The Ghost Shift (5 page)

Safely on the ground again, she’d sat shivering at a café table while her friend had gone off to get a glass of water. She’d felt like a country girl unable to cope with the scale of the city. It defied her sense of logic—that even when she was in no danger of falling, it felt as if she were falling into a void. Afterward, she’d vowed to train herself out of it, but she’d not had the time. She could not bear to show weakness to Yao. She’d lose all authority over him.

Mei placed a hand on the rail of the stairway, feeling it slip between her fingers as the ship shifted against the dock. She started the
climb a couple of paces in front of Yao, holding the rail on each side to steady herself while trying to look as if she wanted to get on board quicker. From behind, Yao could not see her fix her gaze on the steel steps, frightened to raise her eyes to the dark cliff above her.

“Son of a dog. Look at that motherfucker.” Yao halted behind her, pointing upriver.

Mei had no choice but to obey. She twisted in the direction he was gazing, into space across the port. When she opened her eyes, her stomach lurched. They were high between sea and sky, only the ship’s bulk orienting them in space, and the ground felt lost below them. Yao indicated a fully laden container ship edging its way into the Pearl from the East River, looking barely afloat.

Mei tried to hide her fear with a tone of disdain. “It’s just a boat, Yao.” She felt the blood drain from her head as she gripped the rail—she had to get moving again or she’d be rooted to the spot.

“That should keep the foreign devils happy.”

“Not for long.” She faked a laugh, trying not to sound hysterical, and dragged herself forward. As they neared the ship’s entrance, she could not hold back her panic and she rushed up the last few steps blindly, stumbling through the bulwark to safety.

They waited by the door to the ship’s navigation deck, listening. It was bolted shut; a man was shouting angrily on the other side.

“It happens every time I dock. The crew in this port are thieves and cocksuckers.”

The voice that replied was softer—conciliatory, almost jovial.

“These things happen. I know you’ve got it right, but check the manifest again, will you? There has to be an explanation.”

Mei’s knuckled fist, poised to rap on the door, was suspended in midair. She heard someone cross the deck, stomping urgently on the wooden floor, and she waited to hear what would happen next.

“Look. Two thousand and twenty-four. Maybe one went astray in Taiwan. Are you sure you counted right?”

“I know, all right. I’ve had this shit here before.” The man’s voice was still exasperated, but there was now a hint of doubt.

Mei pulled the bolt and swung the door open. The deck was filled with light from sun streaming through the navigation deck that ran from one side of the deck to the other. There was a stunning view of the river and the channel to the sea. Below, she saw the length of the ship and its dark belly, from which all of the containers had been scooped. Crew scurried around far beneath them, like ants in red helmets. She felt queasy, but it would be manageable if she just kept away from the windows. Two men stood by a desk—the ship’s captain and a thick-necked customs superintendent. The official ran a finger down a checklist, rubbing his jaw with his other hand.

“You’re right. How can we fix this? What can I do for you?” As he spoke, he turned to look at Mei and Yao and threw an arm around the captain’s shoulders. “What’s all this? Two fresh crew for you, Xilai? They look young and eager.”

Mei felt herself blush, and Yao seemed to lose his usual insouciance under the official’s gaze. The man watched cheerfully as he stumbled over his introduction.

“Superintendent Hou.… We’re with the Discipline Commission. We need to speak with you, if we may.”

Mention of the Commission was usually enough to ensure cooperation, as the card gave them the authority to cause trouble for any Party member. But this one was tough. His eyes stayed blank and hard even as his smile widened.

Yao put his bag on the floor next to Mei’s ankle, leaning the wedge of official papers up against her calf. He walked over to their target and presented a card, both sides of which the man examined. One side showed Yao’s title in the Ministry of Inspection, the other his Party affiliation. Officially, every Discipline Commission official had two jobs—one in the government and one in the Party. The Party was the master, though. The man nodded, tucking it in his top pocket.

“So, young man. You’re here to take me away for unspecified crimes, are you? Do I face a spell of
shuanggui
?” He guffawed, slapping his companion on the back, as if he’d made a great joke.

Mei stared, abashed. He was laughing at
shuanggui
, their most fearsome power, the right to arrest a Party member on suspicion and detain him in secret for months or years. No lawyer, no
habeas corpus
, no record. The suspect might eventually reappear, spat into the courts in a distant province for the judges to sentence him to a prison term or even death. It was treated as a given that the Party’s verdict was correct. Yet here was a middle-rank official in a cheap suit acting as if he didn’t care.

“We want to talk to you. In private.” Mei’s voice was curt, but she heard it waver. It was hard for her to order middle-aged men around, even with a Party official’s card—too many treated it as flirtation.

“I know what this is about.” He turned to talk to the captain,
presenting his back to Mei. “The boss is being posted to Fujian and I’ve applied for his job. He said the Party would check on me and they’ve sent these kids, so there’s obviously no problem. Don’t worry, you’re not mixing with antisocial elements.”

“Please, sir. We have a job to do.” Yao’s halting voice sounded pathetic to Mei. Whatever questions she had about the assignment, she didn’t want to be humiliated. If Pan found out they’d been treated this way by some customs official she had sent them to investigate, she wouldn’t be happy.

