Jackal (15 page)

“So I can’t come see you?”

“I did not say that. We can still meet. It is just that I need to figure out a safe place. Let me think.… Okay, I
know a place. It is going to be a little awkward for you to get there, but you can manage. You are clever. I am assuming that you plan to return immediately to Shanghai, yes?”

“No,” I said. “I’d rather go straight home, if I can.”

“What about the race?” Hú Dié asked.

“I don’t think Phoenix and Ryan have gotten the clearance to travel yet. If they can’t make it, Mr. Chang is going to make you and me race together as a two-person team against the rest of the field. That includes full adult teams and a new four-person Chinese youth team that he just put together.”

“There is another group of kids?”

“Yeah.”

“Who are they?”

“I have no idea. I only met one of them, and he’s a total nutcase. Ling says he’s a great rider, though.”

“So you think we should just skip the race because of these things?” Hú Dié asked. “Don’t you at least want to give it your best shot? Mr. Chang has not even announced the length of the race yet. If it is a criterium like we rode in California, you and I might do well.”

“No thanks,” I said. “How long is it going to take me to get to Kaifeng?”

“I am pretty certain there is a bullet train that leaves Shanghai around midnight each day. It would put you in Kaifeng around six-thirty a.m., but I do not think it is wise for us to meet here. After you arrive in Kaifeng, you need to take a long taxi ride to a small village at the edge of a low mountain range. Find a taxi driver who speaks English, and tell him that you want to go to the Tea Village beside
the mountains. Every Chinese person in this region knows which village I am talking about. It should cost approximately one hundred US dollars. Can you afford that?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s about seven hundred Chinese yuán. I’ve got a couple thousand yuán left from a pile of money my parents converted for me. What should I do once I get to the village?”

“Meet me next to the well in the center of the village park. There is only one park and one well. I will be there by noon. You should get there before me.”

“Are you sure we need to meet that far from your mother?”

“Yes. Besides, there is something else I would like to show you near there. It would be a shame for you to come all this way and not see it.”

“If you say so,” I said. “Will I need your help buying a ticket for the bullet train?”

“No. There will be plenty of bullet train ticket sellers who speak English. I do not remember how much it costs, though. Will you have enough money for that, too? I believe they take credit cards.”

“I’m fine if they take plastic,” I said. “My folks beefed up my credit card. I’d better run.”

“Good luck,” Hú Dié said. “I once told you that I do not know how I will ever be able to thank you, but I might have just come up with an idea.”

“Don’t worry about it. Let’s just meet and do what I came here to do. Goodbye for now.”

“Goodbye, Jake. See you tomorrow.”

I ended the call and took a deep breath. It was really
nice talking with Hú Dié again. Maybe everything was going to work out, after all. I still wasn’t so sure about racing if it was just the two of us, but I wouldn’t put it past myself to change my mind for her. I’d certainly done it before.

I turned off my new cell phone to conserve the battery and scanned the street for a taxi. I needed to get to the station before the last bullet train left for the night.

Six-thirty a.m. came
sooner than I’d expected. Perhaps it had something to do with the awesomeness of the bullet train. Now I knew why Phoenix had wanted so badly to ride one.

The superfast train blasted me 575 miles in a little more than six hours, and that included a few stops along the way. It rode smooth as butter, and I slept like a baby the entire ride. Nobody messed with me. The hair and sunglasses were still working their mojo. I was seriously considering keeping them even after I returned home.

When I got out of the train station in Kaifeng, I found a line of empty taxis with eager drivers waiting for customers. I poked my head into half a dozen taxis before I found a driver who spoke enough English to get me where I needed to go. I confirmed the price before I got in and felt kind of proud of myself for haggling down the rate.

As the driver pulled out of the line of taxis, I turned my
cell phone back on. There were no messages. I successfully fought the urge to call Hú Dié, and I settled in for the long drive.

Downtown Kaifeng wasn’t too congested at this early hour, but traffic picked up by the time we reached the outskirts of the city. There were no bike lanes here, but the streets teemed with bicycles of all shapes and sizes. Phoenix had told me that he and Hú Dié had ridden through these streets on mountain bikes. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how horrible that must have been. Besides the insane drivers who constantly switched lanes without any rhyme or reason while laying on their horns the entire time, nearly every vehicle billowed thick clouds of gray and black exhaust. I put a surgical mask on, even though I was in the backseat of the taxi with the windows closed.

Once we left Kaifeng’s limits, the traffic cleared, and so did the air. I even rolled the windows down and took off my mask. It was getting warm outside but not uncomfortable. I was still wearing the same clothes I’d been wearing when I arrived in China, and they were beginning to get a bit funky. I hoped I would get a chance to change into something else soon.

The ramshackle housing on the city’s outskirts had given way to farm fields. Open views and the scents of crops filled the taxi. The change of scenery put the taxi driver into a talkative mood, but I played the role of the antisocial, Mohawk-rocking silent type, and didn’t engage.

So we ended up driving along in silence, and I soon found myself nodding off to sleep again. I had no idea how
frequent international travelers like pilots and flight attendants could handle constant jet lag. It made me sleepy just thinking about it.

I woke to the sensation of the taxi rolling to a stop, and I looked up to see that we were beside a pretty little park in the center of a small but active village. I spotted the old well right away, and reached into my pocket to pay the driver. I handed him seven hundred yuán. When I told him to keep the change, I thought he was going to hug me. My quick scowl sent him leaning backward, though, and I fought back the urge to grin. Ah, the power of the Mohawk.

I got out of the taxi and checked the time on my cell phone. It was nine a.m. I still had three hours to kill, so I decided to walk around.

