The Runner (The China Thrillers 5) Read online

  The article traced Fleischer’s career from a brilliant double degree in sports medicine and genetics at the University of Potsdam, to his meteoric rise through the ranks at the state-owned pharmaceutical giant, Nitsche Laboratories, to become its head of research, aged only twenty-six. The next five years were something of a mystery that not even Time had been able to unravel. He had simply disappeared from sight, his career at Nitsche mysteriously cut short. There was speculation that he had spent those missing years somewhere in the Soviet Union, but that is all it ever was. Speculation.

  Then in 1970 he had turned up again in the unlikely role of Senior Physician with the East German Sport Club, SC Dynamo Berlin. At this point, the Time piece fast-forwarded to the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the German Democratic Republic. The files of the East German secret police, the Stasi, fell into the hands of the press. And there, the true role of Doctor Fleischer was revealed for the first time. An agent of the Stasi, codenamed ‘Schwartz’, Fleischer had been instrumental in establishing and controlling the systematic state-sponsored doping of GDR athletes for nearly two decades.

  Pioneering the use of the state-developed steroids, Oral-Turinabol and Testosterone-Depot, his initial success in developing a new breed of super athletes was startling. From a medal count of twenty at the 1972 Olympics, East German competitors doubled their medal tally to forty in just four years, in the process winning eleven out of the thirteen Olympic swimming events in 1976.

  Most of the athletes had come to him as children, taken from their parents and trained and educated in a strictly controlled environment which included administering the little blue and pink pills on a daily basis. Pills which turned little girls into hulking, masculine, sex-driven winning machines, and little boys into growling, muscle-bound medal winners. Fleischer had always assured them that the pills were nothing more than vitamin supplements. He had been an austere father-figure whom the children had nicknamed Father Fleischer. But by the time they were old enough to realise that the pills they had been swallowing during all those years were more than just vitamins, the damage had already been done. Both to their psyches and their bodies. Many of them, like Gertrude Klimt, would later die of cancer. Others had to endure a different kind of living hell; women giving birth to babies with abnormalities, or finding that their reproductive organs had been irreparably damaged; men made sterile, or impotent, or both; both sexes, in their thirties, suffering from debilitating tumours.

  In the nineties, when the truth finally emerged, these children, now adults, had wanted their revenge. Many of them handed back the medals they had won and came forward to give evidence at the trials of their former coaches, nearly all of whom had been involved in doping the athletes in their care. But the one they had most wanted to see in the dock, the one who had promised them the earth and fed them the poison, Father Fleischer, was gone.

  The Time article quoted sources as saying that he had left SC Dynamo Berlin sometime in the late eighties, before the house of cards came tumbling down, and returned to work for Nitsche. There he was reported to have been involved in research to develop a new method of stimulating natural hormone production. But it had never come to anything, and he had disappeared from Nitsche’s employment records in the Fall of 1989. By the time the Wall came down in 1990, he had disappeared, apparently from the face of the earth.

  Until now.

  Margaret looked at an on-screen photograph of him smiling into the camera, a tanned, nearly handsome, face. But there was something sinister in his cold, unsmiling blue eyes. Something ugly. She shivered and felt an unpleasant sense of misgiving. He was here, this man. In Beijing. And Olympic athletes were dying for no apparent reason. Surely to God this wasn’t another generation of children, Chinese this time, whose lives were being destroyed by Father Fleischer? And yet, there was nothing to connect him in any way. A chance snapshot taken at a recreation club for wealthy businessmen. That was all.

  Margaret re-read the article, pausing over the speculation surrounding his activities after leaving the Berlin sports club. It had been rumoured that he had been involved in the development of a new method of stimulating natural hormone production. She frowned, thinking about it. Stimulating natural hormone production. How would you do that? She went back to his original qualifications. He had graduated from Potsdam with a double degree. Sports medicine. And genetics. None of it really helped. Even if he had found a way of stimulating natural hormone production in those dead athletes, autopsy results would have shown abnormally high hormone levels in their bodies. She shook her head. Maybe she was simply looking for connections that didn’t exist. Maybe she was simply trying to fill her mind with anything that would stop her from thinking about Li, about how he had lied to her, and what she was going to do about it.

