by John Gapper
She brought down a cork and some glass tubing, which she stuck in the top of the flask. Then she lit a burner. After a minute, white fumes rose off the crystals and floated along the pipe. She waited until it streamed and then held the envelope to it. Thirty seconds later, the flap sprung open.
“And the Americans say we can’t innovate,” she said, handing it to Mei. “Have a look inside.”
“Am I supposed to?”
“Supposed to?” said Feng mockingly. “Go on, I won’t look.”
Mei took the envelope to a corner, feeling a flat, hard rectangle inside it. She didn’t want to know what it was. But as she hesitated, Yao moved.
“Let me see.” He put a hand on her shoulder, pulling her body back against his to gain a better view.
Taking the envelope, he pulled out a packet of green-and-purple bills bound in a white band. Each bore a cross and the image of a bald man in a high white collar, and next to it the words “Schweizerische Nationalbank.” They were crisp, unused one thousand Swiss franc notes.
“Fuck.” Yao pushed the packet back into the envelope and tried to close the flap, but it lifted open. He hurried across the room to Feng, who was sitting on a bench, gazing at the ceiling.
“Close it, please.”
She bent over the envelope, stroking gum from a nail polish-sized bottle onto the paper. “You know what a guy I knew told me? The most important quality in a spy is the ability to forget.”
Feng held out the envelope to Mei, and she took it reluctantly. No matter how hard she tried to shun it, the evidence kept seeking her out.
Yao opened the door and beckoned Mei inside. He wore pajamas under a silk nightgown, sash tied lightly at the waist, displaying a wedge of bare chest. The silk was embroidered with a red dragon, on fabric finer than anything she owned.
“Don’t let anyone spot you. It might spoil your reputation.”
Mei lacked the energy for a retort. It was late, and she was tense. Even Yao didn’t look at ease.
Yao’s room was like hers—a bedroom with a small bathroom attached to a tiny kitchenette, a study with a desk, and a two-person sofa. Their lives as cadres were the same too. They ate every meal in the commissary, except for a few excursions—nights in Guangzhou, shopping in Shenzhen, a walk in the park. The Party made sure that they didn’t have much time for recreation. Yet there was a gulf between them in the room’s small touches—the fabrics draped across his sofa and the photographs on his desk. He had so many cousins, it was unimaginable to her. There he was with his mother and aunt in Tiananmen Square, there with his father next to a rocket launcher at an Army parade.
Yao’s pedigree was impeccable. His family tree had army officers and high-level officials. One line led back to a great-granduncle who’d been among the Eight Immortals—Deng and the seven Party officials who’d followed Mao. That alone gave him an exalted stature—he was destined for high office. Which didn’t escape the attention of the girls who fell into his bed, she thought.
She sat on Yao’s sofa while he paced around the room in his slippers. “What do we do?” she asked.
The envelope with its customs seal was still in her pocket, the stack of Swiss franc notes shifting inside when she moved. Mei knew that if she gave it to the Wolf it would be the end of him, and knew that she’d been chosen for the task.
“You heard Feng. Give it to him, walk away, forget it. The Wolf’s at the end of his career, and we’re at the start. I bet he’s been on the take for years.”
“I don’t believe that.” It was too neat, this affair. Pan had been onto her as soon as she’d returned from Dongguan, with a mission to bring him down.
“What don’t you believe?” He was exasperated, as if Mei were being deliberately obstructive.
“That he’s corrupt. This is a setup, Yao, can’t you see? Why were we sent to the docks? Why did Hou produce the envelope? Why did Feng open it and tell us to take a look? It’s all fixed.”
Yao clenched his jaw and groaned. “Do you really believe that? What’s in the envelope, anyway? Ten or twenty notes, fifteen thousand francs. That’s nothing for a man in his position. Do you think he’s been clean for all these years and that this is his first sweetener?”
“So why were we chosen to catch him?”
“Isn’t that supposed to be our job?”
