The Lake Ching Murders - A Mystery of Fire and Ice

by David Rotenberg

  The archeologist raised an eyebrow. “Evidently you do.” The light glinted off his heavy steel-framed glasses as he tried to learn what Fong had seen among the objects on his desk. But he wasn’t able to discern what had drawn Fong’s attention.

  Fong noticed and smiled openly. He ran his tongue over his smooth teeth.

  The archeologist smiled back. That twinkle again.

  Fong stepped away from the desk, careful to keep his eyes away from the small bronze statuette.

  The older man watched him carefully, then nodded as if he’d made up his mind about something. He tapped the top of an odd-looking, square machine sitting on the office floor. “Do you know what this is, Detective Zhong?”

  Fong looked at the squat grey thing. By its bulk and open ugliness he assumed it was Soviet in design, but he couldn’t begin to guess what it was. “World’s most impractical doorstop,” he suggested.

  “No, Zhong Fong, it’s a shredder.” A knowing smile blossomed on the man’s face as he added, “A Sovietmade shredder.”

  Fong was disconcerted by the latter comment — it was as if the archeologist had read his mind. “What does it do?” Fong demanded, a little too forcefully.

  “It shreds things, Detective Zhong.” The man’s smile grew to offensive proportions as he took a large map of Shaanxi province from his desk and placed it in the feed bin. He pressed a button. A flurry of metal blades made a racket for a few seconds then hundreds of odd-shaped pieces vomited out into a tray. The archeologist tilted the contents of the tray onto his desktop and spread them out flat. He didn’t bother turning over the pieces that were face down. For twenty or so seconds he studied the array before him. Then he began. In less than five minutes he had reconstructed the entire map. As he fitted the last piece of the puzzle, he looked up. “It’s a unique talent. I was born with it. I never worked at it. Never thought about it. Just used it. My talent.”

  Fong wanted to say, “I’m impressed,” but didn’t. “I assume you use the same principles to piece together the terra-cotta warriors?”

  “I do, indeed,” the archeologist asserted, as if he were being challenged on some fundamental level. His smile was no longer warm. His eyes were piercing. “You too have a unique talent, Detective Zhong. In some ways we are very similar.”

  “I don’t follow that.”

  “Really?” Dr. Roung’s voice arched upward. “I piece together puzzles. You piece together puzzles. I am treated differently by the Chinese state than most other Chinese males and so are you. After all, how many murderers are allowed to return to the civilized side of the Wall?”

  Fong didn’t respond.

  The archeologist wasn’t put off by Fong’s silence. “You do agree, don’t you, Detective Zhong?”

  Fong tilted his head slightly. Not a real agreement — but enough.

  “Good. Then perhaps you’d help me solve a puzzle that’s been bothering me for a very long time, Detective Zhong.” The man seemed suddenly joyful.

  Again Fong tilted his head, wondering where this was leading.

  Dr. Roung crossed to the shelf behind his desk and pulled down an old, leather-bound book from an upper tier. “Have you read the Italian’s account of ‘discovering’ China?”

  “Marco Polo?” Fong asked. Dr. Roung nodded and handed over the well-thumbed text. Fong felt the heft of the thing. It was pleasing.

  “Such an odd name, Marco Polo, don’t you agree? Sounds like a child’s food.”

  Fong allowed himself a smile despite being totally at a loss as to what was going on. He handed back the book. “Yes, I read this in English. It was part of my training in that language.”

  “So you are perfectly prepared to help me with my puzzle.” The man seemed gleeful.

  “If you say so,” Fong said warily.

  “I do.” He clapped his hands once loudly. “Well, every Chinese person who reads this silly account knows in his heart that it’s a lie. A joke played on some European master by this person with a name that sounds like baby food. Do you agree?”

  “Yes,” Fong said without hesitation.

  “Good. I hoped you would. Now, tell me how we know that this book is a lie? Know in our heads, not in our hearts.”

  Fong thought for a moment. “Because of what Marco Polo left out.”

  “Because of what wasn’t in the text?” the archeologist asked, openly fascinated by the idea.

  “Yes,” Fong said slowly.

