Chapter 6: Black Moses (2)
At this point, Director Lin—who hadn't spoken until now—took over: "As a matter of fact, you do."
Elyse kept shaking her head, unable to form words at all.
"You've been claiming there's a ghost in our system. And you implied to Captain Zhou that this secret couldn't be made public, or the ghost might take action against you."
Zhou Mi watched her without blinking, but she didn't even lift her eyes, only curling tighter against the chair back—even that futile gesture of self-defense was beyond her reach.
Pitiful, he thought. So pitiful.
Director Lin's gaze glinted behind his gold-frame glasses, its meaning inscrutable:
"After Case 127, you received an overseas wire transfer. After speaking privately with Captain Zhou, you received a second one shortly after. Coincidentally, in just these few days, the intelligence system has been thrown into chaos—many of our people in Myanmar have run into trouble, and someone within the system has been dragged down as well. For example, me."
His voice turned abruptly severe:
"Elyse, ever since you returned, Case 127 has happened and the intelligence division has been upended. You know Duan Po, Li Yufu, Meng Shan, Ahab, and a whole roster of drug lord and warlord kingpins. And whenever Winter Lee or Wu Xiaochuan crossed your path, things went wrong for them. You're highly capable, manipulating everyone like pawns, turning black into white, seizing on rumors to shake up domestic intelligence operations. Captain Zhang just questioned whether Black Moses even exists—I'm now inclined to agree it doesn't. In fact, I suspect that you are the real Black Moses!"
Elyse stared at him in disbelief, then suddenly let out a hoarse, wild laugh.
3.
Zhou Mi stood by the window smoking. A passing colleague patted his shoulder and commented: "Captain Zhou, you holding up?"
He shook his head, turned his face, and blew the last drag into the wind.
"Who could've guessed? Just a young woman, and her acting was that flawless. Can't really blame you."
Zhou Mi lifted his chin and asked casually: "Find anything?"
The other man shook his head.
"Gotta admit, she covered her tracks too well—no evidence left behind at all."
Wei Shu called from a distance, sounding urgent. Zhou Mi strode over quickly.
"What is it?"
The young officer looked conflicted as he leaned in: "Captain Zhou, the forty-eight-hour detention period is up. Nothing came of the questioning, there's no choice—they have to let her go."
He gestured subtly toward the floor above: "The director was just in a rage."
After a moment of silence, Captain Zhou asked: "Did her parents come to pick her up?"
Wei Shu nodded and pointed downstairs.
"They're at it right now—man, her dad is brutal."
Zhou Mi furrowed his brow and strode toward the stairs.
The first thing he heard was a woman's sharp, rapid-fire curses—staccato, like a machine gun—interspersed with a middle-aged man's roars. At first it sounded like a couple fighting, but they were fighting about someone else.
A young woman sitting silently on the bench—thin, pale.
One arm was immobilized in a triangular sling, the other handcuffed, hanging loosely at her side. Even with her head down, the bright red handprint on her cheek was unmistakable.
"I'll beat you to death, beat you to death, you disgrace! You commit crimes, and what about your sister? She still has to take the civil service exam! I'll just kill you first!"
The stepmother's hand kept striking her head, her face, sending her head jerking with each blow, half-length hair falling across her eyes.
Not a single sound, as if she couldn't feel pain.
She was still wearing the gray-blue-and-white striped hospital gown, even the sandals on her feet were the hospital's.
Captain Zhou barked at them to stop this nonsense. Wei Shu and a few officers pulled the couple apart. After some argument, they didn't even wait for their daughter—they signed the release papers and left coldly.
Their parting words: "Ill-omened creature. Get as far away as possible—from today on, we don't claim you."
Elyse sat on the bench without looking up.
After a long while, the others dispersed. The hallway fell cold and silent.
Zhou Mi paused, then stepped forward and unlocked her handcuffs. He bent down and clearly saw the gauze around her neck—blood was seeping through again.
Healed and split, split and healed. When would it ever end?
Elyse's eyes peered out from behind her bangs, fixedly watching him.
In that instant, Zhou Mi nearly said something—
But she suddenly raised her hand and slapped him across the face, quick and hard. Captain Zhou's head turned. He pressed his tongue against his cheek, tasting blood.
Someone had assaulted an officer. Nobody said a word.
