6. The Foreman's Secret

The jetty was a cracked slab of concrete jutting into the grey harbour, its surface strewn with broken glass, rusted fishing hooks, and the skeletal remains of a crab that had not survived the storm. Lu Chengen stood at its edge, staring at the severed rope in his hands, feeling the cold knot of dread tighten in his chest. The others had gathered behind him, shivering in the drizzle, their breath forming small clouds in the dawn air.

"We can't stay here," Duan said, his voice hoarse. "The judge could be anywhere. He knows this area better than we do. We need to find shelter—real shelter, with a phone and a lock."

"There's a port workers' canteen about two hundred metres east," Jiang Feng said, his journalist's memory surfacing. "I covered a story there last year—labour dispute over overtime pay. It's closed on weekends, but the back door is usually loose. They keep a coal stove for the night shift."

"Lead the way," Mrs. Cheng said. She had not spoken since they emerged from the pipe, and her voice was flat, mechanical, as if she had drained all emotion into the confession she had written.

They walked in a tight cluster, eyes scanning every rooftop, every window, every shadow that might conceal a watching figure. The canteen was a low, brick building with a corrugated iron roof, its windows boarded up but its back door indeed hanging loose on a single hinge. Duan kicked it open, and they filed into a large, dim room filled with trestle tables and mismatched chairs. A coal stove stood in the corner, cold but not beyond revival.

Lu Chengen found kindling—old newspapers, splintered pallets—and built a fire. The flames caught, casting a warm orange glow that made the room feel almost safe. They stripped off their wettest outer layers and hung them on a clothesline that stretched across the ceiling, presumably left by the workers. The steam rose in fragrant clouds, mixing with the smell of damp wool and salt.

Sun Yi collapsed onto a bench, her splinted wrist now a raw, weeping wound. Mrs. Cheng fetched a first-aid kit from Qiu Wei's bag and re-dressed the injury with practised efficiency. "You need antibiotics," she said. "This is getting infected."

"I'll survive," Sun Yi replied, but her voice was thin, her face pale. She had lost a lot of blood in the water, and her body was beginning to shut down.

Jiang Feng found a telephone on the wall—an old rotary model, dusty but intact. He lifted the receiver. A dial tone hummed, faint but present. "We can call for help. The storm's passed, lines should be up." He dialled the emergency number, and this time, it connected. He gave their location, their number, their injuries. The dispatcher promised an ambulance and police within the hour.

Relief washed over the group—momentary, fragile, but real. They sat around the stove, sipping lukewarm tea that Duan had found in a thermos left by a forgetful worker. The fire crackled. The rain outside softened to a whisper.

Then Qiu Wei spoke, his voice so quiet that they almost missed it. "I lied in my confession. Not about the clause—I did write it. But I left something out."

The relief evaporated. Six pairs of eyes turned to him.

"I received a phone call in November 1982, three days before the accident. It was a man—he didn't give his name—who told me that the diving operation was 'high-risk' and that if anything happened, I should make sure the insurance paperwork included a waiver. He said it was for the shipping company's protection. He offered me five hundred yuan to 'expedite' the process. I took the money."

"You took a bribe," Duan said, his voice low with disgust.

"I thought it was just a routine fee! I was young, I didn't know—" Qiu Wei broke down, his shoulders heaving. "The caller knew my supervisor's name. He knew the file numbers. He knew everything. I later realised it must have been the foreman—Ma Zhigang—calling from a payphone. He had already planned the cover-up before the diver even went down."

Lu Chengen felt a cold hand grip his spine. "He planned it. The accident was not a moment of panic—it was a premeditated act. Ma Zhigang knew the propeller was a hazard. He knew the insulation was frayed. He set the conditions for a failure, and he made sure the paperwork would protect him."

"Then who was the diver to him?" Sun Yi asked, her eyes hollow. "A liability? An inconvenience?"

Tan Weiming's confession—the one he had written in the basement—had claimed that Ma Zhigang had a personal grudge against Cheng Guanghua. Something about a loan, a gambling debt, a woman. But that confession was gone now, lost in the pipe with the inspector himself.

"Tan Weiming knew more than he told us," Jiang Feng said. "He mentioned a debt. A personal feud. If Ma Zhigang orchestrated this, he didn't do it just to save his job. He did it because he wanted the diver dead."

Mrs. Cheng stood up abruptly. "I'm going to find a phone book. There must be a directory in this canteen. If Ma Zhigang is still alive—if he's been hiding all these years—I want to find him. I want to look him in the eye." Her voice was steady, but her hands trembled.

