Chasing the Monkey King

by D. C. Alexander

  THIRTY-TWO

  The first thing they did the next day was get Zhang a couple of the common short-sleeve, cotton-polyester blend, collared shirts they’d seen on half the men in every city and town in China—one white, one pale blue. Combined with the nondescript baseball hats covering his bruised and shaved head, Zhang looked like a regular resident of Qingdao. He’d blend in anywhere. Severin also bought a pair of cameras and large, 100-400mm zoom lenses that were remarkably cheap.

  The next part of their plan involved following the van driver in the taxi until he stopped somewhere, anywhere public, at which point Zhang would attempt to follow on foot to learn anything he could about the man. Severin would stay with the cab because he was too conspicuous.

  “Repeat after me,” Severin said to Zhang as they sat in the hotel restaurant, discussing their game plan over breakfast. “You’re going to be ridiculously careful and conservative in your surveillance.”

  “I’m going to be ridiculously careful and conservative in my surveillance.”

  “One, we don’t want to spook our quarry, causing him to bolt. Two, we don’t want him to call more of his goon buddies to finish you off. Three, I have a broken wing, and you have a dented skull, so we aren’t in any condition to fight. Four, I don’t think we can depend on being rescued by Officer Joe again.”

  “As if I didn’t already know all of this.”

  *****

  Their first day shadowing the van driver was rewarding. He took his wife and son straight to el jefe’s house, where el jefe, who stood in what looked like a living room, grabbed the boy and raised him high in the air. The boy spread his arms as if he were an airplane as Severin and Zhang watched through their binoculars.

  “Grandparents,” Zhang said.

  “But on Mom or Dad’s side?”

  “Mom’s.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Look at the resemblance. I realize we all look the same to you, but still.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. So mister van driver is working for his father-in-law. That could be useful.”

  As they continued watching, Severin saw el jefe take a box down from a kitchen cupboard and place it on a countertop next to his tea cup before putting a strainer of tea leaves in the cup and filling it with water. It was the same brand of pu-ehr tea, in the same fancy box with its orange and white foil and ribbon seal their Shanghai-to-Yinzhen taxi driver drank. But after a few minutes, el jefe removed the tea leaves and appeared to toss them in a garbage can. No reusing tea leaves for this guy.

  “It wasn’t the pills,” Severin said as they sat.

  “What?”

  “The hangover, stuffy nose, excessive bile, lethargy, impotence pills you gave me. It may have increased the intensity of my little heart-racing episode back in Yinzhen, but it didn’t cause it. I’ve had them before.”

  “It’s funny you say that, because I’ve been giving thought to your big question.”

  “My big question?”

  “About what I would do if I were you, living your life or whatever.”

  “Don’t jerk my chain.”

  “I’m being sincere. I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “And?” Severin said in a tone of suspicion.

  “I really think you should find a good psychiatrist.” Severin groaned and rolled his eyes. “No, hear me out.”

  “Fine.”

  “How often do you have panic attacks?”

  “Do you have to call them panic attacks?”

  “Lars, it’s what they are. It doesn’t mean you’re a delicate flower. The causes can be genetic. They can be caused by changes in your brain chemistry or function. They can come on after long-term stresses in your life, like losing your parents. They can come on in response to your growing midlife angst about mortality. Things you have no conscious control over. Drinking doesn’t help, either.”

  “Drinking calms me.”

  “Which is probably why you drink so much. But the depressive, relaxing effect is temporary.”

  “Well, obviously.”

  “No, I mean four to six hours after you drink, your body breaks the alcohol down into chemical components that actually have a stimulant effect. That’s why you wake up at two in the morning sweating and irritated after you drink half a bottle of wine at dinner.”

  “How do you know all this? You subscribe to JAMA?”

  “Because I’ve been treated for panic attacks. Mine came on during college. When we were roommates, in fact.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I kept it hidden from everybody. I was worried about the stigma or whatever.”

