A Loyal Character Dancer

Yu’s family to come over to take a hot bath when he had stayed at the Jing River Hotel. Most Shanghai families did not have a bathroom, much less hot water. However, it would not necessarily be wise, Chen concluded, for him to stay in the same hotel as a female American officer. “That won’t be necessary, Party Secretary Li. It’s only ten minute’s walk from here. We can save money for the bureau.”
     
    “Yes, we should always follow the time-honored tradition of the Party: Live simply and work hard.”
     
    As he left Li’s office, Chen was disturbed by the elusive memory of what had happened to him, not too long ago, in another hotel.
     
    What can be recaptured in memory / If it’s lost there and then?
     
    He pounded at the elevator button. The elevator was stuck again.
     
    * * * *
     

Chapter 3
     
     
    T
    he airplane was delayed.
     
    Things were going wrong from the outset, Chen thought, as he waited at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport. He stared at the information on the departure/arrival monitor, which seemed to stare back at him, reflecting his frustration.
     
    It was a clear, crisp afternoon outside the windows, but local visibility at Tokyo’s Narita airport, according to the information desk, was extremely poor. So passengers changing planes there, including Catherine Rohn flying via United Airlines, had to wait until the weather improved.
     
    The closed gate looked inexplicably forbidding.
     
    He did not like the assignment, though everyone else in the bureau might have agreed, for once, that he was the very candidate for it. Wearing a new suit, uncomfortable in a tightly knotted tie, carrying a leather briefcase, struggling to rehearse what he would say to Inspector Rohn upon her arrival, he waited.
     
    Most of the people sitting around the airport, however, appeared to be in high spirits. A young man was so excited that he turned his cellular phone over and over, switching it from hand to hand. A group of five or six people, apparently of one family, kept sending one and then another, in turn, to the departure/arrival monitor. A middle-aged man tried to teach a middle-aged woman a few simple words in English, but finally gave up, shaking his head with a good-humored grin.
     
    Sitting in a corner seat, musing about Wen’s probable whereabouts, Chief Inspector Chen was inclined toward kidnapping by the local triad as the explanation for her disappearance. Of course, Wen might have met with an accident. In either case, the clues would be in Fujian. But his job was to keep Inspector Rohn safe and satisfied in Shanghai. Safe as she might be, how could she be satisfied? If the Fujian police did not succeed in finding Wen, how would he be able to convince her that the Chinese police had done their best?
     
    As for the possibility of Wen having gone into hiding, it seemed unlikely. According to the initial information, she had been applying for a passport for months, and had made a couple of trips to Fuzhou for the purpose. Why should she voluntarily disappear at this stage? If she’d had an accident, by now she should have been discovered.
     
    There was, of course, another possibility: The Beijing authorities wanted to back out. When national interests were involved, anything was possible. If so, his job would be pathetic at best, like a marble go piece placed on the game board to distract the opponent’s attention.
     
    He decided not to speculate further. There was no point. In a speech on China’s economic reform, Comrade Deng Xiaoping had used the metaphor of wading across the river by stepping on one stone after another. When there’s no foretelling the problems ahead, no planning can avoid them. That was the only course Chen could follow now.
     
    Opening his briefcase, he reached for Inspector Rohn’s picture for another look, but the photo he pulled out was of a Chinese woman—Wen Liping.
     
    A haggard thin face, sallow, hair disheveled, with deep lines around her lusterless eyes, whose corners seemed weighed down by invisible burdens. This was the woman in the recent picture used in her passport application. So different from those in her high-school file, in which, Wen, looking forward to embracing her future, appeared young, pretty, spirited, her red armband flashing as she raised her arms to the skies during the Cultural Revolution. In high school, Wen had been a “queen,” though that was not a term used in those years.
     
    He was particularly impressed