05 Chapter CTW:Master Testpages CT 6/3/08 21:19 Page 182

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Beijing: Zhongnanhai – Shandong Peninsula: Naval base 201 – Fuzhou – Zhejiang Province: The Xianxia Pass – Nanjing Command HQ – Zhengzhou City, Henan Province



Beijing: Zhongnanhai he days were growing shorter, it was already dark. The lights in TGeneral Secretary’s official residence were on, but only the Actress was there. Lu Hao-ran felt slightly anxious. ‘Has Zhou Chi not arrived?’ he asked as he threw down his briefcase on the sofa. He had not really intended to ask. ‘He can’t be found.’ The Actress said, standing up respectfully. ‘I’ve left messages for him all over the place telling him to come at once.’ Lu Hao-ran sat down and immediately felt more tired. He spent most of his whole life sitting and did not even want to stand up. He took off his spectacles, pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed deeply. The Actress put a covered cup of green tea at his elbow and looked at him with solicitude. ‘Would you like to do some qigong exercises?’ ‘I’ll look at the video tape first.’ He wanted her to massage his shoulders, but hesitated to ask. He had told her to bring the tape at noon, so that he could watch it before the meeting; but the time had been changed. She had been waiting four hours. It was a copy of an interview with Li Ke-ming, the most wanted man in China, put out by Fujian Television and broadcast over and over again in the seven provinces of the Southern Alliance. In the north it appeared to have been secretly banned. There had been no official announcement, so no one knew who had banned it, for what reason or even whether it really had been banned. It could not be seen in any public place, nor had it been mentioned at the top-level meeting Lu Hao-ran had just come from. It was as if the tape and the sensational news it contained, had never existed. Lu Hao-ran would have not have heard of it had the Actress not obtained a copy through her contacts with television people. During the interview Li Ke-ming categorically denied assassinating

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anyone and accused Shen Di, who had been responsible for the security of the General Secretary of being an accessory. He claimed that the assassination had been planned and carried out the orders from the very top. The interview had been designed to have the maximum impact. Li Ke-ming described the assassination very clearly and in vivid detail, his suspicions at the time, the behaviour of Shen Di, the murder of his friend and of the Director of the Police Academy. He answered questions, various documents and pictures were shown, and specialists were seen examining an imprint of Li Ke-ming’s teeth, which proved his identity. His face was not shown, but in spite of the gauze mask he wore, his suffering, anger and sincerity were apparent. But the fact remained, that apart from Li Ke-ming’s testimony, there was no evidence, even against Shen Di, that would stand up in court. It was the best the Southern Alliance could do at the moment, but could hardly justify their formal declaration of autonomy that had just been announced on radio and television news. If the video had been widely diffused—even if the evidence was inadequate, the combination of the two would have a powerful psychological impact. What people want to believe is more important than proof. People nearly always take the side of the small man who has been hurt—or someone who chooses to play that role. Li Ke-ming made a good impression. The mask inevitably led people to imagine what the damage was like (which may have been worse than the reality), but spared them the horror of seeing it. Sympathy was increased by the knowledge that his wife, far away in the northeast, had just given birth to a boy who had not yet seen his father. The producer in Fujian announced that the studio had sent people to Heilongjiang to film his wife and baby and a moving scene of both of them crying was shown. The footage was taken in a hurry, it was explained, because Li Ke-ming’s home was under close surveillance. His family was obviously poor and it was snowing outside. It was clear that Li Ke-ming had not known in advance about this footage. He had become very tense; his injured hands, in gloves, gripped the arms of his chair as if he wanted to crush them. He said nothing but the pain was visible in his silence. The experienced producer did not interrupt, but allowed the spectators to share his grief. The cameras closed in on him. The red rims of his eyes could just be seen through the gauze mask. Lu Hao-ran was not interested in this deliberately tear-jerking scene, but he believed what Li Ke-ming had said. For this minor security officer from the Three Gorges construction site to challenge Shen Di to

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