The Ghost Shift (21 page)

The room was stuffy, and she couldn’t force the window open. She threw her stuff on the bed and undressed, stuffing her clothes into one of the plastic bags. Then she made the shower as hot as she could, blasting the traces of the night from her body. Afterward, she put on a robe and stood before the mirror to check her appearance. Her face was pale, her eyes were bloodshot, her cheek was still marked where the soldier had slapped her in Guilin, and the knuckles on her right hand were raw where she’d punched Yao. Despite the food she’d eaten, she looked as lifeless as a dummy. She drew the curtains, set an alarm, and fell asleep.

When the alarm squawked, she sat up in bed, bewildered. It took her a minute or two to remember what had happened. She sat on the edge of the bed, trying not to panic. Her life was ruined, discarded like her clothes. She moaned softly to herself, then louder as she recalled handing the passport to the clerk. That evening, the city’s inspectors would come and take a copy for the records. Perhaps they had already arrived and were waiting for her.

“Stop it,”
Mei said out loud in the empty room. It was just a fantasy—she had to keep her nerve.

She put on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans and took her makeup into the bathroom. As she brushed powder on her cheek and put on pale lipstick—the kind she’d seen on the American girl in the train—her spirits revived. She zipped the hoodie and pinned her hair with a clip, then slung her backpack over one shoulder and sashayed down the hallway in the coat and boots as if she had nothing to fear.

Her confidence lasted the walk to the subway, the two stops south to Luohu, and through the exit to the border crossing. Then, at the sight of the lines in front of the border, it evaporated. She walked without thinking toward the line for Chinese nationals and then veered to the one for foreigners. Her hands were shaking; when she glanced up, an official with gold braid on his blue cap was staring at her. A middle-aged couple joined the line, chatting in a strange language.

As they shuffled forward, she breathed deeply and thought of the American shows she’d watched with Luli, trying to remember how the actors spoke. An official stamped the passport of the woman in front and waved to her. He smiled with a brief flicker of his jaw muscles. Then he opened her passport and stared at the photo. His eyes were blank, absorbing everything and giving away nothing. Mei smiled like a kid who didn’t feel the need to be serious. He snapped his eyes down and turned the page, satisfied.

Mei relaxed as he pulled out her departure card and put it to one side. He looked at the visa for a few seconds, then at the card again. His expression didn’t alter, but he beckoned with two fingers at the official who’d stared at her. The man walked across, pleased to be summoned.

“Come with me, Miss Lockhart.” His English was neutral and polished, nothing like those of the actors.

They reached an office to the side of the barrier, and he indicated a chair opposite his desk. Then he examined the passport in detail, going through the same sequence as the guard. When he’d finished, he looked up and gave her a warmer smile.

“You enjoy being in this country, Miss Lockhart?”

“Oh, yes I do! I’ve had such a great time here. Chinese people are very welcoming.”

“You have traveled widely?”

“I visited many places in Guangdong and I took the train to Hunan and to Sichuan. I love their food. It is very spicy!”

Mei flapped a hand in front of her open mouth and grinned. She was doomed if he made any inquiry—he wouldn’t find any trace of Lizzie Lockhart in Hunan or Sichuan—but her American accent felt passable, and she was acting for her life.

“That is why you stayed too long?”

“I did? Let me see.”

He leaned across the desk with the passport. “You have a sixty-day visa and you have stayed for seventy-nine. July 15 to today, October 2.”

“Oh my God. I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault.”

“You’re right. It is your fault.”

“I guess I was having too much fun.”

The man stared at her stonily. “Too much fun. I envy you. Take your passport and travel home safely. You are welcome in China, Miss Lockhart, but you must respect our laws.”

It was only as Mei crossed over the bridge to the Hong Kong side of the border, above the canal that divided the mainland from the New Territories, that she realized she’d joined a different world.

At elementary school in Guilin, boys had teased her about her name because it sounded like America
—Mei Guo
, the beautiful country.
Mei
was slang for American.
Meirican.
Two of them had weaved around her, putting on accents and calling her a Yankee.

Well, she was an American now.

Beijing, 1989

When the phone rings, Lockhart is at the window, looking down at the gates of the compound. Two military vehicles have been parked outside for the past three days, their soldiers sweltering in the August heat wave under the green canvas roofs. He feels sorry for them, having to arrive each day to intimidate the residents when a poster of Li Peng, the premier who sent tanks into Tiananmen Square two months before, would do the job just as well. Two of them have already fainted and been taken away.

The heat is intense, and August has been worse than July. It is nearly 100 degrees and humid. People move slowly in the streets, conserving energy. The police posted at Tiananmen to stop anyone making trouble sweat in their caps. The part of the square where the tourist buses park is empty, and Mao’s portrait stares across from Tiananmen Gate to the Great Hall of the People. Beijing has a dreamlike air, as if June had never happened.

He props one arm on the windowsill, trying to generate a breeze, as he watches Margot pack. She is on her hands and knees on the floor, sorting out papers and pictures, placing them in boxes for the movers. He feels low and irritable, like the city. Political life has ground to a halt while the Party’s leaders tussle in Zhongnanhai over the next step. He’s been sent home from the embassy with their tickets and passports, booked on a flight to Washington, where a desk job beckons. His adventure is over.

