The Interior - Страница 56

Hulan gathered up the papers, knowing that she would have to look at them more closely later, and left the computer room. She walked up a flight of stairs to Vice Minister Zai's office, hoping that even though it was Sunday he'd be there. He was. He looked up from his paperwork, and she couldn't help but see the subtle look of triumph that passed over his features. It was as though he had said aloud, / told her to come back and she obeyed. But then, seeing the expression on her face, his eyes narrowed and he asked her to sit.

"I'm afraid you're going to tell me you haven't finished with your personal investigation," he said. "You're correct, Vice Minister."

He waited for her to speak again. When she didn't, he drummed his knuckles on the table, thinking, then stood. "It is hot in here today, Investigator Liu. Come, let us get some fresh air."

They left the compound and walked around the corner to Tianan-men Square. Despite the fact that this place was important to the government, it was really quite barren. The Forbidden City anchored one end, Mao's mausoleum sat at the other. The Great Hall of the People and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution flanked the other two sides of the square. The concrete square spread out vast and hot under the unrelenting sun. If Hulan and her superior kept to themselves, strolling through the middle, their conversation would be private.

Zai stopped finally, gazed about at the impressive buildings, and said, "You want me to do something." When she nodded, he sighed and said, "Only with you would a suicide turn into something more." "I'm sorry, uncle. I didn't choose this outcome." He sighed again, more deeply this time. This was going to be worse than he thought. "What do you have?"

"Has Investigator Lo spoken to you yet?"

Zai frowned at the woman before him. How like her to confront him with the person he'd assigned to watch her. Zai said, "Lo is with your David this morning. He has been disappointingly secretive in his reports the last few days. As you can imagine, this gives me even greater cause for concern."

"Your Lo is a good man."

"You say that today because he is obeying you. Tomorrow he may once again return his loyalties to me… or someone else. Don't trust him too completely."

"Him or anyone else," Hulan agreed, echoing a lesson that Zai had hammered into her since she was a child. But all this was almost pro forma banter to keep them away from what they both knew had to be a dangerous subject. As an inspector, she didn't have to observe the rigors of privileged information that David adhered to. In fact, in China she had an obligation to expose what she knew or suspected. On the other hand, David was her lover and the father of her child. While the Chinese law was vague about what he could and could not say about his client's activities, she didn't want to do anything that would harm his career or reputation.

She began by telling Zai how she'd infiltrated the factory. She spoke of the harsh working conditions and showed him her hands. But Zai, who'd spent many years at hard labor, was not terribly impressed. "Don't be so naive," he said. "You haven't worked with your hands in more than twenty years. Of course you would have blisters and scratches."

Then she said that she'd met a man who'd been in love with Miaoshan. Now for the first time Hulan hedged on the facts, taking them out of order and implying something for which she did not yet have concrete proof. "This man mentioned that Miaoshan had papers that were proof of bribery of an important official. I saw those papers, which did indeed show large amounts of money being deposited in various accounts."

"Who was receiving the money?"

"I believe it is Governor Sun Gan," Hulan said. It was true she believed this statement, but she didn't know it to be a fact. As air came out in a tight hiss through Zai's teeth, she continued, "I came in today to look up his travel record." She handed the piece of paper with Sun's data to Zai. He hesitated, not wanting to touch it. Then, with his forehead deeply creased, he took the paper and read.

"When I saw this I came to you," Hulan went on. "Doesn't it seem strange that his trips abroad, especially to the U.S., lasted so long?"

When Zai looked up, it seemed to Hulan that he had aged. They both knew how dangerous this was. Sun was a popular politician, and there had been no mandate from above to bring him down.

"I would like to see his dangan," Hulan announced. "How is he able to travel so freely? Where does his money come from? Who protects him? How did he get to where he is today? What is the government's plan for him? There is so much I need to know, so I can decide whether or not to act. Obviously I will be careful," she added, taking full responsibility if anything should go awry. "Obviously I may be completely wrong."

"What does this have to do with the death of your friend's daughter?"

"I don't know yet, but the leads in that murder have brought me here."

Zai looked down at Sun's exit and entry record again. After a moment he looked up, nodded, handed the paper back to Hulan, and walked away. After a few paces he stopped and looked back at her. "Are you coming?"

