China Dolls Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by Rob Wood

  China Dolls

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  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-09832-932-7

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-0-9832-933-4

  Table of Contents

  1

  TIGER BANK

  2

  COMES SOMETHING WICKED

  3

  MIXED MESSAGES

  4

  DRESS WHITES

  5

  STRANGERS BEARING GIFTS

  6

  FIFTY KILOGRAMS

  7

  WHO? WHAT? WHERE?

  8

  HAWKS AND HELICOPTERS

  9

  A CADAVER AND A COLONEL

  10

  LOULAN BEAUTY

  11

  OFFER, COUNTER-OFFER

  12

  THE HUMANITARIAN

  13

  GUANGXI

  14

  ONE HUNDRED STEPS

  15

  SCRIPT CHANGE

  16

  ARE YOU INSANE?

  17

  GET LILY ZHANG

  18

  HUTONGS AND SIHEYUANS

  19

  AIDING AND ABETTING

  20

  NECESSITY IS . . .

  21

  THAT WAS MY HOME

  22

  FRIENDS AND FAMILY

  23

  NO ONE DOES THAT!

  24

  OUT TO SEA

  25

  QUESTIONS

  26

  MAKING FRIENDS

  27

  PIRATES!

  28

  A REASONABLE ALTERNATIVE

  29

  INSERTION

  30

  MENODARWAR

  31

  TEARS OF ALLAH

  32

  CACHE AND CARRY

  33

  NO LUCK, NO TIME, NO AMMO

  34

  “DO YOU INTENDTO KILL ME?”

  35

  “ALL PRESUMED DEAD.” GOOD!

  36

  FAILURES

  37

  PLANS AND PROSPECTUS

  38

  “LONG TIME NO SEE”

  39

  SINGLE ROOM OCCUPANCY

  40

  YOU WON’T LET HIM HURT ME, WILL YOU?

  41

  PICK AND GO

  42

  NOW OR NEVER

  43

  ON THE LAM

  44

  MY ASHEVILLE MOUNTAIN HOME

  45

  TRUST

  46

  EYES ON THE PRIZE

  47

  THIBEAULT AND MAUDE

  48

  STAY OUT OF THE DUCKWEED

  49

  MUTINY

  50

  UP IN THE AIR

  51

  HOSTAGES

  52

  MOPPING UP

  53

  DEBRIEF

  54

  RECUPERATION AND REFLECTION

  55

  DRUGS: TACTICAL AND TARGETED

  56

  PERFECTION

  57

  NO SURPRISES

  58

  PLEASE DON’T DO THIS!

  59

  TAKLAMAKAN DESERT

  60

  TEST RESULTS

  61

  IN THE KAREZ

  62

  LOULAN!

  63

  REAL LIFE AND MOVIES

  64

  SHOVELS!

  65

  JUST THINK ABOUT IT

  66

  NEW VENTURES

  67

  PICNIC

  68

  BLIP ON THE RADAR

  69

  COMING OUT PARTY

  1

  TIGER BANK

  Her name in Putonghua, the official standard language, was Lijuan. Zhang Lijuan. In her Xinjiang homeland, she knew some people referred to her as “Loulan,” a reference to a beautiful woman from 3800 years ago. Then her homeland sat powerfully astride the Silk Road. Loulan was to return from the past when her people most needed her. “A bitter myth,” she thought.

  Most people now knew her as Lily Zhang, a prominent film star, with connections in Hong Kong and Beijing. “Another name, another myth.” In a culture that believed in the destiny-shaping power of a name, she was presented with a great many potential outcomes.

  Lily Zhang sat straight and erect. Her finely chiseled features were expressionless, but her heart raged with anger, humiliation, and frustration. A mystery indeed: how could one harbor so much fury beneath a mask of calm indifference? It was a talent.

  She had been placed behind a screen like an attractive potted plant. She couldn’t see. Cao Kai had wanted to ‘spare her.’ “These ignorant people soiled themselves in multiple ways during interrogation,” he said. The scene was “indelicate.” But as he well knew, she could still hear. Their torture was her torture, focused and refined because it could only be experienced through sound. Each sound, in its extended, fulsome, harmonic complexity, summoned images vividly to mind.

  Now she heard the thunk of the heavy hammer against the broad end of the wooden wedge. The beat was followed by a small shriek of wood as the wedge inched forward, lifting the board. And this, in turn, was overwhelmed by the counterpoint of pain: whimpers, moans, and sobs. Unlike an alligator clip on a nipple or a belt sander on a knee, it left no tell-tale scars, only tell-tale pain.

  This particular method was called “tiger bank.” A person, sitting upright, was tied down at the thighs and knees on a narrow wooden bench. A board was positioned under the heels, driven further and further upward by the wedge. The victim’s legs were stretched backward against the knee joint and the victim suffered excruciating pain.

  Yet Lily Zhang seemed utterly composed in her trench jacket and linen travel suit. To signal fear, loathing, or even impatience would be to give in to Cao Kai and to reveal more about herself than she wished. She wore indifference like a mask.

