Severin knew a number of standard police takedown moves. The only problem was that they weren’t designed for officers with a broken arm in a cast. He tried to think of which he could pull off, bearing in mind that he was quite a bit bigger than Fang. He took three long, quick steps forward and, as Fang just began to turn, put him in what amounted to an almost complete wedge hold, securing one of Fang’s arms, and at least half-securing the other, before turning, locking a leg across Fang’s shins, and dropping him face down onto the ground. Laying atop the smaller man, Severin immediately jerked one of Fang’s arms up and behind his back, pinned it there with his cast, and took possession of the gun with his good arm. Tucking the gun in his own waistband, he then gave Fang a cursory pat down, making sure he didn’t have any other hidden firearms. Satisfied that Fang was as clean as he needed to be for the moment, Severin called for Zhang, jammed the gun—some sort of compact .38—into his own waistband, pulled Fang to his feet, then stepped back and took a deep breath.
“Good morning, Fang,” Zhang said in Chinese as he approached.
Several times, Fang’s anxious gaze jumped back and forth between Severin and Zhang, who kept a decent distance—both to help Fang get over the initial shock of being taken to the ground and disarmed, and to maintain a buffer that would give them more time to react if he decided to attack them with a hidden knife or other undiscovered weapon.
Severin brushed off his dusty pants as he gave Fang a good, long look. “Start by reminding him that if he doesn’t answer all of our questions to our satisfaction, we’ll send copies of all of those photos to—”
“You don’t have to speak Chinese,” Fang said, his arms hanging at his sides, looking angry but resigned, not bothering to brush himself off.
“Oh, you speak English,” Severin said. “How nice. And how did you come by that skill?”
“I was raised by my aunt and uncle in Singapore. They sent me to the American School.”
“Do you know why we’re here?” Severin asked.
“To blackmail me.”
“There’s a little more to it than that, isn’t there?” Zhang said.
Fang sighed. “We know you’re trying to use the system,” he mumbled. “Trying to use American trade law for competitive advantage.”
“Competitive advantage?” Zhang said. “I think you’re thinking of someone else.”
“You’re looking for evidence to give to the U.S. Department of Commerce so they put an unfair high tariff on our products.”
“Like I said, you got the wrong guys, pal.”
“You know something?” Fang said with a new spark of bitterness and defiance in his eyes. “The unjust, protectionist antidumping laws are only there for China bashing.”
“China bashing?” Severin said.
“We’re not dumping. We’re not being anticompetitive. We just have low labor and material costs so we can make products a lot cheaper than America can. That’s all. The U.S. government knows this. There isn’t even any such thing as dumping.”
“Tell that to Hitachi, NEC, and Toshiba’s computer chip subsidiaries,” Zhang said.
“What is this, Meet the Press?” Severin asked.
“You think unjust American law will stop us?” Fang said, shaking his head. “It won’t.”
“Probably not,” Severin said. “Because if Commerce slaps you with a high tariff, you’ll just re-label your sorghum syrup as something else, right? What customs agent is going to know that it isn’t corn syrup, light molasses, or buckwheat honey? U.S. Customs is too busy watching for terrorists and drugs. They don’t have the time or money to test thousands of drums of syrup to see whether or not they contain sorghum. And even if they did catch you committing fraud, what do you have to worry about? When Customs tries to find your U.S. importer to collect the antidumping tariffs, are they going to find millions of dollars stacked to the ceiling at your bustling U.S. headquarters? No. They’ll find a façade—an empty, dusty office you never used as anything more than a mailing address. And next year you’ll just find a new mailing address and restart the game somewhere else, right? Did I score a bullseye?”
Fang glared at him. “We are not dumping.”
“Well, you know what?” Severin said. “That’s between you and the U.S. government. The only reason we’re here is that a family wants to know what happened to their little girl who was here investigating YSP.”
“You work for Marshall Quotient Trading.”
“No,” Zhang said.
