Gage’s cell phone rang as he checked his e-mails at the desk in his hotel room in Marseilles. The window next to him overlooked the Old Port from high above the night-jeweled Quai de Rive Neuve that formed its southern border.
He looked at the number and the time. It was Faith and it was 3:30 A.M. in China. As he reached for the phone, he felt the force of the contrasting images of the devastation in Chengdu and the starlit perfection of sailboats rocking in their slips and the purring Mercedes limousines sliding by below. “I need some help,” Faith said. “Is everything—”
“I’m fine, really. The government shut down the Internet and I need to check something.”
“Hold on.” Gage closed his e-mail program and opened a Web browser.
“What are you trying to find out?” he asked, as it loaded.
“Do you know who Donald Whitson is?”
“The CEO of RAID Technologies. He was on the news the other day, talking about the destruction of their plant in Chengdu.”
“I need to know whether he was once head of their East Asian operations.”
Gage navigated to the RAID Web site, the officers’ tab, and then to Whitson’s résumé page.
“From 1988 through 1991,” Gage told her, then heard her repeat the information in Mandarin. “Who are you with?”
“A workers’ committee in the economic development zone east of the city. They want evidence that Whitson was in a position to have arranged payoffs to Ayi Zhao’s son.”
“Let me call Alex Z and I’ll conference you in.”
Gage put her on hold and punched in Alex Z’s number in San Francisco, then connected him to her and explained the issue.
“We need something fast,” Gage said, “so they won’t think Faith made it up. But she’s got no e-mail access.”
“No problem, boss,” Alex Z said. “I’ll get Whitson’s résumé on my monitor. I’ll bypass the Internet by sending a photograph to her cell phone. A screen shot. I’ll magnify it so it’s readable and she can zoom in even closer.”
Gage heard the ticking of Alex Z’s keyboard in the background, then “It’s on its way.”
“Keep sending whatever you can find about Whitson,” Gage said. “Then find out where he lived in China, who he worked with, and who the RAID bankers in Asia were at the time.”
“I’m on it,” Alex Z said, then disconnected.
“Do you need to get out of there?” Gage asked. “I can send Mark Fong over.”
“Let me go into another room,” Faith said.
Gage listened as a door was opened and closed, then murmuring voices, then another door opening and closing, then the tap of her shoes, and finally silence.
“I’m not sure that it’ll be necessary to smuggle us out,” Faith said. “Anyway, a snakehead’s background may be a little too shady for the circumstances.”
“Which are?”
“What’s going on here is one of the most astounding things I’ve ever seen. The farmers and workers have formed themselves into an investigative body, kind of like a French inquisitorial court. Some of these people can barely read and they’re questioning and deliberating like the best judges I’ve ever seen. If only—” Faith’s voice broke. She paused, then sighed. “If only the mobs hadn’t killed so many before they got to this point.”
“I know it’s small comfort,” Gage said. “But it could’ve been worse. China usually kills in the millions, not in the hundreds.”
“You have a better perspective than I do since you’ve been in the middle of this kind of thing before. I’ve always been the note taker that comes by afterward, when things are settled and new institutions are in place.”
Faith fell silent. Gage didn’t interrupt her thoughts.
“There have been some amazing things,” she finally said. “You should’ve seen Ayi Zhao’s grandson. A sweetheart of a boy. He took the leader aside before the meeting began in which his parents were first questioned. They call him Lao Mao, Old Cat. Not because of his appearance—he’s tall and long and lean—but because of his silent pantherlike grace and because of the look he has in his eyes, how he takes things in and sees inside of people. He seems severe until you look at him closely, then you can make out how weary he is. Just beat. These people haven’t slept much for days and days and you can see it in his face. He’s in his mid-fifties, but right now he looks mid-sixties.
“They stopped a few feet away from me, just outside of the door to the provisional court. Jian-jun looked up at Old Cat and told him the story of Moses and how God wouldn’t let him enter the Promised Land because his hands were bloody from fighting his way across the desert. He was trying to explain to Old Cat that legitimacy requires clean hands.”
“I’m not sure whether that’s courageous,” Gage said, “or just crazy.”
Faith exhaled. “I was holding my breath. Old Cat gave him a puzzled look, then walked inside and whispered to a man already seated at the judge’s table. I was sure he’d just given the order to have Jian-jun hauled away. The man nodded and Old Cat turned back, and then walked past Jian-jun and out the door. Just like that. It was stunning.”
“And that’s the difference between tyranny and rebellion,” Gage said. “I hope it lasts.”
“I’m afraid that tyranny will return pretty soon, but from another direction, when the government decides that things have gone far enough and sends in People’s Liberation Army troops to take control—hold on.”
Ten seconds later, Faith said, “The photo just arrived from Alex Z.”
“There should be more coming in a few minutes.”
Gage heard a door open in the background, and a voice calling to Faith in Mandarin.
“I need to go,” she said.
“Call me the instant you need to get out. I’ll find a way.”
After Faith disconnected, Gage checked his contact list and called a number in Taiwan.
The phone rang four times before a man said, “Wei,” then yawned.
“Mark, it’s Graham.”
“Ah, Da-li Shi-fu.” Marble Buddha was Mark Fong’s nickname for Gage, given to him when they’d last worked together. “What do you need?”
“Faith is in Chengdu.”
“And you need to get her out?”
“When she’s ready. Her and students. Six altogether, one with a leg in a cast. And not by air since the airport may still be shut down.”
“Why not just have someone drive them over to Chongqing. My cousin can meet them and help them get tickets and they can fly out from there. They won’t even need to change planes in China. They can go straight to Bangkok, then back to the States.”
Gage stepped to his window and looked toward downtown Marseilles at the east end of the port, and at the cars streaming out of the city center.
“I have a feeling that the country may cave in toward the middle,” Gage said, “and they’d be trapped. They may need to take a land route, maybe across a few borders, and I need someone who knows how to get that done.”
Fong laughed and said, “You mean someone who can slither like a snake?”
“Exactly.”