by Andy Oakes
And, in the void that remained, some hopes, some beliefs, some doubts, some beginnings, some ends. Like himself, a jigsaw of many pieces, but not all of the pieces available to complete the picture.
Were not all investigators and the cases that they investigate, made up of such as this?
Moving back to the mosaic of papers. Page by page, reading them. If nothing else, at least he was a comrade of habit. Blunt pencil to tongue and to the paper underlining and circling. Over and over again, the same destinations, numbers, names. All of the names, to Piao’s eyes, reading as Arabic. And amongst them, distinguished by difference and indenting every page, the Russian name, Kanatjan Pasechnik.
Chapter 37
‘Little brother, where are your little hands?
My hands are here.
They can grasp guns.
They can fire.
Pow. Pow. Pow.’
Chinese Nursery song.
The People’s Liberation Army.
The world’s largest armed force.
2 million troops. At times of crisis, a further 1.5 million from the reserve-militia. Another 1 million from the PAP, the People’s Armed Police. These consist of combat, combat support and combat support service units. Over 70 brigades, 100 independent regiments, 11 armoured units, 10 mechanised infantry divisions and 7 regiment level special force units.
4,000 light armour tanks, 10,000 heavy armour tanks, type 59 tanks and the improved models, type 69 and type 79. The type 80 featuring a computerized fire control system, a laser rangefinder, a gun stabiliser, night fighting equipment. The type 90, resembling the Russian T-72. Western power plant, improved suspension, active laser defence devices, advanced day-night observation and fire control system.
An artillery manufacturing capability of over 28 national and 17 local facilities. 60 artillery production lines. 12 artillery research and development organisations. 30 artillery divisions. Current deployed artillery elements … 30,000 of various types and various calibres: 155mm, 152mm howitzers; 273mm, 122mm multiple rocket launchers; 130mm guns, 100mm guns; 100mm and 85mm anti-tank guns. The range of this artillery, from 5km to 30 km.
*
In 1999 the World Bank made a loan of $200 million to the People’s Republic of China. It was granted to support the Chinese Government’s continuing reforms. The Chinese Government, through its State Planning Commission, used the Golden China Corporation as its financial agent to disperse the World Bank’s funds. However, the Golden China Corporation is owned and operated by the People’s Liberation Army.
Money granted for “continuing reforms” going towards weapons.
$5 million given to the Northwest Institute for Nonferrous Metal research. Part of the China National Nuclear Corporation, providing the Chinese Army with its nuclear weapons.
$5 million given to the Harbin Research Unit. A PLA front used to purchase turbo-fan engines for the People’s Liberation Army Air Force.
$4 million to the Nanjing Radio Factory. Owned by the PLA, and providing satellite equipment and secure military radios.
$4 million to the Marine Design and Research Institute of China. A PLA primary design facility for all Chinese warships, including nuclear powered submarines.
$3 million to Xi’an Jiatong University. A major PLA research centre, with shared facilities with a PLA chemical and biological weapons’ unit.
$5.5 million to the China Textile Company. A front, known to be used as a money making venture by the PLA Generals.
Chapter 38
A private room, courtesy of guan-xi. The Wizard un-tethered from his tubes, his mouth un-jacked and colour in his face and anger in his eyes. Watching the Senior Investigator, his Deputy, on their knees, checking for electronic listening devices underneath the bed, behind the electrical points. On tiptoes, in clumsy pirouettes, checking in lighting roses, behind curtain pelmets. A nod. A thumbs up.
Watching as the various elements of the computer system were brought into the room on trolleys. A sheet of paper in the Big Man’s hand; complex biroed drawings. Seeming so easy. Foolproof. But now with the reality of myriad wires and orifices to plug them into, the sense of powerlessness that only the computer can engender. For thirty minutes going through the motions. Only when helplessly lost, throwing arms into the air, cables onto the floor, the nurse, with stouter legs than the others, summoning help. A doctor re-wiring the main’s plug. An anaesthetist plugging the printer to port and the monitor to connector. A Senior Consultant switching the system on and re-booting. Hospital staff ushered out of the room. Curtains in a closed swish. Piao, CD taken proudly from pocket and inserted into the drive.
