Death of a Red Heroine [Chief Inspector Chen Cao 01] (68 page)

“Yes, you are right,” Chen said. “I’ve been so busy with the conference. I’ve almost forgotten that I’m in charge of the case.”

Putting down the phone, he hurried back to the hotel. He had a presentation to make in the morning, and a group discussion to attend in the afternoon. In the evening, Minister Wen was scheduled to make an important concluding speech. Soon he was overwhelmed by the conference details.

During the lunch break, he tried to make another call to inquire about the trial but in the lobby he was stopped by Superintendent Fu, of the Beijing Police Bureau, who talked to him for half an hour. Then another director came up to him. And he had no break at all during dinner, as he had to toast all the invitees, table after table. After dinner, Minister Wen, who seemed to be especially well-disposed toward him, sought him out. Finally, after the long speeches, well after nine o’clock, Chen stole out of the hotel to another phone booth on Huanpi Road. Yu was not at home.

Then he dialed Overseas Chinese Lu. Wang Feng had called him. “She’s so happy for you,” Lu said. “That much I could tell. Even in her tone. A really nice girl!”

“Yes, she is,” Chen said.

When Chen got back to his room, the maid had prepared everything for the night. The bed was made, the window closed, and the curtain partly drawn. There was a pack of Marlboros on the night stand. In the small refrigerator, he saw several bottles of Budweiser, an imported luxury that suited his status here. Everything signified that he was an “important cadre.”

Turning on the bedside lamp, he glanced at the TV listings. The room had cable, so there were several Hong Kong martial arts movies available. He had no desire to see any of them. Once more, he looked out toward the First Department Store silhouetted against the night by the ever-changing neon lights.

Had there been an emergency, Yu would have contacted him.

After taking a shower, he put on his pajamas, opened a Budweiser and began studying the newspaper. There was not much worth reading, but he knew he could not fall asleep. He was not drunk—certainly not as drunk as Li Bai, who had written a poem about dancing with his own shadow under the Tang dynasty moon.

The he heard a light knock on the door.

He was not expecting company. He could pretend to be asleep, but he had heard of stories about hotel security checking rooms at unlikely hours.

“Okay, come in,” he said with a sense of resignation.

The door opened.

Someone stepped through the doorway, barefoot, in a white robe.

He stared at the intruder for a few seconds, fitting the image against his memories before recognition came to him.

“Ling!”

“Chen!”

“Imagine seeing you—” he broke off, not knowing what else to say.

She closed the door after her.

There was no suggestion of surprise in her face. It was as if she had just come from the ancient library in the Forbidden City, carrying a bundle of books for him, the pigeons’ whistles echoing in the distance in the clear Beijing sky; as if she had just come walking out of the Beijing subway mural painting, an Uighur girl carrying grapes in her arms, infinite motion, moving yet not moving, light as a summer sky, under her bangled bare feet, scraps of the golden paint flaking from the frame . . .

And Ling was the same—despite the lapse of years—except that her long hair, undone for the night, fell to her shoulders. A few loose strands curled at her cheeks, giving her a casual, intimate look. Then he noticed the tiny lines around her eyes.

“What has brought you here?”

“An American library delegation. I am serving as their escort. I told you about it.”

She had touched upon the possibility of accompanying an American library delegation to southern cities, but she had not mentioned Shanghai as one of the places they were going to visit.

“Have you had your supper?” Another silly question. He was annoyed with himself.

“No,” she said. “I just gotten in. I just had time to take a shower.”

“You have not changed.”

“Nor have you.”

“Well, how did you know I was staying here?”

“I telephoned your bureau. Somebody in your office told me. Your Party Secretary, Li Guohua, I believe. At first he was rather guarded, so I had to tell him who I am.”

“Oh.”
Or whose daughter

Ling took out a cigarette. He lit it for her, cupping his hand over the lighter. Lightly, her lips brushed against his fingers.

“Thanks.”

She sat in a casual posture, drawing one bare foot under her. As she tapped the cigarette into the ashtray, leaning over, her robe parted slightly. He caught a flash of her breasts. She was aware of his glance, but she did not close her robe.

They looked into each other’s eyes. “Wherever you are,” she said jokingly, “I can get hold of you.”

She certainly knew how to get hold of him. There was no withholding information from her. As an HCC, she had her ways.

In spite of her joke, he felt tension building between them. It was illegal for man and woman to share a hotel room without a marriage license. Hotel security was authorized to break in. A loud knock at the door was to be expected at any time. “Routine checkup!” Some rooms were even equipped with secret video recorders.

“Where is your room?” he asked.

“In this same section for ‘distinguished guests,’ because I’m the escort to the American delegation. The security people won’t check up here.

“It’s so nice of you to come,” he said.

