Chasing the Monkey King

by D. C. Alexander

  “No? It seems to be going that way in the rest of the world. Why not here too?”

  They studied one another for a quiet moment.

  “What’s your interest in the man you were following?” Joe asked, changing tacks.

  “Who?”

  “The driver of the van you followed all over Yinzhen. The buffoon in the ridiculous white leather jacket.”

  “We weren’t following anybody. We were trying to find a clear road to the highway. One that wasn’t flooded.”

  “I assume your real interest lies with the driver’s employer.”

  “Who is his employer?”

  Joe smiled. “I thought so.”

  “Fair enough. So really, who is his employer?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “In other words, he’s under investigation, this mystery employer.”

  “Let’s call him a government official, and leave it at that.” He sat back in his chair and studied Severin intently. “Are you from one of his competitors perhaps?”

  “Do government officials have competitors?” Joe just stared, waiting. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about. But I’m beginning to wish I did.”

  “I’ll ask politely. What are you doing here, Mr. Severin?”

  Severin saw no real alternative to answering the question, and no plausible lie came to mind. “We were hired by the family of a female U.S. government official who disappeared after departing Yinzhen, at the conclusion of an investigation of a company called Yinzhen Sorghum Processing. The family just wants to know what happened to their girl. We spotted the van at the alleged sorghum factory and, hoping to learn something, followed it until we got waylaid. We didn’t have a chance to learn anything about the driver.”

  Severin was certain that, at best, this would be the end of his endeavor to find answers. If this officer didn’t arrest him for breaking some sort of Chinese law against private vigilante investigations being conducted by foreigners, then he would, at a minimum, expel him from the country immediately.

  “What was her name? The woman who disappeared?”

  “Kristin Powell.”

  Joe just nodded. “Okay. Okay.” He closed his eyes as though for the first time in days, his eyelids dropping slowly, ponderously. “Is there really nothing you can tell me about the driver’s employer? Nothing, for example, that any law enforcement official would naturally be interested to know?”

  “Could you be even a little bit more specific?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Having assumed he was in the custody of the MSS, another possibility began to take shape in Severin’s mind. There had been no questions concerning his phone, Keen, or the photo of the new Chinese ballistic missile submarine. And if they had been with the MSS, then surely the men who attacked them would have been more careful to capture them in interrogation-ready condition—not beaten within an inch of their lives. Plus, they would have been armed with guns instead of lengths of pipe. Perhaps he and Zhang weren’t suspects after all. Perhaps the Chinese hadn’t known Keen was a spy. Perhaps this man really was a police officer. Perhaps he and Zhang had simply stumbled into a genuine Chinese anticorruption investigation.

  “I’m not sure that I know anything helpful,” Severin said. “Are you able to tell me whether the driver’s employer owns Yinzhen Sorghum Processing?”

  Joe raised his eyebrows and smirked as though on the edge of laughing. “What an interesting question.”

  “I see,” Severin said. “Are Chinese government officials allowed to own private business entities?”

  “Another interesting question, Mr. Severin. And no, technically speaking, government officials are not permitted to hold positions in private enterprises.”

  “So if I’m an anticorruption investigator, I’m guessing that one of my bigger challenges is going to be gathering enough evidence to prove that a government official is also secretly the owner of a business.”

  Joe was still smirking. “Life is full of challenges, Mr. Severin.”

  “Did you arrest the men who attacked us? Did they tell you anything?”

  “I’m afraid that I’m not at liberty to discuss that either.” He studied Severin a moment longer, then reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Here is my card. I know you can’t read the Chinese characters. But that’s my cell number at the bottom. I would very much appreciate it if you would give me a call if you happen to come across anything you think might be of interest to me. We’ll leave it vague for the moment. Now rest. They’ll probably discharge you tomorrow. You’ll find that in Qingdao, unlike in Yinzhen, there are many very comfortable and opulent hotels to stay in while you wait for Wallace Zhang to recover. Excellent restaurants too. See you around.”

  After Joe left, Severin sat there thinking. Why hadn’t he been arrested? Even if they didn’t think he was a spy, surely his fact-finding mission violated some tenet of Chinese sovereignty, law, or etiquette. He could still be the target of an elaborate and well-orchestrated MSS operation—one in which this Joe guy was pretending to be a cop, pretending to be unaware of Powell’s possible spying, and leaving Severin free, but under constant surveillance, hoping that Severin would try to contact other operatives who might be helping or working with him. If there were an MSS operation, then they were surely assuming that Severin had traitorous co-conspirators or facilitators on the Chinese mainland. In that case, their goal would be to identify and roll up the entire network.

  Then again, if Joe truly was a policeman, and if he was high-ranking enough to command a squad of men at least as big as the group that rescued him in Yinzhen, then whatever case he was working was probably a relatively big deal. Which meant that the government official he was investigating was probably a big cheese. And if the government official was also the invisible puppeteer controlling YSP, then he probably had a government position involving international trade. In customs, maybe.

