemed to be talking to herself.
“Especially old men.” The warmth was gone from Pan’s face. “They often make fools of themselves.” She paused. “I will give you a piece of advice, Song Mei. Do not permit yourself to be misled. It would be a shame.”
“No, Deputy Secretary.”
Mei felt a tremor of panic. Without doing anything but obey orders, she had been caught between the Wolf and his deputy. She had no idea what was going on. All she knew was that a body had appeared to her in the night and turned her life into a mystery.
“Now,” Pan said, smiling. “I have a task for you.”
The blue steel cranes stood to attention at Humen Port, saluting the sky. Far above Mei and Yao, a crane lifted a container toward a cargo vessel docked by the side of the Pearl River. She gazed upward as the operator, invisible in his cabin, swung the giant box through space and settled it in place on the pile of others, like giant Lego bricks.
It was a fine day for Guangdong. The smog had thinned sufficiently to allow the sun to gleam and for Mei and Yao to feel its glow. Yao had removed his jacket and walked with it slung over one shoulder, Dolce & Gabbana shades perched on his nose. He swung the other arm in rhythm to one of his father’s old marching tunes, which he whistled to get on Mei’s nerves. She still had a headache a day after her encounter with Pan, not helped by the tang of oil and chemicals in the air.
The ship was one of five sitting under the row of cranes. The vessels were leviathans—vast and fat underneath hundreds of containers piled so high that it seemed as if they might roll over at sea. As Mei and Yao walked, the ground trembled. A train moved slowly along tracks set into the dockside as cranes removed the load from one ship. The river looked muddy green in the sunshine. In the channel, an enormous number of boats—steamers, ferries, and cargo vessels—plied their way back and forth. Water lilies and weeds floated by the dock, feeding on the oily scum.
Dongguan sprawled to the east; a mile to the south, a line of trucks trailed across the Humen Bridge, high above the river. The Pearl River was a trading place for the world, as in the nineteenth century. The iron cannons that had fired on British gunships in the Opium Wars of the 1840s still sat in their stone barricades by the bridge. The British had enfeebled the Canton population by trading opium from Indian poppies for Chinese commodities, so weak and compliant had been the Qing emperors. The Party was a far tougher negotiator with its trading partners—it took Treasury bonds instead.
“This is better than lectures. How did you get us the job?” Yao said.
“Treat me nicely and you get rewarded.” But Mei wasn’t as happy as Yao about their day out. She wondered if it wouldn’t be simpler to be back in a stuffy classroom than doing Pan’s bidding.
Two dockers stood smoking by the side of a truck a hundred or so feet ahead. One of them bent down and snorted, vacating phlegm onto the dockside. Then he looked up at Mei and grinned, showing the gap where a tooth was missing. He said something to his companion that Mei couldn’t hear, and the other man laughed in response, gazing at her. As Yao drew his breath to speak, Mei put a hand out and touched his arm. She could handle it.
“Which one is the Yunnan?” she asked tooth man in Cantonese.
He looked blank, so she repeated the question in Mandarin. It was hard to tell before anyone spoke what language or dialect they used. Like a magnet, Guangdong drew people from all across China and beyond—dockers, workers, traders, and hucksters of all kinds. The local taxi drivers and market stallholders complained loudly in Cantonese about becoming a minority in their own province.
“You hitching a ride, baby? Where are you heading?” He had a northern accent Mei couldn’t place—perhaps Heilongjiang?
She said nothing, reaching into her jacket to produce her identity card. He saw the five gold stars—the largest one representing the Party—stamped on a red circle and stiffened. He threw his cigarette aside, twisting a foot on it to crush the embers.
“That way.” He pointed to the next vessel, two hundred yards beyond. It sat higher in the water than those around it as the last of its cargo was removed.
The Yunnan looked as if it had seen a good portion of the world. It was black and red, its paintwork faded and battered where it rubbed against the dock. The deck was flat, with nothing to block the view of the ship’s stack of cabins, topped by a navigation deck with its broad sweep of glass that glinted in the sun. A gangway slanted on the ship’s side, and Mei saw a tiny figure walking up it. Her heartbeat quickened and her palms pricked as she realized that it was the way to board.