Once back in the compound, he told her to wait in his office. A half hour later, he rejoined her. In his hands he held a large manila file. He sat down and wordlessly pushed it across the desk. He watched her open it; then he turned away and went back to work of his own.

Hulan began to read. Sun Gan had been born in 1931 of the Western calendar in a village outside Taiyuan. The Communist Party had already been in existence for ten years, and Sun was blessed with a pure peasant background. He was still just a little boy during the Long March but was old enough to remember the atrocities of the Japanese invasion of 1937. By 1944 Shanxi Province was firmly in Japanese-Occupied China. A few Americans came into the territory either as spies or had parachuted in when their planes were shot down during the occasional bombing mission. After the Japanese surrender American marines made up a new presence in Taiyuan.

At thirteen years old Sun Gan had apparently been a bright boy and very involved in his village's Communist party. (His third uncle had gone off to join Mao's troops many years before). He also had an affable personality-a trait he still carried to this day, Hulan noted-and had easily become the mascot for a group of American GIs. Hulan suspected that although this camaraderie had been less than innocent-he'd been sent by local cadres to see what he could make of the foreigners and their intentions-it would probably prove to be nearly devastating during the Cultural Revolution. But that, she supposed, was getting ahead of the story.

This early work came with a reward-a position in the People's Liberation Army. During the winter of 1948, when Sun was only seventeen years old, he participated in the massive and decisive battle of Huai Hua against the Guomindang in neighboring Anhui Province. It was here that Sun performed several heroic acts, which were detailed over several pages. He could have stayed in the army-which would have meant that today he would have been a very high-up general, rich and powerful- but Premier Zhou Enlai had personally asked the young man to go back to Shanxi.

Sun first served the people as a rural cadre in his home village, working as a team leader, then brigade leader on one of the local communes. In 1964 he was elected to the Taiyuan City People's Assembly. During the weeklong gathering a wide variety of subjects had been covered, including the imperialism of the West, how to increase wheat production, and the importance of advancing industrialization. Even though discussions sometimes grew heated, Sun had kept quiet. Two years later, Mao unleashed the terrors of the Cultural Revolution. For many months Sun's reticence at the People's Assembly protected him; he hadn't said anything, so his words couldn't come back to haunt him. But eventually some of his subordinates in his home village, where he had risen to brigade party secretary, saw an opportunity and took advantage of it. They remembered that back during the war Sun had been friendly with American servicemen. He had acquired a taste for their expensive cigarettes, decadent style of dress, and barbaric language. As a result he was made to wear the usual dunce cap, kneel in broken glass, and get castigated in the public square.

But this was nothing! Hulan thought. Given his American connections, this punishment had been extremely lenient. Why? The few village cadres who managed to escape the wrath of the Cultural Revolution were typically the ones who were the most corrupt and wielded the most power. Had Sun been one of these? Had he bought his way out of trouble?

Whoever had written the comments on this page seemed to hear Hulan's questions many years later and had written the answering characters in a finely trained classical hand: "Brigade Leader Sun Can has a visceral understanding of the old saying which goes, Once you eat from someone, you will have a soft mouth toward that person; once you take from someone, you will have soft hands toward that person. Because Sun has shown himself to be someone who will not accept or pay bribes in any form, nor has he abused his power during this time of darkness, I believe he is a candidate for advancement."

Within a month Sun had been promoted from rural cadre to national cadre, where he earned ninety yuan a month. The next year he rose to deputy chairman of the City Assembly. In 1978 he was sent to Beijing as a representative for the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Party Congress. In 1979, when China opened up fully to the West again, Sun was on one of the first provincial delegations to travel to the United States. Security was tight, but Sun acquitted himself well, earning the respect of his fellow travelers as well as his hosts. By 1985 Governor Sun-responsible now for his entire province of Shanxi -was flying across the Pacific with some regularity. By 1990 he had an additional office and apartment in the Zhongnanhai compound in Beijing awarded him by the government for his contributions to the country, especially his home province. His continuing travel to the U.S. was not only sanctioned but encouraged. As a bureaucrat in 1995 observed: "Governor Sun Gan has impeccable contacts in the West. With these he has brought prosperity to his home province. We must continue to encourage him, for with his help we will build China into the most powerful country on the planet. By the year 2000 Sun should be permanently in Beijing." This pronouncement, like the one during the Cultural Revolution, seemed to have two immediate effects.