“What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. I think it was Wittgenstein who said that. A fitting paradigm. After all, exposing the original picture sender wasn’t the aspect on which C focused at all.”
He reached out to pour himself another cup of wine, but she didn’t stop him this time.
“But enough of that story; let me go back to the case that I’ve been working on. What am I going to do?”
“Chief Inspector Chen?”
“You’ve gotten lost in this story, Lianping,” Chen said, taking a deliberate sip of wine. “As a cop with professional commitments, I’m supposed to report developments in the investigation to Party Secretary Li. Alternatively, I’m required to report to the Shanghai Communist Party Discipline Committee. But then what?”
“Then—”
“You can easily imagine. There’s no need for me to get into the possibilities.”
“What if you choose to do nothing?” she asked with bated breath. “No one else knows any of this.”
“If I do nothing, then Detective Wei died for nothing. I would never be able to look you in the eye again, not with any self-respect as a cop.”
“Then—” Impulsively, she reached across the table and grasped his hand, only to quickly withdraw hers, the diamond ring dazzling on her finger.
“You mentioned hearing something about the mission of the Beijing team in Shanghai, Lianping.”
“No one knows about these things for certain,” Lianping said, her eyes downcast. “It’s possible that what I heard was all hearsay.”
“Maybe or maybe not. This might be my last case as a police officer, and I want to go ahead.”
She looked up in confusion and alarm.
“I don’t know how things really stand at the top levels in Beijing, but as a Party member, I’m also supposed to report to the Central Party Discipline Committee in Beijing.”
“I’ve heard of your personal connection to Comrade Zhao, the retired Secretary of that Committee,” she said.
“Don’t believe what people may have said about the connection. Believe it or not, the Beijing team has never contacted me. For me, it has been just like the proverb about a blind man riding a blind horse to a fathomless lake in the depths of a dark night. Incidentally, I thought of that back at the Shaoxing hotel. I don’t know what will happen to me, but I have to take the plunge.”
She stared at him, and then lowered her head into her hands. When she looked up a few seconds later, her eyes were glistening.
“You make me feel so wretched,” she said in a wavering voice. “Here I am, trying to be smart and sophisticated, trying to realize the Shanghai dream, seize the moment, go with the flow, and lodge an occasional protest on the sly. That’s about it. But here you’re putting your career on the line…” She stopped to wipe her eyes with the back of her hand.
“There’s no need to say that,” he said, tapping her hand, soft, yet a little wet. He touched the trail of a tear on her cheek before he reached again for his cup. “Perhaps it’s time for me to think of finding another job. I might not be too bad a translator, as Gu just told you. Well, something else for your ‘biography’ of me is that I’ve been translating some additional classical Chinese poems, also on the sly. Poems such as this one by Wang Han, from the eighth century: ‘The mellow wine shimmers / in the luminous stone cup! / I’m going to drink it on the horse / when the Army Pipa suddenly starts / urging me to charge out. // Oh, do not laugh, my friend, / if I drop dead / drunk on the battlefield. / How many soldiers / have come back home?’”
“Please stop, Chen—”
“I cherish your friendship, Lianping, so I’m going to ask you to do one thing for me. But you can certainly say no.”
“Tell me.”
“When I give the evidence left by Zhou to the Central Party Discipline Committee in Beijing, they might choose to act on it, or to do nothing at all. Whatever they do, it’ll be what is in their political interest at that moment, possibly for all the right reasons, or maybe for all the wrong ones. For them, justice is like a colored ball in a magician’s hand; it’s capable of changing in a heartbeat. That’s why I need you—to make sure the truth comes out, in case my quixotic attempt ends up like a rock sinking silently to the bottom of the sea. With your computer and Internet skills, I believe you’ll know how to do it effectively, yet safely.”
“I’ll do anything you want me to do,” she said with a catch in her voice, her eyes locking his.
“And you’ll do it without risking exposure. Promise me, Lianping.”