Dragon Bones (47 page)

From the journal, what Hulan learned in the cave from Michael Quon, and further interviews with Catherine, other aspects of Brian’s last year unraveled. Last summer Wu’s wife had told Brian her greatest secret—her husband’s clan had stood guard over this property and its hidden caverns for thousands of years. Brian had begun taking things from the chamber and selling them to Lily, which set in motion a whole other chain of events. Once Quon started making his increasingly threatening demands, Brian understood his fate. He’d fought to the death to protect something or someone. Since he’d already looted the chamber, even the most hard-bitten investigators chose to believe Brian had died for love.

David left Bashan for a day to accompany a team that descended on Cathay Antiquities in Hong Kong, where stolen artifacts from numerous sites, including Site 518, were found. He also paid a visit to Angus Fitzwilliams’s apartment. The auctioneer freely admitted that he’d ignored Bill Tang’s bid in favor of one by an older and more loyal Cosgrove’s customer. This was not a prosecutable crime, but shortly thereafter Fitzwilliams and his wife retired home to England.

David knew that Hulan saw everything in a geopolitical light—the struggle over image between countries, the battles within those countries for the hearts and minds of their citizens. But to him so much came down to familial actions—Catherine’s desire to impress her father, Brian’s desire to protect his child and its mother—that had resulted in the most deadly reactions. Perhaps none was more insignificant on the surface—but with more lethal results—than the pictorial message Brian had sent to his sister on his website.

In the photograph, Brian stood on a barren hillside with his arms outstretched as though he was presenting the whole panorama. Only Angela saw that his fingers were pointing to tiny golden mushrooms that had sprung up in the crannies around some rocks. Those mushrooms were known to surface after a rain above an
Armillaria ostoyae,
a much larger honey mushroom, which grew under the soil. Three years ago, Angela had been on a team that had discovered a twenty-five-hundred-year-old honey mushroom in Oregon that was three and a half miles in diameter, making it the largest organism ever found on the planet. What was now known as the Bashan Fungus was at least twice the size and perhaps twice as old.

It had grown from a single spore too small to see without a microscope. For thousands of years, black shoestring filaments had radiated underground, strangling roots, killing trees, and leaving behind a sticky substance. The fungus had spread across the surface of the earth, wiping out vegetation from the river’s edge to the tops of the hills above Site 518, from the outskirts of Bashan to another half mile past the Wu house. Rhizomorphs stretched down as far as ten feet and had permeated the caves, giving them their peculiar odor. Michael Quon had said the caves were alive; he just hadn’t known how alive they were.

In addition to the paleobotanists who’d arrived to study the fungus, archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, biocultural anthropologists, and linguists descended on Bashan. David and Hulan watched their activities with interest. Some were engaged in DNA testing, hoping to prove that the Wus were longtime descendants of the wild ones that Yu the Great had met in his travels. Since no coffin or mummified remains had been found, others researched the purpose of the chamber. Had Yu brought these artifacts with him as gifts of culture—music and art specifically—to the wild ones? Had the Wu clan been left to guard the treasures—the white jade chimes, the
bi
disks, the pottery, the weapons of war, and the
ruyi
? Or had the Wus been left to guard the fungus? Some believed that Yu left the
ruyi
with the Ba as a symbol of the tasks they were to do, just as Emperor Shun gave a symbol to Yu when he went about clearing the land of floods. Others thought that, instead of bringing culture and civilization, Yu’s gift had actually sown the seeds of the Ba’s destruction by birthing the invasive Bashan Fungus. Others wondered if the fungus could actually be
shi tu,
the “swelling mold” or “living earth” that Yu and his father had used to control the flood. Meanwhile, old Dr. Strong was doing his best to help a team examine Brian’s theory that not only had geography informed early Chinese language but this very area might be the birthplace of characters like
dragon, cliff, cave,
and
river,
predating those found on oracle bones by hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The land itself might be that long sought after proof of five thousand years of continuous Chinese culture.

