Authors: Andy Oakes
The article from The Daily Weekend was a copy, from a copy, of a copy … grey on grey and barely readable. It debated the new liberalising changes to the law that the National People’s Congress had approved and which had come into effect in January. Among other provisions, it allowed the authorities to seek out alternatives to the use of the firing squad as a means of carrying out state sanctioned executions. It named a doctor, Wang Jun, a director of a hospital in the south-west of the People’s Republic, who, since a few months ago, had been experimenting with the most reliable method of putting people to death. The work had been thorough. Exhaustive. His teams of doctors trying out a never-ending wave of drug cocktails on convicts. Slowly, slowly … narrowing an efficient death down. The main concerns, the main criteria being that the lethal injections should not damage the victim’s internal organs that could be used for transplantation. The final batch of criminals had thanked the director and his team, as they had voluntarily presented their arms … sleeves rolled-up, ready. All had seemed calm. Not one had been tied to their stretchers. Twenty-two had been injected by the doctors. Twenty-two had died. Each death individually monitored by colleagues holding stopwatches and clipboards. Levels of pain accompanying death, duly notated and described. The timings of how long it had taken to die, fastidiously recorded. Death had ranged from three minutes forty-five seconds to just fifty-seven seconds. This was seen as being dependant on whether the criminal was lying down or sitting up. But more so, on what cocktail of drugs had been administered. Mixture No.1 or Mixture No.2. Within days of the final trials, Hu Jiankang, Director of the Intermediate Court, had approved the use of Mixture No.2 as the ‘preferred dose’ of the State, for what he had termed as, ‘a kind of euthanasia’.
Director Wang Jun’s pioneering work in this field was much praised and was now being studied at national levels to see if it should replace the ritual of execution by a shot to the base of the head or into the back.
Piao had sipped the tea, now cold, tasteless … as the jet had turned, dropped, whining on its initial approach towards Capital Airport, fifteen thousand feet below. Through the window, heavy cloud. Black on grey. Grey on black. Nothing of the world to be seen. And knowing, before he had even read it, what the footnote in Lingling’s handwriting would say …
‘Doctor Wang Jun is the Director of the Kunming Court Hospital.’
Kunming.
Haven.
Friends in high places.
WASHINGTON DC, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
The interpreter was working on the last page of the computer data. A fall of Chinese characters toppling down its length, spilling from page to page. Her finger, steady, manicured and baby-pink tipped, scanning across the black laser print, cross referencing.
“Have you traced the email?”
Moving slowly across the cutglass vista, Carmichael glanced back toward Barbara Hayes. Removing his spectacles. Polishing their lenses on his tie. His eyes so small, so impossibly small. He resembling a Gucci garbed Winnie the Pooh.
“Hot mail addresses, false data, and re-routed through at least four systems. It could have come from anywhere …”
He smiled. His eyes only coming alive once he had replaced his glasses.
“… I’ve narrowed it down to the People’s Republic.”
Barbara stared out of her office window across the ‘City of Magnificent Distances’, to the Potomac. It could have been any river at the onset of night. The Thames. The Seine. But more so the Huangpu; perhaps it was, in so many ways. She raised the glass to her lips and drank the wine. Australian … flowers and honey, but strangely soulless, empty. Looking out of the window to the streams of cars, tail-lights slashing … fleeing home to the white and affluent north-west quadrant of the city. Weatherboard twee and stucco chic; worrying about their kid’s college fees and the hardcore porn found under little Billy’s bed. And in the south-west and south-east districts, blacks dreaming about getting a job. Where the fuck the next ten dollars was going to come from and what the hell had ever happened to the American Dream.
“Madam Hayes, I have finished.”
Barbara turned to focus on the interpreter; Chinese-American, with the looks that spanned two different worlds … fusing them together in soft tans, silky blacks and features crafted by a much more delicate palette knife.
“What are they?”
“Hospital records. Confidential hospital records …”
The interpreter’s nail scored through a chain of characters, identical on several papers.
“… this is headed the Shanghai No 1 Hospital, the Huangdong.”
Barbara dipped her fingertip into the wine and onto her lip.
“What sort of hospital records?”
“Lists of transplant organ donors. Lists of the organ recipients.”
