Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 Read online

  Rapidly. Why rapidly? I wondered that myself. When first I was shown His plan, when I had absorbed it, I expressed surprise at such haste. After all, when He had created this world He’d spent millions of Earth years to do it, step by careful step, until every element was perfect. And when, during His most recent irritation with this corner of His universe, He had chosen to save the world rather than destroy it, He had taken, from conception to crucifixion, thirty-four of their years. So why such hurry now?

  The reason, I was given to understand, was that He hadn’t been bored the other two times.

  5

  Kwan borrowed a bicycle from Tan Sun for his trip across the city to the neighborhood of the big hotels. She wheeled it out from the cool shady storage area under the house and handed it over to him, along with the chain to lock it up while he was with the reporter. Her expression was fretful and worried. “Be sure to look for police,” she said, “before you go into the hotel. You know what their unmarked cars look like.”

  Kwan laughed, because he’d been through much worse than this, an interview with a reporter. “Everyone knows what their cars look like,” he said. “Clean, for one thing, and with no toys hanging from the inside mirror. And everyone knows what they look like, too. They all go to the same tailor, and he gives them the material the British won’t buy, the shiny grays and light blues. And then he cuts their jackets a little too short in the back.”

  “Don’t act as though it’s a holiday,” she snapped, getting angry with him because she had no way to release her tension.

  Why did girls always have to become so possessive? Kwan had been hiding with the Tan family for almost two months now, more than enough time to fall in love with their beautiful daughter, explore with her the petals of romance, and grow bored. He couldn’t simply tell her the affair was over, lest her family kick him out on the unfriendly streets, but why couldn’t she see it for herself? Did she want to conceal him under her skirt forever?

  Oh, well. Knowing her concern for his safety was real—and the dangers were real—he sobered and said, “It isn’t a holiday. There aren’t any holidays any more. It is an interview with a reporter for a very important American newsmagazine.” He smiled, to reassure her. “Don’t worry, I’ll bring back the bicycle.”

  “The bicycled she cried, outraged, and stormed into the house. Which was just as well.

  The first time Li Kwan had seen Hong Kong, from the forbidden city of Shenzhen on the Chinese mainland, it had seemed to him like a city in a fairy tale, risen out of the sea just long enough to tease him with its possibility. That had been the occasion of his first failed effort to get out of China and across that narrow strait to the free world, as exemplified by Hong Kong. Traveling south away from Beijing through the vastness of his homeland, a fugitive from the ancient murderers’ injustice, he had been helped along the way by friends of friends, by parents of schoolmates, by people with whom he was barely linked, and of course by women (women had always been very helpful to Li Kwan), and along the way he had learned that the iron grip of the ancient murderers grew increasingly slack the farther one traveled from the center of their web.

  In the farthest south, in Guangdong Province, and particularly in the coastal city of Shenzhen, central government authority counted for very litde at all. Here, most power centered on the rich traders and the Triads, the criminal gangs whose strength came from gambling and smuggling and prostitution and a variety of protection rackets.

  Shenzhen, established as a special economic zone in the late seventies in imitation of Hong Kong, before the ancient murderers learned they would be getting the original back, had become almost a parody, a distorting mirror image of that bubbling cauldron of capitalism. A wide-open city in the sense that everything was for sale there, from Western clothing to forged identity papers, it was a closed and forbidden city in the sense that no Chinese national was permitted inside the perimeter without a special certificate from the central government. Hong Kong businessmen in search of cheap labor had moved many of their small factories and assembly plants across the border, and by the early nineties two million mainland Chinese worked for Hong Kong employers in the city of Shenzhen.

