He’d learned Mandarin and English simultaneously from his parents living in New York’s Chinatown, so he had no accent but rather a bland inflection that would sound foreign to a Chinese. He tuned into the conversations around him, relearning the accent he’d used when he’d been here with the CIA.
He couldn’t believe the transformation in the years since he’d last been to China’s largest city. The skyline was among the tallest in the world, with buildings and construction cranes crowding ever higher, and the pace of life was among the most frenetic. Everyone walking the sidewalks carried on excited conversations over ubiquitous cell phones. When night fell, the Shanghai streets were washed in enough neon to rival the Las Vegas Strip.
He vanished into society in incremental steps. After checking out of his hotel, he left his two suitcases behind a Dumpster that had just been emptied and wouldn’t likely be moved for a few days, not that there was anything in the bags to incriminate him. The diplomatic papers had already been flushed in the hotel. Next, he bought off-the-rack clothes from a midpriced department store. The clerk thought nothing of a customer wearing an expensive Western suit buying clothes that didn’t seem up to his standard. Wearing his new purchases, Eddie ditched his suit and bused out of the thriving downtown until finding an area of factories and drab apartment blocks. By this time, he’d gotten food stains on his shirt and had scuffed his shoes using a brick from a construction site.
He got a few looks from the poorer workers in their ill-fitting clothes, but for the most part no one paid him much attention. He wasn’t one of them, but he didn’t look like he was that much above them, either. Again, the clerk at the clothing store where he bought two pairs of baggy pants, a couple of shirts, and a thin gray windbreaker assumed Eddie was a down-on-his-luck salaryman forced into the labor ranks. He bought shoes and a rucksack from another store and a few toiletry items from a third without raising an eyebrow.
By the time he arrived at the overland bus terminal for his trip to Fujian Province, on his third day without a proper shower, he was an anonymous worker returning to his village after failing to make it in the big city. The slow transformation not only ensured no one would remember him, it helped Eddie become the role. As he sat on a cold bench at the terminal, his eyes had the haunted look of failure and his body slouched under the weight of defeat. An old woman who’d struck up a conversation told him it was best he return to his family. The cities weren’t for everybody, she’d said and told him she’d seen too many young people turn to drugs as an escape. Fortunately, her cataracts prevented her from seeing that Eddie wasn’t as young as she assumed.
The trip had been uneventful, crowded onto a bus that belched great clouds of leaded gasoline fumes and stank of humanity. His trouble had started when he reached Lantan, the town where Xang and his family had begun a trip that ended with them murdered in a shipping container. Eddie had no way of knowing, again because he hadn’t had time to prepare, that he’d arrived during regional elections. The army had set up a checkpoint in the town square, and everyone was required to pass through on their way to the polls.
Eddie had seen such elections before and knew that the townspeople had a choice among one candidate for each office up for election. Oftentimes the ballot was already checked, and the voter had to simply place it in the ballot box under the watchful eye of armed soldiers. This was China’s version of a democratic concession to its people. Some high officials had come out from the provincial capital of Xiamen to watch the polling, and the military had even brought a tank, a massive Type 98 if Eddie’s quick glimpse had been enough for an ID. He assumed it was a public relations ploy by the PLA, the People’s Liberation Army, as well as a subtle reminder of where the ultimate power in China lay.
Although Lantan had a population of less than ten thousand, Eddie knew he’d attract attention. He didn’t speak the local dialect all that well and didn’t have a plausible reason for being in the isolated town if questioned by a curious soldier. Which was why he’d spent the past five hours under a bridge in an irrigation ditch just outside the town limits. He didn’t plan on leaving his hiding place until the officials and military rolled on to the next target of their intimidation.
But once again the luck Eddie tried to make for himself had left him.
He’d been lost in his own world of cold and pain and didn’t hear the voices until they were almost directly overhead.
“Just a little farther,” a male voice cajoled. “I saw a spot when we entered town.”
“No, I want to go back.” It was a woman’s voice, but young — maybe a teenager. She sounded frightened.
“No, it will be okay,” the male said. He had a cosmopolitan accent. Beijing or its environs. The girl sounded local.
“Please. My parents will wonder where I am. I have chores.”
“I said come on.” The man had lost all pretense of civility. His voice was sharp, tinged with a manic, desperate edge.
They were on the bridge spanning the ditch, just a few feet over Eddie’s head. A patter of dirt rained from the joints of the heavy wood decking. Their footfalls had become uneven. He could picture the couple in his mind. The girl was holding back, trying to slow them, as the man drew on her arm to the point of having to drag her.
Eddie gently pushed himself from the bank and sidled silently across the eight-foot ditch, listening as the man drew the girl across the structure. “It will be fun,” he said. “You’ll like me.”
There was a dense copse of trees just beyond the village along the dirt road, a secluded spot that Eddie knew would soon become the scene of a rape. As the man and his victim gained the road, Eddie pulled himself up the embankment, exposing himself had there been a sharp-eyed observer in the nearby town. He shouldn’t have even moved from his original spot. What was about to happen wasn’t his concern, but he was about to make it so.
The man was a soldier, an AK-47 slung over his shoulder, his uniform clean compared to the dirty peasant clothes the girl wore. He had her by the arm, lifting her so her feet barely touched the ground in a frog march to the nearest trees, already in shadow as the sun set beyond a range of mountains to the west. She wore a skirt and simple blouse, long hair in a thick tail dangling between her narrow shoulders.
Eddie waited until they’d vanished into the woods. He peered back to the town. Electric lights were coming on in a few of the buildings, while outlying houses remained dark, their owners hoarding the candles they relied on for illumination. No one was looking in his direction, and the soldiers in the square appeared like they were making preparations to load the tank onto its special twenty-wheeled hauler.
He rose from the ditch and crossed the road, water streaming from his clothes. His feet were bare because he knew the cheap cloth and stitching would have dissolved after such a prolonged immersion. He merged into the forest, letting his sense of hearing guide him deeper into the woods. The girl was protesting, her voice pitched high before becoming suddenly muffled. The soldier must have a hand over her mouth, he thought, his feet silent amid the sparse ground cover.
He stopped at the base of a large pine. A flash of white had caught his attention. The girl’s blouse. It lay on the forest floor. Eddie chanced a look around the thick trunk. The soldier had set his rifle on the ground next to where he’d pinned the girl. His upper body covered hers, but he could tell she was naked from the waist up. With one hand over her mouth, the soldier used the other to pry the girl’s skirts up to her hips. Her legs were thin and coltish, and they scissored in the air as they tried to throw off her attacker.