Whispering Shadows (35 page)

Elizabeth Owen could hardly wait until she was sitting on the plane tomorrow. Whatever awaited her in Milwaukee, at least she knew who she was dealing with there. Who she could trust and who she could not.

XXXII

He had not noticed any of the men. Not the four men by the side table nor the two men by the door nor the group having an unusually silent meal at the big round table on the way to the washroom. Victor Tang was sitting in the Golden Dragon and was too deep in conversation with new steel suppliers to be alert to anything around him. Only when he had paid the bill and gotten up to go did he notice that over a dozen young men in the restaurant stood up at the same time, and that gave him an uncomfortable feeling. The next thing that he noticed was that the restaurant manager, who usually fluttered around him and thanked him for his generous tip when he left, was nowhere to be seen. Even the waiters were keeping their distance from him. They were looking away or giving him strained smiles, not daring to bring him his coat.

On his way to the cloakroom, two of the men planted themselves in front of him and told him to follow them outside. Whoever was behind this, Tang thought, must be incredibly sure of himself to arrange for him to be arrested in public.

A convoy of cars was waiting outside the door: six limousines that were soon driving at high speed on the highway, bringing him to a large building on the outskirts of the city. If he was not wrong, it used to belong to the Ministry of State Security before that ministry moved to new quarters near the airport. The policemen were probably from Beijing. That was not a good sign, but he was not too worried. He had clearly made a mistake; now he had to find out
who he was up against. Would it be Wang Ming and his pathetic Lotus Metal? If the ministry was trying to call him—and thereby also parts of the party and municipal authorities—to justice, then he had miscalculated badly. Tang could not imagine that was the case and it didn't matter to him either way. As soon as he knew who he was dealing with he would assemble his allies and counterattack.

His watch showed that it was just after ten when they arrived at the building. Lights were on on the top floor, but the rest of it was in darkness and looked unoccupied. They climbed over a pile of rubble in the entrance hall and walked up a staircase without a banister and through empty, barely lit corridors to a large room with a high ceiling, with only a red couch and an empty desk and chair in it. A bulb hung from a long black wire, and the walls were bare. Plaster was peeling from several places on the wall, and it looked like a place earmarked for demolition. The men told him to wait there, and they left him alone. When he sat down on the couch he sank so deep into it that it felt like he might as well have been squatting on the floor. His knees were practically at eye level. A dwarf could have sat on the chair opposite and appeared like a giant to him. He was about to clamber his way out of the couch when a man entered the room.

“Don't stand on ceremony, please. Stay seated and make yourself comfortable,” he said, sitting on the chair behind the desk.

As least he had a sense of humor, Tang thought, falling back into the pathetically flabby upholstery.

The man looked down at him for a long moment without saying anything. He was young, probably not even forty yet, and he had a piercing stare that Tang could not avoid. Surely he didn't think that Tang would be intimidated by that.

“Tang Mingqing” the stranger said eventually, drawing out the syllables as he spoke.

“Yes. And who are you?”

“My name is Wen. I belong to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and I'm heading the investigation against
you.”

“When did this investigation start?” Tang asked, astounded. His surprise was not feigned.

“It officially started yesterday. Unofficially, it started some time ago.”

Was it this damn couch or the intolerable arrogance in the man's voice? Tang started to feel uncomfortable, and slid back and forth in search of a comfortable position in which he would not look so ridiculous with his long legs.

“To what do I owe this, if I may ask?”

“The list is long. Several serious cases of corruption. Misappropriation of official funds. Tax evasion and,” he paused here as if to give the next word extra weight, “murder.”

“That's absurd,” Tang blurted out. “I think you don't know who is sitting in front of you. A phone call from me will be enough to clear up this ridiculous episode.”

The inspector took Tang's cell phone out of his bag, which the men in the car had taken from him, and tossed it to him.

“Please try your luck. To be honest, we would also be very interested to see who you turn to in such a situation.”

