China Hand, page 17
Check.
Then I ran the other end of the rope through the descender and began to visualize leaning back into the blackness with my feet up against the building and walking my way down. With my backpack strapped on, I took a deep breath and warned myself not to look down again. I did anyway.
I’m going to fucking die.
I imagined Lily, waiting for me just out of sight, hearing a lurid scream and a dull thump.
I took three deep breaths—procrastination as much as an attempt to steady myself—then swung my gelatin legs over the railing, sucked in another breath, and threw the long line of slack into the blackness below. I listened for the rope to hit the ground but heard only a breeze rustling the trees.
Keep moving.
I jerked the tied-up rope and leaned back slightly, testing the radiator and railing again. I leaned more. The balcony creaked, but the line held tight even as I applied most of my weight. Leaning back even farther, I worked up enough courage to launch myself out as I’d done on the climbing wall.
It felt just like it had with Lily—until it didn’t. I’d descended no more than three feet when I swung right and my ribs hit hard against the balcony’s concrete floor, knocking the wind out of me.
I gasped in pain and shock—and then in sudden relief. I didn’t fall. The rope had held. The carabiner hadn’t failed. A miracle.
That was the good news, but I was still dangling in relative darkness some fifty feet above the ground with sweat-slick hands and only a vague idea of what I was doing.
I gave up any fanciful notion of smoothly walking backward down the side of the building in favor of trying to descend vertically, like a piano lowered by a pulley from a high-rise apartment. It wasn’t pretty, but who was watching?
Maybe stragglers from the protest.
The same stingy moonlight that had helped me pack might now leave me silhouetted against the building, like the lamest Spider-Man ever, ready to be grabbed by campus security before the mission was even properly underway. I looked down but saw no one.
And that was the moment a real miracle happened: I stopped fretting and went to work, loosening the friction on the descender so I could feed the rope slowly through it. My muscles seemed to understand what my mind scarcely could: survival.
Without gloves, the rope was rubbing my hands raw, but I moved steadily down past darkened windows, one after the other until a gust of wind banged me into a balcony, the wrought iron railing reverberating as I bounced off it. Jesus Christ. I looked down to see which floor it was, having been so preoccupied feeding the rope through the descender that I’d lost track. Third floor.
I was still swearing under my breath when the lights went on behind the curtain just a few feet in front of me. I could hear talking from inside the room. Then footsteps.
Oh, Christ.
I let out more slack, desperate to get my body out of sight. Then I grabbed the bottom of the railings that had just abused me and dragged myself to the side so the rope would be less conspicuous. I peeked over the ledge. Makoto, my Japanese colleague, was looking out from a slit in the curtain, which sent a beam of light across the concrete. A puzzled expression filled his face, but then he shrugged and drew the curtains back into place.
Relieved beyond words, I slid back over to the center of the balcony and continued my descent.
I came to the end of the rope about six feet from the ground. Close enough, thank God. I dropped, landing on my feet, fully amazed that I’d made it down. I unhooked the webbing from around my waist and stuffed it into my pack, hoping never to have to use it again.
The rope, however, still hung a foot in front my face, like a giant pointer leading right up to my apartment. The first glimmerings of daylight would bring it into full view.
My impulse was to contact Tom to have it removed. But then I realized that with both Lily and me suddenly absent from the IAU, the rope would be the least of the evidence against me.
The time was now 10:32. Eleven minutes on that wall had felt like an eternity.
I ducked behind some bushes in the garden to hide. I peeked my head up to see her scurrying toward me along the side of the path, hunched over, carrying a small backpack.
Staying low, I waited until she was only about ten feet away before whispering her name.
Lily startled and looked around, then beamed when she recognized me. “Andrew!” she whispered as we rushed toward each other. The fierceness of our embrace eased only so that we could kiss so deeply that we might have been melting into each other.
She still cares. That’s what I had wanted to know most of all, even under those distressing circumstances.
She took hold of my face. “Andrew,” she said again with the greatest urgency.
“What?” I feared the worst—that she was backing out, that she couldn’t—
“I love you. I don’t know what’s going to happen to us, but I had to tell you. Every day I wanted to, but I knew I couldn’t.”
I felt the world sway in my favor. “I love you, too, Lily. It’s been killing me to see you around campus but to have to keep so much distance.” I kissed her again. “But we’ve got to get moving.”
We crept around the Foreign Experts Building and headed north toward the fence that surrounded the campus. It looked as daunting as the Great Wall of China.
And, with its guardhouses, it was.
CHAPTER 30
A light burned in the guardhouse about a hundred feet from Lily and me. The ten o’clock curfew had ended the demonstrations. The night was now eerily quiet. Her absence could be noted at any second.
The clock was ticking.
We scanned the area around us. The guards started talking, a murmur at this distance. But if we could hear them, then they could hear anything louder than a whisper from us.
With no one in sight—and without another word—we inched diagonally toward the far corner of the fence. I figured it would be easier to climb the railings where the two sides came together. The night sky left only those dim glimpses of moonlight to help us on our way. The fear of being caught made our careful footsteps sound as loud as a parade.
