He opened the door to his daughter’s room. For a moment he questioned why he hadn’t climbed the stairs to see his wife. Then he put aside the question. He knew why he was going into his daughter’s room. She lay on her side, twisted, so her body faced the wall. Her head craned back toward the door as he entered. Her eyes, as always, were open and full of pain. Didn’t she ever sleep? Didn’t she ever get relief?
Larry whispered a prayer for forgiveness – but not to God – to her. Then he knelt by her bed and recited his prayers. But for the first time since his relapse he wondered if there really was anyone up there to hear him – or if He was there, if He cared. His daughter’s hand touched his face. He looked up into her dark eyes and searched for a message – anything that said her life was worth the price of her pain.
Then he thought back to his wild days as a student at Yale. To a beach house in West Haven – and a roommate, Joel, who had become an FBI agent. Yes, Yale produced more CIA guys, but it also produced its share of high-ranking FBI agents. He hadn’t seen his roommate for years, but Joel was his class rep so he communicated periodically by group e-mail.
Larry’s daughter rolled over and let out a cry. Her back arched in a vain effort to move away from one of her many sources of pain.
“Like a woman on a surgery table,” he thought. Then he wondered why that thought had come to him. Then he wondered if he should call his roommate – and tell him what? That I’m part of an international conspiracy? No – that this blasphemy must stop!
Yes. This blasphemy must stop. Of that he was sure. The only problem was which blasphemy. Of that Larry was unsure.
His wife found him the next morning asleep in the chair beside their daughter’s bed. The girl’s sheets and blankets were wet; her face was constricted in yet another spasm of pain. As she watched her daughter’s features contort she thought for the thousandth time, “I should never have let Larry talk me out of having the abortion.” Then she apologized to whatever powers could hear her secret thoughts.
Larry’s e-mail note to his college roommate was a botched attempt at circumspection. Not exactly an I-have-a-friend-who letter – but close.
In his austere office in the FBI building, Joel dredged up an impression of his ex-roommate before he proceeded. If even a small fraction of what Larry implied in his e-mail was true, Joel knew he could be in the centre of an immensely complicated international incident. There were just too many people in the Washington office who salivated every time something awful happened to the Chinese. And among those salivating were many who were both powerful and very, very pro-life.
So Joel carefully deleted Larry’s “what-if” e-mail, then its backup, then any history link, checked for cookies, then applied the deep erase available to him as a ranking FBI official. He thought of it as a cleanser. In fact, that’s exactly how it’s marketed on hundreds of porn sites on the Net – Boy Are You In Trouble, Pal – But Buy This Cleanser and She’ll Never Know What You’re Up To!!!
And he forgot about it.
Forgot about it until four days later – when he picked up his morning copy of the Washington Post.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
At first, Shanghai’s five-star hotels ignored the police request to check their guests against the following description: Caucasian male, thirty-five to fifty, overweight, six-foot-one or -two, white belt, white shoes, golf shirt, glasses on a silver chain around his neck, video camcorder. Then they heard about the police command post set up dead in the centre of the Hilton’s lobby. In an effort to keep Shanghai cops out of their own lobbies the luxury hotels started diligently to compare the police description to the appearance of their hotel guests. Soon data began to flow from the hotels to the police.
As it did, Joan Shui, the arson specialist sent by the Hong Kong constabulary, was in a stare-down with an immigration officer at Shanghai’s International Airport, Hong Qiao. She’d already shown the man her Hong Kong passport, a copy of the Shanghai police commissioner’s faxed request, and her Hong Kong constabulary ID. As far as she was concerned, it was enough – fuck, it was more than enough.
Her opinion on this matter was not shared by the hard-faced immigration officer across the table from her. For the third time he asked about her exact origins. For the third time she asked him why he needed to know that information and demanded to see his superior. He refused and allowed his eyes to linger just long enough on the triangle of skin exposed by the undone top button of her blouse so that Joan almost winced. “Funny,” she thought, “stuff like that never used to bother me.”
“I’m a cop. I’ve been asked to help in a serious case of arson in your city.”
“The baby bomber.”
She didn’t nod. She didn’t do anything. To dismiss the fire bombing of an abortion clinic as the work of a “baby bomber” was breathtakingly callous, even for a Chinese male. Before she could help herself she muttered, “Fucking ignorant peasant” – not exactly the most tactful approach to class politics in the People’s Republic of China.
The immigration officer leapt to his feet and began screaming at her. His Shanghanese was so loaded with colloquialisms and colourful local idioms that she only got the gist of the rant – imperialist, running dog capitalist, yeah, yeah, yeah, and yeah. God she wished mainlanders would get past this ancient crap.
The man’s bellowing brought several guards on the run. The guards didn’t bother her, but their drawn Kalashnikovs were another matter. For the briefest moment it occurred to her that should she be shot to death in this situation St. Peter would laugh at her as she approached the pearly gates. “Why didn’t you just tell them your father was Chinese and your mother of indeterminate Northern European heritage? And a whore – such things happen.”
“My background is my business, St. Peter.”
“How quaint of you to think that. But surely you understand that now it is my business too,” he said, his voice filled with a warbling laugh.
On second thought she wasn’t sure if a woman whose last sexual dalliance was little more than a wispy memory of limousines and champagne cocktails would ever get the chance to hear St. Peter laugh.
Then, without warning, the shouting in the office stopped and the weapons were quickly shouldered. The deep voice of Wu Fan-zi ordered the young soldiers back to their stations. Then his bulky frame filled the door. He reminded Joan of the New Zealand rugby players who played for the All Blacks. Not the fleet runners but the solid men in the scrum. She liked solid men. She instantly liked the man in the doorframe though she didn’t even know his name.
When he grabbed her documents from the desk, warned the immigration officer to keep his nose out of police business, and apologized to her for the “inconvenience” – her fondness grew by a full leap if not a bound. Hustling her out of the immigration section he muttered under his breath, “Welcome to Shanghai.” She nodded and smiled. And he had a wry sense of humour – what more could a girl ask for? Then he said, “They found a second fetus in a cage.”
“No bomb?”
“Not yet.”
She stopped smiling. She’d fought to get this assignment because she desperately needed to work on something that had some meaning. She’d had her fill of saving oodles of money for insurance companies that were already richer than some Third World countries. She whispered a silent promise, that this one was different – this one was important.