Ask her. Ask her.
Barbara looked toward the far window. Toward the voice. Bobby, naked and wet. His finger drawing darkly on the sea of condensation. Circles. One, two, three, four … interlinked.
Ask her.
His voice, so clear, but his lips unmoving. Beyond him, beyond the glass of the window, a vista in grids of multicoloured electric. Everyday, Christmas. His face drinking it in … sightlessly.
Dreaming … just dreaming?
Barbara pointed to the characters outlined in marker. Fluorescent pink, as bright as cheap candy. Already knowing the answer that would come.
“And these?”
“Names, Madam Hayes, as close as they can be to the original American names. This one will be the name of Professor Heywood. This one, the name of Robert Hayes.”
“Bobby.”
The interpreter nodded.
Ask her.
Barbara drank some more wine.
“What do the records say about Bobby Hayes?”
The interpreter’s fingernail moved from character to character.
“He was a donor. Heart, living kidneys, corneas …”
She turned the pages, cross referencing; highlighted candy-pink to highlighted candy-pink marker pen.
“… his kidneys were transferred to the No 7 People’s Hospital in Zhengzhou for immediate transplantation. The corneas were kept at the Shanghai No 1 Hospital and were both used for corneal grafting on the same recipient two days later. There is no further mention of his heart.”
Ask her.
“The recipients, do we know who they were?”
Pages being turned.
“His kidneys were transplanted into two recipients. They must have been very important officials. Their names have been withheld.”
“And the corneas?”
A veil of ebony hair across her face, the interpreter brushing it aside. Her eyes, rubber balls, dancing down the characters and pages.
“They went to an American national …”
Tying in the patient’s reference number to a computer billing invoice. Tapping it with her knuckles, as smooth as cowry shells.
“… the bill, it was paid in cash, forty-five thousand dollars. The corneas went to a child, ten years old. Adam Michael Irving. There is an address in Philadelphia. Also a telephone number.”
Barbara took the page to her desk, tracing out each individual digit of the number with her fingernail. The telephone number of the boy that now saw through Bobby’s eyes. Picking up the receiver. Dialling. And then silence. Silence marked and measured by the thump in her chest. Listening, and finishing the wine, warm and weak, but immediately craving something stronger. She cut the call off before it connected, knowing that if it had been answered, it would have been answered by him. Him. A ten year old boy. He would be blond … also knowing that. And with beachball blue eyes. Bobby’s eyes. She put the receiver down, moving to the drinks table, pouring a large Teacher’s into heavy crystal. Gold into silver. The ice cracking as the spirit made contact. Raising the glass to her lips and drinking it in one. Pleasure and pain, the Scotch. Fire and ice.
Ask her.
“Bobby Hayes, his heart, kidneys, and his corneas, who removed them?”
The interpreter turned pages, eyes following the meander of her own fingernail; as certain, as convinced as a scalpel’s deep glide.
“A consultant surgeon. A Doctor Charles Haven.”
Eyes burning, Barbara turned to the window, but Bobby had gone. Just the circles left; tears of condensation bleeding through them.
Dreaming … just dreaming?
“Is there anything else, Madam Hayes?”
Barbara placed her hand in a gentle print across the glass where Bobby had traced. She could feel him,
“No, I’ve finished. I appreciate your help, thank you.”
The door closed. The room empty. The world empty. Just tears filling it. Picking the sheets of data up from the desk as she left; the brief cover note with its faint smell of China Brand cigarettes. She could imagine him writing it. She smiled, placing them in her attaché case. Turning off the office lights.
“Thank you, Sun Piao,” she whispered, as she moved toward the elevator.
*
Walking … a perfect day torn apart. A sky in tatters. Sun, but rain on its coat tails. You could smell it, feel it. Wanting it to come and pass, but it was digging its heels in.
Barbara hurried her pace. Walking nowhere, but everywhere. Past familiar cafés. Seeming unfamiliar. Everything at odds. Only turning back to the office, resolve in her pace, when the tail of music wagged from the open doors of the bar.
‘The moment I wake up, Before I put on my make-up … I say a little prayer for you.’
Sometimes everything, anything, takes on a meaning.
*
Pushing the intercom.
