Flower Net (Red Princess 1)

As Gardner disappeared to mak

e his call, David returned to his scenario. “You get to Monterey Park and you start asking questions…” David seemed at a loss again. “And then…and then…And then you’re on your own.”

“Say you’ve got a package for Spencer Lee or Yingyee Lee,” Hulan said. “Play dumb.”

“And when you get there, try to tell us where you are if you can,” Jack Campbell said. “We’re going to be listening. You won’t be able to hear us, but I promise you won’t be alone. If you need us, just shout. We’ll be right there.”

“And one more thing,” said Hulan. “Ask him about Guang Mingyun.”

For the first time, a shiver rippled through the immigrant’s body. Wordlessly, he shook his head. But Hulan was firm. “You ask how Guang Mingyun is involved, how much money he makes from this trade, and who he uses in China to send the products out of the country.”

By now her MPS colleague had caught on to what she was suggesting. Peter argued with her in Chinese, but she cut him off in English with fierce finality. “I will take full responsibility.” Then she put a gentle hand on Zhao’s bony shoulder. “You ask about Guang Mingyun if you think you can.”

They drove together in a surveillance van supplied by the FBI. During the long trek across the city, the seriousness of his position began to register with the immigrant. By the time they dropped Zhao off at an intersection two bus stops away from downtown Monterey Park, he looked pale and drained of all energy. He walked a few steps, then turned and grinned bravely. Noel Gardner called out one more time, “We’ll be with you the whole time. Don’t worry.” Then Gardner pulled the sliding door shut and the van pulled away.

The plan moved ahead with amazing accuracy and precision. Zhao had been a perfect choice, since he didn’t have to feign ignorance of the city in which he found himself. He walked along the streets of Monterey Park, which were quite different from the two blocks of Chinatown that he’d been allowed to see in the course of his deliveries. He recognized the Chinese characters on the shop signs, but the rest—the vast restaurants, the luxury cars, the bejeweled women—was foreign to him.

He was lost and he looked it. Several times women approached him, mistaking him for a homeless man and offering him small change. When he asked for Spencer Lee or Yingyee Lee, they shook their heads and said they had never heard of those men. One matron asked Zhao his name. When he told her he was Wang Yujen, she suggested he go to the Wang family association house. She gave directions, pressed a dollar bill in his hand, then briskly continued on her way, calling out a final few words of reassurance. “They will help you.”

Zhao did not go to the family association house, where an immigrant might find help and where American-born Chinese of the Wang clan could find companionship and common interests years after their family’s arrival in the United States. Instead, he wandered into a video arcade, where the wire transmission was lost in the noise of simulated battles, drag races, and the players’ squeals and shouts of delight, outrage, encouragement, and triumph. But once back on the street, Zhao seemed to know exactly where to go.

He entered a 7-Eleven and again asked for Spencer Lee or Yingyee Lee. At first the clerk denied knowledge of either man. When Zhao insisted, his voice rising in frustration, explaining that he had a delivery for one of the Lees, that he’d been detained at the airport, that he’d come all the way to Monterey Park by himself—as a foreigner and totally new to the city—the clerk relented. “You wait here,” he said. “I will make a phone call.” When the clerk came back, he told Zhao to wait outside. Someone would be by to pick him up shortly.

From their vantage point in the van, David and Hulan could see Zhao anxiously standing on the street corner. He shifted from foot to foot, paced a few steps in one direction and back again. Then, in an apparent effort to calm himself, he squatted on his haunches, setting his small suitcase and his packages beside him. He could have been on a street corner in any Chinese city.

A black Mercedes with smoked-glass windows pulled up to the curb. The driver rolled down the window and called out, “You are Wang Yujen?”

Zhao nodded enthusiastically.

Inside the van, David groaned. “He’s got to talk. The tape won’t pick up nods.”

Zhao opened the door to the backseat, put his belongings inside, and, without a glance toward the van, got into the front seat of the car.

The driver said in disgust, “You smell like you haven’t taken a shower in ten thousand years.”

“Sorry, so sorry.”

Keeping a safe distance, Jack Campbell followed the Mercedes through the business district, then into a residential area. The Mercedes began to snake its way up a winding road. The houses got bigger, changing from 1950s tract homes into ostentatious mansions too large for their lots.

“Chinese people live in these villas?” Peter asked. When he found that they did, he shook his head in disbelief. What was called a villa in Beijing was nothing compared to the size of these Spanish-style monstrosities.

The Mercedes slowed, waited for a pair of electronic gates—each with the character for happiness rendered in wrought iron—to slide open, then pulled inside. The driver didn’t bother to close the gate behind him. Gardner parked the van across the street. When Spencer Lee got out of the car, David immediately recognized him. Tonight he was nattily dressed in a silk shirt, creamy white slacks, and tennis shoes.

“Hurry up, hurry up,” he ordered.

Zhao got his possessions out of the car and followed Spencer Lee up the marble steps and into the house. Over the transmission, they could hear Zhao exclaiming over the foyer and the living room. “Be quiet,” Lee snapped. “Too much noise. You sit down and tell me why you are here.”

The next few minutes proved to be the toughest for the team in the van as they listened to Zhao—through Hulan’s translation—recount his misadventures at the hands of the law. To David, Zhao sounded like a groveling fuck-up. Zhao was just a poor peasant. He didn’t understand anything of what happened. He was afraid when the foreign devil came up and took him away. He thought he was going to be executed. In other words, David thought Zhao sounded believable, but Spencer Lee was not so easily satisfied.

“They take Hu Qichen. They put you in another room. Okay. I see that. But why are you here? Why do I not see Hu Qichen?”

Zhao’s reaction surprised David. “Fuck my mother! Fuck your mother! Someone says, You go to America, you come home, you make some yuan. I think, Maybe I earn enough to buy an automobile. Maybe I can be a driver for foreigners. But I tell you what happens. I come to America. The policeman looks in my mouth. He puts his fingers up my asshole. I’m thinking, Next thing this man is going to put a bullet in my head. My children will have no father. My wife will go and marry Noodle-man Zhou. He has his eyes on her for many years. I’m thinking, Maybe I don’t want to buy a car. Maybe I want to stay alive. Better to be a poor man in China than dead in this ugly place. Fuck your mother!”

The tirade—shrill and loud—ended as abruptly as it began. Dead silence followed, then Spencer Lee began to laugh.

“Sit down, Mr. Wang. Have a cup of tea.”

“Eaaah,” Zhao grunted, still annoyed.