Chapter 16: The Notebook

Lu Chen had rehearsed this speech in the shower for nine days, and the first thing the room did was cough.

He did not let it matter.

He nodded to the technician at the back, and the ballroom screen filled with a page of grey print.

"This is invoice 1140," he said. "It carries the letterhead of a packaging firm, for a warehouse delivery."

His voice came out level and dry, the voice he used on contracts.

"This is the signature at the bottom. Beside it is a genuine signature from the same firm's owner."

The screen split in two.

"His sevens are crossed," Lu Chen said. "In the first signature there are no sevens at all."

Shu Fan had stopped smiling at the second page.

"Sit down, clerk," he said, from his table. "You are not a nominee."

"I am the legal adviser to the winner of this award," Lu Chen said. "I will be brief. There are thirty-one."

He put up the second invoice, and the third.

The technician, a young man with a headset, had begun to take a visible interest in his career.

By the tenth, a low sound had begun in the audience that was not quite a murmur.

By the twentieth, the sound had a shape.

"These are the firms of Vice President Su's three uncles," Lu Chen said.

"They have never traded with Mr. Shu. I have their statements here."

"Mr. Shu has their forged names on his accounts."

"Lies!" Shu Fan was on his feet. "This man is a jealous orphan with a notebook!"

Lu Chen had been called that before.

He found, to his surprise, that it did not reach him.

At a table near the front, a heavy man with a grey moustache stood up and held up his left hand.

"My signature slants left," he said. "I cross my sevens. I did not sign that."

At the next table, a woman in green stood up. "Nor did I."

A third man rose at the back and said nothing, and only looked at Shu Fan.

Su Yu was beside the podium with his pillow under his arm.