A Loyal Character Dancer - [Chief Inspector Chen Cao 02]

by Qiu Xiaolong

  Chen was taken aback. Li had never before spoken of poetry with him, much less recited lines from memory.

  “And there was another criterion discussed in the ministry meeting,” Li continued. “The candidate should present a good image of our police force.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Isn’t Inspector Rohn quite presentable?” Li took up the picture. “You will present a wonderful image of China’s police force. A modernist poet and translator, with an intimate knowledge of Western literature.”

  This was becoming absurd. What was really expected of him? To be an actor, a tourist guide, a model, a public relations specialist—anything but a cop.

  “That’s the very reason that I should not take the job, Party Secretary Li. People have already been talking about my exposure to Western culture. Bourgeois decadence or whatever. For me to accompany an American woman officer, dining, shopping, sightseeing—instead of doing real work. What will they think?”

  “Oh, you will have work to do.”

  “What work, Party Secretary Li?”

  “Wen Liping is from Shanghai originally. She was an educated youth in the early seventies. She could have come back to Shanghai. So you’ll do some investigating here.”

  This sounded far from convincing. It did not take a chief inspector to interview Wen’s possible contacts, unless he was supposed to put on a show to impress the American, Chen reflected.

  Li stood up and put his hands on Chen’s shoulders. “This is an assignment you cannot say no to, Comrade Chen Cao. It’s in the interests of the Party.”

  “In the interests of the Party!” Chen also rose to his feet. Below him, traffic came to a bumper-to-bumper stop along Fuzhou Road. Further argument would be futile. “You always have the last word, Party Secretary Li.”

  “Minister Huang has it, actually. All these years, the Party has always trusted you. What was it you just quoted from Confucius?”

  “I know, but—” He did not know how to continue.

  “You take over the case at a critical moment, we understand. The ministry will provide you with a special fund. No limit to your budget. Take Inspector Rohn to the best restaurants, theaters, cruises—whatever you decide. Spend as much as you can. Don’t let the Americans think we are all as poor as those boat people. This is foreign liaison work, too.”

  Most people would consider such an assignment desirable. First-class hotels, entertainment, and banquets. China must not lose face before Western visitors: one of the government foreign liaison regulations Chen had learned. There was another side, however, to such an assignment, the government’s secret surveillance. Internal Security would lurk in the background.

  “I’ll do my best, I’ve just got a couple of requests, Party Secretary Li.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I want to have Detective Yu Guangming as my partner on the case.”

  “Detective Yu is an experienced cop, but he does not speak English. If you need help, I would like to suggest someone else.”

  “I will send Detective Yu to Fujian. I don’t know what the local police have done so far. We need to establish the cause of Wen’s disappearance,” Chen said, trying to catch any change of Li’s expression, but seeing none. “Detective Yu can keep me informed about all the latest developments there.”

  “What will the Fujian police think?”

  “I’m in charge, aren’t I?”

  “Of course, you have complete control over the whole operation. Your orders have already been cut.”

  “Then I will have him fly to Fujian this afternoon.”

  “Well, if you insist.” Li agreed. “Do you need any help here? You’ll be fully occupied with Inspector Rohn.”

  “That’s true. I have some other work pending. And there’s the body in the park, too.”

  “Do you really want to work on the Bund Park case? I don’t think you have the time, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “Some preliminary work has to be done. It cannot wait.”

  “What about Sergeant Qian Jun? He can serve as a temporary assistant for you.”

  Chen did not like Qian, a young graduate of the police academy with an old head for politics. It would be too much, however, to turn down Li’s suggestion again. “Qian’s fine. I will be out with Inspector Rohn most of the time. When Detective Yu calls in, Qian can relay messages.”

  “Qian can also help with the paperwork,” Li added with a smile. “Oh, there’s a clothing subsidy for this job. Don’t forget to go see the bureau’s accountant.”

  “Isn’t that allowance only for people going abroad?”

  “You will have to put on your best suit for people coming from abroad. Remember, present a worthy image of our police force. You can also have a room at the Peace Hotel. That’s where Inspector Rohn will stay. It will be more convenient for you.”

  “Well—” The prospect of staying in that famous hotel was tempting. Staying in a room overlooking the Bund would not only be a treat for him. He had invited Detective Yu’s family to come over to take a hot bath when he had stayed at the Jing River Hotel. Most Shanghai families did not have a bathroom, much less hot water. However, it would not necessarily be wise, Chen concluded, for him to stay in the same hotel as a female American officer. “That won’t be necessary, Party Secretary Li. It’s only ten minute’s walk from here. We can save money for the bureau.”

  “Yes, we should always follow the time-honored tradition of the Party: Live simply and work hard.”

