The Lake Ching Murders - A Mystery of Fire and Ice (17 page)

“Madame Minister?”

“Respond that he is to stay at Lake Ching until I tell him that it is time for him to go. As well, tell him that he is not to presume. That all normal formality shall be used in all his communications.”

The man quickly left the office.

Madame Wu turned to the window. Police were already on the island to help the foreigners. So the danger was near. For a moment she thought about her son. Then about her mother.

So many ghosts these days. But this is an important time. A time of change. They were dangerous times for individuals. The good of the country came first. The future needed to be addressed — no — forged. What could she care for a dead mother and a son who was lost to her.

Two days later the archeologist was surprised to see the old fisherman approach the shoal. He was wrapped in rags to keep out the cold. “What now, old man?” he yelled.

“They’re scaring off the fish!” the old man barked.

“Who is?”

“The visitors! Don’t you know anything!”

Dr. Roung was about to rise to the bait when something told him to hold his temper. “Are the foreigners back, old man?” It came out awkwardly — half-question, half-accusation.

“Worse than that.” What could be worse to this man than foreigners? “Government people. Beijing government people.”

This was new. “Take me.” He reached into his pocket and threw a few bills at the older man. The fisherman did a good impression of a cabbie who thought his tip was too light.

Chu Shi wasn’t happy to see him when he entered her hut. “I’m a married woman now.”

“I know.”

She started to leave, but he reached for her. At first he thought she was going to scream. Then he thought she was going to hit him, and then, somehow, their clothing lay in piles on the floor and he flowed into her as she sang his name over and over. When they were done, she handed him his clothing and his expensive imported glasses. They dressed slowly staring at each other.

Then suddenly she was crying.

He held out his arms to her, but she shook her head.

“I need answers to a few questions.” A look of shock crossed her face. It was almost comical.

“You came here to ask me questions?” she blurted out.

“No. It’s the only way I think I can get to see you again.”

“Don’t try to see me again.” But her fingers were interlocked with his.

“Who are the new people on the island?”

“Government people,” she answered.

“Police officers?”

She looked away. When she spoke, her words came out slowly as if their very sounds were dangerous. “No. Different. Government people from Beijing.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“What do they want, Chu Shi?”

“They threatened Iman that if he doesn’t agree to give blood samples to the foreigners they’ll remove our people from the island. They claim we never had any right to be on the island in the first place.”

“Will Iman give in to the demands?”

“He already has.”

That night in the cold, haunted silence of his room in Ching he wrote again to Madame Minister Wu.

This missive she received while attending a formal state banquet for the Japanese ambassador and several of that country’s leading industrialists. Toasts were exchanged. History forgotten. A swollen future embraced.

“Just like before the liberation,” she thought as she raised her glass. “Foreigners everywhere, owning everything.”

Madame Wu sipped the heated saki. The air conditioning puffed out the silk of the woman’s blouse across the table from her.

Silk!

Throughout her youth, Madame Wu had been forced to carry silkworm eggs strapped to her body. It kept the eggs warm. Many nights she was awakened by her mother screaming at her not to roll over in her sleep and crush the precious eggs. Other nights she awoke feeling a feathery movement on her skin. One ounce of eggs produced twenty thousand worms. They’d hatch in the night. She hated having to stand naked and still as her mother picked them off her.

The worms had to increase their weight ten thousand times before they spun their cocoons. Since noise was harmful to their growth, the house was a place of silence. But in the silence was intense anger.

It was always a relief when the worms finally began to spin their cocoons from the loose stalks of straw that the family had provided. The two or three days needed to spin were the happiest times in the house. But it was short-lived. Once the cocoons were spun, the chrysalis had to be killed.

Boiled.

Her mother’s hands, an angry red from fishing the cocoons out of the boiling water and carefully unravelling the still-wet pouches, were the stuff of her childhood nightmares. And it had all been done for a silk factory owned by the very Japanese they were toasting here tonight.

Traitors.

