A Drop of Chinese Blood (6 page)

Gao looked at his ankle. Then he gave me a slippery smile. “Lucky you dropped by.”

“Yeah, lucky. I was on my way home and remembered you owed us. I thought I’d stop in. It seemed like a good time to collect, but I guess not. See you around.”

I was out the door and on the first step when Gao shouted, “Get back in here, OK? I got something to tell you.”

6

“Uncle, we don’t have time to waltz around each other.” I was standing in the workshop, among the pots of glue.

“Good, we’ll skip the dancing. You’re welcome to sit, or are you in a crashing hurry, as usual?”

“I am, and I’m not.”

“In that case, sit on the edge of the chair. That way you can spring up and leap out the door if necessary. Can I offer you refreshments? Tea?” He pointed to the brass teapot he kept on a hot plate near one of the glue pots.

“I wish you’d move either that hot plate or the glue. Sooner or later there’s going to be a fire in here.”

“So you say once a week. You mentioned you have a problem, and we can be sure it isn’t how I arrange my workshop.”

“The problem is a special order from Beijing.”

“A special order.” My uncle wasn’t easily impressed. “You don’t mind if I make some tea? Would you like a cup?”

“No, I don’t want a cup. I want to talk about this order. It’s numbered. When they number orders, that’s a bad sign. It signifies a series, and that means the first one isn’t the only arrow in the air.”

“Go on.”

“All of a sudden, they want me to come down hard on corruption in this sector. Not just a normal cleanup. Not the light dusting we do a couple of times a year. It’s to be something thorough, a tough, hard strike, that sort of thing. They’ll want quick prosecution followed by even speedier execution of several people—enough to scare the daylights out of the rest of the crooks for a good long time.”

My uncle nodded. “Off with their heads.”

“Let’s hope they don’t order me to raid Gao’s place. Half the provincial government will be shot. He’ll be furious, probably cut off my entrée for at least a few weeks. That is, if they don’t shoot him, too.”

“Did he pay up? If he’s executed, I don’t want him leaving this planet with what he owes us.”

“He said he’d do it next week. Just before I arrived, I think, someone hit him on the head to keep him from talking, probably someone who knows about this corruption strike order. They might as well put these supersecret operations on billboards with flashing lights.”

“Someone hit him on the head? What do you think they used?”

“A length of dark wood.”

“It wasn’t me, if that’s what you’re thinking. I wouldn’t waste a good piece of lumber on his skull. That man must have a long list of enemies by now. All sorts of people owe him money, and for his part he probably owes some very bad people a pile. Look at how he’s held off paying us.”

“What do you have against Gao, other than the fact that he’s stiffed us for so long?”

“What makes you think I have something against him?”

“When he came over here to ask your help that first time, I had the feeling you two already knew each other. Bad vibrations.”

“Your tuning fork needs work. I never saw him before. Some people I dislike at first sight. I have good instincts, finely honed, in that regard.”

“He told me he saw Madame Fang last night.” I dropped this little bomb casually.

“Gao said that? Was that before or after you hit him in the mouth?”

“I don’t hit people. I try not to, anyway.”

“What would Mei-lin be doing in a low-class place like that?”

“I thought you could tell me.”

“I don’t have a tracking beacon on her fanny. Believe me, it’s been tried.”

“Maybe you were there with her.”

“You interrogating me? I already told you, we didn’t meet. Did Gao say he saw us together? If he did, he’s lying. Him and his stinking Egyptian cigarettes.”

This caught my attention. “How do you know they’re Egyptian?”

“Was I once a police inspector?”

“You were, and a good one, too, from what I hear.”

This stopped the conversation. I didn’t praise my uncle to his face very often. He looked at the ceiling and then at the floor. “Never mind that,” he said finally. “Did he say I was with her?”

“No, not exactly, but it occurred to me. Just a hunch.”

