The First Excellence: Fa-Ling's Map Read online

  He straightened and turned his palms outward to indicate he was no threat. He stepped forward, stopping when Sui’s captor barked a command. Pretending confusion, he took one more step, placing himself within reach of his mother.

  Without warning Dahui threw his right foot into the air, catching Junior Agent Ho Lon-Yi under the chin. The impact of shoe against jaw made a sharp snapping noise. As Yi fell backward, Sui scrambled free, charging toward the still opened door.

  When his mother was safely in the hall, Dahui blocked the doorway. He held his stance, senses on high alert.

  Yi picked himself up from the floor, cursing as he rubbed his chin.

  Senior Agent Jiu studied Dahui with indifference.

  “We have what we need,” he said, nodding at Ng-Zhi, who slid a perfectly manicured hand into his jacket and pulled out a gun. Dahui barely had time to register the fact it was swollen by a silencer. He was still ready to do battle with the intruders when the bullet pierced his brain.

  “Dahui!” the old man, Dahui’s father, shouted from his sickbed down the hall.

  “Bring the woman back,” Jiu ordered. Agent Ng-Zhi nodded and walked down the hall.

  Sui waited desperately for the elevator. She tried to run toward the stairwell but it was already too late. She could not pass Ng-Zhi in the hall, so she cowered, praying for a door to open.

  She heard the familiar ‘ding’ directly behind her. She turned and darted into the open car, pressing the ‘door close’ button with all of her might.

  The big man did not even break a sweat. With one long arm he reached into the car for Sui, grabbing her wrist. The inhuman sensation of his oversized effeminate hand on her skin sent her into panic. She fought wildly, scratching and biting him as he dragged her back toward the apartment.

  Sui’s husband was dying. She knew there was nothing to be gained by trying to save his life. She had to focus all of her energy on trying to save herself and her son. However, when she saw Dahui’s body crumpled in the apartment doorway, the fight went out of her.

  She could hear the rattled sobs of her husband coming from the bedroom.

  “Lim,” she said, loudly enough for him to hear, “they have killed our son!” She hoped her husband would also hear what she did not say, and he would understand that somehow, miraculously, their daughter Shopei had managed to escape.

  These were the last words Sui ever spoke, and the last her husband Lim ever heard. With the quiet expedience of two silenced bullets, both the dragon and her mate were no more.

  FIVE

  The knock was unexpected. The three men turned their faces toward the door.

  “Sui, ni hao ma?” Sui, how are you ? a man’s voice called from the hallway. “I brought a newspaper.”

  Senior Agent Jiu Kaiyu put a finger in front of his mouth. He glanced at his subordinates to be sure they got the message. He did not want to have to deal with any more bodies. With luck, the man would leave when he got no response.

  The knocking was repeated. After a third try the visitor gave up, and his heavy footsteps receded down the hall.

  Still Jiu’s men did not move until they were sure the guest had gone.

  When they were satisfied they would not be disturbed again, they resumed their work of reconstructing the murder scene. They were not concerned with minor details. The evidence needed only to appear obvious to a team of sloppy, underpaid civil servants who did not possess more than an ounce of natural curiosity.

  As long as the main elements of the crime were laid out according to Jiu’s plan, it would be recorded as a botched drug deal resulting in the slaughter of the Tan family. Shanghai detectives would not connect the murders to the recent violent attack against the senior Mr. Tan. In keeping with the customary local mistrust of authority, none of the family’s friends or relatives would speak openly about this seemingly inconsequential coincidence.

  It wasn’t even necessary to retrieve the slugs. The gun and its ammunition were both untraceable. They had once been the property of a drug lord, but he was dead now.

  The local police would not investigate thoroughly. After all, the Tan family had been less than nobody in the fabric of Shanghai society.

