Flower Net

  On February twenty-third, doctors pronounced David well enough to fly to Beijing, but procuring seats proved difficult. Deng was from Sichuan Province, and many people from his village had been invited to the memorial in the capital. Hulan used the combined clout of the MPS and her status as a member of one of the Hundred Families to obtain airline tickets.

  On February twenty-fourth, Deng’s family and a few top officials met for a private funeral. Deng Xiaoping had always said he wanted a frugal and private service. His wishes were observed up to a point. His wife, children, and grandchildren cried over his body. Hulan—like hundreds of millions of others—watched in television close-up as Deng’s daughter kissed her father’s waxen cheek one last time. Later his body was driven by Toyota minivan past thousands of Beijing’s citizens along the Avenue of Perpetual Peace past the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square to Babaoshan, the cemetery reserved for revolutionary heroes, where he was cremated. Deng had also said he wanted to live to see China regain sovereignty over Hong Kong. This wish, too, could only be partially fulfilled; some of his ashes would be sprinkled in Hong Kong Harbor.

  Hulan’s recent notoriety won her an invitation to the memorial service attended by ten thousand people—an auspicious number to the Chinese—in the Great Hall of the People. At 10 A.M. on February twenty-fifth, whistles and horns on cars, trains, boats, factories, and schools sounded all across China for three minutes to mark the beginning of the service. Hulan took her place with other Red Princes and Princesses on the ground floor of the Great Hall. A few rows ahead of her, she saw Nixon Chen and Madame Yee. A few rows in front of them, she glimpsed Bo Yun and a couple of others she’d seen at Rumours.

  Everyone stood to listen to President Jiang Zemin read the eulogy. Like Hulan’s father’s, it was a carefully worded document, one that would be studied for years to come. In it, Deng was remembered for surviving three purges and for creating the market socialism that had brought so much change to China. The Cultural Revolution, when Deng had suffered so, was proclaimed a “grave mistake.” The bloody massacre at Tiananmen Square, for which Deng proudly accepted responsibility, was mentioned, but Jiang’s words were cautious.

  As Hulan listened, she couldn’t help but wonder about President Jiang’s future. On the street, people sometimes referred to him as “Flowerpot,” because he had become as common as a flowerpot at ribbon cuttings and other photo opportunities. He also had a penchant for singing American movie tunes and reciting passages from the Gettysburg Address to entertain visiting dignitaries. Were these the actions of a “paramount leader”? Did he qualify as the “first among equals”? Would there be a power struggle during this fall’s Fifteenth Communist Party Congress or would it take a year or two for his detractors to get organized? Jiang was the commander in chief of the world’s largest army, but did he have the support of the generals? No one knew the answers yet, but like a Chinese opera there were still many acts to come.

  Hulan was still not quite sure why she had come there. She supposed it was seeing Deng’s daughter tearfully kissing her father on television the day before. For all of his political accomplishments—and failures—Deng must have been a good father. He must have loved his children very much to elicit such a public show of emotion from them. After a lifetime of wishing and trying, Hulan had been unable to forge a similar bond. So she stood in the Great Hall of the People mourning less for Deng than for the absence of love from her own father.

  David would have liked to stay in Beijing, but he had a lot of unfinished business in Los Angeles. Before he left, he and Hulan had one last dinner with Zai, who’d just been appointed vice minister. Despite his new title, he looked much the same. His jacket was worn and his shirt was frayed at the collar and cuffs. He spoke haltingly about Hulan’s father. He knew his friend’s history of corruption but had seen no reason to be suspicious until their trip to Tianjin. After Liu assigned his daughter to the Watson case, Zai concluded that his friend had to be involved. “After Cao Hua’s death, my main concern was for your safety,” Zai told Hulan. “I wanted you out of the country. I hoped you wouldn’t return.”

  Hulan began to mist up, and they decided to drop the subject, but later in the evening when Zai excused himself to go to the men’s room, David followed. “Hulan’s father talked about people high up who ordered him to reopen the case. They—whoever they are—must have known about him. Who told them? Was it you? Was it your opportunity to get revenge on Liu?”

  Zai looked very tired. “He was my oldest friend. Where he was concerned, I followed a one-eye-open, one-eye-closed policy almost my entire life. Even after everything that had happened in the past, I would have done nothing to harm him, until I believed that Hulan was in danger. That I could not stand.”

  “Then how did they know?” David asked. Zai just shook his head.

  On March first, sixteen days after the events at the bear farm, David—with his arm in a sling—was back at Beijing airport in a private waiting room. Vice Minister Zai, as yet unaccustomed to dealing with the media, trudged through a speech for the benefit of the local press. His words were translated into English for a few stringers by a young woman from the Language Institute of Beijing. David scanned the faces of Zai, Guang Mingyun, and others from the Ministry of Public Security who had turned out for this official farewell. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Beth Madsen walk by the window that separated this room from the rest of the terminal. She was either leaving Beijing or coming in on another of her business trips. If she was departing, then they’d probably be on the same flight. At his side, holding his hand, was Hulan. They had said their most intimate farewells at her home, knowing that at the airport their behavior would be circumscribed by formalities.

