The Ghost Shift

by John Gapper

  Mei ran blind, the rain pelting her face. She felt the light of the buildings recede but didn’t look back. She was by herself on the field, and she watched wet earth and grass passing beneath her. She glimpsed a white line on the pitch, and then it went by. The field filled with water as she ran, pooling and splashing. Once her front foot slid from under her and she almost fell.

  The ground hardened, and she felt the gravel of the running track around the field. She stopped, crouching to keep her profile low as she tried to recalculate her course. The walkway was far behind her—five hundred feet or so, she reckoned. Rain would be pouring through the panel, flooding onto the floor and toward the doors at either end. She hoped that nobody had followed her and that she would have time before a breach was found—she desperately needed it. She was at the far side of the soccer field, near the storm sewer. A dog barked, not far away.

  Mei walked a few steps, her head low, and then broke into a run, keeping on the alert for guards. If they were at the perimeter fence, they should still be another five hundred feet away, but the dog had sounded closer. Feeling the rain on her face let up, she saw a patch of sky, dotted with stars, emerge among the clouds. The storm was passing westward, taking with it the downpour that had hidden her. Soon she would stand out on the landscape.

  Suddenly, missing her footing, she tumbled and grazed her knee. Hearing water in front of her, she reached out and splashed a hand in a muddy stream. She was perched on the downward slope of the open drain. The sewer was doing its work, taking water off the field and toward the border of the complex, where it would flow out through channels toward the river. Without it, the compound would turn into a swamp.

  The dog barked again, and she pitched forward, slithering into the stream. It was a couple of feet deep—too shallow to float but deep enough to keep herself hidden. The water, which had bucketed from the receding clouds, was fresh, but the bottom of the drain was slimy with mud. She slid her hands along, trying to crawl on her hands and knees. It was slow progress, and the sky was clearing, exposing her to the sight of anybody close to the lip of the open sewer, or anyone gazing along its length. She was best protected from the side.

  Something like safety lay a hundred feet ahead—an open pipe into which the sewer water flowed. She half-crawled, half-scrambled toward it, waiting for the sound of the guards, and flung herself the last few feet. The pipe was three feet wide, and the water from the sewer welled up as it forced into the gap, rising to about half the pipe’s diameter. It would leave her little room to breathe, and she couldn’t see far down its length. But that wasn’t her immediate problem.

  The end of the pipe was sealed with a grate.

  Mei felt under the water’s surface. The grate was fastened to a wooden frame, and she could not unbolt it. She ran her fingers along the wood, feeling its splinters, and pulled the bars with her good hand, trying to pull it free. It shook at the bottom, where the wood had bloated. She couldn’t do more with one hand, so she turned around and lay flat in the water, feet to the grate. Pulling back her knees, she kicked as hard as she could with her heels. The metal shifted in the frame, making what sounded to her like a huge noise, but didn’t move.

  Mei kicked again, and again. She was broadcasting her presence, but she had no choice. On the third kick, she felt the bottom of the grate give slightly. She kicked wildly a fourth time, and then a fifth. On the sixth, the bars at the bottom broke free. Turning, she wrestled at them with her hand, trying to force a bigger hole. She was half-submerged, water flowing around her neck, as she worked. After a minute, she dipped her head through the gap and kicked against the sewer’s sides to get her shoulders through. Waggling her body, she eased through, holding her breath underwater.

  As her feet cleared, she came to the surface and shot along the pipe. She was floating, carried on the stream of water that gushed down the narrow channel. She struggled to avoid drowning as the water tumbled her over and frothed in the pipe, not knowing which way was up as she flowed downstream in darkness. Whenever her face surfaced, she tried to catch a breath. It was happening too fast to think—all of her attention was focused on snatching oxygen.

  The pipe turned a bend and became wider, the water level falling as the internal pressure eased. Mei was dumped on her back, water flowing around her. She sat, coughing and retching. A hundred feet ahead, water cascaded from the end of the pipe in a waterfall, and the night sky was visible—the world beyond Long Tan’s borders.

