The Ghost Shift (40 page)

“This is forbidden,” Chen said indignantly. “I did not give permission for any such inquiry.”

“I am authorized by the Politburo Standing Committee. A direct order came from Beijing this evening.”

Two soldiers took Chen by the arms, marching him out of the VIP room and along the corridor, with a guard walking ahead of them. The others formed a parade, with Pan at the head—a fifty-foot-long cavalcade of Army, police, and plainclothes security.

“Come on. We can’t miss this. Beijing said to make a big display. They’re going out through the casino,” Feng took a hundred-dollar chip from the table and threw it to Mei. “Have a souvenir.”

The soldiers’ boots echoed down the VIP corridor and, when they got to the escalator, the column was marching along the balcony above the main floor. As they descended, the floor had come to a halt. The Crazy Paris dancers stood on the blue-lit stage, staring at the night’s best entertainment. Cards were no longer being dealt at the tables—everyone had risen to witness Chen’s disgrace.

Feng and Mei broke into a run to keep up, as applause started to ripple across the floor. They walked through the lobby into the night, the neon on the casinos outshone by the lights of police cars, Army vehicles, and mobile phones and cameras. A crowd had gathered outside the Grand Lisboa to watch—even the rickshaw drivers had halted. Two lines of police were holding the crowd, clearing a line to
the official cars, but Pan halted by the doors for thirty seconds, allowing the passersby time to take photos of Chen with their phones.

Lockhart stood at the front of the crowd as they led Chen past. Then Feng grabbed Mei’s hand and pulled her, chasing down the path so they would not be left behind. They clambered into an Audi at the rear of the convoy just before it took off, streaming out of Cathedral Parish toward Zhongshan, lights flashing. Motorcycles pushed other vehicles from its path, clearing the way to the mainland. Mei sat by the window as they hurtled along the roads, hardly noticing as they crossed the border at Gongbei. She had come home under her own name, a return she had feared might never happen, but she was occupied by something else—the sight of Chen’s and Lockhart’s faces as the police had paraded Chen out of the casino.

She could swear they knew each other.

It was midnight. Mei knew the place by smell as she stepped from the car—it was country air, a long way from Guangzhou. The convoy had thinned along the way, losing the Macau police and outriders at the border. It comprised six Army vehicles and three Audis. They’d halted by a line of green-painted hangars that were vivid in her memory. She’d seen them behind the Wolf’s interrogator, as he’d spat at her, on the night of her detention.

A committee of welcome waited by the detention center—a squad of soldiers and, standing in front of them by himself, the Wolf. Pan was occupied at the Army truck that held Chen, ensuring that everything was in order for his transfer, and Feng was asleep. Mei didn’t wait. She opened her door and walked toward him. It reminded her of the night in the marsh, when she’d seen him out there, smoking a cigarette. Officials massed nearby, but he remained a lone beast.

“How are you, Song Mei?” The Wolf was showing symptoms of his detention—he moved more stiffly and was wearing a cheap cotton suit.

“I am honored, Lang Xiaobo.” She took his hand in hers and bent her head. She’d thought she might never see him again and he’d be banished to the far north, a broken and discredited man.

“They tell me you saved me.” The Wolf chuckled. “Six o’clock and all I had on my calendar was another session in the cellar with those animals. Then everything stops, and suddenly I’m an honored guest. A hot shower, fresh towels, and new clothes—” He plucked at the suit. “A dinner of delicacies. They couldn’t do enough to make me
happy. The Party always reaches the correct conclusion, I find, but it can take time. You have rehabilitated me.”

“I only did my duty.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

“I found her father, as you asked me to.”

He nodded. “I knew you would.”

They were interrupted by the sound of marching as the soldiers brought Chen across the tarmac toward the detention block. He had been stripped of his suit and was dressed in Army fatigues, still handcuffed. Pan walked next to him with a thick file. She halted by the Wolf, smiling.

“I am pleased that justice has been done, Lang Xiaobo.”

“A painful form of justice, Pan Yue, as you know, since you were in charge of torturing me.”