She found the directory behind the counter, a thick, dog-eared volume from 1984. She flipped through the pages, searching for the name "Ma." There were dozens—Ma Feng, Ma Jin, Ma Li—but no Ma Zhigang. She slammed the book shut. "He's not listed. He's erased himself."

"Or he's dead," Duan said. "Maybe the judge already found him."

"Then why are we still being hunted?" Lu Chengen asked. "If the judge has already killed the primary culprit, why torment the rest of us?"

Jiang Feng had been writing in his notebook, cross-referencing dates and names. He looked up, his eyes wide. "Because the judge is not Major Zheng. I've been thinking about the voice—the military cadence, the knowledge of procedures. It could be anyone who served with Cheng Guanghua. But Major Zheng was reassigned to a remote base in 1984. I checked the records—he died in a training accident in 1985. Drowned during a night exercise. He's been dead for a year."

The room went silent. The fire hissed.

"Then who is the judge?" Duan asked.

Sun Yi rose slowly, her face a mask of realisation. "The judge is someone who knew the diver better than anyone. Someone who was with him in the water, who trained him, who saved his life in that simulation. Someone who was in the military with him—but who was never identified in the inquiry." She looked at Lu Chengen. "You said there was a footnote in his file. A crossed-out line. What else was in that file?"

Lu Chengen closed his eyes, reaching back into his memory. "There was a reference to a 'training partner'—another diver who was with Cheng Guanghua during his underwater demolition course. The name was redacted. But I remember the service number: 3-UBE-4217. It was a parallel number, assigned to a soldier who served in the same unit, same dates."

Tan Weiming, before he vanished, had mentioned that Major Zheng wrote a letter demanding an investigation. But what if the letter was not from Major Zheng? What if it was from the training partner—using Zheng's name and rank to give it authority?

Sun Yi's face drained of colour. "The training partner. That's who Ma Zhigang was afraid of. That's who the judge really is. Not a commanding officer—a brother in arms. Someone who had no rank, no official power, but who had a loyalty that went beyond regulations."

Jiang Feng was already scribbling. "If the training partner was never identified, that means they could be anyone. A civilian. A dockworker. A fisherman. Or—" He stopped, his pen hovering.

"Or one of us," Lu Chengen finished.

The group fell into a tense, terrified silence. The fire popped, sending sparks up the chimney. The telephone rang—a shrill, jarring sound that made everyone jump.

Duan answered it, his hand shaking. He listened for a moment, then handed the receiver to Lu Chengen. "It's for you."

Lu Chengen took the phone. A voice on the other end—not the deep, commanding tone of the basement speaker, but a softer, more intimate voice—said: "Comrade Lu. You are the only one who has not lied in his confession. You are the only one I trust. That is why I am giving you a choice."

"Who is this?" Lu Chengen demanded.

"The training partner. You can call me 'Comrade Wu.' I have been watching you all for three years. I know that Ma Zhigang is not dead—he is living in a fishing village thirty kilometres south of here, under an assumed name. I know that the person who pushed Sun Yi is not Ma Zhigang, nor is it Tan Weiming. It is someone in your group who has been working for Ma Zhigang all along—a mole, planted to ensure that the cover-up survived."

Lu Chengen's heart pounded. "Who?"

"The one who tried to drown you in the pipe. The one who cut the rope. Tan Weiming was not my sacrifice—he was the mole. He cut himself free to escape, not to die. He has been working for Ma Zhigang since 1983, feeding him information, protecting him from exposure. I pushed Sun Yi—not to kill her, but to make the mole reveal himself. And he did. Tan Weiming's panic when she resurfaced was the confirmation I needed."

"That doesn't make sense," Lu Chengen said, his mind reeling. "Tan Weiming is dead. He disappeared in the pipe."

"He did not disappear. He surfaced on the other side of the jetty, changed clothes, and slipped into the city. I am watching him now, from a rooftop. He is heading to the fishing village to warn Ma Zhigang. If he reaches him, the foreman will disappear again—and you will never have justice."

The line crackled. "Comrade Lu, I am giving you the location of the village. You have one hour to get there and confront Ma Zhigang. Bring the others—they deserve to see his face. But do not tell them about the mole. Let Tan Weiming believe he has escaped. Let him lead you to the foreman. And then you will have your day of reckoning."

The voice gave an address—a coastal village called Xiapu, with a house near the pier, marked by a blue door. Then the line went dead.

