The Firemaker (5 page)

‘You’re late,’ he hissed.

‘Well, that’s hardly my fault. The car picks me up, the car drops me off.’

‘Okay, okay.’ He glanced around self-consciously. The ground floor of the restaurant was packed, dozens of tables stretching off to infinity, steaming roast ducks on trolleys being wheeled to tables for carving by chefs in tall hats. ‘Now, listen, before we go up, there’s a few things you should know.’

‘Oh, I’m sure there are.’ Although still tired, she was getting her second wind now, and the vodka was having its effect.

He ignored her tone and steered her away from the door. ‘You’ll be placed on the right hand of your host – that’s Professor Jiang. Don’t sit until he indicates where. He’ll propose a toast welcoming you to Beijing. You reply with a toast thanking the generosity of your host.’ Margaret felt like a naughty child being admonished for earlier indiscretions and briefed to prevent further
faux pas
. Her attention wandered to a panoramic window giving on to the kitchens, where dripping ducks hung roasting inside great wood-burning ovens. ‘The meal usually comes in four courses. You let him serve you the first couple times then tell him you can manage fine from now on. You
can
use chopsticks, can’t you?’

She sighed. ‘Yes.’

‘Good. Well, turn them round and use the other end to serve yourself from communal plates. Oh, and it’s not considered good form for women to drink too much. So just take a sip for the toasts and then leave the rest, okay?’

Margaret nodded, but she wasn’t really listening. She was looking in a large glass case mounted on the wall at a signed photograph of George Bush with a mouthful of duck. Asked for his autograph, he had obviously scrawled his name and as an afterthought reckoned he should make some polite comment about the restaurant. ‘A superb meal. Many thanks,’ he had written. Inspirational as always, Margaret thought.

‘Another thing. Don’t talk shop unless they raise the subject. And don’t be surprised if they ask you … well, personal questions.’

She frowned her consternation. ‘What kind of personal questions?’

‘Oh, about how much you earn, how much you paid for your apartment in Chicago.’

‘None of their damned business!’

‘Jesus, Margaret, don’t tell them that. If you really don’t want to answer something, try and make a joke of it. Say something like … “I’ve promised my father to keep it a secret”.’

‘Well, that’ll have them rolling in the aisles.’ She had a peculiar sense of floating now. There was a strange air of unreality about everything.

‘We’d better go up.’

As he led her to the stairs, Margaret noticed a group of seven or eight young men sitting around a table with large half-litre glasses of beer and two ducks being carved simultaneously. There was a great deal of raucous laughter rising with clouds of cigarette smoke from the table. Oddly, Margaret thought she recognised one of the faces. An ugly square-jawed face with a flat-top crew cut. She caught the man’s eye and then remembered. It was the bad-tempered cyclist they’d had the collision with that afternoon. To her astonishment, he smiled and waved. Bob waved back, and she realised the wave hadn’t been meant for her. ‘You know him?’ she asked as they climbed the stairs.

‘Sure. He’s a graduate of the university. Way before my time. But he comes back to give occasional lectures. Li Yan. One of the bright upcoming detectives in Section One.’

‘Section One? What is that?’

‘Oh, it’s a kind of serious crime squad. Part of the Municipal Police, but it deals with the big stuff – homicides, armed robberies, that kind of thing.’ He paused. ‘Why, do you know him?’

‘No. Not really. We sort of bumped into him when we were picking you up earlier.’ She glanced back from the top of the stairs, but Li Yan was engrossed in a story being recounted loudly by a big, round-faced young man sitting next to him. There was an eruption of laughter from the table.

The upstairs of the restaurant formed a gallery overlooking the dining area below. Long green lamps dripped like tears from a high ceiling. At the far side their hosts awaited them by a large circular table. Professors Jiang, Tian and Bai, Dr Mu, Mr Cao and their respective partners, as well as Veronica, wearing the same dress she had worn in the afternoon. They went through the formal and tedious process of introduction and reintroduction. Dr Mu’s husband had long hair swept back over his collar and a wispy beard trained to a point, and seemed out of place in this gathering of clean-cut, clean-shaven faces. He gave Margaret a warm smile and produced a pack of cigarettes. He offered her one.

‘I don’t, thanks,’ she told him.

He shrugged. ‘You don’t mind if I do?’

Bob looked tense. Margaret smiled. ‘Your funeral.’

