A Map of Betrayal: A Novel

1974–1975

“I’m your whore, your shameless whore!” Suzie told Gary. “Heaven knows how I wish I could break up with you.”

They were seated in her living room, the floor fan whirling while the chirring of cicadas surged fitfully in the sycamore outside the window screen. In recent months she had often lost her temper, but Gary was already accustomed to her outbursts. Today he clammed up, his body tense and his face averted as if ready to take a slap. Instead of leaving, he stayed on, waiting for her gust of anger to subside, because he had something on his mind and had to talk to her rationally.

Lately he’d been mulling over the idea of divulging his whole story to her in the hope that she might understand his predicament and help him find out about his family back in China. The past few years, every time he’d met with Bingwen in Hong Kong, the man would tell him that his family was well, that his children both had good jobs in a tractor factory. But Bingwen could never produce a current photo of them, always giving the excuse that he’d forgotten to ask Yufeng for it. As a result, Gary couldn’t help but have misgivings about his family’s actual condition. Yet he couldn’t write to Yufeng directly — his letter would be intercepted for certain, nor could he bluntly demand photographic evidence from Bingwen, with whom he had to stay on cordial terms. He had tried hard to look for ways to get in touch with Yufeng, but to no avail. After weighing this matter for months, he had concluded that the only feasible option was to ask Suzie to help.

Today while she was sprawled on her sofa and seething with a folded hand towel over her face because of a headache, he went into her kitchen and brewed a pot of oolong tea. After pouring her a cup, he said, “Suzie, I’m going to tell you something extremely important, a matter of life and death.”

“All right, go ahead.”

“But first you must promise you’ll never let it slip to anyone.”

She sat up, astonished by the graveness of his voice. Her eyes flashed, then fixed on him. “Fine, I will always keep my mouth shut,” she said. “I know you’re full of secrets.”

So he began telling her about his true identity and the history of his spying career, from his mission in Shanghai in 1949 to his current position in China’s Ministry of National Security. He spoke without stopping, as if afraid she might interrupt him. In one hour he poured out everything. When he was done, he felt at once unburdened. He might be at her mercy from now on, because there was a remote possibility that she would use his secret to control him or make excessive demands. But to his amazement, she didn’t seem shocked and just looked thoughtful, her face clouded with a frown. Perhaps through the years she had suspected something.

He then told her about his original family, about his wife and children in the countryside of Shandong, and about Bingwen’s assurance every time they met in Hong Kong. He said he couldn’t completely trust his handler and thought that their superiors might have instructed the man to tell him that his “backyard” was fully covered, so he would concentrate on his mission abroad. In recent years Gary had felt that Bingwen avoided mentioning his family and might have withheld information. If only he could contact Yufeng directly and find out the truth!

When he had finished speaking, Suzie asked, “Can I see what your twins look like? Do you have their photos?”

“I don’t have one now. I had one, but it would have been too dangerous to keep it around, so I left it in Hong Kong. They’re good kids and I miss them, although I’ve never seen them in the flesh or heard their voices. They know nothing about their daddy, I assume.”

At that, Suzie broke into sobs, her narrow shoulders convulsing while her face contorted. “Why did I meet you in the first place?” she groaned. “I must have owed you something in my previous life, or how could I let you torment me like this? What good will come of this wretched affair? I wish I could start my life over without you or could pluck you out of my heart!”

He kept silent, somewhat soothed by her ravings. She wasn’t thinking of abandoning him. He needed her. In this place she was the only friend he could rely on, and the revelation of his true identity, as he’d planned, would be a step toward another phase of their relationship. He reminded himself that from now on he’d have to accept whatever she might say or do to him. Let her blow off steam if she wanted to. She would become herself again. He trusted she loved him enough that she’d do her best to help him get in touch with his original family.

To Gary’s relief, thereafter Suzie stopped lashing out at him. Neither did she drop hints or suggestions again, as though she had finally accepted him for who he was, with the heavy baggage he carried. They continued to see each other once a week, and their affair grew more stable — every Thursday afternoon he would arrive at her apartment and would leave around midnight. She would inquire after Nellie and Lilian, as though she had also accepted them as part of her life. Before Christmas, Suzie bought the girl a pair of patent-leather boots, knee high and each with three brass buttons on the top of the side, which Lilian loved but dared not wear at home.