  It had seemed to Kwan that in such a boiling cauldron of greed and political ambiguity and fevered ambition it should be easy to slip through Shenzhen and into Hong Kong, but in fact at that cliff-edge of China’s influence the guards were everywhere. Kwan’s forged special certificate, allowing him into Shenzhen, was a poor imitation not meant for close study. Chinese police and soldiers were everywhere along the razor margin between the two realities. Kwan was hailed, challenged; he ducked away, lost pursuit in the crowd of shoppers in the free-port streets, blended into a shuffling throng of homebound factory workers, and made his way out of the forbidden city, frustrated, frightened, not knowing what to do.

  The family he was staying with, twenty miles northeast along the coast from Shenzhen, were distant relatives of a student who had died in the square. Kwan had not known that student, but it didn’t matter. Nevertheless, after his first failed escape those people became increasingly nervous, particularly since the man of the house, named Djang, was a local official in the China Bank with much to lose. The face of the infamous counterrevolutionary, Li Kwan, was very well known, after all, despite the bullhorn he’d been holding to his mouth when that news photo was taken. So Djang it was who worked out Kwan’s next escape route, and drove him to the rendezvous in his private car, a perk of his job at the bank.

  This time, Kwan saw Hong Kong at night, across a mile of black water, the city a frozen firework never quite sinking into the sea. ccThe boat will be down there,” Djang said, braking to a stop along the narrow dark road, they the only traffic, the rocky weedy brush-dotted slope leading down on the right side of the car to the water’s edge.

  They both got out onto the packed-stone road, looking around in the darkness of the night, afraid of patrols: by land, by sea, by air. They scrambled together down the steep slope, holding to the tough shrubbery for balance, then made their way crabwise along the water’s edge.

  The boat was there, as promised, old and battered but watertight, with the oars hidden under brush nearby. Kwan and Djang shook hands formally, bowed, and separated, Djang to return to the relative safety of his normal life, Kwan to begin the final leg of his trip, across the water to Hong Kong.

  Steadily he rowed through the dark, and every time he looked over his shoulder, the city was still there, a million white lights painted on the black velvet of the ocean’s night. And every time he pulled on the oars, facing the stern of the boat, the deeper and more dangerous darkness of China was also still there.

  Kwan’s enemy then had been the army, and the old guard, and two thousand years of unquestioning obedience. His enemy now traveled under the name “normalization,” and that was why Kwan had to come out of hiding, had to cross the city in the full hot light of day to meet with the reporter from America. Normalization meant that Japanese aid to China was in place as before, that American businessmen had gone back to China to “protect their investments,” that politicians all over the world were prepared once again to raise delicate small bowls of rice wine to toast the ancient murderers. Normalization meant that a little time had gone by, a year or two, and it was enough for memories to bleach away. Normalization meant that it was possible after just this little time to forget a tank driving ponderously over a dozen unarmed human beings. And finally, normalization meant that last year’s hero of Tiananmen Square was this year’s fugitive, hiding from the Hong Kong police.

  Kwan locked the bicycle to a lamp standard a block from the hotel, and as he walked he checked his appearance in the tourist shop windows along the way. Small and slender, looking younger than his twenty-six years, with prominent round cheekbones that he’d always thought detracted from his looks (and which made him distinctive, a litde too distinctive, even among a billion), he was dressed neady in pale shirt and chinos, and still walked with an optimistic
bounce, forward-moving, like waves on a shore.

  There was no obvious police presence around the hotel; good. The fact is, Hong Kong was a decent city full of decent people, with a government as decent as most; but Hong Kong had to bear in mind 1997, just around the corner. In 1997 the British lease would end, and Hong Kong would revert to the authority and control of the mainland Chinese government. The quickly receding events in Tiananmen Square were to be deplored, but for the politicians reality had to be faced. (Some reality, of course, had to be faced rather more squarely than other reality: 1997, for instance, was relatively easy to face. The image of the tanks on top of the bodies of the people was a bit more difficult to face. Once again, the tough-minded and the pragmatic had found it possible to be just a little lenient with themselves.)

