Razing Beijing: A Thriller (18 page)

“Comrade?”

Chen stopped at the door and turned.

“The request...?” Ni held up the folder.

Chen studied his foreign affairs director. He would prefer
to postpone his decision on the delicate Mojave issue. Perhaps he should get a
feel for Vice Chairman Rong’s take on the subject. At the same time, it was
important he appear decisive to his reporting chain of command; these were not
times to risk the perception of being unqualified, or hesitant to shoulder the
responsibilities of his post. Another question came to mind: What decision
would his predecessor have made?

“You may proceed with the agent’s request, Comrade
Ni.”

EIGHT BLOCKS AWAY
in the neurology unit of Capital Hospital, the patient in bed number 7 drifted
in and out of an unsettled sleep.

Her eyelids eventually drifted open, and Liu Qun fixed her
drugged stare on a water stain in the acoustic tile of the ceiling. The
morphine intravenous drip induced a cloud of semi-conscious confusion,
punctuated with spontaneous moments of lucidity.

Doctor Wu...
She remembered sending her doctor to
find Deng, a friend whose allies were dwindling in number.
How could I have
forgotten to warn the doctor?
Liu certainly knew better and chided herself
for the oversight. If the security apparatus happened to intercept Wu’s message...the
possibility conjured up old familiar fears. She was a woman well acquainted
with the visceral treachery of many in her government.

Perhaps there might be a way to make certain her secret
survived her—her final act of rebellion. Overcoming great lethargy, Liu rolled
onto her side and reached for the box of stationery beside her bed. Resting her
head back onto her pillow, she closed her eyes and collected her thoughts. She
was afraid of what might lay before her. It troubled her that she felt such
regret at this stage of her life—regret at having never been married, or borne
children; regret for having not taken better care of her ailing mother, with whom
she would soon reunite; and recently, her regret for having failed the CIA, the
physicist, and his poor ailing wife on their trek to salvation. She had always
wondered if the CIA had others like her. She hoped that her work for them over
the years had not been in vain.

Liu opened her eyes and smoothed the thin pad of paper. She
pressed the point of her pen to the paper, and carefully constructing her
words, she began to write.

Some unknown time had passed when, having drifted off to
sleep again, Liu opened her eyes. The orderly had his back to her as he put
something in his pocket, still leaving—or was he leaving again...
already?
Perhaps she was still dreaming. Had she only imagined the orderly before?
When
did I dream?

The orderly paused and turned to look inside the room. The
white cloth bandages around the woman’s head—applied to conceal her unsightly
baldness—framed the soft smile receding from her slowly relaxing face. As he
quietly closed the door, she was already dead.

HIS SKIN SOAKED
with perspiration, Deng threw off the sheets and slid to the edge of his bed. After
some forty-odd years he still could not escape the nightmare. Deng glanced
fleetingly at the cherished family portrait on his night stand and shook his
head. It really was all so long ago.

What would become the endless nightmare of the Cultural
Revolution began in the sweltering August of 1966. Teenaged radicals barged
into Deng Zhen’s Beijing classroom, declaring themselves Red Guards and denouncing
all students as rightist intellectuals. In young Deng’s eyes there was no
greater hero than his father, a decorated Red Army soldier who had fought for
China’s liberation. Yet the Red Guards accused the respected school principal of
being a reactionary, an enemy of China who had conspired to undermine Chairman Mao’s
Great Leap Forward.

Since a falsehood quickly dies without reinforcement, the
Red Guards rushed forth in the heat issuing threats. Drought-stricken parents
and children seeking relief in the Wenyu were forced back to the riverbank to
witness them
struggle
Deng’s father. To publicly witness his torture, Medical
staff were wrenched from the hospital; elders from the tranquility of their
gardens; rail workers from repairing track for trains already doomed to cease
operations.
This
is the fate awaiting class enemies.
This
is the
fate awaiting their families who conceal and refuse to denounce them. No cries
for mercy echoed in the dusty streets as the principal of Middle School Number
8 and his wife were paraded around on a flatbed truck and beaten with heavy
clubs.