“Listen, son. Don’t make a big deal of this. I know important people in Guangzhou.”

As she stared at the man’s complacent face, Mei’s temper flared. She was exhausted and distressed, and she could not bear to be pushed around any longer. Bending down, she reached into the bag at her feet. She felt the thick file inside and turned it so that Hou could see the embossed cover as she drew it out and held it to her chest.

“We don’t need to talk to anyone in Guangzhou. We have all the information that we need.”

His smile faded, and he ran a fleshy thumb along his jaw, gazing at the file. He’d never seen it before and might never see it again. It was the script of his adult life, the document that determined whether he got a promotion and what happened after that, and then after that—how far he would rise in his career, how he might fall. Inside was a record of every assessment and infraction for the past thirty years, every incident of disloyalty.

Mei was holding his Party file.

She’d read it in the car on their way to the port, absorbing their target’s unspectacular ascent within the Customs Ministry. He dealt rough justice to the dubious characters who hung around the place, his managers noted, driving out smugglers of cargo, human and otherwise. He starred in the Party’s periodic public campaigns to clean up the docks—a hopeless mission that it addressed with sunny confidence. There was little to stand in the way of him being promoted—a few complaints of petty abuse and one incident of a few cartons of
cigarettes being found in his office just before the New Year. If only others had such modest appetites.

On paper, he was a model Party member, but that wasn’t how she’d heard him behave. Her fingers flicked the top corner of the pages, and he stepped forward to intervene.

“Captain,” the man said. “Could we have the use of a room for a while? I want to assist these
guan yuan
in their inquiries.” For the first time, he had used the formal term for an official.

In a small cabin off the navigation deck, she dropped the file onto the desk. Then, seating herself behind the desk, she leafed through it. Following her lead, Yao sat next to her and observed the official, some of his usual nerve coming back.

“Sorry about that before. I was just fooling around a bit.” Hou plumped himself on a faded green couch under a porthole and spread his arms, submitting to their authority.

As Hou watched, Mei worked her way carefully through the pages of the file.

“So you’ve always worked in customs,” she said. “A lot of people would like your job—that or being a tax official. It was the top choice in my graduating class at university. Why is that?”

Hou shrugged. “Variety. Everything in the world gets carried on the Pearl River. Jeans, cell phones. Opium, in the old days. You see amazing things here, I’ll tell you.”

“So they want to see the world, do they? Nothing to do with the opportunity to take bribes?”

The man sat up warily. “I’ve never taken money. I get given things sometimes, but that’s the same wherever you go. Petty stuff. You can’t stop people doing it. There’s nothing in the file that says different, is there?” He pointed to it. “Is there?”

“You tell me.”

“There isn’t.” She turned the pages in search of something to catch him with, but there was nothing. As he looked on, his confidence returned, inflating him like a balloon. She had tried to unnerve him, but it had not worked. He could tell she was bluffing—Pan had sent her there with nothing.

Mei ran through some routine questions about his family and his sessions at the Party school; after a few minutes, she closed the file and replaced it in the bag, defeated. She was here for a purpose but it was hidden from her, like the Wolf’s invitation to the marsh.

“We’re finished, are we?” Hou said, thrusting himself off the sofa.

“For now.”

Mei felt like a failure—as they rode the elevator from the deck to the ship’s bulkhead, Yao watched her doubtfully, as if he’d mistakenly believed her to be charmed, now that Pan and the Wolf favored her. Confused and miserable, she stepped out of the bulkhead into the haze before she was fully prepared for it and was blinded by the vista of Dongguan. Losing her footing, she tripped forward, feeling as if she were falling into a void. She gripped the rails, trying to block the sensation.

“What’s wrong?” Yao asked from behind, but she held on tight and kept walking without replying until she saw through squinted eyes that they were close to the ground. She stood on the dockside, breathing rapidly and letting the faintness in her head fade.

“Are you all right?” For once, Yao had dropped his bantering tone and sounded worried.

Mei was on the edge of tears, but she forced a smile. “I’m fine. I didn’t eat enough breakfast. Looking at you put me off.”

High above, at the edge of her vision, she saw Hou emerge from the bulkhead and make his way down the stairway that they had just descended. He took his time as she and Yao waited, gazing out at the port that he controlled.

“Hold on, I’ve got something for you,” he called once he was close enough. He flourished an envelope; she could see the blue seal of Guangdong Customs on its flap.

“Will you deliver this to Secretary Lang for me? It’s a note of appreciation for the way you handled things. No hard feelings, I hope. You show promise. I’d like to help you if I can.”

“Have you met Lang Xiaobo?” Mei asked.

“I know him well. Very well.” Hou smiled broadly.

He offered the envelope, one end between his finger and thumb,
and suddenly Mei realized what this expedition was all about. This was the reason Pan had sent her—to witness it, to involve her in it.
Old men often make fools of themselves
, she had said. The whole thing—the Party file, the interrogation, the transaction—now made sense. Mei turned away, leaving Yao to take the envelope.

The scene was scrubbed by daylight, the landscape less sinister. It looked ordinary, the kind of place people drove by at speed. Mei pulled up about where the Audi had brought her two nights before and, stopping the engine, surveyed the marsh. Wind gusted; a flock of birds scattered from a broken tree.