  The “counterrevolutionaries” of that Beijing spring had dispersed after the crackdown by the ancient murderers; those who had not been captured and executed, that is. Some had come together in France, and still issued their press releases to an increasingly indifferent world. Three or four groups had settled in different parts of the United States, to bicker among themselves and continue their educations in American universities and eventually, no doubt, become employees of major hospitals and insurance corporations. Those who had stayed in China emerged only rarely from their hiding places to post declarations on walls that hardly anyone ever saw. Li Kwan was among the few who had chosen to stay in Hong Kong, to that city’s increasing discomfort, where they had been until recendy relatively safe and yet still close to China, where their presence could still be a significant reminder, much more so than anywhere else on Earth.

  But now normalization had come also to Hong Kong. And now Li Kwan, illegally in the city, would if captured be returned to the ancient murderers of Beijing. But of course Hong Kong was a civilized and democratic city. It would certainly not deport Li Kwan without absolute assurances from the Chinese government that Li Kwan would receive a fair and open trial; assurances already given.

  And, too, there’s 1997.

  * * *

  The entire hotel was air-conditioned, everywhere from the huge ornate dark gold lobby to the tiniest shop. Kwan paused briefly inside the revolving doors, body adapting to the chill as he looked warily left and right, and still everything seemed safe. He walked forward, slowly, and waited to be recognized. (“I’ll know you from your picture,” the reporter had said on the telephone, when the intermediaries set up the call, and he hadn’t had to explain which picture he meant.)

  Midway across the lobby, a large shambling man heaved himself out of one of the low armchairs and moved toward Kwan. He looked to be about fifty, in an open-collared shirt and brown suede jacket and rumpled chinos. Three leather camera cases dangled from him. For some reason, Americans, when far from home, always look as though they’ve recently fallen from a motorcycle: clothing a bit disarrayed, manner a bit harried and nervous, but somehow optimistic and relieved because no real damage had been done. The reporter was like that. He had a pepper-and-salt beard, thinning curly hair, dark-rimmed spectacles, amiable smile. “Mr. Li?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sam Mortimer.” He put out his hand, gave Kwan’s a firm and honest shake. “Too early for a drink?”

  “Oh, yes,” Kwan said, smiling at the idea. It was probably several years too early for a drink; Kwan saw nothing to be gained from alcohol at this stage in his life.

  “Tea, then,” Mortimer said, gesturing toward the hotel’s interior cafe. “We can sit and be comfortable.”

  The cafe was irregularly shaped, its predominant color that of flamingos. Along one curving wall, windows looked out at a rock garden and, beyond it, the swimming pool, in which one man windmilled doggedly back and forth, back and forth, while a dozen swimsuited people lay on chaise longues in the sun. Kwan and Mortimer took a table for two next to one of these windows, and Mortimer opened one of his camera cases, which contained a cassette recorder, a notepad, and several pencils. “Mind if I record this?”

  “Not at all.”

  It wasn’t Kwan’s first interview, not by a long shot, and he had only the one subject of interest, so both the questions and the answers were already determined, were already in fact several times in print. But that was all right; the essence of news, as the news gatherers see it, is the recording of simple objective reality. This conversation is actually taking place, here and now, verifiably, and is therefore much more newsworthy than any other previous conversation, no matter how identical.

  They went over the usual ground in the usual order, Mortimer checking off questions already written into his notepad, occasionally making an additional note, or underlining some part of the question. The background of Li Kwan: Father a teacher, mother a doctor, himself a quick student, already a university graduate, continuing his studies in history and English, planning to enter the diplomatic corps. The arrival in China of the American president, Bush, leaving a confused sense of opportunity lost. Then, soon after, the arrival of the Soviet premier, Gorbachev, and the sense that opportunity must be taken now. The demonstrations in favor of Gorbachev leading somehow naturally to the demonstrations against corruption and privilege among the Chinese ruling elite, leading to the hunger strike, leading to the upsurge of popular support.

