by John Gapper
She did not appear to hear. “Can you hear me, Mr. Davies?” she repeated loudly. “It is Madame Zhou. We haven’t seen you for a long time. My girls wish to entertain you again.”
“That’s kind, but—”
“Would you like to visit? When can I make an appointment for you?”
“I’m afraid I have business here.”
“Mr. Davies, I have a message for you from Tang Liu. She is here and wants to spend more time with you.”
Lockhart shut his eyes, unable to cope. He had believed that he had seen Liu for the last time. She would disappear back home and stay there until the job was done. He had tried to find the most stable of Madame Zhou’s brood, had thought the deal would stick. It was her namesake he longed to see again.
“I thought she had gone home.”
“She has returned. We are so happy to see her again.”
“Please tell Liu I hope she is well. But it will be difficult to meet with her. I’m sorry.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Lockhart thought he heard a whisper in the background.
“Liu says you must come. She will not be able to keep her secret unless you help her.”
His instinct was to shut the phone off, go down in the elevator, and throw it into Victoria Harbor. He didn’t want anything to do with the Golden Dragon or Tang Liu or this tawdry blackmail. But he couldn’t do that—the device was his only lifeline. He crafted a reply, trying to calculate how much trouble they could cause. He imagined that Madame Zhou had done this before.
“Could I speak to her, Madame Zhou?”
“It is impossible, I’m afraid. Liu is not here at the moment, but she wants me to arrange a meeting.”
He sighed. “Is it money? Can I help in that way?”
“Oh, Mr. Lockhart.” She sounded shocked, as if he were rude to suggest that cash was her motive, rather than engineering a touching reunion. “Liu wants to see you. Please don’t disappoint her.”
“Very well. I will come tomorrow,” he said and terminated the call.
Lockhart put the phone back on the bed. He’d known this kind of thing before—a fool thinking that, because Lockhart had paid a bribe, he could be blackmailed for more. He wondered if it was Liu’s idea or a racket by Madame Zhou. Either way, they would discover they were wrong.
The news broke overnight. Two women caught Mei as she stepped out of her room to ask if she’d heard.
“I can’t believe it,” she said, and they nodded with wide eyes and solemn faces, excited at passing on the gossip but aware that they should not look like they relished it too much. She did believe it, of course: She’d been dreading it for days.
They had come to arrest the Wolf at four in the morning—a matter of show since guards were posted outside his house and he’d been asleep, alone. The police could have walked across the compound after breakfast just as easily. But that wasn’t how the Party behaved when it wanted to make a public example of someone. After all, the official in charge of preventing corruption had been caught taking a bribe.
Mei composed her expression into shocked surprise and kept it that way as she listened to the others. He’d tried to escape through his garden when they came, they’d found a stash of foreign currency beneath the frame of his piano, he had an apartment in Hong Kong. One cadre, the daughter of a village mayor who seemed perpetually on the edge of tears, denounced the Wolf in sorrow. How can the people believe what their leaders say? It is a terrible day for the Party.
“What do you think, Mei?” she asked, her eyes glistening.
“It’s shocking,” Mei agreed.
She had known it was coming because he’d told her. Goodbye, Song Mei, had been his last words to her; later, he had put a finger to his lips as he looked down from the roof. Don’t say anything. Amid her fear at what would happen and her sense of isolation, she was angry. He’d led her into a maze and abandoned her, shattering her life with only a hint as to why. Find her father. But if the girl was her sister, wasn’t her father Mei’s father too? Her father, the Wolf had said, and he used words deliberately.
She was used to isolation. She’d felt it from her first moment of consciousness, the knowledge that her parents had left her behind. As a toddler, it hadn’t worried her because her playmates were the same. But as she had grown, she had eventually realized that they weren’t average children. Others had mothers and fathers, if not siblings. They were born to two people who loved each other and together made a child to care for. She was not. It was a tantalizing, depressing unknown—a void that couldn’t be filled. Had they never loved her? Had she disappointed them?
