A Map of Betrayal: A Novel

1980

In 1975, Chairman Mao had once burst out at his lying and bickering staffers, “Damn it, I know more about what’s going on in Nixon’s Oval Office than in my own quarters.” Those words were leaked and set many heads in the U.S. intelligence community spinning with questions and speculations. Did Mao really mean what he’d said? Or was he just bragging, too senile to be cognizant of Nixon’s resignation? Or was the U.S. government already infiltrated by the Chinese Communists? That seemed unlikely. Still, there couldn’t be smoke without fire. Even if Mao’s remark had only a grain of truth, it might imply that the Chinese had compromised the communications channels of the White House. To ensure there was no mole in their midst, the CIA required all its employees who had access to classified materials to take a lie-detector test. Gary had no choice but to follow his colleagues through the procedure. Over the decades, he’d taken the test several times, and now he passed again. He was shaken nonetheless. The instant he was unwired from the machine, he’d broken into a cold sweat, fearing he might have flunked it and be dismissed.

Ever since he’d wrangled seventy thousand dollars out of China, Gary had been anxious that his superiors might change their opinion of him. They’d given him the money because they believed his career at the CIA would last many more years. Then, as soon as he got the cash, he submitted his request for an early retirement. The higher-ups must have been caught off guard by his maneuver. Now, they might even have doubts about his loyalty, and some might suspect he was corrupted by the capitalist society and the American way of life, valuing money above everything. That might account for the long silence after he had sent off his request.

Meanwhile, Gary’s diabetes had taken a turn for the worse. He was thirsty all the time and had to drink water constantly. As a result, he had to empty his bladder every hour. He felt dizzy and sluggish at work, unable to concentrate. At the end of the day he feared he might conk out while driving home. Worse yet, he had grown insomniac and could sleep for only two or three hours at night, which aggravated his symptoms during the day. His doctor prescribed insulin, which helped a lot — after a few injections, his forehead wasn’t numb and tight anymore, his legs stopped itching, and even his taste buds were keen again. From then on, he would carry a syringe and some ampoules with him whenever he left home. He had mentioned the possibility of an early retirement to Thomas and his other colleagues, who had all noticed the sleepy look in his eyes. There’d be no problem with the CIA, much as it valued his linguistic expertise and his insights into Asian affairs. Yet he couldn’t make up his mind, because the insulin injections seemed able to control his symptoms and because there was still no word from China.

He had also talked about his plan to Suzie, who urged him to go back and join his original family. To her mind, the sooner he quit espionage the better — she just wanted him to get out of danger. She even said she might retire to Taiwan eventually, and if so, she’d go visit him from time to time, since now American citizens could travel to China without restriction. Her words made him more inclined to quit the CIA.

Finally, in late July 1980, came the reply from Beijing: an early retirement was deemed inappropriate. Gary’s superiors urged him to stay at the CIA as long as he could. They said the United States had the best medical technology and facilities, and diabetes was not a fatal illness, completely manageable with insulin and a proper diet, so he should string out his mission. He was only fifty-six and should be able to continue working at the CIA for a long time. Meanwhile, they’d make arrangements for his final return. They too would love to see him retired to their homeland, but he should give them time to arrange for his successor, for whom he too should cast around — ideally he could recruit someone within the CIA. They sounded reasonable and firm. The reply made Gary regret having asked for an early retirement. To make amends, he knew he’d have to pull himself together and bear his miseries for a few more years. Perhaps he’d have to outlive his usefulness here.

Yet lately he got homesick all the more. His mind could not escape wandering to a public bathhouse in his hometown, in which, three decades ago, he had often snoozed for an hour or so with a warm towel over his naked body after a hot bath. When he woke up, he’d drunk jasmine tea served by a teenage boy and conversed with an acquaintance or two. If only he could again lie in the steaming pool and then repose on a long bed, free from any care. He knew that most of the traditional bathhouses might have disappeared, but he couldn’t curb his reveries. At the same time, his vision of home had grown cloudy, and it was no longer his village or hometown but somewhere vaguely in China, virtually any place his superiors might assign him to live. Nevertheless, his longing had been growing stronger and more tempestuous day by day.