We came to a copse of leafless linden trees and took meager cover behind their trunks. I reminded myself to be careful—that where there were trees, and gusts of wind, there might be broken limbs on the ground.
A snapping branch made a loud crack.
It wasn’t us.
Who’s there? Lily and I couldn’t see anyone. But we must have been spotted. If it was the guards, I hoped they’d at least fire a warning shot before taking aim at the two dark figures prowling around their campus in the midst of a national emergency.
We stayed motionless. I could hear my rapid heartbeat. A full minute must have passed before I realized that a guard wouldn’t hide. He—or they—would be ordering us to stop at gunpoint.
Who, then?
“Do you see anyone?” I whispered to Lily.
She shook her head.
I bent close to her ear. “We should keep moving.”
What else could we do?
We crept out of the trees, with little but the darkness to shield us. As we drew nearer to the corner of the fence, the guardhouse door flew open, spilling light that fell threateningly close to us.
A tall man in a guard’s uniform was silhouetted in the doorway staring into the night.
We froze only a few feet from the fence. If he or his partner did start toward us, we would be cornered in every possible way.
But the big guard headed for the group of linden trees we’d just left.
Lily and I lowered ourselves to the ground to reduce our profiles. Lying on our sides, we watched the guard. He started running, as though he’d spotted someone. His rush flushed his quarry from the trees—a person who must have been following us. Why would they be doing that? Or was it coincidence?
No way.
“Look.” Lily pointed to the dark outline of a person running toward the student dormitory.
The guard shouted, “Zhan zhu!” Don’t move!
His partner bolted from the guardhouse and ran after the tall man, clutching a flashlight. The first guard tackled a woman. We heard her cry out. The second guard was sprinting up to them.
Light appeared in the window of a nearby student dormitory. Then a second and third came to life. Backlit faces were watching as the guards dragged the woman to her feet. The second guard turned his flashlight on her face.
“It’s Rose,” Lily said.
“Rose from my class?” I peered closely. “What’s she doing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she followed me. She was watching me the other day in the courtyard, too—and it wasn’t the first time. When I asked her what she was doing, she just walked away.”
“She’s been stalking you?”
“Maybe, but I don’t think it’s about me. She’s crazy about you. Haven’t you noticed?”
I had noticed the gifts, the open flirting at movie nights, and her growing boldness in class, but I hadn’t taken it seriously. And I hadn’t been aware of this business with Lily. How could I? We’d been forced to keep our distance from each other for months.
“She probably realized we were running off together from the second she saw our backpacks,” Lily said.
We are so fucked. Every detail was supposed to be covered, and now we were getting exposed by Rose?
She would be hailed as a national hero once she pointed us out to the guards. While they were still distracted, we needed to at least try to make a break for it—throw our packs over the fence, then climb it, jump down, and run like hell. It was the only option. I lifted myself to one knee and grabbed a wrought iron rail.
Lily gripped my arm. “Stay still,” she whispered. “Let’s see what Rose does.”
Lily was right. Fleeing could be a death sentence if it drew the guards’ attention.
They began to question Rose right in the open. “Ni shi shei?” Who are you? The tall guard’s voice carried clearly through the stillness.
The second guard held Rose by the shoulder before losing patience with her silence. He started shaking her hard. “Kuai shuo!” Answer the question! He sounded as though he might be the one in charge.
Rose gave her Chinese name.
“What are you doing out at this hour?” the tall guard continued in Mandarin. “There is a curfew, you know.”
Lily squeezed my hand, as if to say, Here it comes.
Rose didn’t answer, but she looked in our direction, beyond the glare of the flashlight. I thought the guards would follow her gaze, but they must have thought she was trying to avoid their questions.
“Answer him!” The shorter man demanded again.
Rose started to cry. “My boyfriend left me. I had to go for a walk. When I saw you, I was scared, so I ran. I’m so sorry,” she finished, still staring right at us.
The two guards looked at each other as in, Are you kidding me? The guard who had tackled her brushed leaves off her sleeve.
“Go home,” the shorter guard said, pointing to the dormitory. “It’s been a hard day for everyone. Maybe your boyfriend will come to his senses. You seem like a nice girl.”
Rose whimpered, “I don’t think he’s ever coming back.”
The taller guard patted her on the shoulder and nudged her toward the dorm. “You just need some sleep.”
She put her head down and trudged away. She looked meeker than ever, but she’d saved us from immediate arrest—or worse. I wondered why—was it really feelings for me, or some deeper sense that it was the right thing to do? I owed her, yet I hardly knew her. Didn’t she realize that by not speaking up about us, she might soon fall under suspicion, too? Unless, once the news of our escape got out, the guards decided to keep this incident to themselves to cover up for their own inaction tonight.
We remained absolutely still until the two men retreated to the guardhouse and closed the door behind them. Then I helped Lily up onto the wrought iron fence.
She climbed it easily. I studied her hand and footholds as carefully as I had in the gym in Shanghai, then lofted the packs over to her. They were heavy, but she caught them easily, making little noise.
