Ginger shrugged. “We’re finding out. But, you know. There’s chaos and chaos. Things could be worse.”
“But they could get worse! That’s what we have to try to head off!”
“I agree.” Ginger was looking at her with the same expression John Semple had so often displayed: amusement. In this case, perhaps a little friendlier amusement. Now she looked at Ta Shu. “What do you think? Can we form a little brain trust up here, see what we can do?”
“I would like that,” Ta Shu said. “As to my contacts, I’m not sure I can contact them. Peng Ling hasn’t been answering my calls. But I’d like to keep helping my two young friends, if I can. For the moment they are free, thanks to Ms. Tong here, but the way Chinese agents keep showing up and snatching them has me convinced that people very high up in some part of the Chinese government want Chan Qi silenced. If they can’t take her into custody, I’m afraid they may try to kill her.”
“Any idea who they are?”
“Not really. One or more of the security agencies, no doubt. Possibly the military, or public security. Or state security. Her father Chan Guoliang may get selected as the next president in the Party congress that’s going on in Beijing now, so I presume the people going after his daughter are his enemies. But that doesn’t clarify things all that much, because he has several rivals for the leadership. There’s the current president’s chosen successor, Huyou. And then there’s Peng Ling herself. She’s a friend of mine, an old student, and she sent me up here to help Chan Qi. But—I’m not completely confident Peng is on my side, or—how can I say it? Supportive of the people I support.” He grimaced unhappily at the thought.
“Sounds like you don’t know much more than we do,” Ginger said. “It would be good if you could sort that out, about Peng I mean.”
Ta Shu stared at her for a while.
“It’s possible,” he continued more slowly, as if reluctant to say it, “that Peng Ling has been using me to locate and control Chan Qi. I think that’s possible. But she may be trying to do that in order to help Chan Guoliang. She’s been allied with Chan on the standing committee, and it could be they are cooking up something together. They are opposed to Shanzhai and his man Huyou, who are linked to rightist elements. Or, it could be that Peng has plans of her own. I can’t be sure about this, I’m sorry to say. Peng sent a couple of agents up here with me, and my friend Fred just told me he thought they were the men who killed Chang at the south pole.”
“What agency did these two say they were working for?”
“They said Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. That’s one of Peng’s units. And they convinced your people here to give them permission to take Chan Qi, along with one of your own citizens!”
“What are these agents’ names?”
“Bo and Dhu.”
Ginger tapped around on her pad for a while.
Finally she said, “You aren’t the only one having trouble figuring things out. There’s a lot of confusion right now.”
“Indeed.” Ta Shu was still regarding her closely, and now he repeated, “Some American in authority here handed Chan Qi and an American citizen over to Chinese security agents, just an hour ago. Do you know who authorized those Chinese agents to take the young pair into custody?”
Ginger tapped out the end of her message. “Yes.”
They waited for her to say more. Valerie wondered all of a sudden if she had brought Ta Shu right into the lion’s den. Not to mention herself. She had helped the two captives escape on her own recognizance; to trust that Ginger would approve of this was a roll of the dice, a snap judgment based on very little evidence. But they needed help now, and something about Valerie’s earlier interaction with Ginger had given her the feeling it was worth a try.
Finally Ginger said, “It wasn’t me. Our head of station made that call. Sam Houston. My boss.” She read her pad for a while, tapped some more. “I’m not sure who in Washington told him to do that. Meanwhile there’s someone in Chinese intelligence, in China as far as we can tell, who has just recently begun sending messages. Lots of messages, like a bot. A lot of people are getting these messages, both here and on Earth. I don’t know who this person is, or what they’re trying to do. But I replied to them right away, and I’m hoping we’ll hear from them again. If I can establish communications with them, we might have some kind of new contact in China. And I have some other lines to tug on.” She paused to read more. “Like a friend at Shackleton.” Then she tapped again and was speaking to her wristpad. “Jiang Jianguo! Good to hear from you, thanks for getting back to me.”
“Good to hear from you, Ginger!” Valerie recognized Jiang’s voice, even though it was coming from Ginger’s wrist, and speaking English.
“Listen, we have a situation. Some of your security people are throwing their weight around up here, and my head of station is letting them do it.”
“Are they calling themselves Bo and Dhu?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry to hear they are troubling you too! But I think I can help you deal with them. We’ve assembled good evidence that they are the ones who murdered our Chang Yazu.”
“That seems to fit.”
Ta Shu said, “Fred Fredericks said that he thinks he remembers seeing them do it.”
“Good to know,” Jiang replied. “These two were the men who joined Li when Chang was meeting with Fredericks. They go by several different names, apparently, but a source of mine in the Great Firewall just correlated several of their covers. When they were here before, using the names Gang and Su, they left traces of the chemicals they used to attack Chang. It was a two-part sarin mix, one part called DF, the other an activator not dangerous by itself. When combined the two activate the poison. On that day, Gang and Su each had one chemical on his hand, and when they shook hands with Fredericks the two chemicals combined there, and Fredericks then shook hands with Chang. Looks like the activator got spread on Fredericks’s hand before the DF, so he had a little protection. Anyway, when he shook hands with Chang, it was lethal for Chang, but Fredericks just survived. We now have camera evidence, chemical evidence, and documentary evidence. It’s a solid case. So if you can send those two agents back to us, we can arrest them and hold them here, no matter their positions in China.”
“Do they work for Peng Ling?” Ta Shu asked anxiously.
Inspector Jiang’s voice sounded surprised. “No! At least not that I know of. My informant in China says they are with the Central National Security Commission, which is a secret unit of the Ministry of State Security. That connects them more obviously to Minister Huyou.”
Ta Shu heaved a sigh of relief. “I’m glad to hear that.”
Ginger regarded him for a while. “You still can’t be sure, you know.”
“I know.” He shrugged unhappily. “I’m going to try to believe it.”
“Who wanted Chang dead?” Valerie said to Ginger’s wristpad. “Why was he killed?”
Inspector Jiang replied, “We think it was because of the private communications device that Mr. Fredericks was delivering to him. Chang made the order himself with Swiss Quantum Works. My informant in the Great Firewall told us this, and told us also that the other device was to be delivered to Minister Peng Ling.”
Valerie looked at Ta Shu and saw that he did not seem to catch the implication of this. “So,” she said, “presumably Chang was working with Peng. So killing him isn’t something Peng would have wanted to do.”
“Ah,” Ta Shu said.
“That seems right,” Jiang added. “Also, I’ve been tracing Chang’s employment history back, and ten years ago he worked for Huyou when Huyou was governor of Shaanxi Province. There is an ongoing corruption investigation of that period that has come very close to Huyou himself, and if Chang knew anything about that, he might have been able to convey to Peng and the discipline inspection commission some damaging evidence against Huyou, right when they are in a fight for the succession. So there’s another reason Huyou might have wanted Chang silenced.”