037

By the time Jon landed in Hong Kong, what the previous morning had been a slight regret, some little doubt of his own wisdom, had turned to grief, to actual wretchedness, a mental agony so sharp that it repeatedly made his stomach turn, while he asked himself over and over how he could have been so blind.

From the airport they went straight to the Foreign Affairs office where, after a short meeting, they were informed that no advances had been made in the investigation, but maybe Faith and Patrick would like to take another look at June’s apartment in case there were clues the Hong Kong team might have overlooked. Probably there weren’t, but Faith and Patrick preferred thoroughness.

Jon had barely settled down in his hotel room and taken a shower when his telephone rang. On the other end, John panted as he spoke. “Jon…you need to come…”. Jon’s heart jumped. “They found Martin…and Lipeng and his son…”, John continued explaining, but Jon was out the door before they finished talking. There he bumped into Jack, who had already been informed. Jon had arranged for a car and a driver to be at their order downstairs so in no time they were on their way to the hospital.

When they arrived, they were guided towards the ER, where they were received by a porcelain-skinned, raven-black-haired doctor that introduced herself as Dr. Zhang. She was fully informed of the situation.

“…but I’m sorry, the patients need to rest so no interrogations will be allowed until tomorrow”, she spoke with a very delicate but firm voice, raising her hand in front of her. “I’m sure you will understand, this has been stressful enough for th- Sir? You can’t go in there, s-“

Too late, she clearly didn’t know Jon, and therefore it took her a couple of moments to react to the golden-maned singer leaving her with the words on her lips, walking past her and storming into the room behind her back. She quickly turned around and ran after him, but Jon was already next to the bed, where a slightly sun-burnt Martin lay, connected to an IV.

For Martin, those first few instants were surreal. “What the…?”, he began as he sat up on the bed, it took him a couple of instants to recognize the blonde man storming into his room and quickly approaching his bed, and it was definitely not a poster face the one he was carrying. Instead, the look in Jon’s eyes were his unspoken reply, and the pieces of the puzzle inside Martin’s head finally clicked into place.

“I need to find her Martin, please, there’s no time”, Jon pleaded, clasping Martin’s shoulders, but most of the demanding was made by his bright-blue eyes that burned into Martin’s own baby-blues.

“I’m so sorry Mr. Engels…”, the doctor apologized with a sheepish grimace. Jon looked over his shoulder but turned his face immediately back to Martin when he heard his voice.

“No…no, leave him”, Martin said to the doctor, but without taking his eyes off Jon’s. “We need to find her”, he said, this time to Jon. “Could you bring the investigators in?”, he asked the doctor first, then turned back to the singer. “I need to talk to them so they can find her”. Both Jon and the doctor nodded their agreements and the woman left the room, though not without a slight reluctance.

As soon as the door closed behind her, Martin went back to Jon, who was now standing by the bed with both hands resting loosely on his hips. “Quickly, get that backpack”, Martin ordered, pointing to the light-brown, dirty bundle that Jon had ignored, but took him only a glance to recognize.

“It’s June’s”, he frowned.

“I know…she gave it to me when we- Just take it, Jon, I didn’t have time to read it, I know you need answers, maybe you can find some in there…”, Martin explained hastily while his fingers wiggled anxiously. Rummaging through the backpack, Jon quickly found the recycled-paper, light-green covered journal.   

Jon tucked it between the small of his back and the waist of his jeans, then pulled his blue T-shirt down over it. It was a good thing that he still wasn’t able to completely fill his jeans. Exactly at that moment, as Jon stomped towards the door, it opened right in front of him, making room for Faith and Patrick to step inside the room. 

“You might want to wait outside, Jon”, Patrick said. “There might be…awkward questions”.

Jon pursed his lips and nodded.

“I promise you’ll have all the information as soon as we put it all together”, Faith added, and got the same response. The couple was a little astonished at Jon’s sudden submissive behavior, but there were still people missing and there was no time to waste in useless speculation. June’s apartment had given them no clues whatsoever. The woman was good at hiding things.

Outside, he reunited with Jack and John.

“I need to get some air, I’ll be back in a while”, Jon told the father-and-son duo without even waiting for a reply.  

Sunk in one of the armchairs of the waiting room, he breathed deeply. He felt exhausted, and could barely focus his eyes on anything smaller than a football, but he got an extra boost of energy from the adrenaline the possibility of answering his questions the journal gave him. He lit up a cigarette and began.

