Verwandte Artikel zu The Ghost Shift

The Ghost Shift - Hardcover

Gapper, John

 
9780345527929: The Ghost Shift
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0345527925 ISBN 13: 9780345527929
Verlag: BALLANTINE BOOKS, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

In the tradition of Gorky Park, John Gapper’s new thriller takes readers inside the secretive and dangerous world of modern China, as a young woman makes a haunting discovery—one that forces her to choose between duty to her government and a desperate desire to learn the truth about herself.

This wasn’t just a body in a field. The corpse’s shape was hers—same length, same curves. Then she knew, and everything else receded to nothingness. All she could see was a woman with the same nose, the same eyes, and the same face.

Her twin.

As an up-and-coming agent of the Commission for Discipline Inspection, Song Mei probes political corruption, not mysterious deaths. But that changes when she arrives on the scene of a grim police investigation and is confronted with a crime—and a victim—impossible to ignore. Despite strict orders and threats from superiors, Mei knows she can not turn away.

Breaking protocol, Mei undertakes a covert search for the truth about the mystery woman’s death—and life—by following in her footsteps from a factory plagued by worker suicides to a luxury hotel dealing in high-end escorts to an American home haunted by tragedy. But when Mei crosses paths with an ex–CIA operative on a shadowy mission of his own, her personal quest takes a jarring turn into political and industrial espionage that pits both agents against the highest ranks of communism and capitalism.

Praise for John Gapper’s A Fatal Debt

“Rarely does one read a first novel so self-assured, sharp, and compelling. It takes off like a rocket and doesn’t stop until its explosive conclusion.”—Joseph Finder, author ofSuspicion

“An enlightening and grisly tale . . . tightly plotted and fast-paced.”—The New Yorker

“An ingenious thriller about the ruthless world of high finance.”—The Washington Post

“A fast-paced book that should entertain finance aficionados and fans of detective fiction alike.”—Fortune

“A neatly crafted and well-written thriller . . . an audacious, assured debut.”—David Ignatius, author ofBloodmoney

“[Gapper] knows when to put his foot on the narrative accelerator.”—Financial Times

“Intriguing . . . suspenseful . . . a web of deceit and betrayal.”—Booklist

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John Gapper is the author of the suspense novel A Fatal Debt, as well as these works of nonfiction: How to Be a Rogue Trader and All That Glitters, a book about the collapse of Barings Bank in 1995. He is chief business columnist and an associate editor of theFinancial Times. He also has a blog on which he comments on business news. He holds a bachelor of arts degree from Exeter College, Oxford University, and won a Harkness Fellowship to study at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in London with his wife and two daughters.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Part I

1

Guilin, 1989

Margot grips the armrest tightly as the Southern Airlines flight descends, hardly noticing the green hills and lakes below, the lush countryside so unlike Beijing’s arid heat. She has suffered a terrifying journey in an Antonov turboprop that lumbered into the air in Shenzhen, propellers whining as it bounced westward. Only in the final, floating moments before the wheels bang onto the runway tarmac does she see the beauty of the place.

The airport is lined with fields and as the aging plane shudders toward the low-slung terminal, tooth-shaped limestone hills appear in the window. She pauses on the stairway as the other passengers leave, some staring at her western face, and breathes in the aroma of earth and humidity. This is the China that Margot loves, the one she will soon lose. She hasn’t been outside of Beijing for a long time; it is like stepping into a steam bath that soothes her clenched muscles.

Walking through the terminal, she stiffens again. Two military vehicles are parked by the exit at a bus stop, and a line of soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army stands by, rifles held at a diagonal. Their faces are blank under their green peaked caps with the red star encircled in gold braid. Margot avoids their gaze. Those weapons mean death—she had heard muffled sounds of gunshots echoing across Beijing two months earlier, like fireworks in Tiananmen Square. When she ventured out of their compound the next morning, the spring’s excitement had vanished from the faces of passersby. They all kept their heads low, trying to be invisible.

The three-wheeled motorcycle taxi bumps along a potholed highway, past lines of pencil-trunked trees. As they reach the center of Guilin, bicyclists swarm them. Margot has never felt so lonely, on this journey that may change everything. He hasn’t come, and she doesn’t believe his excuse. It is his way: His was was to fix things and leave the details to others. He requires the freedom to walk away; she has seen him check the exits upon entering an unfamiliar building. Margot forces herself not to mind too much, even to laugh. But now, alone in this city, among three-wheelers piled with people and vegetables and crates of chickens, she feels betrayed.