  This was how her sister had escaped. She knew it.

  The waterfall shone as if illuminated, and she crawled toward it. The closer she got, the brighter the light became, until she poked her head into a dazzling glare. The headlights of three Jeeps were shining on her; next to one of them stood a man with a self-satisfied smile.

  “Jiang Jia,” the instructor said. “We must teach you discipline.”

  Two guards took Mei by both shoulders, extracting her from the pipe. She’d lost a shoe, and the bandage on her hand hung down in strips. Dragging her, scraping her along the sewer floor, they stood her up by the vehicles. Water dripped down her face, and a contact lens had lodged in the back of one eye.

  “You are soaking wet. We must get you dry. Take off your clothes,” the instructor said.

  Mei looked at him in disbelief. She was standing in the open air, surrounded by men.

  “Remove her clothes.”

  The guards stepped toward her, and one reached down to unzip her pants. As she struggled with his hand, the other slapped her, cutting the inside of one cheek on a tooth. He stepped behind her and gripped her by both shoulders while his partner got on with his task. He pulled off her shoe and then reached around her waist to strip off her pants and underwear. Then he lifted her tunic and ripped off her bra, taking his time to run his hands over her breasts. She stood naked, trying to cover herself, as the instructor inspected her body. He searched the pockets of her soaking tunic, pulling out the logic board.

  “Here.”

  The instructor handed her a towel, and she wiped herself down, leaving smears of mud down her body. She felt utterly degraded as she struggled to pull on a fresh uniform, still barefoot.

  “Now,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

  He opened the rear door of one of the Jeeps, then sat in the front himself. As she dipped her head to enter, the other passenger looked at her as if she were a student who’d broken the school’s rules. It was Dr. He.

  “I was puzzled by your answer, Jia. I wondered how you could have forgotten. The Year of the Dragon started on January 23, and you were in Heyuan on February 16, when the earthquake struck. You did not register in Guangzhou until later in the month. A Heyuan girl who does not know any Hakka dialect? You are a mystery.”

  Mei kept silent—there was nothing to say. She kept her head down, staring at a crushed cigar butt in the Jeep’s ashtray. The door clicked open, and the seat shifted as Dr. He climbed out. The instructor hummed tunelessly. As the door opened, a pair of polished shoes appeared in her line of sight, and she smelled fabric infused with cigar smoke.

  The instructor clapped his hands. “Show respect, Jia. You are in the presence of a great man whose hospitality you have abused. Not many people have this privilege. This is Cao Fu.”

  Everything about Cao was angular—the line of his jaw, his cheeks, his nose. His cigar was twice the diameter of his long fingers, on which the knuckles stood out. When Mei raised her head, he stared at her for a moment before resting his cigar in the tray by his last stub.

  “Open your eye.” Her held Mei’s jaw in one hand and gazed into them, then held open one eyelid and with his finger and thumb gently rubbed her eyeball, plucking out a dark contact lens.

  “There, that’s better.” He discarded it on the floor and picked up his cigar again. “A girl with one green eye and one black eye. I’ve never seen that before. Your face is familiar. Who are you?”

  “My name is Jiang Jia.”

  “I don’t think so. It is unlikely.” H
is voice was light and resonant; he spoke as if he’d experienced so much deception that it didn’t bother him. “What is the second of the precepts that everyone at Long Tan learns?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Fu grunted and took a puff of his cigar, blowing a swirl of smoke around the interior of the Jeep. “Was she not taught, instructor? Is that the reason for her bad behavior?”

  “It is the first thing we teach, Dr. Cao. I taught her the precepts myself, on the day she arrived.” The instructor stared at Mei indignantly, as if she had let him down in front of his boss.

  “What is it, young woman?”

  “Respect.” Mei mumbled the word, sick of the game the members of Cao’s cult played for each other.

  “Yes, respect. By your behavior, by lying even about your identity, you show us no respect. Do you think we’re stupid? Do you think we don’t understand this game? Who are you?”

  “Jiang Jia.”

  “All right. Let’s see how long you will stick with that story. We can be on our way.”

