Chapter 26 #2
Vivien’s mind was racing.
It was, she had to admit, not just a good question, but an important one.
If Kai-wen really was alive, why hadn’t he gotten a message to her? And why hadn’t her husband told her the truth when she kicked him out? Did he want to leave? Her stomach knotted up.
The ferry lurched. Paused. Sank down in the waves, then bobbed back up.
There was silence as everyone waited to see what would happen next. Then the engines revved and strained, and the boat moved forward again.
Vivien was staring straight ahead. Oblivious to their impending doom.
The answer she came to was that her brother hadn’t contacted her because he didn’t want to.
And he didn’t want to because Liu must have told him what she’d done.
The secret she’d kept for decades had been eating her up inside. She’d had to tell someone. So, she’d told the only person she totally trusted. One night, while lying in his arms, she’d whispered the truth into Liu’s chest. Not daring to look into his eyes.
As it turned out, he was the last person in the world she should have trusted, should have told.
Still, maybe there was another reason. Her fingers were intertwined now, twisting each other as she followed that thought.
When Liu had left them at the airport, he’d turned to Vivien. His soft body and round face still reminded her of a dumpling. She very much liked dumplings. So delicious. So very Chinese.
“Welcome the future world,” he sang softly to her. Out of tune, but the lyrics clear. And familiar. “Infinite, ultimate glory.” He stared at her, hard. “Infinite, ultimate glory.”
It was the old Pangu folk song. One they used to sing, wrapped in each other’s arms. One she hadn’t heard in decades. Not since they were young and idealistic and so deeply in love.
Alice, standing beside her parents, also recognized that song. The lyrics had seeped under her door every night as she’d drifted off to sleep. She’d thought her father was singing to her, about her future. Her glory. Telling her he believed in her.
Instead, he’d been singing to her mother about the triumph, the ultimate glory, of a terrorist organization.
And he still was.
That they had created Pangu was not in doubt. They admitted it. That one or both might still be leading it was the question.
Dear God. Let me discover I’m adopted.
Alice glanced at her mother. Could her father have been right? Could this disheveled little woman on the overpacked ferry be running the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world? One responsible for hundreds of thousands, and now, after the power failure, perhaps millions of deaths?
And if her mother wasn’t, was her father?
Coconut buns. Coconut buns. Coconut buns.
“Tell me about the Terracotta Warriors.”
“You know about them. We were just there.”
“No, I want to know why they inspired you and Dad.”
Vivien turned to her. “You don’t still think we created a terrorist organization.” She studied her daughter, searching her face.
“I want to try to understand, that’s all.”
Vivien was quiet for so long Alice thought maybe she wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t open up. But finally …
“They reminded us of a time when visionaries ruled. When China could produce something so astonishing. So beautiful and powerful. Everything that is beautiful in China was created in the before time. The architecture, the poetry, the art, the music and opera. It was all almost wiped out by Mao. Free thinking, creativity, expression has been pretty much criminalized. The warriors seemed to show up to inspire us to stand up, to fight back. But the fact they were buried also seemed a sign. To use soft power. To lie in wait. To be patient.”
“And you have been.”
Vivien shook her head. “No. My Pangu is dead. I killed it. Or I thought I had.” She stared out, past the people throwing up over the side of the ferry. “Until we stood there, at that wall, I had actually forgotten about the legend of Qin Shi Huang.”
“Who?”
“The first emperor. The one who had the warriors made. He united China, built a road system, built the Great Wall. He was a genius, a visionary, and a tyrant. His atrocities are a thing of legend. He died, finally, a madman.”
“So you were inspired by the creation, the vision, of a lunatic?”
Vivien actually smiled. Thin but there. “It appears so. We didn’t realize it at the time. Or maybe we just overlooked the cruelty.” Now she turned to look at her daughter straight on, studying her round face. “I wonder if we ever really understand the things we create.”
“Is it true they haven’t opened up his actual tomb?”
Vivien nodded. “As far as I know.”
“Why not? Aren’t they curious?”
Vivien closed her eyes, tilted her head back, then spoke softly, “Palaces and scenic towers for a hundred officials were constructed, and the tomb was filled with rare artifacts and wonderful treasure.” She opened her eyes and looked at Alice. “That’s a quote from one of the historians.”
“See?” said Alice. “Wonderful treasures. You can’t tell me grave robbers at the very least haven’t broken in, over two thousand years.”
“There’s more.” Once again, Vivien closed her eyes, as though reading from her lids.
“Craftsmen were ordered to make crossbows and arrows primed to shoot at anyone entering the tomb. Mercury was used to simulate the hundred rivers, and set to flow mechanically.” She opened her eyes. “Still want to break in?”
Alice tilted her head. “No one believes that, do they? Booby traps? Rivers of mercury?”
“Scans have been done, and there are dangerous levels of mercury inside the mountain. If that’s true, maybe the rest is too.”
“Booby traps and a vengeful ghost?” said Alice.
