Read A Case of Two Cities for Free Online

visitor. The efficiency-like room would have looked overcrowded with both a desk and a table.
     
    As expected, Yu came over around twelve. A tall man with a rugged face, he carried several lunch boxes as well as disposable chopsticks and spoons in a plastic bag, which was a surprise to Chen.
     
    “Peiqin’s idea,” Yu said. “She insisted on my going to Old Geng’s place first. Free lunch.”
     
    “Delicious idea.”
     
    Yu’s wife, Peiqin, worked in a state-run restaurant, but she had a sideline job as an accountant at a private restaurant, enjoying a good extra income, plus free food from the restaurant owner, Old Geng. The private restaurant was expanding, and the sideline job had become practically a full-time one. Old Geng talked about having her as a partner, for he knew what a capable woman she was.
     
    “Still quite hot,” Yu went on, opening the boxes. “The crisp skin roast piglet and smoked carp head. Old Geng’s specials.”
     
    Chen took out a bottle of yellow rice wine. “You have something to ask me, Yu,” he said, crunching the crispy pork skin in his mouth.
     
    “It’s an anticorruption case under the Party Discipline Committee, right?” Yu said, not really as a question. “Someone high up wants you to do the job.”
     
    “Not exactly,” Chen said. “Most of the investigation is in Fujian. Xing runs a large corruption empire from there.”
     
    “That bastard!” Yu banged the desk with his fist. “You know what? His Red Tower has become a tourist attraction, in spite of its exorbitant admission fee. People pour in, trying to see the place where those rotten officials luxuriated themselves in ‘the woods of naked bodies, in the pools of mellow wines.’ The local government has to close the building again.”
     
    “Indeed, it’s such a notorious case that the day the news first hit the press,” Chen recalled, “the People’s Daily sold out.”
     
    “With Xing in the United States,” Yu said, taking a sip at the wine, “it may be easy for the Beijing government to blame corruption on Western influences—the result of opening the door and ‘letting in the flies.’”
     
    “That’s way too simplistic,” Chen said. “How have you learned all that so fast?”
     
    “This kind of news people learn in no time. Tell me more about what they want you to do.”
     
    Chen recapitulated what he had learned from Comrade Zhao and from the file this morning. At the end of his summary, he pushed over the list of Xing’s contacts in Shanghai. Yu looked at the list without responding immediately.
     
    “Why can’t they have Xing sent back?” Yu said. “Once he’s back, he has to spill. All his connections. No need for you to do anything.”
     
    “China is embarking on international cooperation in the legal field, signing extradition treaties with several countries. Some convicts have been returned to China. But Xing is seeking political asylum there by claiming to be a victim of a Party power struggle.”
     
    “It’s a brazen lie. The Americans really buy it?”
     
    “Xing must have planned it for a long time. His family moved to the States several months before his flight, taking much of the evidence with them. That made the investigation really difficult. The evidence we have may not even be admissible in a foreign court, and our demands for extradition can be overruled on technical grounds.”
     
    “It’s a tough job, boss. Most of the people on the list have high positions, or high connections. Not like ordinary canvassing, a cop knocking on one door after another, without worrying about the consequences. These are the doors of the most powerful, capable of getting you into trouble. They may not be able to wreak their anger against the committee, but it will be a different story for that particular knocker.”
     
    “I know. Beijing could have sent someone to Shanghai,” Chen said, “someone who does not have to work here afterward.”
     
    “And all your