Debates raged about Brian’s discoveries. Could one graduate student find both the Rosetta stone of Chinese language and China’s Holy Grail? Some felt that he’d just lucked into the
ruyi,
which, since it was lost again, was suspect anyway. Some felt that his theories about the connection between his so-called geographic dragon bones and the thoughts and culture of the people who dwelled in the gorges had limited academic validity. Others found his research truly significant and were thoroughly analyzing and critiquing his journal. All agreed that Brian’s premature death was a great loss to the field of archaeology and that further study was required.

Everyone would have to work quickly though. Although this had been a major discovery, the lower caverns would begin flooding in 2003, and by 2009 all of this area would be below the Lake Within the Gorges. This knowledge impelled a group of engineers to examine the impact the inundation might have on the dam. Would flooding the caverns—no one knew just how deep they went—trigger earthquakes? Might Ba Mountain collapse, causing a massive tidal wave? The scientists put a positive spin on these possibilities, but David was glad he wouldn’t be living downstream. In the meantime, every day the river saw more luxury cruise ships for tourists who were plying the waters between Chongqing and Wuhan for a last-chance view of the Three Gorges.

On Hulan’s last day in Bashan, she met with Vice Minister Zai on the veranda outside the guesthouse’s dining room. It was a beautiful day. Sun filtered through the bamboo, and the koi pond glistened. Zai, who’d arrived once the weather cleared, congratulated her on her success. He praised her for upholding virtue and compassion, eliminating those who destroyed order, and stamping out corruption. He reminded her that the excesses of the past could not be repeated or else, like previous dynasties, this one too would collapse.

“Remember that the slogans of Mao and Deng are not so different from those of any ruler,” Zai said. “Remember that the first Xia Dynasty collapsed through corruption.”

But by now she’d learned something about her nation’s history. Powerful slogans and great monuments did transcend time. Mao had understood this very well, but so had Confucius, who’d compiled the
Shu Ching
from many sources, and Qinshihuangdi, who’d built the Great Wall. What Zai and the men who controlled him had forgotten was that corruption comes in many forms. Building a dam—no matter how many patriotic slogans were used—wouldn’t divert the masses from the truth forever.

“A monument doesn’t make an empire,” Hulan told him.

“You’re right, Xiao Hulan,” Zai agreed, summoning up the diminutive he’d used with her when she was a child. “But it does encourage an atmosphere of political enthusiasm and harnesses it at the same time. This leads to stability. Without stability, nothing can be achieved and successes attained will be lost.”

“The problem with nationalist sentiment,” Hulan responded, “is that it focuses attention on leadership.”

“Again you are right,” Zai said, obviously pleased by her understanding. “If we are unable to meet the people’s expectations, we may find, to use an old expression, that in promoting nationalism, we have ‘mounted a tiger that cannot easily be dismounted.’”

Hulan and Zai quietly considered this as doves cooed and wind blew gently through the stand of bamboo.

“We have entered a new century,” Zai went on. “If you go back to the end of the nineteenth century, Britain still thought it ruled the world, but it was on its last legs. Go to the end of the twentieth century and America thought it ruled the world, but I believe it’s on its last legs and doesn’t realize it. Outsiders once called our country a sleeping dragon. That dragon has awakened. This will be China’s century. As the Great Helmsman said, the east wind will prevail over the west wind. You understand all of this, Hulan, because you are Chinese—”

“You’ve often accused me of not being Chinese enough.” She felt her courage waver for an instant, then she said, “I have a facility to understand the frailty of human nature. You sent me out here—”

“Because we have friends abroad and friends at the site who told us a trusted presence was required. Li Guo, the one they call a vulture, is a true patriot. For years he has kept the Ministry of Public Security apprised of Dr. Ma’s activities on behalf of State Security.”

“Li must also have told you that Brian had found the
ruyi
—”

“And that the boy was somehow involved with the All-Patriotic Society.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before you sent me here?”

“Following traditional leads had not helped you bring down the cult,” Zai explained. “I thought that letting you use your best gift—your intuition—might get a better result.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “You didn’t send me here to find Xiao Da. You sent me here because I’ve always been susceptible to the powerful and to indoctrination. I’ve always followed the wind, and you gambled that Xiao Da would find me.”

