The Interior

Hulan gathered up the papers, knowing that she would have to look at them more closely later, and left the computer room. She walked up a flight of stairs to Vice Minister Zai's office, hoping that even though it was Sunday he'd be there. He was. He looked up from his paperwork, and she couldn't help but see the subtle look of triumph that passed over his features. It was as though he had said aloud, / told her to come back and she obeyed. But then, seeing the expression on her face, his eyes narrowed and he asked her to sit.

"I'm afraid you're going to tell me you haven't finished with your personal investigation," he said. "You're correct, Vice Minister."

He waited for her to speak again. When she didn't, he drummed his knuckles on the table, thinking, then stood. "It is hot in here today, Investigator Liu. Come, let us get some fresh air."

They left the compound and walked around the corner to Tianan-men Square. Despite the fact that this place was important to the government, it was really quite barren. The Forbidden City anchored one end, Mao's mausoleum sat at the other. The Great Hall of the People and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution flanked the other two sides of the square. The concrete square spread out vast and hot under the unrelenting sun. If Hulan and her superior kept to themselves, strolling through the middle, their conversation would be private.

Zai stopped finally, gazed about at the impressive buildings, and said, "You want me to do something." When she nodded, he sighed and said, "Only with you would a suicide turn into something more." "I'm sorry, uncle. I didn't choose this outcome." He sighed again, more deeply this time. This was going to be worse than he thought. "What do you have?"

"Has Investigator Lo spoken to you yet?"

Zai frowned at the woman before him. How like her to confront him with the person he'd assigned to watch her. Zai said, "Lo is with your David this morning. He has been disappointingly secretive in his reports the last few days. As you can imagine, this gives me even greater cause for concern."

"Your Lo is a good man."

"You say that today because he is obeying you. Tomorrow he may once again return his loyalties to me… or someone else. Don't trust him too completely."

"Him or anyone else," Hulan agreed, echoing a lesson that Zai had hammered into her since she was a child. But all this was almost pro forma banter to keep them away from what they both knew had to be a dangerous subject. As an inspector, she didn't have to observe the rigors of privileged information that David adhered to. In fact, in China she had an obligation to expose what she knew or suspected. On the other hand, David was her lover and the father of her child. While the Chinese law was vague about what he could and could not say about his client's activities, she didn't want to do anything that would harm his career or reputation.

She began by telling Zai how she'd infiltrated the factory. She spoke of the harsh working conditions and showed him her hands. But Zai, who'd spent many years at hard labor, was not terribly impressed. "Don't be so naive," he said. "You haven't worked with your hands in more than twenty years. Of course you would have blisters and scratches."

Then she said that she'd met a man who'd been in love with Miaoshan. Now for the first time Hulan hedged on the facts, taking them out of order and implying something for which she did not yet have concrete proof. "This man mentioned that Miaoshan had papers that were proof of bribery of an important official. I saw those papers, which did indeed show large amounts of money being deposited in various accounts."

"Who was receiving the money?"

"I believe it is Governor Sun Gan," Hulan said. It was true she believed this statement, but she didn't know it to be a fact. As air came out in a tight hiss through Zai's teeth, she continued, "I came in today to look up his travel record." She handed the piece of paper with Sun's data to Zai. He hesitated, not wanting to touch it. Then, with his forehead deeply creased, he took the paper and read.

"When I saw this I came to you," Hulan went on. "Doesn't it seem strange that his trips abroad, especially to the U.S., lasted so long?"

When Zai looked up, it seemed to Hulan that he had aged. They both knew how dangerous this was. Sun was a popular politician, and there had been no mandate from above to bring him down.

"I would like to see his dangan," Hulan a

"What does this have to do with the death of your friend's daughter?"

"I don't know yet, but the leads in that murder have brought me here."

Zai looked down at Sun's exit and entry record again. After a moment he looked up, nodded, handed the paper back to Hulan, and walked away. After a few paces he stopped and looked back at her. "Are you coming?"

Once back in the compound, he told her to wait in his office. A half hour later, he rejoined her. In his hands he held a large manila file. He sat down and wordlessly pushed it across the desk. He watched her open it; then he turned away and went back to work of his own.

Hulan began to read. Sun Gan had been born in 1931 of the Western calendar in a village outside Taiyuan. The Communist Party had already been in existence for ten years, and Sun was blessed with a pure peasant background. He was still just a little boy during the Long March but was old enough to remember the atrocities of the Japanese invasion of 1937. By 1944 Shanxi Province was firmly in Japanese-Occupied China. A few Americans came into the territory either as spies or had parachuted in when their planes were shot down during the occasional bombing mission. After the Japanese surrender American marines made up a new presence in Taiyuan.

At thirteen years old Sun Gan had apparently been a bright boy and very involved in his village's Communist party. (His third uncle had gone off to join Mao's troops many years before). He also had an affable personality-a trait he still carried to this day, Hulan noted-and had easily become the mascot for a group of American GIs. Hulan suspected that although this camaraderie had been less than i

This early work came with a reward-a position in the People's Liberation Army. During the winter of 1948, when Sun was only seventeen years old, he participated in the massive and decisive battle of Huai Hua against the Guomindang in neighboring Anhui Province. It was here that Sun performed several heroic acts, which were detailed over several pages. He could have stayed in the army-which would have meant that today he would have been a very high-up general, rich and powerful- but Premier Zhou Enlai had personally asked the young man to go back to Shanxi.