When Li Xiao got back to the office it didn’t take him long to identify the blond lady who had arrived with Fong. Wang Jun identified her in three words and a twohanded gesture. “Tall? Blond? Tits?” His hand gesture accompanied the last. Then he said, “She’s at the Equatorial.”
Loa Wei Fen used his most cultured voice on the phone. “Does the hotel have a computer centre?” He nodded at the reply and said “Thank you.” He hung up, took one last look at the dishevelled bed and slipped out of Amanda’s room, heading toward the computer centre in the lobby.
The eight-by-ten-foot glass enclosure in which Amanda and Fong were working was spartan but functional. Two chairs, a computer and printer setup, modem, and fax hookups. The computer once again was brand new but badly out of date. Someone had clearly pulled a fast one on the Chinese. Like the guy who sold Englishlanguage welcome signs to hundreds of Shanghai restaurants which read COME ON IN BIG BOY. That guy at least had a sense of humour.
Fong marvelled at the length of Amanda’s fingers as they raced across the keyboard. Suddenly her fingers stopped and hovered, poised over the keys.
“Problem?”
“I don’t think so . . .”
“What’s the but in your voice?”
“How’s my time?”
“Why?”
“There’s a fast but risky way and a slower but safer way. Your pick, copper.”
On the monitor the phrase SELECT FUNCTION was flashing.
“Fast. I’m not sure it’s possible to be in a riskier situation than we’re already in.”
The beautiful fingers moved from their poised position. Keys were struck and information about the source of the sixteen e-mail messages on Commissioner Hu’s computer began to emerge. Suddenly the screen began to blink.
“I’ve hit a trap.”
“A what?”
“There’s a request for a second password. If I don’t get it right the computer will report us back to the e-mail number that we’re searching.”
“Like a booby trap?”
“More like a snitch.”
“Could it be a fake?”
“Could be.”
“The first password you found was New Life, right?”
“Right.”
Fong thought for a moment and then said, “There is no second password. New Life in Shanghai is everything.”
Amanda hit the Enter key. The blinking stopped and addresses began to scroll. When they finally stopped, one was highlighted. As the address appeared, the fingers of Fong’s hand clenched so tightly on her shoulder that she winced in pain.
“What?” she almost yelled.
“That is the address?” he said, pointing at the highlighted line on the monitor.
“Yes. What is it, Fong?”
Fong’s voice cracked as he said, “It’s in the Pudong.” Completely at a loss as to what this reaction meant, Amanda replied, “That’s what it says. That industrial place across the river, right?”
In a faroff voice, his eyes clouding, he responded, “Right.” Then after a long pause he added, “I haven’t been to the Pudong in over four years.”
Before Amanda could respond the far wall of the glass room exploded. A pellet from the shotgun blast sliced through her cheek and then shattered the computer screen in front of her. A second and third blast rang out. The smell of cordite filled her nostrils. All she remembered was Fong grabbing her hand and yanking her out of the chair, glass flying everywhere. And shouting. And Fong pulling, pulling her through one shattered computer room after another. Then darkness.
Fong had actually seen the policeman’s image reflected in the computer screen, the Pudong address seemingly plastered across his forehead. He heard the first blast and saw the blood flower from Amanda’s cheek before the computer screen exploded into shards of glass and useless metal bits. Fong heard Li Xiao shouting at his men to stop firing. He also heard volley after volley of shots. One of the blasts must have shorted out the electric main line. In the darkness he and Amanda managed to slip into the shopping arcade and then run free out onto Hua Shan Road.
Loa Wei Fen had arrived at the business centre in the lobby just as the first shot was fired. He sized up the scene in a glance and realized that if Fong and the blond woman were to escape it would have to be through the shopping arcade. So he went into the food store at the far side of the complex and, munching on macadamia nuts, waited for them to appear.
When they did, he followed them. Tracking the bloodied twosome was not difficult.
Back in his hiding place Fong looked closely at Amanda’s wound. He had removed the glass shards from her hands and knees. The cuts bled but were not deep. However, the gash on her cheek had ripped the flesh clean down to the bone. She was pale but not in shock.
“Does it hurt?” he asked as his fingers gently touched the skin above the wound.
“No. Will it get infected?”
“Too early to tell.”
“I carry antibiotics, I’ve been taking them like vitamins since I arrived.”
“Don’t trust the food, huh?”
“If you get offended I’ll clock you one. I’ve heard the water in this town is pestilential.” She fished out a small vial of pills and held them out to Fong. For a moment he couldn’t open the childproof bottle but then he saw the arrows and aligned them. He ground a tablet to powder in his palm, and shook it carefully into the open wound on her face. When he finished she reached for the vial and popped a tablet in her mouth. “Damn.”
“What?”
“I can’t swallow it. I’ve got no spit.”
Without comment he gently tilted back her head. She parted her lips. His spittle tasted of old Kent cigarettes.
Fong knew that it was past midnight. In the city’s night glow he could make out Amanda’s face, her head nestled in his lap. Her body had retreated to the sanctity of sleep. He ran his fingers through her hair and marvelled at the lunacy of all this.
All this now.
How easy it had been with her. How even that first time, her head had tilted and her lips parted accepting his tongue as a part of her. How her body fit with his, every inch top to bottom. How the musk rose from her, a flower releasing its pollen, in a puff of wet scent. So unlike Fu Tsong, who was tiny. So unlike Fu Tsong whom he could lift with a simple movement of his hands. And yet Amanda Pitman fit too. More accurately he fit to her. No, he could not lift her and there was not the tightness that was Fu Tsong. But there was a clutching, holding reverence between this woman and him. An exactness of feeling and an aliveness taking place between them in the desolation of the formerly beautiful room on the third story of the now half-demolished Victorian house across from the elevated car on the sixteen-foot pedestal.
While Fong was lost in his contemplations, Loa Wei Fen crouched on the other side of the wall, and waited. Waited and wondered what he was waiting for. Why he simply didn’t kill them now. Why? Confusion reigned. Then he began to fall inside himself.
That night with Amanda’s head on his lap and Loa Wei Fen on the other side of the wall, Fong’s dream started with him standing over the great construction pit in the Pudong holding Fu Tsong in his arms-the baby still on her chest, her robe open, a smear of blood on her abdomen. He felt the lightness of death in his arms. Coals without heat. Noise which only love could resurrect as music. Orsino hammering on the piano never aware that his salvation slept beneath his feet. Then, for the first time, his dream allowed him to see himself fling the two of them far out into the pit. He saw Fu Tsong, the baby still on her body, seemingly come to life as she passed through the beam of the first of the mercury vapour lights. He lost sight of her when she left the light and entered the darkness. But then she entered a second beam. Fong shuddered. The memory so long buried was now garishly alive. In the harsh beam of the second light Fu Tsong raised her arm toward him. Her mouth opened but no sound came. Still falling, she repeated the arm gesture, her mouth continuing to move soundlessly. Then she disappeared into darkness-until the dream opened one last hidden door. This door allowed him to see the concussion of bodies on the freshly poured cement slabs. The swallowing in cold obstruction of Fu Tsong and their baby-only the sash of the bathrobe left afloat on the surface.