‘I am sorry?’

‘I’ve seen first hand what it does to the lungs.’

He looked slightly puzzled, but lit up anyway. Professor Jiang spoke and Veronica translated. ‘Professor Jiang say we should sit.’

The professor stood at his place and indicated the seat on his right to Margaret. She sat, he sat, and then the rest sat. So far it was all going to plan. A waitress arrived with small porcelain cups filled with a clear, evil-smelling liquor and placed one by each person. ‘
Mao tai
,’ Bob told her from the other side of the table. ‘Made from sorghum. It’s one hundred twenty proof, so take it easy.’

Professor Jiang raised his cup and proposed a lengthy toast which the laconic Veronica translated as, ‘Welcome to Beijing, welcome to the People’s University of Public Security.’ They all raised their cups and muttered, ‘
Gan bei
,’ and sipped at the liquor which was as evil-tasting as it smelled. Margaret had difficulty forcing it over, and felt it burning all the way down. Then she remembered that it was her turn, and told them that she was honoured to be there and would like to drink a toast to the generosity of their host, Professor Jiang. Veronica translated, Professor Jiang nodded, clearly satisfied, and they raised their cups again. ‘
Gan bei
.’ This time, she saw, the men drained their cups in a single draught, while the women barely wet their lips. Hell, she thought, it was easier to get it over in a oner than to sip and taste the damn stuff. She tipped her head back and poured it over, banging her cup back down on the table. She thought she was going to faint. Then she thought she was going to die of asphyxiation. Her lungs refused to draw breath. All eyes were on her, her face, she was certain, bright puce, before finally she managed to suck in a breath and smile as if everything were normal. The temptation to give expression to the pain that burned all the way down to her stomach was almost, but not quite, irresistible. Dr Mu’s husband grinned wickedly and clapped his hands. ‘Bravo,’ he said. ‘Your funeral.’ Which made her laugh. And everyone else round the table laughed, too. Except for Bob, whose glare she assiduously avoided.

Now that the pain had subsided, the effects of the
mao tai
, on top of the vodka, on top of the twenty-four hours without sleep, were inducing a positive sense of euphoria. When the drinks order came, she asked for beer, and then the food started to arrive, culminating in the carving of three ducks, pieces of which they dipped in
hoi sin
before wrapping them in very thin pancakes with strips of spring onion, cucumber and minced raw garlic. It was delicious.

They asked her politely about her journey, her hotel. She asked them about their families, their homes. The more beer and wine they drank, the more informal the proceedings and, eventually, the more personal the questions. Mr Cao leaned across the table and said, ‘Forensic pathologists are quite well paid in the USA, I believe.’

Veronica translated for the others, and Margaret replied, ‘Everything is relative, Mr Cao. I’m sure in terms of Chinese salaries you would think so. But you must remember, the cost of living is so much higher in the United States.’

Mr Cao nodded. ‘And how much do you earn, Dr Campbell?’ In spite of Bob’s warning, Margaret was still taken aback by the direct and personal nature of the question.

Dr Mu passed some comment and everyone around the table laughed. Veronica translated, ‘Dr Mu say, when the wine is in, the truth is out.’

Well, thought Margaret, if they want to know … ‘I make around eighty-five thousand dollars a year,’ she said.

In the silence that followed, she could almost hear the computations going on in their heads. Eyes widened, jaws dropped, and there was no doubting that they were genuinely shocked by the extreme wealth of the
yangguizi
whose dinner they were paying for. Margaret began to wish she’d told them she’d promised her father to keep it a secret.

A tasty consommé arrived, boiled up from the carcasses of their ducks, and then a huge platter of fried rice. Margaret finished her beer and helped herself to some rice as Dr Mu’s husband asked, ‘So, Dr Campbell, you are forensic pathologist?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And do you have any, ah, special area, ah, expertise?’

‘Sure. Burn victims.’ She looked around their expectant faces. They were waiting for her to continue. ‘People who die in fires. I was just training at the time, but I was an assistant to one of the pathologists they called in to Waco, Texas, to help identify the corpses – you know, all those victims of the fire. That’s where my interest started, I guess. Funny thing is, the first few times you do an autopsy on a burn victim, the smell of charred human flesh stays with you for days. Now I don’t even notice it.’ She took a mouthful of rice and saw that everyone else around the table was putting their chopsticks down.