Mei laughed. “Of course—two cadres in training at the Discipline Commission. Just the people you send to trap the boss of the organization. They must do that all the time, we just haven’t heard of it.”
“Okay then, so why?” He stood in front of her, waving an arm in frustration. “You’re so much smarter than I am. I’d just a dumb princeling, that’s what you really think.”
“I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.” He was shouting, angrier than she’d ever seen him. “You do. So, why us?”
Mei’s fingers dug into her knees. “Not us. Me.”
“Right. You. Because you’re special.”
“No, because of what he showed me.”
Yao exhaled and reached for a chair. He sat and leaned toward her, his face close to hers.
“What did he show you?” he asked quietly.
“The woman in the marsh.”
“Who was she? I asked you before.”
Mei grimaced apologetically. She had tried to keep the Wolf’s secret but it was no good—she needed Yao’s help.
“She worked at Long Tan.”
“A factory girl, was she? The people who manage that place work them to death. They’ve been falling off the buildings for months. Did you see the photos? They’ve put up nets to catch them.”
“This one didn’t jump. She drowned.”
“What difference does that make?”
“She’s the reason for all this. I want to know who she was.”
“How are you going to find that out?”
“By going to the factory. You have to help me.”
Yao frowned. “If I do, you’ll stop making trouble for us? You’ll do what you’re told?”
Mei nodded. Yao rose with a smile, looking more like his old self.
They drove to Dongguan the next day, after lectures were over. The sun was setting by the time they arrived, and uniformed workers poured out of the high-walled complex, filling the street. Yao edged the car forward through the rush and stopped by the gate. A line of vehicles was waiting to get in, but the guards were not in any hurry to let them through. Two studied the truck at the front of the line slowly, as its driver grumbled. The other drivers stood in a huddle, passing around a packet of seeds to chew and spitting dark juice on the ground.
“You go in. I’ll wait.”
Yao looked startled. “Why? You’re the one who brought us here.”
“A woman poking around attracts attention. It’s better this way.”
He sighed. “I don’t even know why I’m here. You owe me, okay? So what do you know?”
“Tang Liu. Nineteen, from Changsha, Hunan. I’ll write her identity number for you.” Mei took a pen and scrawled it on a pad.
“Good memory. Got a photo?”
“That should be enough.”
Mei saw the guard stiffen as he scanned Yao’s card, then wave him through. She relaxed a little: With Yao asking the questions, nobody would spot the resemblance between the dead girl and her. She climbed out of the car to stretch her legs and wandered across the road toward an Internet café.
Inside, kids in tunics sat in rows, yellow headphones clamped to their ears, eyes locked to screens, posting on Weibo and scouring the Internet. She was one of them—the post-1985 generation that had flooded out of Guangxi, Sichuan, and Hunan, following their parents to jobs in factories on the coast. But they weren’t content to work for a few years and return with the cash to build a house and raise one child. They wanted to earn a resident’s permit. They dreamed of buying apartments, despite the high prices. There wasn’t room for them, despite the noise of construction. People talked of the Pearl River’s cities
being filled in with concrete and the delta becoming a metropolis of fifty million. Even that wouldn’t be space enough.
Mei walked along an alley, where a tattered old Hui Chun poster from the New Year was taped in the dingy entrance to an apartment block to bring the dwellers good luck. The alley, lit by the glow of storefronts, was like a gorge between buildings rising a dozen stories on each side, so close that it looked possible to leap the gap from one balcony to its opposite. A wedge of evening sky was visible high above.
It took Yao an hour to reappear. By the time he did, she’d drunk all the tea she could take and was back in the car.
“There you are. That’s all they had on her. The cops took the file a couple of days ago.”
The recruitment notice yielded only brief details—her date of birth, identity number, and address in Shenzhen. She had walked into Long Tan two months before—as long as Mei had been at the Commission.
“So she joined in July? And she killed herself last week?” Nothing in this affair made sense.
