The Ghost Shift (15 page)

“Say nothing,” Yao said, from behind Mei. “Follow me.”

He overtook her, skipping down the stairs lightly as if he had
nothing to fear, his hips twisting easily. Mei walked behind him, drawn in his wake. When they reached the exit, he crossed the courtyard, delving into his shirt pocket for a cigarette. He stood by the wall, ignoring the others who were already chattering excitedly. Expelling a stream of smoke through pursed lips, he delivered his verdict.

“It’s over, Mei. The Wolf is finished. We did our job. You don’t need to worry anymore.”

Mei shook her head, lips pursed like an obstinate child’s. It would be wisest to heed Yao, but she couldn’t. She thought about what Feng said:
The most important quality in a spy is the ability to forget.
That would mean leaving the Wolf to prison and abandoning her sister. They had stood together in the fields, with the laughter of the Dongguan cops sounding in the dark and the body floating in the pond nearby. She couldn’t erase that from her mind.

At the border, Lockhart filled in the entry form from memory. He was traveling under his own name, so he didn’t need to check his passport. A Canadian diplomat, a French businessman, a British executive. He’d lived all of those lives in the past and shredded them.

He passed the Hong Kong checkpoint and walked with the crowd over the bridge. Apartments towered over the border from the mainland, where once there’d only been farmland. Every square inch of Shenzhen was occupied, although green hills and paddy fields remained in the New Territories on the Hong Kong side. He peered through the windows to the waterway that divided the two Chinas. It still looked scary, with high walls and boats patrolling the water to stop anyone swimming across. But it wasn’t the old days—it was easy now to get a visa to visit relatives or to go shopping in Central. On the mainland, a blue-shirted border official compared Lockhart’s face to his passport and took his photo. Then he tore the entry form in two, slotting one of the sections back into his passport. As he moved on, the man raised one hand and pointed to a panel by the cubicle, asking him to rate the service. Lockhart pressed the “Excellent” button with the smiley face.

By the time he reached the Golden Dragon, its neon emblem was glowing. As he walked by, heading for the elevator, the receptionist smiled at him. On the sixth floor, Madame Zhou was at the podium. She smiled brightly, her lips parting to show a smudge of lipstick on one tooth, like blood. He felt like locking her head in one arm and
twisting, so he’d never hear from her again, but he smiled at her instead. It wasn’t difficult: he had years of experience at hiding his feelings.

“Hello, Madame Zhou.”

“It’s a pleasure to welcome you back, Mr. Davies. You are one of our best customers.” She took his arm and tried to lead him down the hallway into the club, but he stood his ground.

“Is Tang Liu here?”

“She will arrive soon, don’t worry. We have refreshments. Maybe you’d like to be entertained by another girl?”

“I’ll wait for her.”

“Of course.”

He had no choice but to follow her to a room that was lined in yellow silk, with two tasseled lanterns hanging from the ceiling, like a cowboy bordello. A set of chairs faced a low stage with a karaoke screen and two microphones for duets. A hostess brought in a porcelain teapot and two cups, placing them in front of the sofa where Lockhart was sitting, then bowed and left. The strains of a Lady Gaga song wafted in from another room down the hallway.

This was where he’d met Liu the first time. She had clumsily tried to make him sing, but he’d refused and insisted that she sit with him to talk. Unusual among clients of the Golden Dragon, it hadn’t been a euphemism—conversation really was all he’d wanted. And so she’d talked, of her village in Hunan and how she wanted to be a fashion designer and open a shop on Donglong Fashion Street in Shenzhen. She’d taken out her phone and showed him photographs of herself, dressed in some of the clothes she’d made. Lockhart had listened. She was a sweet kid, he had thought. She ought not stay much longer in the city and be corrupted entirely. He had a plan that would take her home for a while, and maybe she’d meet a young man and stay. No need to confess what she’d gotten up to in the city. He offered a better bargain than most of the visitors—more cash for less shame. She’d turned down his first offer, but her eyes had widened, and she had accepted the second one a few days later.

There was a knock on the door, and Lockhart stood up. It was Madame Zhou, with her ghastly smile.

“Mr. Davies, you have a visitor.”

“Madame Zhou, I told you—”

His words faltered as she ushered a young woman into the room. Madame Zhou shut the door behind her, but by that time Lockhart no longer noticed. He was gazing in wonder.

“Lizzie,” he said. The words came out of him in a rush. “Oh, thank God. I thought I’d lost you.”

He took two steps toward her, arms held out. He wanted to hold her, for it to be over, and to leave the Golden Dragon—to get out of China and not to return for a long time. It was like the euphoria of waking from a nightmare, and he would never make this mistake again. She was several feet away from him and when he reached her, he would get his life back.

Lockhart stopped.

Something was wrong. His heart was swelling, but his instincts told him that something was wrong. Lizzie hadn’t moved. She hadn’t reacted at all—he might have been a stranger to her. She stood in a cheap suit and blouse, frowning. It wasn’t the way she dressed. Her face was different somehow.

Then she spoke.

“Who are you?” she said in Mandarin.

He took a step back. The more he stared at her, the more the image faded, like a jigsaw torn apart. Her skin was paler, her eyes set differently. She was almost Lizzie, but not quite. Who was she?

“Sit down,” the woman said.

“Tell me who you are.”

“Only when you sit.”

