The Shanghai Factor (20 page)

“What kind of people?”

“Wild by night, spoiled brats of the Party hierarchy.”

“Wild in what way?”

“Alcohol, marijuana, loud music, punk clothes, outspoken disdain for the Party leadership. Sex, I suppose, but I wasn’t an eyewitness to that.”

“They trusted each other?”

“They grew up together, for whatever that’s worth. At bottom they were just playing games. By day, they were very serious junior functionaries, and they seemed to take the work seriously.”

“Strange,” Burbank said. “It makes you wonder.”

“About what?”

“Everything. For example, this Mei of yours. If she’s who she seems to be, the child of someone who counts in the Party, why would Guoanbu use her as they do.”

“Maybe she’s not Guoanbu.”

“You think she
loved
you?”

I didn’t answer.

Burbank said, “Did she over time?”

I said, “She was always herself.”

“No change at all? Mood, behavior, habits?”

“Toward the end she was less ebullient.”

Burbank meditated, but very briefly. He said, “And you never knew who her father was, never asked?”

“No. I’ve never put that particular question to anybody.”

“Is it possible she has something to resent at home? Something serious?”

“Anything is possible.”

Burbank finished his tea. He looked at his watch. He stood up and sidled by me on his way out. For an instant we were breathing on each other.

I said, “Why do you ask me these questions?”

“Because resentment has been a factor, usually the key factor, in ninety percent of the defections of foreign assets in the history of this organization,” Burbank said. “Somebody doesn’t get promoted or doesn’t get the respect he thinks he deserves or can’t forgive an insult. Or hates his daddy because the old man did him so many kindnesses or has the wrong expectations. He decides to get revenge. Resentment is the open sesame of our business. It’s also the demon when it comes to our own people. It hides, it evades, it smiles at you as if nothing is wrong.”

Was he talking about Mei? Or was he talking about me, putting me on edge? Certainly I had my resentments. So probably did Mei. Who didn’t? I said, “So?”

Burbank said, “So be aware of the possibilities.”

27

It was midwinter before the phone call came, early on a Sunday morning. The familiar female voice told me that I was invited to dinner at six o’clock the following evening at Zorba’s Café near Dupont Circle, not far from the Chinese restaurant where Lin Ming and I had met for the first time. I accepted. Around three, snow began to fall. I called the Hilton on Connecticut Avenue and booked a room for the night. By the time I parked in the hotel garage and checked in, two or three inches of snow had accumulated, and it was falling even more heavily than before. It didn’t take a weather prophet to know this was going to continue. Washington, whose snow removal capabilities are next to nil, would be paralyzed by midnight. It also meant that the U.S. government, including Headquarters, would shut down for at least a day.

I had just enough time to walk to Zorba’s. Inside, I saw myself in a wall mirror. I looked like a snowman, my parka whitened by the stuff. Usually at this hour the place was thronged, but tonight even neighborhood people were staying home, so it was all but deserted. Lin Ming, wearing a puffy, down-filled, made-in-China winter coat with a fur collar, waited at one of the half-dozen occupied tables. He waved. He smiled. He leapt to his feet. No gestures could have been more unexpected. He threaded his way among the tables, shook my hand with yet another smile, and said, “It’s good to see you again, my friend.”

We ordered at the counter, a Greek salad with chicken for Lin, a yero and oily Greek fries for me, two beers. He paid both tabs, holding up a warning hand to prevent me from even thinking about reaching for my wallet. When our number was called over the loudspeaker, Lin Ming fetched the tray, as if all of a sudden he was the lesser person. We ate in a businesslike way, making almost no conversation. About halfway through the meal Lin Ming remarked that the lamb in my yero had a funny smell. Very greasy. Did it taste the way it smelled?

“Pretty much,” I said. “You’ve never eaten lamb?”

“Never,” Lin Ming said with feeling.

Just as we finished, the lights went out. A female voice screeched in the darkness. Lin Ming said, “Let’s go for a walk.”

