Flower Net (Red Princess 1)

“Besides him.”

“Peter.”

David considered this. “You said he was reporting our movements to someone. Who?”

Hulan hesitated. “I was his immediate superior. After that…Section Chief Zai.”

“Zai? Your Zai?”

“But it can’t be him,” Hulan said. “He’d never do anything to harm me.”

“But I think it would be a good idea to talk to him,” David said. “It may be someone else in the ministry. Zai may know who.”

But David’s clothes were still streaked with soot and grime. Clearly the first thing they needed to do was get David back to his hotel so he could change. The obvious mode of transportation was the MPS sedan parked out front, but now that car’s presence seemed ominous.

“If it is someone at the ministry, how do we know he didn’t send the car?” Hulan asked. If she was right, then going into the ministry at all would be dangerous, too.

At ten, after telling the two low-level investigators in the sedan that they’d be walking, Hulan and David set out down a thoroughfare to the back entrance of the Forbidden City. From there, they caught a series of buses, which took them to the Sheraton, where David was finally able to clean up. Then they took a taxi to the Ministry of Public Security.

They couldn’t sneak David past the guards or “hide” him from the people inside the building, so they walked as nonchalantly as possible up to Hulan’s floor, pretended to proceed to her office, then ducked instead into Section Chief Zai’s. When they saw he wasn’t there, they shut the door behind them. They assumed that the room was bugged, so they moved as quietly as they could and kept their voices low. Hulan again repeated that Uncle Zai couldn’t be involved.

“Okay, but since he’s not here,” David whispered, “let’s look around.”

Hulan mouthed the word no, but David walked to the desk and began looking through the papers. “This stuff is in Chinese, Hulan. I need your help.”

Hulan reluctantly came to his side. “You won’t find anything,” she said.

David ignored her, held up a piece of paper, and asked, “What’s this?” Hulan said it was a requisition form. She was surprised at the relief she heard in her voice. David held up another, then another. All were innocuous. One of the desk drawers was locked, but David used a letter opener to jimmy it open. He held up another piece of paper with a red seal stamped on it. Hulan’s unconscious gasp told him he’d hit pay dirt. “What is it?”

“It’s Spencer Lee’s death sentence. The red mark is Section Chief Zai’s chop.”

“You phoned him from the jail after Lee was sentenced. You asked him to file the official petition. Do you see any papers here that show he did that?”

Hulan scanned the desk, then shook her head.

“Let’s just look at this,” David said. “Maybe Zai is making a play. Maybe he wants back what he lost. What was it you said earlier? Things always change to the opposite.”

“Uncle Zai is an honest man.”

“But suppose he isn’t. You told him exactly what we were doing. If he is who I think he is, then he had to get rid of Lee. If for some reason that didn’t work, he had to stop us.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“If Peter reported to Zai,” David whispered urgently, “then he would have known we were going to the Capital Mansion to see Cao Hua.” He struggled to piece together what else had happened that day. “And remember what Nixon Chen said at the Black Earth Inn? You asked him if he’d ever seen Henglai at the restaurant. He said Deng’s daughter went there, the ambassador, your boss. He must have meant Zai.”

“But that doesn’t mean anything. Everyone goes there sometime. Nixon told us that, too.”

“What about when we came back to his office?” David pushed on. “He told us to back off. Then, remember what he said when I brought up the idea of going to L.A.?”

Hulan nodded. “He said we would be out of the way.”

“Out of the way, Hulan! Out of the way!”

“But, David, it can’t be. I’ve known him forever.”

How could he convince her? “On the first day I was here in China, I said something about the Rising Phoenix in your father’s office. Everyone acted strange after that. You told me why later.”

“Those cases had been an embarrassment to us. They were a loss of face.”