Night Heron (10 page)

Beijing

Peanut bided his time in Beijing’s gray chill. He found a second-hand bookshop off the third ring road, on the ground floor of a brick apartment block. It was little more than someone’s living room. A handwritten cardboard sign pointed to it from the street. The proprietor was a bespectacled elderly man, bald, in
zhongshanzhuang
, the blue cotton jacket buttoned up to the throat, a throwback to socialism. Yet he was, it appeared, a man who read classical Chinese and valued the eclectic. In piles, in boxes, the
Shi Jing
, the
Analects of Confucius
, Ming dynasty novels. An electric heater in a corner lent the room a smell of scorched dust. The old man looked up at Peanut, a dim smile, then returned to the
People’s Daily
. A ginger cat sat on his lap and watched Peanut shuffle amid the musty classics.

He found what he wanted: a copy of the
Chu Ci
, the Songs of the South, in a blue paper cover stitched with cotton thread. An old friend, Qu Yuan. The ancient thinker, strategist to kings, rejected and tortured by exile. Killed himself in a river. Scraps of the poems floated to the surface of Peanut’s memory.

Peanut handed ten yuan from operational funds to the old man, who took it in a veined, quivering hand. Then he gestured, as if to make Peanut wait a moment.

“This is good. If you like a challenge.” The bookseller’s voice was a dry rustle. He reached slowly for a brown volume and held it out. “I was given a whole box. Take one, if you like.”

Peanut took the book.
Tai Bai Yin Jing.
The Hidden Book of Venus. No, not smut, military affairs, a Tang dynasty treatise. Peanut nodded, faintly disappointed.

“Well, thank you.”

“It’s quite a work.” The old man was regarding Peanut intently, and now made an effort to stand, palms flat on the desk, pushing himself up. “Forgive me, but do I know you?”

Peanut turned away, flustered, then was gone, back on to the street. He looked back just once. The bookseller was at the window, watching. Peanut moved quickly in the twilight.

To a photo shop. Where he paid fourteen yuan and posed against a white background, and an acned, spike-haired boy told him to hold still.

“Is it for a passport?”

“You could say that,” replied Peanut as the flash died in streaks of color across his retina.

Then back to Fangzhuang, and the department store, where, tentatively, Peanut bought a mobile phone, the cheapest one he could find. Just as Yin had briefed him, he queued at a newspaper kiosk outside the Metro station and bought a little blue coupon to cover fifty yuan’s worth of calls.

By the time he arrived back at the Blue Diamond, trade was picking up, and Dandan Mama greeted him wordlessly with open palms, as if to say, where have you been? Yin sat before
a mirror, brushing her hair. Peanut walked, unhurried, to the storeroom, took off his coat and dropped the two books on the mattress. Then he took up his position, on the stool by the beaded curtain. He lit a cigarette. Yin brushed past him, avoiding his eye, a young man in a baseball cap shuffling behind her.

And so on, into the night. The girls lounged in the salon or sometimes walked for a moment or two along the tiled steps outside, their breath steaming on the air. The rattling television showed a soap. A chiseled tycoon in a tuxedo argued passionately with his simpering, ringletted lover, mouth like a rosebud, the set a Shanghai mansion with Grecian statues and high gates.

Peanut, silent, watched the migrant workers slouch through the curtain. Some were in twos and threes, reeking of sorghum spirit. More of them were alone.

Peanut composed, in his mind, another letter.

And later, when he’d locked the front door, turned off the neon lights and cleaned the ashtrays, he watched Yin insert the battery and plug the phone in to charge. Slowly, as if to a recalcitrant child, she explained to Peanut the significance of the coupon, how to activate his account. She looked disdainfully at the little device.

“You’re not going to impress anyone with
that
,” she said. He took notes as she told him how to make a call, how to answer one.

It was Sunday morning and Mangan spooned coffee from a tin. The “bureau” was silent and chilly. Pajamas, again, and he sat at the desk looking through the Xinhua News Agency copy, pawing the papers, wondering if anything might do for his Monday edition.
Top Chinese official urges transformation of economic development mode!
Or perhaps
Vice Premier urges Gansu cadres to stress stability!
No?

A key rattled in the front door and Ting bustled in, red-cheeked.
She wore a silvery padded jacket and long leather boots with heels.

“It’s almost winter, Philip!
Dongtian, a!
” She set down a shopping bag and stood breathing heavily, smiling. She always took the stairs. “I smell coffee?”

He pointed to the kitchen. “Fresh. Why are you here? It’s Sunday.” Ting studied Kunqu, classical opera, on Sunday mornings, a big, gossipy class of socialites wrestling with
The Peony Pavilion
.

She wagged a finger at him as she went to the kitchen. “I’ll tell you.”

She came back and perched on the edge of the desk, hands wrapped around a steaming mug. “Go and put some clothes on.” She pointed at the wall, then her ear, mouthed just in case.

Mangan put on a hideous dressing gown decorated with giraffes, and they went out on to the balcony. It was cold. Ting took out her diary, spoke quietly. “I was at a party last night and there was a journalist in from Yunnan. Surnamed Ma.
Yunnan Daily
. He said he knows a village that is all Followers, some little lost place in the mountains, whole families who gave everything to the movement.” She tapped a page of hastily written notes, some phone numbers.

“Anyway, the police came and took away the young men, all at once. He spoke to some families, and the men are being held in some sort of camp. They’ve been there for months now. He told me where. I have it written down. He can’t use it, of course, so he said he’d put us in touch. As long as we keep him out of it.” She looked at Mangan, expectant.

Yunnan. A long way away. But this little scrap of hearsay had an urgency to it. It was a story.

“Better rip that page out of your diary.”

