The car had been stopped in the wilderness for some time now.
Rain drummed steadily against the roof—tap, tap, tap—and it reminded Cen Jin of the watch she had worn at the reserve. The second hand had moved just like this, as though it would never stop.
A pair of headlights appeared in the distance, drawing closer. Cen Jin found them blinding and raised her hand to shield her eyes.
After a moment, the car door was pulled open from outside.
Cen Jin looked up. It was En Nu, umbrella raised, standing in the knee-high wild grass. Rain streamed off the rim of the umbrella in all directions, and in the darkness and the glare of the headlights it shimmered a strange, translucent white.
En Nu seemed to have aged somewhat. The passionate indignation he had worn on that television screen three years ago had given way to a composed, measured steadiness.
Cen Jin waited for him to speak first.
He studied her for a long while before he began.
“Miss Cen?”
“Three years ago, I was not yet particularly prominent in Ka Long’s political world. I was dissatisfied with the government’s handling of the war criminal issue, so I organized supporters and held protest marches and demonstrations frequently. I remember that for the third anniversary of the April Calamity, I planned a demonstration on a larger scale than usual—but it still came to nothing. Once, in the middle of a speech, the police deployed tear gas, and everyone scattered in disarray.”
Cen Jin listened without interruption.
“That evening, I watched the news coverage on television and was deeply disheartened. In the middle of the night, a phone call came out of nowhere. The caller had apparently used a voice changer—impossible to tell if they were male or female. Do you know what they said to me?”
Cen Jin smiled. “I imagine they asked whether you knew about the Jewish avengers.”
The muscles in En Nu’s face gave the faintest twitch. Then he nodded.
“I answered that I had looked into some accounts. If the government continued to do nothing, I also wanted to establish such an organization in Ka Long. As long as one’s conscience was clear, that was enough. But I was just an impoverished social activist—I had no idea where to even begin. She answered: that’s all right.”
“About a month later, she contacted me again. Through an untraceable account, she transferred a sum of money—the start-up capital for the Hand of God. Do you know how much it was?”
Cen Jin said: “It wasn’t only the money, was it. Along with the five hundred thousand US dollars in seed money, she must also have laid out a number of conditions—for instance, to remain as ‘fair, just, not driven by rage, not reckless, not to kill the wrong person, not to let the guilty escape.’ And also: please do not investigate her identity; simply maintain the cooperation.”
En Nu was silent for a long time. In the distance, the long slender blades of grass bent under the weight of raindrops, then sprang back.
At last he spoke. “Miss Cen, you are the founder of the Hand of God.”
Cen Jin laughed softly. “That’s overstating it. Whatever scale you’ve achieved today, I’ve had little to do with it. That five hundred thousand dollars probably isn’t even enough to keep the sanatorium running now.”
“At the start of this month, after a gap of three years, Miss Cen made another transfer.”
Cen Jin nodded. “I heard your focus was shifting. A small token. Besides… I have no use for the money anymore.”
As she said this, she lifted her gaze slightly. “But how did you… find out?”
En Nu said: “It wasn’t us. It was Mr. Wei.”
---
Working from Cen Jin’s signature, Wei Lai had pieced together the entire sequence of events. He had no time to deal with Ke Ke Shu’s vows to pull those three bodyguards apart limb by limb. Using that riddled, bullet-pocked desk, he found paper and pen, and laid out the full chain of reasoning for En Nu, point by point.
——”Here: third anniversary of the April Calamity. Re Lei Mi returned to Ka Long as an investor and government guest. At the same time, Cen Jin, consumed by guilt and burdened by her circumstances, also returned. She met with Re Lei Mi. Old wounds were reopened.”
——”Shortly afterward, Re Lei Mi was found dead in his home in France. His safe was wide open. Cen Jin was a suspect—she had been present that evening—but was later cleared due to insufficient evidence. Now we know: she admitted to it. Which means she did in fact kill Re Lei Mi and took the five hundred thousand dollars.”
——”What followed: the Hand of God was established. Mr. En Nu—I’ve been told the Hand of God started out very small, and the initial seed money would not have needed to be large. You are the founder; you know best what was first received. Was the original figure five hundred thousand?”
——”Then, closely following that: the sudden shift in Cen Jin’s writing style. Your people said she ‘sensed danger closing in and started pulling on cover after cover.’ That’s not right. Under normal circumstances, from the time of your founding to when your reputation had spread far enough to reach her—that should have taken considerable time. But in fact it was as though you founded on one day and she changed her style the next. Because it was all arranged by her. She knew what her outcome would be. Once she had done what needed to be done, she stopped holding back.”
——”On the informant’s letter, she wrote out the names of those who should be held responsible for the reserve in sequence. She placed herself last. She was waiting for the others to be dealt with first, and then she would bring the whole matter to a close.”
——”There is one more thing: Cen Jin was the sole person who handled the registration of refugees at the reserve. If it is said that the original name list is held in the National Archives, and yet there exists a second person in this world who can reproduce all 292 names—that person can only be her…”
---
Cen Jin listened in silence until it was over. Then she asked En Nu: “Do you have a cigarette?”
En Nu didn’t smoke. He gestured to an aide, who brought one over. Cen Jin turned it between her fingers, held it up to the car light, and saw the label—Gold Leaf, a premium blend from Zimbabwe.
She lit it. A faint, sweet, scorched fragrance drifted into the air.
She drew a breath, then exhaled. The smoke blurred the air before her, blurring into the past.
She said: “I am, by nature, rather cowardly. I was intimidated by Re Lei Mi and didn’t dare speak for three years. What finally made up my mind—what drove me to the decision—was the meeting with Re Lei Mi three years ago in Ka Long.”
That visit had, of course, brought more threats. Re Lei Mi had leaned close to her ear and, in fact, let slip a secret.
He said: “Do you remember that colleague of yours who went out to find help? He was the one who told us the location of the reserve. He said that apart from himself, there was only one more person left—a young woman, inexperienced, just starting out. Right then we thought: if it’s only this young woman, this will be easy to handle.”
As he finished, he burst into laughter. That laughter still echoed in her ears.
……
Cen Jin looked at En Nu. “It’s raining heavily—won’t you come up and sit inside?”
En Nu shook his head and went on standing there.
“On the way back, everything suddenly fell into place for me.”
“This was not my life alone to lose. This was not my matter alone. Re Lei Mi had made his arrangements airtight. If I didn’t come forward, the truth would never be known—so what would those lives amount to? And my colleague—what would his life amount to? His bones are mixed in with two hundred thousand others from Ka Long, impossible to pick out. And the man who put him there has been hailed as a hero by the Ka Long people.”
En Nu was silent. The rain seeped into his shoes and socks, and his feet were ice-cold.
Cen Jin watched the unbroken lines of rain hanging from the rim of the umbrella.
She had always dreamed there would be a great hero, clad in armor, who would come to rescue her in her darkest moment.
But then—on that journey back—she suddenly understood.