Lu Chengen put down the receiver, his mind churning. The judge—Comrade Wu—was not the enemy. He was a man seeking justice through unconventional means. But his methods had already nearly killed Sun Yi, and had driven Tan Weiming to flee.

He turned to the group. "I have news. The foreman is alive. He's in a village called Xiapu, thirty kilometres south. The judge wants us to go there and confront him."

"Why should we trust the judge?" Duan asked.

"Because the judge told me something that only a true ally would know: that Tan Weiming was the mole. He cut his own rope. He's not dead—he's heading to warn Ma Zhigang right now. If we move fast, we can intercept him and finally face the man who started all of this."

The group erupted. Qiu Wei protested that they should wait for the police. Mrs. Cheng insisted they go immediately. Sun Yi, despite her wound, demanded to be part of the confrontation. Jiang Feng argued for a coordinated approach. Duan simply picked up his wrench and said, "Let's go."

They left the canteen, commandeering a rusty delivery truck that Duan hotwired with the skill of a man who had spent decades in port yards. The engine coughed, then roared to life. They drove south, along a coastal road that was littered with debris from the typhoon—fallen trees, overturned fishing boats, and flooded ditches.

The sun was fully up now, a watery yellow disc struggling through thinning clouds. The landscape changed from industrial to rural, with rice paddies and fishponds replacing warehouses and cranes. They passed a sign reading "Xiapu 5 km," and Lu Chengen felt his pulse quicken.

As they entered the village, they saw a figure in a dark coat walking swiftly along the pier—Tan Weiming, unmistakable, his satchel gone but his stride purposeful. He was heading toward a house with a blue door, the one described by Comrade Wu.

Duan stopped the truck a hundred metres away. They piled out, moving in a low crouch along the seawall. Tan Weiming knocked on the blue door, and it opened. A heavyset man with a bald head and a mole on his left cheek—Ma Zhigang—stood in the doorway, his face slack with shock.

They approached, weapons raised—Duan's wrench, Jiang Feng's crowbar, and Lu Chengen's steady resolve. Ma Zhigang saw them and tried to slam the door, but Duan wedged his wrench in the gap and forced it open. They spilled into the small, cluttered house—a fisherman's cottage, filled with nets and buoys and the smell of dried fish.

Tan Weiming stood in the corner, his hands raised, a faint smile on his lips. "You made it. I was wondering when you'd figure it out."

"Figure what out?" Lu Chengen said.

Ma Zhigang had retreated to the far wall, his face a mask of fear. But Tan Weiming's smile widened. "The judge—Comrade Wu—is not your ally. He is my ally. We are both on the same side—the side of the shipping company. We've been working together for three years to bury this case permanently. The whole trial, the basement, the clues—it was all a performance. The judge was never after justice. He was after a spectacle. A distraction. So that we could destroy the final evidence."

He reached into his coat and pulled out a sheaf of papers—the original inquiry report, with all pages intact. "I took this from the substation before the flooding. And I have a boat waiting at the pier. I'm going to deliver these papers to the company's headquarters, where they will be destroyed. And you—" He pointed to Ma Zhigang. "You're coming with me. You're my witness. Your testimony will be that the diver's death was an accident, and that the six of you conspired to frame me."

Ma Zhigang's face crumpled. "I didn't agree to this. You said I'd be protected. You said—"

Tan Weiming pulled a pistol from his pocket, a small black revolver, and aimed it at the foreman. "I said a lot of things. Now move."

But before he could take a step, Sun Yi lunged from behind a stack of nets, her wounded wrist forgotten. She tackled Tan Weiming, knocking the gun from his hand. It skittered across the floor, coming to rest at Lu Chengen's feet. He picked it up, his hands trembling.

The room was frozen. Ma Zhigang wept in the corner. Tan Weiming lay pinned under Sun Yi, his eyes wide with disbelief.

Lu Chengen looked at the gun, then at the group. He had a choice: to become the judge, the executioner—or to break the cycle. He placed the gun on the table, took a step back, and said, "We wait for the police. We let the law decide."

Dawn broke fully over Xiapu. The sun rose, golden and warm, over the blue door. And for the first time in three years, Lu Chengen felt the weight of his guilt begin to lift—not because he had been forgiven, but because he had chosen to stop running.

But as the sirens wailed in the distance, a single thought crossed his mind: Comrade Wu had said he was watching from a rooftop. But Lu Chengen had scanned every roof in the village, and he had seen no one.

Which meant the judge was not watching from above. The judge was already inside.