  Chapter Nine

  I

  Li knew there was something wrong the moment he saw her. But with everyone else having arrived at the restaurant before him, there was no opportunity to find out what. ‘Oh, you made it tonight?’ she said with that familiar acid tone that he had once known so well, a tone which had mellowed considerably in the years since they first met. Or so he had thought. ‘My mother was thinking perhaps you had gone and got yourself beaten up again just so you wouldn’t have to meet her.’

  ‘I did not!’ Mrs. Campbell was horrified.

  Margaret ignored her. ‘Mom, this is Li Yan. Honest, upstanding officer of the Beijing Municipal Police. He’s not always this ugly. But almost. Apparently some unsavoury members of the Beijing underworld rearranged his features last night. At least, that was his excuse for failing to come and ask me to marry him.’

  Li was embarrassed, and blushed as he shook her mother’s hand. ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Campbell.’

  ‘Uncle Yan, what happened to your face?’ Xinxin asked, concerned. Li stooped tentatively to give her a hug, and winced as she squeezed his ribs. ‘Just an accident, little one,’ he said.

  ‘Nothing that a little plastic surgery wouldn’t put right,’ Margaret said. He flicked her a look, and she smiled an ersatz little smile.

  Xiao Ling gave him a kiss and ran her fingers lightly over her brother’s face, concern in her eyes. ‘You sure you’re okay?’ she asked.

  He nodded. ‘Sure.’

  Mei Yuan quickly took over. ‘Now we’re all here tonight, because Li Yan and Margaret have announced their intention to get married,’ she said. ‘And in China that means a joining together not only of two people, but of two families.’ And she turned to the presents which she had set out on the lacquer table for the second night running, and asked Mrs. Campbell and Li’s father to take seats at opposite ends of the table while she presented them.

  Ninety-nine dollars from Mrs. Campbell.

  Dragon and phoenix cake from Mr. Li.

  Sweetmeats from the Campbells.

  Tobacco from the Lis.

  ‘A pity none of us smokes,’ Margaret said.

  Mei Yuan pressed quickly on, and they exchanged bottles of wine, packs of sugar, a set of brightly painted china hens.

  When, finally, a tin of green tea was presented to Mrs. Campbell she said, ‘Ah, yes, to encourage as many little Lis and Campbells as possible.’ She looked pointedly at Margaret’s bump. ‘It’s just a pity they didn’t wait until they were married.’ She paused a moment before she smiled, and then everyone else burst out laughing, a release of tension.

  Margaret’s smile was fixed and false. She said, ‘I see Mr. Li is having no trouble with his English tonight.’

  The smile faded on the old man’s face, and he glanced at Li who could only shrug, bewildered and angered by Margaret’s behaviour.

  But the moment was broken by the arrival of the manageress, who announced that food would now be served, and would they please take their places at the table.

  As everyone rose to cross the room, Mrs. Campbell grabbed her daughter’s arm and hissed, ‘What on earth’s got into you, Margaret?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Ma
rgaret said. She pulled free of her mother’s grasp and took her seat, flicking her napkin on to her lap and sitting, then, in sullen silence. She knew she was behaving badly, but could not help herself. She should never have come, she knew that now. It was all a charade. A farce.

  Tonight’s fare included fewer ‘delicacies’, following Mei Yuan’s quiet word with the manageress about the sensitivities of the western palate. And so dish after dish of more conventional cuisine was brought to the table and placed on the Lazy Susan. A silence fell over the gathering as the guests picked and ate, and Mrs. Campbell struggled to make her chopsticks convey the food from the plate to her mouth. Beer was poured for everyone, and tiny golden goblets filled with wine for toasting.

  Mei Yuan made the first toast, to the health and prosperity of the bride and groom to be. Mrs. Campbell raised her goblet to toast the generosity of her Chinese hosts, and when they had all sipped their wine, cleared her throat and said, ‘And who is it, exactly, who is going to pay for the wedding?’

