Jeffery Deaver - The Stone Monkey

The old man nodded and winced as some pain shot through him.

"Morphine?"

His father shook his head and breathed deeply for a moment. "This news about Mah – it confirms that the Ghost is looking for us."

"Yes." Then Chang had a troubling thought. "The Wus! The Ghost can find them. They got their apartment through Mah's broker. I have to warn him." He stepped toward the door.

"No," his father said. "You can't save a man from his own foolishness."

"He has a family too. Children, his wife. We can't let them die."

Chang Jiechi thought for some moments. Finally the old man said, "All right but don't go yourself. Use the phone. Call that woman back. Tell her to get a message to Wu, warn him."

Chang picked up the phone and dialed. He spoke to the woman from Mah's office again and asked her to get a message to Wu. "Tell him he must move at once. He and his family are in great danger. You will tell him that?"

"Yes, yes," she said but she was clearly distraught and Chang had no idea if she actually would do as he'd asked.

His father closed his eyes and lay back on the couch. Chang wrapped the blanket around his feet. The old man would need to see a doctor very soon.

So many things to do, precautions to take. For a moment he was overwhelmed by the hopelessness of it all. He thought of the amulet that Dr. John Sung wore – the Monkey King. In the hold of the ship he'd let young Ronald play with the charm and had told him stories about Monkey. One of them was how the gods punished Monkey for his effrontery by burying him under a huge mountain. This is how Sam Chang now felt – covered by a million kilos of fear and uncertainty.

But his eyes then fell on his family and the burden lessened somewhat.

William laughed at something on the television; Chang believed this was the first time that his oldest son had been free from the anger and sour spirit that he'd radiated all day. He was laughing in genuine good spirits at the frivolous show. Ronald too.

Chang then looked at his wife, completely absorbed in the child, Po-Yee. How comfortable she is with children. Chang himself didn't have this easiness with them. He was forever weighing what he said – should he be stern about this matter, lenient about that?

Mei-Mei perched the baby on her own knees and made the child giggle as she rocked her.

In China families pray for a son to carry on the family name (traditionally, not bearing a male heir was grounds for divorce). Chang of course had been delighted when William had been born, and Ronald after him, proud that he could assure his own father that the Chang line would continue. But Mei-Mei's sadness at not having a daughter had been a source of sorrow for him too. And so Chang had found himself in a curious position for a Chinese man of a certain age – hoping for a girl, should Mei-Mei have gotten pregnant again. As a persecuted dissident and flouter of the one-child rule, the party could not have punished him more for having yet another child so he was fully prepared to try to give his wife a daughter.

But she had been very ill during her pregnancy with Ronald and it had taken her months to recover from the delivery. She was a slight woman, no longer young, and the doctors urged, for her health, that she not have any more children. She had accepted this stoically, as she had accepted Chang's decision to come to the Beautiful Country – which virtually precluded the chance that they could adopt a daughter, because of their illegal status.

Out of this terrible plight, though, had apparently come some good to balance the hardship. The gods or fate or the spirit of some ancestor had bestowed Po-Yee on them, the daughter that they could never have, and restored the harmony within his wife.

Yin-yang, light and dark, male and female, sorrow and joy.

Deprivation and gift…

Chang rose and walked to his sons and sat down to watch the television with them. He moved very slowly, very quietly, as if any abrupt motion would shatter this fragile familial peace like a rock dropping into a still morning pond.

Tuesday, the Hour of the Rooster, 6:30 p.m.,

to Wednesday, the Hour of the Rat, 1 am.

His wife was getting worse.

It was now early evening and Wu Qichen had sat for the past hour on the floor next to the mattress and bathed his wife's forehead. His daughter had painstakingly brewed the herbal tea he'd bought and together he and the girl had fed the hot liquid to the feverish woman. She'd taken the pills too but there seemed to be no improvement.

He leaned forward again and wiped her skin. Why wasn't she getting better? he raged. Had the herbalist cheated him? And why was his wife so thin to start with? She wouldn't have gotten sick on the voyage if she'd eaten right, gotten more sleep before they left. Yong-Ping, a fragile, pale woman, should have forced herself to take better care of herself. She had responsibilities…

"I'm frightened," she said. "I don't know what's real. It's all a dream to me. My head, the pain…" The woman began muttering and finally fell silent.

And suddenly Wu realized that he was frightened too. For the first time since they'd left Fuzhou, a lifetime ago, Wu Qichen began to think about losing her. Oh, there were many things about Yong-Ping that he didn't understand. They had married impulsively, without knowing much of each other. She was moody, she was sometimes less respectful than his father, say, would have tolerated. But she was a good mother to the children, she was dependable in the kitchen, she deferred to his parents, she was clever in bed. And she was always ready to sit quietly and listen to him – to take him seriously. Not many people did.

The thin man glanced up and saw their son standing in the doorway. Lang's eyes were wide and he had been crying.

"Go back and watch television," Wu told him.

But the boy didn't move. He stared at his mother.

The man stood. "Chin-Mei," he snapped. "Come here."

The girl appeared in the doorway a moment later. "Yes, Baba?"

"Bring me some of the new clothes for your mother."

The girl disappeared and returned a moment later with a pair of blue stretch pants and a T-shirt. Together they dressed the woman. Chin-Mei got a clean cloth and wiped her mother's forehead.

Wu then went to the electronics store next door to the apartment. He asked the clerk where the closest hospital was. The man told him that there was a big clinic not far away. He wrote down the address in English, as Wu asked; he'd decided to spend the money on a taxi to take his wife there and needed the written note to show the driver; his English was very bad. When he returned to the apartment he said to his daughter, "We'll be back soon. Listen to me carefully. You are not to open the door for anyone. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, Father."

"You and your brother will stay in the apartment. Do not go outside for any reason."

She nodded.

"Lock the door and put that chain on it after we leave."

Wu opened the door, held his arm out for his wife to cling to and then stepped outside. He paused, heard the door latch and the rattle of the chain. Then they started down Canal Street, filled with so many people, so many opportunities, so much money – none of which meant much of anything to the small, frightened man at the moment.