David Rotenberg - The Shanghai Murders

“What?!”

“Even you can’t be that young, Li Xiao. Fong’s a dead man. One way or the other, he’s a dead man.”

“I thought he was your friend, Wang Jun.”

“Funny how that works, isn’t it?”

Fong was Wang Jun’s friend. His only real friend. But things being what they were, Wang Jun would go to the wall to catch his friend and put him behind bars in a prison from which he would never emerge. The New China was growing and Wang Jun wanted to live his last days riding the shoulders of the giant rather than ground beneath its heels.

Amanda almost screamed when Fong slid up beside her on the busy street corner.

“You have the room number?”

“Don’t do that! You’ll scare the panties off a poor girl.”

“Do you?”

“2714.”

“Good, let’s go.”

“Where? To the Portman?”

“Where else?”

“Is he there?”

“Would we be going there if he was there?”

“Well, then where the hell is he?”

“Looking for me.”

“Oh,” she said and began to pick up her pace to keep up with him. It occurred to her that if Loa Wei Fen was looking for Fong, then he might in fact be following them now. It made her laugh.

“What’s funny?”

“All of this is. Yet it isn’t, is it? I used to know but now I’m not so sure.”

Fong smiled. “Welcome to China.”

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

“If you have to ask the question you wouldn’t understand the answer,” he replied.

But Fong was wrong. Amanda asked her question out of a sense of etiquette rather than out of any real need to know. The paradoxical nature of it all was not lost on her. Far from it. What she didn’t know, though, was that as Shanghai worked its awakening magic on her, it also brought her to the attention of the true centres of power in this ancient land.

They approached the Portman from the back and Fong led her through a maze of tunnels beneath the building to a freight elevator. He was about to step in when he said, “Go up to the lobby and take the elevator there. I’ll meet you at the twenty-seventh floor.” To her inquiring look he simply said, “I would look out of place in the lobby elevator. You would look out of place in here.”

They met in front of room 2714 without incident. He had her watch the bank of elevators as he deftly picked the lock. Within a minute they were inside Loa Wei Fen’s room.

“What are we looking for?” she asked.

“A trail. Something that helps us get from the assassin to the one who bought his services. The one who owns him.” As he talked he was methodically opening and searching each of the drawers of the desk.

As Fong went about his by-the-book search Amanda checked the bathroom, entirely devoid of cosmetics; the closet, two very expensive suits, finally the bed side table with the square carrying case. She opened the case and took out a computer notebook.

“What have we here?” She put the computer on the end table and fired it up.

“You know how to work things like that?”

“This is more complicated than I’m used to but they’re all basically the same.” The computer went through its virus check and came to an opening menu. Six down the menu was e-mail. Before he could point to it, she had already selected it.

It required a password.

She went back to the menu and transferred to the operating system. From there to the drivers. Each layer of the computer opened under her command. Finally e-mail access appeared. There was a single character beside the code.

“What does it mean?”

“ Tao . The way.”

She backtracked and went to e-mail again. This time she supplied the English letters for the character. The screen lit up as if it were happy to see her.

“How do you know how to do that?”

“I used to write but I didn’t want Richard to see what I wrote so I got very knowledgeable about computer things like passwords and other protective devices. I used all of them.”

“You really didn’t want him to see your work.”

“I told you that already.” She returned her attention to the monitor. “What am I looking for?”

“His messages.”

“The ones he sent?”

“No, the ones sent to him.”

With the stroke of a few keys, up came the message that instructed Loa Wei Fen to kill Zhong Fong and then disappear for a very, very long time. Fong paled as he scanned the screen. Amanda looked closely at Fong, but before she could say anything he asked, “Who sent it?”

“You don’t care what it says?”

“I care. Who sent it?”

“Give me a second.” She backtracked to the operating system and worked through several screens. Finally she looked at him and said, “And the winner in Peoria is . . . E-M-29-7976.”

“That’s a code?” he asked, but his mind was far away. E-M-29-7976. Where had he seen that before? “Get his e-mail address and then let’s get out of here.”

They were outside the room a minute later. But as Fong was about to close the door, he stopped himself and headed back into the room. There, to Amanda’s amazement, he upended the bed and threw Loa Wei Fen’s few possessions into the toilet. As he emerged there was a strange smile on his face. All he said was “Our friend likes leaving messages, so I thought he might find it interesting to receive one. You’ve got his e-mail address?”

She had never seen this side of him before. She liked it.

Outside the Portman, he turned to her and said, “Can you get me the street address that goes with that e-mail number?”

“In North America I’d say no, but here the servers are so antiquated that I’ve got a chance. Back at the Equatorial there’s a business centre. They’ve got computers, I’ll give it a shot.”

“Can you send an e-mail message to him?”

“That I know I can do. What do you want to say?”

“’Loa Wei Fen, they’re trying to kill us both. We both have a lot to lose in this stupid game.’ Sign it Zhong Fong.”

She repeated the message and he nodded. “Where’ll you meet me?”

“How long should it take?”

“Sending a message, almost nothing. Finding the address of E-M-29-7976 could take a long time. Sorry.”

“When a screen has that number flashing on it, is the screen the sender or the receiver?” asked Fong.

“Why do you ask? Have you seen the number?”

“Yes, I think I have,” he said. Then slowly he added, “I believe the address is 29 Zhongshan Road, seventh floor, suite 976.”

“Are you sure?”

As if weary from it all, “Yes, but check it for me, will you.”

“Whose address is that?”

“The commissioner of police, Shanghai District.” Fong felt dizzy.

The upended bed and the general disarray of his few possessions didn’t penetrate Loa Wei Fen’s calm. The reversal of roles, however, did. He had been in their rooms, both of their rooms, but he was not prepared for them to be in his. The flashing light on his computer notebook caught his eye. When he punched through to e-mail and read the message from Zhong Fong, he had to control his twisting anger. Then he called up the program that would tell him the address of the sender of the e-mail. When it came up on the screen he smiled.

He would go to the Long Hua Temple. He would meditate into the eyes of the lion cub on the roof. Then as the darkness fell he would revisit the Shanghai International Equatorial Hotel, the address from which the e-mail had come.

Breaking into police headquarters would have been simple for Fong to do alone, but with a tall blond woman it proved a challenge. But he had no choice, he needed her computer expertise. So they went together. And since there was no real way to hide they just barged in.