  Vice Minister Zai ended his remarks. The assembled crowd applauded. Then he stepped forward and presented David with a plaque showing the Great Hall of the People with gold characters etched on each side. The two men shook hands. Then it was Guang Mingyun’s turn. “I am grateful for what you did, even though the outcome has reflected badly on my son’s memory.” He handed David a package wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with string. “This is just a small token. Please do not embarrass me by opening it now.” They, too, shook hands, then Guang Mingyun faded into the crowd.

  Zai cleared his throat and said a few last words in Chinese. The others nodded and drifted away so that only Zai, David, and Hulan remained. “Again, we are thankful for your help,” the older man said. “China is a good country, but sometimes we make mistakes.”

  “As do we,” David acceded.

  “Yes, none of us can avoid human nature. In these events neither China nor America was completely clean or completely dirty. People died who did not have to. I think particularly of Investigator Sun and Special Agent Gardner. We should honor their memories by remembering our ultimate success. I hope we can work together in the future to stop corruption and other types of crime. I have much still to do here, and I’m afraid you will be going home to many hard tasks. But I believe we have made a good start.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank you.” Zai looked around. “I will keep the others away.” With that, Zai left the waiting room and stood outside the door, leaving David and Hulan alone.

  “This won’t be for long,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “You’ll come soon.”

  “I will.”

  “You promise.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll be back for you.”

  She smiled. “I’m counting on that.”

  When it was time to board, David had a hard time letting her go. As he walked down the jetway, he paused and turned to look at her one last time. She was standing—dry-eyed—by herself. Nearby, an old woman swept the floor. A few young men in army uniforms rushed by eager to begin their furloughs. A handful of businessmen scuttled past, talking on cellular phones. David waved to Hulan and turned away.

  After takeoff, David opened the packa
ge Guang Mingyun had given him. David didn’t know what he’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t a computer disk. He held it thoughtfully for a couple of minutes, balancing it in his hand. Once the pilot turned off the seat-belt sign, David got up and walked to where Beth Madsen was working on her laptop. The seat next to her was vacant.

  “May I?” he asked.

  “Sure.” After he sat down, she nodded at his cast. “You’re more or less in one piece, I’m happy to see. Can I ask what happened?”

  After David told her and thanked her for her assistance, she said, “I’ve never been so scared in my life, and I didn’t do anything.”

  “Your help meant a lot to us. I don’t know what we would have done…”

  “It’s over now. That’s the main thing.” Then, seeing the look on his face, she asked, “Or is it?”

  “That’s why I came over here. I have another favor to ask of you.”

  He handed her the computer disk. She closed her file and inserted the disk. There were no passwords or secret codes. Instead, the disk had spreadsheets listing shipments, future delivery dates, and payment schedules for nuclear trigger devices made by the Red Dragon Munitions Company, a division of the China Land and Economics Corporation, and sold to a consortium of generals in the People’s Army. Hitting an icon brought up another spreadsheet showing how the consortium had arranged to resell the triggers to several countries and individuals.

  “Do you know what this is?” David asked.

  Beth Madsen ejected the disk and handed it back to David. “I don’t want to know, and I don’t think you do either.” Then, affecting a carefree manner, she said, “Now let’s see if we can find a flight attendant to pour us some champagne. I think I need it.”

  By the time David saw Madeleine Prentice and Rob Butler at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, they’d both already been briefed about his activities in China. He gave them the disk and they never mentioned it to him again. But within a few days, David could see its impact in several small pieces buried deep in the newspaper and in cryptic faxes from Hulan. A new flurry of arrests had been made on both sides of the Pacific. Of those in China, Hulan thought David might recognize the name of General Li, who, until his fall from power, had served on the Central Committee. He was the grandfather of Li Nan, the Red Princess Hulan and David had met that night at the Rumours nightclub.

  David was unfamiliar with the names of the men arrested in the United States. Most of them were not American citizens but hailed from places in the world where terrorism was rampant. However, there were a handful of native-born crackpots who had also placed orders through Chinese middlemen to buy the nuclear triggers. To date, Guang Mingyun’s name had been kept out of the press. David suspected that it would never appear.

  All this David apparently observed with only passing interest, since he was busy with his own cases. Madeleine had given him the go-ahead to prosecute Hu Qichen and Wang Yujen. Armed with the information Spencer Lee had chanted during his death ride, David subpoenaed Lee Dawei’s financial records from several banks in Southern California and was able to piece together an intricate money-laundering scheme. David then went to the grand jury and had come away with an indictment. Immediately after the dragon head’s arrest, the entire organization started to disintegrate. Now David spent his days interviewing witnesses who willingly stepped forward. He had worked toward this moment for many years, but he had no illusions. The Rising Phoenix had suffered a blow—perhaps even been defeated entirely—but in the vacuum another gang would seize power.

