Lobby. Faces.
Street.
The back of a black BMW, crowded between two heavy men with bad breath.
The city.
Highway. Feet tingling. Outside, the sea.
Airport, but not Departures. An access road around the building, under catwalks, past vehicles with stairs leading nowhere, to a white twin-engine propeller plane idling far from anything.
Hands. Breath.
Cold wind across the tarmac. Two men talking, one in a pilot’s uniform, at the foot of stairs.
Up. Hands lifting because feet no longer work.
Through the hole. No smiling stewardess. No “May I see your boarding pass?” Just two lines of grimy, padded seats. Only one other passenger. A pasty-faced Chinese with thick glasses, reading his telephone.
Down, in the seat.
Straps. Not too tight, please.
“Hello, Mr. Milo Weaver.”
It’s the pasty-faced one, putting away his phone. They’re beside each other, the walkway separating them.
Can’t raise hands, but not because of the straps.
“We will be there in three hours. About.”
Where? It doesn’t come out.
But where else could he mean?
And does it matter?
The engine rumbles.
The man is close now, his breath minty and clean. “No, no,” he says, smiling. “Don’t worry, we have time for talking. Later.”
The man sits and buckles his seat belt.
They begin to move.
Yes, it matters.
6
The People’s Daily that Monday morning ran a short notice announcing Hua Yuan’s death “by stroke,” reminding readers that she had been the widow of the esteemed Bo Gaoli, who was tragically felled by a heart attack in April. Zhu remembered Hua Yuan’s suspicion of all officials who had reportedly died of heart attacks and wondered if this could be legitimately defined as irony.
She wasn’t the only fresh corpse. Xu Guanzhong, Wei Chi-tao, He Qiang, and in the Kowloon Hector Garza had died, but not before killing He Peng, whom he’d recalled just for this job. Shen An-ling had arrived last night with their meager prizes for so many bodies-Milo Weaver and Leticia Jones. Things were as they should be-two enemies in custody, another one soon to be dealt with-but there was too much blood. It was time to be done with that.
Zhu had hidden the events of Sunday morning from Shen An-ling, largely because he didn’t want him distracted. Also, he’d entered a new kind of relationship with Sun Bingjun that required sensitivity. By helping Zhu, Sun Bingjun was risking everything, and there was no need to let that information move any further than was absolutely necessary. Sun Bingjun had told him to come to the Great Hall of the People at nine to present the narrative he had spent much of the previous night sketching out in his home office. It had to be complete, even when the facts were not known, and so he filled in holes with educated speculation. At eight, he put on his jacket. Sung Hui gave him a kiss, which he hardly even felt.
After the weekend rains, it was pleasantly clear-skied when he reached the Great Hall, and its damp steps were empty of schoolchildren. There were more guards than usual perched at the top, lugging their rifles, and he wondered if he had missed some announcement or other. Then he wondered if they were waiting for him.
In the Beijing Hall, he found Zhang Guo sitting with Feng Yi, both smoking cigarettes. He stopped a few feet away. Zhang Guo said, “I suppose you’re announcing some breakthrough in the case, Xin Zhu?”
He shook his head.
“Maybe Sun Bingjun is,” Feng Yi suggested, raising his cigarette. “He called the meeting.”
As if on cue, Sun Bingjun strolled in, raising eyebrows at the three men and carrying a yellow folder. To Zhu, he said, “No notes?”
Zhu tapped his skull.
“Dangerous,” Sun Bingjun said, then took a seat.
Zhang Guo and Feng Yi gave them questioning looks.
Wu Liang arrived with Yang Qing-Nian again, but this time both men looked flustered. “I almost didn’t make it,” Wu Liang told them all. “Some of us don’t have the free time for last-minute assemblies.”
“Apologies,” said Sun Bingjun. “You needn’t have come if you didn’t want to.”
Wu Liang noticed the coolness in Sun Bingjun’s voice, and he shook his head. “I’m short on sleep. Excuse me.”
They took their places, Zhu again sitting opposite the others, and after setting his own digital recorder in the center of the room, Sun Bingjun returned to his seat and began very simply. “Thank you all for coming here. You will have heard by now of the tragic death of Hua Yuan, the wife of Bo Gaoli, this weekend, and this is the reason for our meeting this morning. What you may not know is that she was murdered brutally in her kitchen, and the assailant has yet to be identified.”
Though no one said anything, they all shifted, expressing their surprise through movement.
Sun Bingjun opened the folder on his lap. “The identity of her murderer can be set aside for the moment, but what cannot be ignored is something she had on her person when she died.” From the folder Sun Bingjun took out the letter, now dry and crisp, kept safe in a plastic sleeve. He held it up for all to see. “It was written, days before his death, by Bo Gaoli. In it, he identifies an American mole within Chinese security.”
More movement. Sun Bingjun ignored the reaction and began passing around stapled sheets of paper, photocopies of the letter. Zhu got up to receive one.
“Take a moment,” Sun Bingjun told everyone, then closed the folder in his lap. As the others began reading, he watched Zhu, who ignored the letter and tried to read Sun Bingjun’s face. There was nothing in there to read.
“Where did you get this again?” asked Feng Yi.
“From Hua Yuan’s corpse,” said Sun Bingjun. “The discoloration you see there is her urine.”
“A letter,” Yang Qing-Nian said, raising his voice. “A single letter? Who knows who wrote this?”
Wu Liang knew when to stay quiet.
Zhang Guo said, “I think, Sun Bingjun, that you should tell us exactly how you came across this letter.”
Zhu listened as Sun Bingjun quietly and patiently told his story. He began in reality, saying that Hua Yuan had called Xin Zhu about a letter, before diverging. “Hua Yuan told him that it had to do with Wu Liang. Zhu, rightly suspecting that his involvement would be viewed with suspicion, called me before going anywhere. I promised to meet him at her house. He waited for me to arrive, and we entered together.”
Zhu would have preferred if the old man had said he’d arrived first, but perhaps the surly Jade guards weren’t amenable to changing their record of Zhu’s entrance.
“We found her body in the kitchen,” Sun Bingjun continued, “and that’s when I noticed the letter in her pocket. I asked Xin Zhu to please remove it. Together, we read it in the dining room. I ordered Xin Zhu to leave the premises, because I wanted him involved as little as possible. I had my people clean up the mess. I’ve discussed the situation with Yang Xiaoming, and he asked that we perform a preliminary examination now before bringing him into it.”
Which was entirely predictable, thought Zhu. Yang Xiaoming, the head of the Supervision and Liaison Committee, wouldn’t want to touch this until it was set in stone.
