The Flower Net (26 page)

“How do you know what dose to prescribe?” David asked.

“By the age of the patient. By the seasons. I have to determine if someone needs a cooling medicine or one for heating if it’s summer or winter. By where someone is from. In China people eat different foods in different provinces. What I would prescribe for someone from Sichuan is different from what I would give someone from Guangdong Province. The weather is mild and hot in Sichuan. The people eat hot and spicy food. The medicine I would give a Sichuanese would have a strong fragrance and be powerful. For a Cantonese, who has a cool diet, I would give something bland.”

Suddenly Dr. Du stood. “Come, I will show you.”

As they followed him down the hall, Hulan asked, “Do you use Panda Brand products?”

“Sometimes,” Dr. Du said. “But you will see, we like to make our own prescriptions.”

He stopped at a door, unlocked it, and they stepped into a storeroom. The floor space was taken up with huge burlap bags, each opened and peeled back to reveal its contents. Hulan and David recognized the cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, and dried tangerine peel; they learned these were good for hiccup, wheezing, staph infections, salmonella, flu, and a variety of other symptoms. They saw chunks of raw minerals—some crystalline or chalklike; others were just jagged pieces of rock—fluorite, amber, pumice, borax, and cinnabar. Dr. Du showed them tubers, roots, and rhizomes in every size, variety, shape, and color. In one bag was something that looked like saffron, while in another, dinner plate-size patties of dried yellow flowers lay in stacks. They saw burdock root, lotus plumule, swallowwort root, chinaberries, and lichee and ginkgo nuts.

Dr. Du did his best to explain what the herbs were used for. Even Hulan struggled with many of the Mandarin words, not knowing their English equivalents. Some of the herbs Hulan couldn’t have translated even if she’d wanted, for they were grown only in remote areas and had esoteric names. When this occurred, she used a literal translation—“Commerce Continent,” “Sweet Process,” “Chicken Blood Wine,” “Snake’s Bed Seeds,” or “King Who Does Not Stay But Departs.”

Dr. Du took them to another room, which held the medicinals derived from the animal world. Here again were burlap sacks overflowing with abalone, clam, and turtle shells. These and other minerals, Hulan and David were informed, anchored the spirit by reducing irritability, insomnia, palpitations, and anxiety. Sacks overflowed with dried sea horses—used for impotence and incontinence. Dried scorpions were separated by size and placed in large tin bowls. Similarly silkworms were separated by stages of development as well as by “healthy” and “sick.” Yet another bowl held silkworm feces—good for rashes, spasms of the calf muscles, and diarrhea. They saw piles of snakes dried into coils and hundreds of dried centipedes tied together in bundles.

“I know this is a delicate issue,” David said at last, “but I understand that many of the medicines come from endangered animals…”

“Bears, tigers, rhinos—I don’t use those.”

“You answer very quickly,” Hulan said, the investigator coming out in her.

“I answer quickly because every spring the government sends me from province to province to educate other practitioners about alternatives.”

“What about bear bile?” David persisted.

“Bear gallbladder was first prescribed three thousand years ago,” Dr. Du answered. “Since then many scholars have written about the benefits of bear bile, meat, brain, blood, paw, and spinal cord. But the gallbladder is considered to be the most important part of the bear and very strong—like rhino horn, ginseng, or deer musk.”

“I’m sorry,” David said in exasperation, “but you can’t really believe this stuff works.”

There was a long silence. At last Dr. Du spoke. “The ingredients may sound strange, but actually your drug companies use many of these same compounds or synthetic versions in their products, because they’ve been proven to work. Ursodeoxycholic acid is the active ingredient in bear bile. The synthetic version the U.S. makes dissolves gallstones and is showing promise in treating a usually fatal form of cirrhosis of the liver.”

Dr. Du’s stern look transformed into a smile, the white ghost’s impudence forgiven. “Now, I could use cow or pig gall…”

“But?”

“The pig and the bear have habits very much like human beings and they eat the same food. Some doctors use cow gall at a very high dose, but I’m not so sure. Who among us is like a cow?” When he received no response, Dr. Du continued, “I prefer to use gardenia, rhubarb, peony root, even Madagascar periwinkle in place of bear gall, but as I said earlier, only a good doctor will know how to prescribe them.”

