Mister Li

Hohhot, Inner Mongolia.... Here I was... An unending journey from New York to Shanghai, where I spent the day with my contact, a weird old man introduced to me as « Mister Li ». 

A day of walking around the smoggy avenues and surreal Gardens of Shanghai, a long walk through the grey shapes of the City, as if each street had to be visited, except with no time to offer any of them a glance or a glimpse of interest. 

A long day of briefings and stories : about Mister Li and his role during the Vietnamese and Korean Wars, his life as a Trader in the meantime, a jeweller in his lost hours as well as a sailor, an air force elite pilote, a two, four or eight wheels racing driver and an adventurous Travellers' guide to the Southeastern Asian Jungles... He had been all these and so much more...Or so he said...

About Chinese culture and customs, about the Country's Heritage, “a wealth no US Dollar could never afford”, he giggled in his thick, singing Chinese accent... Stories about Pandas and Terracotta Warriors, glorious armies and bloodthirsty emperors, modern and ancient, snakes and dragons...

Only when the sun was on his way down, at the west of the financial district's Skyline, he would turn at me solemnly and enlighten me, at last, on what brought a retired Shanghai-ese adventurer to call for the services of an anonymous Brooklyn detective like me, Terrence Grabble, as New Yorker as a New Yorker could be ... “You've been recommended to me”, he would say, before handing me a  bundle of neglectfully stapled documents, a low-quality wallet and an Air China Ticket to Hohhot, Inner Mongolia.

“You will take off from the International Airport tomorrow, 7:50 am, he said, your contacts in Hohhot will be a German Lady, her name is Kerstin, and a French Gentleman called Bastien.  I recommend you not to trust anyone else than these two, whatever your feeling may be... Anything else you need to know, you will find it in this notes. Now, have a good night, tomorrow will be a long day...” He had hardly finished that last sentence when he started walking away, signifying me through a brief and severe, nearly petrifying glance, that I was not expected to follow him anywhere anymore...

Damn it! I whispered to myself... How the fuck did I come from the other end of the globe to this Country I didn't know in any way, to enquire on a case I still had to learn about, for such a peculiar character as this “Mister Li”... Did this bloke only know I had barely investigated anything but misplaced conjugal jealousies and genuine adultery in my long years as a Private...  I guessed he did, certainly he knew much more than I could simply imagine... Well, I was on a mission...

Another flight in the early morning, drawing my way towards Northern China's Desertic regions,  browsing my notes again and again, searching for an inspiration, a direction to take to ignite my quest. Beyond the airliner's wings, Chinese mainland unwrapped  its never-ending landscapes, repetitions of rocky mountains and sandy plains, lengthy grasslands and dusty cities.

A nearly sleepless night and the parody of a coffee spilled at my hotel's bar had already cut deeply into my good will capital . I was summoned to find a Dutch ranter suspected to have been involved in some high-scale burglary in one of Mister Li Trade Estates. A matter too delicate to be assigned to the Chinese Police, the document specified...

I was expected to localize the man, inform Mister Li immediately and remain in his shadow until my employer would come to “meet him personally”.  The Dutchman was believed to travel around China, disguised as some kind of degenerate hippie touring the country with his bike and a backpack...

The wallet contained a credit card and its secret Pin Code on a piece of paper that I immediately swallowed after learning it by heart. I had a free hand, unlimited funds and two weeks to locate our suspect... “This should be a rather straightforward mission”, I thought to myself as my Boeing was preparing for touchdown...  But how could I have known?...

It was 10:30 a.m. when I stepped in a black taxi towards Hohhot's town centre... I was appointed to meet my contacts at 12:00 in a little Restaurant by the City's Five Pagodas' Temple. For now, I was stuck in that Taxi, with desert as far as the sight could reach on both sides of the road, a few huts there and there, and at the end of the way, approaching slowly, the streets of Hohhot where shaping, ready to reveal me their secrets and mysteries, surely...

I was on the mission...