Where a penis should have been only a frozen black blotch remained. He stepped back. Chen noticed. “Sir?” All he did was point at the rip in the man’s pants. Chen crossed to the dead man as the specialist made his way to the door.
The soldier entered the party man’s boat.
“Done, soldier?” he asked holding the cell phone against his chest.
“I put your suitcase where you told me to, sir.”
“Good,” he said and raised the cell phone to his lips. The soldier stayed for a moment hoping for more than a job-well-done smile. But that was all he got for putting the party man’s metal case in the bowels of the boat.
The last room held the Americans. Two men. Both elderly, although he found it hard to be sure of Caucasians’ ages. These men looked as if they were lying on their backs on the large, plush bed so they could admire their reflection in the ornate mirror that hung from the ceiling. But on closer examination the specialist saw the cut line on their necks between the Adam’s apple and the clavicle. He reached over one of the bodies and put his hands into the man’s hair.
The frozen blood resisted him. So he pulled harder.
The head came free of the torso with a sickening plop. He felt his gorge rise and he stumbled back against the far wall. He sank to his knees, his head in his hands. He concentrated and tried to slow his breathing. To collect himself. Then he felt the hair in his hand and looked through his fingers. The dead man’s eyes were open and looking right into his.
He dropped the head and looked up. There, on the mirror over the dead Americans’ bed in bold red paint, were slashed the characters of the feared 14K Triad. Beneath the name was their motto which had first appeared in the Opium Wars: Foreign Devils and Traitors Die.
Up on deck, the specialist leaned over the ice-coated rail. The shoreline wasn’t that far away. The sun was setting over the city of Ching. A large cultivated island was far off to one side. It all seemed so peaceful. So . . . so romantic. Yeah, sure. Seventeen dead men – romantic.
A single bird dropped from the sky and plunged through a hole in the ice. Moments later it appeared with a fish in its beak. It stretched its long neck and tilted backward. The fish must have been positioned badly because the bird tossed the wriggling thing into the air. The fish arched as it glinted in the sun. Then the bird grabbed it again – this time by the head. The bird’s dinner, still squirming, was pulled in by the bird’s throat muscles, then down into the stillness of its belly.
So alive. Then suddenly so dead.
The specialist turned back to the boat. No doubt there had been a lot of activity on board before the murderers arrived. A celebration perhaps. A party. For what? A celebration then sudden swooping death.
Chen’s men were busily tagging garments and evidence bags as the specialist carefully descended the ladder and left the ship. Moments later a muffled sound came from the belly of the boat – no more than a cough in the blowing wind – and the boat began to list. Chen and his men got off the vessel quickly. Shortly afterward, it began to sink beneath the lake’s icy surface.
The specialist watched the boat enter the nothingness. And he shivered. Then he stopped and began to plan. He knew what Beijing wanted. He also knew what he wanted, no, needed. Slowly, as he watched the last parts of the boat disappear beneath the dark waters of the lake, a plan came into focus.
In Beijing the speaker phone announced the sinking of the boat. The tallish Han Chinese man smiled. But only briefly. This was far from over and he knew it.
Three hours later, at the Ching police station, Chen showed the specialist the documents that had been taken from the men.
One of the Taiwanese had a ship pilot’s licence. “Well, that settled one question. Only five thousand left,” he thought.
Another document showed a receipt for the boat rental. The specialist circled the name of the boat operator. In another wallet the specialist found a receipt for a large amount of prepared food. The specialist circled the name and address of the restaurant in Ching.
Much of the rest of the material was in languages the specialist didn’t understand. He pushed them aside and looked at Chen.
“Yes, sir?”
“Tell me about the local 14K Triad activity,” he scratched on his pad.
Chen did.
“So they’re big enough and strong enough to do this sort of thing?” the specialist inquired.
“I guess, sir. Shall I arrange to bring in their leaders?”
The specialist put down his pen and stared at his ancient hands. He closed his eyes and forced himself to mentally retrace his steps through the death rooms on the boat, ending with the 14K Triad insignia on the mirror. He sighed and opened his eyes.
Chen awaited his orders.
The specialist snatched up his pen and slashed at the pages, “Make sure the Triad leaders don’t go anywhere. Tell them they are to stay put until we find out who murdered the seventeen foreigners on the boat. You can do that tomorrow. Right now bring me some suspects, Captain Chen. I have a plane to catch and I need to make an arrest.”
At Chen’s shocked look, the specialist turned to the window. How very different this small city was from his home. He sighed silently. How very different his life had become since the night he was shot in the Pudong industrial area, across the Huangpo River from Shanghai.
Chen held out an arrest warrant.
The specialist took it and signed the bottom – Inspector Wang.
CHAPTER SIX
Fong drank in China’s heartland as it sped past. He wished he could open the window but wasn’t about to give the thug and the politico the joy of hearing him ask.
He was slowly piecing together where they were going. They’d been travelling southeast for two days. This area of China, either in Shanxi or Shaanxi province – he couldn’t tell which yet – was far from his stomping grounds in Shanghai, but he was a lot closer to home than he had been a mere three days ago. At least he was on the right side of the wall and blessedly far from the windswept loess plateau on which “his” village in the west stood.
Then he saw the first of the road signs. Five hundred kilometres to Xian – the ancient imperial capital of the Qin Dynasty. Fong stared at the sign with its shadowed image of the terra-cotta warriors. For a second he couldn’t figure out what was bothering him about it. Then he got it. It was in English. Of course, Xian was a major tourist destination.
Good.
He sat back in his seat and allowed his eyes to shut. The growing heat and the rumble of the car engine lulled sleep out of his bones. And in this sleep there were visions. Visions so sweet he dreaded that on his waking they would make him cry out to sleep again.
That night they parked him in another jail cell. This one was older than the previous night’s and gratefully, as far as Fong was concerned, empty.
Fong caught an image of himself in the polished steel mirror that was set deep in the cell’s brickwork. For the first time in a very long while he allowed himself to examine his appearance closely. The hardness of his features surprised him. His skin, as if somehow rougher, no longer accented the delicate bones of his face. He removed his Mao jacket and dropped it to the floor. The rustle of the Shakespeare texts he’d hidden there was reassuring. He pulled his shirt and undershirt over his head. The assassin’s wound stood out in high relief on his side, an ugly reminder of a near ending. He turned sideways. His body was undeniably thickening. “I’m no longer young,” he thought, “no longer able to . . .” He didn’t bother completing the thought. He turned from the mirror and put on his clothes. He’d already had two great loves in his life, Fu Tsong and the American, Amanda Pitman. He expected no more. Two loves were unusual largess from the Great God Irony, who rules unopposed in the hearts of the Chinese. Fong knew that to be true.