Fang looked perplexed. “I don’t … . Why—”
“Because you are one of the last two people on Earth known to have been with Kristin Powell and Bill Keen, the vanished investigators from the Commerce Department,” Severin said.
“No.”
“Both the American attorney, Ben Holloman, and the Commerce team’s interpreter, Yu Lin, say you were. They said you were acting funny before you dropped them off at the airport, dropped Holloman at the hotel, and then mysteriously disappeared.”
At this Fang smiled a bitter smile. “No. No, you have the wrong Fang.”
“What?”
“I wasn’t in the van with the Commerce investigators. I was in the car with the interpreter. Ask her. I am Fang Hou. The van driver is Fang Xu. I’m sure our names all sound the same to you, just as our faces all look the same.”
“Now Fang, don’t be cross,” Severin said, tiring of the farce. “Why don’t you show us your identification card so that we know you aren’t trying to pull the proverbial fast one.”
Fang frowned, muttered something in Chinese, then pulled his identity card from his wallet. Sure enough, his name was Fang Hou.
“Fine,” Severin said. “If you aren’t the van driver, then who are you? And if you’re so innocent, then why the hell did you call for those pipe-wielding goons to maul us back in Yinzhen?”
“Somebody sent an email telling us that one of the competing importers in the U.S., Marshall Quotient Trading, had sent people to try to dig up dirt on YSP.”
“Dirt?”
“Something they could give to the U.S. government. Something the Commerce Department could use to justify the imposition of a high tariff on our sorghum syrup, to destroy our business.”
“Who sent the email?” Severin asked.
“It was anonymous. An email address made up of random letters and numbers.”
“You thought we were from a competing importer?”
Fang shrugged.
“So if you aren’t the van driver we’re looking for, then what’s your position in YSP?”
Fang held back. “Let’s talk about those photos first.”
“What about them?” Severin said.
“Are those the only copies?”
“What do you think?”
“So what guarantees are you offering for my cooperation?”
“We’ll get rid of the pictures for you. No one—not your children, your wife, or your father-in-law—will ever be the wiser. Not because of us, anyway.”
“How can I be sure?”
“You can’t be sure, Fang. You have to take our word for it. But consider that we’d have no motive to do anything but destroy them if you give us the information we need. Now, I’ll ask you one more time. If you don’t answer, we’re going back to Qingdao to mail some envelopes full of photos. What is your position in YSP?”
Fang seemed to deliberate before speaking. Looking very reluctant, he resumed. “There’s no such thing as YSP. It’s just a paper company. A name we’ll use as long as Commerce has a low tariff rate assigned to it. When it doesn’t, we’ll give it a new name.”
“What is your role in the bigger picture then?”
“On paper, I’m the vice-president for compliance at Qingdao Ocean One Logistics. It’s an empty title. I’m really just a servant for Xiu.”
Severin thought he caught a trace of bitterness in Fang’s tone. “And who is Xiu?”
“The big boss.”
“El jefe? The man you dr
ive around in the van?” Zhang asked.
“Yes.”
“And the owner of the sorghum exporter of many names?” Severin asked.
“Of that. Of lots of different companies.”
“Running customs evasion and racketeering tribute schemes for all sort of products, right?”
Fang shrugged his shoulders, nodded.
“And he’s a senior customs official with uniformed customs officers and any number of plainclothes goons at his beck and call.”
“Yes.”
“And he’s your father-in-law. Well, well.”
Fang just stared, looking furious.
“Look, all we care about is what happened to Kristin Powell,” Zhang said.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, Fang. Come on now.”
“I really don’t. Why don’t you ask the American lawyer, Holloman.”
“Why would we want to do that?”
“Because he was the last person to be seen with them who had any reason to make them disappear.”
“Doubtful,” Zhang said. “Holloman is a big-time attorney in Washington, D.C., where the average rate for big firm partners hovers around $1,000 per hour. What would have been his motivation to risk his neck like that for a client that only pays him $35,000 for a year’s work?” Zhang asked.
