From the moment we got out of Lu Xin’s car and walked into the vet’s office, Gobi was on edge. She tucked in behind me at first; then as we walked into the examination room, she planted herself on the floor and refused to move.
I laughed it off at first, but once the vet picked her up and started to check her over, I wondered whether she’d sensed something about the place—or the vet himself—that I’d not picked up. He was about as rough and uncaring as any vet I’d ever seen in my life. He pushed and pulled and didn’t show any sign of liking dogs in the least.
He told me her hip was displaced and he needed an X-ray to confirm how bad things were.
“Hold her down,” he said to his two assistants as he wheeled a portable machine over. They positioned themselves at either end of the table, then grabbed her front and rear paws and pulled back. Gobi squealed, the whites of her eyes showing, her ears pinned back flat against her head. She was terrified and in obvious pain. I tried to protest, but the vet ignored me and carried on with the X-ray.
Gobi was still shaking an hour later as I carried her back into the flat. I was angry with the vet, especially when he showed me the image he’d taken. It was obvious why she had been limping; while her left femur was snug into the hip, her right femur was angled away from the socket, as if it had been bent away with great force. The vet hadn’t bothered to explain what might have caused it but told me Gobi would need surgery to correct it. I didn’t bother to ask whether it was a procedure he could perform. There was no way he was touching Gobi again.
After a short sleep, Gobi was up and trotting around again. I wondered—as I had a hundred times already—what had happened to her while I was away. Had she been hit by a car, or was it human hands (or feet) that injured her? Only she knew the answer.
Her fear was now clearly gone, and she was ready for some fun. Watching her hop about, keeping her weight off her right leg, as she had ever since I got her back, I was amazed all over again. She must have been in serious discomfort, yet she chose not to complain or let it spoil her pursuit of fun.
I decided to reward her with a little trip outside.
It was a beautiful late afternoon, and she found some good bushes to sniff around in. I wanted to explore the area and see where I might be able to eat later, so I picked her up and carried her as we set off towards the shops.
Within a few feet a couple of twentysomething girls stopped me.
“Gobi?” they asked.
I told them yes and let them take a photo of all of us standing there together. Gobi stared right into the camera like a pro.
A few feet farther on, someone else asked for a photo. I didn’t mind, and if Gobi wasn’t stressed, I let people make as much of a fuss over her as they wanted. It was great to feel that we were free again.
But when we were twenty feet from the block of flats, I looked across the road and saw it—the grey saloon. It took a moment to sink in, but as soon as I saw the outline of two men in dark suits sitting in the front, I knew the men from the hotel had followed me.
I turned to walk back to the flat. I thought about walking past my block and trying to throw them off the scent, but that was pointless. They must have watched me walk out of the building a few minutes earlier. They had probably been watching me all day. Maybe they even followed me from the hotel.
As I stood in the lift, going up to the seventh floor, the flat didn’t feel quite as safe as it had before. I was a little suspicious when the lift stopped on the fifth floor and a man got in. And I didn’t think I could trust the woman who was struggling with the lock on her door at the other end of the corridor. Were they all in on it? Or was I just imagining things?
My phone rang as soon as I got back inside the flat, and I jumped at the noise. It was Wendy, an international freelance journalist living in Hong Kong, but it took me a few seconds to register who it was.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You sound odd.”
I told her about the men and the car and how I was getting freaked out by it all.
“That’s actually why I’m calling,” Wendy said. “It’s not just the guys in the car. You’ve got some pretty big people watching this, Dion.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Just that—you’ve got to be careful what you say. I’ve spoken to some colleagues, and they’ve heard there are some local government advisers who are watching the story and listening to everything you say. They’re okay with what you’ve been doing so far, but if you criticize the state in any way, they’re going to shut this whole thing down. You’ve got to make sure that anything you say about China is said in a positive way.”
“You’ve talked to people about this? You mean someone’s told you this? How could that even happen?”
“Don’t worry about how, Dion. I just wanted to make sure you got the message”
“So you think these guys in the suits are from the state?”
“Well, they’re not there to steal Gobi, are they?”
I thought about it. Wendy was right. If their intention was to snatch Gobi, they could have done it anytime, and they probably would have done a better job of keeping themselves hidden from me.
“They’re here for my protection?”
“Kind of. As long as you do the right thing, you’ll be fine. Just don’t talk to CNN again.”
“CNN? How do you know about CNN?” I’d already had one interview with that news network and was in the process of setting up a second.
“There’s bad blood between CNN and the state. Just steer clear, okay?”
The call ended, and I sat on the floor stunned. I felt like I was in a bad spy movie. I didn’t know whether I ought to be barricading myself in and sweeping the flat for listening devices or packing Gobi into a bag and climbing down the fire escape. From the way Wendy spoke, it was no big deal, but I found it hard to relax knowing I was being watched so closely.
I sent a message to CNN explaining as vaguely as possible that I had to pull out from the interview. Then I rejected every other interview request from overseas media in my inbox, and I told Lu Xin that I didn’t want to speak to any of the Chinese media either. If there was a chance I could say the wrong thing and get myself thrown out of the country—and presumably lose Gobi forever—I wanted to eliminate that risk altogether.
I asked Wendy if she could help find out exactly who the guys in the suits were. I knew it was ridiculous to ask, but I had to know, not for my own safety but for Gobi’s. If there was a chance I’d end up being whisked onto the next flight home, I needed to have somewhere to take her.
I spent the rest of the day in the flat. The sun dropped and the room filled with shadows and street lights, but I didn’t turn on any of the lights. It felt safer that way.