  It was, however, necessary to create the plausible illusion of drug-related murder. Not wanting to leave prints near the bodies, Jiu Kaiyu drew on a pair of surgical gloves. Then he used a pocket-knife to create a slit in a plastic bag full of fine white powder. Slowly he waved the bag over the bodies of Dahui and his mother, allowing a small amount of the narcotic to scatter onto their clothes. Then he pressed the still-swollen bag into the boy’s right hand.

  The big man, Ng-zhi, was now wearing gloves over his sculpted fingers. He threw a sheet over Dahui’s computer hard drive and carried it out of the apartment. Within moments he had returned with another console, similar in appearance to Dahui’s. Ng-zhi connected the substitute hard drive to the keyboard, mouse, monitor, photo card reader and printer. Then he turned on the PC to make sure it was working properly.

  Meanwhile in the parents’ bedroom, Jiu Kaiyu and the small man, Yi, busied themselves arranging the scene.

  “Look at this crap,” Yi said, waving at the assortment of herbal medicines laid out on top of the old man’s dresser. “Ox-tails and ground leopard teeth — sure to cure just about anything.”

  Jiu Kaiyu leaned over the body to smooth the disarranged bedding. He did not raise his eyes, in fact barely acknowledged his subordinate with the slightest lift of his shoulders. The younger man had become a nuisance lately. Yi’s anger was unpleasant, as was his steady stream of comments. Only the fact Ho Lon-Yi had a well-placed uncle could account for his climb in the organization. His surliness, arrogance and worse, his laziness, were tolerated by Jiu with weary resignation.

  “Let’s go,” Jiu Kaiyu said. He waited for the younger man to exit the room first, not trusting him to leave things as they were. As they passed the son’s bedroom, Jiu glanced at the third man, Ng-zhi, who was sliding the replacement hard drive into place on the workstation. Ng-zhi connected the power cord and straightened his bulky torso, following his boss out of the apartment.

  Once in the hall, Jiu Kaiyu saw the newspaper the visitor had left on the floor.

  “Don’t touch it,” he said. Then, reconsidering, he went back to retrieve it. If the time of death were to come into question, the newspaper might help to obscure the forensic evidence. He carried it into the apartment. Opening it, Jiu laid the paper on the floor beside the old man’s bed the way he imagined the woman might have laid it down on hearing the sound of an intruder.

  He looked around the room once more, satisfied that no glaring contradiction had been overlooked. An entire family, mother, father and son, all gone. At least there were no immediate relatives left to mourn them. It worked out better that way.

  He saw but did not pay attention to the family photo on the living room bookshelf. If he had looked closely, he would have realized the entire family had not, in fact, been exterminated. There was one member who remained at large to mourn and to seek revenge.

  It did not occur to him the Tan family was unusual. He saw what he expected to see — a typical Chinese urban one-child family. The Tan apartment had only two bedrooms, cementing the illusion of normalcy. He couldn’t know the couple also had a daughter, and Shopei kept her bed in a large storage room that doubled as a laundry room.

  It wasn’t that Jiu Kaiyu was careless. It was just that he had learned through experience to speed things up by leaping to certain conclusions. His assumptions were seldom wrong.

  Occasionally, though, his mind’s race toward the so-called ‘obvious’ resulted in oversight. As he passed through the living room, his eyes lighting briefly on the photograph on the bookshelf, there were in fact four faces beaming at him from within their simple wooden frame. Seeing only what he expected to see, Jiu took no notice of the fourth face.

  He joined his men in the hall. They did not use the stairs. The footsteps of three grown men would r
everberate in an empty stairwell. It was much more natural for them to ride in the elevator.

  They encountered no one on their way out of the building. As with most crimes committed in the tireless city of Shanghai, there were no witnesses, unless one could count the four in the photograph who surveyed the atrocity through sightless eyes, their smiles forever fixed in blissful ignorance.

  SIX

  As the men drove away from the building, one pair of eyes followed them. Shopei had run from the apartment on her brother’s insistence, but she could not bring herself to go far. She bought a box of moon cakes from a stand across the street, then pretended to eat one while sitting on the ledge of a brick tree encasement.

