David Rotenberg - The Lake Ching murders

She felt herself on the platform. All she need do is press – and with luck the entire world would change. The whole history of China would be redirected. Back. Back to where this all began. Back to a time before money was everything. “We will soon regain Hong Kong. Our window on the world is secure. Now all we need do is shut the door,” she thought.

Madame Wu turned to her assistant and said, “Yes, he could be made to work for us.” But what she thought was: “He had better be made to work for us or all my years of planning and all the risks I’ve taken will be for nothing.”

Madame Wu smiled.

“Madame Minister?” asked her assistant.

“Nothing – nothing that you’d understand.” She turned from him and looked out the window. It was beginning to rain on Tiananmen Square.

“They’re not going to be pleased about this,” Captain Chen said, then turned on his heel and left. Fong looked up at the slanted bank of filthy windows in the ceiling of the place, then stepped into the fading squares of light on the floor.

He just nodded. “No shit,” he said to the air.

His two years west of the Wall had taught him the value of simple pleasures – like watching day’s end. He removed his padded jacket, then his shirt. The milky rays of dusk felt cool on his skin. He sat and enjoyed the movement of the sun’s dying light on him, around him.

When it was finally dark, he took a deep breath and flipped the wall switch on. The light from the naked bulbs had no warmth or movement to it. Fong turned to the wall of photos. So much death. So many passings at once. And such brutality. He focused on the pictures of the Chinese men with the scraped-off faces. Obliterated faces. Why do this? Fong got up and went to the pictures. He ran his fingers across the first photograph. He had seen violence in his time but nothing like this.

Fong glanced at the photos of the Japanese men with the lengths of intestine down their fronts, and nothing in their pants.

Erased faces – removed genitals.

He glanced at the Triad markings, but his eyes quickly moved to the Americans whose heads had been switched. This message Fong recognized. Many Chinese couldn’t tell one Caucasian from the next. Switch the heads – what’s the difference.

But so much death. Hardly discreet. Un-Triad-like.

The ancient word chi welled up inside him like something long buried coming up in the spring rains.

Chi was a word that evoked both awe and fear. Chinese mania, the foreigners called it. There had been famous outbreaks before. Reports of those infamous eruptions of chi were whispered about at the dark end of alleys in Shanghai’s Old City when a white person made the mistake of thinking it a cute San Francisco Chinatown.

Fong took one more look at the pictures then turned off the light. He walked in the gloom. Only the steady blinking of the red light on his ankle cuff broke the darkness.

He lay on his back and tucked his rolled shirt beneath his neck. He pulled the Mao jacket up to his chin and listened to the silence of the place for a moment; then sleep took him.

Fong never felt the plastic mask slide over his mouth and nose. The clang of a cymbal woke him. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of the deserted factory, he thought he heard an arhu’s mournful notes added to the cymbal’s insistence. He struggled to a sitting position, disoriented, unable to tell if this was a dream or actually happening.

The mongoose lulled in a drugged sleep.

Then a single light cut through the darkness. A spotlight. Into the light stepped Fu Tsong in full Peking Opera makeup and costume – ready for her role in Journey to the West. A drum sounded and she pulled a four-foot-long feather from her headdress down into her mouth and struck a pose.

“I’m asleep,” Fong shouted then leapt to his feet. The light snapped out. Silence. Then the drum sounded just once. Another light snapped on. This time it was right in front of him. Fu Tsong stepped into the light. She was so close that Fong could smell the greasepaint. She raised her elegant arms and the costume’s long sleeves furled down to her shoulders. Her hand reached out and touched his throat – and he knew. He closed his eyes – and accepted.

Her hands. No, its hands. Cold. Male. Then the hypodermic pierced his neck.

Fong’s eyes fluttered open. He maintained consciousness long enough to look into the eyes behind the greasepaint. They were unblinking. Hard.

“The hallucinogen should wear off soon.” It was a voice Fong didn’t recognize. He felt a cold hand on his face. Then strong fingers pried open his eyelids. A shard of pain shot through his skull as a bright penlight snapped his irises shut.

He spat in the direction of the light.

A curse. A kick to his head. A shouting match. “Break his teeth. He has too much pride.” The sound of far-off cracking. Hard chips on his tongue.

“Typhoid and toothless sounds good. Shoot him up again.”

A pinprick breaking the continuity of his skin. Then delirium. Gentle delirium.

Fong laughed in his sleep. Then he felt a strong hand on his throat and saw those hard eyes again. He found himself falling. As if down a well. As if backward. At night.

“His fever’s breaking.” A soft voice.

“That’s quick.” A hard male voice.

“He might have been infected before.”

“Is that likely?”

“No, but it’s possible I guess. Damn!”

“I want him under longer!” The politico.

Fong gasped for air. There was something covering his mouth. He wanted to scream, but found himself awash in a place between wake and sleep where everything slid and changed and lashed out.

Snippets of voices.

“Well, what did he say?” The politico. “What was his plan?” The politico again.

“Well, he asked me to do a stack of things for him.” Chen’s voice.

Then a laugh. Not Chen’s. It could have been the thug’s laugh but Fong wasn’t sure.

“Open his mouth.”

A gasp. “What happened here?

“He fell.” The politico. General laughter.

“Very funny. This could take days to fix.”

“It can’t.” The politico.

“Well, there’s a faster way.”

“Do it.” The politico.

“Hold him still. This’ll hurt.”

A whirring sound. Something prying open his mouth. Then something hot. Molten on his teeth. Spikes of pain. Then on his upper teeth. More spikes.

Then his nose was covered and he floated – tasting oblivion.

He was in a bed. He could feel the crisp coolness of hospital sheets. He sensed it was morning. Which morning he couldn’t guess. He allowed the light to filter through his eyelashes and he slowly turned his head from side to side. The window was to his right.

He opened his eyes.

Sunlight streamed through a large glass pane. A slender silhouette interrupted the square of light.

“Hey ho, short stuff,” the silhouette said in English. “You more looking than usual rotten.” Sort of English.

Lily.

The hawking sound of an old throat being cleared announced the presence of the coroner from Shanghai’s Hua Shan hospital. Fong couldn’t see him, but he could hear him move the phlegm up and down his turkey neck.

A squat, blunt silhouette entered the light. Captain Chen.

Fong tried to say, “What brings you brigands to this part of the Middle Kingdom?” but it came out as, “W’ings u’ds’to s’art o’d Mi’l K‘dom?”

Lily turned toward the window. The light caught her features. Fong saw a look of horror there.

“They must have hurt me badly. But they didn’t annihilate me like the killers did to those people on the boat. No. They need me. They even brought my team together,” he thought.