Citizen One (36 page)

Yes.

“There’s too much fucking data, Boss. I can’t see that it would be worth it. You’re sure we should go through it all?”

Writing fast, so fast, the Wizard. The same word repeated. But then, like a tree felled by a single blow, falling back onto the bed. His eyes bulging. Blood, in a generous rivulet down chin and onto bed linen in an angry budding. The Big Man’s hand already finding the alarm button, as the Senior Investigator cradled the Wizard in his arms. Yaobang running to the door, bellowing down the corridor. Distant, echoing, the sound of feet not used to running. A doctor and two nurses. An instantaneous diagnosis. Rolling Rentang onto his side and into the recovery position. The Big Man catching his spectacles as they started to fall towards the floor.

“He’s haemorrhaging.”

Drips re-inserted. A wad of gauze damming the river. The doctor, seventy hours a week under strip lighting, his face as pale as the bed linen answering the question in the Big Man’s eyes.

“It is serious. I have to get him to the operating table,” as he ran pushing the trolley from the room. Nurses either side, drips held high as paper lanterns at New Year. Disappearing down the corridor in degrees of lightness and shadow, and a rattle of chromium plated steel.

Only when steel’s urgent song had passed, the Senior Investigator taking the paper in hands stained by the Wizard’s blood. The same word repeated.

Yes … yes … yes … yes.

Looking into the Big Man’s eyes.

“He is telling us with his blood. We check every line of data that we have.”

The new Shanghai Museum, Henannanlu.

Opposite City Hall, a layered sprawl, consisting of five vast circular discs sheathed in pink marble imported from Spain, set on top of a rectangular block. From the roof, four handle arches, reminiscent of an ancient Chinese bronze; the reference underlined by the large glyph above the rounded wall of the main entrance.

But when asked to describe the building, the only image to come to mind would be that of a wedding cake. A vast, multi-tiered, pink, 70 million dollar wedding cake.

*

The Director was not a man who lived up to the splendour of the Shanghai Museum’s marble-paved central atrium, surrounded by its fourteen carpeted galleries. A maze of bronzes, ceramics, paintings, calligraphies, coins, jades, statues, lacquers and seals. A pasty-suited comrade, the Director, who was surely still suckling on the breast, and whose face you would have difficulty in remembering within two minutes of leaving him.

“Citizen One …”

Three galleries passed through, and these the only words exchanged after the formal introductions.

“We have 120,000 objects at present in the museum, Senior Investigator. There is just one that has a reference to such a name.”

A busy man, hard to keep up with his pace. Following him through gallery after gallery. Entering through a nondescript door, behind the marble cladding and rich timbered walls, a web of beige scuffed corridors leading into more beige scuffed corridors. At the very soul of the building, vast storage rooms with huge packing cases. Behind mesh wire, mummy-wrapped bronzes, statues, multi-storey cabinets of porcelain, and the smells that only the millennia old possess, of lives by the generations, fallen to ground, of armies of people come and gone, little known, or forgotten.

Beside a huge metal wall, the Director stopping. Vertically sliding, atmosphere controlled drawers, not unlike those found in a morgue. The pasty man searching for one key amongst fifty on a huge chain. Minutes passing in silence, just the sound of keys against keys. Piao taking time to study one of the vases in the display cabinet, 5
^th
century BC. On its exterior a representation of slaves given as a gift to Li Wang, the King of the Western Zhou. An inscription written boldly on its exterior, celebrating the gift of 1,726 lives.

Into his ear a whisper that anyone within fifty feet would have clearly heard.

“History, it’s just one thing after another, Boss, but nothing changes. Nothing ever changes.”

A key into a lock, then the sound of steel sliding on steel runners. Air in a faint huff. A vast floor to ceiling drawer extending. Its interior cotton hung. The Director gathering the white festoons and dramatically pulling the sheer curtain aside. Slowly a vast oil painted canvas spreading into view, which was at least twenty-five feet long and fifteen feet high. Eclipsing them in shadow, the heroes of the Long March, depicted in epic Soviet style. 16
^th
October 1934. 100,000 men of the Red Army, auxiliary groups, and those most closely involved with the Revolutionary Council, embarking on a journey of 6,000 miles. At their front, the Great Helmsman, Mao Zedong. Red Banners enveloping him. Eyes star bright. Set upon his face the smile of a known triumph to come.

