Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [92]
“Isn’t this He Dongsheng’s car?” he asked after a while. “How come … ?”
Lao Chen looked around at the backseat and saw that Little Xi and Zhang Dou had a man pinned down on the floor under their feet. He stared at them, speechless.
“Lao Chen, calm down,” said Little Xi. “Everything’s been arranged. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“He’s fine,” said Zhang Dou. “I used the best brand of chloroform; puppies and kittens get no side effects from it; the worst he might have is a headache for a couple of hours.”
“He won’t wake up for at least two hours,” chimed in Fang Caodi as he drove along. “No matter how loudly we speak, he won’t be able to hear a thing. I’ve tried this chloroform myself. It puts you out completely for over two hours and it’s perfectly reliable.”
“Have you all gone crazy?” shouted Lao Chen, glancing in terror at He Dongsheng.
“We won’t hurt him,” said Little Xi. “We just want to ask him some questions.”
“After that, we’ll set him free,” said Fang Caodi.
“You really are crazy!” said Lao Chen in dismay. “We’re fucked! Really fucked!”
“Shit!” said Fang Caodi suddenly. “Trouble up ahead!”
Lao Chen turned back to look through the windshield. Traffic police were conducting vehicle checks. “Now we’re really fucked!” he said, paralyzed in his seat.
“Everybody sit up straight …” said Fang Caodi. He looked like he was going to ram the roadblock.
Just then Lao Chen saw hurrying toward them that same fat traffic cop who had stopped He Dongsheng a couple of months before. He grabbed Fang Caodi’s arm and said, “Don’t try anything stupid. Slow down.”
As Lao Chen expected, the portly traffic cop prevented the other officers from stopping their car and just waved them through the checkpoint.
“Okay, now drive slowly,” Lao Chen instructed Fang Caodi, “and gradually increase your speed.”
As the SUV passed through the checkpoint, Lao Chen made eye contact with the fat cop and gave him an army salute.
He finally relaxed and the three others heaved a sigh of relief.
“That was close,” said Zhang Dou.
“A miracle,” said Fang Caodi.
Lao Chen signaled to Zhang Dou to move over a bit and then let his front seat recline at a 45-degree angle. He turned on his side and reached over to search in He Dongsheng’s pockets for the anti-surveillance device. He took it out and pressed the button; a few seconds later the three little green lights came on. “Good,” he said, “nobody is following us or listening in on us.” He handed Zhang Dou the antisurveillance device and told him to put it back in the left-inside pocket of He Dongsheng’s suit.
Lao Chen sat back exhausted, in a sad silence.
“Lao Chen,” said Little Xi, “you mustn’t blame us. Old Fang and I debated for a long time, and then decided that we had to question someone who has inside information. Otherwise, no matter how hard we try, we’ll never be able to figure out the truth about that lost month. There’s no way we can resign ourselves to not knowing what really happened.”
“We figured,” continued Fang Caodi, “that in China, where all information is controlled by the government, only a Party and national leader would have knowledge of the entire internal situation. But how could we meet a national leader? That was when we thought about this Professor He you told us about. Then we decided to find him and get him to explain things to us, but we figured he wouldn’t want to talk to us, so we had to take a few risks. Anyway, we believe that our national leaders have a responsibility to tell the common people the truth. Unless we scare them a bit, they will never talk.”
Lao Chen remained silent.
“Old Fang and I,” said Little Xi, “were afraid that you wouldn’t agree, so we didn’t include you in our plans. You can honestly say that you’re not a part of this grab. If you want to pull out now, we won’t try to stop you. We can let you out to take a taxi back, and it will be just like all this never happened. You won’t know anything about it.”
Lao Chen sighed loudly.
“Of course,” continued Fang Caodi, “we all hope that you’ll stay with us and hear Professor He’s