“Good, I’m in favor of hunches. Nothing wrong with hunches, except that most of them turn out wrong. Maybe yours are better than mine used to be. When you go back tomorrow to get the money, ask him directly whom she was with. Don’t let him slip around the question. If he doesn’t change his story and insists she was there, did she show up to meet someone? Or was it that she simply wanted to make a bet?” He took the kettle of boiling water from the hot plate and poured some into a small celadon cup with a tiny bit of tea on the bottom. “That would be like her. She’s been known to gamble a little. Maybe going into Gao’s den appealed to her sense of adventure.” He closed his eyes and took a sip of tea. “Now about this Headquarters order you mentioned. It’s number one?”

“That’s what I said. I shouldn’t have even told you that much. You agreed when you moved in here that you wouldn’t pry into my work.”

“I wasn’t prying, simply repeating. Or is that not allowed either?”

“What I meant to say was,
if
I received such an order.”

My uncle moved a couple of awls to the side and found a pencil. “I must have missed the speculative part. My Chinese is fair, but it’s not perfect. What is it that signifies the uncertainty, a verb ending? Some sort of particle at the end of the sentence? Here, write it down for me.”

His Chinese was good enough to know what I meant. His Chinese was better than mine, sometimes. “It isn’t about verb endings. Don’t play games on this.”

“All right,
if
you ever did receive such an order, and
if
you did happen to mention it to me, do you know what I would say? I would say ‘so what?’ Where’s the problem? You want to find corruption? Stick a pan in the lake, and it comes out with fish, maybe one, maybe more, probably a whole school of them.”

Away we go, I thought. I want to talk about corruption, my uncle talks fish.

“There’s a lot of river between here and Quanhe, plenty of people trying to make a little extra money. I never blamed them.” He took another sip of tea. “Are you sure you won’t have some? Mei-lin gave it to me yesterday.”

First fish, then tea. Sometimes I wondered why I even tried to have a normal conversation with him.

“Corruption is like carbon; life on earth couldn’t exist without it. It might even be more widespread than we think.” At least we were back on the main subject, though the biological origins of corruption weren’t my concern at the moment. “Corruption in every corner of the universe, every life form, every stinking piece of algae—all corrupt. Ever considered that?”

“For some reason I was hoping your experience would do me some good on this. Crazy idea, thinking you might be helpful. They want me to get rid of corruption, not rationalize it!”

“If you don’t like my solution, don’t bring up the problem.” Uncle O closed his eyes again. His voice took on a soothing lilt, all the more irritating and he knew it. “Do your job, and leave me out of it. That way there’s no chance of my prying, as you put it.”

“Nothing would please me more, but I’m afraid I can’t leave you out of it this time.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, it’s so, and I’ll tell you why. Because there are additional concerns here, connections with your old friends to consider.” I paused. Whenever I use the term “old friends” it almost always annoys him. As it did this time. His eyes flew open. I pretended not to notice. “How do I know there are connections? I can read between the lines.”

Other than his eyes opening, my uncle maintained a posture of indifference, but I was sure it was just a facade. Sometimes he thought it useful to play dumb when we wandered onto the topic of North Korea. I decided not to hop around the cabbage patch on this anymore. “The current problem on this side of the river is tied to things on the other side. On your side, understand? We’re not talking happenstance. We’re not talking loosely connected, or hypothetical strings. We’re not talking biology, or astronomy, or fish. What I’m talking about is events, people, actions, all linked together on this side and your side, linked with a steel chain.” I didn’t know how they were linked, or even if they were linked. Li’s sources hadn’t gotten into that, but it was pretty obvious that’s what the target of this Headquarters operation was all about.

“Linked?” My uncle lifted the teacup close to his nose and breathed in the aroma. “Here and there? You don’t say. What a surprise!”

Under the irony, I sensed a flare of genuine interest. The subject of connections across the river always made him perk up his ears. He’d left North Korea in a hurry, under threat, but he still missed home. Though he pretended not to care, he devoured news from there, good news, bad news, anything to make it seem that he hadn’t left for good and abandoned everything he knew.

“Nothing about that lousy border surprises me anymore,” I said, “and it doesn’t surprise you either.” It was true. The border was a nightmare. There was never a twenty-four-hour period where something didn’t go wrong. I had no control over the flow of people or things across it. I had no say in enhanced security measures, no say in better fences or more cameras. According to my job description, I was supposed to keep things quiet, and if they didn’t stay quiet, it was my fault because I was supposed to collect information that would alert Beijing to a problem before it happened. That was the reason the special bureau had been formed; it was the theory that underpinned our continued existence. It was complete monkey crap, but it paid the bills, of which I had plenty.

