Citizen One (30 page)

“Fuck.”

Piao moving around the desk. Just below the Wizard’s shoulder blade, a deep ruddy bruise soaking through the otherwise pristine cotton. A tidy comrade the PLA. The knife that had been used, wiped clean on the victim’s own clothing in a final abuse.

*

The Number 1 Hospital …

A drip. A blip. And his eyes open. Two commas on a blank sheet of white paper. Focusing on Piao, a gurgling deep at the back of Rentang’s throat, expanding into a pattern, rough and phlegmy. Falling chaotically into a coughing fit. His whole body, the bed, rattling with its fury.

The Senior Investigator, adrenalin fighting two days without sleep, yanking the string of the buzzer to summon a stout-legged nurse. A hand, Rentang’s, reaching out to his, loosely pulling it down toward the side cupboard. A clip-board. A pen. A chart of biroed peaks and troughs. The cough easing to a gagging, guttural Morse of breaths. Their eyes fixed on each others’. An understanding passed. Folding the Wizard’s hand around the biro, turning the chart sheet and holding it up to meet the tip of Rentang’s pen. And wondering how many curses, mute and in biro, would balance the ripping out of a tongue and the stealing away of a voice? Painfully slow and precise. Looking away as the words formed. Seeing a flush of red move down plastic tubing. Florid poppy fields of spittle, blood flecked, in full bloom across the bedding.

Only looking at the paper once the pen had halted its trace. Once the arm had fallen back to the aertex ocean and Rentang was at the very centre of the doctor and nurse’s universe.

Two words.

FILE TWENTY

*

“How is he, Boss?”

A look.

“That fucking bad, eh?”

Scrubbing as he talked. The carpet foaming a candy-floss pink.

“And the Street Committee Chairwoman?”

The Senior Investigator moving to the computer. A screen saver flowing with oscillating hoops and colours. As he took the mouse, their hues across his knuckles.

“A broken jaw.”

A laugh from the Big Man.

“I suppose it will be some time before she can speak. There’s always a silver lining, Boss.”

Pink rubber gloves across the glass. Gagging, the Big Man, as he carefully picked up the tumbler of Southern Comfort.

“I’ll never fucking drink this shit again, Boss.”

The toilet flushing.

“Scene of crimes, been and gone, Boss. Thirty minutes, that was all. Didn’t even look at the computer. Either they’ve got hot dates, or they don’t want to know.”

A tap running.

“What I don’t understand is why Qi’s thugs didn’t smash the fucking computer.”

“Maybe they were having so much fun that they forgot.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Watching the Senior Investigator’s fingers on the keyboard.

“Thought you didn’t know how to use a computer, Boss?”

“I don’t. But I am good at watching.”

In a blink, the screen saver’s oscillations swept aside to be replaced by pages of numbers. Shaking his head, the Big Man, as he squeezed the cloth into the bucket.

“Rentang?”

“Yes. The Wizard.”

The computer, where he had left it. Strings of data crashing like a waterfall as Piao scrolled. Pages in frantic dashes. Stopping, then scrolling slowly back. A page, two pages. Slowly, a file title moving into mid-frame. Bold indented.

FILE TWENTY

“It is from Qi’s computer. The Wizard had hacked into it.”

On the right-hand side of the screen, a fine misting of specks. The Wizard’s blood. A few hours ago a man’s tongue had been cut out as he sat on this seat looking at this screen. Every word plucked from his mouth forever. File Twenty. Its significance unknown. But important it must be for a man gagged in blood and sutures, to summon the energy to write words that he could no longer speak. To write ‘File Twenty’ instead of, ‘fuck off’. To write ‘File Twenty’ instead of, ‘see how you have ruined me’. Yes, File Twenty must be important.

Lines. Columns. Banded characters. Numbers. Code labelled. Code edged. Not a code to conceal – Qi confident that nobody would ever see this file. But a code of convenience. A shorthand to save space, to save typing and time. Patterns emerging the more that Piao looked at it. A record, an accounts’ book, a diary and an inventory. Monies out and monies in. Cream scooped from the top. At various accounting intersections the same characters coming into play. A code? A company? A nickname? A name? And
yuan
, trailing so many noughts behind it, like a locomotive pulling carriages.
Yuan
, by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions, sent by courier, the same day of the month, the same time of day. Sent to Citizen One.

“Who, or what the fuck is Citizen One?”

Pointing to figures, running totals.

“Shit, and are these
yuan
, Boss?”

A nod.