“When it comes to the Chinese countryside, foreigners are always the talk of the town. Villagers stare curiously, the women with faces as hard as the men’s, gazes as direct. Foreigners always stand out, whether alone or ten together: eyes dart away and space just opens up around us wherever we go. Even if we aren’t able to recognize the officers in civilian clothes, we know they are there. We can only guess by their faces, though, faces that send a chill down your spine. They stand stiff, and nothing moves but their heads.

The rest of the villagers, as soon as they realized we understood and spoke some Chinese (a Chinese that we force into a really bad, regular tourist version of Mandarin), gradually started coming to us excitedly, making questions we answer with anything but the truth, or evade answering by faking misunderstanding.

Like the day a young woman came to me while I was doing my laundry in the courtyard of the guesthouse Martin and I are staying in, and asked me about him, my ‘fiancé’.

‘When will you get married?’, the woman asked, resorting to one of the usual questions in the list of conversation starters corresponding to her sex and age.

‘As soon as Martin finishes his PHD’, I answered, it didn’t even feel like a lie to me. I was planning on changing the subject, but her tongue was quicker.

‘You must be so happy’

‘Very much so. He’s a very nice guy’, I said. The last part, at least, was true. But as I spoke, in my inner consciousness all I could think of was Jon, and far down in me I could feel the familiar stirring I feel every time I think about him and the tightness of his arms around me. It puzzles me, my persistent wanting him, but what surprises me the most is that I’m not fighting against it, for he’s gotten into my blood, and in all my veins I can feel him.

‘You must be impatient’, the girl added, snapping me out of my rambling, but I just nodded and smiled quietly. Sometimes that’s the best way to end a conversation”.

Jon took his eyes from the page and looked through the glass windows to the interior garden. Pain tightened his eyes at not knowing what had become of her, she might be hurt, in danger, or worse. He shook his head: when he saw her again (he dared not think of another option), he’d first hug her as hard as his strength allowed him. Then he’d spank her.

Another part read:

“From the start I made sure not to refuse any invitation to dinner from the locals, since it gave Lipeng the opportunity to do the same. That way, in the eyes of the rest of the residents, a natural friendship developed, though we see each other much more often than what is of public knowledge. Whenever I think the conditions are favorable (which luckily, is more often than not), I sneak out, usually after sunset, and follow a path through the neighbor’s garden that leads straight to Lipeng’s house, which is conveniently in the outskirts of the town. Sometimes Martin comes with me, but usually I go there on my own. On counted occasions I pay short, “official” visits in which we play mahjongg and drink tea in his courtyard under the pretext of helping me improve my Mandarin, but once the charade is over, I go back to my room only to exit through the back door again and back to his house. Only then, usually in the kitchen, we resume our meeting and talk more freely about the topics that concern both of us.

There’s a man with heedful ears that lives next door. Even when foreigners are constantly coming and going, he always seems frustrated and a little restless about the presence of unknown people.

Exactly a week after we arrived, two young men, claiming to be Australian tourists, asked me for directions. By their physique I guessed they were trekkers or mountaineers. The man next door stared at the newly arrived young men as if he wanted to find in their aspect some sort of interpretation or clue…but their aspect indicated nothing but a good appetite. They settled themselves in another guesthouse across the town, one that’s practically on the countryside, and are barely seen around.

From time to time I can see people just pass by and slow their step in front of the courtyard, peeking surreptitiously, like wanting to look without seeming suspicious. Task at which some of them fail miserably. What they really are, you can’t easily tell, but some of them sure ain’t the innocent traders from other villages they claim to be.

Martin goes every day to the fields and pretends to be interested in learning the different organic products the farmers use for the crops, ignoring that I’m beginning to be even more worried than him. But he doesn’t say anything. And I don’t, either”.

Jon suddenly felt some sort of comfort from her written words, he felt her so alive, so close he dared to feel hopeful.

“Today, after Martin came back, we began to think that luck was on our side, and everything indicates that we could be leaving the town by the weekend. We let Bill and Randy know so they can start to make the final arrangements.

It means that if everything turns out right, by Sunday night I’ll be in the States, and Lipeng and his family safe in Malaysia. I’ve already confirmed by phone (avoiding the key words, of course) that the boat will be waiting since next Friday”.

Jon rubbed his eyes. Reading June’s handwriting gave him a little headache. Or maybe it was the jetlag.

“Yesterday morning, I was hit by a sudden stab of pain in the back of my head, rather on the left side, behind my ear. For an instant I felt as if I was floating, but immediately felt gravity push me down as if my body weighed a thousand pounds. Then a dimness took over me, like a swoon, and the world turned white in my eyes”.