“The Chinese are superstitious.” Vivien said it as if she wasn’t Chinese herself, or superstitious. “There’s a lot we don’t know about this world, and the next.”
Alice nodded slowly. It was true. She seemed to know less and less.
“I have to show you something.” She put her hand in her pocket and brought out—
“I knew it,” said her mother. “You stole a bag of those chocolate coins. That’s bad luck, you know.”
“And we wouldn’t want any of that,” said Alice, putting the small string bag on the wooden bench between them. “This is what I want to show you.”
She held the paper snake.
“You stole that too? The world is falling apart and you steal crap from a gift shop?”
“No, this one was inside Liam’s li bien ball. In all that’s happened, I almost forgot about it. He must’ve been to Xi’an and picked one up. Then shoved this into the ball.”
“Come on. It’s the Year of the Snake. Every shop in China must have them. Why do you think he got it in Xi’an?”
“Look at it. Look at the dirt. Now look at your hands. It’s the same red dirt.”
Unexpectedly, Vivien did as she was told.
“Clever girl. Liam wasn’t just in Xi’an, he was in the pit with the warriors.”
“Must have been. But there’s more. Open it.”
The ferry lurched, and a man fell against her, then apologized and sat down on the deck, where he vomited.
Alice felt bile burn her throat as her gag reflex kicked in. But she kept it down and turned toward her mother.
“It’s a list of corporations,” said Vivien, studying the worn paper. “I recognize these. American. German. This one’s Canadian.”
“Others are British, Japanese, Russian. Liam’s colleague showed me a list of his accounts. These are some of them. Others he must have tracked down. I think this is how Pangu is managing to sabotage so much. Through the supply chain.”
Vivien was quiet, considering. “Not supply chain, blockchain.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Supply chain is a network for the distribution of goods. Blockchain exists only in cyberspace. It’s a tool that controls delivery, that links suppliers and the final destination. Liam must’ve found a connection between these corporations.”
“Corporations that would normally compete, not be linked. I can tell you what they have in common. They all distribute food, of one sort or another. Liam would have known that.” Alice brought out her phone and put on the video of the li bien ball.
“There, right there, at the top of the mountain, you can see the small hole where he got the paper inside.”
Vivien nodded. Liam must’ve realized he was compromised, and tried to hide what he’d discovered. Inside the cheap ornament. And then mailed it to someone no one would suspect.
Vivien looked more closely at the image. “I’ve seen this before.”
The ball was painted, from the inside, with the image of a rugged mountain. There was a tiny cabin partway up, and in the foreground a river with trees beside it, the banks scattered with leaves.
It was rough, not well-made. The artist had missed in some places and smeared black paint on the sky.
But it was pretty.
“Where did you see it?” asked Alice.
“I don’t know. Maybe Xi’an. No, I’m wrong. Not Xi’an. Somewhere else. I can’t remember, but for some reason it reminds me of my mother. And—”
“Yes?”
“Kai-wen.”
“Your brother? Was it somewhere you visited together, as a family?”
Vivien thought, trying to throw her mind back, but there was a thick wall preventing her from going there.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Vivien?” There was something in her daughter’s tone that made Vivien come out of her reverie.
“What is it?” When Alice hesitated, Vivien said, “Just say it.”
“Is it possible Dad was lying?”
“You’re just thinking that now?”
“No, I mean…” For most of her adult life Alice had been looking for ways to get back at her mother. To hurt her in ways that were both passive and aggressive. But now that she had in her hand the perfect bludgeon, she hesitated.
“You can tell me,” Vivien said, her voice soft. Coaxing the puppy out from under the sofa.
“Is it possible that your brother isn’t alive? Maybe we were getting too close, and Dad knew the one thing that would get you, us, to leave quickly was the thought of meeting Kai-wen?”
“No. No. He’s alive.” She looked down at the image of the now shattered li bien ball. “He must be.”
Kai-wen had been heading down to Chang’an Avenue the last time Vivien saw him. The day after the tanks had moved in and the government started firing on protesters.
They had been in the crowd and had helped move some of the dead and injured out of the square. Many of the protest leaders had disappeared overnight. Dead or arrested or hiding.
Brother and older sister had set out early to continue the work of collecting the dead.
“Be careful, 凱文.” She looked him in the eye. “I’ll meet you later at our flat. Don’t get arrested.”
He laughed. “I’ll write that down.”
“Silly shit.”
“Bossy bitch.” He kissed her on the forehead. “You be careful too.”
That was the last she’d seen of him. At least in person.
Later that day, after she’d heard about the extraordinary bravery of a man who’d stood in front of a column of tanks, she still didn’t know it was him.
When he didn’t come home, she became sick with worry.
Days went by without word. She and Liu, her fellow protester, not yet her husband or even fiancé, searched everywhere.
It wasn’t until she finally saw the photograph that her heart sank. She recognized the bags he had been holding. The white shirt. The skinny body. Her little brother.
Silly shit …