  “So what did your treatment consist of?”

  “Some psychotherapy. Really, only half a dozen sessions. The guy taught me a few techniques for weathering stress. Getting through tough moments. And I was on meds for about a year. Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. Greatest thing since sliced bread.”

  “Did that mess up your head? Make you feel fuzzy or whatever?”

  “Not at all. They made me feel great.”

  “And the attacks never came back?”

  “They didn’t.”

  “So what caused them in the first place?”

  “Beats me. I remember stressing about exams. Stressing about not wanting to disappoint my parents by telling them I didn’t want to go to medical school. But that seems like pretty normal stuff. Maybe I’m just genetically predisposed. Not enough serotonin in my head or whatever. At any rate, it was something they taught me to manage the early stages of. Something they taught me to nip it in the bud.”

  “Hmm.”

  “The moral of my story is that I think whatever you are using alcohol to deal with—to self-medicate for—might be better dealt with by modern medicine. Plus, therapy and pills won’t make your liver fall out your ass like booze will.”

  Severin fidgeted in his seat. “I suppose that’s food for thought.” He turned and made eye contact with Zhang. “Thanks, Wallace. Really.”

  “De nada.”

  *****

  It was on their third day of following the van driver that they hit pay dirt. Instead of going straight home from the office, the van driver took himself to some sort of nightclub. Zhang followed him in and was able to sit close enough to hear occasional fragments of a conversation the driver was having with a young girl dressed in a short silk dress as they both drank bright green cocktails out of martini glasses, sitting close together at a tiny table, their knees touching.

  A few minutes later, Zhang came flying out of the club, making straight for the cab.

  “Give me the camera with the shorter lens on it,” Zhang said.

  “Talk to me, Goose.”

  “Mister van driver has a mistress.”

  “So he’s cheating on el jefe’s daughter. Well, well. Fish in a barrel.”

  “It gets better.”

  “How could it?”

  “His name is Fang.”

  “The name of the van driver the State Department couldn’t find?”

  “And possibly the last guy seen with Keen and Powell, yes. Have the camera with the big lens ready for when he comes out.”

  “Rest assured, I will.”

  *****

  That evening, Severin and Zhang sat in Zhang’s hotel room, examining more than a dozen photographs spread over Zhang’s bed. There were several that captured the driver and his mistress kissing at their club table, his hand on her bare knee. There were also several of the two lovebirds kissing as they stood outside the club, about to part ways. They were in perfect focus. There was no mistaking it was the van driver.

  “These are fantastic,” Zhang said.

  “These are what we call dream leverage.”

  “So now what do we do?”

  “Now we buy what will hopefully be the last cell phone either of us ever purchase in China. We’ll write the phone number on the outside of a big manila envelope, put copies of the photos in it, then leave it under a w
iper blade on the windshield of the van at a time when he’ll be the first to see it. When he calls, you’ll explain to him that copies of these photos will be hand-delivered to his wife and his boss/father-in-law unless he agrees to meet us in a public place for a short and happy little conversation.”

  *****

  The next day, they left the envelope on the van’s windshield when the driver stopped at a small market and ran inside for a pack of cigarettes. Zhang and Severin sat in the cab and watched through their binoculars, grins on their faces, as the driver came out and found it. He opened it, thumbed through the pictures, and with a thoroughly terrified look on his face, looked all around, up and down the street, frantic. Then he got in the van and drove away at an unusually high speed. Zhang and Severin sat tight.

  Within seven minutes, their new cell phone rang. Zhang answered it and began a conversation in Chinese. His tone was one of reprimand, then of warning. Soon, he motioned for Severin’s notepad and pen, then scribbled down what appeared to be directions. Then he hung up.

  “Well?”

  “It’s on. Fang doesn’t work tomorrow, so he’ll meet us at 10 a.m. at a Taoist temple at the end of a short trail popular with tourists up on Laoshan Mountain. The trailhead is about 14 miles from here.”

