"People here would have been scared too," Hulan said. "How do you explain to your new comrades that you're getting money from foreign imperialists?"
"Without question it was dangerous," Henry agreed, "but you can always find a crack, and if you're smart, and Sun Can was, you learn how to hide your money, live frugally, and spend carefully. And you have to remember, I wasn't sending a fortune, just fifty or a hundred here and there. It was enough to buy him food, enough to get him to college, and later, as China became increasingly corrupt, enough to get himself out of various jams."
Again Hulan thought about Sun's dangan. Sun had taken Henry's money for years. If he was a true Communist, how could he have done this? Could he have turned the money in to the government? Not according to the dangan. So he must have squirreled it away, which had to explain how he'd been able to buy his way out of trouble during the Cultural Revolution. But how could it not have come to light? Could he have used his stash to buy his way into the file, hire someone to make the critical changes, and clean up his past?
"Not one word of what you've said reassures me," David said, verbalizing what Hulan was thinking, "because in a sense you've been paying Sun bribes for over fifty years."
"I was helping a friend!" Henry sputtered. "What I sent him was nothing compared to what he'd given me. He saved my life! Can't you see that?"
"I see a nice man who tried to do the right thing, who may have chosen to call an apple an orange-a bribe a gift-and in doing so became a pawn in Sun's game."
"You are blind and stupid," Henry retorted.
The two men scowled at each other. Henry was the first to break eye contact by standing and going to check the fax machine. Still, nothing had come through. He came back to his seat, strapped himself in, and looked out the window. David too looked out the window, putting aside all he had heard and plotting their next moves. Once the plane landed, they would need to proceed quickly and efficiently. He also thought about Hulan. No matter what she said, he could see that something was wrong with her. She looked hot even in this air-conditioned environment. She was falling asleep every chance she got, and her mind didn't seem all there. He needed to get all this over with so he could get her to a doctor.
As they had done many times before, Taiyuan airport authorities gave Mr. Knight's plane permission to land, which it did without incident. But from this point all activity associated with Mr. Knight's Gulfstream deviated from anything they had seen before. Fortunately, they showed no curiosity about this. They didn't even come out to investigate why no one except a solidly built Chinese man who looked suspiciously like a law enforcement officer stepped off the plane, trotted across the tarmac, exited the terminal, bargained fiercely and paid handsomely to "rent" a car from a driver (which really meant that Lo flashed his MPS credential and made a few bone-chilling threats), then drove back around through the airport's south gate, back across the tarmac, parked, then disappeared back into the private jet, where there appeared to be no further activity.
Inside the plane the minutes dragged on as everyone waited for Anne Baxter Hooper's fax to come through. One by one they checked to see if all of the fax lines were plugged into the right places. David became increasingly convinced that the call was being blocked in some way, but Hulan-who'd awakened from dreams filled with unsettling images of war and the Knight factory floor, of mutilated bodies and dirty money- doubted that could be so. Finally the machine hummed to life and the papers began to spew out. David picked up each sheet as it came through. As with the others, they made no sense by themselves or even when compared to the papers Sun had given him.
Over Henry's objections, they decided not to look for Sun. "If your friend is hiding on Tianlong Mountain, he'll be hard to find," Hulan offered reasonably after Henry had shouted at David that his judgment was clouded and that he was only concerned with saving his own hide. "For now he's probably better off where he is. Let's get this resolved once and for all. If Sun is innocent as you say, Mr. Knight, then we can bring him out safely. If he's guilty, then he'll be found, prosecuted, and shot no matter what we do."
"All I'm saying is that your boyfriend here keeps forgetting that Sun is his client-"
"I've told you twenty times, Henry, I haven't forgotten that-"
"Can we just go?" Hulan asked.
The copilot released the door and stairs. The heat and humidity hit the travelers, instantly drenching them in sweat and sticky, polluted moisture from the torpid air. Lo and Hulan got in the front seat, and Henry and David got in the back, of a Wuhan-manufactured Citroen. Lo drove them back through Taiyuan City, across the anemic Fen River, then south on the toll road. Lo pulled off at the exit for Da Shui Village, and they proceeded west until they reached the crossroads. From here Lo turned again and drove the short distance to Suchee's little farm.
Midday hung heavily on the little compound. The cicadas shrieked with heat, and the roasting air undulated off the fields. Hulan ducked into the house to make sure Suchee wasn't there, then came back outside and called out across the fields to her friend. Shortly they saw Suchee emerge through a distant cornfield, then trudge across another field of her home vegetables. When she reached them, Hulan introduced Henry. Realizing that this was the man who'd hired her daughter and who in her eyes had corrupted the village, Suchee stared at him with steady, unforgiving eyes, ignoring his passable attempts at polite conversation. Without shifting her gaze, Suchee asked Hulan, "Why have you brought him here?"
"We need to see Miaoshan's papers again."
Suchee stood as still as an ox under the beating sun, thinking, weighing. Then she turned and with heavy steps plodded slowly to the little outbuilding where she kept her tools. A few minutes later, she returned and led the way into her house. Lo remained outside to stand guard.
The heat inside was almost unbearable with the temperature hovering at about a hundred and fifteen degrees. Suchee began to unroll the plans, but David said, "Not those. The other papers." Suchee left the factory plans on the table, and as they waited, Henry smoothed them out, looking at them with sadness. David took this time to check on Hulan. She'd dropped onto one of the overturned crates. Her face was pale, and sweat dripped down her neck. She too stared at the factory plans, but David could see that her eyes were unfocused.
"Here," Suchee said sharply, putting the papers with the columns and numbers on the table.
Henry set the fax down on the table next to the other papers, then looked expectantly at David, who hesitated. Sun was his client. If he was guilty, David would be exposing him. But if he was innocent, this was the only way to prove it. Reluctantly he reached into his briefcase, pulled out Sun's papers, and set them on the table with the others. The four of them stared at the papers, trying to decipher them. After a painful moment Suchee turned away. But to the others a pattern began to emerge. Ann's fax really was the key, providing the various bank names, account numbers, and pathways between the SUN GAN accounts and the dummy corporations.
Each week monies had left the main Knight International account from the Bank of China branch in Taiyuan. From here varying amounts had traveled into other accounts in the same branch, where they never stayed for more than a day. These accounts were the ones that matched Suchee's list and used the Sam amp; His Friends characters to spell out SUN GAN. Then these monies were wired abroad to what looked to be Sun's actual accounts in the U.S. However, Sun's actual account numbers meant absolutely nothing in the scheme. They had been placed in the columns next to the names of the dummy corporations only to deceive, which they had done quite successfully. This was where Keith's key provided another list of accounts. These covered an unusual spectrum of primarily West Coast American- and Asian-owned institutions, the first letters of which also spelled out SUN GAN-Sumitomo, Union, National, Glendale Federal, American, and Nippon Kogyo Ginko. The monies had stayed in these accounts sometimes for a day, sometimes for as much as two months, but then they'd been moved again, traveling through another series of accounts in the United States, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, and, finally, back to China to accounts at the Bank of China, the China Industrial Bank, and the China Agricultural Bank in Taiyuan. By the time the monies reached these institutions, they'd been perfectly laundered, appearing as pristine American dollars deposited directly into the Chinese accounts of Henry Knight. The proof was irrefutable.