Qiu Xiaolong - A Loyal Character Dancer

Wen did not utter a word but as Liu touched her shoulder lightly, she dropped her face into her hands and began to sob.

“Feng ruined your life. The gangsters gave you no choice. The local police did a poor job protecting you. You had to think of your baby,” Chen continued. “Any woman in your position would have considered doing the same thing.”

“But you cannot, Wen,” Liu said in an emotional voice. “You must start a new life for yourself.”

“Liu has done such a lot for you, Wen,” Catherine interjected. “If you do something stupid, what will happen to him?”

Chen said, “I am not saying this to scare you, but you have stayed with him for a couple of weeks. People will suspect that you two planned it together. And Liu will be held responsible.”

“I cannot see how Liu can keep out of trouble if anything happens to Feng.” Yu added, “People must find somebody to punish.”

“Nor can I see how the Flying Axes will be able to get you out of trouble afterward,” Li joined in.

“They won’t be able to,” Qian said, speaking up the first time, like an echo.

“I’m sorry, Liu,” Wen sobbed, clutching Liu’s hand. “I did not think. I would rather die than get you into trouble.”

“Let me tell you something about my Heilongjiang years,” Liu said. “My life was a long tunnel without any light at the end. Thinking of you made the only difference. Thinking of you holding the red loyal character with me on the railway platform. A miracle. If that was possible, anything might be possible. So I hung on. And everything changed for me in 1976, at the end of the Cultural Revolution. Believe me: Things will change for you, too.”

“As I promised you in Suzhou,” Chen said, “nothing will happen to Liu as long as you cooperate with the Americans. Now, in the presence of Comrade Party Secretary Li, I’m making the same promise.”

“Chief Inspector Chen is right,” Li said with all sincerity. “As an old Bolshevik with forty years in the Party, I, too, give you my word. If you act properly, nothing will happen to Liu.”

“Here is an English dictionary.” Yu took out of his pants pocket a dog-eared book. “My wife and I were both educated youths. In Yunnan, I never dreamed that some day I would become a Shanghai cop speaking English with an American officer. Things change. Liu is right. Take the dictionary. You will have to speak English there.”

“Thank you, Detective Yu.” Liu accepted it for Wen. “It will be most helpful.”

“Here is something else.” Chen produced an envelope, which contained the picture of Wen leaving Shanghai as an educated youth, the picture used in the Wenhui Daily.

Catherine took it for Wen, who still had her face buried in her hands, sobbing inconsolably.

Twenty years earlier, at the railway station, a turning point in her life…Catherine gazed at the picture, and then at Wen. Now at the airport, another turning point in her life, but Wen was no longer the young, spirited Red Guard loyal character dancer looking forward to her future.

“One thing about the witness protection program,” Catherine said quietly. “People can leave at their own risk. We do not recommend it. Still, things may change. In several years, when the triads have been wiped out. I may be able to discuss a new arrangement with Chief Inspector Chen.”

Wen looked up through her tears, but she did not say anything. Instead, she reached into her purse, produced a small package, and handed it over to her. “Here is the stuff the Flying Axes gave me. You don’t have to say more, Inspector Rohn.”

“Thank you,” Chen and Yu said, in chorus.

“Now that she has promised full cooperation with you,” Liu said, casting a glance at the adjoining small room, “can we have some time for ourselves?”

“Of course.” Catherine said promptly. “We’ll wait here.”

After Wen and Liu had retired, Catherine Rohn turned to Chen, who made an apologetic gesture to the remaining people.

“Now, it’s story time, Chief Inspector Chen,” she said dryly. The latest development had surprised her, though probably less than his Chinese colleagues. During the last few days, she had more than once sensed something going on with the enigmatic chief inspector.

“This has been an extraordinary investigation, Party Secretary Li,” Chen said. “I had to make decisions without being able to consult you or my colleagues, to act on my own responsibility. And I withheld some information because I was not sure of its relevance. So if you hear something you’ve not heard before, please be patient and let me explain.”

Li said expansively. “You had to make such decisions under the circumstances. We all understand.”

“Yes, we all understand,” Catherine felt obliged to echo, but she decided to take the questioning into her own hands before it turned into a political lecture. “When did you become suspicious of Wen’s intentions, Chief Inspector Chen?”

“I did not think about her motives at first. I assumed she was going to the United States because Feng wanted her to, it was obvious. But I was disturbed by a question you raised, the question about the delay in her passport application. So I looked into the process. It was slow, but there was also an inconsistency about the dates. In spite of Feng’s claim that she started in early January, Wen did not do anything until mid-February.”

“Yes, we discussed that briefly,” she said.

“From Detective Yu’s detailed report, I came to see a picture of her terrible life with Feng. From those interview tapes, I also learned that Feng called her quite a number of times in early January, and that on one occasion Wen was not willing to come to the phone. So I assumed that Wen was refusing to leave at that point.”

“But Feng said she was most eager to join him.”

“Feng did not tell you the truth. Too much loss of face for a man to admit his wife’s reluctance,” he said. “What caused her change of her mind? I checked with the Fujian police. They said they did not put any pressure on her. That I believed, considering their indifference throughout the investigation. And then I found something else in Detective Yu’s report.”

“What’s that, Chief?” Detective Yu did not try to conceal the bafflement in his voice.

“Some of the villagers seemed to be aware of Feng’s problem in the United States. Since the word they used-’problem’- could refer to anything, at first I thought that they might have gotten wind of Feng’s fight in New York, for which he was arrested. But then Manager Pan used another word, saying he had heard of Feng’s ‘deal’ with the Americans before her disappearance. ‘Deal,’ that’s unmistakable. If that information was available to the villagers, I did not see why the gangsters would have waited so patiently until Inspector Rohn was on her way here. They could have abducted Wen earlier.”

“And much more easily,” Yu added. “Yes, I overlooked that.”

“The gangsters had reasons for trying to beat us in the race for Wen. But as those accidents kept happening in Fujian and Shanghai, I started wondering. Why were they so desperate, all of a sudden? A lot of resources must have been tapped. And cops involved, too. After what happened in the Huating Market last Sunday, I became really suspicious.”

“Last Sunday,” Li said. “I suggested you take a day off, right?”

“Yes, we did,” Catherine replied. “Chief Inspector Chen and I went shopping. There was a raid on the street market. Nothing happened to us.” She equivocated, mindful of the fact that Party Secretary Li seemed surprised. “So you knew something then, Chief Inspector Chen?”

“No. I guessed, but things were not clear to me. To be honest, there are one or two things I do not grasp even today.”