  “Like what, Detective Zhong? What was missing in the book?”

  Fong looked for a trap but couldn’t find one. Finally he spoke, “How could a man from the West who claimed to have lived in the Middle Kingdom for almost ten years fail to mention in his books the Great Wall, our character system of writing or for that matter, the tiny, bound feet of aristocratic women? How could these fail to impress him? How could Marco Polo have been here and not seen fit to include them in his account? Don’t you find that odd?” He was happy to be asking the questions.

  “I do, Zhong Fong.” Dr. Roung smiled warmly. “Now that you mention it . . . I do.” He laughed. An odd, honest laugh. “But before you brought it up, it had escaped my attention.” He took a deep breath as if he was about to cross an invisible divide. He reached up and took off his army-issue spectacles. “I create whole things from their many pieces. It is my gift. Yours, Zhong Fong, is to create whole things from those pieces that are missing. It is another kind of gift. A photo negative of my gift, if you follow.”

  Fong considered Dr. Roung’s statement and found some truth in it. More important, for the first time he sensed the man’s deep need to talk. To talk to someone he saw as an equal.

  Fong hesitated. Unsure how to lead the conversation.

  “Would you like to see my terra-cotta warriors, Zhong Fong?” Dr. Roung said in a surprisingly gentle voice.

  It wasn’t lost on Fong that the archeologist hadn’t called him detective. “I would. I would like to see your warriors.”

  As Dr. Roung walked ahead of him, Fong realized that he was following a man who had secrets — dark secrets that he needed to share with an equal — with someone who understood his worth.

  With the simple flip of a light switch Dr. Roung brought the great sleeping contents of pit #1 to life. Row upon row of standing and kneeling men. Archers, horsemen, foot soldiers — each with its own face. An eerily silent army just about to move or having just moved, only to be stunned into immobility by the rising of the light. The famous terra-cotta warriors — the lasting memorial of Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor.

  Fong and the archeologist stood on the gallery above the ranks of frozen men. “In April of 1974 I was called by the Ministry of the Interior. Some stupid farmer outside of Xian had reported discovering a few artifacts in his field,” Dr. Roung chuckled. “I thought it would take me a week at most to deal with what I assumed was a useless piece of junk. My first night here I was brought to a peasant’s hut. The old woman had two terra-cotta heads set up beside her fireplace. She was worshipping them as gods. And you know what, Zhong Fong?” Fong looked at him. “I understood why she’d do that. In my heart it seemed to me that those two old heads were as worthy of adoration as anything I’d ever seen — up until that time.” The final words were only wisps of sound — the heart’s breath.

  Fong repeated the final four words: up until that time. He’d never heard any admission of loss so deep. He looked at the man. Tears were coming from his eyes.

  “It took two years, but by the middle of 1976, my team had unearthed three full pits. A fourth was found late in 1977, but it was empty. Pit #1, down there, has thirty-eight columns of soldiers. Naturally, they all face east. There were originally over six thousand figures. We’ve managed to restore just over a thousand warriors and horses. Pit #2 has fifteen sections. We opened it to the public in 1976 then closed it down.”

  Fong was about to ask why when the archeologist beat him to the punch. “You always leap ahead, Zhong Fong.” He wiped the tears from his cheeks w
ith a fine linen handkerchief. “I may get to that in time. Working on the Qin Dynasty warriors teaches patience, if nothing else. Do you know your history, Zhong Fong?” Before Fong could reply, he continued, “Qin Shi Huang declared himself China’s first emperor in 221 BC — this is his tomb. He must have been quite a man. He defeated the six major warring states of China and ascended a throne that he built. He quashed all resistance from the nobles and set to work unifying a land mass that had never been unified before. He established the civil service system complete with examinations and meritocracy, which lasted over two thousand years, right up to the fall of the Manchu government in 1911. He codified weights and measures to permit commerce in the country. He standardized the written language that you and I use to this day. True, he burned any books that were in opposition to his rule, but then again the world has a long tradition of book burners, doesn’t it?”

