Song Ning remembered while she was on the plane.
It was Yu Zhengyang's first flight, and he was visibly nervous.
Song Ning gave him the window seat.
A bearded foreign man sat on her other side.
Once the plane had leveled off, the foreign man lowered his tray table and took out a pen and paper to write.
His fountain pen seemed to be out of ink. He tried several strokes, but nothing came out.
Apparently impatient, he rummaged in his bag and pulled out several more fountain pens.
He lined them up on the tray and tried them one by one.
A slight jolt of turbulence sent the pens rolling onto the floor.
One rolled beneath the seat in front of Song Ning.
The man tried several times but couldn't bend down far enough to reach it.
Song Ning reached down and retrieved it for him.
After thanking her in somewhat broken Mandarin, the man began writing and sketching with the pen.
Perhaps that had triggered a memory, because the woman's name suddenly surfaced in Song Ning's mind.
As soon as she got off the plane, she found a telephone and called Gu Zheng.
Hearing him answer, Song Ning went straight to the point.
"I remember now! The woman pushing the wheelbarrow who helped with the kidnapping was Du Mei! She used to work at the Supply and Marketing Cooperative near the Military District Guesthouse!"
"Du Mei?"
Gu Zheng clearly hadn't heard the name before.
"Yes! She once accused me of stealing a fountain pen and even reported it to the police. She only said two sentences during the kidnapping. Her voice sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it. Seeing that fountain pen just now jogged my memory!
"More importantly, she has a relative called Du Zhiguo or something