Snakehead by Peter May Read Free Book Online Page B

whenever he could, under the pretence of phoning home. And he posted several reports, so we were able to follow his progress. But we never knew that it would take so long.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Or that it would end like this.’
    ‘Wait a minute,’ Fuller said. ‘Are you telling me you people mounted a unilateral operation here, without keeping us informed?’ He looked at Hrycyk. ‘Did the INS know about this?’
    ‘We sure as hell did not.’ Hrycyk glared at Li as if he was the embodiment of everything he hated about the Chinese.
    Fuller’s face was flushed with anger. He turned on Li. ‘So what kind of liaison are you, that sends an undercover Chinese cop on to US soil without telling us?’
    Li remained calm. ‘We took a clear policy decision on this. We decided to do nothing that might put the life of our operative at risk.’
    ‘And keeping American law enforcement in the loop would be putting your man’s life at risk?’ Fuller was incredulous.
    ‘It is a matter of trust,’ Li said evenly.
    ‘What, you don’t trust us ?’ Hrycyk threw his hands in the air as if it was the most absurd thing he had ever heard.
    Li said, ‘The history of cooperation between US and Chinese law enforcement is not exactly an illustrious one. You might remember the goldfish case.’
    Fuller sighed his impatience. ‘That’s ancient history!’
    Margaret asked, ‘What is the goldfish case?’
    Li spoke to her directly for the first time. ‘A gang operating out of Shanghai in the late eighties was filling condoms with heroin and sewing them into the bellies of large goldfish that were then shipped out with live fish to San Francisco. It is normal for a number of fish to die in transit, but officials in San Francisco became suspicious when they saw stitching in the bellies of some of the fish.’
    ‘This is completely irrelevant,’ Fuller insisted, but he was on the defensive now.
    ‘Is it?’ Li asked. He said to Margaret, ‘When gang members at the American end of the operation were brought to court, the prosecution here asked the Chinese to release one of the gang members from Shanghai to give evidence in court. The Chinese agreed. It was the first cooperative US — Chinese drug prosecution. But when the guy got on the stand he changed his testimony and claimed political asylum. That was more than ten years ago. He is currently walking around a free man in the United States.’
    ‘He said he was tortured by the Chinese police. Beaten and blindfolded and stuck with an electric cattle prod,’ Hrycyk said.
    Li’s laugh was without humour. ‘Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? And in a country where people are prepared to believe the worst that anyone wants to claim about the People’s Republic of China, the odds were pretty much stacked in his favour.’
    Hrycyk stabbed an accusing finger at Li across the prone form of the dead detective. ‘You telling me stuff like that never happens in China?’
    ‘No,’ Li said simply, taking the wind out of Hrycyk’s sails. ‘But it’s never happened on my shift. And if you could put your hand on your heart and tell me a prisoner’s never had a confession beaten out of him in the United States, then I’d call you a liar.’
    Hrycyk looked as if he might be about to leap across the table and take Li by the throat.
    Margaret said caustically, ‘I don’t think Detective Wang gave his life just so that China and America could go to war.’ She brushed past them and lifted a plastic evidence bag containing Wang’s bloodstained notebook from the computer table and held it up to Li. ‘His diary,’ she said.
    IV
    Wang’s Diary
    April 10
    The ship that is taking us across the Pacific was waiting in the darkness for our flotilla of small boats several miles off the coast. It is a rusty old Korean freighter with three holds. About one hundred of us are packed into the rear hold. Another sixty or so in the next. The third is stacked with food and water for our trip.