The Ghost Shift

by John Gapper

  Two men who had been lounging on a glass-topped display case when they entered had ushered him back when he’d shown interest in the parts. He’d traced a finger along the grooves of a pirated case. Yes, they could do more—a dollar a part for orders of a thousand or more. They had a supplier in Longhua. The cops couldn’t find him—he moved around every few weeks, and they could be bribed. Anyway, there was no need to worry. There were plenty of other places—Guangdong was full of ghost factories. They’d set up their equipment one night and be gone the next.

  The local mania for commerce amazed him. Apart from food, it was the only thing that counted for the Cantonese. In Beijing, people wanted to know your family, what province you came from. In Guangzhou, nobody cared. The older generation was already well off. People who had land built apartments and rented them out, living easily. They had enough money to pay the taxes on a second child if they wanted one. They paid lip service to the Party, but only for the connections it offered.

  He went into the Starbucks store along the promenade and took a cappuccino to a table. The place was empty save for an American couple drinking and reading. He instantly recognized their looks of nervousness and longing. They were here to adopt a baby. They would be staying in the White Swan Hotel, in a group of eager parents-to-be, waiting for a call. Lately, he’d found himself wishing he’d gone with Margot to Guilin. After he’d made his bet with Lang, he had wanted to keep clear of the venture. He had felt guilty, fearing that someone at the orphanage who knew what he’d done would catch his eye. When Margot had returned with Lizzie, it had been a relief—she had displayed no sign of knowing. Now he regretted not being with her at that moment.

  A young woman entered the café and stood at the counter. Her black hair was tied in a topknot and she gripped her backpack between her knees as she counted the change for her espresso. Her face was pale, with only a dab of red lipstick. Mei’s description had been accurate, Lockhart noted approvingly. The woman carried her coffee to his table.

  “Hello, Mr. Lockhart. I’m pleased to meet you. I feel as if we know each other,” she said.

  “Ms. Lai.”

  “And how is Song Mei?”

  “She is well, thank you.”

  “I’m sorry about your daughter.” She lifted her eyes and gazed at him. Lockhart liked that she did not look away or behave awkwardly—he found it easier.

  “Thank you.”

  “I got your message.” She blew on her cup and took a sip. “It was unusual, I must say, but interesting. We can talk about that, but I want to ask you something. Who do you represent?”

  “I’m employed by Poppy.”

  “Not the CIA?”

  “The agency is taking an interest.”

  “You worked there, am I right?”

  “Some years ago.”

  “You see, the Ministry of State Security does not usually cooperate with the CIA. It’s just not what we do. We don’t regard it as an ally. Not like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, for example.”

  “The suspicion is mutual.”

  “I imagine so.” Feng smiled.

  “But I thought you would be interested in my information. It might help to foster understanding.”

  Feng nodded and sipped her espresso, leaving some dark foam on her lips. Then she bent over to lift her backpack. She unzipped it and lifted out a white cardboard package with a Poppy emblem on the side.

  “We were interested,” she said. “It came as a surprise, I have to admit. Nobody had informed us.”

  “Nobody?” Lockhart said.

  He was starting to like this young woman. She’d even smiled faintly when she’d mentioned North Korea, as if they both knew what kind of ally it was. He wondered if she was telling the truth. If so, it was astonishing. He was used to one agency not telling another one what was going on—it was harder to get information out of the FBI than out of a teenager. But it was dangerous for any Chinese official to try to starve the MSS of evidence.

  “Nobody.” Feng zipped the tablet back into her bag.

  “So it might be useful to talk further?”

  “It might.”

  They left the Starbucks, Feng with her backpack on her shoulder, and walked over the promenade to the Customs Hotel. Lockhart looked around him, but he could not see anyone except for tourists, photographers, and wedding couples.

  “Did you bring an escort?”

  “They allow me out alone,” Feng said, walking through the entrance as he held the door open for her. They ascended stairs to the second-floor balcony that looked out on the terrace. Lockhart knocked at a room and a pair of eyes appeared at the edge of the door as it opened a crack.

