In Chen Qianli’s new plan, Wei Dafu’s role was extremely important, and rather dangerous as well, so at this moment he put on a gloomy, dejected expression, sitting in a small tavern in old Xijiao, and ordered a pot of shaojiu liquor. On the table was a plate of peanuts, and another plate held some chicken feet, chicken heads, and chicken rumps. He poured and drank alone.
In his heart he silently said, this cup is for Lao Fang—he drank it dry. The next cup, he thought, was in place of Lin Shi. The afternoon before last, at the Maochang coal yard, fighting the secret agents, Lin Shi had taken a bullet. Chen Qianli had Li Han find a tricycle cart to move him to Fahua Town; at the time, everyone had gathered except Chen Qianyuan and Dong Huiwen. Though Doctor Qin lacked surgical instruments, he had tried everything he could think of. At one point they considered using Doctor Qin’s connections to send Lin Shi to a foreign hospital in the concession, but before they could arrange contact, Lin Shi had already died a martyr’s death.
Wei Dafu downed several more cups, drinking one also for the comrade who had come to warn them at the vegetable market—they didn’t even know his name. He thought he ought to drink one for Ling Wen too; according to Chen Qianli’s judgment, she must have been killed by Lu Zhongde. Later he even wanted to drink one for Long Dong, whom he had never met, and one for the many, many others he had never seen.
It was now nine at night. This small tavern stayed open late into the night; besides wine and cold dishes, it also sold plain noodle soup. Only late-night drunkards, night-shift police, and people of dubious occupation knew of this place. But at this hour those people had not yet arrived, and he was the only one in the shop.
Lu Zhongde arrived. He sat down across the small table, lifted the tin pot and shook it, and said with a frown, “Why are you drinking so much?”
Lu Zhongde loudly called the waiter over, ordering half a jin of mutton sliced, and two more bowls of plain noodles.
“Where’s Chen Qianli?” he asked Wei Dafu.
“He’s hiding, they’re all hiding—” Wei Dafu, holding a chicken foot, his drunken eyes hazy.
“What happened?”
“The day before yesterday, from morning to night, the secret agents were hunting Chen Qianli everywhere he went, they chased after him. Luckily he didn’t come looking for me. They found the Maochang coal yard—Lin Shi died.”
Ye Qinian had told You Tianxiao to deliberately let Qin Chuan’an’s clinic and Wei Dafu’s home go unsearched, because he still wanted Lu Zhongde to continue his disguise a while longer.
“Lin Shi died a martyr?”
Lu Zhongde pretended to be greatly shocked.
“Yes, you should say he died a martyr’s death. Comrade Lin Shi died a martyr.”
“Where’s Chen Qianli? Where is he right now?”
“He’s hiding, I don’t know where. Everyone else is at Fahua Town. I found the place—he went there to assign everyone their tasks.”
“What tasks?”
“Everyone has their own task, I can’t tell you that.” Wei Dafu was too drunk to hold his head up; he knocked his head against the table twice, then raised it again to speak.
“Look at the state you’re in now.”
He had always been Wei Dafu’s superior, and he knew that although Wei Dafu appeared careless and dissolute, the man was actually quite sharp.
Wei Dafu finished off the remaining half-cup of liquor, felt he hadn’t had enough, lifted the pot and refilled it, then tilted his head back and drained it again.
Lu Zhongde took out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, then held the pack out to Wei Dafu, offering him one. Wei Dafu took one and tucked it behind his ear, then thought better of it and lit it instead. Craven A was the best brand of cigarette; ordinarily, when he got hold of a good one, he’d save it and smoke it later when he was in a good mood. Wei Dafu took a deep drag, then exhaled a long stream of smoke that drifted apart in front of Lu Zhongde’s eyes.
“Lao Yi, tell me—what exactly are we doing all this for? Do we even have a future?”
Lu Zhongde watched him closely, as though trying to detect every subtle change on his face, hoping to find some evidence that he intended to betray the organization. Or perhaps, hoping to find evidence proving his words were insincere.
He glanced at the cigarette pinched between Wei Dafu’s fingers, and gave him the rest of the pack: “We will surely succeed.” He glanced back toward the counter, then added heavily, “The revolution will surely succeed.”
Wei Dafu laughed, shaking his head.
“So many people have died. Even if there really comes a day of success, we probably won’t live to see it.”
Lu Zhongde scolded him in a low voice: “Bastard, Comrade Wei Dafu, that kind of thinking is dangerous.”
The waiter came out from the back, bringing two bowls of plain noodles and the sliced mutton. After finishing the noodles, Wei Dafu looked somewhat more sober.
“Chen Qianli told me to tell you—move out of the painting-and-calligraphy shop at once, go into hiding, give him your contact information, and wait for orders to act.”