She’d spent her childhood in Guilin with her feet planted firmly on the ground, but Guangzhou was full of skyscrapers. Two years earlier, when they’d finished the new Canton TV Tower, which rose ab
ove the Pearl River like a twisted bundle of firewood molded in white steel, a college friend from Sun Yat-sen had insisted on ascending what was then the world’s tallest building. Mei felt a vague sense of dread but lacked the nerve to refuse. She knew she was in trouble when they were shown into the elevator at the foot of the tower. After one glance through the steel girders as they rose, she closed her eyes and pushed against the rear of the elevator.
When they stepped onto the 107th floor observation deck, she’d felt a new kind of terror, like nothing she’d ever experienced. The black tiles stretching to triangular windows at the edge seemed to melt before her, tipping her toward the river, nearly fifteen hundred feet below. Luli, her girlfriend, had clattered to a glass-floored wedge protruding into space and cried at Mei to take her photograph. It was unthinkable. Crushed by vertigo, she knelt on the cold floor with her eyes gripped shut. She could not bear to watch the jagged rows of apartment blocks and office towers melting into the misty distance beyond the curve of the river.
Safely on the ground again, she’d sat shivering at a café table while her friend had gone off to get a glass of water. She’d felt like a country girl unable to cope with the scale of the city. It defied her sense of logic—that even when she was in no danger of falling, it felt as if she were falling into a void. Afterward, she’d vowed to train herself out of it, but she’d not had the time. She could not bear to show weakness to Yao. She’d lose all authority over him.
Mei placed a hand on the rail of the stairway, feeling it slip between her fingers as the ship shifted against the dock. She started the climb a couple of paces in front of Yao, holding the rail on each side to steady herself while trying to look as if she wanted to get on board quicker. From behind, Yao could not see her fix her gaze on the steel steps, frightened to raise her eyes to the dark cliff above her.
“Son of a dog. Look at that motherfucker.” Yao halted behind her, pointing upriver.
Mei had no choice but to obey. She twisted in the direction he was gazing, into space across the port. When she opened her eyes, her stomach lurched. They were high between sea and sky, only the ship’s bulk orienting them in space, and the ground felt lost below them. Yao indicated a fully laden container ship edging its way into the Pearl from the East River, looking barely afloat.
Mei tried to hide her fear with a tone of disdain. “It’s just a boat, Yao.” She felt the blood drain from her head as she gripped the rail—she had to get moving again or she’d be rooted to the spot.
“That should keep the foreign devils happy.”
“Not for long.” She faked a laugh, trying not to sound hysterical, and dragged herself forward. As they neared the ship’s entrance, she could not hold back her panic and she rushed up the last few steps blindly, stumbling through the bulwark to safety.
They waited by the door to the ship’s navigation deck, listening. It was bolted shut; a man was shouting angrily on the other side.
“It happens every time I dock. The crew in this port are thieves and cocksuckers.”
The voice that replied was softer—conciliatory, almost jovial.
“These things happen. I know you’ve got it right, but check the manifest again, will you? There has to be an explanation.”
Mei’s knuckled fist, poised to rap on the door, was suspended in midair. She heard someone cross the deck, stomping urgently on the wooden floor, and she waited to hear what would happen next.
“Look. Two thousand and twenty-four. Maybe one went astray in Taiwan. Are you sure you counted right?”
“I know, all right. I’ve had this shit here before.” The man’s voice was still exasperated, but there was now a hint of doubt.
Mei pulled the bolt and swung the door open. The deck was filled with light from sun streaming through the navigation deck that ran from one side of the deck to the other. There was a stunning view of the river and the channel to the sea. Below, she saw the length of the ship and its dark belly, from which all of the containers had been scooped. Crew scurried around far beneath them, like ants in red helmets. She felt queasy, but it would be manageable if she just kept away from the windows. Two men stood by a desk—the ship’s captain and a thick-necked customs superintendent. The official ran a finger down a checklist, rubbing his jaw with his other hand.
“You’re right. How can we fix this? What can I do for you?” As he spoke, he turned to look at Mei and Yao and threw an arm around the captain’s shoulders. “What’s all this? Two fresh crew for you, Xilai? They look young and eager.”
Mei felt herself blush, and Yao seemed to lose his usual insouciance under the official’s gaze. The man watched cheerfully as he stumbled over his introduction.
“Superintendent Hou.… We’re with the Discipline Commission. We need to speak with you, if we may.”
