“Cover him, Fong!”
The archeologist held out the stone. Fong took it. It was heavy and dropped to the ground with a thud.
“Pick it up.”
This voice was different. Familiar but different. Fong looked up. Iman stood there, Jiajia at his side.
“Pick it up, Fong.”
This voice was high, lisping. It came from his left. It was the politico.
Fong picked up the stone. It was suddenly light as the finest porcelain. He handed it to the emperor.
The old man took the stone and turned away – toward the east.
Fong turned back.
There was no one there. Nothing there. Then he looked to the emperor. He too was gone.
Of course.
At the end there is only ourselves – and what we know – and time which knows everything but tells us so very little.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Fong’s phone call to Lily in Ching was brief and to the point. She listened quietly – in shock – then began asking questions. Each one a better question than the one before. Then she, albeit shakily, agreed.
“How long do we have, Fong?” she asked.
“Say, four hours. I’ve got to get him and then haul him back. Does that give you enough time?”
“We’ll make it enough.” As she hung up the phone she was surprised to realize that she was excited. No. Thrilled.
Dr. Roung Chen didn’t bother rising as Fong pushed his way past the secretary and into the archeologist’s Xian office. The man looked awful.
Tough.
“Let’s go.”
“Where to?”
“Back.”
“To what?”
“Not to Disneyland, Dr. Roung. To Lake Ching. You may recall there was a mass murder there – on a boat.” The man was so flustered that he didn’t notice Fong reach over and palm a small object from his desk. They drove for three hours in absolute silence. “Maybe just as Captain Chen had on that frigid night over four months ago with the specialist,” Fong thought. But Fong didn’t linger on the thought. There was still something missing from the puzzle. A final link that connected the pieces he had to the rogue in Beijing – which in turn pointed his way back home to Shanghai. And Fong was aware that without the connection to the rogue in Beijing everything he knew was as useless as the bits of paper vomited from the shredding machine in the archeologist’s office.
As he and Dr. Roung walked toward the abandoned factory in Ching, Fong sensed that he’d have only one chance to find that link. He threw open the iron door. They stepped in and Fong slammed the door shut. They stood in total darkness while the clang of metal echoed in the space.
Once the echo faded, Fong said, “It was a place of revenge . . .” he didn’t wait for Dr. Roung to respond, “ . . . and surprise. Wasn’t it?”
Fong hit the wall switch that Chen had set up. All four death rooms snapped into being – floors, walls and ceilings.
Fong stared into the archeologist’s pale eyes. They were retreating behind his army-issue metal-framed glasses. “Fine,” Fong spat out and took three steps toward the projections. Then he stopped and turned back to Dr. Roung.
“It was a cold night. The whore, Sun Li Cha, waited on the dock and greeted the foreigners. The other girls couldn’t make it. Some god with a sense of humour, or maybe it was just Soviet drunkenness, produced a vehicle that broke down and kept them from getting to the boat.” Fong looked back into the darkness. It was as if he was about to step onto a great stage and the archeologist was the only member of the audience. “But that wasn’t the only unexpected event of the evening was it, Dr. Roung? Don’t bother answering. We have lots of time.”
“The foreigners went to the bar. The boat headed out on the lake. Once it was far enough out, the crew was ushered into a lifeboat and sent home. After all, one of the Taiwanese had a pilot’s licence and what kind of trouble could seventeen foreigners get into on a calm lake? Right? Sorry, seventeen foreigners and a hooker – right, I’d almost forgotten – and Iman. Let’s start in the bar.”
