“Shanghai went through the Great Leap Forward in the fifties, didn’t it?” Chen asked.
“Yeah, Shanghai’s part of China despite what Beijing likes to say,” one of the cops replied, wondering where this was leading.
“So there were blast furnaces set up all over the city like in the country?”
“It was before my time, Captain Chen, but yeah, I think there were,” the man replied.
Chen nodded. It was before his time too but the Great Leap Forward was an idiocy that had left its mark. The idea had been to catch up to the West’s steel production by putting small blast furnaces in almost every commune. Then each commune, or in the city each urban unit, was given a quota of steel ingots they had to produce. The failure to produce the quota resulted in severe punishments for all involved.
One small problem: the geniuses in Beijing never supplied any iron ore from which to smelt steel!
Initially the quotas were met by tossing every conceivable metal object the people owned into the blast furnaces – farm implements, picture frames, cooking utensils, door knobs, etc. This simply resulted in the increase of the quotas, which in turn forced more and more sacrifices from the people. Before the end of the first year there wasn’t a wok left in all of China. By the end of two years almost every available piece of wood had been used to fuel the blast furnaces. The result was the denuding of the countryside and this led to massive desertification of valuable farmland. What land escaped the onslaught of the desert often lay fallow since the wooden farm tools used to work the land had been burned to fuel the blast furnaces. And of course farmers who spend their time working backyard blast furnaces don’t spend their time in the fields. Famine was the most immediate and ultimately the most profound result of the Great Leap Forward. Afamine that gripped the land and was felt throughout the Middle Kingdom. By some estimates as many as sixty million people starved to death as a direct result of the Great Leap Forward.
The final irony, as if idiocy needed irony to make its point, was that over 80 percent of the steel produced was of such poor quality that it was completely unusable. That left a lot of scrap metal around. Artisans quickly learned to work in the metals that were suddenly so readily available – unlike good clay or quality ivory. In the dawning hours of morning, they could be seen by the furnaces trying different mixes of metals in an effort to find workable combinations. Many became quite proficient creating and working with new metals. Chen’s father had been one such artisan. That’s why Chen knew so much about this. After all, as the saying goes: “A dragon is born to a dragon, a phoenix to a phoenix, and a mouse is born with the ability to make a hole in a wall.”
“Can we get a map of Shanghai from the period of the Great Leap Forward showing the exact locations of the blast furnaces?”
“Sure, but . . .”
“Would you mind?” The Shanghai cop was going to question Chen further, then he saw something hard in the man’s eyes.
“Will do, sir.” The man left.
“Thank you,” Chen said, then turned to the other cop. “Get me a list of all registered artists in the Shanghai district. The Great Leap ended in 1958. That’s more than forty years ago. I want to find out where all artists who are presently over fifty-five years of age lived during the Great Leap.”
“So, they would be . . .”
“Old enough to learn basic metallurgy during the Leap.”
“This could take a while.”
“Even the longest journey begins with a single step.”
“We don’t quote Mao much anymore in Shanghai, sir.”
“Nor do we in the country, but sometimes he was right. Just like a broken clock.”
“Sir?”
“Twice a day a broken clock tells the right time.”
“Ah.” The man smiled at Chen then headed out to compile the list. Chen was pleased. These Shanghai cops weren’t half as nasty as he thought they’d be – and they even liked the only joke he knew.
Then he looked at the cage and stopped smiling. There was nothing funny about a baby in a cage.
The door to the Hua Shan Hospital had remained shut for what seemed like hours. No sound. No word from within. Finally the door opened slowly and Wu Fan-zi, still in full bomb protection gear, lumbered out onto the steps. He pulled the suit’s heavy headpiece off and let it drop to the ground with a thud. Then, still without saying a word, he re-opened the hospital door and went back inside. When he reemerged, he was carrying a large plaster fresco, almost five feet tall and a foot across. The lower half of it was still covered in flimsy brown wrap.
Wu Fan-zi raised the thing over his head – looking to Angel Michael like Moses raising the tablets in rage upon seeing the Israelites worshipping the golden calf.
Wu Fan-zi’s mouth opened and he shouted in fury, “What idiot had this delivered to the reception desk?”
Fong felt Lily’s hand slip from his. He looked toward her but she was running up the steps yelling at Wu Fan-zi to be careful with that – that it was an antique.
As she grabbed the fresco from Wu Fan-zi the wrapping came loose and exposed the entirety of the piece.
Angel Michael gasped. The exposed section revealed a beautifully rendered figure of Prometheus, the god who had stolen fire from the other gods and given it to man.
What little doubt Angel Michael had about his mission vanished. He whispered a prayer of thanks for this sign – this reassurance – and faded back into the crowd – so pleased with himself that he didn’t notice the round-bellied white man with the camcorder not twenty yards away – or the fact that he’d dropped the note he had in his left hand. As Angel Michael effortlessly moved through the street traffic he thought, “The Hua Shan Hospital’s abortion clinic could wait for another day. After all, there were so many other dark places in this town of eighteen million souls.”
Fong closed the door to their apartment and before Lily could even put the fresco down Fong was on her, “What’s wrong with you? You’re a police officer. It’s illegal to own something like that. And to have it delivered to the hospital was just plain stupid.”
The last word had come out so forcefully that he cringed, but he refused to back down. He was happy that the baby was at his mother-in-law’s.
“So!” he demanded.
Lily didn’t say anything. She turned from him and looked out the window at the grass courtyard – such a luxury in this city of pavement.
Then the phone rang. Fong grabbed it. He listened for a moment then shouted into the mouthpiece, “What!” The desperation in his voice made Lily turn to him. He was ghostly pale as he hung up the phone.
“What?” Lily asked carefully.
Fong had to steady himself against the bureau.
“What?” Lily asked again but even more quietly.
Fong shook his head trying to clear it, then looked at Lily. He held out his arms to her and she slowly moved toward him.
He held her tight. Very tight.
“What was that, Fong?” she asked, a tremble in her voice.
“It was the hospital.”
“The Hua Shan Hospital?”
“Yes.”
“A bomb, Fong?”
“No.”
Lily relaxed a little, slumping against him.
“Another cage . . . with a fetus.” Lily stifled a cry. “In the third abortion surgery. Directly below your office.”
“But no bomb?”
“No bomb.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the commotion caused by your fresco arriving scared him off.”
Lily pulled away a bit. “Maybe it did?”
“Maybe . . .” Fong said, “it did.” Fong turned to go.
“Do you need me at the hospital?”
“Soon.”
“See if the head nurse from the People’s Twenty-Second Hospital was seen, Fong.”
“Good point, Lily. Very good point. . . . Lily?” He hesitated.