I didn’t like this situation at all. The streetlights, the traffic lights, the shop windows were dark. I hadn’t experienced such pitch darkness since Afghanistan. You could half-see snowflakes falling and hear the snow squeak when you stepped on it. By now it was ankle deep. We walked—slogged—for what seemed to be about half an hour. Lin Ming must have been sweating inside his coat. Because the falling snow stuck to its fur collar, he was faintly visible in the darkness. This was not a particularly dangerous neighborhood, but what a laugh it would be if we were mugged—two blind desperadoes handing over their valuables with knives at their throats. Even a master of martial arts—I didn’t doubt that Lin Ming was just such a master—would have difficulty taking a blade away from an assailant if he could see neither the knife nor the assailant.

Lin Ming cleared his throat loudly and spat into the snow. A few steps afterward, he did it again—the aftereffect of smelling the lamb, maybe. Or, who knew, a signal to the assassin who awaited us in the blackness that had descended on the city. This was the most aimless clandestine meeting I had ever had. All the usual stuff—the signals, the double-talk, the solemnity, the darting eyes—was missing. We walked on, neither of us speaking a word although we could have chattered in Mandarin to our hearts’ content and the odds were ten thousand to one that no lurker would have understood a word. Lin Ming was mute for reasons unguessable. I kept my mouth shut because I wasn’t going to be the first to break the silence. My feet were wet. I was edgy for other reasons. I should have used the urinal before leaving the restaurant, but it was just as dark inside Zorba’s as it was outside.

By now my eyes had adjusted. I could see Lin Ming quite plainly—not just as a shape in the darkness, but the man himself, his face inside the hood, his gleaming teeth. Apparently he could see me, too, because he put a hand on my arm and said, “Stop. I think we’re here.”

He turned on a flashlight, a blindingly bright one, and swept the building before us. He read the number on a door and said, “We’ve passed it.”

We turned around. After fifty steps or so, Lin Ming again switched on his flashlight and this time found the number he was looking for. He lighted our way into a doorway. The door was ajar. No elevators were in operation, of course, so we used the fire stairs. Through the darkness Lin Ming moved upward almost as fast as Burbank. On the fifth landing he switched on the flashlight again, located the door, and shone us through it. This on-and-off business with the flashlight destroyed my night vision, so I practically had to hold on to Lin’s belt to find my way down the corridor.

At last we came to a door that showed a thread of yellowish light around its edges. Lin Ming pushed it open—it was unlocked—and stood back to let me go first. An inner door stood open, and through it I could see candles burning—many candles. Lin Ming was behind me, almost pressed against me, like one of the acrobats.

I walked through the door, and there in a puddle of buttery candlelight sat Chen Qi with a glass in his hand. I smelled scotch. I was not surprised. Of course it was Chen Qi, the most unlikely man in the world to be here all by himself. Who else would it be? He stood up, he smiled, he extended a hand and shook mine firmly. He spoke my name. I looked around to see if anybody else was lurking in the shadows, if there were other doors, other ways out. The answer to all these questions was no.

I said, “Good evening, CEO Chen. What a pleasure.”

“I agree,” Chen Qi said. “Sit down, please. We have things to talk about.”

As of old, I did as I was told. Chen Qi did not quite snap his fingers at Lin Ming. But without turning his head he said, “Single malt.” To me he said, as if he had some reason to be nice to me, “I think you’ll like this whisky. Eighteen years old. Very smoky.” Lin Ming, obsequious as a waiter, brought my whisky—two ounces, one ice cube.

Chen Qi was in affable mode, as on the night we dined together in Shanghai and he offered me a job. He hoped that I had been well. He brought me greetings from my former colleagues in the tower. My good work, my American humor were missed.

He said, “I hope you’re enjoying your new posting.”

“It has its moments.”

“It must be stimulating, working so closely with your new chief. So famous for being infamous,” Chen Qi said. “You have a way of finding your way to the top. I think you will have a very interesting life. I have always thought so.”

“Not nearly so interesting as your own life,” I said.

“You shouldn’t be so sure about that. You should be on the lookout. Opportunities hide, then leap at a man,” Chen Qi said. “I’m sure you remember the young woman you knew in Shanghai.”

“Zhang Jia?”

“Zhang Jia has married and is pregnant. A boy, according to the sonogram, so she’s a fortunate person.”

“I’m glad for her,” I said. I was.

“I wasn’t asking about Zhang Jia,” Chen said. “I meant the earlier one, the first woman you had. What did you call her?”

“Mei.”

“Yes, Mei. Now I remember.”