“Fuck me Boss. It’s big.”

The Director, dwarfed by the giants of the revolution.

“Yes, Deputy, it is big. Too big to warrant us displaying it.”

Staring up into the face of a ten foot tall Mao Zedong.

“It was painted some years after the Long March, as you can see in epic proportions.”

The Senior Investigator moving back almost to the far wall, to get a better view.

‘From the Red East rises the sun,

There appears a Mao Zedong’.

“Citizen One?”

“It’s got to be the Great Helmsman, Boss. Who else?”

The Big Man striding from left of the tableau, past Mao, to the far right, pointing at a soldier with a rifle hung from his shoulder. His hand, huge and rough, and at its calloused heart, the pale hand of a child.

“The soldier?”

“No, not the soldier, the child. Citizen One is the child, Director?”

A nod. Within two feet of the oil painting’s surface, the Senior Investigator. A child’s soft face filling his sight. Oil paint eyes brimming with the promise of years of progress and advancement. Three score and ten, in Mao’s promised land.

“Comrade Director, what is the story here?”

Already walking to a telephone. An extension number dialled. In a distant office, ringing.

“I do not know Senior Investigator. But I know a comrade that does.”

*

Miss Lai crossed her shapely legs and sipped the
xunhuacha
with over-rouged lips. She did not make a movement that the Big Man did not dwell upon. The only question in his thoughts: stockings or tights?

“I completed a thesis for my degree at Beijing on the evolution of the People’s Liberation Army. That is the only reason that I have knowledge of Citizen One. But I am afraid that this knowledge is limited.”

Yaobang leaning across the table, pouring more tea. Her perfume and the
xunhuacha
reminding him of every girl that he had failed to tempt to go out with him.

“So who is this Citizen One?”

She smiled, a shred of rose petal across her front teeth, but he could forgive her even that.

“The child’s name is unknown. He was three years old at the time of the Long March. His parents had been Party activists, but murdered by Kuomintang Nationalists. He had survived alone, beside their bodies for many days. Mao himself was taken by the child’s resilience and bravery. He took an interest in the boy and named him Citizen One.”

Stirring the tea.

“That became his name and all that he was ever known by. The child was practically raised by the Red Army. They were his parents, his playmates, his educators. He was a bright child, a bright young man. They even paid for him to be educated abroad, the Sorbonne. He was one of the very first, the original
tai zi
.”

Re-crossing her legs. Blush of pink, in slow fade, caressed by the Big Man’s smile.

“But always a Party faithful who was strong in doctrine, pure in principle and true to the Great Helmsman’s ideals. He rose through the ranks, with Mao’s sponsorship, influencing thought and policy. Very creative, especially in the field of economics. Highly entrepreneurial, he became the architect of the PLA’s financial structure. They called him Mao’s banker. In the 1980s, when he would have been in his sixties, his role changed. It is not known exactly what to, but it would seem that he became effectively, their accountant.”

“Accountant?”

“Of course. Even the PLA needs an accountant. An economic guiding light. They were underfunded by government, year after year. They were unable to update with the latest technology and weaponry and were constantly losing ground to the west. Morale was low: a dangerous situation amongst so many egos with tanks parked in their garages. Economists in Hong Kong have estimated that, in 1993 for instance, Citizen One added some $27 billion to the PLA budget of $57 billion. A massive achievement by any standards.”

More tea with Yaobang pouring. His eyes unable to leave the print of her lipstick on the iced white of the china.

“It was also in the 1980s that Citizen One disappeared from view. He had always been extremely reclusive. So reclusive that not one photograph of him exists.”

“Perhaps he retired ?”

“No, a
tong zhi
such as this would not retire. A
tong zhi
such as this would have to have his fingers prised and broken on his deathbed before he would give up the reins of power.”

Piao walking to the window. Views to Huangpu Park. The sun caught in razor wire branches.

“He did not retire. He is still active, is he not ?”

“But he’d be in his seventies, Boss?”