Lockhart obeyed. The woman handed him one of her cards and sat down, letting him read.

Then, in a flood of anguish, it came to him. He knew who this woman was. She would not remember him, but he had met her once. One afternoon in Beijing twenty-three years earlier.

“Yes?” he said, composing his face into bland indifference.

“I have some questions about Tang Liu.”

“I’m happy to assist you if I can.” His heart beat rapidly.

“When did you last see her?”

“Two months ago. Madame Zhou would know the last date I visited, I expect. Has something happened to her?”

“She was your mistress?”

“I wouldn’t say that. We liked being with each other.” He grinned. “You know how it is, when you’re away on business.”

“I’m not a man, Mr. Lockhart, so I don’t know. You come to Shenzhen for your work?”

“Often, yes. I work as a consultant.”

“Your Chinese is very good.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m surprised you learned so well on your visits.”

“I lived in Beijing once.”

“You were a consultant?”

“In business. Ms.—” He glanced at the card again. “Ms. Song. I would like to help you, but I don’t think I can. I don’t know much about Tang Liu. We met a few times, that’s all.”

She was good, he thought. The Chinese cops he’d known came through the front door, in a mob. She was smarter than that, more devious. She tricked him. But she was far from her base, without a partner. She looked, he thought, vulnerable.

“Passport.”

He reached into his jacket and handed it over.

“Mr. Lockhart,” she said, leafing through the pages.

“Your English is very good.”

“You’re not called Davies?” she said, ignoring him.

He smiled. “Not many of Madame Zhou’s western visitors give their real names, do they?”

“You don’t know where Tang Liu is, Mr. Lockhart?”

“I have no idea, I’m afraid.”

“Then why did you come when Madame Zhou called?”

“Madame Zhou said she wanted to see me.”

“No other reason?”

“No.”

“All right, Mr. Lockhart.” She closed his passport and gave it
back. “I see that you entered the mainland from Hong Kong this afternoon. Where are you staying, in case we need to talk?”

“I’m at the Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon. Please do call.”

She rose and walked to the door. Then, as she grasped the handle, she turned to him again.

“Why did you call me Lizzie?”

“Lizzie?” Lockhart framed his face in puzzlement. “You misheard me.”

“No. You called me Lizzie, like the American girl’s name. Who’s Lizzie, Mr. Lockhart?”

They gazed at each other for what felt like a long time. Her eyes were just the same—soft, determined. Never giving up, never willing to be defeated. He hadn’t been able to fool her, even when she was little. Her eyes would regard him coolly—
You’re lying to me.

“You’re her father,” said Mei.

It was obvious from the way he looked at her, from the way his eyes softened. He was thinking of another girl, the one whose name he’d blurted out when she’d entered.
I thought I’d lost you
, he’d said, with desolation in his voice. He didn’t know the truth yet.

He was a handsome man, although the flesh around his jaw had slackened and his peppery gray hair was thinning at the crown. He had a presence, even sitting on the sofa, legs crossed, watching. She felt an urge to please him, to make him approve of her. His blue eyes were set in deep sockets, above round cheeks that gave him a boyish air. He looked like an adventurer, at home in a foreign land but watchful. On paper, she was in charge. Yet he behaved as if he were in control.

The girl’s father and not hers—the Wolf’s words made sense. It came to her in a tumble why he was there, and why the number was wrong. The dead girl’s name wasn’t Tang Liu, and she hadn’t come from Hunan. Liu was the decoy he had found in a KTV Club. She recalled the Wolf’s tone of admiration as he’d held the badge.
There aren’t many people who could have fixed it. It’s clever.

Then she realized. She was a beacon, signaling to Lockhart across the province, drawing him closer. The Wolf had wanted to alert him, and Mei was the method he had chosen.

“Where is she?”

“Who am I?” she replied.

“Her sister.” He made it sound so obvious that it wasn’t worth dwelling upon. “Tell me where she is.”

Lockhart sat with his chin forward, his eyes locked on her, barely holding himself together. He wrapped his left hand in his right and squeezed it, like the leather bit in the mouth of a man who was about to be lashed. Mei wished she didn’t have to hurt him so, but she had no choice.

“She’s dead.”

Lockhart shuddered and put his face in his hands, while Mei stood uselessly, wanting to help him, unable to. It was the first time in her life she’d broken such news to anyone, and it pained her. Tears dripped through the gaps between his fingers and splashed on the floor. His shoulders shook with grief. After a minute, he lifted his face. He looked ravaged, a vessel that had run aground.

“How did she die?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Lockhart.”

“Please tell me.”

Mei wondered if she could make it sound less brutal, but it looked like he wanted it straight—he needed to hear the worst.

“We found her in a pond, near Humen Port, about a mile from the river. It looked as if she had drowned, but there were marks on the body that suggested violence. She was not clothed, but I later found a badge from Long Tan with her photograph. Here—”

Mei removed the badge from her pocket and gave it to him. Lockhart gazed at it, then nodded.

“You said, ‘We found her.’ Who is ‘we’?”

“The police, the Discipline Commission.”

“Secretary Lang?”

Of course
, she thought.

This man knew the Wolf, and the Wolf knew him. The Wolf had sent Mei to find him, had given her this mission, all the while knowing that Lockhart lay at the end of it. The two of them, it came to Mei, were similar. They were alike in their aloneness, their secrets, how they worked. They were a pair, like her and Lizzie.