“Do you like it?”

Her look was searching.

“Of course I like it. I really like it.”

She tore the page out, handed it to Mangan as if awarding a prize, then turned away from him and went back into the apartment, arms raised in victory, fists clenched.

“But, Philip, you’ll have to make the calls on this one, yes?” She bent to gather up her bags. The sunlight caught her black hair and Mangan thought he saw other colors, greens and blues, flecked through its blackness.

“Of course,” he said.

She was reversing towards the door. “You should come to Kunqu. It’s fun. Lots of rich girls. And the glorious culture of China, obviously.”

“Why would I want lots of rich girls?”

Ting gestured to the room, its shabbiness.

“Because, in the end, poverty is not very sexy, Philip.”

Mangan smiled and made a
Go!
gesture, and heard the door slam and her feet clattering down the stairs. Silence again.

The knock, when it came, was soft.

Mangan stood and crossed to the door, pulling his dressing gown tight. Through the peep hole he saw a man dressed in dark-blue coveralls splashed with paint. He carried a pot of paint and a brush, and had his back to the door, so Mangan could not see his face. Mangan opened the door and the man turned.

“Mr. Mang An. Sorry to trouble you. You remember me?”

Mangan took in the bulk, the bristled hair.

“I believe I do.”

The man went into Mandarin. He smiled and made deferential movements, the half-bow, the open hands.

“Sorry again to trouble you. I would like to speak to you very briefly. May I come inside?”

Mangan stalled. “I am afraid we don’t really have anything to talk about. I am very busy.”

The man’s eyes flickered quickly downward over the absurd dressing gown, the bare, enormous feet.

“Of course. I am sorry. But Mr. Mang An, events are moving very fast. It’s important you know what is happening. This affects you.” With this the man straightened up and pointed at Mangan. “These events affect you, Mr. Mang An.”

“What events are you talking about?”

The man took a half-step forward and gestured to the inside of the apartment. “Inside, please.”

Mangan reluctantly moved to one side. Oh, mistake, he thought.

The man moved quickly into the apartment. Mangan closed the door. The man took a white envelope from inside his coveralls. His hands were smeared with black paint.

“Mr. Mang An. I am giving you an envelope.” He spoke quietly, barely above a whisper. “Inside is one letter, one photograph and a document, two pages. The letter will explain everything. Please read it. And understand, Mr. Mang An, that I deal only with you. Nobody else.”

“You are not dealing with me. I cannot accept anything from you.” Mangan held his hands up. “You must leave now.”

The man just smiled. He walked across the room and put the envelope on the desk. Mangan had the sense of having lost control. “Leave now, please.”

The man was already at the door, and then was gone. The entire exchange had taken under two minutes, yet Mangan felt manipulated, almost physically, as if the man had picked him up bodily and turned him around. Annoyed, he turned, and went to the balcony. He saw the coveralled figure with its powerful, rolling gait, carrying its paint pot, moving fast towards the north gate, walking past the guards and back on to the street. How did he get in?

On the desk was the envelope, a smear of black paint on it.
Mangan picked it up and dropped it in the waste bin. Then bent and took it out. The envelope was blank and sealed with tape. Are there consequences if I open this? he thought.

He held the envelope to his nose and smelled it. Paint.

Yes. I will know something that I do not know now. That is a consequence.

He waited. Then opened a desk drawer and took out a pair of scissors.

One letter, on thin grainy paper, squared, of the sort children might use to practice their characters. In handwritten Chinese, but the characters clearly drawn, each stroke separate and particular. A letter written for a foreign eye. One photograph, passport size, full face against a white background; the face that of the old friend of the paper who spouts nonsense about birds and who arrives unbidden on Sunday mornings and who, we are almost certain, does not work as a painter.

And one document, two pages. Photocopied. On the first page, in the blocky, spiky typeface that screams Communist Party, two characters.
Juemi.
“Top Secret.” At the bottom of the page, a number: 157. And in the middle of the page, a title.
A Preliminary Report. Certain Questions. DF-41.
The other characters demanded a technical dictionary, but Mangan was not of a mind to consult a technical dictionary just now, to go digging for radicals and phonetics and scrolling through hundreds of unfamiliar terms.
Leading Small Group.

On the second page a table of contents.
Background. Explanation of April 16th Incident. Actions and Policies Related to April 16th Incident. Criticisms of Responsible Cadres. Implications for Launch Schedule.

Mangan ran a hand through his hair and wondered if he’d left any trace of himself on the page. A fingerprint?
Annexes. Key Personnel. Timeline of Key Events. Minutes of Leading Small
Group Discussions of April 16th Incident.
His Chinese was fairly good, in its way. Good enough to know that he was looking at a document whose origins lay deep in the secret heart of China’s ballistic missile program. Good enough to know that he was looking at a death sentence. For someone.

He locked the documents in a desk drawer, and dialed.

“Charteris.”

“David, it’s Philip. Sorry to call on a Sunday.”

“Not a problem. Something exciting happening? You’re so assiduous, Philip, always the first to know.”

“Well, not this time. You remember my telling you about that, um, encounter I had. Birds.”

“Careful.”

“Well, another encounter. Bit perplexed, to be honest. Where are you?”

“At the gym. Come here. Now.”

Mangan took a cab to Dongzhimen. The sprawling compound of “villas,” a pastiche of a northern European garden suburb, was flanked on all sides by skyscrapers. On the wall surrounding the compound, a graffiti artist—he was all over Beijing, an anti-hero, infuriating the authorities—had stenciled his signature image in black: a figure, this one a dog, wearing goggles. Underneath it one word:
THREATEN
. Mangan paid the taxi off and walked into the compound.