“So are most of our Politburo members.”

To the girl.

“Veteran revolutionaries only end up as monsters and ghosts. He is still active.”

“Yes, Senior Investigator. Comrade Citizen One is still active. He is still the PLA’s accountant, heading a team of hundreds. But he is very ‘hands-on’, active on the big projects and the entrepreneurial schemes. But also one who would still get his hands dirty. One who would still want to be involved in the small print.”

“Where is this Citizen One to be found? Beijing? At the Guard Army Garrison Headquarters?”

She smiled the smile of secret knowledge, the power and confidence that it brings.

“When I was researching for my thesis, I talked to an economist friend in Korea. He had visited a hotel here in Shanghai. A conference on fraud intelligence. He briefly saw a man during one session, sitting at the very back of the conference hall. An elderly
tong zhi
. To this day he is certain that it was Citizen One.”

Her tongue across her lips. Across rose petals.

“He talked to some of the hotel staff. It appears that this
tong zhi
was a permanent resident in the hotel’s penthouse. He had been living there since the 1980s.”

“He was reclusive. There is not a single photograph of him that exists. This you said yourself. So how can your economist have known him?”

“Difficult years the 50s, 60s, 70s. Purges, political upheavals, rivalries, the unity of the Long March unravelled. The trauma of the Gang of Four. But those at the Party’s top table had recognised that there would be difficult times ahead. They had also recognised their trusted protégé’s talents. They wanted him protected.”

The Big Man staring at her legs. Stockings, yes, he was sure she was wearing stockings.

“When he was fifteen years old he was taken to a whore, his first, and a tattooist in the old French Concession, the first of many through the years. On Mao’s direct order his right arm was tattooed from his shoulder to his hand …”

She anticipated the question.

“A pledge given by the Red Army, by Mao himself, and containing the characters of his own name, that Citizen One on pain of death, should never be harmed. He was offered protection for the entire span of his natural life, with that promise tattooed onto his very skin.”

Pausing briefly for added effect.

“The man at the back of the conference hall, he had a tattoo on his hand, extending beyond his cuff and up his arm. My economist friend saw it.”

“The hotel, Miss Lai, where Citizen One controls his empire from, it’s name?”

“I trust that you do not wish him any harm. Not that you could do anything, he is guarded around the clock.”

“The name of the hotel please, Miss Lai.”

“The hotel, it is the
Heping
. The Hotel of Peace, Senior Investigator.”

Walking to the door, Piao. The world reflected in a shiny brass doorknob.

“By the way, Miss Lai, your thesis, how was it received?”

She smiled with lips that should be kissed.

“Top of my year.”

“Of course. I would have expected no less,” he said, opening the door.

“What a wonderful thing education is.”

Sacks of sugar, walnuts, Azuki beans, sesame seeds, propping up thick volumes of data.

Exhaustion like steel shutters across his eyes. Only a brace of warm Tsingtaos and China Brand after China Brand, holding sleep at bay.

FILE TWENTY. Fingers down the columns, characters, forming abbreviations. Names, organisations, committees? Hunting a grain of rice in a barn of wheat without success.

“Fuck this, Boss. It’s hopeless. Let’s call it a day.”

Just Piao’s sideways glance enough.

“Okay, Boss. Perhaps not.”

Turning pages and more pages before moving to the banks of official directories. The dizzy, misted heights of
cadre
rankings below Grade Ten. All with their own offices, a padded velour office chair and with windows overlooking the city. And a secretary, always young with large breasts and available for such a highly graded
cadre
.

Toppling the pile with his palm, taking a sad joy in watching pages slip over pages and
cadre
falling to a bare timber floor.

FILE TWENTY. Once more immersed in the code of abbreviations and trailing zeroes, but still the key missing. Walking through the door and onto the pier. Night, never blacker. Cyclical breaths as the Madam Psychologist at
Ankang
had demonstrated to him. Inhalation through nostrils …
1, 2
,
3
seconds. Hold in lungs …
1,2,3
seconds. Exhalation through mouth …
1, 2, 3
seconds. At least ten times. Ten risings of her swelling breasts. Ten soft velvet falls. The most erotic experience that he had ever experienced.