Authors: Andy Oakes
A glass of water at his elbow, the Minister picked it up, coughing, drinking it dry.
“… we offered each other the courtesy of favours. We made many deals …”
Zhu placed the glass down onto the desktop, his finger distractedly tracing its rim.
“… I was one of the first that he operated on, along with several other influential Politburo members. I received a living kidney from a prisoner who was due to be executed the next day. The transplant technique went extremely well. Post operative recovery was quick, smooth. Exceptional for a man of my age, I was told. But I had not realised that our screening of donors and their organs was so inept …”
Removing his glasses. The corners of his eyes glistening like jewels.
“… I had not realised that HIV was so widespread in the People’s Republic and that you could be infected from a transplanted kidney …”
Not giving Piao the pleasure of seeing him wipe his eyes. Replacing his spectacles, blinking back the tears.
“… it was only when Lingling found that she had my baby in her stomach, the many blood tests, that it was discovered that she had contracted the HIV Virus …”
An icicle around Piao’s heart. Lead in his guts.
“… I did not know it, but I must have been carrying the virus for those years. I infected Lingling, your wife. Lingling, the mother of my child to be …”
A buzz invading Piao’s head. Hot, deep, dangerous. The anger pushing out in all directions against the inside of his skull.
“… HIV is not conscious of rank. It does not stand around in corridors awaiting an appointment. As for me, it has been diagnosed that I now have AIDS. My immune system is fully depressed. A month ago I had a major operation to remove a cancerous tumour from my insides. They found many others. I have very little time left …”
He poured some more water, sipping it.
“… yes, you are very astute, as I said earlier. This is personal. This is revenge …”
He pushed the folder further across the desk, its edge against Piao’s fingers.
“… the Englishman. You will kill him for me. For your wife and the child. And for yourself, Sun Piao. And for the others whose faces you see every time that you close your eyes.”
“But I’m not a murderer. I’m not an assassin. And I don’t give a fuck about you, Minister.”
Zhu switched on a desklamp; hard light, as yellow as amber. For the first time seeing the wasteland of the Minister’s face. The eyes sunken into potholes.
“But yourself, Sun Piao, you are about to be tried and executed. Do you have the capacity to think of yourself? It is sometimes more difficult to do than hating others.”
“A high cadre, a fucking Politburo member who is a part-time philosopher. History is full of such dangerous combinations. Millions of graves can testify to that.”
Zhu pulled the folder back to the centre of the desktop; his fingers parched leather. The ministerial seal like a red-hot coal beneath them.
“An anger to take you all the way to your execution, Senior Investigator. But kill the Englishman, Charles Haven, and you can claim back your life. Lingling will need you. Listen … she will need you. That is what you have wanted to hear every day since she left you, is that not true?”
Leaning across his desk, breath as sour as unfermented wine.
“Your life is fading by the minute, Sun Piao. Kill the Englishman. You do it. You know him. You have the anger. Kill him and live. Kill him and you will be protected by the law from the charges that are held against you.”
“The law? What does a man like you know about the law, Minister, except that others follow laws and you make them and break them.”
A cough rattling the Minister. Deep. Dark. A storm of the soul escaping through a gaping mouth. Lips as tight as elastic bands stretched to their limits.
“Kill him. Look what, look what he has done to me. Kill … kill him.”
Looking deep into Zhu’s eyes. Tears, in weak tracks down his cheeks. From his lips, spittle, on fine filament dribbles Silver-white and flecked scarlet, dropping down to the desktop.
“No, Minister. I will not kill for you. Or for me.”
Zhu’s cough ploughing deeper, suddenly halting to a sharp intake of breath. A barbed hook that rolled his eyes. That made his crab fingers scuttle across the desk, seeking some unknown purpose. On his lips, down the front of his shirt, as thick and as deep hued as plum sauce … blood. Instinctively, Piao running to the double doors, thumping on them with both fists. Hearing his own voice in a guttural shout for help. Instantly, the two security officers swept into the study, sweeping the old man into their arms. His spectacles in a slow tumble to the floor. Blood and thin laced vomit, across their shirts in an angry scar. An immediate reek of bile, vinegar and gamy, filling the room. Mutterings from Zhu’s lips, loose and mouthing against the security officer’s chest as they swiftly ran him from the room and into the corridor. A door opening, closing, at the very end of the corridor. And then silence. Complete. Unbroken. As silent as if the world itself was holding its breath.