Mention of the Commission was usually enough to ensure cooperation, as the card gave them the authority to cause trouble for any Party member. But this one was tough. His eyes stayed blank and hard even as his smile widened.
Yao put his bag on the floor next to Mei’s ankle, leaning the wedge of official papers up against her calf. He walked over to their target and presented a card, both sides of which the man examined. One side showed Yao’s title in the Ministry of Inspection, the other his Party affiliation. Officially, every Discipline Commission official had two jobs—one in the government and one in the Party. The Party was the master, though. The man nodded, tucking it in his top pocket.
“So, young man. You’re here to take me away for unspecified crimes, are you? Do I face a spell of shuanggui?” He guffawed, slapping his companion on the back, as if he’d made a great joke.
Mei stared, abashed. He was laughing at shuanggui, their most fearsome power, the right to arrest a Party member on suspicion and detain him in secret for months or years. No lawyer, no habeas corpus, no record. The suspect might eventually reappear, spat into the courts in a distant province for the judges to sentence him to a prison term or even death. It was treated as a given that the Party’s verdict was correct. Yet here was a middle-rank official in a cheap suit acting as if he didn’t care.
“We want to talk to you. In private.” Mei’s voice was curt, but she heard it waver. It was hard for her to order middle-aged men around, even with a Party official’s card—too many treated it as flirtation.
“I know what this is about.” He turned to talk to the captain, presenting his back to Mei. “The boss is being posted to Fujian and I’ve applied for his job. He said the Party would check on me and they’ve sent these kids, so there’s obviously no problem. Don’t worry, you’re not mixing with antisocial elements.”
“Please, sir. We have a job to do.” Yao’s halting voice sounded pathetic to Mei. Whatever questions she had about the assignment, she didn’t want to be humiliated. If Pan found out they’d been treated this way by some customs official she had sent them to investigate, she wouldn’t be happy.
“Listen, son. Don’t make a big deal of this. I know important people in Guangzhou.”
As she stared at the man’s complacent face, Mei’s temper flared. She was exhausted and distressed, and she could not bear to be pushed around any longer. Bending down, she reached into the bag at her feet. She felt the thick file inside and turned it so that Hou could see the embossed cover as she drew it out and held it to her chest.
“We don’t need to talk to anyone in Guangzhou. We have all the information that we need.”
His smile faded, and he ran a fleshy thumb along his jaw, gazing at the file. He’d never seen it before and might never see it again. It was the script of his adult life, the document that determined whether he got a promotion and what happened after that, and then after that—how far he would rise in his career, how he might fall. Inside was a record of every assessment and infraction for the past thirty years, every incident of disloyalty.
Mei was holding his Party file.
She’d read it in the car on their way to the port, absorbing their target’s un
spectacular ascent within the Customs Ministry. He dealt rough justice to the dubious characters who hung around the place, his managers noted, driving out smugglers of cargo, human and otherwise. He starred in the Party’s periodic public campaigns to clean up the docks—a hopeless mission that it addressed with sunny confidence. There was little to stand in the way of him being promoted—a few complaints of petty abuse and one incident of a few cartons of cigarettes being found in his office just before the New Year. If only others had such modest appetites.
On paper, he was a model Party member, but that wasn’t how she’d heard him behave. Her fingers flicked the top corner of the pages, and he stepped forward to intervene.
“Captain,” the man said. “Could we have the use of a room for a while? I want to assist these guan yuan in their inquiries.” For the first time, he had used the formal term for an official.
In a small cabin off the navigation deck, she dropped the file onto the desk. Then, seating herself behind the desk, she leafed through it. Following her lead, Yao sat next to her and observed the official, some of his usual nerve coming back.
“Sorry about that before. I was just fooling around a bit.” Hou plumped himself on a faded green couch under a porthole and spread his arms, submitting to their authority.
As Hou watched, Mei worked her way carefully through the pages of the file.
“So you’ve always worked in customs,” she said. “A lot of people would like your job—that or being a tax official. It was the top choice in my graduating class at university. Why is that?”
Hou shrugged. “Variety. Everything in the world gets carried on the Pearl River. Jeans, cell phones. Opium, in the old days. You see amazing things here, I’ll tell you.”
“So they want to see the world, do they? Nothing to do with the opportunity to take bribes?”