The men who run this country are traitors to the people of China — to the memory of her mother.

But they will not get away with it. Her family will see to that.

The Japanese ambassador was speaking. Something about business bringing our two great countries together. Madame Wu sipped at her saki again. She grimaced. The taste made her angry. Yet another foreign thing to be swept out of the country. Then she looked at the saki and a slow smile crossed her features.

Dr. Roung was surprised when the case of wine arrived with the note from the Interior Minister:

Please present this to the Islanders with my compliments
on their new business venture. Enclosed please find
a requisition order to cover your expenses for the banquet
that should accompany my gift. — M.W.

He stared at the case of ceremonial wine. Then at the note from Madame Wu. This was definitely her writing style. But something was wrong. Why send a case of wine from Beijing? Although he didn’t drink himself, he was pretty sure this wine was available in Xian. But before he followed this line of inquiry he saw that this presented another opportunity to see Chu Shi — and all reason vanished before the onslaught of desire.

It took little persuasion to get the islanders to accept Interior Minister Wu’s offered banquet. Shortly, the archeologist was dressed in his best clothes, his thinsulate vest beneath his coat, and on his way to the island.

The light was dying as he crossed the lake. Through the murk and far to one side, he saw a cormorant’s head pop out of the water and crane around. “As if searching for him,” he thought.

It was bitterly cold. He looked past the cormorant and scanned the horizon for the fisherman who always seemed to be there. Always seemed to know when he was coming. But he couldn’t see him or the lanterns of the boat, although he knew some fisherman had to be near. A cormorant was a valuable asset and never allowed too far from the boat. Of course, should the bird decide to fly away, its newfound independence would soon give way to starvation. The metal circlet on its neck made it impossible for the animal to swallow fish — its only natural food. Once the circlet was in place, the bird could only receive sustenance from a narrow lengthy dropper, and that could only be manipulated by a man’s hand. “We’re all on a leash of some sort,” he said aloud. His boatman ignored him. Just another city person who talked to himself.

The banquet was set in the large communal hall halfway up the central terraced hill. The building was a storage place for the upper level crops at the three harvest times. In the winter it was seldom used.

Tables had been made from planking set on crude wooden cubes. Lanterns were lit and hung from poles. Dung burned in the metal braziers. The place, like so much of the island, literally smelled like shit. But the archeologist didn’t mind. Chu Shi had just come into the room with her husband, Jiajia. She wore a woven shawl to keep out the chill of the night. Her eyes were focused on the floor.

Something was different with her. What?

The room was filling quickly. The whole island seemed to be here. Just the farmers not the fishermen, he corrected himself. Food was piled high and savoury on the central table. The braziers and lanterns added to the smoke from the islanders’ harsh cigarettes which featured such fanciful names as snake charmers, bullet proofs and smacks.

He rose. All eyes turned to him. He delivered Madame Interior Minister Wu’s congratulations to the islanders on their business acumen then opened a bottle of her gift, the ceremonial wine. He filled glass after glass as they were presented to him. When the last bottle was almost emptied, he looked up. Even the young had glasses in their hands. They awaited him. He raised his glass and was about to speak when he saw Chu Shi. She seemed very close to him although she was far across the large crowded room. The smoke in the room made him dizzy. He lifted his glass a little higher and shouted, “To the future.”

The room filled with cheering. Glasses were emptied and exclamations filled the air. He took the opportunity to tip his glass over onto the hard mud floor. He was no drinker. The wine seeped into the ground like a brown slug seeking the dark.

It felt as if the evening zoomed by. He didn’t get to speak to Chu Shi. Before he knew it, he found himself back on a boat, frozen stiff, heading toward Ching.

He spent that night, that seemingly endless night, wrestling with his loneliness.

Two days later he was by the shoal, leading the beginning of the excavation of the south end of the mound when he looked up to see the old fisherman sitting in his boat not twenty yards away. His birds were on the gunwales, not in the water. He wasn’t fishing. The archeologist took the paddle from the floor of his own boat and made his way out to the fisherman.