Lu Zhongde thought for a moment. “Did Chen Qianli ever say what exactly the ‘A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains’ plan is?”
“How would he tell me that,” Wei Dafu answered, chewing on a slice of mutton. “But these past two days everyone’s been busy—Doctor Qin’s been out buying medicine everywhere, packed three whole crates full. I called a rickshaw and helped him deliver it to Li Han. Only Li Han knows where Chen Qianli is; whenever he has business, it’s Li Han who passes word to everyone.”
“Does he want me at Fahua Town too?”
“The place I found is very safe. On all four sides are dairy farms—the dairy company bought up land piece by piece, bought up everything around it, except these few houses were left standing. I heard that at first the owners refused to sell the land, so the dairy company just gave up buying it and instead built cow sheds all around. It stinks something terrible, no one’s willing to live there. Can’t sell it, can’t rent it out, sooner or later it’ll belong to the dairy company anyway. Just right—we’ll borrow it for now.”
“I can’t leave the shop. I can’t tell you the reason right now—this is a task Lao Fang assigned me before he died a martyr’s death.”
Lu Zhongde had made up an excuse on the spot. The failed effort to capture Chen Qianli had left him fearing that elusive man. You Tianxiao had clearly caught Chen Qianyuan, had set up a net all around his house, yet somehow, for reasons unclear, Ye Qinian had actually telephoned to have You Tianxiao withdraw and release him. Last night, when he’d seen Ye Qinian at the Zhengyuan Hotel, he’d felt his teacher seemed to have aged decades all at once, looking utterly worn down.
“Lao Yi, go into hiding soon, forget about whatever task it is. Didn’t you always tell me yourself—when doing this work, safety comes first, if the situation feels wrong, don’t take the risk.”
Two men came into the tavern with cigarettes in their mouths, looked at the prices chalked on the blackboard, calculated the money in their pockets, and turned and left again. Somehow Lu Zhongde produced a hoarse voice and said to Wei Dafu, “Sometimes, some risks are necessary, and worth taking—even worth giving one’s life for.”
Wei Dafu felt a certain reverence rise in him; he stared at the little wine cup on the table and said nothing.
“Besides having Doctor Qin buy medicine, what else did he have everyone do?”
“Last night at dinner, I heard from Li Han that he’d gone with Chen Qianli to Dongjiadu. Tian Fei went to the train station to pick someone up, hasn’t come back. Chen Qianyuan and Dong Huiwen came in the afternoon and have just been resting ever since, not doing anything—is it because he’s the younger brother that he gets to hide and do nothing?”
“Pick someone up? Who did Tian Fei go to meet?”
“I don’t know. Task details are all passed on separately in the small room. At breakfast Tian Fei said with a smile that this might be the last meal we all eat together—if something goes wrong, he plans to sacrifice himself.”
“Who could be that important?”
Wei Dafu’s face clouded with worry, and he didn’t answer.
Late at night, Wei Dafu returned to Fahua Town. Fahua Town sat at the meeting point of the International Settlement, the French Concession, and Chinese-administered territory. There were very few residences in this area—besides factory buildings and a foreign sports ground, there were also one or two institutions resembling bank clubs or agricultural societies. Outside the walls of these factories and institutions there were still large tracts of farmland, planted with vegetables and corn. Wei Dafu felt his way in the dark along the dirt path between the dairy farm’s walls; the path twisted and turned, and he saw not a single soul along the way. He entered the house, but there was no one inside.
He went upstairs. In the darkness, someone asked, “Lao Wei?”
The one asking was Liang Shichao. He lit a kerosene lamp, and only then did Wei Dafu see that he was holding a gun.
“Lao Liang, don’t be so jumpy, and put that gun away. Where’s Chen Qianli?”
“In the back.”
Wei Dafu went to the rear window and pushed it open; the back wall pressed right up against the dairy farm’s boundary wall—to drive out these few households, the dairy company had built its wall right beneath their windows, and across from the window was a dark expanse of sheds.
Liang Shichao said from behind him, “Keep your voice down, don’t startle those two big dogs.”
“It’s fine, they know me now, I gave them two big chunks of beef during the day.”
Wei Dafu waved the oil lamp toward the window a few times, then pursed his lips and gave a few whistles of varying length. From the alley between the sheds outside, a figure darted out and rushed over quickly, propping a ladder against the wall. Wei Dafu climbed down. The one who’d come to fetch him was Li Han. The two of them wound through several turns in the alley reeking of cow manure, then slipped into one of the sheds. This was a spare cowshed belonging to the dairy company, vacant for half a year, with some dry straw still on the ground. Wei Dafu knew the dairy worker in charge of this spare shed area—that was how he’d learned about the house in the first place. By some means, Wei Dafu had persuaded the man to turn a blind eye and not come patrol here for a while.
