The Interior - Страница 70

"If not in the caves, then somewhere on that mountain," Henry agreed.

For a moment everything seemed settled, but Hulan wasn't satisfied.

"You're sure that Sun was mission-educated?" she asked.

Henry nodded.

It explained Sun's near-perfect English, but why hadn't this been in his dangan, which said that-far from being an orphan-his parents were from the reddest class, the peasant class? How could all this have been kept a secret? How had this not come up during the various purges that had so shaken China over the years?

"And you say you didn't have contact with him again until seven years ago?" Hulan continued. "So much has happened in China. How did you find him, and weren't you surprised at what he'd become?"

"I didn't see him again until 1990, but that doesn't mean I'd lost contact with him," Henry admitted. "After our escapade I stayed in China for another two years. I did everything I could for the boy. I brought him west to Xian and later to Kunming. I made sure he ate, and he began to grow and fill out normally. He picked up more English, but what can I say, he was around soldiers so his language was pretty much in the gutter. Still, I gave him books. In those days almost everyone in China was illiterate, so I made sure he learned to read and write in his own language too."

As Henry spoke, Hulan began to put the pieces together. Sun's dangan said that he'd been involved with the local Communist party from an early age. Was it possible he'd already been a Communist when he'd gone to the mission? Had he been sent there by the local cadres? It explained his attitude on the mountain. If he'd been a Nationalist, he'd never have fought the Japanese, because the threat of retribution was so great. And later, when Sun had gone west with Henry, he would have been able to report not only on the Nationalists but the Americans as well. It made sense, but again, none of it was in the dangan.

"Once my tour was up," Henry was saying, "my dad wanted me to come home, which I did. But I still wanted a life in China. My father continued to take a very dim view of that idea, but I was working on him. In the meantime I kept sending money back to help Sun. The Chinese called it 'tea money.' But after the war the Nationalists and the Communists went back to their own bloody fight. In 1949 Chiang Kai-shek was beaten back to the island of Taiwan, Mao marched into Beijing, and the Bamboo Curtain fell. Both of you weren't even born yet, but back then anti-Communist sentiment was strong, vicious. To have any contact with China became very dangerous. By 1950 an embargo was in effect, McCarthy was doing his mad dog thing, and little tea money at all crossed the Pacific."

"People here would have been scared too," Hulan said. "How do you explain to your new comrades that you're getting money from foreign imperialists?"

"Without question it was dangerous," Henry agreed, "but you can always find a crack, and if you're smart, and Sun Can was, you learn how to hide your money, live frugally, and spend carefully. And you have to remember, I wasn't sending a fortune, just fifty or a hundred here and there. It was enough to buy him food, enough to get him to college, and later, as China became increasingly corrupt, enough to get himself out of various jams."

Again Hulan thought about Sun's dangan. Sun had taken Henry's money for years. If he was a true Communist, how could he have done this? Could he have turned the money in to the government? Not according to the dangan. So he must have squirreled it away, which had to explain how he'd been able to buy his way out of trouble during the Cultural Revolution. But how could it not have come to light? Could he have used his stash to buy his way into the file, hire someone to make the critical changes, and clean up his past?

"Not one word of what you've said reassures me," David said, verbalizing what Hulan was thinking, "because in a sense you've been paying Sun bribes for over fifty years."

"I was helping a friend!" Henry sputtered. "What I sent him was nothing compared to what he'd given me. He saved my life! Can't you see that?"

"I see a nice man who tried to do the right thing, who may have chosen to call an apple an orange-a bribe a gift-and in doing so became a pawn in Sun's game."

"You are blind and stupid," Henry retorted.

The two men scowled at each other. Henry was the first to break eye contact by standing and going to check the fax machine. Still, nothing had come through. He came back to his seat, strapped himself in, and looked out the window. David too looked out the window, putting aside all he had heard and plotting their next moves. Once the plane landed, they would need to proceed quickly and efficiently. He also thought about Hulan. No matter what she said, he could see that something was wrong with her. She looked hot even in this air-conditioned environment. She was falling asleep every chance she got, and her mind didn't seem all there. He needed to get all this over with so he could get her to a doctor.

