A Drop of Chinese Blood (17 page)

My uncle was in his workshop, but he’d been alone all day so I didn’t think he’d mind the company. “Good evening, uncle. Sorry to be back so late.”

“Don’t apologize.” He was straightening up his worktable, putting the tools in some sort of order that made sense to him. “You don’t have to worry about me so much. I can take care of myself.”

“Can we talk?”

He indicated a newly built stool for me to sit on. “I had the pieces lying around for a couple weeks; let’s see how they fit. Tell me if it feels solid.”

I sat down. It felt solid. “I had some visitors at the office this morning.”

“I’ll probably put on a different seat. That one is made out of poplar, and I have a feeling it might itch.”

When I finished the story of the visitors, my uncle looked at me without saying anything. Then he frowned. “You didn’t see any ID. You don’t know who they are. You don’t know who this Ding character is. Yet you expect me to pack to go with you?”

“I asked someone whose knowledge about these things is impeccable.” It had taken Li Bo-ting several phone calls to find the answer. “He told me exactly who they were, down to the yellow shirt and the tan jacket. They aren’t too smart, but they’re legitimate.”

“Who are they, or are you going to dodge?”

I dodged. “Part of a unit attached to a hurriedly formed detail. It’s complicated. This detail operates without links to anything else. The people who fund it don’t know it exists, and they put their hands over their ears whenever someone tries to tell them.”

“Well, I want to know. All of a sudden I’m a big fan of transparency. I’ve been through too many of these go-here-go-there-look-under-the-bed operations. Step one is that Mr. Ding will be at the camp, you’re told. Oh, really? And will step two consist of our being buried where no one will ever find us once Mr. Ding carries out his orders?”

I had had a feeling my uncle would say that. “We’ll take it slow and careful. Don’t worry, no one is going to kill us.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“They’re not going to pay for air tickets to Mongolia just to do away with us there. It’s cheaper to do here.”

“Maybe.” My uncle didn’t sound convinced. “I’m still not going. You can if you want.”

“It’s not a question of want or not want.”

He was back to rearranging his tools. “It would do you good to go. See something of the world. When was the last time you were out of China? If you’re so sure about Ding, jump on the first plane to Mongolia.”

“Sure, I’ll see the world, and you’ll be right beside me. For once, you don’t have a choice.” I was going to have to scale back on being deferential and pull rank. Normally around him I was willing to play the junior officer. It didn’t cost me anything, other than a little extra enamel from grinding my teeth. This was different, though. “It’s either go with me or get hog-tied and carried to a basement in an old building on the outskirts of Beijing. I’m warning you, you won’t like it. It’s not a broadening experience.”

From the way he let a rasp drop on the workbench, I knew my uncle had picked up the change in my tone. “Maybe I could go back across the river. Maybe the weather’s cleared up.”

“Shall I wave good-bye from the front door?”

“Don’t bother.” He half-smiled, which hid plenty. “So, you are off on a merry chase, following clues to bring home your errant knight. As we both know perfectly well, this is the loyalty test I mentioned to you. It’s more than that. They’re dropping you into an operation without any preparation. We would never have done anything like this.”

He was right, but I wasn’t going to let him crow. “Don’t pretend you know something if you don’t, all right? It isn’t helpful. That’s how things get off on the wrong foot. Why should our fish be in Mongolia? How the hell did he even get there? Why would some state seal be rolling around with a bunch of sheep, anyway? Maybe you’re right, but maybe not. Maybe it’s something else entirely.”

“Like what?”

“Give me a moment, I’ll come up with something.”

“You know what you lack? A hypothesis. If you don’t have a hypothesis, how do you know which way you are going and where you’ll end up? I’m reminded of the Blue Sparrow murders.”

“The what?”

“The Blue Sparrow murders.”

“I don’t want to hear about blue sparrow murders. We don’t have time for that now. Blue sparrows, red sparrows, birds of any type, color, wingspan, or mating habit, all immaterial.”

“The case was quite a challenge. Every now and then I go over it in my mind.” He folded his arms and looked innocently at me. “Not completely the same as what we have here, but instructive nonetheless.”

