The Stone Monkey

response be?”
    “I’d say, ‘What have you done to earn my respect?’ ”
    “William might say the same to you.” Chang Jiechi lifted his hands, his argument complete.
    “But my enemies have been oppression, violence, corruption.” Sam Chang loved China with his complete heart. He loved the people. The culture. The history. His life for the past twelve years had been a consuming, passionate struggle to help his country step into a more enlightened era.
    Chang Jiechi said, “But all William sees is you hunched over your computer at night, attacking authority and being unconcerned about the consequences.”
    Words of protest formed in Chang’s mind but he fell silent. Then he realized with a shock that his father perhaps was right. He laughed faintly. He thought about going to speak to his son but something was holding him back. Anger, confusion—maybe even fear of what his son might say to him. No, he’d speak to the boy later. When—
    Suddenly the old man winced in pain.
    “Baba!” Chang said, alarmed.
    One of their few possessions that had survived the sinking of the Dragon was the nearly full bottle of Chang Jiechi’s morphine. Chang had given his father a tablet just before the ship sank and he’d had the bottle in his pocket. It was tightly sealed and no seawater had gotten inside.
    He now gave his father two more pills and placed a blanket over him. The man lay back on the couch and closed his eyes.
    Sam Chang sat heavily in a musty chair.
    Their possessions gone, his father desperately needing treatment, a ruthless killer their enemy, his own son a renegade and criminal . . .
    So much difficulty around them.
    He wanted to blame someone: Mao, the Chinese Communist Party, the People’s Liberation Army soldiers . . . .
    But the reason for their present hardship and dangerseemed to lie in only one place, where William had assigned it: at Chang’s own feet.
    Regret would serve no purpose, though. All he could now do was pray that the stories about life here were true, and not myths—that the Beautiful Country was indeed a land of miracles, where evil was brought to light and purged, where the most pernicious flaws within our bodies could quickly be made right, and where generous liberty fulfilled its promise that troubled hearts would be troubled no more.

Chapter Seventeen
    At 1:30 that afternoon the Ghost was walking quickly through Chinatown, head down, worried as always about being recognized.
    To most Westerners, of course, he was invisible, his features blending together into one generic Asian man. White Americans could rarely tell the difference between a Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese or Korean. Among the Chinese, though, his features would be distinct and he was determined to remain anonymous. He’d once bribed a traffic magistrate in Hong Kong $10,000 one-color cash to avoid being arrested in a minor brawl some years ago so there would be no picture of him in criminal records. Even Interpol’s Automated Search and Archives section and the Analytical Criminal Intelligence Unit didn’t have any reliable surveillance photos of him (he knew this because he’d used a hacker in Fuzhou to break into Interpol’s database through its supposedly secure X400 email system).
    So he now strode quickly, keeping his head down—most of the time.
    But not always.
    He would lift his eyes to study women, the pretty and young ones, the voluptuous ones, the svelte ones, the coy and flirtatious and the timid. The clerks, the teenagegirls, the wives, the businesswomen, the tourists. Eastern or Western made no difference to him. He wanted a body lying beneath him, whimpering—in pleasure or pain (that made no difference either), as he pulsed up and down on top of her, gripping her head tightly between his palms.
    A woman with light brown hair passed by, a Western woman. He slowed and let himself be touched by the veil of her perfume. He hungered—though he realized too that his lust wasn’t for her but for his Yindao.
    He had no time for his fantasies, though; he’d come to the merchants association, where the Turks awaited him. He spat on the sidewalk, found the back entrance, which they’d left open, and stepped inside. He made his way up to the top floor. It was time to conduct some important business.
    Inside the large office, he found Yusuf and the two other Turks. It hadn’t taken much—a few phone calls, a threat and a bribe—to find the name of the man who was sitting, nervous to