Click. Click. FILE TWENTY.
The soft exposed underbelly of Comrade Qi’s computer spread out like a filleted carp. Columns in coded runs. Characters, figures, in chained links. Piao’s finger in dust strokes and points to the monitor screen. Rentang, in nods, shakes of the head to questions. All against a soundtrack of air passing through a tongueless mouth.
“Dates. Monies in?”
A nod.
“This figure, yuan?”
A shake.
“Dollars?”
A nod. A long, low whistle from the Big Man. Whatever they were selling, the PLA, big, big, dollars.
“This shorthand, I do not understand it?”
A pen clutched weakly in the Wizard’s spider fingers, walking slowly over the paper. His voice, black ink.
Bars … profits … kickbacks.
Characters forming abbreviations. Seeing them now. Finger chasing down column after column.
SMC … Shanghai Moon Club.
DC … Dedo Club.
TFGB … Tom’s Famous Grouse Bar.
FPC … Famous People Club.
Bars. Karaoke clubs. So many dollars.
At the end of every month, figures totalled, large numbers. Dollars, by the million. Beside the total, another figure, a far smaller figure. Tapping the screen with his finger.
“This is incomings? Prostitution, extortion, profits from PLA-owned establishments …”
A nod.
“This figure. Same day, same time every month. Money couriered to a central point.”
Citizen One.
“Show me the balances for the next six months.”
Scrolling through the pages, month after month, checking the gridlocked intersection of totalled digits. Every month a major discrepancy between income and what Qi was couriering out. A discrepancy of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yaobang shaking his head.
“He’s fucking skimming, the stupid bastard. Swindling the PLA. He must have a death wish.”
“Not if nobody knows.”
Not noticing the Wizard’s spider scrawl onto paper, until the cough raked him. Yaobang, with a tissue, wiping away Rentang’s spittle. Piao taking the paper from his limp hand, slowly turning it around.
Citizen One. Mao … Long March.
“There is a link between these. What link?”
Turning back the paper.
PLA.
“I do not understand.”
Money man. Mao’s.
Pen dropping as Rentang was pinned back in the bed in a fit of exhaustion. Breaths through the black tunnel of his mouth in stuttered rasps.
Slowly scrolling through pages before stopping. A different look. A different form of coding to the pages of the file. Figures with more zeroes. The Big Man whistling long and low.
“What is this, Boss? This isn’t prostitution or extortion. Look at the figures. Fucking millions. Only drugs can generate dollars like this.”
A phlegmy, hacking cough, blood in a fine mist. But Rentang flapping his hand for a pen, demanding a pen.
Focus … first, second column. Abbreviations. Initials.
Piao’s finger tracing across column one and two. Hard-edged characters bordering figures by the million. Hard-edged characters in a form of abbreviations.
“The lists that I asked for, political committees, unions, you have them?”
“Sure, Boss. Three tray-fulls of them in the back of the Liberation Truck.”
Watching the Senior Investigator’s eyes.
“Fuck me, Boss. We’re not going to go through that lot, are we?”
The Wizard, with great effort, sitting higher in the bed, frenzied hand over paper.
Yes.
“There’s too much fucking data, Boss. I can’t see that it would be worth it. You’re sure we should go through it all?”
Writing fast, so fast, the Wizard. The same word repeated. But then, like a tree felled by a single blow, falling back onto the bed. His eyes bulging. Blood, in a generous rivulet down chin and onto bed linen in an angry budding. The Big Man’s hand already finding the alarm button, as the Senior Investigator cradled the Wizard in his arms. Yaobang running to the door, bellowing down the corridor. Distant, echoing, the sound of feet not used to running. A doctor and two nurses. An instantaneous diagnosis. Rolling Rentang onto his side and into the recovery position. The Big Man catching his spectacles as they started to fall towards the floor.