What June wasn’t able to tell in her journal was that while she was still passed out at the clinic, after the nurse took her vitals, a blood sample and left the room, Martin stood by the side of the bed, looking down at her with narrowed eyes. She looked warm, and still, and so beautiful. It was during those strange moments when her guard was down that she became so infinitely desirable to him. He still desired her, despite her always present resistance; fact which he’d been succeeding in pretending didn’t exist, favored by their cover-up. She didn’t let him lay a finger on her, though, not even for the sake of the operation.

Little by little, Martin discovered that there was something different in the way June was carrying herself the last week, that mysterious mixture of quietness and restlessness of those who have discovered something they want to keep only to themselves, and not share with anybody else. What was it? What could June be hiding? Martin was curious, and she did absolutely nothing to satisfy his curiosity.

“Jon…?”, she murmured in her sleep, and Martin assumed it was her brother she was calling for.

“When I came to, Martin was refreshing my forehead with a wet towel. The curtains were drawn and the mid-morning sun was shining bright in the sky. The fresh morning air drifted in through the window.

Martin’s face was flushed and his hair ruffled when he told me the test showed that I was pregnant. I could see the deep bafflement in his eyes. He genuinely thought the results must be wrong, but I knew they were right, deep inside of me I knew it, I have known it since a few days ago when I realized I was late and told myself that it was just the stress, but couldn’t get myself to keep taking the pill. Because I knew it, it’s just that until now I hadn’t gotten myself to outwardly admit it. A baby…just when Jon and I are beginning to come to terms with the prospects of a life together. So soon. Too soon. The only thing I know for sure now is that I need to concentrate on keeping myself and the baby safe and get out of here as soon as possible. As for Jon and I…I just know that it can go either way, and that either way will demand strength from both of us.

‘I think I should at least know who the father is…so I could pass the congratulations that were given to me on to him’, Martin said, but I just couldn’t tell him, not until this is over. He understood, as he always does, but then he said that whoever he was, I should tell the father of the baby about this, that there are secrets you’re not supposed to keep from those you love. Martin is right; I can’t keep this from Jon anymore. That hit me straight in the gut, but keeping this a secret is a small sacrifice in comparison to the result we can achieve. My problems dwindle when compared to what these people go through, and if I can do anything to spare the suffering of at least one of them, I’ll do it”.

Jon nodded to himself while the part that agreed with June fought to the death with the part of him that resented her keeping it from him. He could have helped; he could have done something, too. Everything was just…wrong. And the worst part was that he couldn’t do anything.

“In the afternoon, when we got back to the guesthouse and introduced the key in the lock of the room door, we realized the lock had been forced. Almost paralyzed, we pushed the door open and found that the room had been turned upside down, drawers pulled out, clothes scattered on the floor. Fortunately, our passports and some money were wrapped together with the mosquito net that hung from a ring on top of the bed. In their haste, the intruders didn’t even touch it.

Luck has apparently abandoned us and, to make matters worse, it’s started to rain”.

The date of the following entry was five days later.

“It rained non-stop for three days that passed in slow agony. We were stuck inside the guesthouse, the telephone lines and the electricity were down and the rain makes it impossible for any vehicle to get in or out of the village. Our next certain chance will be on the 20^th when the medicine truck comes, but it’s still five days away.

My first thought when I realized we wouldn’t make it out of the village on the weekend was to call Jon and tell him everything. Everything. I also need to reschedule the boat…it all just keeps getting more and more complicated”.

However, the message she’d left on Jon’s answering machine was completely different. What had happened?

“But when the machine beeped, I improvised; if I know Jon at all, he won’t just stand there and wait, and I can’t jeopardize all we’ve been working for. I can’t tell him. Not on the phone, not like this”. Jon had to admit that her reasoning was correct. At least the part about his reaction. The rest was still in the sphere of insanity.  

Another entry read:

“Today I was told that the telephone lines are down again, and I know for sure it’s not because of the rain”.

Jon’s stomach growled, but he just drank half his bottle of mineral water, ruffled his hair, rumbled in the chair and turned yet another page.

“We’re only four days away and inside all of us remains an unspoken uneasiness that robs us of a good deal of the courage and patience we have gathered for so many months. The atmosphere is the same that precedes a decisive battle, and we constantly go over the details once and again, anticipating any possible setback”.

Those were the last words written on the journal. Jon closed it and let it rest on his lap, then just remained seated, with his head hanging from his neck, still and thoughtful. No. He wasn’t going to sit around and wait. He had to think of something he could do.

…

“Outside there was that hustle, that buzz that you feel in a village when women and men come back from the fields, when you can see the first lights being turned on for dinner and hear the greetings or the fleeting comments on the scarcity of the crops. In a matter of moments, the hustle gives place to the quietness of early evening.” Martin’s poetic description of all the facts captivated Faith and Patrick, who listened and took notes from time to time.