“Can’t you use farmed bile?”

Dr. Du answered, “There are some people who believe they can farm bears for their bile. But let me tell you something. What they do to those bears is terrible.”

“How do they extract the bile?” Hulan asked.

“Doctors surgically implant a tube into the gallbladder. This is held in place by a metal corset around the bear’s stomach. The bile is draining all the time. Some people even pay to drink the bile straight from the bear at milking time.”

“How can those places operate if they’re illegal?” David asked.

“You’re a foreigner, so you don’t understand China,” Du said sympathetically. “In our country, the government is very busy with other matters, so these hooligans can get away with it. In the remote provinces—Jilin, Yunnan, and Heilongjiang—anyone can go out, trap some bears, and start up a farm. Even if you go down to Chengdu in Sichuan, you can find maybe one hundred bear farms. We have over ten thousand bears living on illegal bear farms in China.”

“How do you know all this if the extraction process is such a secret and the police are looking the other way?” Hulan asked.

“I already told you, the government sends me out to different provinces. On some trips I have gone on raids.” He paused, then added, “Those places are very bad, but the masses are happy because they believe that the best medicine comes from the wild animal.”

“Why?”

“Because you take on the attributes of that animal—bear, tiger, monkey. You think you will become strong, potent, or wise tricksters. So most of the people don’t want farmed bear anyway. They want to see the wild bear with their own eyes.”

“But something like bear gall,” Hulan said, “how does it work? How do you use it?”

“Your mother and father are very knowledgeable about our medicine,” Dr. Du observed. “Did they forget to teach you?”

“I was away in America for many years,” she explained. “I forgot the old ways.”

Dr. Du scratched at his sideburns, then shook his head in sorrow at what Hulan had lost in the far-off land. “Bear gall is bitter and cold. Bitter medicinals dispel heat, dry dampness, and purge the body. The cold attributes cool the blood and detoxify the body.”

“Which means you use it for what?”

“I don’t use it!”

“I understand that, but you would prescribe a bitter-cold medicine…”

“For jaundice, skin lesions, convulsions in babies, fever, ulcers, poor vision. For hemorrhoids, bacterial infections, cancer, burns, pain and redness in the eyes, asthma, sinus infections, tooth decay…”

“A little of everything,” Hulan said. Now her skepticism was showing. “Isn’t it just the placebo effect?”

“You come in here and say this to Dr. Du?” There was no mistaking his indignation this time. “Our medicine is many times older than Western medicine. It is not a placebo.
This
is why I am invited to speak at Harvard Medical School, and it is why our government lets me travel so freely.”

He threw his hands up over his head. He’d had it with these impertinent fools. “You go away now! I am tired of this!” Then he began shooing them out. At the door, he shook his finger at Hulan. “You show no respect. Your parents would be very disappointed in you.”

Downstairs, Peter was waiting for them. “How did it go?” he inquired as he pulled away from the institute.

“I think we insulted him,” Hulan said.

David snorted. “That’s an understatement.”

“But did you get useful information?” Peter asked.

Hulan and David looked at each other thoughtfully. “I don’t know,” Hulan said. “Maybe.”

“What I still don’t understand is, if the farms are illegal, how can they operate?” David asked.

“Our government says no to many things,” Hulan said. “Still, people want to make money. Some say they’ll open a ‘legal’ bear farm. They say they have a permit, but I bet all they have is a permit to open a business,
not
a bear farm.”

“Doesn’t anyone check?”

“I guess not,” Hulan said, sounding discouraged.

“
I
have good news,” Peter announced. “You were right, Inspector. Cao Hua’s refrigerator was filled with Panda Brand bear bile.”

“The ambassador will be with you as soon as he can,” Phil Firestone, William Watson’s attaché, said brusquely. “We’re in the middle of a crisis and, well, the ambassador is awfully busy.”

“I’d like to think that he’d place the murder of his son above international intrigue,” Hulan said, instantly striking an adversarial chord. For once, David agreed. He was tired of getting the runaround from this man.