He had no idea that ever since the hefty sum of money had been transferred stateside from Hong Kong, the FBI had been following him. They launched a thorough investigation, and all the findings enabled them to connect the dots: now they realized that Mao’s remark about the Oval Office was by no means a joke or brag. The ghost spy had finally revealed his shadow. All attention was now focused on Gary Shang, and he was kept under strict surveillance, his mail and phone calls monitored and his bills examined. They also installed a secret camera near his home, in a neighbor’s house across the street, whose top floor they had rented. The longer they followed him, the more amazed they were by his simple, casual fashion of conducting espionage. In many ways he seemed unprofessional. For instance, few spies would go to East Asia in person year after year and write to their handlers directly in the regular mail. His disregard for the general practice of spycraft, however, singled him out as an expert mole, who had succeeded in staying below the radar and concealing his trail for three decades. They concluded that he had to be stopped without delay; the damage he’d done already was unimaginable. If they didn’t act now, Gary Shang, holding a U.S. passport, might flee abroad the minute he sensed danger. He could even bolt into the Chinese embassy.

They obtained an approval from the Justice Department for “interviewing” the suspect, and without informing the CIA, which they feared might interfere with the mole hunt, they went ahead. Three agents arrived at the Shangs’ one afternoon in September, and Gary answered the doorbell. His wife was in Seattle to visit her sister, who’d just had cataract surgery, and their daughter was in Boston, a first-year grad student at BU. Gary appeared calm and let in the agents, as though he’d been expecting them all along. He must have assumed they had accumulated enough evidence against him, so this was the final hour he had to face, a scenario he had played out in his mind often enough that he was almost familiar with it. It was good he was home alone. He led the three men into the dining room and sat them at the table, while he took the seat at its head. He looked meek but undaunted.

One of the men started “the interview,” speaking politely, as if out of respect for a senior colleague. But before answering, Gary said, “I will tell you all the truth on one condition.” It was neither a demand nor a request, as though he was certain this should be the way for them to talk.

“What’s that?” asked a man who had a pink face.

“My family and my girlfriend, Suzie Chao, know nothing about what I’ve been doing. Leave them out of your investigation.”

They looked at each other. The pink-faced man, who must have been the head, smiled, drumming his fat fingers beside a pocket tape recorder on the table. He told Gary, “We’ll do that as long as you cooperate.”

Their agreement further convinced Gary that they possessed enough evidence against him, because they appeared to believe the truth that his family knew nothing about his real profession, that Suzie had never been involved in his espionage activities.

So the interrogation began. It lasted seven hours with a dinner break. (After asking about Gary’s preference, the agents ordered from a Chinese restaurant sesame chicken, mapo tofu, and two seafood dishes, plus a platter of assorted appetizers. Gary meant to have a hearty meal like this in spite of his diabetes, believing he wouldn’t be able to eat Chinese food again for a long time.) His answers were so clear and straightforward that the agents were amazed time and again. It never occurred to him that they might not have possessed enough evidence to incriminate him, partly because one of the agents had lied, saying they’d been following him for a good many years. It was also because Gary had never been fully trained as a spy, not knowing how to take advantage of legal protection.

Around ten p.m. the interrogation was over, and the suspect held out his wrists to let the agents cuff him. They did. They took him away in a cruiser and put him in the county jail in Arlington. From there they went to Baltimore to arrest Father Murray, but the man wasn’t in when they arrived. Seeing that everything was neat in his room at the parsonage — even his teapot was still warm and two-thirds full, they waited for him to return. They stayed there for a good hour until they realized Murray was gone.

GARY’S ATTORNEY ADVISED HIM to plead guilty, and Nellie urged him to do the same, so that he might get a lighter sentence, but he refused and wanted to go through the trial, convinced that he’d done a significant service to both China and the United States. He might also have hoped against hope that the trial would end in a hung jury, giving China enough time to rescue him. The jurors, seven women and five men, were selected, and Gary was intent on fighting in court, not for escaping a life sentence but for the justice he believed he deserved. Everyone could see that he was deluded, but he couldn’t be dissuaded.

The trial turned out to be a disaster. He was accused of spying for the People’s Republic of China, selling intelligence for cash. His betrayal had done great damage to national security and caused the deaths of numerous people. God knew how much secret information he had funneled to the Chinese and what the long-term ramifications might be. Gary denied most of the charges, emphasizing that he was a patriot of both the United States and China. “The two countries are like parents to me,” he said. “They are like father and mother, so as a son I cannot separate the two and I love them both. I can’t possibly hurt one of them to promote the well-being of the other. It’s true that I passed information to China, but it helped improve the Sino-U.S. relationship, from which both countries have benefited. As a matter of fact, I seized every opportunity to improve the mutual understanding and cooperation between the two countries. God knows, over the decades, how much vital intelligence I gathered for the United States through gleaning Chinese-language publications and reports. Sometimes I put in more than sixty hours a week. For my hard work I have received several commendations.” In short, it was he who had helped bring the two countries together to shake hands like friends. For that kind of diligence and dedication he should be recognized as a valuable citizen, if not decorated with laurels. “I am an American and love this country like every one of you,” he concluded in a strident voice.