“The $35,000 figure is just for the accounting records we put together for Commerce. It’s for show. It has nothing to do with what Xiu actually pays him.”
“How much does Xiu pay him?”
“Four million dollars a year, give or take.”
“Four million?” Zhang said, sounding dubious. “To represent a two-bit sorghum processor?”
“Don’t be obtuse,” Fang said. “Four million to represent all of Xiu’s companies. Holloman and Xiu specialize in taking on small companies in industries that have been targeted by U.S. antidumping investigations and are saddled with high tariff rates. They use their magic legal and accounting schemes to figure out how to get each company’s tariff rate down to zero. Then that company becomes the main player for the industry, and all the other factories or suppliers pay Xiu to export to the U.S. through Xiu’s companies because he has by far the lowest tariff rate, and nobody else can compete profitably in the U.S. market unless they go through him. He makes himself the necessary middle man for entire industries.”
“Like what?”
“Sorghum syrup, composite roofing shingles, plastic bottles, applesauce—”
“Dog food,” Severin added.
“Yes, dog food. Each industry is an income stream.”
“And Xiu is Holloman’s sugar daddy.”
“No. It was all Holloman’s idea from the beginning,” Fang said. “He approached us five years ago, when our canned oyster company got caught up in an American antidumping investigation. He said he had this idea that would make us all rich. Before that, Xiu was just a regular exporter.”
“And high Customs official,” Severin said. “No conflict of interest there, right?”
“Still,” Zhang said, “from Holloman’s point of view, why would he take such a risk and go to such extremes when YSP is just one small piece of the pie? Why not just suck it up for a year, write off YSP, and start over with a new paper company with a new fake name in a new fake location the next year—especially when, as you say, U.S. Customs will never collect any tariffs from the importer anyway?”
“Because anyone who knows anything about these cases knows that the American lawyers have to come over here days—sometimes weeks—before the Commerce investigators show up to help their clients prepare,” Fang said.
“In other words, there’s no way Holloman could pretend he didn’t know YSP was committing fraud,” Severin said.
“Exactly.”
“So if the investigators had been able to file their report, Holloman would have been disbarred. Probably imprisoned,” Zhang added.
Severin and Zhang stared at one another.
“So,” Severin said at last, “when you left Yinzhen, the van with the Commerce employees was behind you.”
“Yes. But then it wasn’t. I didn’t know why, so I pulled over and waited for them to catch up.”
“How far outside of Yinzhen?”
“I don’t know. Five or six kilometers maybe.”
“How long did you wait?”
Fang shrugged. “A few minutes.”
“Then the van caught up and passed you?”
“Yes.”
“When it passed, could you see that everyone was still in the van?”
“I didn’t really look. Anyway, it was too dark. I wouldn’t have been able to see them.”
“Do you remember where you pulled the car over and waited?”
“Approximately.”
“Then show us.”
“I can’t be seen with you! Xiu has people everywhere. Always watching.”
“He’s your loving father-in-law.”
“He will have me killed. He will not hesitate.”
“Look, Fang. If we’re going to believe a single word you’ve told us, then we’re going to need to find evidence that corroborates your story.”
“What do you expect to find?”
“Bodies,” Severin said. “If Holloman killed them, he probably did so on that lonely stretch of road where you waited for the van.”
“I’m—no. I’m not going.”
Severin nodded to Zhang, who pulled from his inner jacket pocket another 5x7 photo of Fang in a compromising position with his mistress and held it up to Fang’s face.
“Will your loving father-in-law kill you if he sees these?” Zhang said.
“We’ll put you in the back seat, with a hat, hood, and big pair of ladies sunglasses to obscure your face,” Severin said, tossing Fang’s gun off the cliff as the three of them turned to begin their descent of the mountain. “You’ll be fine.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Three hours and two traffic jams later, they were driving down a lonely stretch of country road that ran between two vast but fallow farm fields a few kilometers northeast of Yinzhen.
