Enigma of China(77)

In spite of his efforts, a mental image of Fang dancing kept cropping up. Perhaps it was too dramatic to ignore the echo of the ancient story of an imperial concubine dancing for her lord, knowing that it would be her last before she committed suicide. It was a scene much celebrated in classical Chinese literature.

Making a beauty willing to die for you, / the King of Chu was after all a hero. These were two sympathetic lines by Wu Weiye, a Qing dynasty poet.

Like the King of Chu, Zhou had refused to give up, though he was aware of the approaching doom.

The parallels were eerie, but the details confounded Chen.

In the case of the King of Chu, his favorite concubine danced and then killed herself so that she wouldn’t be a burden to her lord in his last battle. Fang didn’t do so, nor did Zhou want her to.

The King of Chu still wanted to fight, clinging to the belief that he could break through the opposing army, that he had enough forces left at the camp east of the river to back him up. Zhou must have believed the same.

Chen again started to go over the sequence of events that fateful night, this time more closely. While she was dancing, Zhou hummed a Mao-quotation song and lit a cigarette—

Chen wondered whether there could be something in Zhou’s choice of the Mao-quotation song, but he quickly brushed aside that idea. It could be simply that the melody was familiar to Zhou from his youth, or because Fang was dancing the loyal character dance…

The chief inspector again lost the thread of his thoughts.

He, too, wanted to light a cigarette. He took out his pack before he realized that he must have left his lighter back at the security checkpoint. That might be just as well. Theoretically, the office should be left intact and undisturbed. Still, his glance swept the office, falling involuntarily upon a lighter next to the mini marble bookstand on the desk.

He wasn’t sure if that was the lighter Zhou had used that night. After all, a heavy smoker might have kept several of them around. Chen went over and picked it up. It wasn’t a fancy, expensive lighter, but it was intriguing due to its torchlike shape, bright red color, and a Mao quote engraved in gold: “A spark can set the whole prairie ablaze.”

He struck the tiny wheel atop the lighter. No spark. He tried harder. Still no luck.

It was probably another sign that he shouldn’t smoke in the office. He shrugged his shoulders and slumped back down in the swivel chair with a thump.

He stroked the lighter again distractedly.

Why would Zhou have kept a useless lighter in his office?

A hunch gripped him.

Chen jumped up and started pacing around, and then sat back down again with the lighter clasped in his hand.

Setting the lighter down on the desk, he took out his Swiss knife, and with the screwdriver blade, he managed to open up the bottom part of the red lighter.

As the bottom fell off, Chen glimpsed an object inside.

Not a butane reservoir but a flash drive, with part of the plastic shell cut off to fit it in.

Finally, one of the crucial missing pieces had appeared.

That night Zhou had still wanted to fight—like the King of Chu—with something in hand that might save him from total destruction. Something that could ensure that people above him, far more powerful, would provide enough help to enable him to survive the engulfing storm.

“A chain of crabs bound together on a straw rope—” What Fang had said to him in Shaoxing came back to him.

What she said was an idiomatic expression that referred to a common sight in the food market. A peddler would bind live crabs together with a thick straw rope, making it easier for customers to carry without worrying about any of them escaping. As a figure of speech, however, it meant something quite different. “Crabs” usually meant evildoers. What bound them together wasn’t a straw rope but their common interest—the schemes or secrets they shared. They had to protect or shield each other; no one could betray another, or one fallen would bring everybody else down.

Zhou must have threatened the people above him by telling them that the bell wouldn’t toll for him alone. Zhou had in his hands evidence, which he hid in a place known to no one else, in the lighter in his office. However, Jiang came earlier than expected, surprising him in the canteen and taking him into custody there. In all the confusion, the lighter had been left behind in his office.

Eventually, the threat he posed led to his death in the hotel. He might have said something, and his coconspirators had had to silence him once and for all. But they still had to find the evidence he’d left behind, or they’d never be able to sleep in peace.

The arrival of the Beijing team at the hotel, with the possible showdown looming in the Forbidden City, only served to make them more desperate.