CHAPTER NINE

He waited in the shadows for nearly an hour, watching through the windows before walking in the side door of Baiyun’s little police post. “The German was an agitator for democracy,” he said to Meng’s back as she sat at her desk. “You knew that.”

Meng went very still, then slowly turned to face him. “He was a foreigner,” she replied, as if it were the same thing.

“You knew he was watching the new pacification camp.”

“A foreigner known for making documentary films who is traveling illegally in a district with one of the highest concentrations of detention camps in all of China. It would be a reasonable surmise.”

“For you.”

“And for Major Liang,” she shot back.

Shan hesitated a moment, confused at the flicker of uncertainty he saw in her eyes. “I need to get into that camp.”

“Don’t be a fool. Impossible.”

“Arrest me.”

Meng brushed a strand of hair from her face. Shan noticed for the first time her disheveled, weary appearance. She gestured toward the computer on her desk. “I spent two hours today trying to figure out who you are, Comrade Shan. Public Security has so many secret operations Beijing can’t even keep track of them in any systematic way. And you’re not really the Public Security type, are you?”

Shan did not reply.

“One of the green apes from that new pacification camp came in to run a request about a lao gai registration number. It was yours, Shan.”

He had forgotten that Lung Tso had taken his tattoo number, though not his discovery that the Jade Crows sometimes acted like surrogates for the Armed Police.

“But that’s all there was,” Meng continued. “Just your name, and an admission date over seven years ago. The Four hundred and fourth People’s Construction Brigade. Nothing else. One of Colonel Tan’s most famous prisons. Tan doesn’t lose records. It has to be a legend, the officer said, a deep cover. I didn’t bother to tell the fool that no one creates deep cover with empty files. But on the other hand, no convict would be so clever as to find a way for Tan to destroy his file and then be so foolish as to keep using the same name and stay in Tan’s county.”

“I could draw you a map of all the roads I helped build with the Four hundred and fourth. Arrest me,” he said again.

“Why not change your name?”

He paced along the front of the detention cell that adjoined the office, touching each bar as he passed it. “The Four hundred and fourth People’s Construction Brigade. It’s how they know me there. It’s how I get inside.”

“You’re making no sense.”

Shan gripped the bars of the cell and spoke into its shadows. “I have a son named Ko,” he explained after a long moment, “my only flesh and blood. He has nearly ten years left on his sentence. Former inmates are not allowed back, but Tan and I have an arrangement. He lets me see him on the first Sunday of each month, and lets me send one letter a month.”

In the long silence that followed they could hear the bleating of sheep in the marketplace paddock.

He turned to her. “I have a friend behind the wire of that new camp. His name is Lokesh.”

“There’s talk of setting up a visitation program.”

“How soon?”

She shrugged. “A few months. By the end of the year if the Tibetans stay quiet. They were blowing that damned horn again last night. Someone made a bonfire of Chinese road signs at one of the crossroads. Another monk burned himself in Sichuan.”

“And if they don’t?”

She shrugged again. “Then there will be another six camps just like it. There’s a new policy. For every Tibetan arrested in a strike or protest two family members will also be arrested.”

Shan dropped into the chair across from Meng’s desk. “I need to be in there, Lieutenant. All I have in the world is my son and that old Tibetan inside that camp’s wire. Please.”

Meng grew still again. Somehow the contemplative look on her face unsettled him. “You’re lucky to have a son,” she said quietly. “I never had a child.”

The silence between them took on a strangely awkward air.

“I think I liked it better when you called me a fool. Arrest me,” Shan pressed.

“It’s administered by the Armed Police. They could arrange for you to slip inside for a few hours.”

“Never. The prisoners would smell a plant.”

Meng glanced at him, then away, several times, as if not knowing how to react. Finally she looked out the window. “I’ve been there. It’s no hard-labor camp, but the detainees are treated like livestock. Typhus has started. I was being given a tour when a tractor finished digging a wide trench behind the camp. The guards laughed when I asked if they were putting in a foundation for a new building, laughed again when the first bodies were thrown in, said they ran the best camp in all Tibet, because pacification at their camp was permanent.”

You’re a Public Security officer, Shan almost rejoined, stop pretending you care. But then he saw the way she bit her lower lip. There were times when Meng seemed like just another girl adrift in the bitter sea of China.

“Meng, I know how to survive in such places. I speak Tibetan.”

When she did not respond he rolled up his sleeve and thrust his forearm in front of her. She stared at the gulag registration number.

“They dig the needle in deep when they do it,” he said in a near whisper, “use a scalding needle to cauterize the blood vessels that get severed. I wanted to scream, but I was the only Chinese prisoner and I thought I should set a good example.”

She looked away, out the window, as if she didn’t want to listen.

“I was never sent in to spy, Meng. I went too far in an investigation, into the top ranks of the Party. Certain ministers in Beijing wanted to bury me alive. They sent me to the prison with the highest fatality rate in China. But I survived, because of Lokesh and men like him. Five years, Meng. I was in five years. I know the diseases. I helped dig mass graves.”

When she looked back, her face had hardened. “Do you have any idea how many agencies there are that run secret intelligence agents?” she asked. “At least a dozen that are widely known, as many more that can’t be named. Agents routinely invest years in their cover. There are schools run for the purpose. They are dead to their prior lives. They live their cover every hour, every minute, never confiding in anyone, going for months or even years without surfacing for those who run them. There is no sacrifice too great for the motherland.”

Shan’s mouth went dry.

“An agent could get such a number on his arm, even build a cover no one understands but him and his handlers. The best of those agents could even endure five years in a prison to earn the trust of his targets. If you were such an agent, what would you tell me?”

He looked down into his hands. “That I wasn’t sent to spy. That I was truly in prison to be punished.”