It was a beautiful little village set at the foot of a fairly tall mountain, with even taller mountains beyond. I noticed almost immediately why this place was called Tea Village. There were tea distributors everywhere. Workers shoveled mounds of dried tea leaves into wooden barrels and fabric sacks before loading them onto flatbed trucks and ox-drawn carts. The village was a cool combination of old-school and new-school ways. I loved it.

My stomach began to growl, and I decided that I should find some food. I didn’t have to go far. Directly across the street from the park was a woman selling dumplings out of a cart that was connected to one half of an ancient, rusted bicycle. I couldn’t ask for anything more perfect than that.

I bought ten
xiao long bao
, or soup dumplings, I now knew, for the unbelievable price of ten cents each. They were so cheap and so incredibly delicious, I bought ten more. The
woman seemed to question my sanity when I bought the other batch, and I didn’t blame her. Ten was enough to fill anybody’s stomach. Twenty was just plain wrong.

I ate every single one of them.

I’d just polished off the last dumpling when a motorcycle came tearing up the road toward the park. The driver was wearing a complete set of protective leather clothing and a full-faced mirrored shield helmet. The outfit was designed for people who rode street motorcycles, but this was a dirt bike. It was made for riding off-road.

The motorcyclist glanced my way as he passed, then he did a double take and spun the bike around, heading straight for me. My back was against a wall, with the old woman and her cart to my right and a tall stack of tea sacks to my left. I had nowhere to go.

The motorcycle skidded to a stop a few yards from me, and I quickly reached into my pack, pulling out the scissors I’d purchased in Shanghai. They weren’t the most intimidating weapon, but they were all I had.

The motorcyclist flipped up his visor and laughed out loud. “Are you really going to defend yourself with that, Jake? You could not even defend your own hair against them! What on earth happened to your head! And why are you wearing
pink
sunglasses?”

The motorcyclist wasn’t a guy at all. It was Hú Dié.

I frowned and put the scissors back into my pack. “They both make me look … tough.”

Hú Dié giggled. “Of course they do. How silly of me. Come over here and give me a hug. I have missed you.”

This time hugging her seemed without question like the
right thing to do. It was a little awkward with my sky-high hair and her helmet, but we managed. The old lady who sold me the dumplings looked totally confused by the whole scene, and I couldn’t say that I blamed her.

“I have what you’ve been waiting for,” I said with a huge grin, and I began to take my pack off my back.

“Not now,” Hú Dié snapped. “Later. I want to take you someplace first.”

“Are you sure we have time?”

“Yes. My mother’s condition has stabilized. Do you remember Hok mentioning a woman named PawPaw?”

“Sure.”

“Well, PawPaw came down from Beijing a few days ago for some other business, but she has been kind enough to stop by and see my mother several times. She is with her now, allowing me a chance to get out of the nursing home for a little while. A ride through the mountains with you is exactly what I want right now. I wish we could be on mountain bikes, but I do not have
that
much time. This motorcycle is the next best thing.”

“I didn’t know you had a motorcycle.”

“I didn’t, until Phoenix and I took this one from a former associate of Lin Tan. I just bought this outfit last night after I spoke with you. I found it at a thrift shop, of all places. Do you like it?”

“I guess,” I said. “About Lin Tan. We need to talk about him.”

“Of course we do, but not right now. Jump on, Jake. I feel the need for speed.”

I looked at the tiny section of seat left behind Hú Dié.
There was barely enough room for the battered motorcycle helmet she had strapped there, let alone my butt.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of room back here.”

Hú Dié scooted forward five or six inches. “That is the best I can do. Phoenix rode back there before and survived. You will be fine, too. There are foot pegs for your feet, and you can hang on to the sides of the seat where those tie-downs are located. Put that helmet on and let’s get moving!”

I groaned and put the helmet on, smashing my spectacular Mohawk. I climbed onto the small section of the hard seat, grabbed hold of the tie-downs, put my feet up, and Hú Dié took off.

We zipped down the village’s main street until it ended at a wide dirt trail. Hú Dié shot up the trail with reckless abandon, making me regret having eaten those first ten soup dumplings, let alone the second ten.

Hú Dié drove so fast, the rush of air made me squint even behind my sunglasses. We blasted up, over, and down a series of low mountains, along bumpy terrain, leaving my hands sore and my backside screaming for mercy.

Eventually, we reached a relatively flat stretch of ground in a sort of valley that was filled with overgrown trees. Hú Dié somehow located a narrow trail that looked as if it had been cut by a weed trimmer, and she followed it at breakneck speed to a clearing that ended at a tall stone wall. The wall was crumbling and broken, looking as if it had been brutally attacked many years ago. Hú Dié shot through a gap in the wall and skidded to a stop.

I jumped off the motorcycle, eager to give my aching
bottom a break. I scanned the area, taking everything in. This had to be Cangzhen Temple, the once famous temple where Phoenix’s grandfather had lived four hundred years ago. It had been attacked and destroyed back then, and more or less forgotten by history.

I could see why. There was nothing else here. It was in the middle of nowhere. The temple actually consisted of several stone buildings surrounding the courtyard in which we stood. They would need some serious reconstruction to be of use to anyone.

Unless, of course, it were turned into a BMX skills course. In which case, I could see dozens of lines screaming for me to ride them. More than that, the surrounding hills and mountains would be a killer place for mountain bike or BMX trails. The dirt looked perfect.

Hú Dié took off her helmet and shook out her long black hair. It glistened in the sunlight, and a man’s deep voice called out,
“Hú Dié?”

“Grandmaster Long!” Hú Dié cried. “Yes! It is me!”