“It was a mistake. The Party has exonerated you of all charges. We will find the truth from the guilty man.”

“You’re sure he’s guilty, are you?”

“We have irrefutable evidence of Chen’s betrayal of the Party. Do not worry. There is no error.”

The Wolf pulled out a pack of Chunghwas and lit one, breathing out two blue streams through his nostrils. He held up the cigarette, smiling.

“They gave me this tonight. I’ve had to make do with some terrible shit from Qinghai. I thought it was a life sentence.”

“You shouldn’t be smoking at all,” Mei said.

“Allow an old man a little bit of pleasure.” He turned his smile onto Pan, letting it chill. “I’m not worried about your error, since I am taking over responsibility for this inquiry. Since Chen is in
shuanggui
, I am in charge. You will work under my command until we find you another assignment, perhaps somewhere challenging. I spent a long winter in Heilongjiang once. It was good for my character.”

The Wolf took Mei’s arm and walked to where Chen stood, handcuffed to two soldiers. Chen looked at them both contemptuously and spat on the tarmac, but the Wolf ignored him.

“Chen Longwei, you’ve met Song Mei, a cadre in the Discipline Inspection Commission. She is already establishing a strong record of
bringing criminals to justice, starting with you. I believe that this feat will soon be recorded in the
People’s Daily
, and she will be rewarded.”

“She’s a whore, and you’re a weakling, Lang Xiaobo. You’ve always been jealous, chasing after me for scraps from my table. I could make you do anything I wanted, all our lives. Is this your revenge?”

The Wolf took a last drag of his cigarette and flicked it into the dark. “You don’t recognize her, do you? When I tell you, maybe you’ll change your mind. You’re right about me, though. I was weak. I should have done it much sooner. Do you know when I first wanted to? Three decades ago. You’re not the heir of Mao and Deng, Chen. You’re a worthless fool who cared only for yourself. What does it say for our Party that you could have ended up in charge?” He turned to a soldier. “Put him in the detention cells.”

“What should I do?” Mei asked.

The Wolf looked at her, taking in her appearance for the first time. The coat Feng had brought only just covered her knees, and the laces on one of her sneakers trailed on the ground.

“We’ll find you a room, and you can rest. I’ll take you. Pan Yue can set things up here.”

He took Mei toward the hangars, pausing on the way to instruct Pan, who was awaiting orders.

“We start tomorrow. I have a list of people for you to bring in for questioning. The first is Thomas Lockhart.”

The Harbin Dolphin
helicopter lifted from Shek Kong, with Lockhart strapped in the same seat as before, watching the New Territories recede as they climbed over the towers of Shenzhen and flew north. They’d sent a Jeep to the Peninsula at dawn, breaking what he’d hoped would be a long sleep. But he couldn’t complain. The PLA was treating him like a VIP, driving him out of Hong Kong at high speed and laying on breakfast at Shek Kong. The pilot had leaned around as Lockhart donned his flying helmet and put one thumb up.

It was a short flight—twenty minutes door-to-door from the Shek Kong terminal to the airbase—with a fine view of the Pearl River, snaking through Guangzhou. By nine o’clock he had been driven across the tarmac, shown to an interview room with padded walls,
and given a cup of coffee in a porcelain cup and saucer. He sat without being told what would happen, but knowing it. It had been twenty-three years since he had been summoned without warning from his Beijing apartment. People have habits, he’d learned. No matter how hard they try to break them, they leave a pattern. This was how it had started, and this was how it would end.

The Wolf entered the room ten minutes later, with a file under his arm. Lockhart scanned his face. He was thinner than before, and his hair had turned gray. He looked a little fragile, as beaten up by life as Lockhart felt. He realized that he was pleased to see him again—they had only met once, for half an hour, yet he was the only person who understood.

“Hello, Lang Xiaobo,” he said, standing.

“Tom.” The Wolf put the file on the table and shook Lockhart’s hand, resting the other on his shoulder. “It has been a long time. I thought of you often. You have not aged. You look the same.”