“Is this Tom Lockhart?” The gravelly voice pronounces the vowels in a formal accent.

“It is. Who is this?”

“Economic counselor at the U.S. embassy?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Until recently.”

Lockhart doesn’t say anything. The man has shown too much inside knowledge for comfort—Tom rather than Thomas, his job, the fact that he has been instructed to leave. He looks at his watch. Four o’clock in the afternoon in Beijing, four o’clock in the morning on the east coast of the United States. He likes that he spends his day with his case officer asleep and thus unable to offer guidance. He’ll miss Beijing—an unpredictable challenge, with an excuse to do what he wants and justify it to Langley later. Besides, the seventh floor is empty in August. Sedgwick is on Cape Cod with his second wife.

“I want to show you something,” the voice says.

In the silence, Margot gazes at him inquiringly. Lockhart raises his eyebrows, as if in bemused exasperation, and tilts an imaginary cup to his lips. She smiles and goes to the kitchen.

“Tell me who you are.”

“You’re familiar with where I am,” the man counters. “At a siheyuan near Gulou Xi Dajie.”

Lockhart looks around. Margot is still in the kitchen.

“That means nothing to me.”

“A lady has been living here, but she does not pay the rent for herself. It comes from the China Postal Savings Bank, which receives a monthly deposit from an account at Wing Hang Bank in Hong Kong. You control this account, on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

“I think you are mistaken. It is the first I have heard of any of this,” Lockhart says.

“One hour,” the voice says. “You will not be in danger. I want you to see something.”

When the call ends, Lockhart checks his watch. Sedgwick is out of reach, at least for two hours. “I’m going out,” he shouts. “Won’t be long.”

He takes his bicycle from the gate—the good thing about military rule is that he doesn’t need a lock—and cycles through the embassy
district to Dongzhimen Road, then turns west amid the flow of bicycles. He rests his jacket on the handlebars, enjoying the wind in his shirtsleeves. Passing the red and green edifice of the Drum Tower, he enters the hutong district, its ancient siheyuan courtyard houses tiled in thick terracotta, with carved wood façades.

Two police cars have forced their way up a narrow street and are parked by a gate that leads into an alley. Lockhart gets off the bicycle and rests it on a wall by a clay pipe shop five hundred feet short of them. He has a bad feeling, but something in the voice on the phone pushes him forward. It had an air of disdainful certainty—as if the speaker knows all about Lockhart and isn’t impressed.

The police are expecting him when he walks up the street. The officer in charge holds out a hand for his black diplomatic passport and, after flicking through it, points at the gate. Lockhart walks up the alley to a one-story siheyuan at the end. He is curious to see it—he knows the address but has never been to the place, only paid the bills. He pushes open the door and crosses a dingy kitchen, with pots on the walls, to a tiled courtyard.

A tall man stands in the courtyard, his blue Mao tunic unbuttoned and his shirt open at the collar, smoking a cigarette. There are two butts at his feet; as Lockhart enters, he pulls a red-and-gold pack of Chunghwas from a pocket to offer him one.

“I smoke Marlboros,” Lockhart says.

The man shrugs. “These are better.” He indicates the door that leads to the rest of the house. “Look in there.”

There is a wide bed in the first room, facing a silk wall hanging of a crane on the roof of a temple. It is hot, and there is a smell like rotten eggs. Two flies buzz around the bed, on which lies the body of a woman. Another sits in a pool of blood that has collected from a deep wound in her chest. To judge by the smell, she’s been dead for some time. She was beautiful, with long, dark hair and a feline face. Lockhart has seen her photo but it didn’t do her justice, even dead. He looks at his watch again and then stands by her, closing her dull, sightless eyes with his fingertips.

He goes into the next room, past a screen that hides a basin and shower, toward the sound of crying.

Two babies lie side by side in cots in the darkened room. They are tiny, mirror images, with delicate eyes and tufts of dark hair. One sleeps, but the other’s face is red and clenched, bawling in hunger. They wear tiny white embroidered dresses, as if for a visitor.

The man comes into the room.

“You didn’t know?” He offers the cigarettes again, and this time Lockhart takes one. It tastes of plums as he inhales.

Lockhart shakes his head. It is a goddamned mess. He can imagine what Sedgwick, who didn’t like the plan in the first place, will say. He is on his way out of China, and this is the coup de grâce.

“This is what you got for your dollars. Was it a good investment?” The man leans on the wall, staring at Lockhart. He is in his forties, and it looks like this isn’t his first corpse.

“Who are you?”

“I work for the Ministry of State Security.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“You didn’t answer mine. Look at what your money bought. Silk covers and pretty dresses, an apartment for a mistress near Zhongnanhai. A bloody death. You are responsible for this.”

“We didn’t pay for it, and we didn’t want it.”

The little girl still cries, but softer now.

The man shakes his head. “Americans. You think everyone wants to be like you. We also want a society where the rich are indulged and the poor suffer, where addicts and criminals fill the cities. You forget that emperors have ruled China already. The people do not wish to return to that.”