David Rotenberg - The Hamlet Murders

Shanghai was even more densely populated than Hong Kong. She didn’t think that possible, but it was. She finally found a phone kiosk and got in line. She needed to call the number she’d memorized from the e-mail. A half-hour and several nasty comments later, she finally got up to the kiosk, paid the two yuan and placed her call. An answering machine picked up and quickly gave an address then added, “Programmed cell phone there under curb. Pick it up and hit number three once.” Then the answering machine cut off.

Moving to Xinzha Lu, Joan found a bus shelter with a Shanghai street map and oriented herself. It took her two hot hours of walking to get to the address she’d gotten from the answering machine. She passed by the address twice before it was clear enough of people for her to lean down as if adjusting the bundle on her back, reach beneath the cement overhang above the sewer grate and extract the small cell phone that had been put there for her between two bricks. Once she had the phone, she faced another problem. Looking the way she did, it would be incongruous that she owned a cell phone. So she had to find a place to use the phone where no one could see her. Not an easy thing to do amidst Shanghai’s 18 million souls.

And prying eyes in this city could also report. She remembered the eyes of the man across from her in the fourth-class hard-seat train car. The way they bore into her and seemed to glory in the prospect of reporting her. “We Chinese enjoy the failings of our compatriots too much,” she thought, “and although this may be part of the Chinese character, it had grown exponentially under Communist rule.” More reason to promote an opposition like Dalong Fada.

She meandered, drawn by some force beyond her comprehension, to the Old City. Once there, the pace slowed. The dankness took over. There was little or no commerce here. Just lives lived in the shadow of the great. And alleyways. Dark alleyways that at this moment in Joan’s life were her friends.

She reviewed the codes in her head before she hit the number three on the phone. The welcome code was given in response. Then she identified herself. It took a moment for the man on the other end to speak. Then he whistled into the phone and said, “They’re bringing in the heavy artillery, are they?”

“I guess.”

“Do you know the Temple of the City God?”

“No, but I can find it.”

“Good. Go in the front entrance and buy seven sticks of incense. Kneel and hold them between your palms as if you’re ready to light them. I’ll find you.”

“How long will I have to do that?”

“As long as it takes.”

“But won’t it look suspicious if I hold the sticks and don’t light them?”

“Hold them for a while, then as if you haven’t decided on your prayer, put them back in your pocket and walk the grounds. It will not appear odd. Just another Chinese person anxious not to waste the cost of seven incense sticks on a frivolous request of the gods. Then come back as if you’ve made up your mind what you want to pray for and if I’m not there yet, go through the process again.”

“Until you find me?”

“Yes. Until I find you.”

Oddly enough, Joan didn’t feel funny holding the seven incense sticks. She had had a moment of dread when she realized that the little money she had been given might not be enough to buy seven sticks of incense. The irony of it almost made her do a very unpeasant-like thing – laugh out loud. Here she had US$25,000 in her bundle and yet it was possible she didn’t have enough money to buy seven stupid incense sticks. However, when she upended the cheap plastic change purse her contact on the ferry had supplied her, she found just enough.

With the sticks in hand, she opened one of the large wooden doors of the first pavilion. Before her was a pleasing room with hand-carved mahogany rails and three black lacquered screens. The floor was a much-worn marble. She walked through the quiet room and down a set of dark hardwood steps to the prayer chamber with its towering statues and kneeling pads. She waited for a moment then knelt. To her surprise, time seemed to slow down and sounds faded into the distance. She felt at ease.

She had never celebrated the passing of her lover Wu Fan-zi. And now, with the incense sticks in her hand, she had the opportunity.

She rubbed the sticks between her palms and in her heart sang his name.

Forty minutes later, a man knelt beside her with seven incense sticks in his hands. He touched his head to the ground then righted himself and rolled the sticks between his palms. As he closed his eyes he said, “The incense here is quite expensive, isn’t it?”

She began to rock on her knees. “Yes, it is.”

“Go up the stairs, out the back of the pavilion and look at the statue there. I’ll walk past you. Follow me.”

Chen came out of Fong’s office so fast that he didn’t even see Shrug and Knock until the poor man was prone on the ground. Chen immediately reached down to help him to his feet, “I’m terribly sorry. I hope your suit wasn’t ruined. If it needs cleaning I will supply whatever money is necessary . . . ”

“Get your stupid peasant hands off me! This jacket is new. It’s my favourite.” Shrug and Knock howled.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Chen said as he pulled the jacket off of Shrug and Knock then shoved his hands into the inside pocket while he continued to shake dirt off the jacket, both inside and out.

“Enough, you . . . ” Then Shrug and Knock let fly with a particularly demeaning comparison between Chen’s facial features and lower parts of other human beings’ anatomies, grabbed back his coat and walked back to his desk.

An hour later, Joan Shui was sitting across a table from her contact, who was clearly honoured to have her in his house. She thanked him for his help. She desperately wanted to ask to use his shower but she didn’t. Cleanliness could be dangerous. Her disguise of filth had protected her so far and she wasn’t going to change it now.

“Where is Xi Luan Tu?”

The man looked away.

“What?”

He took a deep breath then said, “He was supposed to contact us last week. All we know is that he is in Shanghai and he’ll contact us through the Internet.”

Joan’s heart fell.

Finally on the fourth call to the sixth name on Geoff’s list of numbers, Fong made contact – he thought of it as “getting through.” Through what he wasn’t quite sure.

“Are you the second wave?” the lightly lisped high Shanghanese female voice asked.

Fong flipped through the notes he’d made from Geoff’s CD-ROM to get the code sequence right. “Yes, I am here to drive away the storm.”

“Very clever,” the voice said.

Fong noted the word clever as a “go ahead, all is safe” code word and said, “We should meet.”

“We, no doubt, should.” A moment passed then she spoke. When she did, her voice was harder than before, “The Catholic cathedral on Caoxi Beilu, just after evening prayers.”

Fong didn’t know what time that would be but he could find out on his own. “How will I recognize you?”

“You won’t. I’ll recognize you.”

The phone went dead. For a moment Fong was at a loss: how could she recognize him? Then he got it – fuck! She thought he was Geoffrey Hyland, a white theatre director from Canada. He immediately punched redial on his phone. But the woman’s phone didn’t even ring. “A one-time cell phone,” he thought. “Damn.”

“Well?” Li Chou demanded of the young officer in front of him. “Have you succeeded?” The officer knew very well that Li Chou was not really asking a question but demanding results. The man nodded and held out a diskette that he slid into the D drive of the laptop on Li Chou’s desk. With a click of a mouse, a map overlay of Shanghai’s streets appeared on the screen. With a second mouse click, a point of light began to blink. The point of light remained in the middle of the screen but the street map overlay was in constant motion identifying the dot’s whereabouts.