  The instructor nodded, rapping furiously on the window to summon a guard. He hopped from the Jeep and crossed to the passenger seat before he could be forced into the indignity of driving. A Jeep pulled out ahead, and the driver tucked in behind it, the third forming a convoy. It sped along the perimeter road by the drain, passing a checkpoint with a raised barrier. They were outside the compound, but Cao’s command reached beyond his territory.

  The Jeeps hurtled around a shallow bend. The storm had drifted across the delta, visible now only by the flickering of far-off lightning on the horizon. They swung left, past another checkpoint and over a bridge, and then entered the complex through a gate that Mei had not seen before. Two buildings lay in their path, both of them half-empty—they had a dozen stories, but only a few were lit. It was a long ride from the main streets of the complex. There was an oddity about them that Mei couldn’t identify at first. As she was pulled out of the Jeep by a guard, she realized what it was: They had no nets.

  Cao strode ahead, his cigar glowing in the night, followed by the instructor, chattering at his shoulder. Mei walked behind, handcuffed to the guard who’d pawed her. He’d pushed away another guard, as if his violation had turned Mei into his chattel. She didn’t look at him or register disgust—she was too scared by the dark buildings. Her nightmare had returned.

  They took her most of the way by elevator, and got out on the eleventh floor, leaving only one flight of stairs to the roof. She stood with the guard on a landing while Cao and the others climbed the last steps and swung open the door. Then he led the way, tugging on the handcuff so that it bit into her wrist. She felt faint just looking at the roof, glistening with water from the storm. Cao was striding across it, toward the far edge.

  “Bring her,” the instructor commanded.

  The guard pulled her out, tugging her across the threshold. The sky was wide and black, the last of the storm clouds breaking. It was brilliantly clear—stars shone and aircraft sped south toward Hong Kong. To the north lay the bend of the Pearl River and Guangzhou. After the exhilaration of her near-escape, she knew her fate. She let herself be pulled toward Cao—there was nothing she could do. He had halted near the side, looking at the twin building a hundred feet across the void.

  As they neared, he tossed his cigar into the chasm between the roofs, where it plunged like a doomed firefly.

  “Who are you?”

  “Jiang Jia.”

  The instructor clapped once. “Where is your respect? You must—”

  “Quiet, idiot.”

  Mei was terrified, almost broken, but if she could have laughed, she would have. Cao had treated the instructor as she’d wanted to since the first time they’d met. She smiled at him, but his face was frozen and rigid.

  “Show her what we do to liars,” he said.

  The guard unlocked the cuff from his hand and pulled her free arm in front of her. He cuffed her wrists together and pushed her toward the edge. Her patina of calm cracked as she saw the drop—made worse by the facing building, which formed a tunnel to the ground. Her head spun, and she tried to scramble back, but the guard shoved her with his knee. Another held her cuffs on a metal hook attached to a wooden pole. They had done this before.

  “Kneel,” the instructor said.

  Mei obeyed, her back to the roof’s edge and her toes waggling in space, as if praying to Cao.

  “You know happens next,” he said.

  “I—”

  Before she spoke, the guard kicked her legs from under her and they dropped off the roof. Her wrists snapped agonizingly against the cuffs, which the second guard held with the hook, leaving her half-on and half-off the roof. The metal bit into her wrists, and she couldn’t breathe.

  “Further,” Cao said.

  The guard walked slowly, lowering her over the side. She was in agony. Her body shook, and she could feel gravity tugging at her feet. She would be swallowed up, she knew. An image came to her of the bracelet-like weal on her sister’s wrist as the body had turned in the pond.

  “My name is Elizabeth Lockhart,” she said in English.

  Cao looked down at her as if, for the first time, she had said something that interested him.

  “Bring her up,” he said.

  The pain in her wrists was so intense that she thought they might break as the guard walked backward, dragging her onto the roof. When he was done, she lay there shaking.

  “Where do you come from?”

  He spoke English with a crisp, hard accent—the kind he might have acquired at a boarding school.

  “I’m American.” She turned her head to one side to speak, feeling the damp grime of the roof on her cheek.