“He’s haemorrhaging.”
Drips re-inserted. A wad of gauze damming the river. The doctor, seventy hours a week under strip lighting, his face as pale as the bed linen answering the question in the Big Man’s eyes.
“It is serious. I have to get him to the operating table,” as he ran pushing the trolley from the room. Nurses either side, drips held high as paper lanterns at New Year. Disappearing down the corridor in degrees of lightness and shadow, and a rattle of chromium plated steel.
Only when steel’s urgent song had passed, the Senior Investigator taking the paper in hands stained by the Wizard’s blood. The same word repeated.
Yes … yes … yes … yes.
Looking into the Big Man’s eyes.
“He is telling us with his blood. We check every line of data that we have.”
Chapter 39
The new Shanghai Museum, Henannanlu.
Opposite City Hall, a layered sprawl, consisting of five vast circular discs sheathed in pink marble imported from Spain, set on top of a rectangular block. From the roof, four handle arches, reminiscent of an ancient Chinese bronze; the reference underlined by the large glyph above the rounded wall of the main entrance.
But when asked to describe the building, the only image to come to mind would be that of a wedding cake. A vast, multi-tiered, pink, 70 million dollar wedding cake.
*
The Director was not a man who lived up to the splendour of the Shanghai Museum’s marble-paved central atrium, surrounded by its fourteen carpeted galleries. A maze of bronzes, ceramics, paintings, calligraphies, coins, jades, statues, lacquers and seals. A pasty-suited comrade, the Director, who was surely still suckling on the breast, and whose face you would have difficulty in remembering within two minutes of leaving him.
“Citizen One …”
Three galleries passed through, and these the only words exchanged after the formal introductions.
“We have 120,000 objects at present in the museum, Senior Investigator. There is just one that has a reference to such a name.”
A busy man, hard to keep up with his pace. Following him through gallery after gallery. Entering through a nondescript door, behind the marble cladding and rich timbered walls, a web of beige scuffed corridors leading into more beige scuffed corridors. At the very soul of the building, vast storage rooms with huge packing cases. Behind mesh wire, mummy-wrapped bronzes, statues, multi-storey cabinets of porcelain, and the smells that only the millennia old possess, of lives by the generations, fallen to ground, of armies of people come and gone, little known, or forgotten.
Beside a huge metal wall, the Director stopping. Vertically sliding, atmosphere controlled drawers, not unlike those found in a morgue. The pasty man searching for one key amongst fifty on a huge chain. Minutes passing in silence, just the sound of keys against keys. Piao taking time to study one of the vases in the display cabinet, 5th century BC. On its exterior a representation of slaves given as a gift to Li Wang, the King of the Western Zhou. An inscription written boldly on its exterior, celebrating the gift of 1,726 lives.
Into his ear a whisper that anyone within fifty feet would have clearly heard.
“History, it’s just one thing after another, Boss, but nothing changes. Nothing ever changes.”
A key into a lock, then the sound of steel sliding on steel runners. Air in a faint huff. A vast floor to ceiling drawer extending. Its interior cotton hung. The Director gathering the white festoons and dramatically pulling the sheer curtain aside. Slowly a vast oil painted canvas spreading into view, which was at least twenty-five feet long and fifteen feet high. Eclipsing them in shadow, the heroes of the Long March, depicted in epic Soviet style. 16th October 1934. 100,000 men of the Red Army, auxiliary groups, and those most closely involved with the Revolutionary Council, embarking on a journey of 6,000 miles. At their front, the Great Helmsman, Mao Zedong. Red Banners enveloping him. Eyes star bright. Set upon his face the smile of a known triumph to come.
“Fuck me Boss. It’s big.”
The Director, dwarfed by the giants of the revolution.