“That many
yuan
, it’s got to be drugs, Boss. Only drugs would generate such income. That’s what our
tai zi’s
up to. Some war with another drugs’ cartel. What do you think, Boss?”

“Perhaps. Such a PLA would have access to a network that covered the whole of the People’s Republic. Transport. Distribution.”

Tapping the monitor screen with his nail.

“This also …”

The only other complete name. The only other junction where substantial amounts of
yuan
were being absorbed. Page after virtual page, the same name repeating. Drawing the eye, as the needle to the spittle-spiked end of the thread.

“Kanatjan Pasechnik. A Russian comrade, I would imagine.”

“Perhaps he likes the particular cocaine that our PLA is fucking providing, Boss?”

Piao, tapping the monitor screen.

“Citizen One and this Russian comrade, I want to know them as intimately as you know the inside of one of Mama Lau’s dumplings.”

“Sure, Boss.”

“This file, it is important. I think that this is a bridge that Colonel Qi has failed to dismantle shortly after crossing it. We cannot afford a mistake. Ring Ow-Yang, he will talk me through it.”

“Anything else, Boss?”

“Yes, I want you to get me lists. Lists of everyone of the highest
cadre
who make up the following bodies: foreign legations, the Central Political Bureau, the Central Secretariat, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. I want lists of all the most powerful committees in the Republic. Like the bastards that telexed for our comrade PLA’s release from the
fen-chu
.”

Writing notes on the meat of his palm, the Big Man. Tucking the biro into the pocket of his stained shirt.

“Don’t tell me, Boss, a hunch. It’s going to fucking cost.”

“I know. ‘At least two bottles of Teacher’s whisky. Maybe even a few packs of Marlboro thrown in.’ And then, somehow, we are going to dismantle this equipment and tomorrow set it up in the hospital. In the Wizard’s room.”

“Shit, Boss. We’re really going to take this computer all apart and put it fucking back together again …”

A nod.

“And then you can help me pack a box.”

“Why a box?”

“We need to become invisible from the
tai zi
, and from his PLA thugs.”

“Sure, Boss. You know I’m working on it.”

“You said that your cousins would provide transport for us? And a place for us to operate from and to sleep?”

“Sure, Boss. Next week.”

“Can they be persuaded to bring this forward?”

“Probably, Boss. But why?”

“I have noticed that my cut-throat razor has gone missing. I believe that this was what was used on the Wizard. When you go to the
fen-chu
submit a report about it being missing, so that it is on the record.”

The Senior Investigator’s eyes drifting to the sodden dull brown carpet at his feet.

“Your cousins, I would like to go there tonight, late. This flat has suddenly lost its affection in my heart.”

*

Late. Too late to sleep. Too early not to sleep.

Piao walking from the bathroom, drips of cold water with every footfall. Pulling on a fresh, clean shirt, identical to the last. Noticing that the inside of the cuffs and his shirt collar were still grey. No matter how he scrubbed them, they were never clean. As if his soul, soiled, was bleeding dirt through the pores of his skin in an attempt to purge itself.

Picking up a cardboard box. On its scuffed, stained sides, huge yellow inked Spanish suns blazing over green inked hills, trees bent with orange inked Satsumas. A pang, no name to it, just the constant sense of being on the outside, looking in, of being on the inside looking out. But never quite with anybody else present, as if life was going on in sweet parade, but without him.

Packing the box, and something about the slow parade of this process honing his thoughts, sharpening his perceptions about his life. Clothes, precisely folding them and placing them into the box still smelling of Satsumas. Still smelling of Spain. Sparse toiletries. A razor. A book, the
Shijing
, ‘The Book of Songs’. But only half full, the box, like his life. On top of these, a spare pistol, an old Soviet Makarov PM. Two clips and a worn holster. His documents of authority. A diary. A pen. But still only half full the box. Finally placing the carefully wrapped frame in amongst the fold of his clothes; a press of grey crescent-collared and cuffed shirts. Within the frame, a photograph. A woman, sable fan of fine hair. A wife lost in time, a lover lost in a cold
cadre’s
embrace.

For a while, longer than he imagined, standing at the window viewing the lives that others lead. From the
long
, through the gap between window and worn frame, steam carrying the aroma of noodles, anointed with garlic and ginger … a marriage arranged in heaven. Only pulled from his trance by a tired footfall from the kitchen.

“Ready to go, Boss. The cousins will be waiting.”

Sealing the box quickly, feeling pain that his life was so meagre, that it could be sealed in a small box that had once held Satsumas from Spain.