Lectures were canceled, investigations put on hold. Everyone was told to gather in the auditorium at ten o’clock. When she arrived, the room was full of people awaiting fresh gossip. Mei scanned the space for Yao. He was sitting seven rows down, by himself. She walked around the rear circle and down the same aisle, taking a place two rows in front of Yao. When she glanced back at him to signal her presence, his expression didn’t change.
A single podium stood on the stage, the red national flag draped behind it. The audience waited in silence. After fifteen minutes, a door opened and a line of officials filed in, taking seats on the front row. Another five minutes passed. Then Pan Yue walked onto the stage. Her expression was like the cadres Mei had encountered first—solemn, yet filled with excitement. Her face was flushed, and she looked as if she had just won a prize.
“Young comrades, thank you for being here this morning. I know how busy you are,” she said, ignoring the fact that they’d been given no choice. “Remember this day, for it will be your most important lesson. All those who fulfill their duties with honesty and vigor need fear nothing. Only those who betray the Party will suffer. I know some will have doubts and may feel uncertain about the future. I cannot lift your spirits alone, and our leaders wish to encourage you. It is my honor to introduce Secretary Chen Longwei.”
Mei’s heart thudded and two cadres in the row in front of her glanced at each other in awe at how the Wolf’s arrest had so quickly overturned the old order. Chen had never intruded on the Commission’s business before—he had left the Wolf to run his empire. She felt sick at their eager innocence.
As Chen emerged from the side of the stage, the line of officials at the front stood up, and the cadres in the row behind them followed, the wave rippling past Mei to the rear. Mei studied Chen’s walk. He placed his feet as gently as he’d done on the roof of the Long Tan building.
Chen waved both hands downward to make his listeners sit. Microphone in hand, he walked forward until he was at the front of the stage and looked out at the faces.
“No need to be formal.” He smiled, and the officials laughed, the tension easing. “I wanted to come here today to talk to you and to reassure you. You know why that is important to me? Because you’re the future of this Party, its sixth generation, and you will determine whether it thrives past this generation, as it has thrived until now, in the service of the Guangdong people. That’s quite a responsibility, but I know you’re up to it.”
He passed a hand over his jaw and wiped away his smile.
“Yours is an enormous responsibility because the Commission ensures that the Party earns the people’s loyalty. There are many temptations and even those we least expect to succumb can fall into the trap. Even your leader—the man you most trusted—has let you down. It is an awful day when that happens. A moment of confusion and danger.”
He bowed his head, walking to the edge of the stage and then down some steps onto the floor. Then he leaned against the stage and raised the microphone. The room remained silent, but the silence had turned from expectant nervousness to rapt attention.
“I’m older than you. I’ve witnessed what can happen when the people lose faith. You’ve read your history books. Maybe your parents have told you things. Mistakes were made because the people lost trust in the Party. I was one of those who suffered. It won’t happen again.” He paused f
or effect, then emphasized each word with stabbing gestures. “It—will—not—happen.”
Chen smiled, as if he’d been caught in terrible memories but had shaken them off. Then he slowly ascended an aisle of the auditorium as he spoke, like a talk show host moving through his audience. Mei realized with alarm that he was heading in her direction.
“We have a task. It’s simple, but tough. It demands effort from you all. You must be honest and willing to criticize yourselves. When something of this nature happens, we must ask ourselves searching questions. Did I compromise myself? Did I take part in wrongdoing? Did I hold my tongue when my duty was to speak?”
Chen’s eyes were on her. He was four steps away, then three. She could hardly hear. He halted one step below her and smiled at the cadres in her row.
“You’re young. I wish I had your energy and your ambition.” His gaze settled on the cadre next to Mei, and he spoke at her. His eyes were copper, his pupils narrow. “You can learn from this and move on. But if you lie to us, the Party will know.”
