Free The Hamlet Murders by David Rotenberg Page B

– Geoff was gone, we had tried to get him to direct but he was gone and at this late date who could we possibly get – hey, the business manager is available – aren’t we all one big happy family again!
    There was one other place in Canada that Geoff’s passing was noted – although not publicly. It was on the West Coast of the huge country on a mountaintop university campus by a handsome man in his late thirties who went by the name Richard Lee. He dressed and moved casually, but there was a real distance in his eyes. As if something far-off were the object of his attention.
    That something far-off was in fact his brother, Xi Luan Tu.
    Richard sat on the wooden deck on the north side of the Simon Fraser University campus and stared at the snow-covered peaks across the way. The dazzling sunlight, a rarity for this part of the world even in summer, flooded over him. He had come to Simon Fraser University because of the significant Dalong Fada presence on the campus, which allowed him to arrange for adequate security for his meeting. And therefore he sat, at the appointed hour, in the brilliant sunshine, on this campus – almost empty of people – and read the university’s promotional brochure. Richard was not interested in the university’s self-congratulatory bibble-babble about its achievements and its goals, but he found the short blurb on the history of the school’s namesake, Simon Fraser, really quite interesting. It seemed that all Mr. Fraser managed to accomplish in his life was to be the first Caucasian to enter the land that is now called British Columbia. He accomplished this overland feat in 1808 at the behest of the North West Company of Montreal. It appears, though, that the company was looking for beaver pelts, not some of the world’s most spectacular country. He had failed in his appointed task. He was a man who discovered beauty but not rodents.
    A large raven, inky blue-black, fluttered to a stop on a nearby concrete ledge and looked at Richard. The bird’s sharp beak snapped open and emitted a flat caw. Richard held the bird’s eyes. Two black pebbles in a deeper darkness. In Mandarin, Richard said, “Fly away without my soul today and I will pray to you tomorrow.”
    “Not a classic Dalong Fada thought,” said a sharp voice in Mandarin from behind Richard. The raven cawed loudly again and flapped its wings but maintained its roost on the post.
    Richard turned toward the source of the voice. The man standing there was in his mid-to-late twenties; the results of a fairly regular attendance in a weight room were evident on his arms, chest and neck. He held a fresh croissant in one hand. He wore expensive Italian slacks and a pure linen shirt. But his feet, exposed by his ever-so-fashionable sandals, were pure Hunan peasant.
    “How does a boy from the rice paddies get all the way to a university atop a mountain in Canada?” asked Richard.
    “The cause. And you?”
    Richard canted his head slightly to indicate that “the cause” had brought him here too, but they both knew they came for very different aspects of the cause. The two men stared at each other. The raven moved its cold eyes from one to the other.
    Finally, the younger man took a bite from the croissant and said, “I got your note.”
    “Good.”
    “Are we betrayed?”
    Richard looked away. “I don’t know. Xi Luan Tu is still in Shanghai. I don’t know if this Canadian theatre director betrayed him before they hanged him or not.”
    “You’re sure he was hanged then?”
    “No, I’m not sure,” he spat back then softened his tone as he continued, “but he had a cell phone with wireless Internet access programmed to get Xi Luan Tu most of the information he would need to get out of China. Mr. Hyland smuggled it into Shanghai on his first trip but never got it to Xi Luan Tu. He went back to deliver the phone as well as the money and papers he smuggled in this second time. Then he contacts us to tell us that the phone