“What?”

“There’s sickness.”

“Where?”

“The farmers. Many are sick. Deep sickness.”

“Influenza? What?”

“She may die.” There was no need to name Chu Shi. To Dr. Roung’s surprise, the old man’s sadness seemed to be aimed at himself. As if he was to blame somehow. Without another word, the fisherman grabbed his oar and headed toward the island.

Dr. Roung sat dead still, his boat bobbing gently, the creepy-crawly of fear dancing on his spine.

Three days later, on December 1, the archeologist was shocked into waking by a hand pressing down hard on his chest. Four men were in his room. Islanders. Before he could speak, Iman stepped forward. “Chu Shi is dead.”

Dr. Roung didn’t know what to do.

“We are not foolish people, Excellency. We know about you and her.”

“Then why didn’t . . .”

“We stop it?” Iman completed the archeologist’s question. For a moment he was lost in thought. Then he shrugged. “The others are getting better, but she died from the sickness.”

Dr. Roung’s head filled with questions as he felt himself falling down a great pit of blackness. Then Iman closed off the light at the top of the pit. “She died carrying your child.” He didn’t see Jiajia’s blow coming. It caught him full on the face. Only Iman’s presence saved his life.

He was not allowed on the island for the burial. No one from outside was allowed on the island anymore. Rumours on shore spread that the islanders blamed the sickness on the foreigners with whom they had done business. That giving blood had caused the sickness. That all business deals were off.

Blood was sacred to the islanders in many ways.

Fires burned constantly on the uppermost parts of the island. Rumours became fact when two of the islanders’ foreign business partners arrived and were chased away at gunpoint.

Twenty-four hours later, special assault units of federal soldiers were helicoptered onto the island. Stories. An exhumation. The foreigners insisted. The islanders resisted. The army backed the foreigners. Several islanders were shot. The islanders came out in force and fought a pitched battle with the federal forces. Then another helicopter, this one a small, modern, single-passenger model without markings, landed on the far side of the island. Away from the fighting. Iman and his best fighters stood silently waiting for the rotors to stop their lethal circling. When they did, the door slid open and Madame Minister Wu stepped out.

She looked at him, identified herself and canted her head slightly to one side.

He matched her gesture — this would be a meeting of equals.

Quickly, a small fire was built on the sandy beach and the two sat facing each other across the flames.

Jiajia stepped forward.

“Was it this young man’s wife who died of this foul contagion?”

“It was, Madame Minister.”

“My condolences, young man. Now let me have words in private with Iman.”

Jiajia started to protest then stopped as he saw the flecks of rage the flames of the fire brought to life in Madame Wu’s eyes. He turned and left the ring of light.

Madame Wu picked up a stick and poked at the fire. Iman watched her closely. Finally, she raised her eyes and said, “He is reckless in his grief.” Iman nodded but said nothing. Madame Wu smiled. “But such men can be of use in times such as we are living through. Don’t you agree, Iman?” Again he nodded. “Good,” she said. “Now let us plan a response to these indignities the foreigners have heaped upon you and your people.”

“We are already seeing to that,” Iman said in a cold flat voice.

“By fighting with federal assault troops? Folly, old man. Folly.” Before Iman could respond she added, “There is a better way of dealing with this . . . situation.” She caught his eye. “Let them dig up the dead girl.” Iman leapt to his feet. She shouted, “Sit down.” He did. “One must get one’s revenge when the enemy is not ready for it.” She slipped a small, beautifully bound copy of Sun Tzu’s
The Art of War
from her pocket and held it out to Iman. “Have someone read you the chapter on spies.” She checked to see if Iman was offended. He wasn’t. She went on, “Pay special attention to the part about lulling the enemy into a false sense of security — friendship even.”

Iman took the book.

“I’m sure you will agree with me that letting the foreigners dig up the dead girl is the best way to proceed.”

Madame Wu rose and walked out of the fire’s circle of light. She didn’t want him to see the hatred on her face.