Li Jin』s rented van sped along the dirt road creating dust clouds in its wake. It was dark and the deserted winding road was full of pot holes and barely visible in the dim glare of the headlights. Li Jin was driving while Lao Zhou, the headman of his remote Shaanxi village, stared straight ahead, his brow furrowed with . In the back of the van, the supplies he had purchased in Xian. Before that, he had paid a visit to a bank in the walled city and bombarded the young teller with a bewildering array of financial instrus. It had already been dark when Li Jin had driven up to the village and woken the headman up. Lao Zhou had been happy to see him after an absenore than two years but his elation had quickly transformed into when he had seen the van and the supplies stacked in the back.
Li Jin had simply thrust a thick wad of New a Yuan in the old man』s hands and explaio him what he needed dohe headman did not uand what Li Jin was asking and he didn』t like what he was hearing o. Where had Li Jin gotten all the money from and what was this elaborate scheme all about? Was he in trouble with the authorities? Li Jin』s instrus were even more fusing? He was going to spend several weeks in a puter and the old man was supposed to keep an eye on him and watumbers on another puter. If he saw something blinking in red or his cell pho off with a puterized voice saying 「Critical dition」, he was to get in the van, pick Li Jin up and take him to the hospital. All this stuff about puters. The old man did not uand what he was being asked to do.
Whatever the boy to, Lao Zhou smelled a rat. Yet, Li Jin was the village』s golden boy and could do n. If he was in trouble, Lao Zhou promised himself that he would do all he could to help him. And the money, several years of ine worth, would help the village. He would build a new school, repair the village roads and maybe build himself a new brick house. And Li Jin had promised more money, wired automatically into his at at the Agriculture Bank in Yulin city at weekly intervals. What if the money was dirty?
Li Jin wanted a place to hide out, somewhere remote with no ce of being found and Lao Zhou knew just the place, a deserted cave dwelling high in the mountains that still had electricity and was covered by the provincial wireless and broadbaworks. Yet Li Jin had insisted that he didn』t need electricity. He had bought his own mini geor with him. There was a small stretcher at the back of the van, and what looked like medical supplies. Every few minutes, Lao Zhou would turn around and look at the boxes swaying in the back of the van. What oh was the boy up to? Li Jin looked over at the old man and tried to put his mind at ease.
「Don』t worry Lao Zhou. This is all pletely safe. It』s a project related to the stuff that I was studying at Tsinghua,」 he explained.
「If you say so. But uand it from my point of view. You turn up in the middle of the night after almost two years away with all this cash and ask me to do this? And you seem to be in this great hurry. I don』t uand it.」
「I will explain it to you afterwards. It』s just a couple of weeks.」
「OK, if you say so. Go off the road here,」 the old man instructed relutly. Li Jin took a left turn and the van』s wheels spun as he iated the vehicle over rough terrain. It was almost impossible to see clearly in the night and one wrong turning could pluhem into a steep ravine.
They were about fifty kilometers outside the city of