The First Excellence: Fa-Ling's Map (4 page)

The park was a rare inner-city fantasy of greenery that absorbed the traffic noise and filtered at least some of the heavy pollution from the air. Dahui and Shopei hurried toward a clearing where more than fifty people had gathered. The hand movements were already underway. They joined the group, their bodies flowing with a motion that was as natural to them as breathing. It was ‘long-form’ T’Ai Chi, so they would be at it for nearly thirty minutes, depending on the day’s leader.

After their exercises, Shopei finally relaxed. She did not smile, but her face lost some of the hardness that had been carved on it during the past week. For the first time in days she held Dahui’s arm as they left the park.

“
Coffee, older sister?” he said.

“
You drink too much of it.”

“
There’s a new place on the corner.”

“
At the bookstore?”

“
That’s right.”

“
OK,” she said. “I can pick up a magazine for my boss. If you are late, it’s always wise to bring a gift.”

His chuckle was heartier than he felt, and louder than her joke warranted, but they were both in need of humour.

“
Randy will be with us soon,” he said. “He should arrive at 11:00.”

“
Will you meet him?”

“
Yes. I’ve already cleared it with my manager. She said I could leave early today.”

“
That’s good. I don’t want to miss any more time from work. Last week was…”

“
I know. It was awful.”

They found a small table in the centre of the overpriced café. Dahui pulled out a chair for Shopei. She sat and motioned for the waitress. Despite her delicate appearance, her movements were strong and determined. She had inherited their mother’s sense of certainty.

Dahui was ten when his family left the southern rural community where he was born and came to Shanghai to find work. His parents had received special permission as farmers to bear a second child, in the hopes, of course, of conceiving a son who could help with the labour and carry on the family name.

Dahui knew he was blessed to have a sister. He could not imagine what his childhood would have been like without her. Their mother, Sui, was a strong-willed woman. Dahui thought of her as a dragon, one of those legions of matrons who would battle to the death to protect their families.

He knew if he had been born a second daughter it would have broken his mother’s heart. Sui loved Shopei, but one girl was quite enough in a land where the pressure to produce a son was still irresistibly strong.

No matter. Mother had survived life on her in-law’s farm and the birth of a first-born daughter. She would deal with Father’s injuries and this latest threat to her family. Dahui had infinite faith in his mother’s ability to persevere.

Dahui and Shopei drank their coffee. They would hurry home with breakfast for Mother and Father, then rush to catch the train. Shopei’s joke aside, neither wanted to be late for work.

**

Tan Sho-Sui listened for her children to return. Since their father had been unable to leave his bed, they’d made a practice of bringing breakfast. They knew Sui was exhausted from caring for Da-Lim, changing bedding and bandages without complaint. The children did what they could to help.

Sui worried Lim’s condition was not improving. He seldom ate more than a few bites of the hot breakfast pastries. She feared he might never be restored to the man he had been before the attack.

The doctor assigned to Lim’s case was inattentive, exuding the bored intellectual manner of a man meant for greatness but trapped in the role of a civil servant. Beyond setting the broken bones, he prescribed painkillers and bed-rest. Sui did her best to limit the dose of the drug, believing it stilted the natural healing energy of her husband’s
chi
. She could not withhold it entirely, though. His pain was too severe.

When Sui was not busy cleaning, she sat by his side, mixing a variety of recommended
chi
tonics and watching Lim shrink into a shadow of the man she remembered. Sui was well aware there were some things in life even she could not control. It was all she could do to hide her anxiety.

Dahui and Shopei were taking longer than usual. They would have to hurry if they were going to get to work on time. The moment their mother heard footsteps approaching in the hall, she rushed to open the door for them.

That was a mistake.

A large man burst into the room, nearly knocking Sui to the floor. A second, smaller man followed him. A third entered the room slowly, looking around as his subordinates secured the apartment.

The boss was taller than the other two. Sui followed him to the master bedroom.

He studied his surroundings through eyes that surrendered no flicker of light from beneath their hooded lids. Were it not for those dead-black eyes, he might have been any man ― a banker perhaps. His clothes, hair and posture all indicated a healthy measure of education and intelligence.

Sui met his eyes, searching for some assurance of humanity, but the cold black surface of his stare forced her to turn away.

“
Your husband is injured,” he said. His voice was a perfect match for his eyes, flat and low, devoid of inflection.

Sui glanced at the clock on the bureau. The children would be back at any moment. Whatever business these men had, she wanted to deal with it and get them out of the apartment before Shopei and Dahui arrived.

“
Why are you here?” she asked.

“
You have a son,” the man said.

“
He is at work.” Sui did not add that she also had a daughter. When it came to authority figures, she believed in one cardinal rule: never give away information unless you are sure the recipient already possesses it. One can never know what secrets will prove to be valuable down the road.

“
Very well,” Senior Agent Jiu Kaiyu said. “We just need to look around. Which room belongs to your son?”

“
On the right.” She struggled to keep her hand from shaking as she pointed toward it. Like most Shanghai apartments, their unit had only two bedrooms.

“
Is this his computer?” Jiu waved at the workstation beside Dahui’s bed.

“
No. It’s mine,” Sui lied.

“
Please turn it on.”

“
It isn’t working.” Her instincts told Sui whatever was on Dahui’s computer might land him in trouble.

Her stalling tactic was transparent and futile. Jiu Kaiyu nodded. One of his henchmen, the large one, turned on the computer. To her horror, Sui noticed the big man’s massive hands were perfectly manicured. This minor nod to personal grooming was in glaring contrast to his weathered peasant face and rumpled grey suit. It enhanced rather than contradicted his thug-like appearance.

