Fong answered inside Robert’s head: “I am.”
Devil Robert shouted at Angel Michael, “It’s real. No Islam Akhun forgery here.”
Angel Michael gasped and reached upward, toward the scroll.
Holding the Zippo aloft Robert shouted, “Let them go or I light this.”
Angel Michael screamed, “No.”
Robert touched the flame to the treated parchment. The paper whooshed into life, the flame leaping along its length aided by the chemical treatment used to make the scroll appear to be ancient. The paper raced fire across the space like a flash of heat lightning on a moonless night.
All eyes in the room looked up.
Then the part of the scroll that Robert held in his hand burst into flame. The smell of his own burning flesh brought a rush of memory to Robert: No, Mommy. No Mommy no. But now Robert wasn’t sure if it was his brother’s voice or his own.
Angel Michael opened his arms to the burning pathway above him, a luminous smile suddenly appearing on his face. For an instant Robert saw the innocent child Angel Michael had been, not the madman he now was.
Angel Michael put Xiao Ming on the dais then lay down beside her. He turned the baby’s head so she faced away from him. Then he slipped his even-sided cross from his neck and placed it in his mouth.
Fong raced toward the dais, the gun at his side.
Angel Michael raised the swolta knife and moved it toward Xiao Ming’s throat – an arm’s-length away.
A potent thought bloomed in Fong’s mind: “It was a sacrifice – the baby in the construction pit was not made to watch the father die – the baby was sacrificed by the father!”
The swolta touched Xiao Ming’s throat.
Fong raised his gun. But as he pressed the trigger everything changed. Suddenly he was in a modern room with a curved staircase at the far side. Music was playing. People were dressed for a celebration of some sort. Ahand tapped him on the shoulder and he turned. Commissioner Hu, the man in charge when Fong had first joined Special Investigations and who everyone referred to as His Huness, smiled his connected party smile and said to Fong, “Keep your eyes open, you’re here on business.”
The guy always knew how to ruin a good time.
“Right, sir,” Fong said. He was surprised at how young his voice sounded. Then he recognized where this was – no, what this was. It was a party after a performance at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. He and a few of the other candidates for Special Investigations had been tapped to provide security because they were cops and could speak enough English to overhear conversations between the Chinese actors and the many visiting foreign dignitaries.
It was the night that he had first met Fu Tsong, his deceased wife.
The band was playing – something forties, swinging. He moved toward the music and struck up a conversation with one of the men listening. “How was the play?”
“Sensational. This new actress Fu Tsong is truly amazing.”
“What was it?”
“Twelfth Night. She plays a girl who dresses as a boy, then reveals herself at the end as a woman.”
“Sounds like a Peking Opera.”
“In fact, at first I thought it was a Peking Opera then I read the notes in the program.”
“It’s not Peking Opera then?”
“Plot sounds like it but no. British. By a guy named Shakespeare. Hey look, there she is.”
Fong looked. On the sweeping set of stairs stood an extraordinary, delicate creature flanked by two men. She seemed to glide effortlessly down the steps. At the bottom she nodded to the people waiting to talk to her. Then she headed toward the door. Halfway there the band completed their tune. She stopped to offer her applause.
When she did she saw Fong for the first time.
She tilted her head slightly and took a step toward him. He remembered little else except that they had danced together that night in a small bar. Then found a taxi and took it down to the river. They walked till a clear dawn came up over the Huangpo – the Huangpo that led to the mighty Yangtze, that in turn led to the sea. The details of the evening were lost to Fong. It was as if they had happened to someone else.
“It’s ephemeral, Fong,” said Fu Tsong. Then she laughed. “In fact, it could just as easily not have happened at all.”
“Look.”
Fong looked where she pointed. He found himself in the same room, with the same conversations both with his Huness and the man who had seen Twelfth Night. “No. British. By a guy named Shakespeare. Hey look, there she is.”
And there she was again. Fu Tsong glided effortlessly down the sweeping steps. At the bottom she nodded to the people waiting to talk to her and then she headed toward the door just as she had done before. Halfway there the band completed their tune with the exact same ending as the other time. Fu Tsong stopped to offer her applause but this time the band picked up a tag and segued directly into a more modern number.
Fu Tsong threw back her head and laughed as she continued to the door and left – without, even for a moment, casting a glance in Fong’s direction.
Fong looked down – his finger was pulling the trigger of the gun.
The shot thundered in his ears.
Just a glance – or a non-glance and a life changes. The slightest pressure on the metal of a pistol’s trigger and a life ends.
A viciously bright flash – a young man – a beautiful young man – a Chinese man – whose associates called Angel Michael – lay dead on the floor – a single bullet hole in his forehead – an even-sided cross half in and half out of his mouth. There is remarkably little blood. The silence in the room is momentarily profound.
Then the children scream – and life continues.
Fong let the gun fall and turned away. It was a lucky shot. He knew it. He could as easily have killed Xiao Ming as Angel Michael.
Police officers rushed into the room from all sides. Crying children and shouting cops. At the height of the mayhem Fong saw Captain Chen leap up on the dais, grab Xiao Ming, and hold her tight to his chest. Lily was only a step behind him.
But Fong didn’t move toward his wife and child.
He didn’t know why or why his eyes were drawn upward to the black cinder of the scroll that rose on hidden currents and twisted and turned like a thing that although dead – refused to die.
AFTER
Fong wasn’t surprised how out of place Robert Cowens seemed in the small canteen at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. No one in Shanghai has a kitchen so everyone eats in places like the canteen. The food was inexpensive and reasonably good but not really open to the public so it was only the rare foreigner who found their way into such places. Sometimes, because the canteen was connected to the theatre academy, Fong would see foreigners – usually guest directors – seated at the rickety tables picking carefully through the food in front of them. He recalled one such Caucasian who had dragged his translator to the canteen to identify the meat he had been eating for weeks. When the white man came to the table with a dish of the mystery meat, the translator’s face went a little pale. “This,” he’d said pointing at the plate of breaded, deep-fried meat covered in a sweet brown sauce. “This. What kind of meat is this?”
The man’s translator had taken a breath then put on her best smile and said, “Chicken. It’s chicken.”
The man had looked at her and replied, “You won’t understand this but I’ve had chicken every Friday night for my entire life and I’ve never seen a piece of chicken like this.”
The translator had nodded then said, “Ah. But this is thin chicken.”
The man looked at her with a strange expression on his face. “Thin chicken?”
The translator gave a small apologetic smile and raised her arm from the elbow then moved her hand back and forth to indicate the movements of the head of a snake. “Very thin chicken.”