In his testimony George Thomas, his domed forehead beaded with sweat, said, “To my mind, Gary Shang did help the United States reestablish a diplomatic relationship with China. In a perverse fashion he served both countries.” While saying that, he avoided looking Gary’s way, his dappled hands trembling a little.

David Shuman, his face still babyish at age forty-three in spite of his thick blond mustache and beer belly, told the court that he felt Gary might be a patriot. Blinking his camel eyes, he said, “I remembered when President Kennedy was assassinated, Gary Shang collapsed in the office blubbering like a small boy. He was more heartbroken than the rest of us, you know. You can ask anyone in the CIA about him, and I can assure you that they’ll all say he was a gentleman, easygoing and friendly. Of course, reflecting on the whole thing now, it gives me the creeps to think of Gary Shang as a Communist mole among us. You know, this really freaks me out.”

Nonetheless, the jurors looked unconvinced, some shaking their heads, furrowing their brows, or scowling at the CIA officers. The government’s attorney, a middle-aged man with cat eyes and scanty brows, began to cross-question the accused. The man straightened up and said in a smoky voice, “Mr. Shang, did you provide the names of more than a dozen defected Chinese POWs for the Communist regime in 1953?”

“That was due to—”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“How much did you get paid for that?”

“Five hundred dollars.”

“So for that paltry amount of money you sold more than a dozen lives to Communist China?”

“It didn’t happen like that. I didn’t know the consequences of the intelligence. I assumed those men would go to Taiwan anyway. That was the first time I passed information to China. Perhaps I might be guilty of an accidental act. But I never did that kind of thing again after I came to know about those returnees’ incarceration and deaths.”

“So you were aware that some of them had been executed?”

“Yes, later I was informed of that.”

“Mr. Shang, did you reveal to Communist China the communications plans and the code names of the secret agents dispatched to destroy China’s nuclear facilities in 1965?”

“Yes, I did. I had their mission stopped on purpose, because it might have started the Third World War. That prospect terrified me. What could the United States have gained from such a war? Nothing but destruction of lives and property and a waste of taxpayers’ dollars. So I would do my damnedest to prevent that mission from being carried out. For that I don’t feel one iota of guilt.”

Some in the audience chuckled and a few cheered. The judge, his face turning puce and his goatee tilting up a little, banged the gavel for order. When the room was quiet again, the flat-cheeked cross-examiner went on to ask about the information on missiles and aircrafts that the accused was charged with stealing. To the question of the technological secrets, Gary answered in a haughty tone, “I was interested only in strategic intelligence. I am not a petty thief — that sort of information is beneath me.”

A pregnant silence filled the courtroom. It was drizzling outside, rivulets running intermittently down the windows, beyond which the pointed tips of cypresses swayed a little. The sky was so saturated it looked as though it was about to collapse in a downpour.

Without difficulty the jury reached their guilty verdict unanimously, and the judge gave Gary 121 years in prison and more than three million dollars in fines. The jurors also stated that they took umbrage at the attitudes of some CIA officers, who seemed to have stuck up for the Red spy, the monster of deception, but not for the truth or for the interests of our nation. One of them, a fortyish black woman with arched eyebrows, even voiced her suspicion of complicity.

The convicted man was stolid, his face expressionless, though his tired eyes appeared narrower and his temples were throbbing. He was biting his lip in order not to cry. For a brief moment everything went blurry around him. He leaned forward and clasped his head in his hands.

Afterward, in the lobby of the courthouse, when a woman reporter asked Gary what he’d like to say to the Chinese government, he cried out, “I appeal to Deng Xiaoping to intervene on my behalf. President Deng, please bring me home!”

Those words were published in several major newspapers the next day. But at a news conference, the Chinese ambassador to Washington responded negatively to the question about Beijing’s connection with Gary Shang, insisting, “Let me reiterate, I never heard of that man. China has no spy in the United States at all, so we have nothing to do with him. All the accusations against the Chinese government are baseless, fabricated by those people hostile to our country.”