Yao shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t like the job.”
For the mid-autumn festival, paper lanterns were lit all over Guangdong. Mei watched them drifting at night along Fazheng Road, near the Commission’s offices. She loved the story of Chang’e, who ascended to heaven and lived in the moon after her husband was killed by a villain. Every year, Mei ate a moon cake on the night of the festival and remembered how she’d gazed into the sky as a child, trying to see the goddess.
The festival was an excuse for Guangzhou to eat, which it did with relish. Mei was amazed at the appetites of its citizens. They happily swallowed things that revolted her even to look at. Street stalls lined the gates to Revolutionary Martyrs Park, their lamps pale in the sunlight. They were piled with sea horse, abalone, alligators, chicken’s feet, pig livers—every organ imaginable.
“Ugh, get it away.” Mei ducked and held her nose as her friend waved the legs of an octopus in her face.
“Coward.” Luli said. “You’ve got to learn to eat.”
The stallholder cursed at them as Luli dropped the slimy creature on the ground. Mei paid for a bag of star fruit to placate the grouchy vendor, and they walked through the red gates, past characters in Zhou Enlai’s handwriting on a white granite pedestal, topped by red and yellow tiles. Every bush was neatly clipped, and the granite stones were scrubbed. The pair was soon engulfed in a crowd heading for the rally.
“This had better be fun,” Luli said, sucking on a fruit.
“You’ll learn something.”
Luli groaned. She wasn’t dressed for school—she strode along the avenue in heels, white jeans, and red T-shirt with “Lucky 69” stitched in English on the front. The authorities had erected a wide stage in front of the memorial to the 1927 Communist uprising—a huge hand grasping a rifle that pointed to the sky—and a troupe of dancers in silk costumes filled it. Luli took Mei’s arm, leading her to an advantageous spot on the lawn, where she spread a blanket. She took a box of moon cakes from a bag and placed it by the fruit.
“Eat, Mei. And wake me up if anything happens.” Luli put on a pair of Gucci sunglasses and lay down on the grass.
“Thanks for coming,” said Mei.
“I don’t know why you asked me. I’m not even a member. What about that Party boy of yours?”
“Who?”
“Don’t play ignorant. Yao. He’s got a nice smile. I bet he’s got a good body too. That’s what you need—a distraction.”
Mei blushed. “Don’t be stupid.”
Luli propped herself on one elbow and looked at Mei over her sunglasses.
“It would do you good to have a bit of fun. It’s like you’re married to the job. Where do you bring me on your day off? A Party rally. Ooh, exciting.” She shut her eyes and lay down again.
“I’m sorry. It’s been crazy at work.”
“What’s going on?”
Mei looked at Luli, half-dozing on the ground, happily oblivious. There was so much to tell her, but none of it made sense. Mei didn’t know who she was anymore—she’d never had much information, but even the precious scraps she’d gathered were suspect now. She had no family, only a fantasy. It would make no sense to Luli, who went home to her village every New Year’s holiday and sent her parents gifts from the city. All Mei had was a ghost in a pond. Even if she’d wanted to confess to Luli, how could she? Even thinking about the body made her shiver.
“I can’t say,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“You’ll go far, my dear.”
The dancers finished. A poster in the commissary had urged everyone to attend the rally, billing it as a cultural celebration of Guangdong. Chen Longwei, the Party secretary himself, would lead it. Mei hadn’t seen him except from afar, striding across the compound in a wedge of officials. He had charisma, even in the distance—tall and good-looking, with a ruddy face and a small, heart-shaped mouth.
People said that Chen had changed. When he’d come to Guangzhou from a military post elsewhere, he’d been happy with Guangdong’s informal, business-friendly ways. The Party shouldn’t stand in the way of enterprise, he’d said. But over time his tone had changed. He made speeches, held rallies. He’d started to invoke Mao’s name alongside Deng’s, complaining that old virtues were being lost, that corruption had led the Party astray. Peasant wisdom, he now said, was needed to restore discipline.
