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Section Chief Zai spoke sharply. “Think, Hulan, think! He must be very familiar with your dangan to have made the connection between you and the U.S. attorney.”
Hulan nodded pensively. “Yes, I was in America. Yes, Attorney Stark and I worked at the same law firm. But my situation was curious in those days. I don’t think it’s a secret, uncle.” She deliberately used the honorific to show that she understood and respected Zai’s concerns.
“Don’t you wonder who agreed to this cooperation? It has to be someone very powerful. Maybe it’s come from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, maybe the Ministry of State Security, maybe—I don’t know…”
Hulan looked into her mentor’s worried face. “Uncle, if the order comes from Deng himself, what do I care? This is my assignment. I have no choice.”
5
JANUARY 27–29
Madeleine Prentice’s Office
Thanks for coming, David,” Madeleine Prentice said, motioning him into her office. Jack Campbell stood near Madeleine’s desk with his arms crossed. A pale, redheaded man sat in a standard-issue executive-office armchair. “David, this is Patrick O’Kelly from the State Department. Patrick, David Stark.” After everyone shook hands, Madeleine said in her no-nonsense way, “Patrick, why don’t you get right to it?”
When O’Kelly opened his mouth, David was surprised to see the shine of braces. “I am here because of the murder of Guang Henglai.”
“What do you know about him?”
“His father is Guang Mingyun, the sixth-richest man in China. His company, the China Land and Economics Corporation, serves as an umbrella for a variety of businesses with assets of more than one and a half billion U.S. dollars. His personal wealth is in the neighborhood of four to five hundred million dollars.”
Campbell whistled.
O’Kelly spent the next few minutes summarizing the State Department’s dossier on Guang Mingyun. He was destined by birth to become a worker in a provincial glass factory like his parents before him, but his secondary-school achievements had attracted the attention of people in Beijing, who brought him to the capital to attend Beijing University, where he excelled in engineering and math.
“By the early 1980s, Guang had started several privately owned factories,” O’Kelly explained. “But his biggest break came in 1991, when he traded five hundred railroad cars of Chinese goods for five Russian-made airplanes. This one transaction catapulted Guang from relative obscurity into the first rank of wheeler-dealers. Since then, he’s expanded into real estate, the stock market, and telecommunications. His profits allowed him to launch the Chinese Overseas Bank, an investment bank based in Monterey Park with several branches in California.”
“I’m familiar with it,” David said. “How does owning a bank here help him?”
“It gives him a way to funnel U.S. funds—specifically those of overseas Chinese—into China, and for Chinese nationals to send money to the U.S., where the political situation offers banking stability and security,” O’Kelly answered. “Now, what makes Guang truly different from other entrepreneurs is that he recognizes that change in China must happen across the country, not just along the coast.”
“Excuse me?”
O’Kelly nodded agreeably. “Here’s what we’re looking at. The Chinese economy is booming all along the coast—in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Fujian Province.”
“And Tianjin?” Jack Campbell asked.
“And in the city of Tianjin,” O’Kelly confirmed. “There are some villages in those areas where the average income is better than in the U.S. But if you were to go inland a thousand, five hundred, or even a hundred miles, you would see a very different picture.”
“Isn’t that all rice farming?”
“Farming of every sort. But the peasants make only about three hundred and fifty dollars a year. In China, capitalism has created an economic chasm unlike any seen before in history. The problems for the Chinese over the long term are: How can they bring prosperity to the entire country? If they can’t, what will they do when those peasants—nine hundred million strong, one in six people on the entire planet—get pissed off? In other words, how will the government control the have-nots, when the government’s mandate came originally from the peasants?”
“And Guang has an answer?”
“Perhaps. He’s not only privatizing industries—and I’m talking here about everyday essentials like salt, pharmaceuticals, and coal—but he’s taking them inland to the poorest provinces. He’s bringing modern technology to the countryside and rewarding people who work hard.”
“For profit.”
“Absolutely. He can pay peasants far less money than workers along the coast. Simultaneously, he’s building their loyalty and trust.”
“How does this connect to the case?” David queried. “Are you suggesting that Guang Mingyun was trying to cut in on the triads’ businesses in the interior? That his son was kidnapped as a warning or for ransom? That the whole thing was botched and they dumped the body?”
“We don’t know yet. We’ve already been in contact with Beijing…”
“You what?” David asked sharply.
“Let me say at the outset that we at the State Department were well aware of Guang Henglai’s disappearance.” O’Kelly paused to let this revelation sink in, then went on. “The boy has been missing for almost a month. Those of us at the State Department—even recent tourists to China—are familiar with the case. China is well known for being able to find anyone at anytime anywhere. During these last few weeks China has mounted its largest manhunt ever. Needless to say, they found neither Guang Henglai nor anyone who could give them any information as to his whereabouts.”