The cell phone thudded next to him on the couch. Tang stared at it and felt himself growing hot. Please, he couldn't show any sweat on his brow now. He had not expected this coldness. This man was of a different stature to the party cadre heads, fat cats, or local officials he usually dealt with. Threats did not impress him. He had been sent from the capital, and possessed the remorselessly self-righteous manner of a person acting on behalf of those in power. I must change my tone, Tang thought, to get this official to realize how important I am.

“Inspector Wen, what do you actually know about me?” he asked in as jovial a tone as he could manage.

“A great deal.”

“I mean about my personal life.”

“You were born in 1952 in Chengdu, son of an army officer.”

“That's right,” Tang said, interrupting him. “I was one of the Red Guards and led a work brigade in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. Four years later, I went to study at Harvard. The first Red Guard to make it to an elite American university. Did you know that?”

The inspector merely nodded. He did not look amazed or impressed. Tang comforted himself with the thought that he was from another generation—much too young to grasp what an achievement that was.

“It was my own long march, if you like.”

Silence. Not even the hint of a smile passed over the apparatchik's expressionless face at this allusion.

“When the economic reforms started I established several companies here in Shenzhen for the Sichuan government, and earned about a hundred million American dollars for the province.”

No reaction. It was like speaking to a wall.

This conversation had taken a turn for the worse, and Tang could feel himself growing more and more uneasy. He had wanted to demonstrate how superior he was but he felt smaller and smaller as he went on. As though this was a magic couch that was shrinking him back to the size of a fourteen-year-old.

“Then I set up my own company and, as you know, became a very successful entrepreneur.”

“Not by legal means. That's why we are sitting here.”

“Inspector Wen.” Perhaps a joke would help to lighten the situation. “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.”

“And?”

“Do you know who said that?”

“No. Chairman Mao? President Hu?”

Tang gave a deep sigh. “Balzac.”

“Who?”

“A French writer. Forget it.”

He could not believe that he was supposed to answer to this
young man. Did he have to give him a history tutorial first? What in damnation was he accusing him of in the first place? It would be very difficult for them to prove that he was responsible for the murder of Michael Owen. What remained were crimes like fraud, misappropriation of funds, and corruption. Laughable. What kind of China did this man live in? This was a time of establishing new horizons, a gold rush period in which everyone was out to get as much as he could for himself. Every great power in their history had experienced a time of change like this. It was a time for chancers and gamblers, speculators and robber barons. Tang was convinced that it was people like him who helped the country make progress. Without them, the people would be sitting in the dirt and chewing on tree bark like the North Koreans. How did the inspector think that the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers had come by their fortunes? By honest reckoning of every cent or centime? By keeping their word on agreements?

“If you're suddenly trying to crack down on these types of crimes in China,” Tang said in a trembling voice, “then you can arrest the majority of party cadre heads, officials, and entrepreneurs in the country.”

“I'm not investigating the majority, Mr. Tang. I'm investigating you.”

“That is completely arbitrary. Today I've fallen into disfavor. Tomorrow you'll seek out another victim. And what about the rest of them? Do they stay under the carpet? What do you have in mind? A show trial?”

“I understand a show trial to be for cases where the accusations are unfounded and the judgments have been decided before the start of the process. Our charges against you are based entirely on the facts. An independent judiciary will decide on the outcome.”

“You can't be serious. Based on the same facts you could lock up tens of thousands, no, millions of people.”

“My task is to conduct an investigation of you. The rest do not interest me right now.” He paused and smiled briefly. “We'll have to
start somewhere.”

It was this smile that made Tang feel a deep, bottomless fear, a fear that he had thought he had left behind him forever. He recognized this smile from when he had smiled the same way. It was the evil smile of contempt that the powerful cast at their victims.