  On March thirteenth, David invited Jack Campbell to run with him the next day around Lake Hollywood. In the morning, the FBI agent—dressed in a warm-up suit—met David at the gate that led into the lake property. As they stretched, Campbell kidded David about trying to run with a bum arm, but the younger man answered tersely that it helped his recovery to keep the blood moving. Then, to ease the tension, David clapped the agent on the back, jogged in place for a few steps, and went back to his stretches.

  They started out at a leisurely pace. It was still early morning and only a few people had set out ahead of them. The air was fresh and the lake reflected the blue of the sky. David waited until he could verify that no one else was on the path, then he shoved the agent against the fence. David held his cast just under Campbell’s chin to pin him in place. The look of surprise on the FBI agent’s face was quickly replaced by a laugh. “What the fuck! You’re pretty handy with that thing.”

  “Tell me what this was all about!”

  Campbell attempted a shrug. “What’s to tell?”

  “This was never about endangered animals, drugs, illegal immigrants, or the triads. So how about the truth?”

  “The truth? Can’t do that,” Campbell said lightly. “You don’t have the clearance.”

  David jammed his cast against Campbell’s chin. “I think I earned my clearance.”

  “You’re sounding pretty tough for an AUSA, but, hey, I’m the one with the weapon.”

  A small smile played across David’s lips. “I don’t think so.”

  The agent reached behind him for the gun he kept holstered at his waist. His eyes widened when he realized it was gone.

  “I took it while you were stretching.”

  “I didn’t think you had it in you. You’ve got balls, Stark. I’ll give you that.”

  “Let’s try it again.”

  But Campbell wasn’t ready to cave in that easily. “What about the other runners?”

  “I’ll worry about that when they come. Until then, start at the beginning, and no lies.”

  “The beginning…” Campbell said thoughtfully. “I guess that would be with Guang Mingyun. He was up to his elbows in those nuclear trigger shenanigans. Could we prove it? Absolutely not. So we get a break. Here’s this big operator and his only son is murdered. You find the body. Guang wants the killer found—at any cost. Do you know what that means? He came to us. Guang knew his son was up to no good, but he was willing to take the risk that whatever we uncovered might cause him to lose face.” Campbell paused, considered, then asked, “What does it matter now, David? We got the bad guys.”

  “Finish it!”

  “So he comes to us, like I said. We have a practical government, David. We’re a country of merchants. We always have been. We say, This is gonna cost you. What do you have to trade?”

  “The triggers.”

  Campbell nodded. “He tells us he’s noticed some improprieties in one of his businesses.” As Campbell said this, a memory of Hulan’s father rushed into David’s brain. At Long Hills, Liu had said that anyone could take advantage of Guang Mingyun. Indeed, while his back was turned, his son had begun cheating him. At the same time, someone else had horned in on the Red Dragon trade. “Guang says he’s willing to give us names if we help him,” Campbell continued. “As a gesture of good faith, he tells us where and when a shipment of the triggers will be delivered. Those arrests were made while you were flying to Beijing the first time, but the people were all low level. But see, Guang has already promised he’ll give us the big guys—generals in the People’s Army no less—if we find his son’s killer. A deal like that doesn’t come around very often.”

  “So you sent me to China to get the deal rolling.”

  Campbell held up a hand. “Now wait. You’re getting ahead of things. We know that Guang’s a prickly guy. We also know that we’d rather do business with a capitalist like him than some unknown down the line. We’re thinking ahead. We have been for a long time. What’s going to happen after Deng dies? Will the generals take power? Will some conservative wacko emerge from the Central Committee who’s got a bug up his butt about capitalism and democracy? We’ve got analysts who weigh these things and here’s what they tell us: Guang’s bringing wealth to the country. He’s got support from the people. Man, this guy’s consolidated power all along the Yangtze. He’s driven by money, that’s something we can understand. So, back in Washington, they think Guang’s not such a bad guy to hav
e in our camp. We’ve certainly been in bed with worse. To put it bluntly: We’ve got a vested interest in China. Guang Mingyun is someone we understand. We speak the same language. Only one thing’s going to hold him back: the People’s Army. We help him find his son’s killer and we help him bring down the strongmen in the army. All this may not happen today or even a year from now, but down the line, we’ll expect tit for tat.”

  “All for a price.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Part of that price was Noel.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Campbell said with regret. “But, Stark, he knew what he was getting into. It’s a risk we take every day.”

  “What about Watson?”

  “Power corrupts.” Campbell shrugged. “These things happen.”

  “So you knew.”

  “We knew something.” Campbell held up his hands again and spoke earnestly. “You understand that when I say ‘we’ that doesn’t necessarily mean me or even the Bureau. I just do what I’m told.” His hands dropped as he said, “Let’s just say that what happened came from the highest levels of government.”

  David also remembered hearing that same phrase in China. Everything the president of the United States and all those officials in China had said these last few weeks had been bait used to ferret out the ambassador, Vice Minister Liu, and the generals—each guilty of their own crimes—and to keep Guang from reneging on his deal. All the rhetoric, all the threats, had been nothing more than a political smoke screen. Those people who made up Campbell’s “highest levels of government,” whether here or in China, had toyed with David’s and Hulan’s lives with complete dispassion and the certainty that they would never be revealed.