“I think it was right around here somewhere,” Fang said.
“Where you pulled over to wait for the van?” Severin asked.
“Yes. But it was getting dark. I’m not sure.”
“Okay. We’ll keep heading toward town. You shout out when we get to where you last remember seeing the van’s headlights behind you.”
“You really think we’re going to find bodies?” Zhang asked, sounding more than a little uneasy. “Even if they were killed here, they were probably disposed of someplace else, right? I mean, if they were killed here, nobody would have had time to dig graves and bury them in the time Fang was pulled over and waiting for the van to reappear. And if they weren’t buried, somebody would have discovered them. Unless, of course, there was some other accomplice who came to bury them. But if that’s the case, we’ll never find their remains.”
“Humor me,” Severin said.
They drove on, heading southwest toward Yinzhen. But before they’d gone far, Severin spotted a narrow dirt service road perpendicular to the road they were on that led out into the farm fields.
“Turn onto that road,” Severin said to Wallace.
They drove at a crawl, watching for anything that might pass for a clue. But half a mile from the main road they encountered an impassible water-filled pothole that was as wide as the service road itself. Severin and Zhang got out, skirted the pothole on foot, and spent the next half-hour walking up and down the rest of the short road, getting dark brown mud all over their shoes, searching every square foot. But they found nothing more substantial than a few dozen cigarette butts.
They got back in the car and resumed their drive toward Yinzhen. Within a couple of minutes, they spotted another service road, much like the other. Again, they turned onto it. There were no houses or other farm structures for many hundreds of yards in any direction. They motored along slowly—maybe a couple of miles
per hour—as they watched for clues out of their open windows. A lightning bolt flashed within a wall of purple stratocumulus clouds rapidly approaching from the south. A few seconds later, deep rolling thunder rattled the car.
“Do you think we’re going to get wet?” Zhang said, eyeballing the towering clouds.
Severin didn’t answer. His eyes were locked on what looked like a large heap of agricultural refuse up ahead 50 or 60 yards on their right. As they got closer, they could see with certainty that it was a giant compost pile comprised of decomposing plant matter. Weeds, cuttings, reaped sorghum cane. It looked as if refuse had been deposited there season after season for many years. The pile was about the same height as Severin, had a more or less circular base of at least 20 feet, and had a fair degree of overall symmetry. But a flaw in its symmetry was what now held Severin’s eye. A place where it looked like the side of the pile had eroded and collapsed—or been pulled down—into a shorter semicircle of debris that extended out from the larger pile.
“Stop the car,” Severin said.
“You see something?”
Severin opened his door, got out, and walked slowly, apprehensively, toward the pile—toward the flaw. He stopped ten feet from the flaw and stared at it as Zhang came up behind him, then walked all the way around the greater pile, examining it as he went. As he expected, he found that the flaw was the only one of its kind in the pile. Stopping as he reached the flaw again, he noted what he was sure had once been deep grooves gouged out of the side of the pile by the heel of someone’s foot. They were thoroughly eroded, but clearly recognizable as such. Someone had climbed up on the pile and either accidentally or deliberately pushed material down, creating the flaw.
“Check the car to see if there’s something we can dig or probe with,” he said to Zhang. “A shovel. A tire iron. Anything.”
Zhang gave him a grave look before going. There was a bad smell in the air. Not just of decaying plants. It was more akin to putrid meat and reminded Severin of the stagnant air downwind of a pork slaughterhouse one humid summer day that he spent near his cousin’s home in Louisville, Kentucky. As he drew slowly closer to the flaw in the pile, he saw that it wasn’t going to be necessary to dig. The sole of a black leather women’s shoe was exposed where compost had eroded away. A symbol imprinted in the rubber indicated that it was made by Cole Haan—an American brand.
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