Flower Net (Red Princess 1)

“Criminal!”

“Black heart!”

“Hooligan! Hooligan! Hooligan!”

“Country bumpkin!”

This last caught Lee’s attention. His head jerked up. He looked out at the faces and singled out the man, a vegetable peddler, who called out the insult again. “You!” Lee shouted. “Who are you calling country bumpkin? You can’t even afford a stick to beat your drum. You have to use your penis!” The crowd broke into cheers. Even the peddler laughed. “Take your stinking fart words back to your own outhouse,” Lee yelled. “You’re smelling up the whole village here!” People congratulated the peddler for eliciting such entertainment from the dead man.

Lee found Hulan and David again. “I did as I was told and I was guaranteed protection. They lied to me. I was a dope.”

The truck stopped. Guards pushed against the crowd, trying to clear a space so that the gates might be opened.

“There’s no more time,” Spencer said.

Hulan shouted to the guards. “I am from the MPS. You must let me through.” But the guards couldn’t hear her. There were still dozens of people between her and the front of the truck.

“Spencer…” Hulan’s voice was filled with regret. There was nothing more she could do.

“Make this mean something,” David said. “Tell us who you were working with in China.”

“I can’t. I don’t know.”

“Then the dragon head in Los Angeles,” David said. “He sold you out. Tell me his name.”

“Lee Dawei,” the young man said. The truck lurched forward, then stalled.

“Give me something I can use to get him.”

The young man shook his head wildly from side to side. “I can’t.”

David searched his mind, then blurted out, “The Chinese Overseas Bank! We think the organization keeps its money there. Give me names. Give me accounts. Make them pay for betraying you.”

The truck rumbled back to life. As it crept forward, Spencer Lee began shouting out names and numbers obviously long memorized into a rhythmic chant. The truck pulled into the courtyard, the gates closed, and the crowd fell silent. Hulan pushed through the people and banged on the gate. No one answered.

Everyone but David knew what would be happening now inside the compound. The placard would be removed from the condemned man’s back and tossed aside. He would be brutally pushed to his knees. The executioner would take his position directly behind the boy, aim his pistol at the back of his head, and fire. When the shot cut sharply through the air, several in the audience winced. Then the entertainment was over. The crowd, subdued now, began to disperse.

Suddenly the ground was rocked by a deafening explosion. The repercussion blew glass from windows, sending fragments slashing into flesh. Pandemonium broke out as people darted in all directions at once. Hulan and David found each other, then were pressed along in the current of humanity as everyone ran to where they could see smoke mushrooming up in a dense, acrid cloud. They poured into the crossroads. Merchants—whether injured or not—bolted for their stands, hoping that their wares weren’t destroyed. A few people collapsed—overwhelmed with relief that they were alive. Some bled from cuts. Others wailed—in fear, in pain. A few called out frantically for loved ones.

At the edge of the circle, the Saab was a charred mass of twisted metal. The smell of burning gasoline, rubber, leather, plastic, and flesh billowed into the air. Inside the car, David and Hulan could see Peter’s skin peeling away as flames licked up about him. Hulan rushed forward, trying to reach the car, but David pulled her back. “It’s too late. He’s dead.” She buried her face in David’s chest and he held her tight. He couldn’t distinguish the shaking of her body from his. Then one of the tires exploded, sending the crowd into another chorus of cries. A few good Samaritans ran for hoses and began dousing the blaze.

David and Hulan stood together in the traffic circle staring at the smoldering Saab, their breath ragged, their hearts racing. They knew they were supposed to be dead.

The fire was out. Peasants packed up and began trekking back to the countryside. Workers went back inside to their factories. Mothers returned home to start preparing the midd

ay meal. Only a few children—their pink faces streaked with soot—stood in nosy little groups in the traffic circle.

David and Hulan slowly regained their equanimity as well, so that by the time the Neighborhood Committee director, a man in his eighties, informed them that he had sent someone for the local police, they were already calm enough to begin plotting their next move. Hulan was about to search for a phone to call the MPS when she saw the Neighborhood Committee director poking at the burned-out car with a stick. When Hulan told him to step away, that he shouldn’t contaminate the evidence, the old man wandered off. Then Hulan, with David in tow, walked to a gas station to try to put through a call to Beijing, but the lines were still out.

Back outside, they sat on the curb. Hulan fished through her bag, brought out a notebook and pen, and handed them to David. He wrote down the names and numbers that Spencer Lee had shouted. When he was done, Hulan asked, “Will that help?”

“Yes, if he told the truth, and I think he did. The way he chanted those names…” He shook his head, remembering Lee’s final ride.

When they returned to the circle, they saw the old man with his head back under the hood. Hulan chased him away with a string of threats. Instead of being frightened by the inspector, he invited her to a café for lunch. He overrode her reluctance by saying that the phone lines to Beijing had been temperamental for the last six months, that the local police were corrupt and unresponsive, and that she could still watch the circle and the car from the café.

The Neighborhood Committee director guided Hulan and David to an open-air café decorated with New Year’s banners and couplets. He introduced his granddaughter, this simple establishment’s owner and chef. Hulan went with her into the kitchen and kept an eye on her as she made three bowls of noodles. Hulan warned the woman to make sure she used boiled water for the broth so that the foreigner wouldn’t get sick. The woman seared slivers of ginger, garlic, and dried red chili peppers in the bottom of the wok, threw in shredded pork—fresh just this day, she assured Hulan—then added hot water from a thermos and some noodles. At the last moment, the woman scrambled some eggs in a bowl and poured the mixture on top of the soup, where it instantly floated apart into flowery petals. Once everything had boiled again to Hulan’s satisfaction, the woman ladled the soup into bowls, dribbled in hot chili oil, and carried the meal to a table on the sidewalk, where the men sat next to a brazier.

David could have sworn that he wasn’t hungry, that he’d never eat again, but the first sip of the hot and fiery broth brought instant warmth to his body. For a few minutes, no one spoke, preferring to slurp their noodles appreciatively. Then the old man began to talk, criticizing his granddaughter for being a bad cook and announcing that when he died she would probably starve to death. Hulan understood this for polite conversation.