Agent Ng-Zhi did not look like someone who would be comfortable with technology, but within seconds he had Dahui’s email window opened and was searching through the most recent messages.

“
Got it,” he said. “I’ll print it out.” Unlike his superior, Ng-Zhi’s voice was musical, his words scaling the tones of Cantonese.

Jiu Kaiyu studied the incoming email, struggling with the English words. He memorised Randy’s flight number and time of arrival, and tucked the page into the pocket of his jacket.

Sui turned at the sound of footsteps approaching in the hallway. It had to be Dahui and Shopei arriving at last with breakfast.

“
Run away!” Sui shouted, determined to stop her children from stepping into a trap. “Do not come in!”

In the hallway, Dahui and Shopei heard their mother’s warning. Shopei reached for the door, but her brother held her arm.

“
No,” he whispered. “It is my place to go inside.”

“
Be careful, brother,” Shopei said. Still clutching the bag of breakfast pastries, she ran toward the elevator. Dahui held the doorknob until his sister was on her way back to the street.

Then he flung the door open, crouching to minimize the target he would present. Dahui had already assumed his fighting stance, hands raised and body low, but he let his arms drop at the sight of the small, angry man holding a gun against his mother’s temple.

He straightened and turned his palms outward to indicate he was no threat. He stepped forward, stopping when Sui’s captor barked a command. Pretending confusion, he took one more step, placing himself within reach of his mother.

Without warning Dahui threw his right foot into the air, catching Junior Agent Ho Lon-Yi under the chin. The impact of shoe against jaw made a sharp snapping noise. As Yi fell backward, Sui scrambled free, charging toward the still opened door.

When his mother was safely in the hall, Dahui blocked the doorway. He held his stance, senses on high alert.

Yi picked himself up from the floor, cursing as he rubbed his chin.

Senior Agent Jiu studied Dahui with indifference.

“
We have what we need,” he said, nodding at Ng-Zhi, who slid a perfectly manicured hand into his jacket and pulled out a gun. Dahui barely had time to register the fact it was swollen by a silencer. He was still ready to do battle with the intruders when the bullet pierced his brain.

“
Dahui!” the old man, Dahui’s father, shouted from his sickbed down the hall.

“
Bring the woman back,” Jiu ordered. Agent Ng-Zhi nodded and walked down the hall.

Sui waited desperately for the elevator. She tried to run toward the stairwell but it was already too late. She could not pass Ng-Zhi in the hall, so she cowered, praying for a door to open.

She heard the familiar ‘ding’ directly behind her. She turned and darted into the open car, pressing the ‘door close’ button with all of her might.

The big man did not even break a sweat. With one long arm he reached into the car for Sui, grabbing her wrist. The inhuman sensation of his oversized effeminate hand on her skin sent her into panic. She fought wildly, scratching and biting him as he dragged her back toward the apartment.

Sui’s husband was dying. She knew there was nothing to be gained by trying to save his life. She had to focus all of her energy on trying to save herself and her son. However, when she saw Dahui’s body crumpled in the apartment doorway, the fight went out of her.

She could hear the rattled sobs of her husband coming from the bedroom.

“
Lim,” she said, loudly enough for him to hear, “they have killed our son!” She hoped her husband would also hear what she did not say, and he would understand that somehow, miraculously, their daughter Shopei had managed to escape.

These were the last words
Sui ever spoke, and the last her husband Lim ever heard. With the quiet expedience of two silenced bullets, both the dragon and her mate were no more.

The knock was unexpected.
The three men turned their faces toward the door.

“
Sui, ni hao ma?”
Sui, how are you ?
a man’s voice called from the hallway. “I brought a newspaper.”

Senior Agent
Jiu Kaiyu put a finger in front of his mouth. He glanced at his subordinates to be sure they got the message. He did not want to have to deal with any more bodies. With luck, the man would leave when he got no response.

The knocking was repeated. After a third try the visitor gave up, and his heavy footsteps receded down the hall.

Still Jiu’s men did not move until they were sure the guest had gone.

When they were satisfied they would not be disturbed again, they resumed their work of reconstructing the murder scene. They were not concerned with minor details. The evidence needed only to appear obvious to a team of sloppy, underpaid civil servants who did not possess more than an ounce of natural curiosity.

As long as the main elements of the crime were laid out according to Jiu’s plan, it would be recorded as a botched drug deal result
ing in the slaughter of the Tan family. Shanghai detectives would not connect the murders to the recent violent attack against the senior Mr. Tan. In keeping with the customary local mistrust of authority, none of the family’s friends or relatives would speak openly about this seemingly inconsequential coincidence.

It wasn’t even necessary to retrieve the slugs. The gun and its ammunition were both untraceable. They had once been the property of a drug lord, but he was dead now.

The local police would not investigate thoroughly. After all, the Tan family had been less than nobody in the fabric of Shanghai society.

It was, however, necessary to create the plausible illusion of drug-related murder. Not wanting to leave prints near the bodies, Jiu Kaiyu drew on a pair of surgical gloves. Then he used a pocket-knife to create a slit in a plastic bag full of fine white powder. Slowly he waved the bag over the bodies of Dahui and his mother, allowing a small amount of the narcotic to scatter onto their clothes. Then he pressed the still-swollen bag into the boy’s right hand.

The big man, Ng-zhi, was now wearing gloves over his sculpted fingers. He threw a sheet over Dahui’s computer hard drive and carried it out of the apartment. Within moments he had returned with another console, similar in appearance to Dahui’s. Ng-zhi connected the substitute hard drive to the keyboard, mouse, monitor, photo card reader and printer. Then he turned on the PC to make sure it was working properly.