  Was Joe perhaps thinking that Severin and Zhang’s continued freedom of movement—or more specifically, their meddling, their hornet nest kicking—might be, in some obscure way, helpful to his investigation? Was Joe thinking that they might provoke the hidden target of his investigation into making an ill-advised move that he could use to his advantage—maybe even as justification for making an arrest? At this point, all Severin could do was theorize.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  That afternoon, shortly before being discharged from the hospital, Severin shuffled his sore body down the hall to Zhang’s room. Seeing Zhang was a shock. Asleep—or in any case, unconscious—he had an IV in his right arm, an oxygen cannula in his nose, and a huge bandage wrapped around his head. His face was ashen where it wasn’t black and blue. He looked dead.

  Severin sat in a visitor’s chair against the opposite wall. For several minutes he remained silent, horrified, at a loss for what to say. Sometimes he would stare at Zhang, sometimes he’d have to look away. A tremendous sense of guilt washed over him. It made him feel sick. Made him tremble as though he were somewhere terribly cold.

  At last, Severin cleared his throat. “I remember seeing on TV that you’re supposed to talk to people who have head injuries. Maybe that’s B.S. I don’t know.” He looked up at the ceiling, then back down at Zhang. “You know, Wallace, I’ll tell you something funny. I’ve never really related well to people.” He shifted in his seat. “What am I trying to say here?” He paused, took a deep breath, swallowed. “Shit, Wallace. I’m so sorry.” He began to choke up. “I’m so sorry that this happened.” That was all he could manage to say as he fought back emotion. Had he been able to continue, he might have added that he was grateful for his time with Zhang. That having Zhang around reminded him of happier times in his life. Instead, he sat for several more minutes, silent, trying to master himself. Wishing to God he had a drink. At long last, he swallowed and cleared his throat once again. “I suppose you’re a sort of link, Wallace,” he muttered sadly, more to himself than to Zhang. “A fain
t link to how things used to be for me. A long time ago.”

  *****

  Having checked into Qingdao’s Shangri-La Hotel, Severin took a notepad and pen from the desk in his lavish room and took the elevator to the hotel’s business center. There, he situated himself at a desktop computer at a small workstation in the corner and brought up the partially censored Chinese search engine, Baidu. First, he conducted a search for the terms antidumping together with dog food, and quickly found several news articles about a recently initiated U.S. antidumping investigation involving dog food from China. Next, he found a U.S. Federal Register notice containing a list of the 27 Chinese dog food manufacturers the U.S. was now investigating. Both Ningbo Animal Feed and Zhucheng Pet Food Products were on the list. He ran searches on each company name. His search of Ningbo Animal Feed turned up a web-site for a company ostensibly located in city of Ningbo, which Zhang had said was hundreds of miles to the south. Its website looked legitimate enough. Searching Zhucheng Pet Food next, following a link to the company’s web site, he found himself staring at a photo of the alleged YSP sorghum factory in Yinzhen.

  The web-site was amateurish, looking like it had been thrown together in a couple of hours by someone who didn’t really know what they were doing. Severin figured it was a good bet the web site had been set up simply for appearance’s sake, and not for any legitimate marketing purposes. In broken English, it indicated that the company had been producing premium pet food for more than 20 years, and had long experience in exporting to customers in Japan, the European Union, and the United States. Aside from this statement, and a few low-resolution photos of piles of what appeared to be dog food, it provided the name and phone number of a purported sales agent. Severin wrote down the phone number, then spent two hours scrolling through the sorghum case record trying to find a matching phone number for one of YSP’s officials. But he had no luck. Still, given the photo on the web-site, and recalling Andrew Bergman’s statement that there was pervasive fraud in these cases, Severin suspected some sort of dishonorable connection between YSP, Zhucheng Pet Food, and Ningbo Animal Feed.

  Another idea occurred to him, and he ran searches of public business filings of the U.S. dog food importer named on the shipping documents he’d found at the YSP building: Yang & Lui Trading of Seattle, Washington. He did the same for Sun Ocean Trading. According to company LLC filings on record with the Washington Secretary of State’s office, both importers were supposedly based in the International District of Seattle. That, by itself, certainly wasn’t damning. And each importer had different owners and registered agents for service of legal process. However, when Severin ran searches of the attorneys each importer listed as their registered agent, he discovered they both worked in the same very small law firm in Seattle’s Northgate neighborhood. For Sun Ocean Trading and Yang & Lui Trading to both be located in Seattle’s International District neighborhood, to both be using the same tiny law firm for service of process, to both to be involved in the importation of Chinese products subject to antidumping tariffs, and for both of them to be working with Chinese companies that each shared some connection to the YSP building in the remote village of Yinzhen—well, that was just too much to ignore.

  *****

  Back in his room, Severin received a phone call from Joe.

  “Sorry to bother you.”

  “No problem,” Severin said, half wondering if Joe was going to tell him they’d recovered their cell phones from the drainage canal and found the texts about the submarine.