Eventually the marauding youths rallied outside the Deng
family home. There the executioners dragged both of the accused from the truck
and kicked the patriarch to his feet. Two of the Red Guards inserted a bamboo
pole between his back and the crooks of his elbows. A single accusatory ‘
Stinking
ninth class!’
pierced the air as they lashed the man’s wrists across the
front of his waist. Head lolled forward, his battered lips drooling blood and
bits of teeth, a length of hemp was tied to each end of the pole extending
beyond his shoulders.

Barely conscious, Deng Jianxing flickered his eyes over the
crowd, unaware of the rape of either his wife or their ten-year old daughter as
he was hoisted from the branch of an old poplar. The wretched man’s feet,
dangling over the ground, quivered spasmodically after a club to his genitals. Following
a howl of approval the youngster redoubled his grip, preparing his next blow. The
spray of blood, when it came, spattered a few of the scowls ringing the mob—the
elder Deng hurled a scream at the bolt of pain that began in his foot and
exploded in his brain. Before passing out, the forty-six year old father
muttered something that sounded like a prayer, further enraging the Red Guards
close enough to hear it.

Alerted by friends, young Deng raced home to their
hutong
to see flame and smoke roiling over the bonfire that consumed his family’s
heirlooms. As he battled to contain his rage, he slipped behind a neighboring
home and worked his way around to the wall surrounding their courtyard. His
fingers dug into familiar cracks in the stone while he inched his head over the
crest, and there he froze. Strung from a tree was his slack and lifeless
father. On paving stones beneath shredded strands that were once his feet was a
spreading pool of blood. Deng gasped for air. Movement on the ground drew his
eye to his sister, whose parting words to her brother that morning were a
promise not to linger by the village well. She was sprawled on her back, naked
below the hips. Each thrust of the Red Guard atop her caused her delicate legs
to convulse.

A primordial growl escaped Deng’s throat as he pulled
himself up, but his toes slipped from the cracks. He managed to regain his
foothold when suddenly the tail of his shirt was grabbed from behind. He kicked
and clawed to secure his grip, determined that if he couldn’t save his sister
then at least he would strangle her rapist. He glimpsed a lean figure beside
his father lift a machete before powerful arms hurled him backward through the
air. He struck the ground on his hip with an audible crack—a neighbor’s callused
hand clapped over his mouth to muffle his scream. Before passing out, he heard the
fateful
thud
from over the wall.

For years to follow, Deng Zhen struggled to find meaning in
his loss. Had it all been some never-to-be-repeated bureaucratic anomaly, its
unfortunate victims trampled in a rampage of giants? Mao Zedong had famously
denounced Deng
Xiaoping,
the cherished leader who would eventually succeed
him, as a Capitalist Roader. While their families shared no blood relation, Deng
Zhen later determined that his family’s politically unpalatable name had made
them a target.

Once Mao was dead, the Cultural Revolution finally over, China’s
new leadership was wary of pursuing yet another bloody purge. They allowed the
vast majority of guilty to remain, unreconstructed, among the twenty million
members of the Communist Party. To the tens of millions who had witnessed the Cultural
Revolution’s barbaric delirium, this administrative blunder meant they would pass
their loved one’s executioner in the street, or stand beside him at the bazaar,
giving rise to unspeakable hatred. Deng Zhen, on the other hand,
had never gotten
a good look at those who had butchered his family
.

It was this legacy which collided tonight with Dr. Wu’s
single word utterance—a title, however unspecific, that threatened to make a
mockery of Deng’s greatest aspirations. Hours later his hands trembled with
resentment:
gaogan.
Was it possible—a government official, presently in
a position of power? If the woman was telling the truth, how long had she
known—why had she not told him before?
How
did she know? This
gaogan
presumably would have been barely a young adult at the time of his family’s
destruction. Deng closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.

