介绍
2017 年 9 月 5 日，50 岁的段伟红从北京的街头消失了。最后一次见到她是在前一天，她在创世纪北京公司的宽敞办公室里，这是一个她和我共同建造的价值超过 25 亿美元的开发项目。在那里，段伟红躲在一个工作空间里，访客在经过保安、精心设计的花园和十几种意大利大理石的考验后才到达，她策划了价值数十亿的房地产项目。而现在，她突然离开了。
这一切是如何发生的？谁是段伟红？
段伟红是我的妻子和商业伙伴，有十多年了。那时，我们已经离婚了，但多年来我们一直是亲密的合作者和知己，一起享受最疯狂的旅程。我们已经实现了我们共同的梦想，即在中国为中国做伟大的事情。我们来自贫困地区，对自己的生活有一种渴望。我们对自己的成功感到震惊。
我们在北京首都国际机场建立了世界上最大的物流中心之一。我们构思并建造了中国首都最豪华的酒店和商业中心--位于城市繁华中心附近的一片精选房地产上。我们完成了股票交易，使我们获得了数亿美元的收入。我们在中国的权力中心运作，培养总理、中国共产党的高级成员和他们的家人。我们为那些掌握着整个中国的新上任官员提供咨询。我们推动了社会和政治变革，使中国成为一个更好的地方。通过做得好，我们相信我们可以做好事。我们做了计算；我们的净财富总额达数十亿。
但现在她已经消失了。在英国的家中，我联系了段伟红的管家，她说段伟红在 2017 年 9 月的那一天没有下班回来，此后再也没有人见过她。仿佛她已经被蒸发了。
我给我们创立的公司的人打电话，得知段伟红不是唯一一个消失的人。她公司的两名高级管理人员--以及一名兼任管家的初级助理--也都失踪了。此后，没有人再听到他们的消息。我在 7 月底才刚刚离开北京，把我们的儿子送到他母亲那里去过暑假。我想知道。如果我在中国多呆几个星期，我是不是也会失踪？
在中国，不明原因的失踪事件经常发生，中国共产党垄断了权力。尽管中国宪法规定了法律保护措施，但党的调查人员无视这些规则，以最站不住脚的借口抓捕任何人，并无限期地关押他们。这些天，中国共产党的特工人员甚至在海外进行抢夺行动，目标是报纸出版商、商人、书商和持不同政见者。你听说过美国对恐怖主义嫌疑人的特殊引渡。那么，这就是中国的版本。
我给段伟红的父母打电话，但他们一无所知。我问过朋友，问过共产党等级制度中的高级官员，他们的职位都归功于她。没有人愿意为她说情。人们非常担心被段伟红的案件所牵连，非常害怕党的中央纪律检查委员会，我断定该委员会是关押段伟红的组织，所以他们不愿意伸出援手。
我打听得越多，就越意识到，在中国党政系统内工作的人之间形成的每一种关系都被利益和损失的计算所饱和。段伟红对她的朋友非常有用。她为中国共产党和政府内部的几十个人安排了晋升的机会。她管理他们的职业生涯，并花了无数时间与他们一起制定下一步行动的战略。但现在她处于危险之中，他们就像一块石头一样把她丢了。
当我疯狂地思考该怎么做，用什么巧妙的方法将失踪的母亲和对我的生活产生了巨大影响的前妻交还给我的儿子时，我回顾了导致这一切的一系列长达数年的不可思议的事件。
当段伟红失踪时，她的净资产远远超过了我们俩在交往初期可能想象的范围。在一个父权制社会中，她是一个才华横溢的女人，她以无与伦比的技巧玩转了新中国的轮盘式政治环境，与一个政治巨头的家族结盟，取得了几乎无法想象的成功。直到她没有这样做。她了解真正的中国，直到她不了解。我是她的商业伙伴和丈夫。我们一起攀登高峰。这是我的故事，也是她的故事。
ON SEPTEMBER 5, 2017, WHITNEY DUAN, age fifty, disappeared from the streets of Beijing. She was last seen the day before in her sprawling office at Genesis Beijing, a development project she and I had built worth more than $2.5 billion. There, cocooned in a work space that visitors reached after running a gauntlet of security guards, meticulously landscaped gardens, and a dozen varieties of Italian marble, Whitney had masterminded real estate projects worth billions more. And now suddenly she was gone.
How had that happened? And who is Whitney Duan?
Whitney Duan was my wife and business partner for more than a decade. By that point, we were divorced, but for many years we'd been close collaborators and confidants and together had enjoyed the wildest of rides. We'd achieved our shared dream of doing great things in China for China. Coming from poverty, we'd been seized with a desire to make something of our lives. We were awed by our own success.
We'd built one of the biggest logistical hubs in the world at the Beijing Capital International Airport. We'd conceived and constructed the swankiest hotel and business center in China's capital— located on a choice swath of real estate near the city's bustling heart. We'd done stock deals that netted us hundreds of millions of dollars. We'd operated at the center of power in China, cultivating premiers, high-ranking members of the Chinese Communist Party, and their families. We'd counseled the up-and-coming officials who had all of China in their grasp. We'd pushed for social and political changes to make China a better place. By doing well, we believed we could do good. We'd done the math; our net wealth totaled in the billions.
But now she'd disappeared. From my home in England, I reached out to Whitney's housekeeper, who said that Whitney hadn't returned from work on that day in September 2017 and hadn't been seen since. It was as if she'd been vaporized.
I called people in the company we'd founded and learned that Whitney wasn't the only one to have vanished. Two senior executives in her firm—along with a junior assistant who doubled as a housekeeper—were also missing. None have been heard from since. I'd only just left Beijing in late July, having dropped off our son for a summer with his mother. I wondered: Might I have disappeared, too, if I'd stayed a few more weeks in China?
Unexplained disappearances occur regularly in China, where the Communist Party holds a monopoly on power. Despite legal protections enshrined in China's constitution, Party investigators flout those rules to seize anyone on the flimsiest of pretexts and hold them indefinitely. These days Chinese Communist operatives even perform snatch-and-grab operations overseas, targeting newspaper publishers, businessmen, booksellers, and dissidents. You've heard about America's extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects. Well, this is China's version.
I called Whitney's parents, but they knew nothing. I asked friends, senior officials in the Communist Party hierarchy who owed their positions to her. None were willing to intercede on her behalf. People were so worried about being ensnared by Whitney's case and so afraid of the Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, which I've concluded is the organization that is holding Whitney, that they were unwilling to lend a hand.
The more I asked around, the more I realized that every relationship formed among those who work within the Party system in China is saturated by calculations of benefit and loss. Whitney had been extraordinarily useful to her friends. She'd arranged for promotions for scores of people inside the Chinese Communist Party and the government. She'd managed their careers and spent countless hours strategizing with them about the next move. But now that she was in danger, they'd dropped her like a stone.
As I thought frantically about what to do, what clever approach would deliver back to my son the mother who'd gone missing and the ex-wife who'd had such a transformative effect on my life, I reflected on the years-long series of incredible events that had led to this.
When Whitney disappeared, her net worth vastly exceeded what either of us might have imagined back in the early days of our relationship. A woman of outsize talents in a patriarchal society, she'd played the roulette-like political environment of the New China with unparalleled skill, parlaying an alliance with the family of a political titan into almost unimaginable success. Until she didn't. She'd understood the real China, until she didn't. I was her business partner and husband. We scaled the heights together. This is my story, and hers.