Elyse stood and walked out of the Cang City Public Security Bureau without looking back.
That was the last time Zhou Mi saw her. A few days later, Elyse vanished from the hotel where she'd been under surveillance. And from that point on, she was never seen in China again.
...
A soft click—Wei Shu broke apart a pair of disposable bamboo chopsticks, stirred the cilantro in his soup, and started eating with gusto.
Morning. The aroma of cooking smoke and food was bracing.
This old shop's food was so good that at breakfast, it was nearly packed—five or six tables couldn't seat all the customers. Diners who couldn't wait just squatted by the road with their bowls.
At the innermost small square table, two tall, long-legged plainclothes officers squeezed together—Captain Zhou and his partner, grabbing a quick bite after an all-night shift.
Wei Shu ate fast but carefully, lifting his head to check—their captain still hadn't touched his chopsticks. The bowl in front of him sent up graceful wisps of steam, but the man sat there expressionless, smoking and spacing out.
The captain had been smoking more and talking less lately.
Something was definitely up.
Wei Shu sighed, casually turned his attention away, and added an extra scoop of chili to his own bowl.
The young officer broke into a sweat from his steaming noodles.
Not so long ago, that young woman had also sat at this same table, looking as though she were in a rare good mood—actually joking around, holding up three fingers:
"Three bowls."
On the one hand she could still move, it was still wrapped in white gauze from fingertip to fingertip. She was covered in injuries, bones and muscles damaged, her constitution wrecked.
After a month and more of recovery, she'd barely begun to look like a young woman again. By the day she left, half her face was beaten red, the corner of her mouth split and conspicuous.
Those eyes that seemed wrapped in ice, hiding blades—they shouldn't have belonged to a person like her. She should have been living freely, carefree, in the light.
Young lives were supposed to race toward open roads, toward brilliant futures.
He lowered his gaze and ground out his cigarette.
"Captain, there's something—about Elyse."
Captain Zhou's voice betrayed nothing unusual as he started eating, quick and unhurried: "Go ahead."
"Strictly speaking, it's about Elyse's sister."
Wei Shu had finished, was wiping his mouth with a napkin while reporting: "Elyse said someone kidnapped her sister, right?"
Zhou Mi nodded, listening carefully: "She did."
"The brother unit in Yining followed You You for several days. She seems like a perfectly normal high school girl—nothing out of the ordinary."
Amid the bustle of the shop, the owner's order calls rising and falling, Wei Shu actually dropped his voice.
"But yesterday, she ran away."
Captain Zhou frowned—he was sensitive to the word "run"—"What happened?"
Wei Shu waved his hand: "She didn't actually get away—they still had eyes on her. You You, a teenage girl, left home in the middle of the night. Guess where she was heading?"
"Right here to Cang City."
"What's she coming to Cang City for?"
Wei Shu shrugged, helpless: "To meet someone she met online."
Zhou Mi guessed: "A internet romance?"
"Exactly. The Yining team intercepted her, checked her phone, and found she'd downloaded a chat app called Sugrom—needs a VPN to use. She's been chatting with an online boyfriend for over two months. They're very close, and recently he's been lobbying her to run away with him."
The two officers fell silent for a moment.
Wei Shu shook his head: "Sugrom is registered overseas, uses read-and-burn messaging, very hard to trace. The person You You fell for online—their IP is most likely in Myanmar. So Elyse's claim that someone kidnapped her sister may not have been a lie."
Zhou Mi set down his chopsticks—he'd been more taciturn lately, and Wei Shu was used to it, filling in the gaps himself:
"There really was someone trying to take her sister. They just hadn't fully succeeded yet."
He then offered another possibility:
"Or, the person hiding behind Sugrom was actually Elyse herself—trying to lure her half-sister to Myanmar to take revenge on her parents?"
It had to be said, this profile fit Elyse's character better.
But Zhou Mi gave a short, humorless laugh. He pulled banknotes from his wallet and handed them to the owner's wife as she passed, then strode out with his long legs, tossing back an unequivocal rejection:
"It wasn't her."
4.
In the tropical forests of northeastern Myanmar, over four hundred kilometers from the China-Myanmar border, impoverished and quiet villages were scattered across the landscape.
Here stood a Christian school built with UN aid, its twenty-year-old campus buildings mottled with age.