Zai had no response for this. How could he when she spoke the truth?

“You know my failings, and you’ve played upon them very well,” she continued sadly.

But the concerns of one individual were of minor interest to Zai when the philosophical conflicts between Zhu Rongji and Li Peng—and the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of Public Security—were being played out in Beijing, where what mattered were issues such as how the dam would proceed and would a Confucian or Taoist methodology be followed, where consideration had to be given to how China would approach the United States about Michael Quon, his involvement in the All-Patriotic Society, and what he had attempted to do with VYRUSCAN at the Three Gorges Dam. Trying to control the masses was one thing; trying to destroy the dam was quite another.

A deliberately defective version of VYRUSCAN—the program that had made Quon so wealthy—had been located in the Three Gorges Dam’s computerized safety system. Michael Quon had broken many of his many tenets, but perhaps this was the most insidious of all. He had used dreaded “Confucian” technology to try to disrupt the dam’s systems so that the river might run free again and he could solidify his position as a religious and political leader.
He who controls the waters….

“The bombing of the embassy in Yugoslavia and the downing of the American spy plane pale in comparison to this scandal,” Zai said, “but is it worth political chest beating on either side of the Pacific? Is it worth tapping into the U.S.’s worst xenophobic fears about spies and terrorism at a time when our two countries need to work together to fight both of these threats? And what if worming versions of VYRUSCAN have been implanted either narrowly or broadly in the States? China’s future hinges on the U.S. staying economically strong for a while longer.”

Perhaps even more important, Hulan thought, was it worth riling up the masses to let them know of Michael Quon’s demonic acts against China? Was it worth more anti-American demonstrations? Or would this knowledge merely provoke unwanted questions about the dam’s vulnerability and the leadership’s vincibility?

“But why do we talk about all this?” Zai asked lightly. “What matters is that you and David are happy again. We will all go home to Beijing, and everything will be the same.”

“It will never be the same,” Hulan said. “I loved you like a father, but you were willing to risk our lives—”

“Nothing happened to you, and we have had a happy result,” he said reassuringly, but his features were filled with pain and remorse.

She turned her face away from him. He stood up, and with his fingers he gently lifted her chin. “Whatever decisions you make, know that I will always love you,” he said. “Good-bye, daughter.” With that he walked away. She was unsure if she would ever see him again.

Hulan got a ride out to Site 518 with Officer Ge Fei, who was now the highest-ranking policeman in Bashan’s Public Security Bureau. On the way, she reflected on some other aspects of the case. Stuart Miller didn’t get to be a big public hero; however, people in power noted his role in all this and he’d been quietly given a medal in gratitude for his efforts to aid China, while his company was awarded several very lucrative state projects. Captain Hom, by contrast, became a true Chinese hero. Hom had wanted desperately to protect the people of Bashan, but the government now used his death for very different reasons. He was being held up as an exemplar of socialist behavior in the same category as martyrs like Lei Feng and Liu Hulan. Tales of his childhood were being collected for a picture book, while a small volume of his sayings was already being rushed to press by a publisher in Chongqing. Thanks to Captain Hom, all across the country posters for the All-Patriotic Society had been painted out, Internet connections cut, and phrases like “Be reverent” (an admonition first spoken by Emperor Yao forty-three hundred years ago) removed from daily discourse. Fortunately for Hom’s extended family, his brother-in-law’s life and death had “disappeared.” Nothing could be allowed to mar the propaganda value gained by Hom’s death.

Hulan arrived at Site 518, found David, and together they passed among clusters of people to say good-bye. Then Hulan and David walked out past the Wu house and down the path until they reached the little beach that had been Brian’s refuge. The river had calmed and lowered. The cliffs that soared above the current were now covered with trash at the high-water mark: plastic bags suspended on jagged rocks, bottles jammed into the tangle of roots, clothing twisted, torn, and flapping on inaccessible precipices. All of these things would stay where they were until time wore them out, wind ripped them away, or the next flood washed them to sea. Hulan had great faith in the river’s persistence. It might be slowed, but it would never stop.