money that drives all this. If I can’t stop the money behind it I can’t stop the blood trade. I can arrest the blood collectors – we call them blood heads. I can arrest fifty of them on Monday and by Tuesday morning there will be fifty different people out in the paddies replacing them. The money is just too great to pass up. The only way to stop the disease is to cut off the source of the capital that is pushing the whole thing. And that’s in Vancouver, and that’s what I need you to help me with.”
“There’s that much money to be made collecting blood?”
“No. The money is in selling it.”
“How much?”
“Tons. They pay almost nothing to the collectors and peasants in China to get the blood, then sell it at market rates throughout North America and Europe.”
Robert’s face darkened.
“What, Mr. Cowens?”
“You can call me Robert.”
“What, Robert?”
“If the source was in Toronto or Montreal it would be easier for me to find out things, but Vancouver can be a hidden world to someone like me.”
“Like you . . . a lawyer?”
“No. Like me, a Jew. But I do have an old friend who could be a good contact to the business community in Vancouver and another guy who . . .”
“Please contact them.” Fong looked up sharply. Robert followed his eye line. Beijing’s young watcher, this time without a cigarette stuck in his face, was approaching from across the snack bar.
“He your keeper, Fong?” Robert asked sotto voce.
“He is.” Fong stood and shook Robert’s hand, saying loudly, “Thank you for your advice on this matter. Thank you very much.” Then as he turned he said in a practised undertone. “It’s in the newspaper. Follow it carefully. This could get dangerous.” Without looking back to Robert he said to his Beijing keeper in furious Shanghanese, “These Long Noses really don’t know when enough is enough. And their smell – wooo.”
“Ouch!” shouted the French tourist as she grabbed her stomach. All around her in the packed street market off Julu Lu, south of Shanghai’s embassy district, Chinese faces looked away – just another damn foreigner making a fuss over who knows what.
The tourist, Francine Allaire, couldn’t care less what these Asians thought. She pulled her blouse out of her slacks and looked closely at the pinprick hole just below her navel. It didn’t make any sense to her but she could only think of one explanation for that kind of puncture. She turned to the mass of Asian faces and screamed in her high-end Parisian French, “Which of you fucking Chink assholes stuck a goddamned needle in me?”
CHAPTER TWO
THE ASSASSIN
H e almost laughed at what the sparkling new Pudong International Airport considered a security check. Of course he was carrying no weapon. A folded piece of paper was a perfectly adequate weapon when in his hands – not to mention a credit card, whether the edge was filed or not. He held his hands out to either side so they could wand his body. Nothing bleeped or blopped or whatever noise this devise would make. He didn’t know the appropriate sound – he’d never been on an airplane before. It was rare for the Guild of Assassins to take an assignment outside of the Middle Kingdom.
And this time the authorities had asked for him, the teacher – not one of his students. As he waited in line to board the plane he thought of his favourite student – perhaps the only one he’d ever really loved, Loa Wei Fen. The boy had slept in his bed for many years – although near the end the boy had pushed him away in the night screaming, “You stink of wet paper!”
An odd phrase that – stink of wet paper. He had thought of that exact phrase when first he heard that Loa Wei Fen had met his unlikely end in a construction site in the Pudong Industrial District. Back then the Pudong, across the Huangpo River from the Bund, was a place in transition. The old shanty towns had been pulled down and replaced with massive
“There’s that much money to be made collecting blood?”
“No. The money is in selling it.”
“How much?”
“Tons. They pay almost nothing to the collectors and peasants in China to get the blood, then sell it at market rates throughout North America and Europe.”
Robert’s face darkened.
“What, Mr. Cowens?”
“You can call me Robert.”
“What, Robert?”
“If the source was in Toronto or Montreal it would be easier for me to find out things, but Vancouver can be a hidden world to someone like me.”
“Like you . . . a lawyer?”
“No. Like me, a Jew. But I do have an old friend who could be a good contact to the business community in Vancouver and another guy who . . .”
“Please contact them.” Fong looked up sharply. Robert followed his eye line. Beijing’s young watcher, this time without a cigarette stuck in his face, was approaching from across the snack bar.
“He your keeper, Fong?” Robert asked sotto voce.
“He is.” Fong stood and shook Robert’s hand, saying loudly, “Thank you for your advice on this matter. Thank you very much.” Then as he turned he said in a practised undertone. “It’s in the newspaper. Follow it carefully. This could get dangerous.” Without looking back to Robert he said to his Beijing keeper in furious Shanghanese, “These Long Noses really don’t know when enough is enough. And their smell – wooo.”
“Ouch!” shouted the French tourist as she grabbed her stomach. All around her in the packed street market off Julu Lu, south of Shanghai’s embassy district, Chinese faces looked away – just another damn foreigner making a fuss over who knows what.
The tourist, Francine Allaire, couldn’t care less what these Asians thought. She pulled her blouse out of her slacks and looked closely at the pinprick hole just below her navel. It didn’t make any sense to her but she could only think of one explanation for that kind of puncture. She turned to the mass of Asian faces and screamed in her high-end Parisian French, “Which of you fucking Chink assholes stuck a goddamned needle in me?”
CHAPTER TWO
THE ASSASSIN
H e almost laughed at what the sparkling new Pudong International Airport considered a security check. Of course he was carrying no weapon. A folded piece of paper was a perfectly adequate weapon when in his hands – not to mention a credit card, whether the edge was filed or not. He held his hands out to either side so they could wand his body. Nothing bleeped or blopped or whatever noise this devise would make. He didn’t know the appropriate sound – he’d never been on an airplane before. It was rare for the Guild of Assassins to take an assignment outside of the Middle Kingdom.
And this time the authorities had asked for him, the teacher – not one of his students. As he waited in line to board the plane he thought of his favourite student – perhaps the only one he’d ever really loved, Loa Wei Fen. The boy had slept in his bed for many years – although near the end the boy had pushed him away in the night screaming, “You stink of wet paper!”
An odd phrase that – stink of wet paper. He had thought of that exact phrase when first he heard that Loa Wei Fen had met his unlikely end in a construction site in the Pudong Industrial District. Back then the Pudong, across the Huangpo River from the Bund, was a place in transition. The old shanty towns had been pulled down and replaced with massive
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