  “Looking back now,” Kwan said, smiling faintly at his former naivete, ccwhat we did reminds me of the American protestors of the nineteen sixties, who formed a circle around the Pentagon, joined hands, and attempted to levitate the building with their minds. They thought they would actually do it, you know, they expected to see the building rise up from the ground. We thought we would actually do it, too, and our conviction held the army back for more than a week.”

  Mortimer said, “Do you know a lot about the United States? Not history, I mean, but things like levitating the Pentagon.”

  “That is history.”

  Mortimer smiled, indulging him. ‘Those people were silly,” he said. “You don’t mean to say that the students in Tiananmen Square were silly.”

  “Of course I do,” Kwan insisted. “Anyone who follows his aspirations beyond common sense, beyond the bounds of reality, is silly. But we have to be silly, some of us have to be silly, if the human race is to get anywhere.”

  Mortimer was troubled by that. It showed in his friendly face, but he didn’t pursue it. Instead, he went on to the next question in his notebook. And the next. And the next. Through the past, and into the future: “What do you think will happen in China now?”

  “Change,” Kwan said. “Some for the good, some for the bad. But always slow. The habit of the people, for centuries, is to obey.”

  “If the Hong Kong authorities get hold of you, they’ll send you back. There’ll be a trial, a public trial. You’ll get to speak. Would that be good for your cause, or bad?”

  A strange question. Kwan said, “It would be bad, of course, because then I would not be able to have any more interviews like this. There are not many voices right now. We can’t afford to lose any of them.”

  “How about a public statement at your trial? Wouldn’t that have an impact?”

  ccThe trial would last one day,” Kwan told him. “I would get to say very little. The second day, I would be taken outside and told to kneel. A pistol would be put to the back of my head, and I would be killed. The third day, the government would send my family a bill for the bullet.”

  Mortimer’s eyes widened at that. “A bill? You’re kidding me.” “No, I’m not.”

  “But why? For God’s sakes...”

  “That’s the family’s punishment,” Kwan explained, “for having brought up a child without the proper discipline.”

  “The family has to pay for the bullet that kills you,” Mortimer said, musing, thoughtful. “Is that the usual procedure in China?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know about that.” The reporter fell into silence, brooding, seeming to lose interest in his next question.

  Kwan took the time to glan
ce over at the pool, which was now empty, and then the other way, at the interior of the cafe. A westerner sat alone at the next table, drinking coffee and reading the Hong Kong Times. He looked up, his eyes meeting Kwan’s for just a second, and then he went back to his paper, but in that second Kwan suddenly felt afraid.

  Of the man? No. He wasn’t from the Hong Kong police. He was a European or American, heavy-set, about forty, with yellow hair like a Scandinavian. He wore a short-sleeved shirt, pale blue, and a dark red necktie, but no jacket. He had a large gold ring with a red stone on the little finger of his right hand.

  Click.

  Kwan looked at the table, and Mortimer’s cassette player had stopped. “You’ve run out of tape.”

  Mortimer looked up, embarrassed, as though he’d been asleep. “Time went by fast,” he said, laughing awkwardly, and spent the next moment fumbling with the machine, turning the tape over, starting it again. ccWhere were we?”

  “My family would pay for the bullet.”

  “Oh, yes.” That fact still made Mortimer uncomfortable.

  “And you’re sure you wouldn’t have an opportunity to make any sort of meaningful state—”

  “Mr. Mortimer?”

  It was the waiter, standing beside their table, bowing in Mortimer’s direction. The reporter looked up, reluctant and irritable. “Yes?”

  “Telephone, sir. You can take it at the cashier’s desk.”

  Mortimer was torn, indecisive. He rubbed the knuckles of his right hand against his bearded cheek. “I don’t know,” he said, glancing at Kwan, at the cassette player, then back at the waiter.

  He made an aggravated mouth, as though angry at the interruption, or angry at himself, or just angry. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Here I come.” With a bright meaningless smile at Kwan, he said, “Sorry about this. Be right back.”