Volume One, Chapter Forty-One: The Mole

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Beijing.

He suddenly received a page and hurriedly left the office area, raising his hand to flag down a yellow minivan outside. Once inside, the driver asked for his destination. "Just keep driving west," he replied. "I'll tell you when to stop."

Barely a kilometer later, they reached Fuxingmen. Along the way, he kept glancing back, making sure no one was following him. When they arrived at the entrance of Quzi Alley, he saw several grocery stores inside and told the driver to pull over, handing him a ten-yuan bill. The minivan driver watched him dart into the alley with confusion.

"Such fuss! It's so close, and he takes a cab? Must be burning money," the local driver muttered.

He walked to the phone booth at the other end of the alley, glancing back at the deserted old street to ensure he wasn't being tailed. He dialed Sarro’s familiar number, expecting a lengthy conversation.

The specialized surveillance department couldn't monitor the massive number of public phones.

He dared not use his cell phone.

Yesterday, after Yannu called his mobile, he returned to the office building feeling uneasy. He’d heard that the internal affairs department was considering whether to establish a specialized unit to collect citizens’ mobile phone information, meaning he needed to be doubly cautious in the future.

He would not allow himself the slightest mistake. A man’s life could be ruined by an insignificant lapse in judgment, or he could lose his life over a few seconds’ error.

“Zhuge lived by caution; Lü Duan never muddled major affairs.”

He never doubted his choices in direction or strategy, yet he paid equal attention to detail. Growing up in a seaside fishing village, he’d never seen a child drown who couldn’t swim; instead, it was the expert swimmers—adults—who sometimes perished in the sea.

On the other end of the call was Yannu’s daughter, Yu Wen’er, speaking in heavily accented London English, of which he understood about eighty percent. He responded briefly in English, and after hanging up, he slumped in the helmet-shaped phone booth.

Yannu was actually still alive.

This news threw him into complete disarray. He knew Squirrel; with Squirrel’s skills and experience, killing Yannu should have been effortless—this was Squirrel’s assignment. He couldn’t believe that the flawless Squirrel would fail. With Squirrel’s relentless drive, even if he couldn’t deal a fatal blow to Yannu, he would surely launch a fiercer offensive. There was no way he would simply retreat after one failed attempt.

He could not have imagined that Squirrel’s reason for sparing Yannu’s life was simply a refusal to kill.

According to his prior calculations, after Squirrel killed Yannu, escape from Mang City would be impossible. Yannu’s territory was swarming with armed henchmen, none to be trifled with, and Yannu’s furious successors would instantly issue a bounty. With such a reward, Burmese mercenaries and professional killers would join the hunt.

Without doubt, Squirrel would find himself trapped, perhaps with no hope of burial. But Yu Wen’er calmly told him: Squirrel had vanished—disappeared into the vast tropical rainforest.

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Yu Wen’er hoped that if he heard anything about Squirrel, he would let her know immediately.

Both he and Squirrel were admired by their departments and trusted by their organizations for their exceptional cunning. He was given another nickname: “Master of Calculation”—the moniker of Zhu Wu, chief among the seventy-two Earthly Fiends in Water Margin, meaning “a man whose plans never miss their mark.”

Squirrel, meanwhile, was mockingly called “Grass-Killer”—a Cantonese slang term, somewhat derogatory, meaning someone so cunning they could calculate a thriving weed to death; a deeply scheming, unexpectedly clever person.

Losing his judgment and control over the matter left him confused, angry, and helpless.

Yes, now there was no one who could help him—not even anyone to consult.

The Yadu Public Security Bureau sat at the foot of a mountain, facing the city’s only three-star hotel, and also operated the “Golden Shield Hotel” downtown.

Lu Lin had just argued with his wife, again over another woman. The madwoman smashed whatever she could find at home, as usual, always choosing the cheapest items. Today it was a glass and a thermos. He left the crying, ranting woman behind and drove his five-year-old daughter to Yadu Kindergarten.

Back at the office, policewoman Julie came in to report that, early in the morning, a lunatic claiming to be a murder suspect had come in to surrender.