“Did you go see your father in prison?” Ben asked me, his hands in his jeans pockets. We were strolling on Wollaston Beach with Boston’s skyline in view, a bunch of skyscrapers partly obscured by the dissipating mist in the northwest. An airliner was descending noiselessly toward Logan Airport. The drizzle had let up, the clouds opening and revealing patches of blue.

I said, “I visited him once, in late November of that year, but I had to rush back to BU. I was teaching a course and had to meet my class. Dad didn’t say much to me because a guard was standing beside him and there was glass and steel wire between us. We spoke over a phone. He kept saying ‘I’m sorry’ and was tearful. I went through the visit as if I were drugged, unable to find words. That was the first time I’d ever seen him in tears, and at the end of the meeting he blew me a kiss and forced a smile. My mother saw him more often and made sure that he received proper medication and also had his ulcerated gum treated. I wished I could have stayed home longer so that I could visit him again.”

“He must’ve died miserably.”

“I was devastated when I heard about his suicide. I had a breakdown and couldn’t help my tears whenever I saw an older man.”

Ben had read that Gary smothered himself with a trash bag tied around his neck with two connected shoestrings. (He had skipped breakfast so that his body might not be messy. He lay on his bed in the solitary cell and died without making any noise.) We had talked about his death the previous night, when Ben finally confessed he was indeed a Chinese spy, though a minor one.

The ebbing tide kept the bay flat. Ben continued, “What touched me most is this sentence he said to his cross-examiner: ‘I am not a petty thief.’ I wept when I read that. It reminded me that I was a petty thief. Recently I acquired a pair of new night-vision goggles just issued to the U.S. Marines, an F-18 manual, a list of the public radio frequencies, and some other stuff. I’ve been stealing technological secrets — a petty thief indeed.”

“On some level Gary was a conceited man.”

“He had to have a high opinion of himself or how could he survive? A spy of his kind had to convince himself of the importance of his mission so that he could continue in the face of adversity.”

Ben’s words reminded me of a sentence in Gary’s diary that had baffled me for a while: “For me, self-sacrifice is sweet.” My father seemed to believe in the grandeur of what he was doing. In spite of his remarkable intelligence, he lived in a fog, possessed by an ancient emotion whose validity his reason couldn’t penetrate. Indeed, an exalted vision or illusion might make pain bright and supportable.

Farther along the beach a little girl cried out. She was carrying a miniature saffron bucket with a spade in it and wobbling toward her mother, who was sitting on a boulder and flipping through a fashion magazine. The sun had come out, and the sand was turning whitish. Ben went on about Gary, “I still think he gave up too easily. China might have made a rescue effort to get him repatriated.”

“You’re too naïve,” I said. “Didn’t the Chinese ambassador deny that China had anything to do with him?”

“But that couldn’t be the final word. My grandfather held at least the same rank as the ambassador, probably even higher. That is to say, the ambassador had no right to decide Gary’s fate. The official denial might just have been routine bureaucracy. Once the media quieted down and the case was out of public view, there might have been a way to get him out of jail and back to China.”

“But the ambassador represented the country.”

“Look, even for small potatoes like me there’s an exit plan in the event of emergency. My grandfather’s case couldn’t be that simple.”

I was about to ask Ben how he could extricate himself, but I refrained. A pair of mottled seagulls took off from the teeth of the soft waves and let out sharp squawks. They were suspended in the air, their wings hardly moving. I said, “Maybe Suzie Chao knows more about this. Last winter when we talked, she said she hated the Communists because they had abandoned your grandfather.”

“She’s someone I’d like to meet. She seemed to remain loyal to him, to the very end.”

“Maybe I should pay her another visit. Would you like to come if I go to see her again?”

“When do you plan to go?”

I thought about it and believed that the FBI might swoop down on Ben any minute, so I said, “The sooner the better. Let me give her a call.”

I fished my cell phone out of my black suede purse and dialed Suzie’s number. On the third ring her voice came on, halting as if I’d woken her up. I said, “Suzie, this is Lilian.”

“Lilian who?”

“Gary’s daughter.”

“Oh, I thought you’d wiped me out of your mind long ago.”

“How are you doing?”

“Still up and around.”

“Listen, my nephew, Gary’s grandson, and I would love to see you. Can we visit you if we come to Montreal?”

“Sure, anytime. I’ll be happy to see you. You say you have a nephew, a Chinese?”

