The Interior - Страница 78

"There's just one thing I need to know," he said. "Did you ever think I could run the company? Did it ever just once cross your mind?"

David moved into a crouch, ready to pounce. He kept his eyes on Henry, primed for a signal, so he saw, just as Doug saw, the look that came over the older man's face.

"No, Doug, it didn't," Henry admitted sadly, and as he spoke these words it was abundantly clear that the realization that he'd so little faith in his son was even more painful than the fact that his son was a murderer.

Doug, the revolver steady in his right hand, flicked open the lighter. Just as he did so, hundreds of women rose en masse. Immediately they were joined by those who hadn't gotten the word that had circulated. Whatever opportunity David had to attack was blocked. In that same instant a shrill voice screamed something in Mandarin, something clicked and clicked again, and the machines revved to life.

Doug took a step backward and waved his revolver around. Amy reached for hers. In that second the women rushed forward. Amy was wrestled to the ground. Doug struggled, got off a couple of shots, pushed away from the grabbing hands, lost his balance, and flew back into one of the machines. Blood spurted from the center of the crowd of women. Doug's scream was cruel and very short.

A moment later the machines were shut down and an eerie quiet fell over the room. David picked his way through the pink-smocked women. Doug had been grabbed by the claws of the fiber-shredding machine. His body was a mangled and bloody mess. Henry stood at Doug's side, a hand touching his son's lifeless ankle.

David heard Madame Leung's voice over the loudspeaker, giving instructions of some sort. The women obeyed and began drifting in an orderly fashion toward the exit. David hurried to Hulan's crumpled form. Two girls-one about fourteen, the other also a teenager-kneeled at her side. He felt for a pulse and didn't feel one. He put his ear on her chest and heard nothing.

Then someone screamed. Then another scream, and another, and another as the preternatural calm of moments before was replaced by panic. One of the girls holding Hulan's hand looked at David in terror. She moved her lips. He didn't understand the word. She repeated it again and again. Finally he understood the word through her heavy accent. Fire.

He scooped Hulan up into his arms and stood. Now that he was upright, he saw the flames kicking up from the fiber fluff. Hundreds of women shoved and pushed to get out the door as the flames spread quickly through the piles. David, holding Hulan, with the two girls clinging close to his side, joined the others in a desperate attempt to escape. Acrid smoke filled the air, creating even more panic. A lot of people would die in here if someone didn't do something. David lowered Hulan's feet to the ground and motioned for the two girls to take her arms and get her out of the building. He took one last look at Hulan's ashen face, then turned and walked into the smoke.

25

BECAUSE OF THE SOUNDPROOFING IN THE BUILDING, MOST of the fatalities were in the final assembly room. By the time the fire had spread far enough to alert the women there, the fumes from the burning plastic and fiber had made any chance of survival impossible. Fortunately, almost all of the women had made it out of the primary assembly area where Hulan had worked. But here too many women lost their lives due to smoke inhalation or being crushed in the stampede. The remoteness of the factory had done little to help matters. Many women died on the way to Taiyuan. More died in the hospital, inundated as it was by so many injuries. The final death toll reached 176.

David had done his best to fight back the fire, swatting the flames with the empty burlap bags that had once held the stuffing for Sam amp; His Friends. Madame Leung, who stayed at David's side until the very end, helped his efforts. Miraculously, she'd found a couple of fire extinguishers. If not for these, they wouldn't have made it out of the building alive. For her efforts Madame Leung was given a medal by the central government.

And then there was Hulan. When David emerged from the burning building, choking, his eyes running, his lungs scorched, he found Hulan stretched out on the ground, the two girls who'd brought her out still at her side. The only way he knew she was alive was that her skin radiated an intense feverish heat. He knew that when the medical teams arrived, the doctors would dismiss Hulan as less urgent, for she looked peaceful and physically uninjured compared to the others who were in such agony from their burns. He half staggered, half ran back to the Administration Building, made his way back through the deserted hallways to the conference room, thinking that he'd have to take the car keys off Lo's body. Instead he found Lo shot but conscious. David helped Lo out to the car, drove to where Hulan was, put her in the backseat along with Siang, the girl who spoke a little English, then, under Lo's directions, pulled out of the compound and made it to the hospital in Taiyuan before the hundreds of others arrived.

It was a good thing David thought to bring Siang, because by the time they reached the hospital Lo had gone into shock. With eyes wide, Siang presented Lo's and Hulan's Ministry of Public Security credentials to the nurse, who quickly summoned help. Hulan and Lo were wheeled away, and David waited.

