The older man examined Fong’s face in the window’s reflection. Finally he said, “Be careful, Traitor Zhong, be very careful.”
Fong responded quickly, overriding the threat, “Was Mr. Hyland a spy?”
The younger man took a step toward Fong’s back, but the older man shot him a hard look and he stopped. “Why do you want to know that, Traitor Zhong?” asked the older Beijing man calmly.
“Mr. Hyland’s version of Hamlet strikes me as heavy on the spy stuff. Since you guys are the only ones I know who deal with spooks, I thought maybe there was a connection.”
“I doubt that he was spying in any ordinary sense of the term,” said the older man.
“And in an extraordinary sense of the term?”
The older man did that elegant moving thing again then said, “Perhaps.”
“Ah,” said Fong and turned to face the two Beijing men. “Now that we have that cleared up, where exactly were you two clowns on the night of Mr. Hyland’s death, say between 11 a.m. and 6 a.m. the next morning?”
Eventually the Beijing men coughed up alibis. The younger one had been in a K-TV lounge until almost three and the older man had led a seminar on counterterrorism late into the night in one of Beijing’s many Shanghai safe houses. Both were able to supply several names and addresses of people who could corroborate their stories.
Upon completing his answer and then threatening Fong in an entirely predictable fashion – Fong thought of it as just more blah-blah from Beijing – the younger Beijing man shouted a final warning and stormed out of Fong’s office.
Fong stood and once more turned toward the window – this meeting was over.
Fong glanced up into the pane and was surprised to see the older Beijing man take a quick step toward him.
Fong turned.
Then the younger Beijing man reappeared in his office door. The older man stopped in his tracks, shouted a threat that Fong found oddly half-hearted then whirled on his heel and left the office followed closely by his younger partner.
Fong watched their retreating figures and wondered if he needed to recalibrate where he thought they – or at least the older Beijing man – might fit in all this mess.
And what a mess it was. Geoff’s death was not a suicide, although he had no idea who murdered him or why.
Fong reminded himself that Geoff was smart. Geoff had tried to communicate with him through his business card – maybe he had tried to communicate in other ways. Geoff’s Hamlet certainly was concerned with spying and his two Beijing keepers were clearly more interested in Geoff’s comings and goings than in his death. “The play’s the thing” Fong remembered from the front of Geoff’s business card. It would be like Geoff to leave messages on both sides of the card.
He checked that his office door was locked, noted that Shrug and Knock was gone then headed toward the old theatre on the campus of the Shanghai Theatre Academy. Despite the fact that he had seen Geoff’s Hamlet twice since the director’s death, Fong had the gnawing feeling that he had overlooked something – something obvious.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
After two days and nights travelling on local trains and buses, Joan Shui was 20 miles south of Shanghai. That night, she slept in the back room of a peasant’s hut on some dirty straw with the pigs and two other small furry animals she couldn’t identify, although she was told they were harmless.
She had been passed smoothly from one Dalong Fada escort to the next and, although the officials’ demand to produce her papers increased as she neared Shanghai, no one had asked her to open the smelly bundle she carried on her back. In fact, the stinkier she got, the less interested officials were in her.
A pig cuddled up to her back, oh well, a little more stink couldn’t but help. Yes dear, in this profession body odour is your friend. As she drifted off, she could just make out the angry whispers of this last escort’s wife, who evidently was not as loyal to the cause as her husband.
Joan awoke in the middle of the night. Without a watch she had no idea what time it was. A second pig had nestled into her back and was snoring loudly in her ear. She’d heard worse at the Calden Inn. But it wasn’t the pig’s snoring that had awakened her.
Just for a moment Joan Shui couldn’t catch her breath, as if her lungs had, for an instant, forgotten how to work.
Fong sat at the back of the old theatre. The day’s heat had been trapped in the ancient building. Now, at almost two in the morning, it was obvious that the heat would keep its hold on the building through the night. Fong rolled up the bottoms of his pant legs so they were over his knees. Not a lot of relief, but some. He forced himself to think through the last time he had seen Geoff alive. It began with the Canadian director coming onstage while Fong was at the back of the auditorium. It ended with Geoff slipping Fong his business card, on the back of which were penned the words: Help me, Fong.
Fong sat in the same seat now that he had sat in then and slowly rewound his mental tape, making himself put the events in sequence. Geoff had said, “Fuck me with a stick, what brings your sorry ass here?” Fong had noted at the time how odd the words were, coming from Geoff’s mouth. Then Geoff had called for a run of the play from the top. He’d hopped off the stage and headed toward Fong. He was followed by his translator Da Wei at a respectful distance and then by the two Beijing keepers and the two Screaming me-me’s.
Fong stopped – well no, not stopped, startled into a new kind of waking. Was that the first time Geoff had known he was sitting there at the back of the theatre? If Geoff were trying to communicate with him, which was evident from the plea for help on the back of his business card, then he may have been sending messages from the very first time he knew Fong was watching. It had never occurred to Fong before but perhaps Geoff knew he was in the theatre from the very moment, the instant, that he’d arrived. It had been that way in the past. Geoff had that kind of intuitive knowledge of the spaces in which he worked.
Fong remembered a moment right after he arrived when Geoff seemed literally to stop in midair. Was that Geoff’s response to knowing he was sitting at the back of the theatre? Maybe. If that were true, then Geoff’s “Fuck me with a stick” may have been said to bring the two Beijing keepers into the open. To show them to Fong so that he would watch his mouth. That made some sense. Fong went back to his mental tape this time looking to see if there was other communication intended for him before Geoff claimed to discover him sitting in the back of the auditorium. Before “Fuck me with a stick,” Geoff had talked to a few actors, set the fight director to work on the fight between Hamlet and Laertes and . . .
Fong felt a slither of cold make its way down his spine. Despite the heat he shivered. Geoff had spent all that time with the unusually large leather pouch used by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to transport the letter instructing the ship captain to murder Hamlet. Geoff hardly ever bothered with props. In fact, Fong had never seen Geoff so much as touch a prop onstage, let alone be so concerned about something as inconsequential as a pouch. And he had done it onstage. Not in the wings with a props man but onstage – so Fong could see.
Fong rose and walked slowly toward the stage. A single bare light bulb hung from the ceiling upstage of the proscenium arch. It, too, seemed to sway with the turning of the earth – as Geoff had in the end.
Fong hopped up on the stage, turned and looked out at the darkness of the auditorium – a cavern drawing him, an emptiness needing filling. No, demanding filling. He had an impulse to speak, to open his heart, to unburden himself into the maw of the theatre – but he didn’t. He knew he hadn’t earned that right.
He crossed upstage of the proscenium arch stage right and flicked on the work lights. Harsh incandescence filled the cluttered space. Behind him Fong saw the props cage. He looked at the cheap lock. It took him a few minutes and a deep splinter to his left index finger, to force the hinges to pop.