“Exactly.”

Shan opened his mouth to argue but hesitated. He could not fathom why he felt the need to make this woman understand the truth of his life. There was, in the end, no way to refute her. She wanted so badly to believe he was not real, that he was an agent, an informer. In the world she inhabited no one had to be real. There was no truth in her world, only greater and lesser degrees of propaganda. And there was a certain veracity to her words. He did live under cover, he did hide the most important elements of his life, he did keep his most important truths secret.

He rolled his sleeve back over his wrist. “I know how to survive,” he repeated in a tight voice.

“You’re a fool to think so. Survival in such a place is a cast of the dice. Lose the throw and it’s that hole in the ground for you. Not even a shroud. They toss you in the pit and maybe throw some lime on your face. The birds will pick at you until your end of the hole fills and a bulldozer shoves dirt over it. Bodies mean nothing in China,” she added as a bitter afterthought.

Shan studied her. She had been sitting in half-darkness, staring at her desk, before he arrived. “What happened, Lieutenant?”

She stared again out the window, into the night. “I wasn’t supposed to see. I didn’t want to see. There’s a shed behind the district headquarters by the cell block. The door was open. There were stacks of ice inside and it made me curious. If I had known the ice was for him I would have stayed away.”

“You mean the German. It was only two bodies that were stolen because Liang had already stolen the German’s.”

The lieutenant nodded. “But they had tortured him.”

A chill crept up Shan’s spine. “He was already dead, Meng.”

“They beat him, crushed the bones in what was left of his face, broke his arms and legs. There was a sledgehammer by the table.”

It was Shan’s turn to stare at the empty desk. “Has the major left?”

“No. He was gone for a day after his meeting with you. Now he’s furious at everyone. He’s sending more bulldogs in to stir things up here, says this is the price we pay for giving such a free hand to the Tibetans in the valley. He won’t leave until things are resolved.”

“You mean until they find the American.”

“If she has evidence she should come forward.”

“You call me a fool? You know they’ve decided what to do with the German. He was in an accident, probably a climbing accident, a fall off a thousand-foot cliff. Foreigners are notorious for secretly climbing forbidden mountains. Too bad about his girlfriend. She will probably be roped with him.”

“You’re making no sense.”

“The American girl who saw the murders. She’s dead but she doesn’t yet know it.”

*   *   *

Genghis had the stamina of his Mongol namesake. The youth was in obvious pain, pausing at his work in the park to clutch at his side or adjust the bandage on his head. He was after the big bolts that secured the planks to the benches, and had clearly done it before. With a wrench in one hand and a hammer in the other he moved with mechanical efficiency, leaving every other plank as if to disguise his theft.

Shan saw a motorbike leaning against a tree in the shadows. “The Jade Crows had the cameras of the dead foreigner,” he said to the youth’s back. “I bet you looked at the photos. “

Genghis spun around, raising the hammer. “You’re crazy, Old Mao. Dealing with stolen property is against the law.”

Shan grinned and gestured to his bucket of bolts. “A bold statement, all things considered.” Genghis waved the hammer as if to threaten him.

Shan pointed toward the darkened houses off the square. “No one in this town can afford to pay what those cameras are worth. Nor could they afford the risk. The cameras left on one of your trucks to Nepal. You drive those trucks sometimes. It must be boring. Surely you looked at the photos.”

Genghis’s grin revealed teeth stained dark red. Chewing betel nuts was one of the lesser vices of Yunnan natives. “You dumb son of a bitch. You want to take on the Crows over a few photos of Tibetans?”

“Tibetans where?”

Genghis shrugged. “Tibetans making that damned dried cheese. Tibetans blowing big horns. Tibetans on a yak caravan, working at that convent, saying prayers.” He raised his hand and mimicked the snap of a shutter. “Like you better pray if you try to fuck with the Crows.”

“I’m not the one with cracked ribs, Genghis. You can’t just go around stealing bodies and public property.”

“Just scrap metal for recycling.”

“There’s going to be some new police arriving soon. I told the constable outside the police post that someone was vandalizing the statue. They won’t be tolerant. At least you could have tried in the middle of the night. You’re rather conspicuous.”

The youth’s eyes flashed. “None of these damned egghead Manchurians are going to say a word about us. I could—” He paused midsentence. “Cao ni mai!” he spat.

Shan could see the blinking light of a police sedan reflected in the youth’s wide eyes. He forced himself not to turn around, not to evidence his interest. “What color are the uniforms?” he asked. He could hear the crackle of police radios now.

Genghis’s face tightened with worry. “Green apes,” he replied as he searched the square, looking for an escape route. He glanced back at Shan. “Does it matter?”

“It makes all the difference. Drop your bag and kick it under the bench.” Genghis did as Shan instructed. “Give me your hammer.” Another car pulled up at the opposite end of the square, Meng’s grey utility vehicle.

When the youth froze in indecision, Shan reached out and pulled the tool from his hand. “Now get your motorbike and walk away with it. Don’t run, don’t start the engine until the shouting starts.”

“Shouting?”

But Shan had no time to explain. He shoved Genghis toward the shadows then glanced over his shoulder to see the police moving up the square, two of the green-uniformed officers on either side, long batons in their hands. He marched deliberately toward the statue in the center of the square.

“Shan! No!” Meng called out as he pulled himself up on the plinth. She began running toward him. The police behind him were shouting now. He heard the pounding of their boots on the pavement.

Shan held onto the waist of the fiberglass Mao as he edged around the statue, then steadied himself by throwing his arms around the short thick neck. The police were cursing at him, running faster. He nodded into the empty face of the Great Helmsman.

“You did all this, you son of a bitch,” he spat at Mao, then lifted the hammer and smashed in his nose.