  As he left Li’s office, Chen was disturbed by the elusive memory of what had happened to him, not too long ago, in another hotel.

  What can be recaptured in memory / If it’s lost there and then?

  He pounded at the elevator button. The elevator was stuck again.

  * * * *

  Chapter 3

  T

  he airplane was delayed.

  Things were going wrong from the outset, Chen thought, as he waited at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport. He stared at the information on the departure/arrival monitor, which seemed to stare back at him, reflecting his frustration.

  It was a clear, crisp afternoon outside the windows, but local visibility at Tokyo’s Narita airport, according to the information desk, was extremely poor. So passengers changing planes there, including Catherine Rohn flying via United Airlines, had to wait until the weather improved.

  The closed gate looked inexplicably forbidding.

  He did not like the assignment, though everyone else in the bureau might have agreed, for once, that he was the very candidate for it. Wearing a new suit, uncomfortable in a tightly knotted tie, carrying a leather briefcase, struggling to rehearse what he would say to Inspector Rohn upon her arrival, he waited.

  Most of the people sitting around the airport, however, appeared to be in high spirits. A young man was so excited that he turned his cellular phone over and over, switching it from hand to hand. A group of five or six people, apparently of one family, kept sending one and then another, in turn, to the departure/arrival monitor. A middle-aged man tried to teach a middle-aged woman a few simple words in English, but finally gave up, shaking his head with a good-humored grin.

  Sitting in a corner seat, musing about Wen’s probable whereabouts, Chief Inspector Chen was inclined toward kidnapping by the local triad as the explanation for her disappearance. Of course, Wen might have met with an accident. In either case, the clues would be in Fujian. But his job was to keep Inspector Rohn safe and satisfied in Shanghai. Safe as she might be, how could she be satisfied? If the Fujian police did not succeed in finding Wen, how would he be able to convince her that the Chinese police had done their best?

  As for the possibility of Wen having gone into hiding, it seemed unlikely. According to the initial information, she had been applying for a passport for months, and had made a couple of trips to Fuzhou for the purpose. Why should she voluntarily disappear at this stage? If she’d had an accident, by now she should have been discovered.
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br />   There was, of course, another possibility: The Beijing authorities wanted to back out. When national interests were involved, anything was possible. If so, his job would be pathetic at best, like a marble go piece placed on the game board to distract the opponent’s attention.

  He decided not to speculate further. There was no point. In a speech on China’s economic reform, Comrade Deng Xiaoping had used the metaphor of wading across the river by stepping on one stone after another. When there’s no foretelling the problems ahead, no planning can avoid them. That was the only course Chen could follow now.

  Opening his briefcase, he reached for Inspector Rohn’s picture for another look, but the photo he pulled out was of a Chinese woman—Wen Liping.

  A haggard thin face, sallow, hair disheveled, with deep lines around her lusterless eyes, whose corners seemed weighed down by invisible burdens. This was the woman in the recent picture used in her passport application. So different from those in her high-school file, in which, Wen, looking forward to embracing her future, appeared young, pretty, spirited, her red armband flashing as she raised her arms to the skies during the Cultural Revolution. In high school, Wen had been a “queen,” though that was not a term used in those years.

  He was particularly impressed by a snapshot of her taken at the Shanghai Railway Station: Wen danced with a red paper heart bearing a Chinese character—loyal—in her hand. A long, graceful neck, terrific legs, strands of her black hair curled against her cheek, and a red armband on her green sleeve. She was in the center of a group of educated youths, her almond-shaped eyes squinting in the sunlight, with people beating drums and gongs in a sea of red banners in the background. Underneath the picture was a caption: Educated Youth Wen Liping, graduate of the class of ‘70, the Great Leap Forward High School. The picture had appeared in Wenhui Daily in the early seventies, when high-school graduates from cities, the “educated youths,” were sent to the countryside in response to Chairman Mao’s declaration: It is necessary for the educated youths to receive reeducation from the poor and lower-middle-class peasants.

  Wen went to Changle Village in Fujian Province, as a “relative-seeking” educated youth. Soon afterward—in less than a year—she had married Feng Dexiang, a man fifteen years her senior, the head of the Revolutionary Committee of the Changle People’s Commune. There were different explanations for the marriage. Some described her as a too ardent believer in Mao, but others claimed pregnancy was the cause. She had a baby the following year. With her newborn infant bundled on her back, in sweat-soaked black homespun, laboring barefoot in the rice paddies, few would have recognized her as an educated youth from Shanghai. In the following years, she returned to Shanghai only once—on the occasion of her father’s funeral. After the Cultural Revolution, Feng was removed from his position. In addition to her toil in the rice paddy and vegetable plots, Wen started working in a commune factory to support the family. Then their only son died in a tragic accident. Several months ago, Feng had left on board The Golden Hope.