In Zhongnanhai, the Party compound near Tiananmen Square from where the government operated, it gave them heartburn. There was talk of him burnishing his image for the Party Congress in November, vying for a seat on the Politburo Standing Committee. But the people loved him. He’d pledged to help migrants by letting their children into schools and improving their living conditions. His rallies were full of them, cheering his speeches and singing the old Party songs that he said expressed the pure spirit of the country’s past.
As the dancers left, they were replaced by a choir of women in red tunics and officials in military uniform. Chen walked on as the orchestra tuned up, and he waved to the crowd.
The band played the tune to “March of the Volunteers,” the Party’s anthem, but the choir sang the words to the 1978 version—the one venerating Mao that had been dropped long ago.
Raise high Mao Zedong’s banner, march on!
Raise high Mao Zedong’s banner, march on!
March on! March on!
Luli sat up. “What the fuck?” She put a hand to her mouth and laughed. “My dad would love this.” She held up her phone and took a video.
As the anthem ended, the crowd roared, and the choir went straight into “Spring Story,” a patriotic song praising Deng. Chen beamed, waving a red flag in time to the music. They sang three more—“Spring Comes Early in the Commune,” “A New Look Has Come to Our Mountain Village,” and “The East Is Red”—and Chen stepped to a microphone as they filed off.
“Wasn’t that refreshing?” he began. “To hear songs that tell of honest labor and building the country for the people? Not of fighting for profit or officials putting themselves before the Party? It reminds me of happier days.”
People at the front of the crowd cheered.
“This guy even sounds like my dad,” Luli said. “He’s always moaning about how life was simpler. They could go on a long march together.”
“Guangdong is thriving,” said Chen. “It has become the engine of China. We’ve gathered at this festival to celebrate it. This is the Year of the Dragon, the year of good fortune and prosperity. There is nothing we cannot do. We are hardworking, ambitious, and lucky. We have an appetite for success—a big appetite!”
Chen grinned and held up a moon cake to the crowd before taking a bite out of it. There were more cheers, and Chen clapped along, laughing. Then he motioned to the crowd for quiet.
“There is much to admire in our society, but some things worry me. I see wealth, entitlement, and fraud—things that are concealed from the people. There are officials who let you down, who use their privileges for their
own advantage instead of helping others. We’ve all suffered.”
Luli scoffed. “You don’t look like you’ve suffered too badly.”
“Shush.” Mei waved at her friend, wanting to hear what Chen would say. She knew that his words would be quoted back to them on Monday, with approving comments. Perhaps they would be the basis of a new campaign. The Party constantly announced campaigns to make things better, although one seemed to pass into the other without much effect.
“We’ve dealt with the little ones—officials who take a bribe to house a family or to get them a job. They deserved the people’s justice. But it’s time for us to go higher, to hunt for tigers and not just flies. The village boss who tries to hold back progress, the senior Party official whose job is to impose discipline but who wants a red envelope himself.”
Mei stood. People near the stage were shouting angrily and booing, as if they wanted to march through the city and drag away those whom Chen had condemned. They waved banners that had come from somewhere—Hunt the Tigers, Set the People Free Again. Chen raised a clenched fist, as if standing in solidarity. The mood had turned ugly.
Mei gazed at him, her heart racing with fright. The Party official who takes a red envelope. She felt the packet of banknotes hidden inside her jacket, resting near her heart.
The Wolf lived in a white-walled villa in the Party compound. As Mei approached, a full moon threw silver light on the building, making it glow like a cottage in a fairy tale. Two guards stood at the gate, and one wrote her name in a leather-bound book.
“You found me,” said the Wolf, upon answering the door. He was in a suit, a red tie loosened around his neck, as if recently returned from a formal dinner.
“They let me in.” Mei nodded her head in the direction of the guards, who were watching.