This interrogation was only the beginning. They had probably already searched his offices and his house and arrested his managing director. Victor Tang no longer held himself upright. He was suddenly no longer one of those people who could bend and twist the truth or even completely dismantle it and make something else out of it entirely.

He saw his father. The pack was on its way to the market square. He could hear their cries already.

If anything could save him, it was the fact that Inspector Wen was not an independent investigator who was bound to observe the rule of law. He was a tool, a henchman for the powers that be, and those could change, Tang thought.

A second man came in, walked over to Wen, leaned down to him, and whispered something in his ear. The men talked in low tones so Tang could not make out a word of what they said. While they talked, the stranger looked at him as though he was regarding a dog warily, unsure of whether he was about to attack him. He was shorter and quite a bit older than the inspector and seemed somehow familiar to Tang. He stood up, walked around the desk, and stared at him without saying anything. They had met before, but where? Why was his usually excellent memory letting him down now, of all times?

“Do we know each other?”

The man nodded.

“How?”

“From a temple.”

“Where did we meet?” Tang could not remember when he had last been in a temple.

“At an execution.”

“Whose?”

“A monk's. But mine too,” he said, stretching his arm out and making a movement as if he was holding something and striking downward with force. Where was that musty smell coming from? What was that horrible sound that cut Tang to the bone in his spine and his legs? Wood splintering.

“Mine,” Zhang repeated. “And yours.”

XXXIII

She had wanted to come unburdened, without the terrible fear of the past few days and nights when she had hardly been able to sleep because she was worrying about him and wondering what had happened. Most of all, though, she had wanted to come without the weight of high expectations. He had rung her that morning and asked her to dinner and also asked her if she might like to stay the night. His voice had sounded quite different from before: very relaxed, cheerful, in fact, and she did not want to bring anything with her other than the happiness and lightness that had been with her all day since they had spoken on the phone. She simply wanted to spend the evening and the night with him, to simply see what would happen, and not be disappointed if it turned out to be nothing much.

But by the time she had made her way through the hedges and the bamboo grove, opened the garden gate, closed it behind her, and seen the house and the terrace, all the longings and expectations that she had wanted to leave behind in Hong Kong had returned.

Paul had turned the garden into an enchanted forest. Tea lights placed close together marked out the terrace and several white and red lanterns were hanging from the trees. A string of fairy lights was wound around the frangipani tree and an eight-candle candelabra was on the table next to two glasses, a big bouquet of red roses, and a bucket with a bottle of champagne in it. The doors and windows were open, and the only light in the house came from the
candles on the tables and windowsills in the kitchen and the living room.

Paul lay quietly on his deck chair and pretended to be dozing. She could see perfectly well that he had opened one of his eyes by a tiny slit and was following her movements. She had never received such a welcome from anyone before.

She went to the table and saw how much care he had taken to decorate everything. There were more than a dozen small bowls full of delicious things; she could see eggplant, hundred-year-old eggs with mustard and ginger, and steamed crabs, all her favorite dishes. White frangipani petals and many more small red bougainvillea petals were strewn on the table. Her place setting was a disc of deep-red silk and a tea light flickered on both plates. She heard Paul getting up carefully and creeping up behind her. Then he was standing behind her and covering her eyes with his hands.

Her knees gave way. For a moment, she was afraid that this was all a dream and that she would wake up any minute and find herself on her couch in Hang Hau, staring at the test screen on the television. Then she felt his lips on her neck and her skin prickled. How could a person kiss so tenderly? She wanted to turn around, but he took her in his arms, lifted her up, turned in a circle with her, and carried her into the house and up the stairs like a sleeping child. He laid her on the bed and started undressing her. There were candles burning in the bedroom too. By their light, she watched his every move and she saw that he would not lose his strength today. She could hardly hold still with excitement and she wanted to tear off her skirt, her blouse, and her bra, or at least help him with the buttons and the belt to hurry things up, but he stroked her hands to her side and whispered, “We have time.”