  She stared at the screen in front of her. In five panels, it supported the image of a winding, gnarled, intricately-detailed old cypress. It was a reproduction of the brush and ink drawing by the scholar-official Wen Zhengming. It was a symbol of endurance. In the upper left, Wen had added a couplet: “Weighted down by snow, oppressed by frost, with the passing of years and months, its branches become twisted and its crown bent down, yet its strength remains majestic.”

  Lily thought about the couplet and wondered if she had the requisite strength and endurance.

  Cao Kai had arranged to interrogate prisoners in the old municipal prison at Pingyao, a remarkably preserved medieval city. On the slab stones outside the gate, you could still see the ruts left by the wheels of carts that brought goods and people for disposition. The ruts dated from as far back as the Ming dynasty.

  Pingyao was situated in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, in the eastern region of the Loess Plateau. All of the city was preserved like a snapshot in time: barbican- fronted defensive wall, residential courtyards, and temples that rose in tiers like a layered cake, upturned at the corners. In 1986 it had been designated as a “famous historic cultural city” by the State Council of the People’s Republic. This act essentially froze the city in time.

&nbs
p; Colonel Cao Kai liked Pingyao. Cao fancied himself a dramatist. So, for one night, he had brought political prisoners here to this remnant of medieval China to be interrogated and disposed of. When Cao visited, tourists were forbidden. True, Pingyao was nearly a third of the way across China from his offices in Beijing. But Cao could get a bullet train. He was extremely well placed and influential in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) security division.

  And prisoners? They were available nearly everywhere. There were thousands across China. No one knew how many because, of course, they had been taken without due process. As a result, many were merely detained forever and simply forgotten. But Cao did not like to forget anyone.

  He knew some were Falun Gong—so-called religious extremists. Some were ethnic separatists. Some were ideological threats to the state—writers, activists, nouveau capitalists—who had stepped over the line. Some were merely the wives, mothers and daughters of the politically suspect. These were the ones Cao preferred. “You never know who knows what,” Cao would say.

  Lily had listened to them scream. This recalled, in a clouded, indistinct way, her own memories of a young girl’s screams—and her first meeting with Cao. In the years since, she believed she had become the more powerful of the two, engineering the relationship to suit her own ends. Always, she hid her real feelings behind a mask.

  At present, the screams had stopped. All she heard was the sobbing of a new victim, evidently a woman groveling in front of Cao. She knew Cao was sitting on a raised platform. He was pretending to be part of another time. He was pretending to be something other than what he was—the PLA’s pit bull, part national security, part secret police. And he was pretending that this was justice.

  Of the daughters, wives, and mothers here—or anywhere across China—many were completely innocent. Some knew things, however. It was Cao’s charge to make sure anything worth knowing came to light. He had all the means of discovery at his disposal. In the end, no one refused to answer his questions. But he still had to know enough to ask the right questions.

  A young girl approached Lily and proffered a small, cheap fan.

  “From one of the women,” the girl said. “She said it was all she had left of value. She thought she recognized you. She called you ‘Loulan.’ Are you famous?”

  Lily shook her head. She stared hard at the girl. The girl blanched at her own temerity. How could she have forgotten her manners?

  “My name is Lijuan.”

  “Oh,” said the girl, disappointed. “Anyway, the woman wanted you to have the fan. She said she had made it herself.”

  The girl backed all the way out, eyes on the ground.

  Lily saw that the fan was hand painted. She unfurled it, cocked it in her hand as courtesans had years ago. She admired the simplicity of the watercolor. It showed a cottage in the embrace of an old tree, a winter plum, a storied symbol in China. She thought the pattern of shadows at the corner was darker than elsewhere, as if this had been only recently painted—or repainted.

  Her wide eyes narrowed. She stared until the creases, folds, and shadows resolved themselves into the script called nushu. The message was short.

  “This will not end well,” she sighed. “Where to look for help?”

  2

  COMES SOMETHING WICKED

  Suitland, Maryland, is an unincorporated community and census-designated place approximately one mile southeast of Washington, D.C. It would be totally unremarkable, except for one thing: It is the headquarters of U.S. Naval Intelligence. Think concrete and steel piled high and wide.

  Inside, brusque as a January wind, Carla Izquidero shoved the folder across the desk. “National Security Document.” The first paragraph harrumphed: “Transnational organized crime (TOC) has infiltrated many influential governments and poses a significant and growing threat to national and international security, with dire implications for public safety, public health, democratic institutions, and economic stability across the globe.”

  Izquidero sat back in her chair. “Not only are criminal and terrorist networks expanding, but they also are diversifying. Vicky, we can’t see squat over there, and you know it.”

  Izquidero’s special interest was Asia. She and Joe Jovanovich—“Vicky”—had been friends even before the creation of the Navy’s Information Dominance Corps (IDC), a creation, as Vicky liked to say, of gumshoes and cyber nerds.

  Their argument was an old one. The walls of the Suitland office building had seen and heard it all. In fact, Izquidero and Jovanovich often batted the issue around, knowing they were both in fundamental agreement.