  “This is a raid. Open up,” Feng said.

  Mei opened the door fully and stood, dressed in Lizzie’s clothes—jeans and a T-shirt.

  “Look at you,” Feng said, throwing her backpack on one of the beds, then hugging her. “Welcome back, Miss America. I missed you.”

  Mei looked questioningly over her shoulder at Lockhart, who nodded. She had been pacing the room fretfully for an hour, worrying about the risk she was taking. Feng’s voice was the best sound she’d heard for weeks.

  “I missed you too,” she said.

  “Okay, love-in over,” Feng said, detaching herself. “Tom told me you thought of this. It was smart. I can’t make promises, but I know people who would forgive you a lot for it. There’s a lot for them to forgive.”

  “I had no choice, Feng. He was going to—”

  “Forget it. He was asking for trouble, that boy. I’d have done it myself. Now then—” Feng sat cross-legged on the floor and took out the Poppy tablet and a file of papers.

  Lockhart twisted himself onto the floor next to her, unable to cross his legs like her. He propped himself on one hand instead while Mei arranged her limbs gracefully by his side.

  “Okay,” Feng said, tapping the tablet. “We found this in Secretary Lang’s house, at the back of a drawer. The cops missed it, of course. Who knows why we pay them? It was like you said. We stripped it and found the chip. Someone went to a lot of trouble to put it in there, but we don’t know why.”

  “Nor do we,” Lockhart said.

  “I thought the NSA could crack anything.”

  “I thought you could,” Lockhart jousted in return.

  “So we’re stuck.”

  “I’ve got a suggestion. You’re the government. Why don’t you walk into Long Tan and raid the place? Send in the PLA. They wouldn’t let me in, but they can’t stop you, can they?”

  “Yes, they can. This is Guangdong.”

  “So what?”

  “Guangdong isn’t run by Beijing. The local Party controls it. Everything goes through Chen. If we want to get inside Long Tan, we need permission from him, and we won’t get that. This is his kingdom, and that place is his biggest asset. Nobody in Beijing likes it. They don’t like him acting like he’s Mao and singing red songs. They don’t want him on the standing committee. They’d love to topple him. But they need evidence, and there isn’t any.”

  Mei remembered Chen’s voice on the roof, taking the Wolf away. It all came back to Chen. He could not be investigated; he prevented anyone getting into the factory. Pan had been following his orders when she had sent Yao to arrest Mei. The people who had killed Lizzie were too. As long as he was in power, they were playing around the edges, finding clues as to what was going on, but remaining in the darkness. There was only one way to get through.

  “Do you think Lizzie found it?” she said.

  “She might have. We’ll never know.”

  “I want to try.”

  “No way.” Lockhart shook his head.

  “That’s crazy,” Feng said.

  Mei had waited for so long. Since she’d seen her sister for the first time. In the cell in Virginia, as she’d pined for release. When she’d flown to Hong Kong, under guard in the CIA plane. She had searched for the chance to rescue Lizzie’s life, to make things better again. Despit
e their protests, she saw them wondering. They were professionals, after all. It might be reckless, but it was their only hope. If she didn’t want to carry on living in limbo, trapped between China and America without a home in either place, it was the only chance for her, too.

  The minibus drove through the gates at seven-thirty in the morning, with the heat coming. The sun was rising over the campus, poking through stray clouds. It was a hot day—could be in the nineties, the driver said, turning up the air-conditioning—and the old women picking through the street markets had hoisted their parasols. The morning catch from the Dongguan employment agency amounted to three: two Shenzhen students and Jiang Jia, the twenty-five-year-old daughter of a tungsten miner from Heyuan.

  Outside the single-story recruitment center inside the campus, the guard took Jia’s identity card. She stretched her arms in the sunshine as she waited for him to copy down her details.

  “Stand still!” he said sharply, moving to the students.