It was obvious that he wasn’t going to relent. We’d been through this sort of thing before, his raising “challenging cases” from the old days. I had learned the hard way that the more I objected, the more he would be determined to tell the tale. The best move was to feign interest. It saved time in the long run. “Why blue sparrows?”

“Did I say sparrows? I didn’t say sparrows plural. I said sparrow singular—Blue Sparrow, as in one small, dully brown little bird. Only one. If there had been more than one, I might not be here.”

“That’s a thought.”

“Blue Sparrow wasn’t a bird, actually. It was a code name, or a recognition sign more likely. We never found out exactly. Fascinating.” He nodded to himself. “Thoroughly fascinating case.”

“I’m waiting.” I pointed at my watch. “You are determined to tell me about it, so go ahead. I’ll give you five minutes. Maybe just the summary and conclusion will be enough? Then we could get on with figuring out how to save our necks.”

“Very well, a summary. Man meets woman. Woman disappears. Man turns up dead.” He stopped. I thought he was just taking a breath, but he sat back and looked at his hands.

“That’s it?”

“There’s more, but you are in a hurry.”

“How does Blue Sparrow figure in this?”

“That’s not part of the summary. For that, you have to listen to part one.”

I pointed at my watch again. “You have exactly ten minutes.”

My uncle gave me a tight smile. “So fleet the feet of time. Five minutes extra? The fate of empires can be sealed in five minutes. Less, sometimes.” He closed his eyes as if to convince me he was going into the inner reaches of his memory. “This was a complicated case. It twisted around itself. We never solved it completely.” He held up his hand before I could say anything. “Not every case has a solution. Still, essence can be instructive. This was the most instructive case I ever encountered. Young as I was, it made an impression.” He opened one eye, to make sure that I was listening. Assured, he continued. “Vice Minister J one afternoon—about three o’clock, we later determined—opened his door and found on his doorstep a note attached to a severed ear.”

“There was no mention of an ear in the summary.”

“That’s why it was a summary.”

“How about a basic question?”

“If you think it can’t wait until the end.”

“Who was Vice Minister J?”

This appeared to make him suspicious. “Why do you need to know?”

“Apart from idle curiosity? Perspective, I suppose. At some point, it had to come up whether the man or the office was the more important in determining the significance of the ear and his connection to it, assuming it wasn’t dropped on the wrong doorstep, which sometimes happens. And if the office is more important than the man, perhaps it is connected to something going back many years. For all anyone could know at the outset, it had nothing to do with the vice minister himself but rather the ministry he represented.”

“A little off track, but a fair point. A good point.” He sounded pleased. “You have a quick mind, even if you don’t always use it.”

“Again, who was Vice Minister J?”

“Railways, the vice minister of railways.”

“And the ear?”

“Aha! A woman’s. Delicate, shell-like. Still had attached to it an earring of some beauty. A gold filigree cage in which hung a pearl of perfect luster.”

A pearl. I thought back. No, Madame Fang had definitely been intact. “Left ear or right?”

“Very good. You had to ask. It was the right. We thought that would be important, but it turned out not to be. In any case, we were sure the vice minister didn’t take the time to determine that fact. He panicked and called his chief of staff for advice.”

“He didn’t call the Ministry of People’s Security right away? A little odd, wasn’t it?”

“In those days we were still the Ministry of Public Security, but never mind. You haven’t asked about the note.”

“I was about to. I take it there was something in the note that caused him not to want to get mixed up in the whole affair, which is why he went to his chief of staff first.”

“That could be.” My uncle tapped his fingers on the desk. “Yes, that’s what I wondered, too.”

“So, what was in the note?”

“Never found out. Damn thing disappeared. There was some suspicion that the chief of staff destroyed it, though there was no way to prove anything. It was a windy day, might have just blown away. Not having that note hurt us for a while, kept us running in circles, but in the end it wasn’t fatal to our work.”

What work? The case was never solved. “When did he finally call the police?”

“He didn’t. As I told you, he died.”

I realized instinctively that asking the next question was a bad idea, but it could not be avoided. “Died of what?”

“Ah.” My uncle smiled.