  Li glanced at Margaret, but her eyes were fixed on her lap. He cleared his throat, embarrassed. ‘Well, Margaret and I have discussed that,’ he said. ‘It’s not going to be a big wedding. I mean, more or less just those of us who are here tonight, and one or two invited guests. We are going to keep it very simple. A tea ceremony at my apartment, a declaration at the twin altars, and then the banquet. The legal stuff is just a formality. So we thought … well, we thought we’d just pay for it ourselves.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Mrs. Campbell said loudly, startling them. ‘It may be a Chinese wedding, but my daughter is an American. And in America it is the tradition that the bride’s family pays for the wedding. And that’s exactly what I intend to do.’

  ‘I don’t think I could allow you to do that, Mrs. Campbell,’ Li’s father said suddenly, to everyone’s surprise.

  But Margaret’s mother put her hand over his. ‘Mr. Li,’ she said, ‘you might speak very good English, but you don’t know much about Americans. Because if you did, you would know that you do not argue with an American lady on her high horse.’

  Mr. Li said, ‘Mrs. Campbell, you are right. I do not know much about Americans. But I know plenty about women. And I know just how dangerous it can be to argue with one, regardless of her nationality.’ Which produced a laugh around the table.

  ‘Good,’ Mrs. Campbell said. ‘Then we understand one another perfectly.’ She turned back to her plate, and fumbled again with her chopsticks. She would have preferred a fork, but would never admit it.

  ‘No,’ Mr. Li said, and he leaned over to take her chopsticks from her. ‘Like this.’ And he showed her how to anchor the lower of the sticks and keep the top one mobile. ‘You see,’ he said. ‘It’s easy.’

  Mrs. Campbell tried out her new grip, flexing the upper chopstick several times before attempting to lift a piece of meat from her plate. To her amazement she picked it up easily. ‘Well, I never,’ she said. ‘I always thought chopsticks were a pretty damned stupid way of eating food.’ She picked up another piece of meat. ‘But I guess a billion Chinese can’t be wrong.’ She turned to smile at Mr. Li and found him looking at her appraisingly.

  ‘What age are you, Mrs. Campbell?’ he asked.

  She was shocked. Margaret had told her that the Chinese were unabashed about asking personal questions. But clearly she had not anticipated anything quite so direct. ‘I’m not sure that is any of your business, Mr. Li. What age are you?’

  ‘Sixty-seven.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘You have a year or two on me.’

  ‘Maybe you remember when your president came to visit China?’

  ‘Our President? You mean George W. Bush?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I can’t stand the little man!’

  ‘No. Not Bush. President Nixon.’

  ‘Oh.’ She was faintly embarrassed. Nixon had become something of a presidential pariah in the aftermath of Watergate. ‘Actually, I do.’

  ‘1972,’ the old man said. ‘They had just let me out of prison.’

  ‘Prison?’ Mrs. Campbell uttered the word as if it made a nasty taste in her mouth.

  ‘It was during the Cultural Revolution, you understand,’ he said. ‘I was a “dangerous intellectual”. I was going to crush all their heavy weapons with my vocabulary.’ He grinned. ‘So they tried to knock the words out of my head, along with most of my teeth.’ He shrugged. ‘They succeeded a little bit. But when they let me out, it was 1972, and I heard that the President of the United States was going to come to China.’ He paused and sighed, recalling some deeply painful memory. ‘You cannot know, Mrs. Campbell, what that meant then to someone like me, to millions of Chinese who had been starved of any contact with the outside world.’

  Li listened, amazed, as his father talked. He had never heard him speak like this. He had never discussed his experiences during the Cultural Revolution with his family, let alone a stranger.

  The old man went on, ‘It was to be on television. But hardly anyone had a television then, and even if I knew someone who did, I would not have been allowed to watch it. But I wanted to see the President of America coming to China, so I searched around all the old shops and market stalls where we lived in Sichuan. And over several weeks, I was able to gather together all the bits and pieces to build my own television set. All except for the cathode ray tube. I could not find one anywhere. At least, not one which worked. But I started to build my television anyway, and just three days before your president was due to arrive, I found a working tube in an old set in a junk shop in town. When Nixon took his first steps on Chinese soil, when he shook hands with Mao, I saw it as it happened.’ He shrugged, and smiled at the memory. ‘The picture was green and a little fuzzy. Well, actually, a lot fuzzy. But I saw it anyway. And … ’ He seemed suddenly embarrassed. ‘ … I wept.’