Veronica, who had been translating, had turned very pale. She rose quickly. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, and hurried away in the direction of the toilets.

‘Could I have another beer?’ Margaret asked the waitress.

‘And I’ll have a large Scotch.’ Heads turned as McCord pulled a chair from another table and drew it into theirs. He was quite unsteady on his feet and very flushed. ‘Fancy meeting you here,’ he grinned lecherously at Margaret and sat down. ‘You good folks don’t mind if I join you for a dee-jest-eef?’

Stony faces greeted him around the table. Mr Cao leaned over and whispered something to Professor Jiang, who contained his anger with a curt nod. Bob gave Margaret a long, hard look. She shrugged. McCord leaned towards her. ‘So, Margaret Campbell … how was your Beijing Duck?’

Mr Cao rounded the table and stooped to whisper in McCord’s ear, eliciting an indignant outburst. ‘Well, hell! That’s not very hospitable!’

Bob stood up and took one of his arms. ‘I think maybe you’ve had a little too much to drink, Dr McCord.’

McCord pulled his arm free. ‘How the hell would you know how much I’ve had to drink?’

Margaret tugged at Bob’s sleeve. ‘Who is he?’ she whispered.

‘I thought you knew,’ he said coldly. ‘He seems to know you.’

She shook her head. ‘He tried to pick me up at the hotel.’

‘I’ll tell you who I am.’ McCord pushed his snout between them. ‘I’m the man that’s feeding this goddamn country.’

Mr Cao shrugged helplessly towards Professor Jiang, who nodded and waved at him to sit down. Bob said, ‘Dr McCord was responsible for developing China’s super-rice. You’ve probably heard about it. They introduced it as a crop about three years ago. Since when production has increased by … what … fifty per cent?’

‘A hundred,’ McCord corrected him. ‘Indestructible, you see. Disease-resistant, herbicide-resistant, insect-resistant. You name it. I made it that way.’

‘And no doubt it tastes as good as it always did.’ Margaret couldn’t conceal her scepticism.

‘You tell me. You’re eating it.’ McCord grinned as Margaret took in the bowl of rice in front of her.

‘Perhaps you should have some of it yourself, then – to soak up the alcohol.’

He laughed. ‘Never touch the stuff.’

The waitress arrived with his whisky and Margaret’s beer. She watched him guzzle thirstily and, through her fatigue and a haze of alcohol, a vague and distant memory was beginning to surface, attached to other things she would rather forget. ‘McCord,’ she said. ‘Dr James McCord.’

‘That’s me.’

‘You got kicked out of … where was it … the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University? About six years ago?’

McCord’s complexion darkened. ‘Those fucking people!’

‘Field-testing genetically engineered plants without a permit from the EPA. Something like that, wasn’t it?’

McCord hammered a clenched fist on the table and everyone jumped. ‘Fucking regulations! They got our people so tied up in them they can’t move. Paperwork, bureaucracy, everything takes so goddamn long, by the time we get permission for a field test, the rest of the world’s growing the stuff.’ He grabbed a bowl of rice. ‘This.
We
could have been growing this. Or wheat. Or corn. Feeding the planet. Instead, it takes a third world country like China to have the vision.’

Those Chinese around the table who understood English bristled at his description of their country as ‘third world’.

‘So it was the Chinese who financed your research?’ Margaret was curious.

‘Hell, no. They just facilitated it. It was my employers, Grogan Industries, put up the money. Good old-fashioned capitalist high-risk investment. They did the deal with China. Strange bedfellows, huh? But, boy, did they both hit the jackpot.’

‘How?’

‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? The Chinese got a quarter of the world’s population. And for the first time in their history they can feed themselves. Hell, they’re growing so much rice now they’re exporting the stuff.’

‘And Grogan Industries?’

‘They got the patent on all my work. They’re going to be launching my rice all over Asia and India next year.’

Margaret had heard of Grogan, a multinational US-based biotech company with an unsavoury reputation for ruthlessly exploiting the pharmaceutical market in the third world.

‘And no doubt the poorest countries – those with the greatest need – will be the last to get it. Because I’ll bet your technology doesn’t come cheap, does it, Dr McCord?’

‘Hey!’ He threw his hands up in self-defence. ‘Don’t blame me. The sole purpose of the scientist is to work for the benefit of mankind.’ He grinned. ‘Or something. But it’s money that makes the world go round.’