She catches a glimpse, on one side of a boulevard, of two gilded pagodas in the morning sun, and cranes her neck to look back. The driver doesn’t slow down, speeding past a cluster of bicyclists with a muttered oath of irritation in a dialect she doesn’t understand. They must be close, she thinks, and pulls a clasp mirror from her bag and dusts her cheeks with powder, trying to spruce herself up. In the tiny bobbing circle, her face looks ashen and crumpled, hopeless, and she snaps the mirror shut.

It is farther than she had imagined. They emerge on the other side of the city center and wind through hills before plunging into a district with roads bristling with shacks and workshops. In their ill-lit interiors, stuffed with doors, pipes, and metalwork, men check stacks or haggle over a transaction. Then onward again, past a street market with stallholders squatting in the road and ducks poking their heads through cages to gape at the customers. A school, a playing field, before the houses fall away and they reenter the countryside. The driver swerves up a long dusty track surrounded by watery fields.

“Where are you taking me?” she calls to him in Mandarin. But he does not seem to hear.

Just as she is starting to panic, he turns a final bend, stamps on the brakes, and lights a cigarette. She opens the door and climbs out. They are in the middle of nowhere, the fields stretching to hills and sky on one side—deep, luminous greens and blues, as if she is seeing them through Polaroids. From behind, she hears the high-pitched chatter of children and turns to face a concertina barrier with a sentry hut to one side and a courtyard beyond. Steps lead up to a block-like four-story building—a brutalist place whose builders lacked any sense of style. Six small children in muddy smocks watch wide-eyed, as if they have never seen anyone like her.

The doors open and a man strides down the stairs, scattering the children with a swat of his hand. He gives them a hard glance and turns to Margot with a broad, fixed smile, acting out a greeting. The expression stays in place as he walks across the yard, a young woman following a pace behind. The man is wearing a Mao tunic, his hair molded on his head as if glued down, making Margot feel even more disheveled. As they reach the barrier, a guard emerges to open it and the man bows to her.

“We were told about you. Follow me,” he says. It sounds like an order, translated into poor, mumbled English by his companion. As they walk, she grimaces at his back like a naughty student and the translator stifles a smile.

They sit on hard chairs in his office, official photographs of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping on the wall, and make small talk about her journey and his job. As they talk, she glances over his shoulder at the children walking down the hall of the Social Welfare Institute. Margot wonders how long this has been their home, why they are so quiet, and how they are punished if they misbehave. Holding her teacup on the saucer, her hand trembles as she waits for the protocol to finish. She already feels like running away from the place and she’s been there only twenty minutes. When honor is satisfied and she has signed a form she does not bother to read and smiled and bowed again, she is taken into another room. By now she is shaking.

There, for the first time, she sees her, lying inside a wicker basket, covered with a thin blanket.

Friday will be Margot’s thirty-fourth birthday, and this is every present she’s ever gotten, all wrapped into one. She’s read stories of orphanages being dumping grounds for the disabled and has tried to prepare herself for the bad side of this unexpected offer—it can’t come without complication—but the baby is perfect. The basket rests on a table, and Margot brushes back a lock of hair on the girl’s forehead as she sleeps. When she puts a finger under the baby’s hand, the tiny fingers clasp it. As if she’s been waiting for Margot to come.

A woman is close by. Margot had not noticed her yet because of her intense focus on the child. The woman is fifty, she guesses, with a broad face split by a crooked smile that reveals a missing tooth. Reaching down, the woman fusses with the blanket, tucking it in tightly.

“Hello,” Margot says in English. The woman smiles and clasps one of Margot’s hands. Then she nods and waves at the child, as if to introduce her. She reaches into the basket before Margot can say, “Please don’t bother, let her sleep”—not that the woman would understand, what is she thinking?—picks up the baby and puts her in Margot’s arms. It is such joy, after everything, that she can’t help crying. As she dabs at her face with a tissue, the older woman takes charge. The baby’s cloth diaper is wet; the woman gestures inquiringly, prompting Margot to fetch the bag she’s brought, stuffed with bottles and formula and baby clothes and Pampers from Hong Kong. She stumbles putting on the first diaper, and the woman helps her.

They return to the courtyard, where the driver is standing next to his car smoking. Suddenly remembering her camera, Margot digs into her bag. She hands it to the translator and poses with a smile, one arm around the woman’s shoulders and the other holding the gift she has received—a daughter.

2

Guangdong, 2012

The Wolf was waiting for her.

He stood in the far distance, on a ridge...

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Verlag
BALLANTINE BOOKS
Erscheinungsdatum
2015
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345527925
ISBN 13 
9780345527929
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
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