“This isn’t our normal sort of problem,” I said, “not by a long shot. It’s bigger than you might imagine.” That didn’t seem to get a reaction, so I upped the ante. “Much bigger.”

My uncle grunted. “I hope there isn’t a verb ending in all of this that I’m missing.”

“You mentioned fish.” I couldn’t tell my uncle exactly what the problem was. Headquarters was holding its cards close for fear something would leak. Li might be able to come up with some more in a day or so, but meantime I had to work with what I had. Anyway, sharing operational information with my uncle was a bad idea; it could put him in jeopardy. Nobody could get in trouble talking about fish, though. “Let’s start there, that’s a good image.”

My uncle understood discretion, but he didn’t like it when I was so obvious. He frowned slightly, but I stayed on track. “We both know that some fish are expendable. Some are not. Some fish swim upstream to where they were born, some fish don’t.”

My uncle nodded slowly, so as not to dislodge the frown.

“Some fish are less tasty than others. Some have too many bones.”

At this my uncle gave me a sideways glance. “Bones,” he said. “Bones stick in the throat.”

Something had caught his attention, or maybe it had just snagged on an old memory.

“Have you eaten those little fish from Lake Geneva?” He moved the pot of shellac a couple of millimeters away from the hot plate. “They were full of bones. That’s what they were, all bones. I wouldn’t go near them again.”

Still not the advice I was hoping for. “I’m not concerned with little fish,” I said, “and we’re not talking about Geneva.”

“Why not? Little fish feed big fish. It’s nature.” He waved a rasp at me. “Let’s stop for a moment and review what you’ve just said, hidden as it is behind a veil of discretion so thick that you’re lucky we both haven’t smothered in it.”

“Go ahead, review if you want to.”

“You don’t have any idea which fish you are supposed to catch or which to throw back as unpalatable, possibly poisonous. It could be your bosses don’t know, or they don’t want to let on that they know and intend for you to stumble around. Either way, it’s clear that your hind end is the one closest to the fire.” He moved the shellac back to where it had been. “Something goes wrong, you’re the one who gets burned.”

This was the sort of challenge I couldn’t let go unanswered. “You think I don’t know my territory? Actually, I have a pretty good idea about the fish on my side. I have files. I have subfiles. I have data files, personality files, grouped files, and computerized linkage files. If any two of these fish scratch their noses on the same day, it gets noted. I could bring in a half dozen of them before lunch. Don’t worry, I know my fish.”

My uncle smiled slightly. “I’m half inclined to believe that you could. In that case, if you know so much, where’s the problem?”

“The problem, as I’ve been trying to make clear, rests not on my side of the river but on yours. Yours. That’s where it always is. Always on your side we get ourselves in the muck. Simply by wading halfway across, everything becomes suddenly delicate. Heaven forbid I should offend anyone’s exquisite sensibilities! Your old friends can commit all sorts of mayhem over here, and I’m supposed to do what? Buy them dinner and a night with the girls on Dooran Street!”

“You were saying…”

I forced myself to calm down. “Via channels—never mind which or whose—it was intimated to me that I’m supposed to haul in some fish from your side, but if I hook the wrong one, we both know that the situation will get messy. And this mess, as we are both aware, will lap at my feet.”

“Don’t mince words, nephew, come out and say it. You’ll be drowning in shit at that point. That’s why you want my advice.”

Tied to me by blood or not, the man was exasperating beyond measure. Wasn’t it obvious why I was asking his advice? “You understand how things work over there, uncle. I need to know where to step and where not to step.”

“No, no. How many times have I tried to tell you? I don’t know how things work over there, not anymore. I did, once, up to a point, anyway.” He held up his hand to keep me from interrupting. “That’s wrong. Let me restate the obvious. I never knew how anything worked. Nobody did. Sometimes I thought not even the Center knew how things worked. Clarity was not our strong point. We did not fuss much with transparency.”