“Do we have an operative who can manage that?”
“Yes.” Richard looked out at the mountains. “She won’t like it, but it’s time to activate her for the sake of her dead lover.”
“The fireman?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s she, now?”
“In Hong Kong.”
“Still with the police force?” the young man asked unable to hide the suspicion in his voice.
“She’s an arson investigator there, not exactly a normal cop.”
“You want me to contact her?”
“No. I’ll do it, but I want you to activate your people in Shanghai. We may need their help to rescue Xi Luan Tu.”
The younger man nodded then tossed a piece of the croissant to the raven. The bird ignored it and stared at the Chinese men as if wondering what could have brought these two to his domain.
“Fly to my brother,” Richard said in his heart. “Tell him we’re coming to get him.” To the surprise of both men the great bird cawed loudly, flapped its wings and took flight. Richard watched him ascend a thermal then head east. “From the Golden Mountain to the Middle Kingdom,” Richard thought, but said nothing.
Richard took a deep breath and allowed himself a moment of reflection. A looking back at the tumult of events that had brought him inevitably to this mountaintop university on the outskirts of Vancouver Canada. He knew that Dalong Fada is now the popular name for the movement that is one tradition within Xulian, ancient methods to cultivate the mind and keep the body healthy. Years ago, however, Xulian picked up a religious association, so groups adopted a new word for their practices – qigong (qi meaning life energy and gong meaning cultivation of energy). But Richard realized that Dalong Fada, no matter what its name, is far more than the series of physical exercises that structure the centre of the practice. As its leader has admitted, Dalong Fada is a way of life. Its methods of insight and health for the body and mind have attracted a large and loyal following.
Every successful political movement (and since its modern inception in the early nineties, Dalong Fada has been incredibly successful, growing from a few practitioners to many millions of followers) gets to a point where it is seen as an opponent to the power structure. When that happens, those in power attack the upstart movement. The movement then splinters into those who propel its values and ideas and those who protect those values and ideas. It’s the inevitable division in any successful movement between faith and force. For the faithful, like Richard, it becomes the classic deal with the devil, in this case, the military arm of Dalong Fada, which is under the control of the young peasant from Hunan Province – the young man with the fancy clothes and open-toed sandals.
The sound of young women’s voices made Richard turn. Over by the reflecting pool with the obscenely large piece of jade in its centre, three young women had taken off their tops and hopped into the water to cool themselves. “What would they do to cool themselves off in the stifling heat and humidity that is a Shanghai summer,” Richard wondered, “remove their skins?”
The e-mail wasn’t a surprise to Joan Shui, but it threw her world into a tailspin, like a plane whose jet engine had just ingested a large bird.
It was too soon. Wu Fan-zi, her Shanghanese lover, had only been dead seven months. His birthday, which she had celebrated with Fong and the Canadian lawyer Robert Cowens, was the last time she’d been in Shanghai.
She curled in on herself. She thought for a moment about pulling out her phonebook – what she used to think of as her book of dates. Comfort, the oblivion of sex, being the object of desire seemed momentarily the only way out.
Shanghai. Fuck. She looked at her recently refurnished condo on the forty-third floor of her building on Hong Kong’s Braemar Hill Road. This was real. Shanghai was . . . she didn’t know the right word for what Shanghai was, but she really wasn’t sure that she was ready to go back there yet. Wu Fan-zi’s face would be everywhere she looked.
And this time, Fong would be the enemy.
She checked her coded e-mail message a second then a third time. They definitely wanted her in Shanghai and no doubt they knew how to get her there. There was a long list of instructions, but the gist of them was that she was to deliver money and papers that would aid in the escape of Dalong Fada’s foremost organizer – Xi Luan Tu, Richard Lee’s brother. And, by the by, China’s most wanted man.
CHAPTER SEVEN
After unceremoniously kicking Shrug and Knock out of the sweltering meeting room, Fong sat at one end of the large oval table waiting for the others to arrive. At least there hadn’t been any evidence on the table for Shrug and Knock to snoop at. “Count the small blessings,” he reminded himself as he allowed his mind to drift. First to other meetings in this room then to a place in his memory he hadn’t visited for a very long time. He was sitting across his office desk from a middle-aged Englishman. Alternating waves of guilt and relief crossed the man’s handsome angular face. “You can go now, Mr. Paulin,” Fong repeated. “We know you didn’t have anything to do with the death of your wife. You were lucky.” The man stood slowly and headed toward the door. Fong rose from his chair. When he did, Mr. Paulin stopped in mid-stride as if suddenly he had become the icon for “Walk.”
Fong said, “We know you didn’t kill your wife, Mr. Paulin, but we know you wanted her dead. To be exact, we know that you were getting ready to plan her death, but an out-of-control taxi on Wolumquoi Lu solved your problem, didn’t it?”
Mr. Paulin didn’t move – couldn’t move – as if a brittle wire from Fong’s heart to his connected the two men. Then the wire snapped. Mr. Paulin reassumed his stature and looked down on Fong – not just from a height but from a long-held sense of racial superiority. “Can I go, Officer, or is there something else you want to say to me?”
“You can go, Mr. Paulin.”
“Good.”
“But don’t think of coming back to Shanghai, Mr. Paulin.”
The man whirled on Fong, clearly about to defend his right as a British citizen to come and go as he wished, to do business where he damned well pleased – but all he said was, “Anything else?”
“Yes.” Fong made him wait for it. Then on the off breath he said, “Murder eats away the heart. It was only chance that saved you from killing your wife. Don’t forget that. And remember that chance does us a favour once but charges us twice. You owe fortune twice now, Mr. Paulin.”
Fong held out the man’s passport. “You’ll need this to leave China. You have six hours to be gone from the Middle Kingdom. Starting from this very moment.”
Mr. Paulin slammed the door as he left Fong’s office. Fong counted to twenty then released his breath and turned to the window. On the other side of the glass was the world famous Bund and across the Huangpo River the Pudong, which was in short order becoming the very centre of the miracle of economic revival that was Shanghai. He looked at the shiny new buildings but was unimpressed. “Maybe just because I’m getting older,” he said aloud to the empty room and leaned his head against the cool windowpane. He was having more and more trouble keeping the world’s evil at bay. The mangled body of Mrs. Paulin that they had extracted from the wrecked taxicab would now wake in the morning with him and accompany him to sleep at night – as would the relieved look on her husband’s face. So many souls tucked beneath his skin, fighting for space in the membranous sack around his heart. So much ghostly weight.
Fong looked up. The room was filled with officers waiting for him. He wondered how long he had indulged in his memory.
Li Chou was at the far end of the oval table. His men were on either side of him. Lily sat halfway up one side with her young assistant. Chen sat across from her with Fong’s people.