  Jia obeyed, shifting into the shade cast by the building only when he had turned away. Her brown hair was shorn to the collar—not the fashionable cut she could find in the city, and soon would. She wore a cotton jacket, T-shirt, jeans, and Rocky sneakers. Her belongings—clothes, toiletries, a stuffed panda with black eyes like hers, family photos, and a sticker-covered radio—were in a canvas bag.

  She stood for two hours, wanting a drink of water but unable to leave her spot. The building faced south and the concrete wall radiated heat. At ten o’clock, they were taken inside and allowed to sit while they waited to be screened by an official. Three characters were marked on the wall above her head: “Love, Respect, Discipline.” There was still no food or drink, and a guard confiscated a carton of apple juice as one student took it from her bag.

  The official looked up when Jia was finally called at two o’clock. “Identity card.” She studied it. “What’s your birthdate?”

  “September 12, 1988.”

  “Ethnicity?”

  “Hakka.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I moved to Shenzhen two months ago. I worked in a restaurant, but I don’t have residency, and it is expensive to live. A friend says this is a good place. They take care of you.”

  “The best, as long as you work hard.” The woman appraised her. “You want to work, you’re not a slacker?”

  “I’m a hard worker.”

  “Good.” She glanced down at the card. “Jiang Jia. There are many opportunities to prosper, if you prove yourself. You have chosen a lucky time to come. We are very busy. Plenty of overtime.”

  “I want it. My brother is joining the Army. We need money for his place, and my father cannot work. He has lung disease.”

  “What are your ambitions?”

  Jia stared at her hands, folded together in her lap and smiled shyly. She was embarrassed.

  “I love Poppy phones—they are cool. I heard you make them here. I would like to do that.”

  The woman smiled. “So you don’t want to be a fashion designer or an artist, like other girls here.”

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t do that. I’m not that smart. My brother is the clever one of our family.”

  “Well, maybe you’ll get your ambition, Jiang Jia. Who knows? I want you to sign this paper and this one, too. It’s for voluntary overtime, so you will be first in line to help your brother. The nurse will check you, and we’ll take your photograph. We’ll find you a job to do.”

  By four o’clock, they were on their way. One of the pair of students was still with Jia. The other hadn’t made it through, but her companion wasn’t worried—she was too busy gazing at the new world she’d entered. As the bus drove along an avenue toward the dormitories, the shift changed and the side streets filled with bodies. Some rushed toward a supermarket to beat the lines, others sat down in the shade. Jia could not see anyone who looked as old as thirty. Even the uniformed guards, patrolling in pairs in electric vehicles, were kids.

  They were passing a soccer field when two men, both in jeans and tunics, ran by. One chased the other and, as the first reached the edge of the field, his pursuer leapt on him, dragging him to the ground and punching him on the head. The bus sped on, and Jia turned to watch through the back window. They rolled on the ground, and one man landed a punch before two guards ran from a building. As they reached the fighters, one guard drew a nightstick and thrashed the bodies, while his partner kicked at them from the other side. The bus turned a corner, cutting off the view.

  The driver shook his head at the man sitting beside him—another recruit—and they laughed.

  “Those Uighurs are always making trouble,” the driver said.

  “They should be sent back to terrorist-land.”

  “When the guards are done with them, they’ll throw them out. If they can still walk, after a good beating.”

  They halted at an old building with high brick walls, and a supervisor led them inside in a group.

  “Women here, men there,” she called.

  The old warehouse smelled sweet—it must have been used to store a fragrant crop once. Now, it had been split up into boxlike rooms leading off a corridor. The supervisor collected their identity cards and led them along the passage, pointing them to the rooms where they would sleep.

  Jia’s dormitory came second. The supervisor handed her a tag with a number and pointed inside. It was on the first floor, with windows that had been draped with cloths to dim the light. The room was crammed with triple-decked bunks, like a night train, and women were dozing or reading or flicking phones in about half the beds—the others were empty. Jia walked slowly through, searching for her bunk.