“He usually won when they played mahjongg, but that night it was her winning. When they talk…”, he chuckled as he recalled, “…no one can put a word in. So I turned to chat to Xiaofang, who was always hard at work making sure the sunflower seeds and steamed bread bowl were never empty”. With his mind eyes he could still see June popping those bits of bun into her mouth and washing them down with tea, then putting aside a strand of hair from her face with the back of her hand, the other slim hand half-stretched across the table toward Lipeng, the added respect in how she addressed him.

“Then suddenly Bill and Ryan stormed in through the backdoor. ‘We have to leave. NOW’, Bill whispered his scream. ‘They’re coming to get him, and they can’t find us here…’, he explained. I’m sure all of us wanted more answers, but by the look in their eyes it was clear for all of us what we had to do. However, they were too late, because somebody knocked on the door before we even managed to get out of our astonishment. ‘Who is it, at this time?’, Lipeng raised his voice, without getting up from his chair. ’We need to speak with Mr. Li’, the voice replied. ‘It’s too late, come back tomorrow’, he said. ‘You’ve been summoned for an urgent meeting with the council, you need to come with us’, the officers on the other side of the door shouted and for a moment, I guess June and I must have looked very much alike: blood drained from our faces as we envisioned catastrophe.” Martin’s story-telling and the way he imposed his voice and gestured were so captivating the couple of investigators didn’t mind that many of the details were completely unnecessary.

“Then everything happened so quickly…” , he continued.

…

June was not certain whether time had slipped for her or everything really did happen so quickly, but before she knew it they were all running out the back door out to the open fields. They followed Lipeng, who led them to a rustic wooden shed. “I hope my friend will forgive me…”, he said, rather to himself as he opened the big wooden gate. In front of them stood an old, rusty, dust-covered truck. “…and I hope that it still has some gas in the tank”. He added. In any other moment that could have been a joke, but now it wasn’t.

They took a narrow dirt way that joined the broad stone paved road that led from the village to the river pass. It was still muddy and slippery, but Lipeng skillfully steered the truck away from the village. With the sinking sun almost all the way down the horizon now, the air was thick and damp. Some lethargic-eyed farmers stood blank-faced as they watched the truck pass by.  

They took them a well hour and a half to get to the pass and they were somewhat relieved that nobody appeared to have followed them, but without wasting a precious second, one by one started getting off the truck. It was already night but the sky offered a weak glow that allowed them to find their way without turning on the flashlights. Lipeng and Bill were the first ones, immediately running towards the river to check for the best point to cross. Martin followed close behind while Ryan helped Xiaofang get off the truck with the baby in her arms. June, who was still trying to finish her note, was the last one. She was only a few feet away from the truck when she saw the first group running back from the river, shouting at them and waving their hands frantically in the air.

“The river’s flooded! We can’t cross! Get back on the truck!”

However, they froze to the spot when in the distance, way behind their stolen truck, they saw two headlights approaching. The 7 year-old hid behind his well-built father while Xiaofang did the same behind Randy, a few yards away. The fact that they would choose this pass to cross was an easy guess, but it was also reasonable to think that similar military trucks were arriving at different crossing passes, so it was likely that no matter what pass they chose, the story would be the same. 

“No! We need to cross! There’s no other way!”, June shouted back. “Just go!”, she shouted, “Bill, Randy, take them, please!”.  

They obeyed, but Martin kept running towards the truck, only to see June get back on it and stand on the back seat of the roofless truck. She turned around to face the soldiers and Martin saw, in backlight, how she lifted both her hands up in the air, the sleeves of her cream-colored soft cotton loose blouse sliding down to her shoulders. The note that June was holding tightly in her clenched fist fell to the floor of the truck and Martin clasped his head in desperation. She’s gonna get killed, he thought, with uttermost certainty.

Swallowing, she opened her mouth twice before any words came out, and when it did, it was a scream edged with desperation.

“Don’t shoot! I’m a citizen of the United States of America!”, she shouted first in English and then in Chinese. The few wisps of hair that had escaped her ponytail made her seem wild. But for only response she got a shot, which thanks to the jolting of the approaching truck, missed the target and ended on the side of the truck. Maybe she had misjudged them.

June turned to Martin: “RUN!!!!”, she screamed at him as she jumped off the truck and started running. Martin waited for her and took her hand before they ran together towards the river, ducking slightly in case any other shots were fired from the approaching truck. Like ducking would help them dodge the bullets.

They saw no one when they got to the shore and, without hesitation, they jumped. It was the only way out.