4

The next afternoon we were in the library, anxiously digesting after lunch. I was waiting for Li to call with news about the woman who had followed us the previous day to the dumpling restaurant. Maybe Li had been wrong, unlikely as that seemed. It wasn’t impossible that she and her friend had been out for a walk that took them on our exact route. The odds were against it, but they probably weren’t at zero.

My uncle looked at the clock just as the phone rang. He mimed that if it was for him, I was to say he was out of town. As a rule, detectives make poor mimes, so I was only half sure of what the rest of the excuse was supposed to be.

“Is this Inspector O?” It was Miss Du, and she didn’t sound happy.

“No, I’m afraid not. He’s gone away, duck hunting.”

My uncle shook his head.

“Is that how he is spending all the money I gave him? I called to find out what sort of progress he’s made in finding my father.”

I indicated to my uncle that he should pick up the extension and listen in, which he did as standard procedure for phone calls that came when he was “out of town.”

“I use the term ‘duck hunting’ loosely, Miss Du. In the criminal investigation world, it means that someone is on a case and moving toward a solution. It’s jargon. I hope you’ll understand.”

“Apparently, someone is listening to the jargon on another extension. I can tell from a little electronic gadget my father had built for me before he disappeared. It turns red when someone is on the line who shouldn’t be.”

Naturally, MSS didn’t have any such technology. Handy equipment like this always went first to the underworld, though I was loath to put Miss Du in that category.

“The phone in the kitchen must have been knocked off the hook,” I said. “Sometime maybe you’ll show me your gadget.”

There was a very long silence.

“Miss Du? Did you have something you wanted to tell my uncle? I can get him a message.”

“Tell your uncle that if he doesn’t have a preliminary report to me in a week, he can expect a visit from my solicitor. Whether that is before or after my cousin’s wrecking company’s bulldozers pull up to your door I cannot be sure.”

“I’m quite positive you’ll have a report in short order. I’ll give him your message.”

The moment I hung up the phone, there was a knock at the front door.

“You don’t suppose that’s her cousin, do you?” my uncle asked. “At least they knocked. I was worried they might break down the door with one of those big machines. You want to let them in?”

“It’s not Miss Du’s cousin. It must be the taxi to the airport. When are we going to have time to send her a report? Have you packed, like I told you?”

He reached down and retrieved a red suitcase, a small four-wheeler, from beneath his desk. “I have packed, against my better judgment. Where are we going, by the way? Shanghai?”

“No, I already told you.” It was a little worrisome. He was starting to forget things. “We’re going to Mongolia.”

“Really? You did tell me, but I was sure you were kidding. Well, I’ll buy more there if I need it. Can you lend me a tie and a razor in the meantime?”

“We can take turns wearing the tie. As for the razor, get your own.”

“You’re squeamish, like your father.”

The knocking became more insistent. “You’d better answer it,” my uncle said. “Taxi drivers don’t like to wait.”

When I opened the door, two men and a woman looked at me. One of the men was sucking the knuckles on his right hand. “Damn! What is this door made of? Concrete?”

The woman rolled her eyes. “Give him a lump of sugar, will you, or he’ll complain all afternoon.”

I took a liking to her instantly. “Have we met?”

The second man rumbled ominously. “This isn’t a pickup bar. You and your uncle ready? We need to get to the airport or you’ll miss your plane.” He started to push his way in, which left me no choice but to shut the door real fast and lock it. Taxis in Yanji were going upscale, but none of them had gotten to the stage of personal valets for each passenger. I didn’t know who these people were, but I was pretty sure we didn’t want to get into a car with them.

My uncle emerged from the office wearing an old jacket and rolling his red suitcase. “What are we waiting for? If we’re going, let’s go.” For a moment he contemplated the closed front door through which angry shouts were getting louder by the minute. “On second thought, let’s use the side door.” He started off in the other direction. “I have a feeling this driver isn’t in a welcoming mood.”

We went out the side entrance, which led into a narrow alley with the smell of charred piglet trotters floating from the kitchen of the house next to ours, and emerged onto the street about thirty meters from our front door. The woman I had admired turned her head at that moment and saw us. I braced, waiting for her to give the alarm, but she only nodded toward a brown car parked across the street.