*
Piao slept for five hours, seeming like five minutes. Aware of the constant activity at the end of the corridor. Comings, goings, from Kang Zhu’s room.
He awoke worried into the dark. Never as black. Sitting on the end of the bed … Lingling.
*
Morning. The sky lemon, when she rose kissing him … tasting of salt and strawberries. Her words few. Last words. Almost thrown away as if they didn’t really matter. As if she had never doubted that he would agree to what she would ask. The Englishman, Haven, what he had done to the eight in the river. To the Minister. To herself … the HIV, the slow boat of death. What he had done to Piao … his trial, his execution only days away. So many venerable reputations to be soiled by his wrongdoings; reputations pulled through the mud. So many to lose face. Such loss of face. Yes, he had to be killed. There was no other way. The Senior Investigator would, of course, do as the Minister had requested … save himself and kill the Englishman. She kissed him again, this time longer. Sweeter.
“Haven. Kill him, Sun. If not for the Minister, then for me.”
She had smiled, and automatically he questioned the words that he knew that he wanted to say. Each one a fishbone in his throat.
“I am not an assassin.”
Lingling closed the door, walking silently to the room at the end of the corridor. The smile slipping from her face.
*
The day was one of uncomfortable silence. Sleeping, as it took him. The nervous naps of a cat dozing on a window ledge high above the ground. Dreams of only hard things. Spiked things. Food served at regular intervals by an elderly, toothless a-yi. Outside of his room, the measured pace of security officers. And inside of his room … a constant awareness of the corridor and the Minister Kang Zhu’s bedroom at the dark end of it.
Seeing Lingling only once during the whole of that day. A glimpse, brief and desolate, as she had run the length of the corridor. Her bare feet making no sound. Both hands clasped to her face. Tears bleeding between the gaps of her fingers.
*
Dust angels moving through a splinter of morning light.
The a-yi left … Piao’ s eyes adjusting to the darkness of the study. Moods, textures, filling the room to its brim. Everything the hue of mahogany and bitter chocolate, except Lingling. Her back, hard against the bookshelved wall … wearing white. Completely in white. The colour of death. At the centre of the study, the carved desk had been removed. In its place, a heavy chromium plated stand, resting upon it, a dark wood coffin. A re-touched Kang Zhu only partially filling its large gaping interior. Hair slicked. Cheeks rouged. Lips painted. More a septuagenarian clown than a Minister of Security.
She moved from the bookshelf towards the casket. Her perfume, Chanel … invading. A sharp stiletto piercing other scents. The scents that Piao always associated with death. Wet earth. Long standing puddles. Rusty railings. Fallen fruit. She stood at the coffin, her crimson tipped fingers braced on its carved wood and gently tapping to some anonymous rhythm. Speaking across its mouth. Speaking across the body of Zhu. Again, the question … more forthright this time. It worrying Piao that she felt no need of levers in her words.
“Will you kill the Englishman for me?”
For me.
The Minister’s dead, but Lingling taking up the reins of vengeance.
“I am not an assassin.”
For a second, her fingers still, before moving to the window and pulling the drapes aside. Piao shielding his eyes as the room flooded ice-white. Details … noticing details. The fingerprint grain in the wood of the coffin. Gold titles on the spines of the leather bound books. ‘The Water Margin’. ‘Rulin Waishi’. ‘The Family’. ‘David Copperfield’. And Zhu’s eyes, looking like black scratches under glass. Mascara smeared and charcoal pencil underlined. The Senior Investigator’s gaze drawn to the residence’s gardens, a verdant fist … at its centre a man. Paper pale. Across his forehead a jagged scar. Yaobang. Beside him, the shadows of two security officers.
“As you see, not dead at all …”
Flexing her fingers, she studied her nails, gesturing toward the window, toward Yaobang. As if remarking to a girlfriend about a handbag in a shop display.