  Dr. Roung reached into his pants pocket and took out a greenish-bronze coin. “He instituted the use of currency. This bronze ban liang coin was his creation. We found thousands of them in the pits. They were good for commerce — and taxes, of course. So much easier to collect money than rice. Qin Shi Huang built the Great Wall to keep them away from us. More recently, you, Fong, from me. And he raised a great army by the use of this clever little invention.” From his pocket he produced the small bronze statuette of the frontquarters of a horse that Fong had seen on the desk. He must have palmed it before they left the office. Fong wondered how he’d missed that. “He gave a half to each of his generals. They could only raise troops when they were met by the emperor’s man who had the other half that fit his. In a time of limited communication it allowed the emperor to control the most important communications — those that led to the raising of troops — of potential insurrection.”

  Fong noticed the delicate way Dr. Roung handled the bronze and thought he saw a subtle further fall in the man’s features. He resisted the impulse to reach into his own pocket and touch Chu Shi’s statuette. Then he thought about “potential insurrection” — and a rogue in Beijing.

  “Of course, Qin Shi Huang’s achievements required huge taxes and hundreds of thousands, maybe even a million, forced labourers. We are sure that more than seven hundred thousand artisans and workers worked on the tomb for thirty-six years. But on some level it was worth it, don’t you think?” The archeologist turned toward the lines of soldiers in the pit. Fong followed his gaze. “A creation that withstands the very movement of time.”

  Fong found it both beautiful and appalling. An achievement, no doubt. But at what cost? Over seven hundred thousand lives dedicated to what? Fong felt Dr. Roung’s cold hand on his shoulder again. “Let’s not start here. I think I know how you would best be introduced to my terra-cotta warriors, Zhong Fong.”

  With that, he flicked off the switch and the place went ghostly dark.

  Fong followed the archeologist out of the building and down a back alley. The night air was quick and chilled. A desert night. Fong found himself happy that Dr. Roung was setting a fast pace in his walk.

  They moved through the silent dark for more than half an hour before the man stopped in front of a large, corrugated metal building. He pulled out a set of industrial keys and opened the sheet-metal door. The interior smelled of things old and dusty. Then Dr. Roung hit the light switch. No soft folding light here. High-intensity overhead beams turned night into a glaring day. And brought to life a tableau of a world in pitched battle between birth and decay.

  Fong stepped forward without invitation. The huge space was littered with partially completed terra-cotta warriors. Many seemed as if they were trying to rise from the dust, pulling limbs still caught by the very time of the Earth. Others lay on their sides as if arms and parts of legs were being sucked down into the ground. Then heaps of body parts. And finally, a pile twice Fong’s height and maybe twenty feet wide of stacked heads. Some looking wistfully toward the harsh light as if the false sun could rejuvenate their long-lost lives, while others were bidding their final adieus to a cruel world.

  Fong turned and saw the archeologist sitting at a large glass-topped table. On the surface were thousands of shards of fired clay. Dr. Roung moved his hands above the pieces as he had done with the shredded bits of map in his office. Even in the cold light, Fong couldn’t deny the beauty of the man’s arched back and long tapered fingers. The man’s left hand reached out and snatched a piece from the table and snapped it perfectly into place with another piece that was by his side. He turned to Fong, a simple smile on his face.

  “This man is happy here,” Fong thought. “He should never have ventured out of doors.”

  “There are millions of pieces yet to be fitted.” That seemed an immensely pleasing fact to the archeologist. “Each of the pits was covered by a heavy wooden roof. They all collapsed. From the char marks, we surmise that they were burned. Probably by the rebels who ended the Qin Dynasty’s short-lived rule. Well, the roof beams smashed all the figures. The kneeling ones, often archers, were least damaged. Things were in pieces, you might say. Beijing called on my services. No. They needed my services.” He nodded at Fong, “As they have now called on your services.” Fong nodded back.

  “We call this place the fitting room — apt, don’t you think.” He pushed back his seat and crossed to a computer on a side table. As he typed he said, “Every piece is coded. Each side of each piece carries a sub-code. When we find a match we enter it in the computer and the computer helps find similar shards that might fit what we now have. But the final fitting can’t be done by machine. It needs a human hand. It needs talent.” He finished his entry and looked at Fong. Then he raised a single finger and pointed to a side room.