Mei’s fingers gripped her knee and she felt words rising in her throat. In that moment, she wanted to confess, to clear herself of whatever crime the Party thought she had committed—to cast aside the past few days. Chen walked on, his gaze switching off like a searchlight being extinguished. He took three steps forward and turned to the stage, his hand falling on Yao’s shoulder.
“Those who are open have nothing to fear, and I know that you will be honest and support Comrade Pan in her task. Then our Party’s leaders in Beijing will know we are loyal and true.”
He raised his hands, starting to clap. The sound of his palms echoed around the hall like a shot, then another one. As the third clap sounded, Pan rose and joined him, followed by the other officials and then the cadres, until the room echoed with applause. It died down only when Chen had left the stage and Pan had signaled for them to leave the auditorium.
“Say nothing,” Yao said, from behind Mei. “Follow me.”
He overtook her, skipping down the stairs lightly as if he had nothing to fear, his hips twisting easily. Mei walked behind him, drawn in his wake. When they reached the exit, he crossed the courtyard, delving into his shirt pocket for a cigarette. He stood by the wall, ignoring the others who were already chattering excitedly. Expelling a stream of smoke through pursed lips, he delivered his verdict.
“It’s over, Mei. The Wolf is finished. We did our job. You don’t need to worry anymore.”
Mei shook her head, lips pursed like an obstinate child’s. It would be wisest to heed Yao, but she couldn’t. She thought about what Feng said: The most important quality in a spy is the ability to forget. That would mean leaving the Wolf to prison and abandoning her sister. They had stood together in the fields, with the laughter of the Dongguan cops sounding in the dark and the body floating in the pond nearby. She couldn’t erase that from her mind.
At the border, Lockhart filled in the entry form from memory. He was traveling under his own name, so he didn’t need to check his passport. A Canadian diplomat, a French businessman, a British executive. He’d lived all of those lives in the past and shredded them.
He passed the Hong Kong checkpoint and walked with the crowd over the bridge. Apartments towered over the border from the mainland, where once there’d only been farmland. Every square inch of Shenzhen was occupied, although green hills and paddy fields remained in the New Territories on the Hong Kong side. He peered through the windows to the waterway that divided the two Chinas. It still looked scary, with high walls and boats patrolling the water to stop anyone swimming across. But it wasn’t the old days—it was easy now to get a visa to visit relatives or to go shopping in Central. On the mainland, a blue-shirted border official compared Lockhart’s face to his passport and took his photo. Then he tore the entry form in two, slotting one of the sections back into his passport. As he moved on, the man raised one hand and pointed to a panel by the cubicle, asking him to rate the service. Lockhart pressed the “Excellent” button with the smiley face.
By the time he reached the Golden Dragon, its neon emblem was glowing. As he walked by, heading for the elevator, the receptionist smiled at him. On the sixth floor, Madame Zhou was at the podium. She smiled brightly, her lips parting to show a smudge of lipstick on one tooth, like blood. He felt like locking her head in one arm and twisting, so he’d never hear from her again, but he smiled at her instead. It wasn’t difficult: he had years of experience at hiding his feelings.
“Hello, Madame Zhou.”
“It’s a pleasure to welcome you back, Mr. Davies. You are one of our best customers.” She took his arm and tried to lead him down the hallway into the club, but he stood his ground.
“Is Tang Liu here?”
“She will arrive soon, don’t worry. We have refreshments. Maybe you’d like to be entertained by another girl?”
“I’ll wait for her.”
“Of course.”
He had no choice but to follow her to a room that was lined in yellow silk, with two tasseled lanterns hanging from the ceiling, like a cowboy bordello. A set of chairs faced a low stage with a karaoke screen and two microphones for duets. A hostess brought in a porcelain teapot and two cups, placing them in front of the sofa where Lockhart was sitting, then bowed and left. The strains of a Lady Gaga song wafted in from another room down the hallway.
