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      Qing rode in a child seat that was clamped to the handlebars, clutching a puppet resembling a hawk. As they passed the northeast corner of the park, she raised the bird so the breeze, sweet with flowering trees, caught its wings and lifted them gaily. Later that day, she was to take part in the annual puppet production at the Children’s Palace, the hall of culture where the most creative youngsters went after school each day to learn the sublime arts. The hawk was one of two main characters in the play, the other a lowly, scheming turtle. Children all over China would be acting out the same story during the upcoming week, an ancient fairy tale about the resilience of the Middle Kingdom, and Li was proud that his position allowed her to take part. As they entered the dark maze of hutongs, over which the painted rings of the Temple seemed to lean, Qing lowered the head of the bird and pecked playfully at his arm.

      When Li had delivered her into the hands of his mother-in-law, the old woman’s slow face at the ready for another day of spoiling her grandchild, he was surprised to find that he still had time for a visit to the Friendship Store. The thought of English cigarettes, aromatic in their coffin of foil, drew him onward through the cooking smoke, the blood running in the gutter from the corner abattoir, past the warehouse of the vegetable collective with its affable white-coated workers lounging behind their cardboard stand. A PLA jeep sprinted past him, honking wildly, soldiers tottering in the back like barrel staves, either drunk or asleep behind their scanty mustaches and shades. Along the boulevard, block upon block of new apartments rose behind the powdered trees, painted balconies rising for story on story to the colorless sky. In a year the general would pull him fully into his circle; a year and they would leave his mother’s house and have their own place. Behind the sliding glass doors that led from the balconies, he imagined Qing’s room with her rows of little dresses in the wardrobe, posters of her beloved Mickey Mouse on the walls. The image buoyed his spirits, even as he passed beyond the apartments and beneath the smug gaze of the foreign hotels.

      The day was warming, but his years in poorly heated apartments had accustomed Li to wearing a cardigan; now he felt sweaty, unpressed as he flashed his papers to the guards at the entrance to the Friendship Store and moved politely through the fat, perfumed Westerners and Overseas Chinese to the tobacco counter in back. The counter man, protected by his ranks of dark-leafed Cuban cigars, asked to see Li’s papers again and read them over with a dubious smile. As he handed them back, his expression seemed to indicate some complicity between them. As if he knew what Li had seen: the young people fallen, not like piles of laundry at all but flesh showing, thin stomachs and pelvic bones, skin unbearably modest in death. Among their bodies, the mangled tracery of spokes and chrome. As if the asshole had seen it . . .

      Joylessly he paid the cashier and jammed the pack hard, again and again against the heel of his hand, smoking one cigarette after another as he cycled along the Dajie, fingers squeezing the handgrip so hard that his knuckles turned white. At the Beijing Hotel, he guided his bike past the taxis and government drivers, the vents of his tweed jacket flapping and coming to rest. The goat-faced Manchu, Feng, leaned against the general’s beige Toyota Crown, studying the grease beneath his fingernails.

      “Where’s the Big Fish?” Li asked.

      The driver accepted a Kingston and nodded slyly toward the lobby. When General Zu emerged, he seemed to spring from the revolving door, his short arms flapping at his sides. Feng was up the steps at a sprint, offering help with Zu’s briefcase, but the Big Fish brushed him violently away.

      “A perfect example of how stupid, how grossly incompetent and obsequious these fools are,” Zu said as Li reached him.

      “Yes, General.”

      They hurried down the stairs in quick, shuffling steps.

      “You don’t even know what I’m talking about,” the general remarked.

      Li helped him into the back of the car and climbed into the front seat next to Feng. He turned to meet the general’s dolorous face. “I assume you are speaking of the reactionaries, who see the corruption in Shenzhen as a far bigger issue than it is.”

      “We have bred a generation of pirates and slaves,” sighed the general. The shadow darkened around his mouth. “Some will have to be sacrificed. When the time comes, I must take a stand on corruption.”

      “Shenzhen is the future of China,” Li agreed.

      “It’s a wasteland,” Zu said.

      Feng avoided a donkey cart carrying a refrigerator and moved to the center lane, honking at buses and trucks. They went swiftly across the mouth of Tiananmen Square, under the reviewing stand and onto Quianmen, its broad sidewalk a beach where they had piled the new dead, like fish thrown up from a gray, diseased bay. The calm and heavy-lidded, beatific face of Chairman Mao approved the scene.

      “You have gotten me started,” said the general, shifting his short, bulging torso on the pinions of his legs. “You always make me think of my son.”

      Li chose not to respond. The general’s son ran a factory in Shenzhen, the so-called Special Economic Zone, and Li had seen him, in his Western suits and German car: he had known from the tender way the son regarded his possessions that he was a thief.

      Feng skirted Beihai Park, where the old men sat on stumps, fishing the slimy green water with bamboo poles. The general was silent, and Li wondered if he was thinking of the morning they had mustered in the wet grass on the shore. Li could still feel, still hear the squishy boots as they marched, the burning itch on the balls of his feet. A month later, General Zu had been transferred from the Second Department to the Ministry of State Security, a move in which Li had chosen to accompany him. The wily among Li’s comrades had envied his good fortune, offered congratulations or made snide comments about Li’s ambition under their breath; the jealous were also the ones who had turned down commands at the Square. The duller ones had simply come to Li’s farewell party, gotten drunk, and clapped him on the back, as if they were sending him back to Tibet. Thirteen years and nothing had changed.

      “We have a more pressing problem,” the general said, rapping the window with his hand. Sweethearts in rowboats sculled against the grim background of the Forbidden City walls. “Yong Beihong has disappeared from his apartment.”

      “Yong? I thought I knew all of their names.”

      “This one was rounded up again several years ago and has been under house arrest. He was a university instructor who made a short speech on the second day of the uprising. He was signatory to one of those reactionary letters last year.”

      “When did he escape?”

      “It has been five days ago now. The officers they had watching him were common city police. When Yong went missing, they looked for him for three days before they informed their superiors.”

      “It’s the work of the mayor,” Li said. The general’s bottom lip stuck out. “May I ask how long you’ve known?”

      “Do not always think of yourself, Li. I received a call last evening at home. I needed to consider.”

      “Then clearly you see some connection between this Yong and the American woman you asked to be followed to Nanjing.”

      The general’s mud-colored flesh shifted downward into a frown. The folds of his chin hid his collar from view. “It is only a coincidence. Without coincidence, however, we would be lost. Do you have anything more on this woman?”

      The car took a hard turn into a side street, and Li had to brace himself quickly against the door. As they went through the gates СКАЧАТЬ