“It is difficult to meet, and also difficult to part, / The east wind listless, and flowers languid
...” Ling quoted the couplet about star-crossed lovers to good effect. She understood his passion for Li Shangyin.

“I’ve missed you,” she said, her face soft under the light, though etched with travel fatigue.

“So have I.”

“After all the years we’ve wasted,” she said, dropping her eyes, “we’re together tonight.”

“I don’t know what to say, Ling.”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“You’ve no idea how grateful I am,” he said, “for all you have done for me.”

“Don’t say that either.”

“You know, the letter I wrote, I did not mean to—”

“I knew,” she said, “but that was what I wanted.”

“Well—”

“Well,” She looked up at him, and her eyes lost the tentative look and grew hazy. “We’re here. So why not? I’m leaving tomorrow morning. No point repressing ourselves.”

An almost forgotten phrase from Sigmund Freud, another Western influence in his college days. In hers, too, perhaps. He saw her moisten her lips with her tongue; then his glance fell to her bare feet, which were elegantly arched with well-formed toes.

“You’re right.”

He moved to turn off the light, but she stopped him with a gesture. She stood up, undid the belt, and let the robe fall to the floor. Her body gave off a porcelain glow under the light. Her breasts were small, but the nipples were erect. In a minute they were on the bed, aching for the time they had spent apart, their long wasted years. The haste was his doing as much as hers, touched with a sort of desperation that affected them both. There was no salvaging the past, except by being themselves in the present.

She groaned, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his back. Moving under him, she arched herself up, her fingers long, strong, sliding down his back. The intensity of her arousal sharpened his. After a while, she changed position and lay on top of him. With her long hair cascading over his face, she was provoking sensations he had never known. He lost himself in her hair. She shuddered when she came, panting in short, quick breaths against his face. Her body suddenly grew soft, wet—insubstantial as the clouds after the rain.

They lay quietly in each other’s arms, feeling themselves far above and beyond the city of Shanghai.

Perhaps due to the height of the hotel, he suddenly seemed to see the white clouds pressing through the window, pressing against her sweat-covered body in the soft moonlight.

“We’re turning into clouds and rain,” he said, invoking the ancient metaphor.

She whispered a throaty agreement, curling up with her head on his chest, gazing up at him, her black hair spilling.

Their feet brushed. Touching her arched sole lightly, he felt a grain of sand stuck between her toes. Sand from the city of Shanghai—not from the Central South Sea complex in the Forbidden City.

Their moment was interrupted by the footsteps moving along the corridor. He heard the sound of the hotel people producing a bunch of keys. A key turning—once, only once—at a door across the corridor. The suspense made their sensations even more intense. She nestled against him again. There was something in her features he had never seen before. So clear and serene. The autumn night sky of Beijing, across which the Cow Herd and Spinning Girl gaze at each other, a bridge woven of black magpies across the Milky Way.

They embraced again.

“It’s been worth the wait,” she said quietly afterward. Then she fell asleep beside him, the stars whispering quietly outside the window.

He sat up, took a pad from the nightstand and started writing, the lamplight falling like water on the paper. The stillness around them seemed to be breathing with life. Amidst the images rushing to his pen, he turned to see her peaceful face on the pillow. The innocence of her clear features, of the deep-blue night high above the lights of Shanghai, charged through him in waves of meaning.

He had a feeling that the lines were flowing to him from a superior power. He just happened to be there, with the pen in his hand. . . .

He did not know when he fell asleep.

The ring of the telephone on the night stand startled him.

As he stirred from his dream, blinking, he realized Ling was no longer beside him. The white pillows were rumpled against the headboard, still soft, cloud-like in the first morning light.

The telephone kept on ringing. Shrill and sharp, so early in the morning, like an omen. He snatched it.

“Chief Inspector Chen, it’s all finished.” Yu sounded edgy, as if he too had hardly slept.

“What do you mean—all finished?”

“The whole thing. The trial is over. Wu Xiaoming was sentenced to death, guilty on all the charges against him, and executed last night. About six hours ago. Period.”

Chen glanced at his watch. It was just past six.

“Wu did not try to appeal?”

“It’s a special case. The Party authorities put it that way. No use making any appeal. Wu was well aware of that. His attorney, too. An open secret to everybody. Appeal or no appeal, it would have made no difference.”

“And he was executed last night?”

“Yes, just a few hours after the trial. But don’t start asking me why, Comrade Chief Inspector.”

“Well, what about Guo Qiang?”

“Also executed, at the same time and on the same execution ground.”

“What?” Chen was more than shocked. “Guo had committed no murder.”

“Do you know what the most serious charge against Wu and Guo was?”

“What?”

“Crime and corruption under Western bourgeois influence.”