Death of a Red Heroine

Yao want to see him?
    Chen glanced out of his cubicle. Detective Yu had not come in yet. Party Secretary Li would not show up, as a rule, until after ten. He could make his Guangzhou report after coming back from the Party Discipline Committee.
    The committee office was in Zhonghui Mansion, one of the impressive colonial-style buildings at the corner of Sichuan and Fuzhou Roads. He had passed the building many times, but he had not realized that there were so many institutions headquartered there—Old Men’s Health Society, Women’s Rights Committee, Consumers’ Rights Association, Children’s Rights Committee . . . He had to study the lobby directory for several minutes before locating Director Yao’s office on the thirteenth floor.
    The bronze elevator had been sprayed with some supposedly high-class air freshener; the air inside felt inexplicably close. He was unable to shake off the sense of being caged even as he left the elevator, which deposited him just in front of Yao’s office.
    The Party Discipline Committee had been founded in the early eighties, with its central office in Beijing and branch offices in all large cities. After the Cultural Revolution, it was realized that the Party, with its unlimited, uncensored power, was unable to resist corruption, which would eventually lead to its downfall. So the committee, mainly consisting of retired senior Party members, came into existence to prevent and punish Party members’ abuses of power. Its main responsibility as a watchdog was to exercise a sort of censorship but the committee was not an independent institution. While it had conducted several intra-Party corruption cases, most of the time it barked rather than bit. However, the committee, which was authorized to perform background checks on Party members, was influential in the process of young cadre promotion.
    Chen’s knock on the office door brought out a middle-aged woman with an inquiring look. When he handed over his card, the woman, whose voice he recognized as that of the secretary on the phone, led him into an elegantly furnished reception room containing a large oyster-colored leather sofa, flanked by two mahogany chairs and a tall antique hat stand.
    He had anticipated that Director Yao would keep him waiting for a while. To his surprise, Yao came out immediately and shook his hand firmly. She led him into her office and had him sit in a leather club chair in front of a huge oak desk.
    Yao was an impressive-looking woman in her late sixties, squared-faced with thick eyebrows, wearing a dark suit, which was immaculate, without a single wrinkle. No jewelry. Minimal makeup. She sat straight, appearing unusually tall behind her impressive desk, perhaps due to the combined impression of her starched collar, the splendid view from the office window in back of her, as well as his seat. Sitting in a chair much lower than Yao’s, almost as if he was a witness at an inquisition, he was nervous.
    “Comrade Chief Inspector Chen, I’m pleased to meet you today.” Yao spoke with a pronounced Shandong accent, which also fit the image of an “old Marxist woman,” a notorious character in the movie Black Cannon Incident, in which a Marxist bureaucrat made a fool of herself by punctuating her every speech with quotations from Marx and Mao. Chen had seen it with Wang, who joked about his becoming a “young Marxist man.”
    “It’s an honor to meet you, Comrade Director Yao.”
    “You’re probably not surprised to learn that you are highly regarded by us old comrades, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen. I’ve spoken to a number of people, and they all praise you as an intelligent and dedicated young cadre. You are on the seminar list of the Central Party Institute, aren’t you?”
    “Yes, but I’m still young, inexperienced. So I have so much to learn from old comrades.”
    “And you are working hard, too, I know. You’ve been quite busy recently, Comrade Chief Inspector?”
    “Yes, we’re short-handed.”
    “Is there some important case you are responsible for?”
    “Several. Every case is important—to us.”
    “Well, I have heard that you are investigating the case of Guan Hongying, the national model worker.”
    He didn’t know whether that was a statement or a question, so he just nodded. But how could she have heard of it, he wondered.
    “Is there any result so far?”
    “A few promising leads, but nothing definite. A lot of questions are unanswered.”
    “What are