“Yes, Deputy, it is big. Too big to warrant us displaying it.”
Staring up into the face of a ten foot tall Mao Zedong.
“It was painted some years after the Long March, as you can see in epic proportions.”
The Senior Investigator moving back almost to the far wall, to get a better view.
‘From the Red East rises the sun,
There appears a Mao Zedong’.
“Citizen One?”
“It’s got to be the Great Helmsman, Boss. Who else?”
The Big Man striding from left of the tableau, past Mao, to the far right, pointing at a soldier with a rifle hung from his shoulder. His hand, huge and rough, and at its calloused heart, the pale hand of a child.
“The soldier?”
“No, not the soldier, the child. Citizen One is the child, Director?”
A nod. Within two feet of the oil painting’s surface, the Senior Investigator. A child’s soft face filling his sight. Oil paint eyes brimming with the promise of years of progress and advancement. Three score and ten, in Mao’s promised land.
“Comrade Director, what is the story here?”
Already walking to a telephone. An extension number dialled. In a distant office, ringing.
“I do not know Senior Investigator. But I know a comrade that does.”
*
Miss Lai crossed her shapely legs and sipped the xunhuacha with over-rouged lips. She did not make a movement that the Big Man did not dwell upon. The only question in his thoughts: stockings or tights?
“I completed a thesis for my degree at Beijing on the evolution of the People’s Liberation Army. That is the only reason that I have knowledge of Citizen One. But I am afraid that this knowledge is limited.”
Yaobang leaning across the table, pouring more tea. Her perfume and the xunhuacha reminding him of every girl that he had failed to tempt to go out with him.
“So who is this Citizen One?”
She smiled, a shred of rose petal across her front teeth, but he could forgive her even that.
“The child’s name is unknown. He was three years old at the time of the Long March. His parents had been Party activists, but murdered by Kuomintang Nationalists. He had survived alone, beside their bodies for many days. Mao himself was taken by the child’s resilience and bravery. He took an interest in the boy and named him Citizen One.”
Stirring the tea.
“That became his name and all that he was ever known by. The child was practically raised by the Red Army. They were his parents, his playmates, his educators. He was a bright child, a bright young man. They even paid for him to be educated abroad, the Sorbonne. He was one of the very first, the original tai zi.”
Re-crossing her legs. Blush of pink, in slow fade, caressed by the Big Man’s smile.
“But always a Party fa
ithful who was strong in doctrine, pure in principle and true to the Great Helmsman’s ideals. He rose through the ranks, with Mao’s sponsorship, influencing thought and policy. Very creative, especially in the field of economics. Highly entrepreneurial, he became the architect of the PLA’s financial structure. They called him Mao’s banker. In the 1980s, when he would have been in his sixties, his role changed. It is not known exactly what to, but it would seem that he became effectively, their accountant.”
“Accountant?”
“Of course. Even the PLA needs an accountant. An economic guiding light. They were underfunded by government, year after year. They were unable to update with the latest technology and weaponry and were constantly losing ground to the west. Morale was low: a dangerous situation amongst so many egos with tanks parked in their garages. Economists in Hong Kong have estimated that, in 1993 for instance, Citizen One added some $27 billion to the PLA budget of $57 billion. A massive achievement by any standards.”
More tea with Yaobang pouring. His eyes unable to leave the print of her lipstick on the iced white of the china.
“It was also in the 1980s that Citizen One disappeared from view. He had always been extremely reclusive. So reclusive that not one photograph of him exists.”
“Perhaps he retired ?”
“No, a tong zhi such as this would not retire. A tong zhi such as this would have to have his fingers prised and broken on his deathbed before he would give up the reins of power.”
Piao walking to the window. Views to Huangpu Park. The sun caught in razor wire branches.
“He did not retire. He is still active, is he not ?”
“But he’d be in his seventies, Boss?”
“So are most of our Politburo members.”
To the girl.