When Suzie went back to Taiwan for the Spring Festival in February 1975, Gary asked her to go to mainland China via Hong Kong and to see if she could find his family there. He told her that she wouldn’t have to speak at length with Yufeng or let her know who she was. Just take a look at their house and shoot a few photos of his family if possible, so that he could assess what their life was really like. Suzie promised to try her very best to look for them. But when she attempted to enter China from Hong Kong on the pretext that she wanted to see her bedridden uncle, she was stopped. Her name appeared on some kind of blacklist, probably because of her work at Voice of America. They rejected her application for a visa and told her that as a U.S. citizen she couldn’t enter China, because the two countries hadn’t formed a normal relationship yet and she’d have to get her papers from the States directly. No matter how she begged them, they wouldn’t let her pass.

Suzie came back to DC in early March, harried and tired. She described to Gary the difficulties she had encountered in Hong Kong, saying, “I even told them that my uncle is hospitalized and I wanted to see him before he died, but they wouldn’t relent, every one of them remained stone-faced. I felt as if I was bumping into an iron wall, and even if I had smashed my head into it, none of them would’ve given a damn. They were all like automatons. The next day I went to Bingwen Chu and asked him to help. He went berserk and blamed me for not notifying him beforehand. He said he couldn’t do anything either, because I was a U.S. citizen and was not allowed to enter China unless I’d already got a visa. He urged me not to try again.”

Gary became unsettled. “Did you tell him that you know about my family in Shandong?”

“Of course not. I only asked him to help me get through customs. I told him we were friends.”

“He might’ve guessed your intention.”

“Probably. I shouldn’t have gone to him.”

Gary regretted having given her Bingwen’s contact information (to use in case of emergency). That was clearly a mistake. He feared that their superiors might learn of Suzie’s attempt. Indeed, the following week he received a letter from his handler, who expressed his worries and insinuated that their higher-ups had been furious about Suzie’s effort to sneak into China. They believed Gary must have gone out of his mind; otherwise he wouldn’t have committed such a blunder, which might compromise his position at the CIA. They threatened to take disciplinary action against him if he continued to behave unprofessionally. That might imply they’d bust him down to colonel. “Please don’t let your friend run such a risk again!” Bingwen pleaded. “It would be too dangerous for everyone.”

The last sentence sent a shiver down Gary’s spine as he realized that Suzie might have run into danger if she had stayed longer in Hong Kong. To protect his identity, the Chinese might have had her eliminated. He wouldn’t let her get involved in this matter again, nor would he allow her to reenter Hong Kong. More than that, he gave up attempting to contact his original family.

THUS GARY’S LIFE RESUMED its old pattern. He was a man accustomed to loneliness and to the torment of qualms and could always keep a cool head. Had he let his guilt overcome him, he wouldn’t have been able to function in his daily life. He had to convince himself that China was looking after his family’s livelihood — everything was fine back home, and all he should do was focus on the mission here. As time went by, he again managed to put Yufeng and their children into a vault deep within him.

In his American home, life had grown peaceful. Rarely would he and Nellie raise their voices. His wife, though still embittered, stopped griping despite knowing that Gary saw Suzie regularly. Nellie even appreciated that he came home every night, given that their daughter was far away in Massachusetts. Indeed, over the years Gary had developed a greater attachment to Nellie. When she had been ill with gallstones three years before, he’d been so worried that he often skipped meals and lost sixteen pounds. Nowadays he often watched TV with her just as a way of keeping her company. For better or worse, this American woman had given him a child and a home, where she was the only person he could speak to if he had to say something. Deep inside, he was grateful, though he had never expressed this feeling to her.

