What Fang saw in the trash bag that morning, the tiny pieces of broken plastic, could have either been parts of the broken butane reservoir, or parts of the shell of the flash drive.
Chen didn’t think he had to read the flash drive there and then. He had to get out of the office immediately.
Luckily, there was still no one in the hallway. He made it to the elevator and then to the lobby without anyone seeing him. He walked by the security guard with barely a nod.
Outside, it was surprisingly warm in the People’s Square. Chen again began sweating profusely.
The square was swarming with people, as always. Several groups of people in their fifties or sixties were dancing or exercising to music blaring from CD players on the ground. They were enjoying the moment, with the sun setting and the City Government Building still shining in the fading light.
Behind the people filling the square, there was a line of limousines waiting patiently along the driveway in front of the magnificent City Government Building.
Amidst them all, a lonely figure was standing in a corner, absentmindedly clicking a red lighter in vain.
TWENTY-THREE
CHIEF INSPECTOR CHEN KNEW that the investigation had reached a critical point and that he had to make a decision.
But, instead, he decided to visit his mother.
At least for the moment, he wanted to put aside all the confusing and conflicting thoughts that were plaguing him, no matter how urgent the situation was. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this would be his last case. The people involved were far better connected and more powerful than a chief inspector could deal with. This was a feeling that was intensified by the bits and pieces he’d been picking up over the last few days including, paradoxically, the conversation he’d had with Sheng, the Internal Security officer he’d met with at the City Hotel. The scenario he’d spun out for Sheng turned out to be almost self-fulfilling.
Whatever the flash drive contained, the chief inspector could choose to do nothing. No one knew about his discovery in Zhou’s office. Chen was only consulting on the case; he wasn’t really expected to make any breakthroughs on it. He wasn’t supposed to carry out any secret missions for Comrade Zhao, despite the poem he cited for Chen. The power struggle going on in the Forbidden City was way beyond his grasp and his interest. It might be just as well to be nothing more than an ordinary cop.
But would that work? He wasn’t sure. Others might not even let him keep his position as chief inspector.
As an alternative, he could give the flash drive to his immediate superiors, like a loyal Party member who believed in the system. But he shuddered at the thought in spite of himself.
For the early summer, it was an extraordinarily warm day. He looked up to glimpse a spray of red apricot blossom stretching out over a white wall on Zuzhou Road, trembling in a fitful breeze.
With so many details unknown to him, he couldn’t properly analyze the situation. He thought once more of the metaphor of a blind man riding a blind horse toward a deep lake during a dark night. Any move he might make felt risky, unguided. What’s worse, any move could play right into a political situation beyond his control, and out of his depth.
Even if he did decide to do what was expected of him in his position as a chief inspector, taking all the risk on himself, what about the people close and dear to him—particularly his old, sick mother?
He found himself walking over to the old neighborhood. Like the rest of Shanghai, it had been changing as well, though not much beyond new food stalls, restaurants, and convenience stores appearing here and there. Near Jiujiang Road, he saw a new whiteboard newsletter standing at the corner of the side street, on which was written, “To build a harmonious society.”
It was another reminder that, as a Party member police officer, his job was supposed to be nothing more than damage control. As repeatedly urged in the People’s Daily, everything he did was supposed to be for the sake of a “harmonious society.”
But how was he supposed to do that?
He took a shortcut through a lane once familiar to him. He wasn’t particularly surprised to feel a drop of water splashing on his forehead. He tilted his head to see a line of colorful clothing, freshly washed and dripping from bamboo poles overhead. It was another ominous sign for this assignment. According to a folk superstition, it was bad luck to walk under women’s underwear, let alone under ones dripping from above—
“Damn! What a shitty taste!”
Chen was startled by a curse echoing from a middle-aged man who was eating from a large rice bowl, shaking his head like a rattle drum over a shrimp that he’d spat out onto the ground.
An elderly woman bending over a common sink beside him cast an inquiring look at the shrimp. “Oh, it was dipped in formalin so that it would look like a Wuxie white shrimp.”