David Rotenberg - The Hua Shan Hospital Murders

He paused then smiled. He pressed the flash button but not the “capture” button. The woman smiled. Matthew didn’t.

As he left the Children’s Palace, Matthew pocketed the digital camera and put on a pair of sunglasses. It was going to be a hot day and it would get hotter – much hotter, Angel Michael thought. He took in the landmarks. Fine. Not far from the Hua Shan Hospital or the Shanghai Theatre Academy. Almost halfway between the fighting parents. Good.

He began to think about the courtyard of the Hua Shan Hospital – and the things he’d stowed there.

Copies of Angel Michael’s picture were being rushed around the city. Every hotel, every restaurant, every flophouse was scoured. Just before two o’clock in the afternoon a weary cop approached the front desk of the Shanghai Metron Hotel. Angel Michael spotted him the moment he entered the lobby. Cops walk as if they are important – weary, hard-working, but righteously important. When the man drew out the photo, Angel Michael guessed that they had found the cage maker. He knew he should have ended that one’s earthly woes. But it didn’t matter now. He checked his watch. Four hours and twelve minutes and the sixth operating theatre at the Hua Shan Hospital would deliver his final message – which he still needed to move into place.

In fact, the presence of the cop played right into his hands. He ducked out of the lobby and ran up to the second floor. From there he took an elevator to his room. He grabbed the few things that he needed then flipped open his computer screen and downloaded his favourite digital picture of Xiao Ming. He hit F2 and the pre-designed program began to roll. Matthew left the room with a backpack over his shoulder and headed down the service elevator. Even as he made his way out the back entrance of the building, the hotel manager was opening his room and letting in the cop.

Forty minutes later, Fong stood in Angel Michael’s room but his eyes were not searching the place for clues. They were glued to the computer screen where an image of Xiao Ming trapped in a cage was turning round and round and round while a message scrolled across the bottom: “I am in the light – and your daughter is with me there.”

Robert Cowens stood up as his translator entered the restaurant. He had picked her favourite place, a small Japanese restaurant discreetly tucked away on a side street in the embassy district. The place was so clean that Robert always felt underwashed when he went there. Well, he’d also felt that way the few times he’d been in Japan. Their accent on hygiene was really a little much. This “accent” was even more evident when one had just stepped out of the harsh realities of Shanghai street life. His translator took off her round glasses and sat quietly with her hands folded on her lap. He offered her the dish of pickled pumpkin seeds. She declined. He ordered an appetizer and green tea. She didn’t speak.

Finally he asked, “How was your interview?”

“Interview, Mr. Cowens?”

“With Detective Zhong?”

“I didn’t . . .”

“Please. We’ve worked together for a long time, you and I. I have never thought of you in any way as stupid. Please don’t think that I am.”

She blushed – an unusual colour on the flawless Asian skin of her rounded cheeks.

“Fine, now I want you to get in touch with your contacts.”

Her eyes widened. “Contacts, Mr. Cowens?”

“Again, I ask you not to treat me as if I am stupid. I’ve known from the beginning that you have contacts. That everything you and I talk about ‘moves’ to other places. So I want you to convince your contacts that I have in my possession an original Manichaean scroll all the way from the Taklamakan Desert. You can do that, can’t you?”

The green tea arrived. She reached for the pot but he beat her to it and poured for her. As she brought the steaming liquid to her lips he said, “This is important to me. Understood?”

She nodded and said, “ Dui .”

It was only at that point that Devil Robert realized he had conducted the entire conversation in Mandarin. He smiled.

She looked at him questioningly.

“How’s my Mandarin?” he asked in Mandarin.

“Getting better, Mr. Cowens. Getting much better.” She put her green tea down and stood.

“Won’t you stay to eat?”

“No, Mr. Cowens. If this is important to you, I need to start right away. I should have a response for you soon.”

He nodded and poured tea for himself as she left the restaurant.

Fong knew he was shouting into his cell phone but he couldn’t stop himself. When Lily finally got on the line she shouted right back at him, “How dare you order my forensic people around, who the hell do you . . .?”

“Where’s Xiao Ming!”

“With my mother as she . . .”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, every morning my mother . . .”

“Can you contact her, Lily?”

Suddenly there was fear in her voice as she said slowly, “Why?”

Fong paused. He heard Lily gasp. “Where does your mother usually take Xiao Ming, Lily?”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Think!”

And Lily did. She began to reel off places and Fong relayed them to his officers. Within an hour more than 40 percent of the officers assigned to guard the Hua Shan Hospital were out on the streets looking for Fong and Lily’s baby.

Angel Michael arrived to pick up Xiao Ming. He carried a digitally doctored photo of the baby and the grandmother with him standing beside them, just in case he was challenged. But there was no need. The woman in charge of the daycare at the Children’s Palace was happy to see the handsome young man again. It crossed Angel Michael’s mind that what would really have pleased this woman was being touched the way his French teacher had made him touch her. Angel Michael breathed away the nausea that came with that thought and allowed a smile to his beautifully shaped lips. The lady smiled back at him and bobbed a bow.

As Angel Michael left the Children’s Palace, Xiao Ming began to struggle in his arms. She did not cry out. No. But she looked deep into his eyes. It almost spooked him.

Twenty minutes later, Fong ran into the Children’s Palace. Five minutes after that, Angel Michael entered the largest abortion facility in all of China – the Hua Shan Hospital. Xiao Ming was in his arms. He carried a shopping bag. No one stopped him or even asked him to present ID. What kind of bomber carried a baby?

With Xiao Ming in the crook of his arm he waited for a moment until the front reception desk was at its busiest then put the note on the counter and slipped back into the crowd. Ten minutes later, one of the three harried receptionists opened the envelope and shouted for a security guard.

Less than ninety seconds after that, Fong’s phone rang and he went pale.

“What?” demanded Lily.

“Another note at the Hua Shan Hospital.” He called his head of security. “Evacuate the hospital! Contact Wu Fan-zi!”

He looked back to Lily. She was ashen. “The man who wrote the note has Xiao Ming, doesn’t he?”

Fong nodded.

Suddenly Lily was screaming at him. “She’s your daughter, Fong. Do something. Do something!”

Angel Michael took advantage of the chaos of the Hua Shan Hospital’s third evacuation in four days to slip past the few remaining guards. Five minutes later, he entered the hospital’s sixth abortion surgery. He put Xiao Ming on the table, climbed up to the window, and grabbed the titanium cage with its grisly contents and the RDX explosive he’d stashed in the courtyard just outside. Back in the operating room he took out the complicated timing device he’d carried in the shopping bag and wired it to the explosive. Then he placed the titanium cage beneath the table and stood back to admire his handiwork. On the operating table, Xiao Ming lay very still, watching him. For a moment he paused, then he grabbed the girl and headed out into the gathering chaos. He dropped the remaining contents of the shopping bag as he did – decoy bombs.