He lit his water pipe and listened absentmindedly. Too many nameless corpses drifted down from the river’s upper reaches to this small city; this was the first time he’d heard of someone arriving alive during the river’s violent season. Especially hearing that the suspect had burst into the police station nearly naked, he was a bit surprised. “Where did he come from?”

Squirrel was placed in a temporary holding cell. The holding area faced all the working officers, three narrow iron cages lined up side by side, each door locked with a brass padlock.

Squirrel was put in the empty middle cage. To his left was a gaunt old man who looked over seventy. Squirrel struck up a conversation, asking why the old man had been arrested. The old man replied listlessly, “They said I stole several bicycles, but I really didn’t. I was wronged.”

Squirrel laughed. “Who in here isn’t wronged?”

He turned his attention to his “cellmate” in the right cage—a tall, strong young man wearing a collarless sailor shirt and a thick gold chain around his neck. Squirrel smiled and asked, “Brother, you were caught for assault or robbery, right?”

The young man raised his head proudly. “Both. I wasn’t wronged at all. Snatch-and-grab robbery. The woman’s purse barely had any money, but she clung to it. I yanked her down, her head hit the concrete, blood everywhere. No idea if she died.”

Squirrel looked at the pride in his face and thought, What a mess—locked up with a thief and a bandit?

The cages were one meter square. The Sarro people were generally short, and the cage height was only one meter seventy. The other two suspects crouched on the floor. Squirrel was too tall to squat, so he hunched over, gripping the bars.

He shouldn’t have to wait long. He had already made plans to initiate the special department’s procedure, so Lu Lin would quickly confirm his identity.

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Lu Lin forced himself to perk up and face the man across the bars. The man before him showed no signs of fleeing, instead seemed eager for Lu Lin’s appearance.

Squirrel spoke bluntly, “I know you’re Director Lu Lin. This is the border; your office must have a red secure phone line connected to the security department in Beijing, with a confidential directory locked in your drawer. Please give me paper and a pen. I’ll write down a number from your directory and some information. Announce my nickname, and before questioning me, make a call to check.”

Lu Lin eyed the ragged, bloodstained beggar, perhaps a drug-addled addict or a reckless dealer.

Yet his demeanor didn’t match; despite his tattered clothes and unkempt beard, he was calm, not a madman.

This guy knew about the red secure phone and mentioned Beijing. Lu Lin studied the slip of paper Squirrel handed him for a long time. “How do you pronounce this character?”

“Just read it by its radical—‘wu,’ Squirrel—that’s me.”

Lu Lin returned to his office. The two “cellmates” stared at Squirrel in surprise.

Ten minutes later, he came out and told Julie to buy Squirrel a tracksuit at the city’s department store. He asked the officer for a keyring, ready to unlock the brass padlock himself. As his right hand touched the cage, he froze—the lock was gone.

Squirrel held the already opened lock, grinning slyly inside the cage.

Squirrel requested Lu Lin bring him into the office; he wanted to make a long-distance call.

Lu Lin took the lock and led him into the office, watching Squirrel pick up the phone. As Lu Lin prepared to sit on the couch, Squirrel asked, “Could you wait outside? I can’t make the call with you here.”

Lu Lin was displeased. “Even if you’re someone important, this is my office. You’re using my phone—do you trust me so little?”

Squirrel smiled, as politely as possible. “Director Lu Lin, I’m from Yingzhou. Over there, the street punks—what you call hoodlums—say, ‘If you can trust a cop, even pigs can climb trees.’ Crude words, but true. In certain ways, the police profession can’t be too honest. We’re both in this line of work, just met, so a bit of caution between us is normal, right?” Lu Lin was speechless and closed the door as he left.

Waiting for Lu Lin to shut the door, Squirrel looked at the red phone, reached out, and picked up the receiver. Finally getting a chance to make a call, he realized he didn’t know who to dial.

Apart from the dead Amei, no one had spoken to him for so many days. He truly hoped to find someone to talk to.