  She was partially hidden from view by the moon cake vendor. A green bus decorated with bright red characters advertising a new restaurant was parked on the street, adding to her cover. She watched as a large man carried a computer console from the building, putting it into the trunk of a brown sedan. She saw him carry a second hard drive back into the lobby.

  From where she sat, Shopei could not see the car’s plate number. She did, however, notice an object suspended from its rear-view mirror. It was an air freshener, but not one of those commonly seen on the streets of Shanghai, fashioned in the shape of Pokemon or Hello Kitty. It appeared to be some sort of net with a large blue feather dangling from its centre. She did not know it was a dream-catcher, a popular Native-American trinket that was virtually unheard of in China.

  Soon afterward three men came out of the building and got into the car. Shopei prayed Dahui would come jogging onto the sidewalk, that he would see her sitting under the tree with her uneaten moon cake and would laugh at her.

  But he did not come out, nor did he call her on her cell phone to alleviate her concern. There was only one possible explanation: someone or something had prevented him from leaving the apartment. Knowing the stress they had all been under since the attack on their father, Dahui would not have allowed her to worry needlessly.

  Shopei sat with the opened box of moon cakes on her lap, until she could sit no longer. She had to know what had happened in the apartment. Her mother’s shrill command to “run away” left no doubt in her mind. The danger was immediate. Even now, Shopei might be able to help her family.

  She tossed the moon cakes into a trash bin and made her way across the busy street, darting through traffic with the skill of a local pedestrian. Her eyes flashed nervously around the lobby as she waited the interminable fifty seconds for an elevator to come.

  Shopei got off the elevator one floor below her apartment and ran to the stairwell. She opened the heavy door quietly and stood listening for unusual sounds. When she was sure she was alone, she moved up the stairs to her floor and opened the door with the least possible noise. Her ponytail bristled in a primal sensation of fear.

  Ever so slowly she crept down the hall toward her family’s home. She strained her ears to pick up any noises from within the apartment.

  She heard nothing ― not her mother’s voice reading to her father from the newspaper; not the sound of running water, or footsteps, or cupboard doors opening; not even the peaceful rhythm of her father’s snores.

  Shopei opened the door. The fact that it was not locked added to her alarm.

  Her eyes immediately took in the surreal image of Dahui and their mother lying on the floor. At first she didn’t notice the white powder scattered on their clothing. She was too frightened to check for breathing or a pulse. No matter. The position of the bullet holes made it clear no measure of life had been spared. Both Mother and Dahui had been shot in the head.

  Fighting her impulse to scream, she hurried to check on Father. His wound was not apparent at first, as his head had been re-positioned with the bullet hole resting against the pillow. However, the lifeless eyes that stared at the window and the jaw still hanging open in a call for help told Shopei what she needed to know.

  She approached him, and even found the courage to kiss him on the cheek once she was certain he was dead.

  “Goodbye, Father,” she whispered. She could feel her senses draining away, as the numbness of shock swept through her body. She knew she would have to act quickly, while she still possessed some presence of mind.

  In her own room, which doubled as the family laundry room, she gathered up those few possessions she could carry into a large shoulder bag — her identity papers, a few small toiletries, her digital camera and all of her Yuan.

  She hurried into Dahui’s bedroom. Randy’s contact information and flight number would be in his latest email. She reached for the power button, but something did not seem right.

  A numb realization crept into her brain. The intruders had switched computers. She jumped back from the PC as if it might explode. Quickly she turned off the power and wiped her fingerprint from the button. She knew Randy was expected to arrive at 11:00. She would have to get to the airport in time and inquire about the gate number once she was there.

  A thick anger rose in her throat. Suddenly it became important to salvage what she could of her family’s valuables, such as they were. The thought of a greedy landlord or a crooked police officer putting his hands on her mother’s beloved jade pieces, or her father’s favourite calfskin wallet sickened her. She knew where Dahui kept his papers, and these she tossed into her bag along with her late grandmother’s rings.