“I need someone checked out, Carmichael. All the way. And traced. I need him tracked with a daily update. Whatever it costs. Whatever deals have to be made. He’s in China at present. I’m not sure where. If its Shanghai, it will be the Jing Jiang Hotel. If it’s Beijing, the Diaoyutai State Guest House …”
Through the window, the sky moving toward darkness in a steady flow. Almost liquid. Yellows to mauves. Reds to purples.
“Friend or foe?”
Barbara’s eyes followed the curve of the Potomac, the George Washington Memorial Highway hugging its far shore in a lazy flex of traffic.
“Foe.”
She could hear his fingers already tap-dancing across the computer keyboard.
“You said ‘him’, so it’s a male?”
“It’s a male.”
“ An American National?”
“No.”
She heard the slap of the keys slow, fall silent.
“Not one of us, so what is he?”
The sun falling like a stone toward the horizon. Barbara left with no certainty that it would ever rise again.
“He’s English.”
“As English as fish and chips. Scones and jam?” Barbara smoothed her hand across the glass, city lights blooming smeared beneath it.
“No, Carmichael, as English as ‘Jack the Ripper’.”
THE GHOST MONTH,
GUI YUE
… THE SEVENTH LUNAR MONTH.
Do not be devout, for during this time the ghosts of hell will walk the earth. Do not be devout or it will be a dangerous time to travel. To go swimming. To get married. To move to a new house.
Do not be devout, for during this time if your husband should die, your wife, your father or your mother, if your brother, sister, or your own child should die … you shall not bury them. You will preserve the body for a funeral, a burial, a month later.
Long weeks. Longer days.
So many things not to do if you are devout. So many things to do if you are.
On the first and fifteenth days of the ghost month you will burn ghost money and incense … to appease, to pacify the spirits. On the first and fifteenth days of the ghost month you will prepare food, carefully, intricately, offerings to be placed on tables outside your home … to appease, to pacify the spirits. On the first and fifteenth days of the ghost month you will bathe, dress in your best clothes and visit the Taoist temple … to appease, to pacify the spirits.
Death, it is a sensitive issue. Do not talk of it … do not hint of it. Longevity, you talk of. Death is taboo. Be careful, so careful when pronouncing the number ‘four’ … in Chinese it sounds so like the word for death. Do not give a clock as a gift, it is a sure sign that somebody will die. Should you write a will, it will be impossible for you to find a witness to your signature upon it. If you give flowers, always give red flowers, never white … white, the colour associated with death. The purchasing of life insurance, this is to be avoided. And if you are to take a holiday or to move home, always seek out the many wonderful geographical names that litter the People’s Republic, as confetti does at a wedding. Happiness Valley. Paradise Road. Heaven’s Gateway. The Boulevard of a Thousand Joys. When visiting the United States of America, go to the many beautiful National Parks that the country has to offer. Except one, always avoiding one … Death Valley.
And on the seventh day of the seventh moon, falling during the heart of the ghost month …
qingren jie
, lovers day. Cards. Chocolate candies. Restaurants. A day of love in a month of ghosts.
Do not be devout … too devout. It may pass you by, the ghosts stealing it away.
BEIJING, THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA.
A man moving against a wall of sheet mirror-glass. Moving through the traffic of Chang’andongjie … an artery of a city chewing on the fumes of one million cars, ten thousand buses, fifty-five thousand taxis, one and a half million motorcycles. Still distant, but unmistakably, Charles Haven.
Closer. Outline firming. Features, shifting, settling into place. Eyes, surprisingly blue. Furiously blue. And hair, blonder than Piao had remembered.
Memories of memories of memories. How they fool. How they convince.
The Senior Investigator lowered the pocket binoculars and rubbed his eyes. Sleep, not so much a natural act now, more a butterfly that refused to be netted. Watching as the Englishman pierced the shadows of the pavement, entering the Bank of China. Days now … trailing him on a leisurely journey. Hospital to hospital. Bank to bank. Government office to government office. The boredom and weariness building. Paralysing. Disabling. Flowing through the Senior Investigator’s arteries into his muscles and the cortex of his brain. Doing a job that would have required the deployment of thirteen PSB officers if it had been a Bureau operation.