Lisa See - The Interior

And then there was Hulan. When David emerged from the burning building, choking, his eyes running, his lungs scorched, he found Hulan stretched out on the ground, the two girls who'd brought her out still at her side. The only way he knew she was alive was that her skin radiated an intense feverish heat. He knew that when the medical teams arrived, the doctors would dismiss Hulan as less urgent, for she looked peaceful and physically uninjured compared to the others who were in such agony from their burns. He half staggered, half ran back to the Administration Building, made his way back through the deserted hallways to the conference room, thinking that he'd have to take the car keys off Lo's body. Instead he found Lo shot but conscious. David helped Lo out to the car, drove to where Hulan was, put her in the backseat along with Siang, the girl who spoke a little English, then, under Lo's directions, pulled out of the compound and made it to the hospital in Taiyuan before the hundreds of others arrived.

It was a good thing David thought to bring Siang, because by the time they reached the hospital Lo had gone into shock. With eyes wide, Siang presented Lo's and Hulan's Ministry of Public Security credentials to the nurse, who quickly summoned help. Hulan and Lo were wheeled away, and David waited.

Siang didn't have the language skills to translate the doctors' words, but eventually someone was found who'd studied at Johns Hopkins. Still, the words-tachycardia, oliguria, anoxia, tachypnea-were as foreign and had as little meaning for David as the Mandarin. Even the terms he understood he couldn't allow himself to comprehend. The doctor seemed to be telling him that the sepsis had gone so far that Hulan's heart, brain, or liver could be overwhelmed at any moment. If the poisoning turned out to be viral, the doctor added regretfully, there was nothing anyone could do. They had twenty-four hours, if Hulan lived that long, to wait for the results of the blood culture. In the meantime Hulan was intravenously dosed with broad-spectrum antibiotics.

Those twenty-four hours were the worst of David's life. Now that he knew what Hulan had, all of her ailments of the last few days fell into place-the flu-like symptoms, the lethargy, the fever followed by chills, her rapid breathing, her racing, then feeble pulse. The guilt he felt over this was superseded only by the terror at the prospect of losing her.

Eventually the right cocktail of antibiotics was found, and Hulan's doctors announced that she would probably live. The survival of the baby, however, was still an issue. The baby's heart continued to beat, but more tests needed to be run.

By that time much had happened. Henry Knight, who survived the ordeal at the factory, led an expedition up Tianlong Mountain to ferret out Governor Sun, while Siang was informed about Tsai Bing's death and her father's hand in it. David, who never left Hulan's side, spent hours on a cell phone, talking to the partners at Phillips, MacKenzie amp; Stout, to Anne Baxter Hooper, to Nixon Chen (who was enlisted to help Henry), and to Rob Butler at the U.S. Attorney's Office. Rob and David had much to discuss, but in the meantime Rob negotiated for and won the right to send a team of forensic accountants from Los Angeles to the Knight compound to try and pull up the financial records that Doug had tried to eliminate from the computer. Through it all, David had the help and support of Vice Minister Zai, whose concern for Hulan's well-being seemed sometimes to surpass even David's.

One day Hulan's doctors crowded into her room and announced that the tests on the baby looked good. This news gave Hulan a surge of energy, and she began to regain her strength. Though Zai and the doctors preferred that Hulan be spared the details, she was adamant that she hear everything. She reviewed the media coverage, studied the photos of the burned-out building, read over the casualty list, and cried first at the number of names, then at the individual names of people she'd known. Once she was deemed well enough to return to Beijing, they flew to the capital on the Knight jet and settled back in the compound with round-the-clock nurses. Hulan's mother and her nurse came back from the seaside. Cooks and maids were brought in to help, and the compound bustled with activity. Finally there came a day when Hulan told David that he had unfinished business to attend to and that she'd be fine with all her extra caretakers. With deep misgivings, David did as he was told.

Many questions still needed to be answered, but those who might have answered them most truthfully-Miles, Doug, and Sandy-were dead. That left Aaron, Jimmy, and Amy. Aaron Rodgers, who had the great fortune to have been in Taiyuan on the day of the fire, admitted to a healthy libido befitting a twenty-five-year-old placed in the happy circumstance of being one of a handful of males amongst a thousand females. Ling Miaoshan had been the first of many conquests. His age, his isolation in the Assembly Building, and his stupidity (which became apparent to all concerned as the investigation unfolded) conspired to keep him blissfully in the dark to the financial shenanigans. As for conditions in the factory, Aaron used the predictable and well-worn excuse that he thought that's how things were supposed to be in China. As his mother and father, who flew out to Taiyuan, said, their son didn't know any better. No criminal charges were filed. He gave testimony against Jimmy and Amy in court; then his parents took him home. He would never again return to China.

David then turned his attention to Jimmy and Amy. David wasn't the only one who wanted answers, and so it was that Henry pulled himself away from the ruins of the Knight factory, where he'd worked practically without sleep since the fire, to accompany David to Taiyuan 's provincial jail. On their arrival they were handed a file pertaining to one James W. Smith, which had been faxed from the Australian authorities. As Hulan guessed when she'd first seen Jimmy, he had an extensive criminal background, which included armed robbery and a couple of cases of battery. He'd been in and out of prison since the age of eighteen. Two years ago yet another warrant had been issued for his arrest, but he'd managed to flee, ending up, the record showed, in Hong Kong. It was presumed that he had met Doug in that city, been hired, and had moved into the Knight compound even before the factory opened.

Also, as suspected, the Knight records showing that women who'd suffered injuries of one sort or another and had chosen to "go back home" proved false. Using the doctored files, Chinese investigators had contacted local Public Security Bureaus across China and ascertained that those women had never returned home. No wonder Xiao Yang had screamed so when Aaron had carried her off the factory floor. No wonder she'd been found dead not long after.

But had this murder been too hasty, a matter of convenience on a day that was busy? Or had it been part of the plot to keep pushing Henry in one direction so he wouldn't look in another? Had Jimmy thrown Xiao Yang off the roof? Had he run down Keith? The record showed that he'd been in Los Angeles on the date in question. Was he the one who'd killed Pearl and Guy? The answers to these queries would help address a major underlying question: How much of a monster had Douglas Knight been? But Jimmy Smith wasn't talking. David pleaded. Henry begged.

Obviously the local police had tried persuasion of another sort, all to no avail. Whatever Jimmy knew would die with him.

David and Henry were dealing with a bureaucracy, and for their next meeting they were asked to move to another room. The pitiful room that passed for a visiting area was filthy and stiflingly hot. Amy Gao, who ten days ago had looked so snappy in her suit at the banquet at the Beijing Hotel, now wore a dirty prison uniform. She had not been allowed to bathe, wash her hair, or brush her teeth since her confinement.