“She’s well and happy, I hope.”

“As far as I know she’s well,” Chen said. “But happy? Probably not.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. I took hold of myself and said, calmly I thought, “What’s the problem?”

Chen Qi said, “You’ve finished your whisky. Did you enjoy it?”

“Very much.”

“Then you shall have another.”

He gave no order, not even a gesture, but his words were enough to bring Lin Ming and a tray at the trot. He poured one finger of the amber fluid into each of our glasses, and deftly handling silver tongs, added an ice cube.

Chen Qi said, “There’s something about your friend Mei—several things in fact—that you may not know.”

“There is an infinity of things I don’t know about Mei,” I said. “She never supplied a single fact about herself. Not even her true name.”

“Really? And you never asked for facts? Why not?”

“I thought she was entitled to her privacy.”

“How sensitive. Especially for an officer of U.S. intelligence.”

His voice roughened. His eyes hardened. That much showed, if only for an instant. Had he been a softer man, his face might have been flushed. I put down my whisky glass. The moment was not right for a friendly drink. Chen Qi noted the gesture and put his glass on the table as well.

“Why were you so incurious?” he asked.

“In her case, at the time in question, who she was was irrelevant. I thought I understood what she was.”

“And what was that?”

“A woman who lived her own life as she wanted to live it.”

“Like an American woman. Do you know what Chairman Mao said about that? ‘Never trust an American girl.’”

I said, “He knew American girls?”

Chen Qi brushed away my words with a gesture. It was Mei he wanted to talk about. “Consorting with an American spy is never irrelevant to the people who may now have this Mei of yours in their hands,” he said. “They insist on facts. Believe me, she will supply them. Anyone who is her friend would urge her to supply them.”

“In this case, what I was, or was suspected of being,
is
beside the point,” I said. “I thought it was possible that Mei was an agent whose job was to observe what I did and report. I also thought any woman in China would do the same—would have no choice.”

Chen Qi blinked—actually blinked. I had crossed the line. I was guilty of disrespect. His affability evaporated. I was not dismayed by this mood swing, though a saner man might have been.

I said, “So how long has Mei been in the hands of Guoanbu?”

“Guoanbu?” Chen Qi said, as if the term were new to him. “She was placed under protection shortly after you and Lin Ming, here, had your most recent conversation.”

“Do you know where she’s being held?”

“If I did why would I tell you? What can you do for her?”

The answer was “nothing.” To Chen Qi I said, “Let me ask you a question.”

A gesture—
go ahead if you must.

“What’s your interest in Mei?”

Chen Qi said, “I have her interests sincerely at heart.”

“I don’t doubt it. But why? Is she related to you?”

No flicker of a reaction from Chen Qi. No sound. Lin Ming, somewhere behind me, moved—twitched. I could feel it.

At this moment the power came back on, fluorescent tubes flickering and buzzing. Chen Qi paid no attention. The bluish electric glare was less flattering to him than the candlelight had been. With no shadows to conceal the reality, he looked just like the heartless bastard he was. I hoped that I didn’t look as sick to my stomach, as strangled by anxiety, as I actually was—Mei in prison, confined, silent, learning, session by session, the
Kama Sutra
of pain and fear that was secret interrogation.

I made the feeling worse with my next guess about her identity. “Your mistress?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Chen Qi said.

But Chen Qi, the invulnerable man, looked caught. He looked as if he wished Mei’s mother had drowned the girl in a bucket on the day she was born. How else would he feel? If she actually was his relative, however close or distant, and she was under investigation for sleeping with an American spy, he would be under suspicion himself, because how could she commit such crimes without his approval? Chen Qi got to his feet. Lin Ming rushed to help him into his overcoat.

“Our time together is over,” Chen Qi said. “You and Lin Ming will have a chat after I go. But before I leave I have a suggestion to make to you.”

Chen Qi looked me in the eyes. “You must do what’s best for yourself,” he said. “But if you are concerned about this girl—Mei? Is that what you call her?”

“Yes.”

“The situation may not be hopeless. Obviously she is in difficulty,” Chen Qi said. “But if you were to create an opportunity, so to speak, by reconsidering the offer of employment Lin Ming has made to you, then that might give this Mei an opportunity of her own to make amends, to improve her situation.”