This was where he’d met Liu the first time. She had clumsily tried to make him sing, but he’d refused and insisted that she sit with him to talk. Unusual among clients of the Golden Dragon, it hadn’t been a euphemism—conversation really was all he’d wanted. And so she’d talked, of her village in Hunan and how she wanted to be a fashion designer and open a shop on Donglong Fashion Street in Shenzhen. She’d taken out her phone and showed him photographs of herself, dressed in some of the clothes she’d made. Lockhart had listened. She was a sweet kid, he had thought. She ought not stay much longer in the city and be corrupted entirely. He had a plan that would take her home for a while, and maybe she’d meet a young man and stay. No need to confess what she’d gotten up to in the city. He offered a better bargain than most of the visitors—more cash for less shame. She’d turned down his first offer, but her eyes had widened, and she had accepted the second one a few days later.
There was a knock on the door, and Lockhart stood up. It was Madame Zhou, with her ghastly smile.
“Mr. Davies, you have a visitor.”
“Madame Zhou, I told you—”
His words faltered as she ushered a young woman into the room. Madame Zhou shut the door behind her, but by that time Lockhart no longer noticed. He was gazing in wonder.
“Lizzie,” he said. The words came out of him in a rush. “Oh, thank God. I thought I’d lost you.”
He took two steps toward her, arms held out. He wanted to hold her, for it to be over, and to leave the Golden Dragon—to get out of China and not to return for a long time. It was like the euphoria of waking from a nightmare, and he would never make this mistake again. She was several feet away from him and when he reached her, he would get his life back.
Lockhart stopped.
Something was wrong. His heart was swelling, but his instincts told him that something was wrong. Lizzie hadn’t moved. She hadn’t reacted at all—he might have been a stranger to her. She stood in a cheap suit and blouse, frowning. It wasn’t the way she dressed. Her face was different somehow.
Then she spoke.
“Who are you?” she said in Mandarin.
He took a step back. The more he stared at her, the more the image faded, like a jigsaw torn apart. Her skin was paler, her eyes set differently. She was almost Lizzie, but not quite. Who was she?
“Sit down,” the woman said.
“Tell me who you are.”
“Only when you sit.”
Lockhart obeyed. The woman handed him one of her cards and sat down, letting him read.
GUANGDONG COMMISSION FOR DISCIPLINE INSPECTION
CADRE SONG MEI<
br />
Then, in a flood of anguish, it came to him. He knew who this woman was. She would not remember him, but he had met her once. One afternoon in Beijing twenty-three years earlier.
“Yes?” he said, composing his face into bland indifference.
“I have some questions about Tang Liu.”
“I’m happy to assist you if I can.” His heart beat rapidly.
“When did you last see her?”
“Two months ago. Madame Zhou would know the last date I visited, I expect. Has something happened to her?”
“She was your mistress?”
“I wouldn’t say that. We liked being with each other.” He grinned. “You know how it is, when you’re away on business.”
“I’m not a man, Mr. Lockhart, so I don’t know. You come to Shenzhen for your work?”
“Often, yes. I work as a consultant.”
“Your Chinese is very good.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m surprised you learned so well on your visits.”
“I lived in Beijing once.”
“You were a consultant?”
“In business. Ms.—” He glanced at the card again. “Ms. Song. I would like to help you, but I don’t think I can. I don’t know much about Tang Liu. We met a few times, that’s all.”
She was good, he thought. The Chinese cops he’d known came through the front door, in a mob. She was smarter than that, more devious. She tricked him. But she was far from her base, without a partner. She looked, he thought, vulnerable.
“Passport.”
He reached into his jacket and handed it over.
“Mr. Lockhart,” she said, leafing through the pages.
“Your English is very good.”
“You’re not called Davies?” she said, ignoring him.
He smiled. “Not many of Madame Zhou’s western visitors give their real names, do they?”
“You don’t know where Tang Liu is, Mr. Lockhart?”
“I have no idea, I’m afraid.”
“Then why did you come when Madame Zhou called?”