Sun entered the show home, flanked by a delegation from the local government and a dozen members of the media.
At a discreet distance, Bill, Shane and Nancy Deng followed with their anxious German as Sun led the press pack through gleaming rooms, down sweeping staircases, under crystal chandeliers and round an Olympian swimming pool, talking in Shanghainese all the while. His bodyguard, Ho, that slab of a man, was never far from his side.
At that lunch Bill had pegged the Chairman as one of those men who rise to the top by keeping their mouths shut, but clearly when he did open up, he was a man who was accustomed to being listened to, even without the presence of a translator.
The journalists were all Chinese apart from two Shanghai-based Westerners. One of them was a razor-thin American woman in Jimmy Choos, and the other was Alice Greene. She smiled at Bill, whom she had not seen since his wedding day, and he nodded back.
In his experience journalists were rarely good news for lawyers.
They were going outside. Chairman Sun led the way out of the show home and Bill thought it was like stepping out of a Las Vegas hotel on to the surface of the moon.
As far as the eye could see, the bleak landscape was mud, churned by construction work and the summer rain. The farms had long been bulldozed and the barren fields where the new houses would stand were already partitioned, ropes staking out the plots of land, parcelling out the future. There was a cop on the door of the show home, a young Public Security Bureau policewoman with a fading love bite on her neck. As they filed outside Bill saw that there was security everywhere, although it was not easy to tell where the private guards ended and the PSB state police began.
There was something curiously martial about the site. Inside the wire that staked out the development there was a long, orderly line of snout-nosed trucks with red flags fluttering on their bonnets. Men in bright yellow hard hats swarmed between orange diggers adding to the piles of earth, their lights flashing in the mist. Everywhere there were patches of water with an oily, rainbow-coloured sheen, and on the far side of the wire, like a defeated army corralled into a POW camp, the farmers and their families stood watching.
The lawn had yet to be laid outside the show home and the woman in Jimmy Choos began to topple backwards as her heels sank into the mud. Bill caught her and she flashed him a professional smile.
‘I’m from Shanghai Chic,’ she said, holding on to him for support. ‘Where are you from? Isn’t this hilarious? We’re doing a big piece.’
On the far side of the wire, a few bored-looking security men were attempting to move the villagers on. But they didn’t want to move and began to argue with the guards. Then the dispute suddenly erupted into fury, the kind of hysterical, almost tearful scene that Bill had seen break out without warning on the streets of Shanghai. Press the wrong nerve, he thought, and all at once these people go ballistic.
He watched as a grubby-faced boy of about twelve drew back from the wire, and picked up something from the ground. He hefted it in his hand – a broken brick, discarded by the builders – and then threw it high and hard in the direction of the palace that had appeared on their land. The brick fell short, but they all turned to look as it clattered against the show home’s cast-iron gates.
Orders were barked and the villagers took off across the field with the security guards on their tail. Bill saw that Ho had disconnected himself from Chairman Sun’s side and was with them.
‘Hilarious,’ said the woman from Shanghai Chic. ‘Isn’t this hilarious?’
The boy who had thrown the brick paused by a neat stack of fresh bricks and began hurling them at the chasing pack. An old man joined him, one of those wiry old Chinese men without a gram of fat on his body, and Ho and the security guards hid behind a bulldozer as the bricks rained down. Then they started throwing the bricks back.
Bill shook his head. ‘It’s like a medieval battle,’ he said.
‘China is a medieval country,’ Shane said. ‘A medieval country with broadband.’ He looked across at the press delegation. ‘We should put a stop to this, mate,’ he said. ‘It’s not good in front of journalists. Even tame journalists.’
‘I’ll deal with it,’ Bill said. ‘You get Tiger.’ He began walking towards the press pack. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, if you would care to step back inside, Chairman Sun will take questions.’
But nobody was listening. They were watching the guards chasing the old man and the boy across the open mud flats. The old man was too slow, and when he fell the guards were immediately on him, lifting him by his arms. The boy had stopped, uncertain if he should run or fight, and then they had him too. As Ho barked instructions, the guards began hauling them back to the show home.
‘Hello, Bill,’ Alice smiled. ‘Going to get rich in China?’
Bill smiled along with her. ‘That’s the plan,’ he said, watching the security guards. They were taking the old man and the boy to the PSB. That’s what they were going to do, he saw. Turn them over to the law. The cops had gone to the gates to meet them.
‘You know who’s going to get rich here?’ Alice said. ‘The Chinese. A few of them, anyway. Chairman Sun, for example. And some of his pals. You comfortable with that, Bill?’
He looked at her and said nothing. She was still holding her notepad in her hands. She may have been at his wedding, and she may have been his wife’s best friend when they were growing up, but she still looked like trouble. He began walking towards the gates. Alice followed him.
‘You’re an intelligent man,’ she said. ‘And I’m just curious to know what you think is happening here. Off the record.’
‘And what do you think is happening?’ he said, not breaking his stride. ‘On the record.’
Alice shrugged. ‘Looks like a standard land-grab to me. The new rich get their mansions. The local politicians get their cut. And the farmers get shafted.’
He stopped and stared at her. ‘You think these people are going to be robbed?’ he said, genuinely outraged. ‘Is that what you think is going to happen? I’ve seen the details of their compensation package.’
She laughed at him.
‘Just think about it,’ Alice said. They had all arrived at the gates at the same time. Ho and the guards were handing over the old man and the boy to the PSB. The old man looked resigned to his fate but the child looked terrified. ‘Until the mid-nineties all the land in China was owned by the People,’ Alice said. ‘And then suddenly it wasn’t. One day you woke up and the land your family had farmed for generations was owned by someone you had never met. And he wanted you out.’
‘These people are going to receive generous compensation packages,’ Bill said, watching one of the security guards shove the old man. That wasn’t right. They shouldn’t do that.
‘Don’t buy that, Bill. We both know that the money goes to the local government. Your friend Chairman Sun – is he going to see the farmers right, Bill?’
He ignored her. The security guards were conferring with the PSB cops as they gripped the arms of the old man and the boy. They were working out what to do with them. Bill hesitated, unsure if he should stick his nose in here.
‘Every foreigner who works in China has to learn the ostrich trick,’ Alice said. ‘You know what the ostrich