Siang didn't have the language skills to translate the doctors' words, but eventually someone was found who'd studied at Johns Hopkins. Still, the words-tachycardia, oliguria, anoxia, tachypnea-were as foreign and had as little meaning for David as the Mandarin. Even the terms he understood he couldn't allow himself to comprehend. The doctor seemed to be telling him that the sepsis had gone so far that Hulan's heart, brain, or liver could be overwhelmed at any moment. If the poisoning turned out to be viral, the doctor added regretfully, there was nothing anyone could do. They had twenty-four hours, if Hulan lived that long, to wait for the results of the blood culture. In the meantime Hulan was intravenously dosed with broad-spectrum antibiotics.

Those twenty-four hours were the worst of David's life. Now that he knew what Hulan had, all of her ailments of the last few days fell into place-the flu-like symptoms, the lethargy, the fever followed by chills, her rapid breathing, her racing, then feeble pulse. The guilt he felt over this was superseded only by the terror at the prospect of losing her.

Eventually the right cocktail of antibiotics was found, and Hulan's doctors announced that she would probably live. The survival of the baby, however, was still an issue. The baby's heart continued to beat, but more tests needed to be run.

By that time much had happened. Henry Knight, who survived the ordeal at the factory, led an expedition up Tianlong Mountain to ferret out Governor Sun, while Siang was informed about Tsai Bing's death and her father's hand in it. David, who never left Hulan's side, spent hours on a cell phone, talking to the partners at Phillips, MacKenzie amp; Stout, to Anne Baxter Hooper, to Nixon Chen (who was enlisted to help Henry), and to Rob Butler at the U.S. Attorney's Office. Rob and David had much to discuss, but in the meantime Rob negotiated for and won the right to send a team of forensic accountants from Los Angeles to the Knight compound to try and pull up the financial records that Doug had tried to eliminate from the computer. Through it all, David had the help and support of Vice Minister Zai, whose concern for Hulan's well-being seemed sometimes to surpass even David's.

One day Hulan's doctors crowded into her room and announced that the tests on the baby looked good. This news gave Hulan a surge of energy, and she began to regain her strength. Though Zai and the doctors preferred that Hulan be spared the details, she was adamant that she hear everything. She reviewed the media coverage, studied the photos of the burned-out building, read over the casualty list, and cried first at the number of names, then at the individual names of people she'd known. Once she was deemed well enough to return to Beijing, they flew to the capital on the Knight jet and settled back in the compound with round-the-clock nurses. Hulan's mother and her nurse came back from the seaside. Cooks and maids were brought in to help, and the compound bustled with activity. Finally there came a day when Hulan told David that he had unfinished business to attend to and that she'd be fine with all her extra caretakers. With deep misgivings, David did as he was told.

Many questions still needed to be answered, but those who might have answered them most truthfully-Miles, Doug, and Sandy-were dead. That left Aaron, Jimmy, and Amy. Aaron Rodgers, who had the great fortune to have been in Taiyuan on the day of the fire, admitted to a healthy libido befitting a twenty-five-year-old placed in the happy circumstance of being one of a handful of males amongst a thousand females. Ling Miaoshan had been the first of many conquests. His age, his isolation in the Assembly Building, and his stupidity (which became apparent to all concerned as the investigation unfolded) conspired to keep him blissfully in the dark to the financial shenanigans. As for conditions in the factory, Aaron used the predictable and well-worn excuse that he thought that's how things were supposed to be in China. As his mother and father, who flew out to Taiyuan, said, their son didn't know any better. No criminal charges were filed. He gave testimony against Jimmy and Amy in court; then his parents took him home. He would never again return to China.

David then turned his attention to Jimmy and Amy. David wasn't the only one who wanted answers, and so it was that Henry pulled himself away from the ruins of the Knight factory, where he'd worked practically without sleep since the fire, to accompany David to Taiyuan 's provincial jail. On their arrival they were handed a file pertaining to one James W. Smith, which had been faxed from the Australian authorities. As Hulan guessed when she'd first seen Jimmy, he had an extensive criminal background, which included armed robbery and a couple of cases of battery. He'd been in and out of prison since the age of eighteen. Two years ago yet another warrant had been issued for his arrest, but he'd managed to flee, ending up, the record showed, in Hong Kong. It was presumed that he had met Doug in that city, been hired, and had moved into the Knight compound even before the factory opened.