David Rotenberg - The Hamlet Murders

Li Chou smiled. “How long will it last?”

“It draws power from their bug. As long as their bug’s bugging, our bug’s bugging their bug. They draw power from the cell phone; we draw power from them.”

“Power drawing power,” Li Chou thought. He liked that. Then he looked closely at the young man before him. Being a devious man himself, he assumed that this man would also have a hidden side – and more immediately important, a hidden agenda. Li Chou knew that the best way to defeat such agendas was to demand exact details. “How did you mange to bug Captain Chen’s bug?”

“Your man saw Chen enter central stores. I called my contact there. He informed me that Captain Chen had requested a bug. Well . . . ” the man shrugged, “my friend bugged their bug and gave me the software to follow it.”

Li Chou didn’t like it. This young man was too clever by half then by half again. He smiled but filed away his concern. He would not nurture potential competition in his ranks.

“Is there a problem, sir?” the man asked.

“No,” Li Chou lied easily. “You can leave.”

The man waited to get at least a nod of appreciation or a mention of a job well done – but none was forthcoming. He turned and left.

He wasn’t brave enough to slam the door.

Li Chou hit the Enlarge icon and immediately the scale of the street map changed. Li Chou checked the street coordinates. There was some sort of Christian temple right there.

He reached for his phone.

Evening prayers began just after sundown. A call to the Bishop of Shanghai confirmed the exact time. Fong had all the cathedral’s side doors locked so everyone had to use the main entrance. Just inside the front foyer, Fong had positioned four uniformed cops facing the entrance doors. He and Captain Chen waited outside on the front steps in the hope that a Dalong Fada member would enter the cathedral, see the cops and, as surreptitiously as possible, head right back out.

Fong reached into his pocket and touched the bugged cell phone with the wireless Internet connection he had retrieved from behind the toilet.

“Is this a religious place, sir?” asked Captain Chen.

“Yes, it’s a main Catholic church, Xujiahui Cathedral. It was built by the Jesuits. In English they call it St. Ignatius Cathedral.”

“We have nothing quite like this in the country.”

“No. But with all the beauty out there why would you need it?” Fong checked his watch. It was 8:30 p.m. The service had begun twenty minutes ago. Fong cursed himself for not asking the bishop how long it would go on.

All the people who came to this evening’s service had gone past the cops without comment and had stayed for prayers. Shanghanese were usually unfazed by the presence, even the large armed presence, of the police. Fong and Chen watched, but no one had turned around and come back out since the service began.

Li Chou looked at the six CSU detectives in his office. “Keep in cell phone contact with me. I’ll guide you. No one is to make any move toward the suspect until I order it. Got that?”

Nods from all six.

“Good. Let’s go.”

Fong and Captain Chen moved down to the bottom of the cathedral’s wide front steps. Time seemed to move two paces forward, one back and one sideways. Then the front doors of the cathedral opened. Fong checked his watch. Evidently evening services were a little longer than an hour. People began to leave the large building. Fong didn’t look at the faces. Unless his contact was already inside the cathedral she would arrive soon, looking for a tall white man with what Westerners called black hair but people in the Middle Kingdom knew was really red hair. “We Chinese have black hair,” Fong thought. “That’s why spoken drama from the West is called Hong Mao Ju, literally red-haired drama.”

Then he saw a small middle-aged woman make her way slowly up the steps. She had a slight limp, as if one leg were shorter than the other. Her face was pleasingly calm as she passed by Fong and entered the cathedral. A moment later she re-emerged, shielding her eyes from the remains of the setting sun. She strode down the steps with a quick but unhurried stride.

“Is the bug activated in the phone, Chen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long will it last?”

“It’s hooked into the power supply. Every time the cell phone charges, the bug fills its capacitor. So in theory it could last forever.”

Fong just heard this last as he raced to the curb.

The Dalong Fada woman had already crossed the six lanes of traffic and four of bikes on Caoxi Beilu with remarkable ease and was headed directly to the Xujiahui subway station entrance. Fong moved as quickly as he could through the traffic and raced down the stairs to the subway. He dug in his pocket for change, found none, flashed his badge at the ticket-taker then hopped the barrier, to a chorus of complaints from his fellow citizens.

The platform was almost empty as the train pulled out. Fong cussed and was about to turn away in disgust when the last car of the train moved past him revealing the Dalong Fada woman standing patiently on the opposite platform.

Fong ran through the underpass and came up on the platform. He pushed his way through the densely packed crowd ignoring the colourful insults hurled at him and took a position right behind the Dalong Fada woman.

The train came into the station. The Dalong Fada woman stepped in and held onto one of the vertical central posts with her small left hand. Over her right shoulder she had an open red-white-and-blue nylon bag. Fong came up behind her and found a handhold above hers. As the train lurched forward, he slipped the cell phone into her bag then made his way around the pole to look at her.

Instantly, fear bloomed in her eyes. “It’s in your bag,” Fong said as casually as he could manage.

Her fear receded. She said nothing.

Fong smiled then pushed his way through the throngs in the car, pulled open the door between the cars and stepped into the next car.

He got off at Caoxi Beilu station, took out his cell phone and called Captain Chen. “She on your screen?”

“Yes, sir, I’ve copied the software to track her onto my PalmPilot and the signal from her cell phone is coming through just fine.”

“And our Li Chou?”

Chen laughed aloud, something that Fong had never heard from the man before. He wasn’t sure exactly what to make of it. “Where are you, sir?”

Fong told him.

“Shall I pick you up?”

“Is there any hurry?”

Chen checked the screen of the PalmPilot, “The cell phone’s still in motion so I don’t think so.”

“Fine,” said Fong and snapped his phone shut.

Chen looked at the screen of the PalmPilot and then at his cell phone. He thought of Fong’s warnings about understanding the politics in the office. Then he thought of his obligation as a husband to Lily and a guardian to Xiao Ming and made a call.

The younger Beijing man picked up and listened for a moment. “This was the wise thing to do.” He hung up the phone and turned to the older Beijing man. “He’s doing just what we expected.”

The older Beijing man nodded, “As Mao said: allow a man to marry and have a child and he is lost to the Revolution.” The younger man hadn’t heard Mao quoted in quite some time. No one quoted Mao anymore. But it was the wistful tone in the older man’s voice that drew his attention.

“Perhaps, but more to the point, they’ll lead us right to Xi Luan Tu.”

The older man didn’t reply; he just looked out the window at the miracle that was modern Shanghai.

Xi Luan Tu saw the limping woman make her way down the alley. He wheeled his barrel of grub pupae through the rusted gate at the back of the old Sovietstyle apartment block, where he slept on a basement mattress with twelve others. It was the appointed hour and he’d been waiting there every day at that time for the past two weeks. He watched her limp by, knowing she would make at least three passes before she made her drop.