“So do you,” Lockhart lied.

“Would you like one?” The Wolf pulled out a pack of Chunghwas and offered it to Lockhart.

“I’m trying to give them up.”

The Wolf smiled. “One every two decades. That’s not so bad. I still prefer them to Marlboros. Sit.” He sat opposite, holding the pack of Chunghwas in front of him and turning it in one hand, like a Rubik’s Cube he was trying to solve.

“I am very saddened by her death. It was a terrible thing. I wish I could have stopped it. I feel guilty that I did not.”

Lockhart sighed. He had been dreading this moment, facing the man who had won the bet they should never have made. But now it felt like a relief to be there, to confront it.

“You were right. I couldn’t take care of her properly. I should have left her here, with Mei.”

“Do not say that. She was a fine young woman. She died honorably. You should be very proud of her. She did extraordinary things with her life. She was like her sister, I think.”

Lockhart blinked. “I think so, yes.”

The Wolf puffed his cigarette and opened the file, reading the top
sheet to relieve the tension. “Tom Lockhart, economic counselor to the U.S. embassy in Beijing between 1986 and 1989. Officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. Required to leave China for breaches of national security. Subsequently posted by the CIA to Vietnam and Kenya. His wife did not accompany him on these trips and they later divorced. Working as a consultant, mainly for U.S. corporations.”

Lockhart sipped his coffee. “That’s accurate.”

“Would you like to know more about me?” The Wolf stood and leaned against the wall, eyes on Lockhart. “Lang Xiaobo, a member of the fifth generation, born in Beijing in 1952, son of a teacher and a lawyer. I happened to go to the same school as a boy called Chen Longwei—Beijing Number Six Middle School, near Zhongnanhai. We were twelve when we met. He was likable, then. Impish, with a rebellious streak. He provoked the teachers, but he had impeccable connections. His father had fought alongside Mao and had worked in the Foreign Ministry. Mao declared the Cultural Revolution two years later, and suddenly Chen was a Red Guard. You know those kinds of kids at school. Imagine if they could do anything they wanted. Chen turned into a vicious bully. His gang beat and tortured the teachers they called ‘capitalist-roaders,’ and they painted ‘Long Live the Red Terror’ on the wall in their blood.

“It was a dangerous time. My parents were ‘blacks’—suspected of being bourgeois and counterrevolutionary because of their jobs. I knew that, at any minute, a gang might put them in dunce caps and parade them in the streets. I stuck close to Chen so that they would be left alone. It worked. In 1968, they sent us to the countryside to learn from the peasants. Chen and I went to the same farm in Hubei. Those people had been through the Great Famine. They knew more life than he ever would. He was sixteen. But he formed a village committee to purge them. I try not to think too much about what happened there. Men died, women were raped and discarded. I knew of two peasant women who were thrown off a roof. I thought of those days when he was up on that stage, singing his red songs about Mao.”

“I thought you admired the Party,” Lockhart said.

“It is always a work in progress. It has made mistakes.” Lang tipped ash from his cigarette to the floor and glanced down as he
spoke. He looked sad, Lockhart thought. “The last time we met, we talked about the June Fourth Incident. I remember I lost my temper with you. I’ll tell you why. That year, we all were in Beijing. You, Chen, and me. He was at the Ministry of Civil Affairs and I had joined the Ministry of State Security. I was a spy, like you. But that wasn’t the important thing in my life—it was my wife, Xiaoli. She was an artist I had met at a gallery. My life had been so drab, and she was so beautiful. They were my happiest days.”

“I met Margot at that time.”

“Then you understand. You know what it was like in Beijing then, the talk was of freedom and reform. Xiaoli had friends who supported the ideas of Fang Lizhi and got caught up by it. I loved her, but I told her not to go too far. I knew things could change fast. She wouldn’t listen, and she went to the Square on the night of June Fourth. I stayed up waiting for her, but she never returned. They were caught by an army unit in a side street, and Xiaoli died. She was thirty-two.”