Peter May - Snakehead

‘I’m afraid we can’t do that, Mr. Soong,’ Fuller said. ‘We opposed the release of Li’s sister, but that was a court decision. We have no control over that.’ He took a deep breath. ‘The fact is, we’re holding all the illegal immigrants arrested yesterday in protective quarantine — for their safety, and ours.’

There was a long silence around the table. Soong leaned forward. ‘I do not understand, Mistah Fullah. Protective quarantine?’

Fuller said, ‘What I’m about to tell you, Councilman, must not leave this room. I know I’m taking a risk here, but you people need to know what’s happening. We’re going to need your full co-operation, not least because the Chinese community will be the first to suffer.’ The slurping of green tea had stopped. He had the full attention of everyone in the room. And he explained to them how for the last three months illegal Chinese immigrants crossing the border from Mexico had been injected with a flu virus which would be activated on consumption of a specific set of proteins, as yet unidentified. And that once activated, the virus was likely to spread like wildfire through the United States, leaving thousands of people dead in its wake. He said, ‘This thing gets out, and every Asian face in the United States is going to be a target for vigilante groups, whether they’re illegal immigrants or third-generation Vietnamese Americans.’

Outside, they heard the rain battering on the roof of the stadium. Sheet lightning flashed across the skyline of downtown Houston like bad stage lighting. The composure had left Soong’s face, along with all the colour.

The grey-painted stonework of the Catholic Annunciation Church on the corner of Texas and Crawford was stained dark by the rain. The intermittent rat-a-tat of a pneumatic drill echoed back at them off the walls of the buildings that crowded the intersection. Men in hard hats were digging up the road behind red and white striped drums, cutting through the remains of a railroad track that the city fathers had simply tarmacked over during a previous era of short-termism.

Fuller, Li and Hrycyk hurried through the downpour to the sprawling empty car park behind the stadium where Fuller had parked his Chrysler. Hrycyk pulled up the collar of his jacket and shouted above the noise of the drill, ‘American justice, my ass! Only two reasons those people in there want the immigrants back on the street. They want their pound of flesh.’

Li said, ‘You almost sound as if you cared.’

‘Sure I care,’ Hrycyk shouted. ‘I want to see the whole goddamned lot of them behind bars, or at the very least on a slow boat back to China. Community leaders! Those guys were all shuk foo , uncles in the tongs. You think they ain’t involved some way in bringing in the illegals?’ He snorted his derision. ‘If they ain’t, then you can bet your sweet life they’re exploiting the cheap labour these people represent. Lot of restaurants without waiters last night, shops without assistants today, sweatshops without machinists, whorehouses without whores.’ He gave Li a special leer.

Fuller said, ‘And what’s the other reason?’

Hrycyk said, ‘They don’t want us asking the immigrants a lot of questions. They might not know a lot, but I’m betting a good few of them have seen enough to incriminate more than one of the uncles in there in a whole range of illegal activities.’

‘What about Soong?’ Fuller asked.

‘He represents the Chinese community,’ Hrycyk said, no longer having to shout as the sound of the pneumatic drill receded. They splashed through the surface water gathered on the tarmac. ‘These people are the Chinese community — or, at least, the commercial face of it. He’s playing both sides, so that no matter what happens, he’s going to come out looking good. Typical goddamned politician!’

They jumped into Fuller’s car, shaking off the rain, and the windows quickly steamed up. Fuller turned to Li in the back seat. ‘What did you make of them, Li?’

Li thought for a moment. ‘I’ve seen them all before,’ he said, and in his mind’s eye he saw a parade of faces pass before him. Corrupt politicians and Party officials, businessmen on the take, civil servants with small salaries and big houses. ‘I’ve seen them on village councils and street committees, at Party gatherings and on public platforms. I’ve arrested more than a few of them in my time, and I’ve seen them in football stadiums with a gun pressed in the back of their head and the piss running down their legs.’ If not them, it was people just like them who had forced thousands of young men and women into prostitution and virtual slavery. The venom in his tone made Fuller and Hrycyk turn to look at him.

Hrycyk grinned. ‘I take it you weren’t impressed, then?’ Li didn’t think a response was required.

Fuller started up the engine of the Chrysler and said, ‘Washington’s diverting emergency funds to a massive operation along the Mexican border. They’re going to quadruple the number of Border Patrol guards and enlist the help of the local police departments. Every vehicle coming into the country’s going to be stopped, every truck searched with dogs and x-rays and carbon dioxide detectors.’ The windshield wipers scraped rhythmically back and forth, the vents blew out hot air to demist the car.

Hrycyk was unimpressed. ‘Now that’s what I’d call shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. We’ve been screaming for an increase in Border Patrol for years.’ He hissed his frustration. ‘Jesus, we been telling them long enough that people-smuggling was bigger than drugs. It’s the goddamn drug runners who’re bringing the people in, for Chrissake. They’re experts at moving stuff in and out of the country. They’ve been doing it for decades.’

‘Well, whoever’s bringing them in,’ Fuller said, ‘that’s who’s injecting them. And I don’t figure it’s any of the people we just sat around the table with. Whatever else they’re involved in, I don’t think it’s that. Did you see their faces when I told them what was going down?’

‘Sure didn’t look too happy,’ Hrycyk conceded.

Li stared through the rain running down his window and somehow couldn’t convince himself that the faces which had expressed such shock in Soong’s suite were anything more than masks, like those he had seen on trips to the Peking opera with his uncle.

From her window, Margaret could see the sky breaking up, shredded by light and patches of pale blue. Dark, tumescent clouds edged by fine patterns of gold, sunlight bursting through the gaps, delineated like rods of platinum striking toward the earth. Even in her anger, she could not help but admire its magnificence.

‘So I don’t have a leg to stand on?’ she barked into the phone. ‘He can just throw me out on the street because I changed the locks without his permission?’ She sucked in air through her teeth. ‘I hope you’re not thinking of charging me for that information.’ She gasped her disbelief at the response. ‘Well, thank you! Next time I need a lawyer, I’ll know who not to call.’ She slammed the receiver back in its cradle. ‘Damn you!’ she shouted at the ceiling, at the sunset, at the liquid gold reflections in every west-facing window in medicine city.

The phone rang and she snatched it back to her ear, surprised by the heat of her anger still retained in the plastic. It was Lucy. ‘I think you should know, Dr. Campbell, that they can hear you at the end of the corridor.’ And before Margaret had time to respond she added, ‘And you should also know that hell and damnation are very real to some of us.’

‘I know that, Lucy,’ Margaret said. ‘They’re very real to me, too. Was there any other reason you called?’