Nellie wasn’t troubled by his remoteness anymore, revolving in her own little sphere of life. She enjoyed working at the bakery and by now had become an expert in cookies and cakes. She’d get up early in the morning to be at work before five to start baking. When the store opened at seven, she’d take a breather and return home to make breakfast for Gary — she would cook poached eggs, or French toast with an omelet, or pancakes, or even a frittata. The two of them would eat together. During the day she kept flexible hours and spent a lot of time alone in the bakery’s kitchen preparing the next batch of offerings. She would measure flour, sugar, and milk, knead bread, roll out piecrusts, blend in butter or grated cheese or sour cream if needed, and add chocolate chips or raisins or nuts to cookie dough. The bakery was less than half a mile from her home, so she felt comfortable about the work schedule and the walk back and forth, which she took as exercise. If she was pressed for time or the weather was foul, she’d drive. She had her own car, a burgundy Chevrolet coupe.

A Dunkin’ Donuts had opened recently on a nearby street and attracted droves of customers, most of whom went to work early in the morning. Both Nellie and Peggy noticed the thriving shop and wondered what made it so popular. Sometimes cars would form a line stretching from the parking lot onto the street. Nellie went there one afternoon and bought a muffin and a bagel, which didn’t taste at all better than those sold by their own bakery. Peggy and Nellie were both confident that they offered better baked goods. Then, what made that shop so successful?

Peggy wasn’t terribly bothered, saying the donut shop was similar to McDonald’s or Burger King, which couldn’t compete with real restaurants and drew in only junk-food lovers. But Nellie wanted to figure out what made the coffee shop thrive. She mentioned this to Gary at breakfast one day. He said, “David Shuman stops by Dunkin’ Donuts every morning too. He told me he was hooked.”

“Is the shop on his way to work?” Nellie asked.

“That’s part of it. David also said Dunkin’ Donuts has the best coffee.”

“Really? Then it must be the coffee that makes it tick.”

“Maybe. Why not go try it and see if it’s true?”

She looked at her big wristwatch. “My, I’ve got to run. Peggy’s face will drop a mile if I’m too late.”

On her way Nellie stopped by the Dunkin’ Donuts and bought a cup of coffee, the original blend, which was indeed strong and fragrant. She let Peggy taste it too.

After a swallow, the old woman said, “Oh my, this could keep a grizzly awake for a whole day.”

“We should offer better coffee too,” Nellie suggested.

“We don’t need to follow Dunkin’ Donuts.”

“But it could bring in more customers.”

“We’re a bakery, not a coffee shop. Don’t be troubled by this. We can sell more bread instead of donuts and muffins. We don’t need lots of bagel eaters for customers anyway.”

“Peggy, you’re a bad businesswoman,” Nellie said with a straight face, which had been getting pretty in a gaunt way as she grew older, even her eyes more vivid than a decade before. “We can’t let them take away our customers. I won’t just sit tight doing nothing. Why not offer an extra few kinds of coffee and make them all strong? Just see what will happen.”

Peggy shook her head. “A coffee bar will cost a pretty penny.”

“But we must do our best to keep our business.”

“All right, I’ll grab some coffeemakers and put them there.” Peggy pointed at the corner in the small dining area.

So the “coffee bar” was set up the following week, offering French vanilla, Colombian, hazelnut, and house blend, all twice as strong as before. To go with the coffees were whole milk, half-and-half, cinnamon powder, sugar, its substitutes, and bits of bread and pastry for sampling. The corner indeed looked like a tiny bar. Morning after morning Peggy and Nellie could see that more people were now dropping by on their way to work.

Soon Peggy hired another full-timer, and the bakery continued thriving.

By the summer of 1975, Gary had grown tired of sourdough and developed a taste for Irish soda bread, so Nellie would bring one home every evening. He had quit relishing raw garlic long ago and was no longer a lusty meat eater; rarely would he have sausage. Like a senior general who needn’t go to the front line anymore, he would no longer travel to Hong Kong in person (in part because he dreaded jet lag).

When on vacation, he would stay home, reading and writing. Lately he’d been translating Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. He knew this might infringe the copyright, but at the time no written works were covered by any rights in China, where foreign books were just translated and brought out without notifying the authors and the original publishers, so it might be possible for Gary to get his translation of the small novel published when he was back in his homeland. Ideally it would be a bilingual edition, with the original words and the Chinese characters printed on facing pages so that English majors could use it as a textbook for learning current American idioms. (Gary didn’t feel comfortable with Briticisms, which sounded mannered to him but were still taught throughout China.) He kept reminding himself that the translation was just a pastime, and proceeded at his leisure, three or four paragraphs a day.