  Little wonder, Chen observed, that her passport picture looked so different from those in her high-school file.

  The flower falls, the water flows, and the spring fades, / It’s a changed world.

  Twenty years gone in a snap of one’s fingers, Wen had graduated from high school just two or three years earlier than he. Chief Inspector Chen thought now that he had comparatively little to complain about in his life, despite this absurd assignment.

  He glanced at his watch. Still some time before the airplane arrived. At a phone booth, he dialed Qian Jun at the bureau. “Has Detective Yu called in?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “The flight is delayed. I have to wait for the American and then accompany her to the hotel. I don’t think I will make it back to the bureau this afternoon. If Yu calls, tell him to reach me at home. And see if you can also speed up the report on the autopsy of the body in the park.”

  “I will try my best, Chief Inspector Chen,” Qian said. “So you’re conducting that investigation now.”

  “Yes, a murder victim found in Bund Park is another political priority for us.”

  “Of course, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  Then he telephoned Peiqin, Detective Yu’s wife.

  “Peiqin, this is Chen Cao. I’m at the airport. Sorry about sending Yu away on such short notice.”

  “You don’t have to apologize, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “Has he called home?”

  “No, not yet. He will call you first, I bet.”

  “He must have arrived safe and sound. Don’t worry. I’ll probably hear from him tonight.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Take care, Peiqin. Give my best to Qinqin and Old Hunter.”

  “I will. Take care of yourself.”

  He wished that he could be with Yu, discussing hypotheses with his usual partner, even though Yu was not enthusiastic about taking on the Wen case—even less so than he was about the Bund Park case. Though the two men differed in almost every way, they were friends. He had made several visits to Yu’s home and enjoyed himself there, despite the fact that the entire apartment consisted of a room no more than ten or eleven square meters in size, where Yu, his wife and son, slept, ate and lived, next to the room which was his father’s home. Yu was a warm host who played a good game of go, and Peiqin was a wonderful hostess, serving excellent food and discussing classical Chinese literature, too.

  Regaining his seat in the corner, he decided to do some reading about human smuggling in Fujian. The material was in English, as this topic was banned from Chinese publications. He had read no more than two or three lines when a young mother pushing a stroller came to the seat beside him. She was an attractive woman in her mid-twenties, with thin, clear features and a touch of shadow under her large eyes.

  “English?” she said, glancing at the material in his hand.

  “Yes.” He wondered whether she had taken the seat next to him because she had glimpsed his English reading matter.

  She wore a white dress of light material, a caftan, which seemed to be floating around her long legs as she rocked the stroller with a sandaled foot. There was a blond baby sleeping in it.

  “He has not seen his American daddy yet,” she said in Chinese. “Look at his hair—the same golden color.”

  “He’s cute.”

  “Blond,” she said in English.

  There were many stories about cross-cultural marriages nowadays. The sleeping baby looked adorable, but her emphasis on the color of his hair bothered the chief inspector. It sounded as if she thought anything associated with Westerners was something to be proud of.

  He got up to make another phone call. Luckily, he discovered a booth that took coins for a long distance call. Time is money. That was a newly popular, politically correct slogan in the nineties. It was certainly correct here. The call was to Comrade Hong Liangxing, superintendent of the Fujian Police Bureau.

  “Superintendent Hong, this is Chen Cao. Party Secretary Li has just assigned me to the Wen case, and I don’t know anything about the investigation. You are really the one on top of the situation.”

  “Come, Chief Inspector Chen. We know the decision has been made by the ministry. We will do everything possible to help.”

  “You can start by filling me in on the general background, Superintendent Hong.”

  “Illegal emigration has been a problem for years in the district. After the mid-eighties, things took a turn for the worse. With the Open Door policy, people gained access to the propaganda of the West and began to dream of digging into the Gold Mountains overseas. Taiwan smuggling rings established themselves. With their large, modern ships, the journeys across the ocean became possible, and hugely profitable too.”

  “Yes, people like Jia Xinzhi became snake heads.”

  “And local gangs like the Flying Axes helped. Especially by making sure people made timely payment to the smuggling rings.”

  “How much?”

  “Thi
rty thousand U.S. dollars per person.”

  “Wow, so much. People could live comfortably on the interest of such a sum. Why should they take the risk?”

  “They believe they can earn that much in one or two years there. And the risk is not that great because of changes in our legal system in recent years. If they’re caught, they are no longer put into prison or labor camp. Just sent back home. Nor are there political pressures on them afterward. So they are not worried about the consequences.”

  “In the seventies, they would have received long prison sentences,” Chen said. One of his teachers had been put into jail for the so-called crime of merely listening to the Voice of America.