“… he will be executed, maybe his organs harvested, if you do not kill the Englishman …”
A head-on collision of emotions. Both extreme, both opposite. Alive, Yaobang alive. A thump of joy in the Senior Investigator’s chest. And in the other corner, regret, loss … already starting a process of grieving for him. The Big Man’s life in the palms of his hands, yet about to leak between his fingers.
“No, I will not kill for you.”
Lingling moved around the foot of the casket.
“Sun, you are making me do things that I do not wish to do. Turning me into someone that I do not want to be …”
It was raining outside. On the window, the snare-drum rhythm of its fall. The security officers still standing over Yaobang. His hair wet. Its square cut fringe, spiked, as serrated as a bread knife.
“… that is what men do to women. You turn us into other things. The bits that you do not want, we become. The things that you will not do, we do for you …”
Heavier, now the rain. On the trees. The leaves. On the grass. Over her shoulder, Piao watching its streaked, grey fall.
Wash everything away, please wash it all away.
She was reached into her pocket, in her fingers a piece of paper. Unfolding it slowly. A computer print-out. Its words unveiling a more personal horror. A premature shiver taking hold of Piao.
“… this is from your specialist at the People’s Military Hospital. The results of your latest blood tests …”
Taking it from her fingers. Everything with an edge. Hues. Smells. Textures. Feeling the thickness of the paper between his fingers. The print raised infinitesimally above its surface. But not reading it. Not needing to. Knowing that she would tell him. With certainty … knowing.
“… the transplant organ, the kidney that you were the recipient of at the hands of Charles Haven. It had come from a living donor. A prisoner who was infected. The Englishman would have known of this …”
Outside, still the rain. Seeing its flow in rivulets from Yaobang’s nose and chin. Seeing its fall on every individual blade of grass. And above, the sky moving in a seamless shutter … the colour of amalgam spat into a sink.
“… the prisoner had HIV. You have HIV …”
She smiled. A lipsticked gash. The sky falling. Piao feeling for a chair as his legs melted. A blurred snap of a glance, out of the window to the gardens. It was still raining, but the Big Man was out of its fall now and nowhere to be seen. Out of its fall, safe and dry. Safe.
See … the waters of the Ghost Month fall on the dry earth. See … we burn the incense. We make the offerings. We appease, pacify the spirits of the ancestors. See … still the rice does not grow.
The rain … here she came again. Every day. As if earth were turning to ocean. For weeks now. Months?
Piao sat on a log, its fall in a constant wash down his face. Each drop, a snare beat, drumming the strength back into him, where before there had been none. In the corners of his mouth, its taste … bitter tastes. Only bitter tastes.
He followed her journey from the main body of the house, a glide in black, leaving no witness to her passage on the sodden lawn. A large, dark umbrella above her head, like a brooding cloud. And then she was with him, standing over him.
“It is time,” was all that Lingling had said.
*
During the ride to the airport he had read the slim file. Arrangements. A hotel room. A car. The airline tickets. Expecting a flight to the United States of America. Gleaming people in gleaming cities. A jolt of surprise pinning his back firmly to the velour upholstery of the black foreign car.
A flight, one way … to Capital Airport, Beijing.
*
On the flight, as they had spanned the garden city of Suzhou, the silk city of Wuxi, Zehngjiang on the Long River Delta, following the straight cut of the Great Canal and crossing the ancient Marshlands of Hebei … he had removed the last two items from the file. A large and detailed article from the provincial newspaper ‘The Daily Weekend’ and a computer listing of Visa details and internal travel permits. The subject … Haven.
As Piao had drunk tea, scalding and bitter, and the CAAC flight had turned across the frayed edge of the Sea of Bohai … his finger ran down the pale grey lines. The Englishman re-entering the People’s Republic just over a month ago. Forward travel onto Kunming approved and stamped, basing himself there ever since. Kunming, with its reputation as a transit centre for drug trafficking and its major hospital, the Kunming Court, renowned as a centre of excellence. Just days ago, the internal travel permits showing that Haven had entered Beijing. A return flight, CX 251, to the United States of America, reserved … and just days away. So smooth his movement in and out of the People’s Republic. So smooth his internal travel within the country, from province to province without question. It was obvious that he was still a ‘favoured foreigner’. Still a man who had friends in very high places.