“What Fong?”
“I’d hang the fresco on the other side of the window so the figure is turned toward the centre of the room, not the side. It’s exquisite, Lily. Really special.”
He smiled.
She smiled back.
Then he took a long look at her and wondered what his life would be like without her. “Call Chen. I want him at the hospital.”
As Fong approached the Hua Shan Hospital he was once again met by the head of hospital security. The man’s mouth opened but Fong put up a hand for him to stop. Something had struck an odd chord in Fong. A very odd chord.
He scanned the steps. Wu Fan-zi had been over there – the head of hospital security had been exactly where he was now – that had spurred Fong’s memory – but memory of what?
“What?” he screamed at himself as Chen’s car screeched to a halt and the ugly young cop ran up to him.
“Where is it, sir?”
“In one of the operating theatres.”
“Near where Lily works?” Chen asked. If Fong hadn’t been so preoccupied with his memory he would have noted the obvious terror in Chen’s voice. The terror of a man frightened of losing a lover, not of a man in fear of losing a friend.
The head of security ushered Fong and Chen into the third operating room. The surgical team was standing to one side. The security chief stepped forward and pointed to one of the lower cabinets.
Fong and Chen leaned down and there behind stacks of surgical supplies was the cage complete with fetus. Fong pushed aside the supplies and pulled out the cage. On the metal sheathing that was wrapped around the fetus was etched a phrase, in English: THIS BLASPHEMY WILL STOP. THE LIGHT WILL COME.
Fong looked around the room and spotted the window high up on the south wall. “Do the ORs all have windows?”
“One other does, the other four don’t.”
Fong grunted, then turned to the head of security. “Has the room been swept?”
“The whole area, sir. If there’s a bomb here we would have found it. Wu Fan-zi has been summoned.”
“Twice in one day, he’ll be thrilled.” The man nodded and raised his shoulders in a what-can-you-do gesture. Fong turned to the surgical team. “Who found this . . . thing?”
A young nurse stepped forward. Chen waited for Fong to begin his interrogation. When he didn’t, Chen took down the basics. While he did, Fong hurried out of the room and ran back to the front steps of the hospital. That’s where Chen found him twenty minutes later. Fong was standing at the bottom of the wide set of concrete steps scanning the now almost entirely empty vista in front of him. Chen approached him carefully. Without looking at the younger man Fong said, “Wu Fan-zi was over there, the head of hospital security was right there, Lily was beside me.” Fong looked around. “The crowd had gathered there behind the police line . . . the . . . the . . . the man . . . the white man . . . with the video camera had been over there.”
After a prolonged silence, Chen prompted, “Sir?”
“Shit,” Fong said aloud.
“What, sir?”
“A tourist-” Fong thought for a moment. “An American. White shoes. White belt. Golf shirt. Reading glasses on a silver chain around his neck. Red hair – though all Westerners seem to have red hair. Freckles. A Fujitsu video camera.” Fong was moving fast now and shouting orders to the nearby cops, “Find him for me. Start with the local five-star hotels. Set up a command post in the lobby of the Hilton. I want the hotels to know that we mean business.”
“Sir, should I continue to track down the cage?” asked Chen.
Fong stopped and looked at his ugly companion. “Take ten men. Tape off the entire area. I want every scrap of anything brought to me. Then you follow the cage, I’ll follow the tourist.”
Chen handed Fong the notes he’d taken from the OR nurse. “I had her wait for you, sir.”
“Thanks.”
The young nurse was country-round and her eyes were dark saucers of fear.
Fong sat opposite her in a small office that security had provided. “Would you like some tea?” Fong asked. She shook her head. “Fanta?” Again she shook her head. Her mouth opened and a few remarkably quiet words came out: “I’m afraid I may vomit.”
“Why? What have you done?” Fong asked.
Her “nothing” came out with a small quantity of spittle.
Fong knew that vulnerable witnesses were sometimes valuable witnesses. “Fine,” Fong said. “Were you close with the head nurse of the abortion clinic at the People’s Twenty-Second Hospital?”
“Who?”
“The head nurse of the People’s Twenty-Second Hospital.”
“Why would I know this person?” she demanded.
“No reason,” Fong answered, then changed tack. “Do you like your work here?”
She checked his face for traces of condemnation and seeing none said, “We are helping these women. Most of them are just girls.” Fong said nothing. He was waiting for more and it finally came. “Sometimes, though, it’s hard. So many. So small. Sometimes so . . .”
Fong prompted with the word, “Lifelike?”
Anger blossomed on the young nurse’s face. “How dare you! We are not killers here! We are . . .” but once again she ran out of words.
Fong got the nurse to give him the basic facts about the use of the operating room in which the cage with the fetus had been found. It had been closed down at 10 p.m. the previous night like all the ORs. But in the morning they hadn’t opened up the room because there had been a bad smell that they couldn’t locate. So they’d ordered in a cleaning crew and doubled up the use of the other ORs.
Fong thanked her and went to the hospital’s housekeeping office. An elderly man showed him the charts for cleaning rotation. As Fong leafed through the papers the man said, “It’s almost impossible to keep people at this kind of work now that the government doesn’t force people to do what needs doing.”
“That so?” Fong asked looking up from the paperwork.
“It’s so. This past week I’ve had six new faces and already I’ve lost three. Nobody wants to clean up anymore. Why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for?”
“Who was supposed to clean the OR?-”
“The one with the thing in it?”
“Yeah, that one.”
The old man flicked over a page and came up with a name.
“Is he new?” Fong asked.
“No. Been with us almost two months. A veteran.”
“What does he look like?” asked Fong.
“A peasant. What do peasants look like – mud that got up and walked.”
“Young, old, male, female, what?”
“Youngish. Male.”
“Where is he now?” The man gave him a blank stare. Fong snapped open his cell phone, “Surround the hospital. No one is to go in or out.” Then he turned to the elderly man, “Find that man, now!”
CHAPTER TEN
Larry arrived at his suburban Connecticut home the second night after the meeting in Virginia and fell to his knees in the darkened front hall. He hadn’t slept since the meeting and its startling news about Angel Michael’s activities in Shanghai. Already newspapers were full of lurid stories. Amassive right-to-life campaign swung into action supporting the Shanghai bombings with startling figures on the rate of abortion in China. These figures were immediately rebuked by pro-choice advocates. Abortion was back on the front page – just as the old man who Matthew called his father wanted at this time of a crucial Congressional election.
That first night Larry’s wife had suggested they pray. He had done his best but he was unable to clear his head of the images that had taken root there. A woman on a table – a fetus in a cage beneath. Larry had no doubt that abortion was murder and that it was the most open manifestation of the wrong turn that society had taken. That it must be stopped before it ushered in the devil himself.
And Larry knew of the devil and his awful works. Until the meeting two nights ago in Virginia he was certain that his profoundly retarded CP-wracked daughter in the next room was the devil’s price for his momentary lapse into faithlessness. But since the meeting he was less sure of that – of anything. He caught an image of himself in the hall mirror. His classical “Yalie” looks were deserting him. Yalie looks he thought appropriate for a Yale man to have – even faded or fading Yalie looks.