“Yes. I am ready.”

Piao picked up the box and walked out of the room without looking back, toward the stairs to the
long
, where others lived out their lives.

From the river, warehouse skirted, the scars of commerce. A million ships that had berthed, delivering cargoes, loading cargoes: pork bellies, spices, iron, herbs, silk, the products from ten thousand factories. But the warehouses now empty. Where dockers once laboured, now an internet café and a cluster of chromed ‘birds of a feather’ retail outlets. Where the People’s Republic’s wealth hung on the crane’s jib, the pallet’s load … now a Coffee Republic; fifty different versions of the frothy brew. On their pastel walls, mezzotints and sepia prints, of what work once looked like and how lives were once lived in this place.

And behind the cracked brick walls and windows too dirty to see through, where the river lapped exhausted and stinking, the Happy Smile Bakery. Day and night, the aroma of mooncakes baking, cutting through the smell of Latin beans roasting and the Cologned dabs of western dreams. 15,000 mooncakes.

*

A tour and a chipped mug full of
Dukang
. Fire and flour, brown sugared lips. Moving through the process of a mooncake’s conception, birth and life.

Brown sacks of flour, white sacks of sugar and salt. On a stainless steel bench close by, so many eggs, so much lard. Two industrial mixers, one churning the ingredients to form the smooth water-shortening dough, the other, the flaky dough. Their contents flushed out onto separate floured tables. A fist of flaky dough, wrapped into a fist of water-shortening dough. A cousin at each end of a huge rolling pin, rolling. Flour floating through air, onto faces and muscled arms. The continents of dough folded three times, before being rolled out again. Flour in a cloud over high strung dim bulbs. Panels of dough slipped from one bench to the next. A cousin at each end of a hoist. A hundred 3´´ cutters lowering, pressing through three layered dough blanks. Re-hoisted. Remnant dough, in strung equilateral triangles, pulled aside. A hundred snowed disks slid onto the next bench. Beside it against the walls, puffing, panting … peanuts roasting. Chestnuts boiling until tender. Almonds blanching. Sesame seeds roasting, popping. Red Azuki beans, soaked for two hours, now boiled, shedding their coats. Strained in cheesecloth, cooked in sugar, oil. Aromas cloying in toffeed sugar. Your clothes and skin, smelling of almonds, sesame, apricot, sugar as brown as river mud. A disk of dough in floured fingers, pushed deeply into mooncake moulds. A handful of filling into the heart of each: perhaps blood red Azuki bean, apricot, walnut, sultana, poppy seed, roast sesame and brown sugar. Edges wet, another disk of dough pushed in place as a lid. Each mould knocked on the side of the stainless steel bench. Inverted. The mould slipping away. A stamp, a traditional chrysanthemum design, dipped into a red wash of colour. Stamped deeply into the dough. Bleeding to its edges. Beaten egg and sesame oil anointed. Baking sheets of a hundred mooncakes moving down the benches, like little children going to school. A sweat on the filled dough as the oven doors are opened. Mouth hell hot. Ovens that had not been turned off, except for urgent maintenance, for over twenty-two years. 350 degrees for twenty minutes. Until golden, golden brown. 15,000 mooncakes.

*

The same hybrid dream for three nights. Each dream, a little clearer, night by night.

In one of the main wards of
Ankang
, a horseshoe of parchment pale faces. Rolled, marble white eyes and dribbled-down shirt fronts. A doctor and a nurse also standing in the space; beside them, a large electrical appliance with switches, a numbered dial, and heavy wires in umbilical snakings across the floor. Beside them a stainless steel cot, strapped to its quicksilver framework, a patient with a paper-white face. Fine acupuncture needles removed from delicate paper sheathes and carefully affixed to rubber holders at the ends of the wires. Applied with deep twists into the patient’s temples, the
taiyang
points. The doctor, wire rim spectacled, black rubber gloved, between rubber forefinger and thumb, the heavily engraved knob; twisting it to its first point, until it met resistance. A hum of electricity, and even in REM’s grip, a taste, a smell of burning. Instantly, a place beyond pain. Bucking with the electricity’s razored jolt, the patient. His spine arching, legs kicking, arms bracing beyond limits, and a scream, as a scream was never heard before. As sharp, as seamless as an oxy-acetylene torch’s flame. The doctor turning, and shouting at the inmates. Slapping his hands at them. Pointing at them. The other hand, the knob, twisting … past the first level of resistance. And the patient screaming, and the inmates backing away, some crying, others throwing up.