The gentleness with which he undressed her, the way his fingers glided over her skin, aroused her so much that she would not be able to take much more, would explode if he did not release her soon. How could he control himself for so long? How could he cover her
with kisses for so long, until she was practically floating from the touch of his tongue?

When the moment came, she felt as if she was losing consciousness. As though he was sending waves of happiness through her body, waves that swept everything in their way along with them, that lifted her high and carried her into another world she had never been to, where there was no fear and no doubt, where there was one answer to every question. A world she had not even thought existed and that she never wanted to leave again. She felt indescribably weak and at the same time stronger than she had ever been in her life.

Their bodies were so intertwined that they were like one body. She held Paul tight and knew that she would never let him go again.

After some time she heard him laughing quietly as he lay in her arms. She took his head in her hands and saw that he was laughing and crying at the same time. He got up and carried her through the dark house down to the garden, where all the tea lights had burned down to the wick and gone out. He put her down on a chair gently, went back into the house, fetched two bathrobes and a basket full of tea lights, lit them one after another, and soon the garden was lit as it was when she arrived. He brought some warm rice from the kitchen, opened and poured the bottle of champagne, handed her a glass, and kissed her on the neck again, making her heart pound with excitement once more.

“You're driving me crazy,” she whispered. “If you don't stop, the candles will go out another time without us.”

“Again? I'm not a young man of twenty anymore,” he whispered back.

“What a shame,” she said, kissing him on the forehead.

Paul began feeding her. He picked up a piece of eggplant with his chopsticks, circled it in front of her open mouth, and let it drop in. He fed her some chicken in lemon sauce, cold duck, and tofu cooked in seven spices. She knew Paul was a keen cook, but his food
had never tasted so good.

“This is incredible,” she said, amazed. “How long did you spend in the kitchen?”

He was clearly pleased by her praise. He poured more champagne into her glass and clinked glasses with her.

“What are we toasting?” Christine asked, curious.

“You.”

“Why me?”

“Because I want to thank you.”

“Me? What for?”

“For your love. ‘As if trusting was only for fools. As if we had a choice.' When you first said that to me I thought you were crazy. Of course we have a choice.”

“And now?”

Paul sipped from his champagne, leaned his head to one side, and gave her a thoughtful look. “Now I know that you're right. When I had dinner with Victor Tang your words suddenly came to me. I missed you terribly and I quoted you.”

“Did he know what you were talking about?”

“He knew very well. But he thinks the opposite is true, that we have no choice but not to trust.”

Christine thought about her brother and her father and she thought about the story that Paul had told her yesterday on the telephone about Tang's father. “That's very Chinese.”

“He said something similar.”

“What?”

“That he wouldn't trust any Chinese person from his generation.”

“I wouldn't either. In love, we have no choice but to trust. But
apart from that, yes we do have a choice.”

Christine listened in silence as he talked about the past two days, trying to imagine Tang and his world—the mansion, the gold golf clubs, the servants, Anyi—but she could not. It was too alien to her. It was as if Paul were telling her about his journey to the land of darkness, not about a place she could get to by train in an hour. What Paul was describing confirmed her worst fears and left her feeling indifferent at the same time. She was interested only insofar as she was still worried about Paul. She didn't care about Tang, and the Owens meant nothing to her. Only when the conversation turned to Zhang, and Paul spoke slowly and increasingly hesitantly about the temple and the old monk, did she grow uncomfortable. She could see how difficult it was for him to tell this story.

There was a long silence in the enchanted forest after that.

“Why did he never say anything?” Paul said in a half whisper, tipping his head back and looking up into the night sky as though the stars might have an answer for him.

Christine marveled at his question. Was it really so difficult for him to understand that Zhang could not share this secret? “Paul, your friend was just too ashamed, and he never found the right time. I think that after the right time passes, every minute of silence becomes another lie and they mount up so quickly that at some point it becomes simply impossible to talk about. Don't you know that feeling? Are you sure that you would have said anything in his place?”