  Fong followed.

  In the room was a fully completed figure. Naked. Partially painted. “We use a glue made from sharks’ lungs to keep any flakes of the original paint in place. Then we make old-style pigments from minerals and bind them with animal blood and egg white. Charcoal is used to tint the hair, hemp for soles of the shoes and braided hair for the archers. The torsos and limbs are generic; there are thirty-two different styles, but the faces are unique. No two match. Of all the mysteries here, and yes, Fong, there are some extremely interesting mysteries here, the fact that Qin Shi Huang went to the trouble of giving each soldier an individual face stands out as most interesting to me. Of course, that’s just my opinion. Others find the seven unidentified skeletons more interesting. Personally, I assume that they were the emperor’s children. Some people find the fact that in the great pit there are two generals most interesting. I don’t. I find it very Chinese. Grant neither full power. Make both go through the emperor. Balance the power between the two to keep each in check — very Chinese.”

  “In boxes,” Fong thought.

  “I have something else to show you.”

  The man headed toward the far door. Fong followed. This time they entered the night air only briefly before Dr. Roung opened the door of a late model Toyota Santana and told Fong to climb in. They drove. The wind was full of desert sand. A cold scraping eternity. They had left the tourist’s Xian behind and were racing along a dirt road.

  Then they were in country.

  Twenty minutes later Dr. Roung pulled the car to the side of the road and took a large flashlight from the glove compartment.

  They began to walk. The night was getting colder. The wind abated and, overhead, Fong saw the brilliant desert night sky again. Fong was tiring. Late nights were no longer simple for him. He was about to request a stop when Dr. Roung crested a hill and pointed his flashlight at one of the oddest sights in China — a very large, empty plot of arable land.

  Fong didn’t need to be told what this was. He sensed the presence of the dead all around him. Huge numbers of them. Buried here. One atop another. Squashed side to side like eels on a cutting table. “The workers?” he asked, already knowing the answer to his question.

  “Very good, Fong. There may be in excess of seven hundred thousand bodies bu
ried here.”

  “Not nearly so lavish as the tomb of Qin Shi Huang!” Fong spat out.

  “True, Fong, but are all lives really worthy of royal tombs — of immortality?”

  That sense of falling came from the man at his side again. The sense of loss. Fong thought of Captain Chen’s confusion about justice. Fong had been unmistakably moved by the achievement of the Qin emperor’s tomb. But was the emperor’s life really worth that much more than the lives of all those who worked on the enterprise?

  Again the archeologist put a hand on Fong’s shoulder — so personal. So un-Chinese. “Two million visitors a year come to the terra-cotta warriors. The foreigners love it. We bake little replicas for them and they pay a fortune for the worthless things. That’s a lot of money coming into the country. Some claim that the warriors are the number one tourist attraction in the world.” Dr. Roung removed his hand and began to laugh, to cackle. “Personally, I’m interested in seeing Disneyland.”

  Fong turned toward the braying sound. The archeologist’s face was dark; confusion and loss vied for prominence on his features.

  “But our emperor did not meet an end any better than those seven hundred thousand souls buried out there, Fong. He died at forty-nine, after only eleven years of power.” The man chuckled again, a hoarse, angry laugh. “Do you know how he died?”

  “No, how?”

  “Naked on a mountain top. Howling at the moon. He’d got it into his head that there was an elixir of life. A fountain of eternal youth.” A truly ghastly laugh exploded from the man’s face. A line of spittle crept from the corner of his mouth. “China’s first emperor, perhaps the most powerful man the world had ever seen, sent his scholars out to find it. The whole of China was turned upside down in Qin Shi Huang’s desperate effort to stop growing old, to defeat time itself. Thousands were executed when the substances they produced for the emperor had no effect. Finally, he was told of a mountain peak, a holy mountain. He climbed it with a single trusted serving man. Once they got to the top, the faithful retainer was sent down. They found the emperor the next morning, naked, clutching a stone to his groin — frozen to death.”