David Rotenberg - The Hamlet Murders

“How does a boy from the rice paddies get all the way to a university atop a mountain in Canada?” asked Richard.

“The cause. And you?”

Richard canted his head slightly to indicate that “the cause” had brought him here too, but they both knew they came for very different aspects of the cause. The two men stared at each other. The raven moved its cold eyes from one to the other.

Finally, the younger man took a bite from the croissant and said, “I got your note.”

“Good.”

“Are we betrayed?”

Richard looked away. “I don’t know. Xi Luan Tu is still in Shanghai. I don’t know if this Canadian theatre director betrayed him before they hanged him or not.”

“You’re sure he was hanged then?”

“No, I’m not sure,” he spat back then softened his tone as he continued, “but he had a cell phone with wireless Internet access programmed to get Xi Luan Tu most of the information he would need to get out of China. Mr. Hyland smuggled it into Shanghai on his first trip but never got it to Xi Luan Tu. He went back to deliver the phone as well as the money and papers he smuggled in this second time. Then he contacts us to tell us that the phone is safe but he had to jettison the money and the papers, and shortly thereafter he is swinging from a rope.” He picked up a pebble and thought of throwing it at the raven then decided to toss it over the edge of the platform. “The connective seems clear to me. Besides I don’t believe in coincidence, do you?”

“No.”

“Good. We have to move quickly now. Xi Luan Tu and many others are probably in great danger. Who knows what Mr. Hyland told the authorities before they hanged him. We must send someone else in there with the money and the papers Xi Luan Tu needs to get him out of there.”

“Do we have an operative who can manage that?”

“Yes.” Richard looked out at the mountains. “She won’t like it, but it’s time to activate her for the sake of her dead lover.”

“The fireman?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s she, now?”

“In Hong Kong.”

“Still with the police force?” the young man asked unable to hide the suspicion in his voice.

“She’s an arson investigator there, not exactly a normal cop.”

“You want me to contact her?”

“No. I’ll do it, but I want you to activate your people in Shanghai. We may need their help to rescue Xi Luan Tu.”

The younger man nodded then tossed a piece of the croissant to the raven. The bird ignored it and stared at the Chinese men as if wondering what could have brought these two to his domain.

“Fly to my brother,” Richard said in his heart. “Tell him we’re coming to get him.” To the surprise of both men the great bird cawed loudly, flapped its wings and took flight. Richard watched him ascend a thermal then head east. “From the Golden Mountain to the Middle Kingdom,” Richard thought, but said nothing.

Richard took a deep breath and allowed himself a moment of reflection. A looking back at the tumult of events that had brought him inevitably to this mountaintop university on the outskirts of Vancouver Canada. He knew that Dalong Fada is now the popular name for the movement that is one tradition within Xulian, ancient methods to cultivate the mind and keep the body healthy. Years ago, however, Xulian picked up a religious association, so groups adopted a new word for their practices – qigong (qi meaning life energy and gong meaning cultivation of energy). But Richard realized that Dalong Fada, no matter what its name, is far more than the series of physical exercises that structure the centre of the practice. As its leader has admitted, Dalong Fada is a way of life. Its methods of insight and health for the body and mind have attracted a large and loyal following.

Every successful political movement (and since its modern inception in the early nineties, Dalong Fada has been incredibly successful, growing from a few practitioners to many millions of followers) gets to a point where it is seen as an opponent to the power structure. When that happens, those in power attack the upstart movement. The movement then splinters into those who propel its values and ideas and those who protect those values and ideas. It’s the inevitable division in any successful movement between faith and force. For the faithful, like Richard, it becomes the classic deal with the devil, in this case, the military arm of Dalong Fada, which is under the control of the young peasant from Hunan Province – the young man with the fancy clothes and open-toed sandals.

The sound of young women’s voices made Richard turn. Over by the reflecting pool with the obscenely large piece of jade in its centre, three young women had taken off their tops and hopped into the water to cool themselves. “What would they do to cool themselves off in the stifling heat and humidity that is a Shanghai summer,” Richard wondered, “remove their skins?”

The e-mail wasn’t a surprise to Joan Shui, but it threw her world into a tailspin, like a plane whose jet engine had just ingested a large bird.

It was too soon. Wu Fan-zi, her Shanghanese lover, had only been dead seven months. His birthday, which she had celebrated with Fong and the Canadian lawyer Robert Cowens, was the last time she’d been in Shanghai.

She curled in on herself. She thought for a moment about pulling out her phonebook – what she used to think of as her book of dates. Comfort, the oblivion of sex, being the object of desire seemed momentarily the only way out.

Shanghai. Fuck. She looked at her recently refurnished condo on the forty-third floor of her building on Hong Kong’s Braemar Hill Road. This was real. Shanghai was . . . she didn’t know the right word for what Shanghai was, but she really wasn’t sure that she was ready to go back there yet. Wu Fan-zi’s face would be everywhere she looked.

And this time, Fong would be the enemy.

She checked her coded e-mail message a second then a third time. They definitely wanted her in Shanghai and no doubt they knew how to get her there. There was a long list of instructions, but the gist of them was that she was to deliver money and papers that would aid in the escape of Dalong Fada’s foremost organizer – Xi Luan Tu, Richard Lee’s brother. And, by the by, China’s most wanted man.

After unceremoniously kicking Shrug and Knock out of the sweltering meeting room, Fong sat at one end of the large oval table waiting for the others to arrive. At least there hadn’t been any evidence on the table for Shrug and Knock to snoop at. “Count the small blessings,” he reminded himself as he allowed his mind to drift. First to other meetings in this room then to a place in his memory he hadn’t visited for a very long time. He was sitting across his office desk from a middle-aged Englishman. Alternating waves of guilt and relief crossed the man’s handsome angular face. “You can go now, Mr. Paulin,” Fong repeated. “We know you didn’t have anything to do with the death of your wife. You were lucky.” The man stood slowly and headed toward the door. Fong rose from his chair. When he did, Mr. Paulin stopped in mid-stride as if suddenly he had become the icon for “Walk.”

Fong said, “We know you didn’t kill your wife, Mr. Paulin, but we know you wanted her dead. To be exact, we know that you were getting ready to plan her death, but an out-of-control taxi on Wolumquoi Lu solved your problem, didn’t it?”

Mr. Paulin didn’t move – couldn’t move – as if a brittle wire from Fong’s heart to his connected the two men. Then the wire snapped. Mr. Paulin reassumed his stature and looked down on Fong – not just from a height but from a long-held sense of racial superiority. “Can I go, Officer, or is there something else you want to say to me?”