“Naturally Ambassador Watson continues to mourn,” Firestone said smoothly. “But sometimes we have to put others above our own needs.”

“While we’re waiting, perhaps you can answer some questions,” David said.

Firestone started to roll his eyes, then caught himself. “Go ahead,” he said with a sigh.

“How do you process visa applications?”

Firestone shook his head slightly. “Visa applications? What do they have to do with anything?” When David didn’t respond, Firestone sighed again. “People come here. You’ve seen them outside. They stand in line. They get applications and fill them out. We interview the people. If someone wants to travel to the U.S. on business, we expect to see an official invitation from the sponsoring organization or business stateside. Potemkin Auto Leasing, the Audubon Society, the Baptist Church of Starkville, Mississippi, you name it, we’ve seen it. Nothing peculiar about it. The Chinese like to see the same types of formal invitations when they process visa applications for American citizens. I’ll bet you got an official invitation from the MPS before you came here.”

David nodded, then asked, “What if someone
hasn’t
been invited by a corporation in the U.S.?”

“We treat those cases quite a bit differently,” Firestone said. “After all, there are a lot of people in China who’d like to get out, and I’m not talking just about dissidents.”

It was amazing to Hulan what a few days and a lot of news headlines could do to a political toady like Firestone. His knee-jerk diplomacy of just one week ago had evaporated as easily as a late-spring snow shower. He now saw China as a hair’s breadth away from being a full-fledged enemy, while the MPS and its investigation were emblematic of all that was evil in the society.

David chose to ignore Firestone’s rudeness. “Who actually stamps the visas?”

“What are you talking about?” The young man’s patience was wearing thin. “If you’re accusing someone of something, why not spit it out?”

“Just answer the question,” David countered evenly.

“We’ve got a department full of people who do that. But, hell, I’ve stamped a couple of passports, even the ambassador has stamped them on occasion. It’s all perfectly legal.”

As on their last visit, the ambassador began speaking to them even before he entered the room. “We’re going to have to make this quick,” he said just before he appeared around the doorjamb. “I’m waiting for a call from the president,” he continued as he crossed the room, modulated his voice to the more intimate surroundings, shook David’s and Hulan’s hands perfunctorily, and took a seat. He barely paused before he summarily dismissed his adjutant. “Phil, get these folks some coffee.”

As soon as the young man left, the ambassador’s public demeanor fell away and was replaced by declarations of personal gratitude for the arrest, trial, and conviction of his son’s killer.

David and Hulan had discussed how to approach this man. Should they treat him as an adversary—a course Hulan recommended—or as the highest-ranking American citizen in China? This quandary was aggravated by the fact that they were here on two very different missions: one, to find out how Guang Henglai, Cao Hua, and the other couriers had gotten visas so easily; two, to break the news to Ambassador Watson that his son was, at the very least, involved with some pretty shady characters. They had decided that attacking on the visa issue was the most practical approach, since it would unquestionably provoke anger. Then they could tell Watson about his son. Somewhere along the way they hoped they’d learn something to save Spencer Lee.

But they didn’t get very far with their preliminary inquiries before Phil Firestone, who’d returned with the coffee, burst out with “Why do you keep asking about this visa bullshit? It has nothing to do with anything, and is just a waste of the ambassador’s time. I already told you that he’s very busy at present.”

“What we’re talking about here is a serious threat to national security,” David stated bluntly. “Illegally stamping passports is a federal crime. That translates, Firestone, into federal time in a federal penitentiary.”

Phil Firestone flushed a deep crimson.

David now directed his comments to the ambassador. “If there are any irregularities in the embassy, it wouldn’t be the first time. I’m sure the ambassador is aware of several cases where trusted employees overstepped their diplomatic bounds.”

“If you’re accusing me—” Firestone sputtered.

“Take it easy, Phil,” the ambassador cut in. “Can’t you see they’re just trying to get your goat? Go on back to your office. I’ll be fine. But when that call comes through, let me know right away, okay?”

When Firestone closed the door behind him, the ambassador said, “Come on, Stark, give the boy a break.”

David held his palms up and shrugged. “It was worth a try.”

The ambassador shook his head and smiled wanly. “I’ll look into this problem, all right? Now how else can I help you?”