The Ghost Shift Read Free

the rote phrase that they had learned.
    “That’s right. How old are you now?”
    “Twenty-three.”
    He nodded.
    She felt his eyes on her in the gloom and thought of the first time she had seen him, a month before. She had been pulled out of a lecture to take notes at a Party meeting. It was an honor, of course, and she had rushed to the building, shaking with nerves. A delegation was visiting from Chongqing, and they had needed to fill the seats. The armchairs, topped with lace antimacassars, had been arranged in two lines of eight facing each other, with a pair of armchairs at the head for the leaders of the delegations. Shown into the room as the meeting started, she scurried to the junior place. All formal meetings were like this—they started with the careful filling of teacups by young attendants and polite expressions of good wishes to the other side.
    She had taken out a pen and listened as the Wolf had croaked his way through a welcome to the visitors before the business began. He had looked uneasy. Words did not come easily to him. That was why he hadn’t risen further, they said—the honey tongue belonged to Chen Longwei, the Party secretary for Guangdong. After his set piece, the Wolf had remained silent, interjecting occasionally to correct an official. But once, when she looked up, she had seen him gazing at her as if she intrigued him. Even after she had caught his glance, he had kept looking. She had bowed her head, embarrassed.
    The Wolf spoke again. “Song Mei, I’ve brought you here to show you something you have to see. It will be hard for you. It will require all of your strength. Do you understand?”
    “I understand, Secretary Lang.” She did not, but she felt the shock of being called by her name. She was alone, three months after she had been recruited, with an official so senior that many people who worked for the Commission served an entire career without ever speaking to him directly.
    “You cannot talk about what you see to anyone else, not even that eager young man. Promise me that.”
    “I promise.” She wondered at his casual dismissal of her partner, as if Yao’s family meant nothing.
    The Wolf gestured at her to follow, pulling another flashlight out of a pocket for her to use. As they walked, the leaves fell away, and they passed beyond the grove to a field that had been dammed at each side and flooded to form a fishpond. The Wolf turned right and tiptoed along the edge, his flashlight casting a glow on the water’s surface. Then he halted and looked back, illuminated by her beam. His face was rigid, and he looked desolate.
    Mei shone her light on the water where he was pointing. In the pool of white, she saw rushes and noticed a tubular shape a few feet from where she stood. She turned the beam on it.
    It was a leg, the ankle poking above the surface. Dark shapes moved against the leg in the water and she could see mud carp trawling the body in search of food, their fleshy lips open. Their scales glinted in the light; a large fish nearly the length of the corpse’s foot flicked its tail and swam off. It looked big enough to be harvested.
    Mei shuddered at the sight of the fish swimming mutely around the body and then stilled herself, afraid of looking frail in front of the Wolf. He had told her to be strong, and she was going to prove herself.
    She ran the light up the leg to the corpse’s buttocks, twin moons against a watery sky. The width and roundness of the hips indicated that it was a woman—a young one, her skin smooth and full, still with a faint echo of sexuality. She was naked.
    Mei had not breathed since directing her light on the water. Inhaling, she smelled, mingled with mud, the stench of ripe human.
    A tattoo marked the small of the corpse’s back, and Mei bent toward it. The blob was distended by the bloated skin, and she couldn’t make out the shape or the lettering. The body beyond the hips lay below the surface, twisted so that only one shoulder and