  “Fourteen miles? I thought we were going to meet him nearby.”

  “His idea. He’s worried about being seen.”

  “How very dramatic.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  Zhang and Severin left the hotel at 7 a.m., wanting to make sure they got to the mountain well ahead of Fang or any goons who might lay in wait to sandbag them. On the way, they pulled off the road once more in front of Fang’s apartment building to check that he hadn’t left ahead of them. Severin trained his binoculars on the windows.

  “There he is, gnawing on a banana. Looks like he’s having a heated discussion with the missus.”

  “Maybe she’s ticked that he isn’t hanging out with her on his day off,” Zhang said.

  “He’s going hiking. Looking to get healthy. She should give him some credit.”

  *****

  A few miles farther down the road on their drive out to Laoshan Mountain, they began skirting the perimeter of the sprawling Jianggezhuang naval base—no doubt the base where Keen photographed the new submarine—and glanced at each other with sudden unease.

  “Don’t even say it,” Zhang said.

  A little further on, they came to a small, beachside fishing village of tan brick houses with red terracotta roofs. A dozen or so old wooden fishing boats sat at anchor in the calm cove. Severin wondered how many hundreds of years people had been doing the same things here—their lifestyle little changed. It struck him that China was so full of contrasts. Unbelievably rapid economic advancement juxtaposed with political backwardness. A society long influenced by the Buddhist philosophy of eliminating cravings, yet hamstrung by pervasive, debilitating corruption and materialism. Incredible wealth and incredible poverty. Ancient temples within ultramodern cities. A centuries-old fishing village where the fishermen still used primitive, open-bow wooden boats just down the road from a ballistic missile submarine base.

  The road hugged the sheer and rocky coastline until turning inland for a short stretch and then terminating at a parking lot that fronted a small tea plantation and a temple built in the grand, highly ornate architectural style of some lost, ancient dynasty. The front gate was comprised of massive, tall, red wooden doors and a flared tile roof of a blue-green color that reminded Severin of oxidized copper. It was flanked by immense stone sculptures of what appeared to be lions—which didn’t make much sense to Severin, given that he was 99.9 percent sure there had never been lions in Asia outside of zoos or, perhaps, the private gardens of the absurdly rich and powerful.

  They stopped for a moment to read a plaque explaining, in English, how Laoshan was perhaps the most important place in the Taoist religion. That Taoist monks had lived in the many temples dotting the sacred mountain for literally thousands of years. They called it the home of the immortals. The home of those who controlled the wind and the rain.

  “What are the tenets of Taoism, anyway,” Severin asked. “Is it similar to Buddhism?”

  “No.”

  “So what’s it all about?”

  “I don’t really know. The word Tao means the path. One of my uncles tried to explain it to me once. But I didn’t get it.”

  “Maybe it’s like the Force.”

  “Maybe you’re, like, an idiot.”

  Following the instructions Fang had given them, they passed through the temple complex, emerging on the other side to find a trailhead that immediately began to climb up a ridge of the forested mountainside. It was paved and included stone steps on the steepest sections. But it was a largely relentless ascent, and Severin found himself winded in minutes. Though the sky was mostly clear, a small white cloud clung to the shoulders of the mountain, obscuring their view of the summit. They soon ascended into it, and their visibility was reduced to a few dozen feet. Though it was morning, hawkers were already manning tables of food, drinks, and souvenirs that flanked the trail wherever there was available space on the ridge. Many of the tables had elaborate tarp covers strung up overhead for protection from sun or rain. It seemed that half the hawkers were selling bottled water that had come from a source on the mountain itself—indeed, it was the frequently mentioned, frequently praised, frequently pushed Laoshan Water served at their hotel and at the nicer restaurants they’d been to in Qingdao. The hawkers would appear out of the mist and, quickly pegging Severin and Zhang as English speakers, would half shout “Laoshan Water! Laoshan Water for good health!” One of the hawkers sat next to an ice-filled cooler of bottled Qingdao beer.

