“Now why would that be?” Fong thought, but he put a false smile on his face and asked, “What is it you want from me, Captain Chen?”
“Nothing, Traitor Zhong.” The politico stepped out of the shadows across the way. “Captain Chen wants nothing from you. This kind of personal thinking got you into trouble to begin with, Traitor Zhong. Captain Chen wants nothing from you. Your country wants something from you. Is that understood, Traitor Zhong?”
Fong tilted his head, but only after a pause that was clearly noted by all three men. The politico was about to rise to the bait, but then he backed off and lit a cigarette. The sweet fumes tugged at Fong’s nose. “You were the head of Special Investigations, Traitor Zhong. You have dealt with crimes against foreigners before. We want to know who did this to the foreigners. What else would we want?”
Fong chose to dodge that question but noted that the “we” the politico used sounded strangely like a first person pronoun. “Why the delay? Three months is a long time.” Fong thought he knew the answer to his question, but he couldn’t resist hearing the man admit that they couldn’t solve this one on their own.
The politico smiled. “Even you, Traitor Zhong, can understand that this has become a matter of international concern.” Then, as if it were an afterthought, he added, “Foreign governments want to see justice done.”
Fong stared at the man. Finally he spat out, “Just pick out some dumb peasants and claim they did it. Execute them in public if the West wants blood for blood.” He almost said “measure for measure.”
“The specialist did that – picked out some dumb peasants, Traitor Zhong.”
Fong again stared at the man in front of him. This was all the more baffling for his admission. “So?” he asked, completely at a loss.
“Would you like to interview them, Traitor Zhong?” The politico was smiling.
“They haven’t been executed?”
“Obviously not, unless, Traitor Zhong, you’re capable of interrogating the dead.”
It was hard to argue with that. But it bothered Fong that the politico’s final statement was the only thing out of the man’s mouth that made much sense.
Fong had seen both sides of a jail’s bars. He preferred the side he was standing on now. The side that had a corridor leading to an unlocked exit door.
The three men in the cell on the other side of the bars were nondescript men of the land. More like stones than men. They looked a lot like each other. They were brothers. The guards prodded them to taciturn awakening. Three flat resigned sets of eyes focused on Fong as he entered the cell. Fong looked down at the files Captain Chen had given him.
Fong knew that interrogations were best done in private. But he decided against causing a scene by asking the thug, the politico and Chen to leave. There was Fong’s vanity too. He was always a gifted interrogator and he couldn’t resist showing these men that he had lost none of his talent.
He did his best not to wince when the door slammed shut behind him.
Fong looked at the three brothers who stood accused of masterminding and then carrying out the murder of the seventeen foreigners on the luxury boat on Lake Ching. According to Chen’s files, all three were from a local island community. All looked to be in their earlyto mid-twenties. One of them had the unlikely given name of Hesheng, meaning “in this year of peace.”
Fong started with that.
The year of peace was 1949. It would make the man fifty years old. He was clearly less than half that. “Your parents played a joke with your name, Hesheng.”
The men didn’t laugh. The men didn’t do anything. “How old are you, Hesheng?” Fong asked casually.
Something passed over the man’s face. Was it anger, rage, fear – what? Then it was gone. No, not gone – stopped behind the hard mask of the man’s hatred. Fong did his best to calm his Shanghanese accent and tried again with his best country speech. “So are you twenty or thirty, Hesheng? Just give me a hint.”
Again that cloud crossed the man’s face. This time it also crossed the faces of the other two. “Well, I’m enjoying this, how about you?”
Fong turned from them and then whirled back on Hesheng. “They’re going to execute you for a crime that you’re too stupid to have committed and too fucking frightened to deny. Do you understand that, you ox? Or is that beyond your limited capabilities? Ever see what happens to a man when he’s dangled from a rope? His face turns purple, he shits his pants, he fights for breath. He claws at the noose. He kicks his feet . . . and the crowd cheers. Trust me on this, Hesheng, they cheer, and loudly. Is that what you want? Is it?” For a moment, it looked as if the man was going to speak then he turned away. “Open your fat mouth and tell me if that’s what you want?” Fong shouted.
“Go away,” another of the young men said. His voice was surprisingly low. The timbre like aged liquor. Fong whirled around. When Fong stepped toward him, the man repeated his command. “Go away.” Again that low voice. A sense of having been places. Seen things.
The third man came to the speaker’s defence and repeated his command. Another deep, aged voice in a young face. Fong found it incomprehensible. “I know you three didn’t do this. I know it. Now help me prove it.”
“Why?”
That low voice again. Fong looked at them almost unable to answer. “Because . . . it’s your life.”
“That’s what we told him,” said Hesheng.
A moment passed before Fong demanded, “Who?” The other two drew Hesheng behind them. Fong had missed his chance. He cursed himself. He was out of practice. Back in Shanghai he’d never have missed the opening that Hesheng had offered. But that was almost five years ago. “Who did you tell, Hesheng?” shouted Fong, knowing full well that there would be no answer.
The men turned away from him and returned to that dark, still place from which they’d momentarily surfaced. Fong thought of them as three large rocks. Only marginally alive.
Emerging from the line of cells, he found the politico smoking in the front room. The man at first hid the smile on his lips, then gave up the effort and did everything but laugh in Fong’s face. “So did you get a confession, Traitor Zhong?”
“From the look on their faces you managed to bludgeon that out of them a long time ago.” Fong stepped in close to the politico. “So what is it you really want from me here?”
“Are you threatening me, Traitor Zhong?” Fong hadn’t realized that he had grabbed the man by his lapels. He pulled his hands back and turned away. “Find out who did this, Zhong Fong. That’s all that is wanted. Do your duty. Use your talent.”
The anger and sarcasm lathered on the word talent was so deep, so fulsome that it took Fong’s breath away. Then the man snapped his fingers and two uniformed officers came into the room. One knelt quickly and snapped a metal ankle cuff on Fong.
Fong looked down at the thing. “It’s electronic, Traitor Zhong. A little something that happened in the world while you were on vacation. It can tell us exactly where you are whenever we want to know.”
Fong stared at it. The single red eye blinked up at him. He had to use his considerable will power to stop from reaching down and tearing at the thing.
“No, Traitor Zhong, it can’t be taken off without the proper code. And I assure you I will not supply the code until you find out what we want.” The “we” that sounded like “I” again. “Welcome back to the police force – Fong. Second chances are rare in this life. Don’t waste this one.”
The man rose and moved past Fong, close enough to touch. A challenge. Hit me! But Fong didn’t. The confusion in Fong was whether he didn’t slug this guy because he knew better than to hit a ranking party official or whether he was no longer capable of fighting back.
He didn’t know.
He hung his head for a second.
The hideous anklet blinked its red eye up at him.