David Rotenberg - The Hamlet Murders

Back in his office with the cell phone safely in his pocket, Fong activated Geoff’s CD-ROM. He fast-forwarded through the lists and copied the names, numbers and code words with their meanings onto a pad. Then he hit the Eject button and removed the CDROM from the computer.

A milky morning light was just peeping over the horizon. Another day of heat clearly lay ahead. He called in Chen.

“Sir?”

“When I played this CD-ROM, did the computer copy it?”

“Copy it, sir? Oh, you mean back it up.”

“I guess. Did it?”

Chen sat at the machine. Two clicks and a scroll down later and he gave Fong the bad news. “The machine is set up with an auto backup. And it takes cookies as well. Not all the digital material may have been burnt onto the hard drive but some of it probably was.”

“Burnt means copied, right?”

“Right.”

“And cookies?”

“Cues to the computer as to how to find material that is stored on the drive. The term is American and I’m told refers to pieces of pastry left behind so children can find their way out of the woods.”

Fong nodded. For a moment he wondered why the children would use cookies to mark their path out of the woods. Wouldn’t animals eat the cookies? Then he wondered why he was wondering about stuff like this. He looked at Chen. The man was waiting for instructions. Okay. But destroying evidence was even more of a crime than having evidence and not reporting it. Fong would save Chen the problem if he knew how to destroy the CD-ROM and the hard drive – but he didn’t know how to safely get rid of either.

“Do you want the copy erased, sir?”

“Is that possible?”

Chen’s face took on a funny look. Fong had no idea what that look might mean.

“Well, Captain Chen?”

“You want to be certain there is no copy on the hard drive, right, sir?”

“Yes, Chen. That’s what I want.”

Chen reached into his pant pocket and took out a penknife. He tilted the computer to expose the screws in the back. “You understand what this means, Captain Chen?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.” He undid the screws with a remarkable dexterity. Then, removing the case he snapped out the hard drive.

“That’s the hard drive, right?”

“Yes it is,” he said holding it out to show Fong. “Now give me the original CD-ROM.” Fong hesitated. “You want there to be no trace of this, don’t you, sir?”

Fong nodded.

“Then I need to destroy the CD-ROM along with the hard drive.” Chen’s hand was still extended toward Fong.

Fong wanted to protect Chen from committing the offence of destroying evidence but he didn’t know how. Then it occurred to Fong that once he gave over the CD-ROM and the hard drive Chen would have all the evidence he’d need to really hurt him.

Fong trusted Chen. But now it was not just his future he was handing over to this ugly country police captain whom he had first met on far-off Lake Ching, on the lake boat with the seventeen dead foreigners, and who now lived with his ex-wife Lily – it was the lives of all the people implicated by the material on that disk.

Could Captain Chen be trusted with those lives?

Maybe Captain Chen thought that Dalong Fada was a dangerous enemy that needed to be stomped out. Maybe he feared cults in general. Maybe there was a secret Captain Chen that Fong had never met who harboured ambitions within the Shanghai police force and would use information like this to advance his own career.

Maybe Chen was as irrationally jealous of him as he had been of Geoff.

Fong stared at the man. “How’s my daughter, Xiao Ming?”

Chen blushed, “Getting used to having me around. She knows I’m not you. It’s clear she misses you. But I try to give her what little I can. I am not much of replacement for you, sir.”

Chen’s answer was so devoid of guile that Fong relaxed. Chen was exactly what he seemed to be – an honest, absolutely good man. And loyal. Xiao Ming was lucky to have such a man in her life.

All that was true, but what Fong failed to consider was: loyal to whom?

Fong handed Chen the CD-ROM. Chen then wrapped the CD-ROM with the hard drive in newsprint he took off Fong’s desk, turned on his heel and headed toward the door.

“How’re you going to destroy those things?”

“I’m not. There’s no sure way to do that. I’m going to lose them.”

“What?”

“I’m going to take a stroll across the new bridge to the Pudong and they’re going to happen to fall into the muddy waters of the Huangpo River. The silt is so thick there that even if they sent divers down there’s no chance they’d ever find them.”

He smiled. Fong smiled back.

“That’s all right, sir?”

“It’s fine . . . and thanks.”

As the door closed behind Captain Chen, Fong wondered at the new alliances that were now central to his life. Fu Tsong used to quote Shakespeare about just this sort of thing. Something about circumstance making strange bed-fellows. Then Fong stopped. Another of Fu Tsong’s favourite quotations from English writing had popped unbidden into his consciousness: “What a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.”

Fong eyed the first number on the list he had taken from the CD-ROM. He knew there was no point trying to find an address from the phone number because Shanghanese used cell phones almost exclusively and almost everyone prepaid for time used so there was no billing required. In theory, cell phone buyers had to give an address when they got a phone number, but everyone lied. Even Fong, on a reflex, had lied when he got his first cell phone. In fact, there was no incentive to tell the truth since there was not even a remote chance of being caught for such a violation of the law. Shanghanese purchase thousands of cell phones a week. In fact, without cellular technology there was no way that the economic miracle that had taken place in Shanghai could have happened. It would have been an insurmountable expense to have wired all of Shanghai.

Fong punched in the number. The cell phone was answered on the third ring, “Dui.”

The accent was Shanghanese, the background noise that of a large kitchen.

Fong spoke using the first word in the coded sequence. There was a brief silence on the other end. Then a coded word was buried in the man’s response. Fong looked at his notes to find the word’s meaning. The word was soup – tang - and it meant be careful, I’m being watched.

The man on the other end of Fong’s call was not the only man being watched at that time. Captain Chen’s stroll along the bridge to the Pudong was observed as was his entrance to central stores and his exit with a small plastic-covered package – by another set of wary, feral eyes. These eyes belonged to Shrug and Knock, who quickly reported to Li Chou.

As Chen returned to Fong’s office with the bug for the cell phone that had the wireless Internet access for Xi Luan Tu, the desk phone in Fong’s office rang. “It’s for you, Captain Chen,” Fong said holding out the receiver.

Chen hesitantly took the phone, listened for a moment then said, “Thanks. I owe you one or maybe two.” He handed the phone back to Fong.

“Captain Chen?”

“It’s good to have friends in low places, sir. They help situations become opportunities not problems.”

Fong laughed. It was the first joke that Chen made that Fong understood. Chen blushed. “Is your friend more powerful than our friend’s friend, Captain Chen?”

“Much, because he’s lower.”

“And you’re sure that you were followed?”

“Oh, yes, quite sure. They didn’t pay any attention to what I dropped off the bridge to the Pudong but I made sure they saw me pick up these. ” Chen smiled and unwrapped the two electronic bugs. One was attached to the other. Then he held out his hand for the cell phone with Internet access.