  “We’ve got the X37B spy plane and satellite reconnaissance,” Jovanovich said. Vicky often saw technology as the fulcrum on which to leverage scant human resources.

  “China and Korea—most of it’s mountains,” returned Izquidero. “That complicates satellite recon. Their facilities are hidden in a network of tunnels. They’re hard to see. Top secret communications are not only encrypted, they’re carried on a system of buried fiber optic cables that are difficult to tap.”

  Vicky lifted his hands, palms up, as if asking the heavens for patience. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know. I’ve said for years there is no substitute for boots on the ground—or better said, ears to the ground. I’ve said it because the tech toys I love can’t do it all. And they never tell you anything about culture or the way people think.”

  Izquidero shook her head. “Maybe the message isn’t getting through. The Naval Forces Command for Korea has only about three officers and sixteen enlisted men deployed across the peninsula, covering all of IDC activity.”

  “And that’s South Korea!” exclaimed Jovanovich. “The beloved leader’s DPRK is a black hole. China isn’t much better. Diplomats, businessmen, aid workers—they’re all under security surveillance. They don’t—or won’t—say much. And Beijing’s control of communications is notorious.”

  “I don’t even trust what’s coming out of Tokyo, to tell you the truth,” said Izquidero. “Externally, frictions with China and North Korea frustrate their intelligence gathering. Internally, I think they withhold information to shield the politically powerful people—and that includes TOC.”

  “Maybe the China Teams will help,” said Jovanovich, his natural optimism returning. “I like the idea of units of expertise as mobile as our fleet, combining scholars with real warfare veterans, and calling the whole thing Navy.”

  “It’s an idea whose time has come,” nodded Izquidero. “Here is a history, a culture, a strategic dynamic we don’t fully understand. I, for one, would give a lot to have one little insight into Asian transnational organized crime. One nugget of information.”

  The man hardly had the strength to gasp. He seemed to sip tiny draughts of air. Sepsis had poisoned his body. His hair—even his eyebrows—had fallen out. The short bristles lay dark against the pillow.

  Anemia sapped his strength. Lack of oxygen, due to a plummeting red blood cell count, addled his brain. The tattoos on his chest seemed to come alive, crawling, writhing, breeding.

  Good. A fitting last memory.

  His tattoos were his most precious possession. His pride. His self. His proof that he was yakuza, part of the estimable crime family of Japan.

  Not bad for the son of a Korean whore. Although he had been born in Hoech’ang, in the mountains west of Pyongyang, DPRK, his father was Japanese. A man of vision was his father, a member of the Red Army Faction of the Japanese Communist League. North Korea welcomed them as heroes. He was at home in both countries. But his loyalty was to North Korea, a country that employed several moles in Japan. He had been most successful with his son. His son had, in fact, become part of a cultural institution that was distinctly Japanese.

  After a moment, the man’s flickering clarity of thought returned. He remembered, vividly, his initiation. He heard himself swearing loyalty to his komicho, the supreme boss. At the time, he held in his hand a picture of a saint. They had set fire to the picture. Regar
dless, he had to hold the fire in his hands. They cut his trigger finger and the blood seeped, sizzling, into the flame.

  He heard the sound of flutes. He saw the brethren nod. He was accepted. He was yakuza.

  He had waited. He had been humble. He had been obedient. Today, even as he approached death, he was only a shatei—a younger brother. But he had no doubt that his kumicho would be proud of him. He had done exactly as he was told, exactly what was required.

  Not that it was difficult. On any given day at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant there were as many as 3,700 workers. A high proportion were yakuza recruits. It had always been so. How else was the power company going to meet its needs? This was the most dangerous and—considering the danger—the most poorly compensated work in all of Japan. But you did what the kumicho told you.

  After the explosion, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare had admitted that no one knew precisely who they were, or where they came from. Especially after the explosions. But he knew. He was one of them. They were nameless men, popping iodine pills, stomping around in baggy suits. Like the pills, the suits were designed to protect them. They hadn’t protected him from where he had been or what he had done. But he had known this going in.

  In the panic that followed the nuclear meltdown at the plant, officials could keep track neither of people nor material. They really did not know what was happening from one moment to the next. There was no accountability. And the amount he had taken could not be noted, billed, or traced. It was the perfect crime with the perfect outcome.

  3

  MIXED MESSAGES

  For Lily, it was 48 hours later, and the circumstances seemed vastly different. For one, she had shaped a new persona. Serene and confident, she had changed into high heels and a blue western chiffon: open back, sarong neck, and billows of fabric descending from the waist—fabric sufficiently sheer to accent her long legs and thighs.

  Cao was preoccupied, his attention divided between the lovely Lily Zhang and the message he had received by courier: “Fundamentals favorable. Futures promising.”

  Lily looked past Cao, seated on her sofa, cocktail in hand, to the window-wide panorama behind him. Her capital city condominium was her favorite retreat and the unofficial Beijing headquarters of Zhang Enterprises. And the view! A world of Paul Androu-inspired skyscrapers jutted out of the smog and the hustle-bustle at street level. Hers was an aerie indeed.