The Interior

25

BECAUSE OF THE SOUNDPROOFING IN THE BUILDING, MOST of the fatalities were in the final assembly room. By the time the fire had spread far enough to alert the women there, the fumes from the burning plastic and fiber had made any chance of survival impossible. Fortunately, almost all of the women had made it out of the primary assembly area where Hulan had worked. But here too many women lost their lives due to smoke inhalation or being crushed in the stampede. The remoteness of the factory had done little to help matters. Many women died on the way to Taiyuan. More died in the hospital, inundated as it was by so many injuries. The final death toll reached 176.

David had done his best to fight back the fire, swatting the flames with the empty burlap bags that had once held the stuffing for Sam amp; His Friends. Madame Leung, who stayed at David's side until the very end, helped his efforts. Miraculously, she'd found a couple of fire extinguishers. If not for these, they wouldn't have made it out of the building alive. For her efforts Madame Leung was given a medal by the central government.

And then there was Hulan. When David emerged from the burning building, choking, his eyes ru

It was a good thing David thought to bring Siang, because by the time they reached the hospital Lo had gone into shock. With eyes wide, Siang presented Lo's and Hulan's Ministry of Public Security credentials to the nurse, who quickly summoned help. Hulan and Lo were wheeled away, and David waited.

Siang didn't have the language skills to translate the doctors' words, but eventually someone was found who'd studied at Johns Hopkins. Still, the words-tachycardia, oliguria, anoxia, tachypnea-were as foreign and had as little meaning for David as the Mandarin. Even the terms he understood he couldn't allow himself to comprehend. The doctor seemed to be telling him that the sepsis had gone so far that Hulan's heart, brain, or liver could be overwhelmed at any moment. If the poisoning turned out to be viral, the doctor added regretfully, there was nothing anyone could do. They had twenty-four hours, if Hulan lived that long, to wait for the results of the blood culture. In the meantime Hulan was intravenously dosed with broad-spectrum antibiotics.

Those twenty-four hours were the worst of David's life. Now that he knew what Hulan had, all of her ailments of the last few days fell into place-the flu-like symptoms, the lethargy, the fever followed by chills, her rapid breathing, her racing, then feeble pulse. The guilt he felt over this was superseded only by the terror at the prospect of losing her.

Eventually the right cocktail of antibiotics was found, and Hulan's doctors a

By that time much had happened. Henry Knight, who survived the ordeal at the factory, led an expedition up Tianlong Mountain to ferret out Governor Sun, while Siang was informed about Tsai Bing's death and her father's hand in it. David, who never left Hulan's side, spent hours on a cell phone, talking to the partners at Phillips, MacKenzie amp; Stout, to A

One day Hulan's doctors crowded into her room and a

Many questions still needed to be answered, but those who might have answered them most truthfully-Miles, Doug, and Sandy-were dead. That left Aaron, Jimmy, and Amy. Aaron Rodgers, who had the great fortune to have been in Taiyuan on the day of the fire, admitted to a healthy libido befitting a twenty-five-year-old placed in the happy circumstance of being one of a handful of males amongst a thousand females. Ling Miaoshan had been the first of many conquests. His age, his isolation in the Assembly Building, and his stupidity (which became apparent to all concerned as the investigation unfolded) conspired to keep him blissfully in the dark to the financial shenanigans. As for conditions in the factory, Aaron used the predictable and well-worn excuse that he thought that's how things were supposed to be in China. As his mother and father, who flew out to Taiyuan, said, their son didn't know any better. No criminal charges were filed. He gave testimony against Jimmy and Amy in court; then his parents took him home. He would never again return to China.

David then turned his attention to Jimmy and Amy. David wasn't the only one who wanted answers, and so it was that Henry pulled himself away from the ruins of the Knight factory, where he'd worked practically without sleep since the fire, to accompany David to Taiyuan 's provincial jail. On their arrival they were handed a file pertaining to one James W. Smith, which had been faxed from the Australian authorities. As Hulan guessed when she'd first seen Jimmy, he had an extensive criminal background, which included armed robbery and a couple of cases of battery. He'd been in and out of prison since the age of eighteen. Two years ago yet another warrant had been issued for his arrest, but he'd managed to flee, ending up, the record showed, in Hong Kong. It was presumed that he had met Doug in that city, been hired, and had moved into the Knight compound even before the factory opened.