  “You’re a spy?”

  “No. No.” She would do anything not to be dropped back over the roof. “I work with an NGO. In Hong Kong.”

  Cao put back his head and laughed.

  “You’re a do-gooder? Trying to save the world? Why are you bothering Long Tan, where people are happy? Why aren’t you in Af-ri-ca?” He elongated the syllables with disdain.

  “Your workers are badly treated. I wanted to help.”

  “Nonsense. You know nothing, Elizabeth. Don’t try to colonize us with your sophomore ideas.”

  She raised her head to speak. “I’m an American citizen. My family knows where I am. So does the U.S. Consulate.”

  “That was in another country. You’ve joined Long Tan’s family. Why did you steal that logic board? A souvenir? Enough of your lies.” Fu knelt by Mei and gestured to the guard to roll her over on her back. He held a badge with her photo on it and clipped it to her tunic. Then he got to his feet, wiped his knees, and walked away.

  “Get rid of her,” he said.

  The guards pulled Mei to her feet, with her wrist bleeding from the handcuffs. Cao had vanished through the door on the other side of the roof, and she was alone with them and the instructor. The man had puffed up—pleased that, with Cao gone, he was the boss.

  He pointed to the handcuffs. “Take those off her.”

  The guard who’d groped her did so, then took a cloth and wiped away the blood. He wasn’t showing solicitude; he was eliminating evidence.

  “Jiang Jia,” the instructor said. He addressed her as if he hadn’t listened to her last words, or as if he preferred to go by her badge. “We gave you our trust, and you let us down. You have betrayed the spirit of Long Tan and put our workers in peril. That disappoints me—”

  “Fuck your grandfather.” Despite everything, saying it felt good.

  His face stiffened. “Put her there,” he said.

  Two guards stood by Mei’s side and grasped her by her upper arms, pulling her to the edge of the roof. She held her eyes away from the precipice, looking at Guangdong—the cities and the river that carried the world’s goods. In the last moments of life, she wouldn’t let him see her terror.

  “Wait.”

  The instructor walked up to Mei and faced her, as if he couldn’t
bear to let her have the last word. He opened his lips to talk but didn’t speak as, with a splattering sound like a melon bursting, blood drenched his face.

  Mei felt the grip on her arm slacken as the guard to her left twisted and sagged to his knees. His skull had blown apart in a spray of red; he was already dead. Mei and the instructor watched open-mouthed as the man’s body tipped backward, plunging off the roof. As it did, the guard on her right also fell to the ground with blood spurting from his leg.

  Time slowed down. A mere second had passed, and Mei didn’t know what was happening, except that they were under fire. She saw the instructor’s face clear as his brain came back to life. They were standing three feet from the edge of the roof and he had the stronger position—facing her, her back to the edge. There was only one move for an untrained fighter with the advantage of weight and he took it instinctively, pushing his arms toward her, palms out.

  It was nothing—she’d trained for such a moment, and he had given her far too long to react. She thrust her hands up to his arms, so as to sense which one would push harder. It was the right, and she brushed his left arm away while her left hand encircled his right wrist, pulling. Use your opponent’s weight to your advantage, the sifu always said. The instructor was off balance and she dragged him forward, darting aside to let him pass, almost like a matador. He stumbled two steps, mouth opening as he recognized his fate.

  Then he fell into the chasm.

  Mei crouched, scanning the roof. The shots had stopped, but she had to get down somehow. She rolled toward the exit and raised her head. It was a hundred yards away, and she couldn’t get there by rolling. She crawled ten or twenty feet, waiting for a shot, and then got to her feet and ran a few paces with her head low. No response. She scrambled to her feet again. Nothing. Taking a deep breath, she ran for her life.

  A few feet from the exit, the door opened, and a man stepped onto the roof with a gun in his hand. It was Lockhart.

  “Get down!” he shouted.

  He shot, the explosions booming across the roof as a body fell behind her. The wounded guard had limped after her, but now he was dead. Lockhart went to check on his body, then ran back to her.