He wouldn’t dig for intelligence anymore and preferred to just pick up whatever came through his hands. Of that there was plenty, because all the CIA’s reports on China would be checked by him for accuracy and stylistic consistency before they were dispatched to the White House. At long last he could afford to take it easy, like an old angler who didn’t care how many fish he caught and only settled in a beach chair, holding a rod while drifting in and out of sleep.

Nevertheless, every once in a while important information would come his way and he’d photograph the pages and provide his analyses. By now Gary’s views and assessments were highly valued in Beijing — he had become China’s ear to the heartbeat of the United States. He knew he was indispensable to the Chinese leaders thanks to the position he occupied. Whenever he had something to deliver, he’d drive to Father Murray’s church in downtown Baltimore. Even in the absence of urgent business, he’d go out with the priest for lunch or dinner once a month. Neither of them bothered about the rule that prohibited such a no-delivery meeting. Having gone through so many years’ fear and danger together, the two had become friends. Murray wouldn’t eat red meat but loved seafood and cheese. He often told Gary stories of his childhood in the Philippines. He was estranged from his father, a burly white man, captain of a British ocean liner, who’d taken Kevin’s mother as a “local wife” and had his legal family back in Manchester. The man provided for his Chinese-Filipina mistress, though; he also sent their son and daughter to an English school and then to an American college in Manila. “I hate my father,” Kevin said, munching on a soft-shell crab sandwich. “He’s a selfish asshole.”

Gary chuckled. He listened to Murray attentively but didn’t say anything about his own past, afraid that once he started, he might not be able to hold back the flood of emotions and memories.

Ben came to College Park on the pretext of picking up the microchips that had just arrived. Again he paid Henry a one hundred percent profit, $3,920, which thrilled my husband. But Ben didn’t look well; his eyes were slightly puffy and his face drawn, as though he were sleep-deprived. He told me that he had finished the book on his grandfather and then read more about Gary to figure out what actually happened to him. He came to see me because he’d been stonewalled in his investigation. He’d gone to the Boston Public Library and got hold of the microfilms of The New York Times and The Washington Post from the fall of 1980, and he had read all the articles on Gary’s arrest and his espionage activities. But the deeper Ben delved into the case, the more misgivings he had about his grandfather, who was very different from the figure Ben had pictured.

We were seated in my study, just the two of us. Ben, his eyelids a little tremulous, asked about my father, “Do you think he missed his family back home?”

“He did,” I said.

“Did he love my grandmother?”

“Of course. He missed her a lot, especially during the first years of their separation. He was always remote from things around him, and his heart was elsewhere. In his diary he mentioned that he dreamed of your grandmother every once in a while.”

“But he married your mother and kept a mistress on the side,” Ben said, an edge to his voice.

“He was a complicated man. He might have been traumatized.”

“By what?”

“By the separation from his original family. Imagine how much he carried within him. In the beginning it must have been so hard for him. Then gradually he grew jaded and numbed. Still, he was human and couldn’t possibly have suppressed his longings and pain all the time. The more I work on his story, the more terrible his life appears to me.”

Ben lifted his cup of coffee and took a large sip. He went on, “Was he a good father to you?”

“Absolutely. He was gentle and loving and patient. I must have been the only person on earth he could hold close to his heart, but I went to a prep school when I was thirteen and then to college. I didn’t spend enough time with him. He once told me that someday he and I would go visit his home village together. If only we could have done that.”

“He never saw his son, my uncle, who died at the age of twelve. A couple of articles say Gary was a bigwig in China’s intelligence service. Was he that big?”

“According to his diary, he was a vice minister of national security, holding the rank of major general.”

“I can’t believe this! My uncle starved to death while his father was a high official.”

“I was told he had died of encephalitis.”

“That was what the local clinic said. Some people also said he’d died of a twisted gut. But my grandmother told me he had actually starved to death, his belly sticking out like a balloon. During the famine the family had to eat wild herbs, elm bark, willow leaves, corncob flour, and whatnot. My uncle wasn’t strong physically, but he was hungry all the time, shrunken to the bone. Once he was ill, there was no way his body could fight the illness.”