  Margaret saw that her mother’s eyes were moist, and felt an anger growing inside her.

  Her mother said, ‘You know, Mr. Li, I saw that broadcast, too. The children were very young then, and my husband and I stayed up late to watch the pictures beamed live from China. It was a big thing in America for people like us, after nearly thirty years of the Cold War. To suddenly get a glimpse of another world, a threatening world, a world which we had been told was so very different from our own. We were scared of China, you know. The Yellow Peril, they called you. And then, suddenly, there was our very own president going there to talk to Mr. Mao Tse Tung, as we called him. Just like it was the most natural thing. And it made us all feel that the world was a safer place.’ She shook her head in wonder. And all these years later, here I am in China talking to a Chinaman who watched those same pictures, and was as moved by them as we were.’

  ‘Oh, spare me!’ Everyone turned at the sound of Margaret’s breaking voice, and were shocked to see the tears brimming in her eyes.

  Her mother said, ‘Margaret, what on earth … ?’

  But Margaret wasn’t listening. ‘How long is it, Mr. Li? Two days, three, since I wasn’t good enough to marry your son because I wasn’t Chinese?’ She turned her tears on her mother. ‘And you were affronted that your daughter should be marrying one.’

  ‘Magret, Magret, what’s wrong, Magret?’ Xinxin jumped off her chair and ran around the table to clutch Margaret’s arm, distressed by her tears.

  ‘I’m sorry, little one,’ Margaret said, and she ran a hand through the child’s hair. ‘It’s just, it seemed like no one wanted your Uncle Yan and me to get married.’ She looked at the faces around the table. ‘And that’s the irony of it. Just when you all decide you’re going to be such big pals, there isn’t going to be a wedding after all.’

  She tossed her napkin on the table and kissed Xinxin’s forehead before hurrying out of the Emperor’s Room and running blindly down the royal corridor.

  For a moment, they all sat in stunned silence. Then Li laid his napkin on the table and stood up. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, and he went out after her.

  She was out in the street before she r
ealised that she had no coat. The snow was nearly ankle-deep and the wind cut through her like a blade. Her tears turned icy on her cheeks as they fell, and she hugged her arms around herself for warmth, staring wildly about, confused and uncertain of what to do now. The traffic on Tiananmen Square crept past in long, tentative lines, wheels spinning, headlights catching white flakes as they dropped. One or two pedestrians, heads bowed against the snow and the wind, cast inquisitive glances in her direction. The Gate of Heavenly Peace was floodlit as always, Mao’s eternal gaze falling across the square. A monster to some, a saviour to others. The man whose rendezvous with Nixon all those years before had somehow achieved great mutual significance for her mother and Li’s father.

  ‘Come back in, Margaret.’ Li’s voice was soft warm breath on her cheek. She felt him slip his jacket around her shoulders and steer her towards the steps.

  The girls with the tall black hats and the red pompoms stared at her in wide-eyed wonder as Li led her back into the restaurant. ‘Is there somewhere private we can go?’ he asked. One of the girls nodded towards a room beyond the main restaurant, and Li hurried Margaret past the gaze of curious diners and into a large, semi-darkened room filled with empty banqueting tables. Lights from the square outside fell in through a tall window draped with gossamer-thin nets. While the emperor and empress dined in the room where Li and Margaret had intended to make their betrothal, the emperor’s ministers would have dined here. Now, though, it was deserted. Li and Margaret faced one another beneath a large gilded screen of carved serpents. The silence between them was broken only by the distant chatter of diners and the drone of engines revving in the snow outside.

  He wiped the tears from her eyes, but she wouldn’t look at him. He wrapped his arms around her to warm her and stop her from shivering. And they stood like that for a long time, his chin resting lightly on the top of her head.