As they had done many times before, Taiyuan airport authorities gave Mr. Knight's plane permission to land, which it did without incident. But from this point all activity associated with Mr. Knight's Gulfstream deviated from anything they had seen before. Fortunately, they showed no curiosity about this. They didn't even come out to investigate why no one except a solidly built Chinese man who looked suspiciously like a law enforcement officer stepped off the plane, trotted across the tarmac, exited the terminal, bargained fiercely and paid handsomely to "rent" a car from a driver (which really meant that Lo flashed his MPS credential and made a few bone-chilling threats), then drove back around through the airport's south gate, back across the tarmac, parked, then disappeared back into the private jet, where there appeared to be no further activity.

Inside the plane the minutes dragged on as everyone waited for Anne Baxter Hooper's fax to come through. One by one they checked to see if all of the fax lines were plugged into the right places. David became increasingly convinced that the call was being blocked in some way, but Hulan-who'd awakened from dreams filled with unsettling images of war and the Knight factory floor, of mutilated bodies and dirty money- doubted that could be so. Finally the machine hummed to life and the papers began to spew out. David picked up each sheet as it came through. As with the others, they made no sense by themselves or even when compared to the papers Sun had given him.

Over Henry's objections, they decided not to look for Sun. "If your friend is hiding on Tianlong Mountain, he'll be hard to find," Hulan offered reasonably after Henry had shouted at David that his judgment was clouded and that he was only concerned with saving his own hide. "For now he's probably better off where he is. Let's get this resolved once and for all. If Sun is innocent as you say, Mr. Knight, then we can bring him out safely. If he's guilty, then he'll be found, prosecuted, and shot no matter what we do."

"All I'm saying is that your boyfriend here keeps forgetting that Sun is his client-"

"I've told you twenty times, Henry, I haven't forgotten that-"

"Can we just go?" Hulan asked.

The copilot released the door and stairs. The heat and humidity hit the travelers, instantly drenching them in sweat and sticky, polluted moisture from the torpid air. Lo and Hulan got in the front seat, and Henry and David got in the back, of a Wuhan-manufactured Citroen. Lo drove them back through Taiyuan City, across the anemic Fen River, then south on the toll road. Lo pulled off at the exit for Da Shui Village, and they proceeded west until they reached the crossroads. From here Lo turned again and drove the short distance to Suchee's little farm.

Midday hung heavily on the little compound. The cicadas shrieked with heat, and the roasting air undulated off the fields. Hulan ducked into the house to make sure Suchee wasn't there, then came back outside and called out across the fields to her friend. Shortly they saw Suchee emerge through a distant cornfield, then trudge across another field of her home vegetables. When she reached them, Hulan introduced Henry. Realizing that this was the man who'd hired her daughter and who in her eyes had corrupted the village, Suchee stared at him with steady, unforgiving eyes, ignoring his passable attempts at polite conversation. Without shifting her gaze, Suchee asked Hulan, "Why have you brought him here?"

"We need to see Miaoshan's papers again."

Suchee stood as still as an ox under the beating sun, thinking, weighing. Then she turned and with heavy steps plodded slowly to the little outbuilding where she kept her tools. A few minutes later, she returned and led the way into her house. Lo remained outside to stand guard.

The heat inside was almost unbearable with the temperature hovering at about a hundred and fifteen degrees. Suchee began to unroll the plans, but David said, "Not those. The other papers." Suchee left the factory plans on the table, and as they waited, Henry smoothed them out, looking at them with sadness. David took this time to check on Hulan. She'd dropped onto one of the overturned crates. Her face was pale, and sweat dripped down her neck. She too stared at the factory plans, but David could see that her eyes were unfocused.

"Here," Suchee said sharply, putting the papers with the columns and numbers on the table.

Henry set the fax down on the table next to the other papers, then looked expectantly at David, who hesitated. Sun was his client. If he was guilty, David would be exposing him. But if he was innocent, this was the only way to prove it. Reluctantly he reached into his briefcase, pulled out Sun's papers, and set them on the table with the others. The four of them stared at the papers, trying to decipher them. After a painful moment Suchee turned away. But to the others a pattern began to emerge. Ann's fax really was the key, providing the various bank names, account numbers, and pathways between the SUN GAN accounts and the dummy corporations.