“Your grandfather didn’t get the big promotion until 1972, long after the famine.”

“Still, we didn’t benefit one bit from his high rank. My grandmother was terrified by the rumor flying around their hometown. It said that her husband had fled to Taiwan and then to the U.S. Some people even threatened to denounce her publicly and drag her through the streets. The true reason was, they were jealous of the money she received from the government every month. In the 1950s, a hundred yuan was a tidy sum. Grandma had no choice but to cut all the ties to her husband to protect the family. After she left Shandong, she didn’t report her whereabouts to the government and stopped receiving his salary on purpose. She was too scared to be connected with him publicly. So the family had to start from scratch in a mud hole of a village and constantly struggled to make ends meet. My mom did all sorts of work in her teens, even collected manure and dug up sand to sell to a construction company. She also cut grass for a pig farm, and during the winter she sold frozen tofu in the county town, having to set off before daylight. After she and Dad got married, they both toiled in the fields like beasts of burden for many years. My dad almost got killed in a granite quarry, unable to work for months after an injury to his leg. Our family always lived hand to mouth until he became a clerk in the county administration.”

“Would it be possible he got that job because of some official help?” I doubted that the government was really ignorant of where Yufeng was. It seemed to me that very few people could escape its surveillance.

“I doubt it,” Ben said. “Before working in that office, Dad had taught elementary school briefly. He could write well, and the county administration needed someone like him for propaganda work. For many years nobody in our family would mention my grandfather, not until the mid-nineties, when we were informed that he had died in the line of duty overseas. In other words, officially our family had a clean history. When Grandma heard about that, she wept for a whole night.”

I burst out, “The government ought to have paid her all the arrears — I mean Gary’s salary had been accumulating since 1961.”

“They did when she filed a petition. That’s how our family got the funds for starting the seamstress shop.”

I didn’t know what to say and lowered my eyes, which were getting hot and watery. Unlike them, I was the main beneficiary of my father’s small amount of wealth, which Nellie inherited and later bequeathed to me. (They’d been co-owners of the house.) Reluctant to let on to Ben that my mother had given me the down payment for our apartment building, I remained silent.

Ben continued, “Aunt Lilian, do you think my grandfather loved China to the end of his life?”

“I believe so. Otherwise it would have been unimaginable for him to live that kind of isolated existence for so many years while he was always determined to return to his homeland.”

“He sacrificed a great deal for China, in other words. I respect that, but in his trial he claimed he loved America as well.”

“That must have been also true. He had lived here for so many years that he couldn’t help but develop some good feelings for this place. Besides, my mother and I were Americans.”

“Truth be told, that’s what I fear most.”

“Fear what?”

“To love both places and be torn between them.”

“Is that why you can’t make up your mind about marrying Sonya and settling down here?”

“In some ways. Yes.”

He didn’t say more about his plight. I knew he was to some extent controlled by his company in China. In the back of my mind remained the suspicion that Ben might have been collecting intelligence for the Chinese military, though I wasn’t sure how professional he was. I guessed he might be a petty spy specializing in industrial and technological information. Regardless, it was a dangerous business and he might get caught sooner or later.

He stayed with us for only one day and took the Acela Express back to Boston the next morning. I had let him take all six volumes of Gary’s diary with him in the hope that they might shed some light on his investigation.

I urged my husband not to purchase microchips for Ben again. “What’s the big deal?” Henry asked blithely.

“The chips are banned from export to China,” I said. “And some Chinese companies might be their destinations.”

“That’s Ben’s business. Mine is just to buy them.”

“But that might make you an accomplice.”

“Don’t be such a worrywart, Lilian. I do everything legally, and I have no further connection with the chips once Ben has them. How the hell can I be charged for buying something entirely legal on the market? The truth is anybody can get them — if not from the U.S., you can buy them from places like Taiwan and Singapore.”

“This gives me the willies.”

“Sweetie, just take it easy. At this rate I’ll pay off my debt and get rich pretty soon.”

So I left it at that, but still I was agitated.