He was still staring up at the stars in the sky. “No,” he said, without looking at her. “Confucius claims that trust once lost can never be regained. Do you think that too?”

“Stop that,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Even the Chinese philosophers get it wrong sometimes.”

“Hmm. I'll think about it.”

“Paul, it's not the head that forgives but the heart.”

He smiled. “But even the heart takes time.”

“Especially the heart.”

He nodded and fell into a long silence again.

“What are you thinking?” Christine wanted to know.

“About Elizabeth Owen. She was here this afternoon. She wanted to thank me. It's strange, but I had a bad conscience after she went.”

“After everything you've done for her?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I got the feeling that I should have told her that it was her husband who told Victor Tang about Michael's negotiations.”

“Why?”

“She thinks it was Anyi.”

“I would too, if I were her.”

“But I know the truth,” Paul retorted.

“And you think she doesn't?”

“No, she doesn't.”

“Paul, Elizabeth Owen is not stupid. I'm sure she has a sense of who it was but she doesn't want to know. You can't force the truth on someone who doesn't want to see it. Anyway it's none of your business. It's a matter for the two of them.”

Paul gave a deep sigh. “Sometimes I envy your pragmatism.”

“You mean my simple view of the world?” she asked in mock indignation.

“No,” Paul laughed out loud. “Not at all. But things like that bother me for ages.”

He shook his head, got up, and fetched another bottle of champagne from the fridge. He put his arm around her and kissed her. “It's exactly that which I am grateful to you for, Christine. For your sense of humor and your belief in people, even though I can't always share it.”

“Then watch out: the ability to trust is contagious.”

It was still wonderfully warm so they pushed the chairs together
and sat facing each other with their legs on each other's laps. They talked and ate and drank the second bottle too, until they heard the first birdsong and the sky above them gradually grew lighter. Christine could not remember when she had last spent the night outdoors in Hong Kong.

At some point they went upstairs and crawled into the bed, which still smelled of them. Paul lay next to her with his arms crossed under his head and his eyes open and Christine was reminded of her son. Not that there was the slightest resemblance between them, but the look in his eyes made her think of Josh when he was three or four years old and how he had greeted her in the mornings sometimes with such boundless happiness. It was not long before Paul fell asleep and Christine watched him, far too happy for sleep to cross her mind. She had taken the day off—her first in many years. Even on the day of her grandmother's funeral she had gone to the office in the afternoon. After a while she got up to surprise Paul with breakfast. She crept downstairs, tidied up in the garden, made some tea, and took the raspberry jam and the croissants out of the bag she had brought with her. She warmed them up in the oven, put everything on a tray, brought it up, and sat down next to him on the bed.

She listened to his quiet, even breath and watched his face at peace in the warm glow of the early daylight, and she asked herself whether she was frightened that he would pull away one more time, as he had so often in the past few months. Whether she was afraid that he would leave her or cheat on her, just like her husband had left her and cheated on her. Whether she was still haunted by the pain that her husband had caused her. No, she thought. No, she was not. She would not surrender to the power of mistrust. Because of that, her best friend said she was naïve and credulous, and her mother scolded her for being innocent, simple, and unworldly about love. Christine knew that she was none of those things. How could someone who loved be simple? How could anyone call her unworldly when there was almost nothing more important in the
world than to love and to be loved?

She thought about the cold and rainy day in February when she had first met Paul. She had thought that he was about to shatter into thousands of tiny bits of glass like a car windshield on impact. He had been silent as if he had lost the power of speech; she remembered the wounded look on his face. This last night, in the flickering of the candlelight, he had looked no less vulnerable, but something was back in his eyes, a light that she had not seen all these months but that she had always known existed. He had laughed and joked and loved her more gently than any man ever had, and he had found his speech again. He would never lose her again, that she was sure of. He had carried her in his arms through the house and into the bedroom.