On cue, the other rooms blacked out. Fong stepped into the projected bar room, the images playing across his face and body as he moved through the space. Dr. Roung followed Fong. The projections of the seven faceless bodies somehow stood out. The eldest, the one strung from the ceiling, even seemed to be swaying back and forth as if the boat were in motion on the lake. “Seven dead men. How?” The archeologist stared at Fong, the coloured lines of the projections playing across his face. “If you look about you, you’ll see that there are no half-empty glasses. An odd bar that has liquor and clean glasses but no half-empty glasses, don’t you think? Oh yes, there was the stain on the floor . . . right here.” Fong was at the side of the room farthest from the bar. He opened the satchel he was carrying and pulled out a bottle of champagne. “Remember, Iman was there. You remember him, don’t you, Dr. Roung? Sun Li Cha told me all about him being there. So as soon as the crew left and the boat was far enough out on the lake, Iman proposed a toast. After all, they had just completed a monumental business deal, hadn’t they?” He held up his bottle. “Champagne. The foreigners were all there; hey, this was a big celebration. A deal done. A long march completed! Iman poured them each a glass and then held his aloft. He shouted a toast, ‘To Blood!’” Fong shrieked. Then he paused and shrugged. “Perhaps it was more civilized: To Life or To Money or To Hell. Who knows? Well, of course you do, don’t you Dr. Roung! Well, whatever Iman said, the seventeen men must have cheered and then drunk their champagne – like good little capitalists.”
Fong opened the bottle and drank. It scorched his throat and made his stomach do a quick loop. “Don’t worry, Dr. Roung, this is just alcohol. No sedative in this champagne.” Then Fong turned the bottle over and the liquid splashed onto the projected image of the red carpet, beside the stain that was already there. “They didn’t all drink though, did they, Dr. Roung? Iman allowed everyone else to swallow the poison while he tilted his onto the carpet behind him. Thus, the unidentified stain the specialist went to such trouble to photograph.”
“It was the Triads . . .”
Fong didn’t let him complete his sentence, “Right, the Triads. I’d almost forgotten about them.”
“That Triad medallion . . .”
”Found right here. Correct?” Fong pointed to a space two feet to his left. “I worried for a bit about the medallion. Well, not really about the medallion. About the chain. Actually, about the single broken link of the chain. Well now, that’s not quite honest either, Dr. Roung. I was really worried about the four photographs the specialist supplied of the broken link. Four pictures, one link. Not very Chinese, don’t you think? So I had an associate of mine buy some of those medallions in Xian. They’re very popular with the tourists, don’t you know.”
Fong took one from his pocket and put it around his neck. He grabbed the medallion with his right hand and yanked downward. The chain broke. Fong held the broken thing up close to the archeologist’s face. “How many broken links, Dr. Roung?”
“Two.”
“Right. Two. Every time I’ve done it – two. But the medallion in the rug of the bar had only one broken link. Four photographs, one link – one attempt to blame the Triads for . . .” Fong spread his arms and turned, “ . . . this.”
Fong looked at the archeologist, but the man’s face revealed nothing.
“During the toasts, and I assume there were several, Iman’s people boarded the boat.” He indicated a projected portal. When he turned back to Dr. Roung he said, “That’s when he saw them, wasn’t it?”
“Who?” snapped back the archeologist.
Fong grunted. “Fine.” He began to walk and Dr. Roung followed. Quickly he left the bar. It blinked out. The bedroom with the two beheaded Americans snapped on. Fong didn’t bother to check if Dr. Roung was following him; he knew he was. “Sun Li Cha entertained the two Americans – briefly. She claimed they weren’t up to the task. When she left the room the islanders slipped in and slit their throats. These were the first murders. Silent murders that wouldn’t alarm the rest. After all, Westerners were so odd, who could tell what they were doing in their room? It gave the sedative more time to work on the Asians who just may not have drunk all their champagne – champagne is an acquired taste, isn’t it?” Fong looked at the projection of the two dead Americans. “I put my money on Jiajia for this piece of work. The switching of the heads could have been done by any of them. A little chi let loose on the boat, huh Dr. Roung?” He paused for a moment, a new thought coalescing in his mind. “Or all of them,” he muttered. He dismissed a vision of the room stuffed with islanders watching the heads being cut from the bodies.