entered the warehouse and darted to assist them, ignoring all else, even the man who had helped Somo the night before, the Chinese administrative manager.
'The accounts for the field teams at Yapchi are out of order,' Shan sighed, with a long, exasperated glance at Winslow. Winslow's task, Shan had told the American, was to say nothing, look irritated, and give no clue of understanding Mandarin.
'Surely not,' the man in the coveralls stated, nervously looking at the American. He wore an American-style baseball cap, black, with an orange bird on its front. Shan felt guilty about playing to such an obvious, even sad, weakness, but the one thing that most of the venture workers seemed to be obsessed with was making contact with foreigners, for help with immigration.
'I told him,' Shan said, 'these things are very complex. Multiple deliveries. Sensitive equipment that may be shipped directly to the camp. Sometimes boxes with food supplies and field equipment get confused.'
The warehouse manager examined Winslow carefully. The American offered a forced, impatient grin, then glared at Shan.
Shan retreated a step, as if expecting to be hit. 'Please,' he said in a plaintive tone. 'He's been to Yapchi already. He has their records for verification. He's American.'
The man nervously motioned them toward a computer terminal on a table in a corner of the warehouse. Moments later he had a screen displayed that read Yapchi: Supply Balances. Shan looked at the screen with a satisfied smile. Running the petroleum venture was as bureaucratic and disorganized as running the army.
The man tapped a few more keys and a subheading appeared: Field Teams. 'They all have the same equipment,' the man said, pointing at a column on the left side. 'Team One,' it said. Metallic water bottles, twelve, the listing began. Tent, four man, one. Sleeping bags, four. Butane cooking stoves, one. Fuel cylinders, eight. Rations, sixty meals. Shan quickly scanned the rest of the list. Ropes, axes, mineral hammers, seismic explosive charges. The four-member teams were equipped for five days in the field. 'Tell him I know baseball,' the manager urged Shan. 'They play tapes of baseball games one night a week. Baltimore Orioles,' he added in a hopeful tone.
Shan gave an impatient nod in reply. 'But one of these field teams left behind some of their equipment.'
'Which team number?'
Shan gestured toward Winslow. 'What team do you think? The one headed by the American.'
Strangely, the man seemed to deflate. 'Ah,' he said slowly, 'Melissa.' His eyes clouded.
'You knew Miss Larkin?'
'Sure. I mean-' the man searched their faces warily as if trying to assess how slippery the ground had become. 'She brings things for us when she visits. Fossils sometimes. Pretty pink quartz. Once some American sweet biscuits. She is…' he studied their faces again, then fixed his gaze on the computer, 'easy to remember.' When he felt Shan's inquisitive stare, he sighed and continued in a more distant voice. 'Once when she was here there was a big storm and the electricity was gone. No one could work. Most people went to the operations center and drank all day. But Miss Larkin, she made a fire here, in a big iron bucket,' he explained, pointing to the center of the concrete floor. 'Some of us sat around it and told stories. She taught us American songs that day. Row, Row, Row Your Boat,' he said in English, having difficulty with the r's. 'Jingle Bells. Oh Susannah.'
'But that last time she was here, she wanted something special, didn't she?' Shan suggested. 'She left food supplies at Yapchi because she had to carry something else.'
The man tapped a few more keys at the computer, then sat down heavily on a nearby stool. A new screen appeared, showing resupply orders for the Yapchi camp. 'She said she didn't have time to do all the paperwork.' He looked around the warehouse, suddenly wary not of Shan and Winslow but of the shadows beyond them. 'Said no one would miss them, that months would go by before anyone would ask for them and I could reorder by then. I said only six, but she insisted on taking all twelve.'
'Twelve what?'
The man winced. 'It didn't make sense. I still think about it sometimes. I still don't understand.' He looked into Shan's face with a pleading expression. 'I'll have replacements by next month.'
'Twelve what?' Shan repeated.
'Dye markers,' the man whispered. 'Used to mark currents, or measure the flow of water. Where we usually work, in the new fields, it's almost like a desert. The markers were all covered with dust. I reported that they had all expired,' he said, as if once he had decided to confide in Shan, as a fellow Han who shared the burden of dealing with Americans, he had to tell it all, 'too old to use. I didn't check. Probably true,' he added quickly.
'You just did your job. She was a team leader, after all,' Shan said and looked at the screen. There was a line blinking at the bottom of the screen, the last entry under Larkin's name. Replenish, it said, and referenced a date. The date was tomorrow. He pointed at the line of text.
'Resupply,' the man said hesitantly. Shan leaned over and moved the cursor to the line and clicked the mouse. A new list appeared, with the same date, and map coordinates. Butane fuel cylinders. Blankets. Five hundred feet of rope, and seismic charges. Four cases of seismic charges.
As Shan studied the screen a chill crept down his spine.
'Why, if it's for Larkin's team,' he asked slowly, 'would you keep this in the system?'
The color drained from the man's face and he stared at the screen a long time before answering. 'I don't put the supply assignments in the system, just assemble the supplies for the orders that appear on the screen. That team may still be working. I hear they haven't found her body,' the man said in a subdued, worried voice. Then, as he saw Shan's intense interest in the screen, he stood in front of the monitor.
'She asked you to keep the replenish order in the system when she was here,' Shan stated. The man had mixed his tenses in speaking of Larkin, using the present tense sometimes even though he had obviously heard of her death.
'No, it's a mistake,' he groaned, 'just a mistake for this to be in this system. It doesn't mean anything.'
'You mean she asked for a special resupply and later someone asked you to take it off?'
The man looked at Winslow with a pleading expression now. 'A good woman,' he said in broken English. 'Row, row, row your boat,' he said with a forced smile. 'Baltimore Orioles.'
'You mean the Office of Special Projects,' Shan said.
The words brought a cloud to the manager's face. 'He said take her listings off our screens. I must have forgotten this piece.'
'Special Director Zhu said take off the resupply request?' Shan asked. 'Cancel it?'
The man in the blue shirt hunched his shoulders forward, and seemed to draw into himself, getting smaller. 'Not cancel it,' the man whispered to his feet, looking more frightened than ever. 'Just take it off our screens.' He stepped in front of the computer and turned to face the entrance to the warehouse, as though guarding the screen. Or hiding it.
'You mean Zhu found out the replenishment order was still in the system,' Shan said slowly, glancing at Winslow, who was busily writing down the map coordinates, 'and he said continue with it. But he is taking over the resupply assignment?'
The man's voice had grown hoarse. 'Like the rest of us, I guess. He hopes she still lives.'
But no, Shan realized as he hurried Winslow out of the building, it was because Zhu hoped to make sure she didn't.
'How could-' Winslow began when Shan had explained his suspicion.
'The dye markers,' Shan explained. 'We saw the dye markers being used the day before we saw Zhu in the mountains. He told us she had been killed a week before. He filed reports stating as much. But he was lying. She was in the mountains, near us, just the day before. No one else was using the markers. No one else had any markers. Zhu reported her killed to make sure no one else would interfere.'
'Interfere with what?'
'I don't know. I think Zhu is going to deliver those supplies. He reported her dead. What if he lied, what if he wanted everyone to give up on her so he could find her? Zhu, and maybe Public Security, had decided she's dangerous. What if it was because he wanted to make her dead now that everyone had accepted the lie that she was dead? Make her dead now, or take her somewhere for interrogation. She's a ghost now. Zhu can do anything and no one would know.'
Winslow stared at Shan. 'Impossible,' he said, but Shan didn't see disbelief in the American's eyes. He saw cold fury, and fear, and a glimmer of helplessness.
