But how do you know it’s a foreign country? she thought. How do you know it’s not an accident?
“Hegemony must be resisted,” said another caller.
Hegemony, hegemony, she thought, the powerful nation bullies the weaker; definitely a memory-marker word here. Once it had seemed like a catchphrase of the Communist era, but it still had lightning-rod power today.
“The issue is a national one! Eight members of the Chinese women’s Olympic team were on the plane!” said a woman caller.
Oh. Lia started forward. Had she heard that right? That was very bad.
People continued to cut in over each other, louder.
She wondered how the government was going to contain all this. Public opinion could no longer be ignored in China. That was the magical thing that had slowly happened. It was not like the old days when the government could control most of the flow of information. Now the government had to please its constituencies, now the government had constituencies, because people knew more, they had phones and faxes and the Internet and a media of sorts. Public debate was here, whether the government liked it or not. And it didn’t sound like the public was happy. They had already decided who was at fault and they wanted action.
“The government shouldn’t be so soft on foreign powers!” Now the voices were heated and broken up with static.
She got out at the villa, paid the driver, and ran across the humped bridge, along the stone paths, and into the building, through the rooms and the corridors and across the inner courtyard. She clattered in through the glass doors and snapped on the lights. It was all here. She felt completed just to be back with it.
Her phone rang.
“Wei,” she answered.
“Miss Fan.” Gao Yideng. “You have returned? Your trip was suitable?” She could hear the wire of consternation in his voice.
“My trip was most interesting, thank you. I found answers to a few questions. As for my return, it was only a little delayed.”
“You had no problems?”
“No. I’m with the collection now.”
“And you progress well? You are close to finished?”
“Not quite,” she said. “Almost.”
“Ah. One had hoped-“”
“Yes,” she said. “But my colleague Phillip Gambrill is due to arrive at any time, and we must look at about fifty pieces together. Then we’ll be ready. We’ll submit.”
“Good. Oh, and in case you have been wondering, Mr. Gambrill is at this moment arriving in Vancouver, British Columbia, to change flights.”
“Oh!” she said. She let herself go to a quick fall of relief. “Thank you! I had not heard from him.” She counted forward. So he’d be in Beijing in the morning.
“It’s nothing. Please. I must not keep you from your work.”
Gao hung up and turned to the man standing next to him in his office. It was Bai, the ah chan, hands deep in the pockets of his pleat-front pants. “The schedule is delayed,” Gao said. “The load’s not ready.”
“Ei, the appraiser is slow.”
“Not so slow.”
“But he’s a foreigner, right, the appraiser? That’s why he’s slow.” Bai gave a small, self-satisfied laugh.
Irritated, Gao looked sideways at the ah chan. The southerner presumed, he imagined he knew every corner of the situation, when he actually knew nothing. Above all he knew nothing about the American woman. So far she had surpassed what Gao had expected. Not just her knowledge-her will. He was impressed. Each time he had challenged her or placed an untruth in her path she had risen to him, easily, and never without a pleasing cover of courtesy. A worthy opposite. In another life she’d have been an ally or a friend. He’d have liked that.
He still needed Bai, so he gave voice to only a narrow refraction of what he thought. “You are mistaken.” He looked down to check his watch. “This art expert is highly knowledgeable.”
“Of course,” Bai said. He knew at once he’d stepped wrong. “So if not tonight, when do you calculate I shall load and leave?”
“Two days,” said Gao. “With luck.”
The ah chan showed nothing, but inside he frowned. He did not like the mood in Beijing just now, since the news had come out about the plane. He knew all the things that simmered underneath. Dao shan huo hai, hills of knives and seas of fire. Best to be gone from the capital as quickly as possible. “What about the vehicle?” he said hopefully.
“Ah! The vehicle is ready.”
“It’s so? Where is it?”
“Nearby. Would you like to go and see?” Gao Yideng said.
“Yes, through a thousand li of crags, if I had to,” he said, and Gao laughed.
They went out into the street, which faced the rear gate of the Forbidden City. The avenue streamed with cars, the ancient moat shone with still water and clumps of lotus, the thick red palace walls rose up. The basement of Gao’s little satellite office building held a contemporary art gallery; the top floor, a Thai restaurant.
Bai’s heart sang with the well-deserved sense of being at the center of things. He was here. He had arrived. Gao’s driver brought up the car. To Bai’s pleasure, Gao dismissed the driver, saying he would drive and they would go alone. The two of them climbed in front with a satisfying slam of steel doors.
From behind the wheel, Gao Yideng looked over at his grinning passenger. In the provincial man’s soft-lipped smile Gao saw everything: skittering joy, fierce ambition. Good, he thought, satisfied with this ah chan from the south, sure under his skin and in the center of himself that this man would take his eight hundred pots successfully out to Hong Kong.
Phillip Gambrill pressed his body as close as he could to the inadequate alcove of a pay phone in a large, roaring, open-domed atrium at the Vancouver airport. Between the stalls selling Vietnamese noodles and boxed planks of smoked salmon, across from the plazas selling fake native art and polyurethaned totems, he applied himself, straining against the noise, to the receiver. “I said, the flight’s canceled.”
Dr. Zheng was on the other end of the line. “What time’s the next one?”
“There is no next one,” Phillip told him. “Not now, anyway. All flights to Beijing are canceled. Shanghai too.”
“All flights?” Dr. Zheng repeated.
“All flights.” Phillip turned, twisted the cord under his arm, looked into the crowd. People standing, walking, sitting, sleeping. Families making islands with luggage and dozing children. Faces full of fear; it was back again. Something bad had happened. There were the relentless booming announcements, the flight numbers, the static names of other world cities, the white-peaked, evergreen-carpeted postcard prettiness of western Canada.
“Let me talk to our travel people. I’ll call you back.”
“I’ll keep my phone.” Phillip knew the Hastings travel people wouldn’t tell Zheng any different. Right now no one could get him from anywhere in North America to Beijing. Hanging up, shouldering his bag, he gave up on it and walked back into the crowd.
14
Michael Doyle bent over the table in his room, laying out his Polaroids. These were the kids in his study. He’d taken a shot of each during the first interview, all against the same wall in his office. They were all between five and eight. Their little faces called out to him from childhood.
He liked to put the pictures in the order of their lead levels. At first he’d started with their newborn readings, from cord blood. This was maternal exposure, at birth, no more. When he got a tooth, though, he could see what they’d actually accumulated. This marker was much more solid. With each tooth he made another change, put the pictures in a new order. Today he moved Xiaoli. Twenty parts per million. Bottom row center, for now.
He passed his hands over his thin layer of hair, half gray now since his illness, and his skull, strong, almost rectangular, widest at his ears and cheekbones. He could follow these children but he couldn’t keep them safe. Again he reminded himself.