  “I’m getting one,” Severin said.

  “It isn’t even 9 a.m. Don’t we need to be sharp?”

  Severin ignored him, bought a beer, and plopped down on a PVC chair, at a PVC table, under a giant blue tarp to drink it. Zhang shook his head and sat down next to him.

  “This is a damn good beer.”

  “Great.”

  “I get that Fang is worried about being seen, but this seems a bit extreme.” Severin said.

  “Seeing this trail, I’m guessing he probably thought he could get here ahead of us and watch the approach to see who we are and how many of us he’d be dealing with. He also said there was just too much danger for him down in the city.”

  “Did he really use the Chinese word for danger?”

  “Yes. And he sounded genuinely frightened.”

  “Does he know who we are?”

  “He assumes we’re the guys who were following him in Yinzhen. But beyond that, I don’t think he has a clue.”

  “We’ll enlighten him.”

  “You don’t think he’ll just shoot us?”

  “Too public. And he’d only have one very long escape route back down the mountain. Too risky.”

  They resumed their ascent as soon as Severin finished his beer. The cloud at last moved off, revealing clear blue sky and the summit of the great granite mountain towering above them. Before long, they could see their destination: a cluster of what looked like half a dozen small, old stone buildings built on a ledge that looked like it had been chiseled out of the mountainside. Ten minutes later, they were there. It was a high shelf of stone, maybe 20 yards deep at best. On it sat the little stone buildings, and behind them, tiny temples carved into the mountain itself—ornate gates framing small doorways to man-made tunnels housing Taoist altars and religious decorations. The air smelled of burning incense, and innumerable little bells could be heard tinkling in the gentle breeze. A white-and-blue clad Taoist monk emerged from a narrow gate through a wall that ran from the edge of the cliff, clear across the shelf, to the sheer granite face of the mountainside. He strode past them silently, without so much as raising his gaze to acknowledge their presence, then disappeared around the corner of a tiny stone building perched on the edge of a great precipice. From wher
e they now stood, they had a spectacular view out over the Yellow Sea toward Korea.

  “Let’s go hang out near the edge and keep an eye on our good friend Fang as he makes the climb,” Severin said. “Make sure he isn’t accompanied by any of his goon buddies.” They did so. And barely half an hour later, Severin spotted Fang through his binoculars, slowly making his way up the mountain path, alone. The only other people visible on the trail were a trio of young women with cameras—obvious tourists—and a Taoist monk who was descending with a pair of large plastic buckets.

  After watching Fang for several minutes to assure themselves there wasn’t any hostile muscle following him up the ridge at a discreet distance, Severin and Zhang hid themselves in a clump of trees from where they would be able to observe Fang from close up. Soon, Fang emerged at the top of the stairwell and, after pausing with his hands on his knees to catch his breath, strode to the exact same spot near the edge of the cliff where Severin and Zhang had just been observing his ascent. He pulled a pair of binoculars from a jacket pocket and trained them on the trail, below.

  “Sorry, Fang,” Severin whispered, “but the early bird catches the worm.”

  He and Zhang watched him for a couple of minutes—with Severin, still moderately concerned that Fang might be carrying a weapon, looking for telltale bulges in Fang’s clothes. Then, as Fang bent down to scratch his leg, Severin saw that he had a handgun jammed into the waistband of his pants at the small of his back.

  “Wait here,” Sevrin whispered to Zhang. “Don’t move.”

  Fang, having watched the trail through his binoculars for a couple of minutes, lowered them, rubbed his eyes, and then strode a few steps to his left, disappearing behind one of the small stone buildings. Severin emerged from concealment and slunk up to the corner of the same building. Peeking around it, he saw Fang, standing near the edge of the cliff not 10 feet away, once again watching the trail though his binoculars.