  As an afterthought, Shopei removed the camera from her bag and made her way back to her parents’ room. She took some shots of her father and the area around the bed from different angles, taking care to touch nothing.

  As she passed through the living room, she took several pictures of Mother and Dahui before the process of photographing them made her stomach turn. She lifted the family photo from the shelf, studying each face in turn.

  The photo had been taken on a special day: Mother’s most recent birthday. Father had treated the family to a picnic at the park. Sunlight always caused Mother’s face to radiate. Shopei swallowed hard and put the photo into her bag.

  Then she reached into a kitchen cupboard and found her parents’ cash savings.

  She stepped carefully around Dahui and Mother and bowed her farewell. She shut the apartment door carefully, leaving it unlocked as she had found it. Then she sprinted to the stairwell and down the nine flights to the street below.

  One thought hovered at the front of her consciousness. She had to get to Shanghai International Airport by 11:00. She had to intercept Randy and warn him of the danger he was in.

  Tears would come later, when the time was right for grief’s heavy hand to settle upon her heart.

  SEVEN

  Fa-ling stood at the edge of her travel group, as far from the others as possible without losing contact. She was with them, but not one of them.

  The five nervous couples clung together, making small talk as they searched for the guide who was scheduled to meet them at Shanghai International Airport. One of the women, Eloise Golluck, had been chosen as the group leader. She was responsible for carrying all necessary travel documents.

  During the layover in Vancouver, Eloise and her husband Joseph had introduced themselves to Fa-ling. They were nice people, but Fa-ling wasn’t comfortable with their curiosity. She wished she could be more like her younger sister. Daphne would talk to anyone. Strangers trusted her. It was because of Daphne’s face, which was soft and round, as open as the full moon.

  Fa-ling’s narrow features, on the other hand, while not exactly closed, were not inviting. In those unguarded moments when she passed a mirror and saw herself as the world must see her, the effect was unsettling. At best, Fa-ling thought her face appeared pensive and faraway. Sometimes it carried a look of outright sadness.

  There was a light that shone in her eyes, though, when she became animated. Her friends saw it. Those who made it into her world were loyal.

  Since setting out on this journey to her birth-country, Fa-ling had felt even more withdrawn than usual. It was the nature of the trip, she told h
erself. It was more than just an adventure. It was a pilgrimage.

  Fa-ling’s life until this point had been anything but normal. She did have a boyfriend for awhile, Michael, but they’d broken up during the March break. Neither she nor Michael had taken the commitment seriously. In retrospect, Fa-ling understood it had not been ‘love’ that brought them together. It had been merely a convenient alliance ― they moved in the same circle of friends.

  Eventually Michael became unavailable. Fa-ling was too proud to ask him why, but she guessed the reason. He was worried Fa-ling would start to make demands on him. It was unthinkable that he should introduce her to his family. After all, the Liu’s were ‘Chinese’ in a way she could never be, despite her mastery of the languages.

  Beyond the sharp pain of having been rejected, the separation didn’t bother Fa-ling much. She talked it over with her friends, had a good cry, and got back to her studies.

  Once in awhile, though, most often late at night, she remembered the way Michael had felt inside of her. In her memory the lovemaking was better than it had been in reality, not clumsy at all, but sweet and passionate. At such times she would lie awake and wonder what it would be like to be truly desired.

  When her loneliness grew too great, there was always her music. The feeling of a new reed resting on her tongue brought with it sweet oblivion, followed by the sound of her own longing as it emptied itself into the instrument’s smooth cylinder.

  Her parents had always been in awe of Fa-ling’s desire for solitude and seldom discouraged her when she would hide away with books or her clarinet. Of course, her father was an academic, so he understood about the love of reading, and her mother was a musician. A private smile would pass between them when they talked about Fa-ling.

  They worried, but they trusted her to find her own way through her childhood.

  Still, they had not allowed her to take this trip alone. Solitude was one thing, safety was another. When she finally convinced them this was something she had to do, her mother arranged for her to ‘tag along’ with the travel group.