“I need my husband,” she said.
“The police think—”
“I know what the police think,” she replied. “They’re wrong.”
I hesitated. Denial was the most common initial response to bereavement. There was an outside chance Shang Li was still alive, but with three dead colleagues, even if he’d been alive when he’d been taken from the van, there was little chance of him being allowed to live for very long.
“Do you have someone you love?” Su Yun asked me.
I was silent, thinking about Justine.
“If you do, you’ll know you can feel them in your bones. They are part of you, like your eyes or your heart,” she told me. “Would you know if your heart stopped, Mr. Morgan? Mine is still beating. He’s somewhere out there. Find him for me.”
“If he’s alive, we’ll find him,” I assured her.
“My husband speaks highly of you, Mr. Morgan. We will meet when he is by your side and we can celebrate his safe return.”
“Until then,” I replied.
“Thank you, Mr. Morgan,” she said before hanging up.
“Su Yun called,” I explained to Zhang Daiyu when she finished her call.
“How did she sound?”
“Defiant,” I replied.
Zhang Daiyu joined me at the computer and we sat in her modest office reviewing the investigation material for a couple of hours. She briefed me on what she’d already found and pointed out interesting highlights, like David Zhou’s frequent visits to Meihui. I built up a picture of an extremely successful financier with some unusual connections. Along with Meihui, there were regular visits to a street vendor in Pinggu who sold cheap radios and to a chow fun stall in Dongcheng District.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“Intelligence or criminal,” Zhang Daiyu replied. “Maybe both.”
“What was he doing on the university campus the night they were all killed?”
“The police think Zhou knew he was the target of surveillance and that he lured the team somewhere they would be vulnerable,” Zhang Daiyu revealed. “They believe he planned the ambush to prevent us from discovering whatever it is he’s up to.”
I didn’t think he’d be so stupid, but Zhang Daiyu’s phone rang before I could respond. She got to her feet and answered, pacing her office while listening to whoever was calling. I’d noticed there were few personal touches in her office. No photos of family or friends, just a framed picture of her in her Beijing Police dress uniform hanging alongside some sort of certificate. Shang Li had told me she was dedicated to her job, and nothing I’d seen so far led me to believe otherwise.
“Okay,” she said after she’d hung up. “Let’s go. I’ve got you into the most secure prison in China.”
“So long as I can get out,” I replied, getting to my feet, wondering how she’d managed to do something so difficult. Chen Ya-ting had said even he couldn’t get into Qincheng. Just who was this woman? I asked myself, studying her.
I didn’t like the wry smile she gave in response to my joking comment. “Now that I can’t promise.”
Chapter 15
It was late afternoon when we arrived at one of the most notorious prisons in the world. Qincheng is a huge facility located in the Changping District, on the edge of Beijing in a valley 3,000 feet above sea level, making the air thin and the sun powerful. Ten cell blocks were arranged in the outline of a square that dominated the surrounding fields. The main entrance featured a large pagoda surmounting two gatehouses, but we weren’t heading there. Zhang Daiyu steered her H6 SUV along the perimeter road, and we passed beneath some of the highest watch towers I’d ever seen.
“Some people joke that it’s a holiday resort for high-ranking party officials who get caught doing bad things,” she said, “but those people are wrong. It’s an awful place. The walls of the cells are padded to prevent inmates taking their own lives by smashing their heads in. It’s no holiday resort.”
I looked at the high concrete wall beside us and wondered what horrors lay on the other side. Built in the late 1950s, the prison had a fearsome reputation for breaking political prisoners and dissidents. The very existence of such a place was an affront to America’s core ideal of freedom of expression. Independence of thought had made the US an economic and military powerhouse but China had taken a different route, governing through a single party, prizing social order and cohesion above all else, subjugating individual rights to the needs of the community. Qincheng was the embodiment of this difference in approach.
I couldn’t help but wonder who Zhang Daiyu had been talking to when I’d been reviewing the case files back at the office. She must have some powerful connections. I hoped they were trustworthy.
We pulled into a small parking lot near the south-eastern corner of the prison complex. A guard in a gatehouse waved her on and she took one of the few empty spaces.
We got out and crossed the perimeter road, heading for a solid steel door.
“If anyone asks, you’re FBI,” she said, and I shot her a surprised glance.
“Why?” I asked.
“Just trust me. You’re with the Bureau, here on an international exchange,” she remarked, pressing a buzzer beside the door.
She looked into a video camera beside the buzzer and spoke in Mandarin. A moment later, the huge four-inch-thick steel door slid open on rollers and I followed her inside.
A pair of young corrections officers sat behind a twenty-foot-long bullet-proof glass window that gave them a commanding view of the staff entrance. I couldn’t understand a single word they said to Zhang Daiyu, but I didn’t need to. They were stern and officious, clearly making her jump through hoops. I smiled blankly and looked around the lobby, which was as wide as the bullet-proof window and about twice as long. There was another smaller steel door in the south wall, opposite the entrance, and near it a custody officer in black pants and white shirt stood beside a walk-through metal detector while a colleague sat by an X-ray machine. The room was painted battleship gray, the drab shade successfully conveying some of the misery and hopelessness that the inmates of this penal institution must feel.
Zhang Daiyu’s voice rose and suddenly took on an imperious edge. She barked at the men behind the thick glass, and whatever she said had the desired effect. One of them responded meekly and waved us toward the south door.
“What did you say?” I asked as we headed for the metal detector.
“I reminded them my uncle doesn’t tolerate inefficiency,” she replied.
“Who’s your uncle?”
“The deputy governor of this prison,” she revealed casually, and I felt a surge of relief at the revelation.
She deposited her keys, purse, and phone in a tray and pushed it into the X-ray machine. I put my wallet, phone, and passport into another and pushed them into the machine, before following her through the metal detector. The corrections officer put on a fresh pair of latex gloves for each of us and conducted a fingertip search inside our mouths. He then removed his gloves and patted us down. If Zhang Daiyu objected to being touched by a man, she didn’t show it. The surveillance and search protocols made Qincheng one of the most secure places I’d ever visited.
Finally satisfied we didn’t pose a risk, the officer waved us on, and we gathered our effects from the X-ray machine.
The south door buzzed and swung open automatically as we approached.
“Your uncle is deputy governor?” I asked.
“It’s not something we ever talk about in our family. People would seek to exploit the connection for good or bad,” she replied. “There he is.”
We stepped into a long corridor secured at both ends by large metal doors, each of which was monitored by three video cameras. A tall slim man in a black suit stood waiting for us.