I climbed less nimbly but found it much more manageable than the descent from the balcony.
We scurried down a nearby alley, just east of campus, where Lily leaned back against a brick wall, cushioned by her pack. “What now? Tom said you would know what to do.”
I certainly knew the overall plan, but I confessed that we had not expected to escape while the country was in turmoil. With the state of emergency, the streets were unnervingly quiet. There was no traffic at all and not a cab in sight. That’s when I understood why Tom had given me the address of a safe house that hadn’t been mentioned in the original plan. Just in case. Well, just in case had now come to pass.
I showed Lily the address, which was unfamiliar to me.
“Qianmen District. That’s at least an hour and a half by foot.”
Too much exposure. “A twenty- or thirty-minute bike ride?”
“Yeah.”
My bike was parked on the street not more than a hundred yards away, but in precisely the wrong direction—back toward campus. Far worse, it was in open view of the guardhouse at the IAU North Gate. By now, officials at the school could have been rousing everyone to track down Lily.
It’s your only chance.
“I’m going to get my bike. Stay here. Watch my pack.”
Lily looked intensely into my eyes. “Be careful.”
I hurried back to the main street, checking that no one was there. With a deep breath, I walked as nonchalantly as possible toward the IAU North Gate. As I neared it, I could see that the lights in the guardhouse were on, but it looked empty. The door had been left wide open.
Glancing up at the Foreign Experts Building, I saw the lights in Tom’s and the Japanese couple’s apartments, but the other teachers appeared to be asleep.
I continued to the row of bicycles parked alongside the road, about twenty feet past the guardhouse. There were dozens of them, almost all identical black Forever bikes with racks on the back, just like mine. Which one is it? I couldn’t remember the last time I rode mine, much less where I’d parked it. I grew increasingly frantic as I searched for the one with the combination cable lock I’d brought from home, rather than the more common U-locks. I finally found my bike.
As I began to roll it out of the rack, footsteps pounded down the path toward the main quad. I was completely exposed. If I ran back toward Lily, I would be seen for sure.
What the hell?
I rested my bike against the one beside it, laid down, and rolled up against the rear tire.
The footsteps grew louder. I peered up through a gap in the bicycles and saw the two guards who’d questioned Rose.
“You take the east side of the fence, and I’ll watch this side until backup arrives,” the shorter one said in his gruff Mandarin. The tall guard turned and strode toward the part of the fence we had climbed—and toward the alley where Lily was now crouching not more than fifty yards away.
There was no way I could get up, much less go back to her. The shorter guard was standing post right at the North Gate, alternately looking inside and outside campus.
Sirens blared from the east, getting louder as they approached. The headlights bore down on me. I faced away from the police car, hoping to be dismissed as a passed-out college student—an irrelevancy when a general’s daughter has gone missing.
The cruiser raced past me, tires screeching as it rounded the corner of the next intersection. Then it turned left, toward the front gate of campus.
The phone inside the guardhouse rang loudly.
“Wo kao,” the guard muttered as he hurried inside. Damn it.
I could hear him on the phone. “Ming bai, ming bai,” he said. Understood, understood. I didn’t know how long this conversation would last, but it might be my only chance.
I stood quickly and pulled my bike from the rack, knowing I couldn’t ride directly to Lily, not with the tall guard in the way.
Just go.
I sped after the police car, away from her. As I turned left at the intersection, I saw the People’s Armed Police cruiser parked at the IAU main gate, its red and blue lights still whirling. At least a dozen people were speaking with the cops.
Head down, I rolled to the opposite side of the street and pedaled hard as I looped around campus until I re-entered the alley where I’d left Lily. I braked as I approached her, crouched beside a trashcan. She jumped up.
“Did you see the police?”
“Yes. And guards, too—that’s why I had to go around. Hop on the back.”
“Can you ride with me on it?” We both had heavy packs.
I nodded, not knowing if I had the strength. But it was do or die.
CHAPTER 31
I pedaled furiously, fueled by panic and the pressing need to get away from the IAU as fast as possible. I wasn’t sure we were on the best course toward the safe house in Qianmen, but the arrival of that People’s Armed Police car at the university’s gate told me loud and clear that an alert about Lily’s disappearance must have been issued.
My own absence would be noted as soon as the door-pounding started at the Foreign Experts Building. I was sure that security protocols for the missing daughter of a high-ranking official were firmly established and would be put into action immediately.
“Keep your face pressed against me and your hat pulled down,” I said as a car came toward us, its headlights momentarily blinding me. I wanted her to look sleepy, while hoping that with my dyed hair combed straight down, Tom’s Chinese army surplus jacket, and the black-framed glasses, I just might appear Chinese at a distance. If we came across a roadblock, though, it would mean certain arrest and the most serious charges possible.
“I need you to help me navigate to the safe house,” I said. “I’m going to stop at that canal up ahead.” I’d spotted it thanks to those otherwise threatening headlights. “I bet there’s a footpath under the bridge where we can get some cover.”
