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Stuart’s cheeks flushed and his head jerked back as though the words themselves had hit him in the face. “Lily! I….” He put a hand to his brow and rubbed. “I apologize. I hadn’t thought about what might have been done to her.” He dropped his hand and took a deep breath. “She must have suffered terribly.”
Hulan watched him closely. Lying about committing a murder was to be expected, and people tended to do it pretty well, given the stakes. Grief, by contrast, was hard to imitate, but she’d met experts at the game. A lot would depend on how he answered her other questions.
Hulan veered back again to the dam. “You mentioned you’ve had some problems here in the construction zone.”
Stuart looked puzzled. “I don’t remember any problems.”
“Faulty components….”
“Oh, those problems.” He laughed sadly and shook his head. “I just wanted to avoid your interrogation.”
Hulan prompted: “Work being sabotaged….”
“Inspector,” his voice sounded world-weary, “have you been on a construction site before? Construction—whether it’s a simple home remodel or a project like this—is always plagued with problems. So yeah, we’ve had problems, but I don’t see what they could possibly have to do with your investigation.”
“Still, I’d like you to take me through some of your difficulties as you see them.”
“We’ve had delays in the delivery of materials, because your Customs people held them up down in Shanghai.”
“What else?”
“We’ve ordered materials here in your country, but each time they arrive we seem to get defective batches.”
“Another outside problem, correct?”
“Another problem caused by your country, if that’s what you mean,” he replied irritably.
“And you say these complications are to be expected?”
“Like I said, every project has headaches. This one has had them for what? Eight years?” He hesitated, then asked, “Do you know anything about the dam?”
Avoidance, she knew that route well herself.
“I just saw the displays down at the visitors’ center.”
&nbs
p; “I mean the history of the thing.” Stuart pushed away his teacup, then leaned back in his chair. “It’s been one obstacle after another since day one. Sun Yatsen first proposed a dam in 1918 as part of his Grand Plan for National Construction. Forty years later, Mao commanded that a dam be built that would show man’s supremacy over nature, the Party’s supremacy over the masses, and Mao’s supremacy over both—”
“I know this—”
“But it was beyond China’s capabilities,” Stuart continued, “so Mao ordered boulders blasted and the course dredged, effectively taming the wildness of the river and eliminating the need for trackers. You know what they are, right?”
“The men who pulled boats upriver.”
“Brava, Inspector.”
She didn’t like the way he was testing her, but she decided to let it go for now, because of course he’d want to reestablish the upper hand. This tactic was more common among men than women. Men didn’t like others to see their pain.
“Different people had different ideas all the way up until two months before the events at Tiananmen,” he went on, “when the State Council rejected yet another dam proposal. But how do you divert a country—and the world—from the disgrace of what happened on that square? Li Peng, prime minister back then, pushed for the project to go forward as a monument to national pride. He claimed that China would need no outside help. Of course, it did. So here I am. But so are a lot of outside contractors and suppliers. And yes, we’ve all had problems, not just in dealing with the bureaucracy of your system but with work being unintentionally sabotaged. But I want to assure you that we’re vigi- lant, and we’ve got a foolproof safety system of redundancy upon redundancy—from the smallest moving part to my turbines to the computers that will run the whole thing to the best software in the world that will scan for viruses and any other problem 24/7 from now till eternity.”
“You’re still speaking in generalities. Tell me more about sabotage.”
Stuart thought for a moment. “I’ll lay out two scenarios for you. Let’s say you find that someone’s dumped a load of concrete over your equipment by accident. It doesn’t harm the dam per se. It’s just a nuisance. You with me so far?”
She nodded and he went on.
“Scenario two: We install a piece of equipment. Everything is checked and approved, then checked and approved again. Redundancy upon redundancy even before you become operational to make sure everything is as safe as it can possibly be. You go back the next day and two screws are gone. Would that cause a problem today? No. Will it ever cause a problem? Probably not. But consider the size of the dam. Now subtract a couple of screws here and there throughout the dam. Now you have to worry about overall integrity. As they say in your country, the collapse of the dam begins with an ant hole.”