  “I have some good news. Wallace Zhang has regained consciousness.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Back in the visitor’s chair in Zhang’s hospital room, Severin sat looking at him, feeling as guilty as ever. Zhang, still with an oxygen cannula in his nose, was visibly woozy, blinking slowly.

  “Anyway, I’m sorry about all of this,” Severin said, continuing an annoyingly long monologue of regret. “As soon as you feel mobile, I’ll arrange to get us the hell out of here and on the first plane home. I spoke with Thorvaldsson. He said to stick it out if we could, but that he’d understand if we needed to come home. We won’t get the rest of the money, of course. But screw it. I told him we were out of here.” Zhang rolled his eyes and groaned. Severin took it as a sound of disapproval. “Don’t worry. We’ll wait until you feel fit to move.”

  “No,” Zhang half whispered.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “No, what?”

  Zhang closed his eyes. “I’m still seeing double. My head hurts like hell. And look at my hair, Lars.”

  “Your hair.” Severin thought that perhaps Zhang wasn’t quite of right mind yet. Then he saw the slightest hint of a weak smile form at the corners of Zhang’s mouth.

  “My pretty, pretty hair.”

  There was a huge square patch shaved bare on the side of Zhang’s head, put there when he was being prepped for the surgery he didn’t end up having. He looked freakish and ridiculous.

  “Clearly, you’ve lost your mind.”

  “I don’t even remember what happened. Cop told me.” He took several deep, slow breaths, then reached up with the arm that didn’t have an IV in it and gingerly touched the deeply bruised square of bare scalp on his head. “Bastards. We’re not going home yet.”

  Severin looked incredulous. “You sure about that?”

  “What else are you going to do, Lars?” Zhang slowly croaked. “Go back to your debt, and your booze, and beg your boss for your crap job back?”

  “Hey now. Be nice.”

  “Am I going to go back to my parents’ basement? Screw that, Lars.”

  “I can appreciate you want revenge for them making your head look like the belly of a black Labrador that just had abdominal surgery at the vet. But what about the … .” He stopped himself over a sudden fear of microphones, and tried to pantomime using a submarine periscope.

  Zhang shook his head. “Coincidence. If it were really a thing, we’d know by now.”

  “Unless they’re waiting for … .” Severin stopped himself, but thought unless they’re waiting to see if we make contact with other operatives.

  “We have no real reason to think that,” Zhang said, knowing what Severin intended to say.

  “It’s still theoretically possible.”

  “Anything is possible.” He took a deep breath. “Are we going to give up on all that money over something so unlikely?”

  “It isn’t that unlikely. And the consequences—”

  “We aren’t going home yet.”

  Severin threw his hands up, looking uneasy. “Fine.”

  “But now you tell me something, and tell me true.”

  “What?”

  “What’s the real fee Thorvaldsson is paying you?”

  “It’s $50,000. I told you. Really.”

  Zhang just stared at him.

  “Wallace. Really. And if he throws in any sort of bonus, I promise we’ll split it 50/50. I’ll even split my royalties with you.”

  “What royalties?”

  “From the memoir I’m going to write. A memoir chronicling our adventure.”

  “Huh,” Zhang said, his weak smile returning. He took another deep breath through his nose tube. “Okay. When I’m back on my feet, the gloves are coming off. You know what I’m saying?”

  “The gloves are coming off. Yes.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  When Severin entered Zhang’s hospital room the next morning, it was immediately apparent that Zhang was feeling much better, so Severin brought him up to speed. “So, in a nutshell, what I’ve come to is this,” Severin said. “It is not beyond the realm of possibility that there is some hidden octopus person or entity that owns or runs multiple, allegedly independent and unrelated manufacturers of goods that are subject to antidumping investigations.”

  “But why?” Zhang asked. “Why deal in products that are subject to high tariffs in the United States? Why not just deal in something that isn’t subject to an internationa
l trade dispute?”

  “Ay, there’s the rub.”

  “To dump, or not to dump: that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of U.S. fair trade law, blah, blah, blah … .”

  “Very good, Wallace. Especially for someone with a concussion.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Anyhooooo, it’s possible that someone out there has simply figured out a scheme to game the system—one the Commerce Department hasn’t wised up to yet—such that Commerce thinks they aren’t exporting their products to the U.S. at anticompetitive low prices. In the context of the sorghum case, for example, if someone figured out a tricky way to reduce the high 354 percent antidumping tariff on sorghum down to a low level, or even zero, they could use their low tariff rate to become the only Chinese manufacturer of sorghum syrup able to export to the U.S. at a competitive price. That is, the only viable exporter to the U.S. market. You follow me?”

  “I think so,” Zhang said.

  “So if YSP is the only viable exporter to the U.S. market, then if any other sorghum manufacturers want to sell their products to the U.S. at all, they probably have to funnel their sorghum through YSP. Probably having to relabel their sorghum as being produced by YSP. However it works, I’m guessing they have to pay YSP’s phantom owner a hefty tribute in the process. And if such a scheme works with sorghum, it would probably work with anything. Dog food, steel pipe, textiles—anything.”