  She found it in the corner, on the bottom of a stack of three. The upper bunks were taken, but no one was in them. Setting down her bag, she took out most of her things, laying the clothes in a box next to the bunk. She unfolded the sheet and blankets on the bed and made it. Then she tucked her panda by the pillow and sat, hearing whispers and faint music. She still hadn’t eaten.

  At seven-fifteen, the other bunks started to stir, their occupants climbing down and putting on shoes. They drifted out of the room in a crowd, emptying it. Two walked past Jia without pausing. For a while, she was by herself. Then she heard noises, and ten women entered the room, laughing and joking. Two came to the bunks above her but did not acknowledge her, changing clothes before wandering out again. Picking up her card, she followed them.

  Outside, she joined the crowd walking across a courtyard to another building. It wasn’t like the eruption of the afternoon—there was no urgency in the progress. Some paused to smoke, and others strolled, their arms entwined. She smelled the destination from fifty feet away—a canteen. She walked past women washing at a trough and entered a dining hall packed with trestle tables. The intense warmth and the odor of the cooking tempted her to pile a tray with food, but her card was empty.

  There was nothing for her here. She walked back to the dormitory and reached into her bag, retrieving her radio. Then she took a jacket and went out into the night, which was still humid. Four men in tracksuits were taking wild kicks at a soccer ball on the field that stretched in front of her, lofting it high into the air. She headed for a bench on the far side and sat alone, tuning her radio.

  She knew this place—the dormitory blocks deep inside the campus and the smoking chimneys. The glow of the furnaces about half a mile away, closer to the river. She was familiar with its nighttime presence—the shapes that loomed in the dark sky and the whine of electric carts.

  She took the badge and looked at her photo, cursing the haircut she’d suffered. The badge was like the other one, but, with another name—not Tang Liu, but Jiang Jia. They were flags of convenience, identities stolen or borrowed. She didn’t know if Feng had found this one or concocted it. It had come with everything she’d needed—a hukou resident permit, a high school card, a story. She had practiced for two days as Lockhart quizzed her about Jia’s family, the place they lived, and her father’s il
lness from the tungsten mine.

  Mei turned on the radio, with the volume low. It was a Han opera, the high voices swooping like birds. When she plugged in earphones, the music died and she could hear only a hiss.

  She spoke quietly. “Hello?”

  “Where are you, Song Mei?” Lockhart asked.

  “Inside. No problems.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Hungry, but okay.”

  “Be careful.”

  The hiss resumed and, when she extracted the cord, the voices declaimed their love again. Mei walked back to the dormitory slowly, hoping to find a cake or even fruit—any scrap of comfort.

  “Love. Respect. Discipline.”

  The instructor intoned the words slowly and solemnly from the front of the training room. It was eight o’clock in the morning, the start of the day shift, and Mei sat with ten others behind Formica desks, trying to look eager. There was no air-conditioning and the room smelled of sweat, but she was at least doing something, rather than roaming around, fearing discovery.

  The man pointed to the girl beside Mei. “You. What are our values?”

  The girl was nervous, and faltered as she repeated the words. “Respect. Discipline.… Love.”

  “Wrong. You?” He turned to Mei. She tried to appear eager, but he looked like a time-server of the kind the Party seemed to attract to positions of petty authority. His stomach bulged over the belt of his regulation pants, and he’d greased a lick of black hair to his head.

  “Love. Respect. Discipline.”

  “Correct. Love comes first. Love always comes first at Long Tan. How many of you know our founder’s story?”

  No hands were raised, and he pursed his lips sullenly, as if the class had already proved itself unworthy. Mei kept her eyes fixed on him. Every official was a door to be unlocked.

  “Cao Fu was born in Hubei in 1949, the year of the revolutionary victory. His parents were peasants, but they loved their son, and they taught him that he could be great. Cao fulfilled their love by building a business that is the envy of the world. It shows other nations what our people can achieve when they have unity born of love. Love of the family and of others. Long Tan is a family. We eat together, we sleep in the same house, and we work as a team. We are building a new world.”