Flower Net (Red Princess 1)

“What are they doing?” David asked.

“If this were somewhere else—near a stretch of cultivated land, for example—I would guess they were doing some kind of diversion or irrigation project. But look, those rocks must be washing away in the current. They aren’t building anything. They’re just keeping busy.”

“It’s hard to imagine your father and Guang doing that kind of work.”

“And Uncle Zai, too, even though he was here later,” Hulan added. “Oh, David, what a waste!”

“It was all right in front of us, but we couldn’t see it. Guang’s ties to Sichuan, the bear farm, this place. Think of the years Guang and Zai must have plotted. And your father…”

“Right,” she said. “Everything must have started here.”

23

LATER

Long Hills

By the time Hulan and David reached the landmark the young woman at the Panda Brand facility had described—a pair of stone pillars marking a dirt road on the left—darkness had enveloped them. They bounced over the rutted road, which led down into a canyon. The headlights danced crazily into groves of dense bamboo. They came around a corner and almost had a head-on collision with a black sedan that shimmied within inches of David and Hulan’s car and sent them skidding off the road and into a low ditch.

“What was that?” David exclaimed.

“I don’t know. Are you all right?”

David nodded. “And you?”

“I’m fine, I think.” They waited a moment, feeling shaken, then Hulan asked, “Who was that? Do you think we should follow him?”

“He’s already got too much of a head start. Let’s find the farm first.” David put the car in reverse and with much squealing of tires and billowing dust edged back onto the gravel road. A few minutes later they came around another curve, and the road opened up. Ahead of them, in the beam of the headlights, they saw a couple of low buildings enclosed by a fence and a sign that read LONG HILLS BEAR FARM. David stopped the car and the two of them sat staring ahead into the darkness.

“I wish I had a weapon,” Hulan said.

“I wish you did, too, but I’d settle for a flashlight.”

By opening the car doors David and Hulan seemed to shatter the silence. When they shut the doors, they were again plunged into inky blackness. They waited for their eyes to adjust.

“Ready?” Hulan whispered.

“Yeah.”

They met at the front of the car and crept forward. Hulan gently pushed open the gate. Its creak seemed louder than the car doors’ slam.

“Let’s look out back first,” Hulan suggested softly. David nodded and followed her between the two buildings. As soon as they reached the other side they could hear deep breathing and could smell the bears. A few more tentative steps and they came to the first cage, which stood several feet above the ground on four posts. Beneath it, excrement and old food that had fallen through the mesh rose up in a pile a good two feet high. Inside the cage, a moon bear looked at them and groaned. This sound roused the animals in other cages.

As they edged forward, David and Hulan saw several cages, each with a moon bear. The animals had no room to stand or even sit up. They all wore metal corsets around their middles. Some of them had gangrenous infections that festered and oozed pus from beneath their corsets; others seemed to be suffering from dementia.

“Is there something we can do for them?” David asked.

There was no mistaking the impatience in Hulan’s voice as she said, “What? How? We’re in the middle of nowhere, David. Come on, we’d better see what’s inside.”

The first building was locked, but from the sounds of movement and heavy animal sighs inside, they determined tha

t it must house more bears. Then they walked to the second building. It appeared to be a storage shed of about fifteen by fifteen feet with several window-size openings. David poked his head through one. He could smell the warm aroma of fresh hay mingled with the feral odor of more bears, which he could hear breathing deeply. But he couldn’t make out anything else. The door easily opened and they entered. But the room—with only starlight to illuminate it—was pitch black. Then, just ahead of them and to their left, they saw the small orange glow of a cigarette’s tip as someone inhaled.

A voice in English said, “I have been waiting for you.”

Hulan was not surprised to hear her father. “Baba,” she said.

“Yes, it is I.” Then a match was struck and a kerosene lantern lit. In its flickering light, David saw Vice Minister Liu, dressed not in a sharp Western suit but in the clothes of a peasant. A pistol dangled casually in his hand. David knew nothing about guns, but this one looked to be of a large caliber. Liu smiled. “It took you so long to get here. But now that you have arrived, are you surprised?”