Will I never make peace with this?

The illuminated alarm clock displayed 4:17
A.M.
Dr. Wu had agreed to take him to see Liu
Qun before administering her morning sedatives. If he arrived at the hospital a
few minutes early, perhaps the nurse would allow him to see her right away.

*     *     *

FROM DENG’S SEAT
inside
the dingy reception lounge of Capital Hospital, he saw the orderlies push
gurneys; women labored behind over-stuffed laundry carts; day-shift nurses
noisily went about conferring the status of patients with their departing
counterparts. Amazingly, not one could direct him to the patient named Liu. At
some point Deng had become
Commissioner
Deng and the flurry of activity
surrounding the reception took on a hushed silence.

At 7:10
A.M.
, Dr. Wu
finally appeared at the administration desk. After a surprised glance his way
and a blustery exchange with the staff nurse, the neurologist approached Deng
in the reception. In that instant Deng knew that Liu Qun was dead.

“I am deeply sorry,” Wu began, his eyes betraying the
tempered grief of a man long accustomed to lost battles.

“When?” asked Deng.

“Early this morning. Apparently there was nothing that
could be done. A tragic development.”

Deng felt an empty sadness for the poor woman. At the same
time, he could not deny feeling a trace of relief.

Wu said, “I should have arranged your visit last evening. I
achieved nothing but opening old wounds.”

Deng recalled Wu specifically saying last night that his
friend’s condition was stable. Again the word
gaogan
resonated with his
thoughts. “Are you certain of the cause of death?”

“The tumor had ravaged her medulla oblongata. Some portion
of her involuntary functions simply ceased.”

“Will you conduct an autopsy?”

“For a patient such as this, no. Her condition had been
fairly well established.”

Limping toward the hospital exit, Deng forced himself to
accept that there had been no guarantee the woman would have solved his tragic
riddle. Now her implication of a high government official was going to haunt
him.

Deng found Ji Peng with his face buried beneath the
People’s
Daily
. The driver jumped nervously when Deng opened the passenger door. “To
the office,” he said with a resigned sigh.

They had begun to drive away from the hospital when the
Shanghai rolled to a stop.

“What is it, Ji?”

“Someone is waving us down.” Ji nodded toward the rearview
mirror. “There in the blue smock, coming this way.”

Deng turned to see Dr. Wu jogging toward them. He rolled
down the car’s rear-passenger window.

Wu produced a small white envelope and handed it in to him.
“The nurse found this a moment ago,” Wu said, struggling for his breath. “She
thought you might still be here and rushed it to my attention.”

Deng took the envelope. “From Liu?”

“Tucked beneath her mattress.”

Deng studied the thin scrawl of his name, the light hand
having skipped unevenly over the edge of the seal. “Wait.” He tore open the
envelope.

The characters were shakily arranged, as if by the
hand of either a child or a very old person. Nonetheless, the clear
construction of the sentences was testament to the coherence of the author at
the time it was written, dated yesterday.

My Dear Friend,

How sad I am as I write this. Your reading it can
only mean that my worst fears have come true.

We have each lived through the most tumultuous of
times. There are things that I should have told you, private things affecting
you that you are entitled to know. My reasons for not informing you earlier are
no longer important.

I trust Dr. Wu was thorough in his communication,
for his safety and yours.

You must know, my Zhen, that I have always adored
and respected you. That this was so from afar was not of my choosing, you
stubborn old fool!

I have made numerous good friends and
acquaintances in this life. I fear my strength will not endure the effort of
writing them all. Bid them goodbye, on my behalf? Perhaps you recall our old
acquaintance Kang Long? Please find him and pass on our final farewell. Please
do not be disappointed.

Forever,

Liu Qun

Certain he had missed something, Deng read the letter again.
The name Kang Long meant little to him.

He looked up from the note. “Doctor, you will see that an
autopsy is conducted.” Anticipating Wu’s objections, he added, “I will sign the
appropriate documents. You will personally inform me of the findings.”