The Hamlet Murders by David Rotenberg Page A

this room with the door closed and locked that he was not sure it would ever open again.
    The two Beijing men entered. Fong thought to rise but decided against it.
    Bad idea.
    “Stand up, Traitor Zhong,” said the older of the two.
    Getting to his feet, Fong said, “I am the head of Special Investigations, Shanghai District . . . ”
    “You are as long as we let you be . . . Traitor Zhong.”
    Fong breathed in that truth then jumped quickly to the corollary. If they let me it’s because I can do something of value for them. And what is that something?
    The younger man lit a cigarette and said as if to no one in particular and as if apropos of nothing, “No one is above being replaced in the People’s Republic of China. No one is that special.” His pronunciation of the word special was particularly venomous. But Fong declined to take the bait and the invective splatted to the table like a dollop of glutinous brown sauce from a dish of Hei Pei pork.
    The older man said, “Would you like to see the cell you spent two years in, Traitor Zhong? It’s fortuitously available at this time.”
    Fong took a deep breath, “What do you want?”
    “We want you to investigate the unfortunate passing of Mr. Hyland. What else would we want?” The man smiled. His teeth stuck out of his gums at odd angles, like fenceposts after a monsoon. “We expect your best efforts. We expect you to think creatively. We also expect something else.”
    “And that would be . . . ?”
    “Your discretion, Traitor Zhong. You see, there could be much more here than may at first strike the eye.”
    Fong thought of the lines Hamlet says to Horatio about there being more things in heaven and earth than are ever dreamt of in philosophy. Then he got angry. “Why don’t you just tell me what you know?”
    The younger man smiled. “Maybe we don’t know anything.”
    Fong almost snarked back “That would be no surprise,” but he resisted that temptation. “Why were you assigned to keep an eye on Mr. Hyland?”
    “He’s a foreigner.”
    “He’s been here before and I never saw keepers with him then.”
    “Maybe this time he had more on his mind than directing plays and fucking your wife.”
    Fong couldn’t believe they’d gone there. All he could manage was, “What more?”
    The older man leaned against the wall, “Two weeks ago, Mr. Hyland entered the Jade Buddha Temple at 7:15 a.m. Once inside, he managed to lose our surveillance team in the morning crowd. He was gone for a day and a half. We don’t know where he went or what he did.” The man shifted position. “We want to know.”
    “What do you suspect?”
    The man pushed off the wall and began to pace with an oddly rhythmic elegance. “Mr. Hyland was a lonely man. A sentimental man. Someone who perhaps was looking for something to which he could dedicate the final years of his life.”
    “He was an artist. Artists have their art. They seldom need more.”
    “We think Mr. Hyland needed more,” shot back the younger man.
    The older man tossed a grainy photo onto the table. A young, handsome Han Chinese man in Western casual dress was hopping into a taxicab in some downtown area. There was a Caucasian in the back seat.
    Fong took the photo, “Shanghai?”
    “Yes. Near Julu Lu and Nanjing Lu.”
    “When?”
    “Over three months ago.”
    “And I’m supposed to know who this is?”
    “No. You’re not. The important thing is the man in the back seat of the cab. He’s Mr. Geoffrey Hyland.”
    “Geoffrey was here three months ago?”
    “Without papers.”
    “So this wasn’t a suicide, then?”
    The older man looked at the younger man who looked at Fong. “I don’t think either of us said or implied that, did we?” He looked to the older man who shook his head.
    “We didn’t,” said the older politico. “Keep in touch, Traitor Zhong. Now, I think both you and we have other things to do with our day.” He made an odd hand motion that was meant to be dismissive but