The others each occupied a shed and were already asleep, but Chen Qianli was still awake, sitting on the straw with his back against the railing. Seeing Wei Dafu enter, he stood up and went to meet him.
“How did it go?” Chen Qianli asked.
“He won’t come. Says Lao Fang gave him a task before he died, and he has to stay put there. I told him everything else.”
“How did he look?”
“I drank quite a bit—he should be sure I was drunk.”
Chen Qianli sat back down, hugging his knees, thinking for a moment. “Go to sleep first. I need to think about what to do next.”
The next morning, Wei Dafu left Fahua Town once more. He walked a long stretch of road, then changed trams twice, and made his way to the little eatery across from the Grand Stage on Second Road, where he had a good breakfast. He liked this shop’s pan-fried buns and clay-pot wonton soup best of all. Once he’d eaten his fill, he gave a long yawn, loosened his shoulders, rose and left the eatery, and walked to the offices of Shen Bao newspaper on Third Road.
At the entrance to the newspaper office, many newspaper vendors squatted against the wall, oilcloth spread on the ground before them, various papers laid out on top. Shen Bao had a large circulation, and every vendor had many newsboys under him. So each dawn, when Shen Bao was issued, the vendors would fold and count the papers, hand them out to the newsboys, then continue to wait by the wall of the newspaper office. A few hours later, other papers on Wangping Street would also deliver their issues here, handing them to the Shen Bao vendors, who would then pass them along to the newsboys.
The ground floor of the newspaper building held the printing plant and the typesetting room. Wei Dafu made inquiries at the second-floor business counter, saying he wanted to place an advertisement in the paper; the staff led him to the advertising department. He said the ad needed to be rushed through, to appear in tomorrow morning’s edition—it only needed to run once, but he was willing to pay for a full week’s run, plus the rush fee. He handed the drafted text to the young lady attending him, Miss Wu, and casually complimented her new hairstyle, asking which famous salon had done it, saying he wanted to tell his girlfriend about it. He was in no hurry to leave, watching closely as Miss Wu copied the text word for word onto the manuscript paper. Flattered by his compliments, Miss Wu didn’t seem to mind his many demands at all.
He filled out the form and paid, and the advertisement business was concluded. Wei Dafu checked the time, then asked Miss Wu, “Could I use the telephone?”
Miss Wu pointed to the phone on the shelf by the window.
On the other end of the line was Chen Qianli. He told Wei Dafu not to wander around, not to drink, and there was no need to return to Fahua Town—he should find somewhere to hide, and meet him at the gate of Gujiazhai Park early tomorrow morning; there was something he needed him to do.
Setting down the receiver, Wei Dafu said to Miss Wu with a smile, “Nothing to do today—my boss just gave me the day off, told me not to come back to the office. How about I treat you to lunch, Miss Wu?”
This time, Miss Wu paid him no mind.
By the time he left the newspaper office, it was already one in the afternoon. Wei Dafu seemed not to notice that three men outside the building had marked him—one on Wangping Street, one on Third Road, and another standing on the corner across from Third Road. He planned to head to the Yuelai Sichuan restaurant on Second Road; he felt something spicy might suit his current mood.
He was still a few dozen steps from the Sichuan restaurant when a small car pulled up close beside him. He sensed something was off and turned to look at the car; someone behind him patted his shoulder. “Mr. Wei, we’ve been looking for you a long while. You owe someone money—have you forgotten?”
He tried to turn his head, but someone pressed a hand against the back of his neck, and a pair of hands gripped each of his shoulders. At that moment a man came from the front and grabbed the collar of his Western-style jacket. Wei Dafu recognized this man—he’d seen him on the tram earlier, had even noticed him changing trams along with him.
Last night, after saying those words to Lu Zhongde, Wei Dafu had already anticipated that someone would come to seize him. He’d been unable to sleep half the night, the matter turning over and over in his mind, needing to be spoken. In the small hours he’d gone to the shed where Chen Qianli slept, meaning to wake him, but Chen Qianli hadn’t been asleep either, still sitting on the straw with his back against the railing. Moonlight streamed in through the skylight in the shed roof, and the two of them had crouched there talking for over an hour. Chen Qianli had thought the same as he had—after what he’d said in the tavern last night, they were bound to take an interest in him.
Several men pushed Wei Dafu into the back seat of the car; on the other side of the back seat sat You Tianxiao. He was wedged between You Tianxiao and a plainclothes agent; in the front seat, besides the driver, sat another agent. Of the three who had tailed him this far, only one got into the car—the other two vanished into the crowds on Second Road. None of the passersby seemed to notice what had just happened at the roadside.
It was an abduction, but Wei Dafu didn’t cry out—he knew shouting at these people would do no good, and would only earn him more physical suffering. The car did not head toward Longhua; instead it turned north along Zhejiang Road. Not knowing where they would take him, Wei Dafu felt a growing unease in his heart.