“Yes, he’s from China. We’ll speak more about this tonight, okay?”

“That’s fine, call around nine.”

I was pleased by her agreement. Putting away the phone, I turned to Ben. “Suzie can meet us anytime. Today is Friday. Maybe we should head to Montreal tomorrow. What do you think?”

“Well, I can’t fly. The moment I board a plane, the FBI will know. Perhaps we should drive.”

“Good idea, but don’t you need a visa for crossing the border?”

“Not if I have a green card.”

“Then let’s drive.”

“Should we rent a car or use mine? I just got my engine replaced. The car runs like new.”

“We can drive your car. This should be safe.”

On our walk back to his place, Ben talked more about how he’d gone into the espionage business. He said, “Most of my schoolmates enrolled at the spy college in Luoyang because their parents or grandparents had been in the profession. We were told that we were the crème de la crème of our generation, handpicked by the Party, and we all pledged allegiance to the country and the revolutionary cause. In retrospect, I can see that the whole thing was quite sanctimonious, as if every one of us were a great man in the making. Our Party leaders even called us ‘linchpins of the nation.’

“They chose me because my grandfather had been a top spy, so I was supposed to be cut out for the work as well. But in most ways I wasn’t a good student. If anything, I was on the underperforming side. I couldn’t shoot well or swim more than two miles. In barehanded melee I usually lost to my opponents. But I had an ear for language, and my English was among the best in the class. I could reel off whatever we’d learned the previous day and could imitate all kinds of sounds and tones like a ventriloquist. What’s more, I had interpersonal skills; I was able to strike up productive conversations with strangers. I was nicknamed Superglue, which meant I could always find ways to make a connection with others. During our training, whenever we were sent out to gather intelligence from folks in small towns, I would get more useful information than my classmates. That impressed our instructors. I also was good at analyzing intelligence and could see implications in small details. That’s why they continued to train me after graduation, to prepare me for missions abroad. They let me enroll in a master’s program and I got an MS in technology.”

“What did they tell you about your grandfather?” I asked.

“They said he was a martyr who had fallen in the line of duty, so I was obliged to follow in his footsteps.”

“In hindsight, do you resent that?”

“Sort of. But they also made me a more capable man, well off and privileged in some ways.”

“Do you know you’re in danger now? The FBI might move in on you at any moment.”

“I’m aware of that and must act soon.”

“But you have been passive for so long. Does Sonya know your true profession?”

“She might’ve sensed it, but I didn’t tell her anything.”

“You have a lot to decide. To be honest, few women can stand your kind of passivity.”

“Actually, I asked my higher-ups for permission to marry her so that we could have the baby and live in America for some years, but they want to keep me more or less detached from this place. A baby born here will be a U.S. citizen, and that might bind me to America. My superiors reprimanded me for losing control of my sex life and told me to make Sonya have an abortion. I’ve been trying to figure out a solution. I can’t force her to do anything.”

When we arrived at his place, Sonya was cooking spaghetti and, with a wooden spoon, stirring the sauce of ground beef and black olives. She was wearing a mauve housedress like a maternity outfit, though her pregnancy wasn’t showing yet. In spite of her smile, which accentuated a pimple on her nose, her roundish face was a picture of worries, her eyes a bit shadowy, but she still looked pretty, especially in profile. She’d been suffering from morning sickness, and her nose was congested. The previous evening she had confided to me, “I just can’t figure Ben out. He seems sick of everything. He promised me this and that, but I’m not sure I can believe him.”

After trying the sauce, I told Sonya, “This is delicious.” Then I said in an undertone that we were going to Montreal the next morning, but she mustn’t let anyone know of the trip.

“What for?” she asked.

“We’re going to see an old friend of my father’s. We’ll be back on Sunday.” I kept my voice low and assured her, “Don’t worry too much. Everything will work out fine.”

“I hope so.” She breathed a feeble sigh. Another pot was coming to a boil. Sonya broke a bunch of angel-hair spaghetti in two, threw it into the water, and began stirring. I turned to wash the pans in the sink.

There was a gas station close by, so after dinner I took Ben’s black Mustang there and filled the tank. Then he worked for a while on his car in the basement garage. He poured a bottle of fuel treatment into the tank, saying that was something he’d done every fall. He also checked all the lights and added fluids. I put two coats into the trunk, having heard that the temperature would plummet the following day. Back in his apartment, he and I avoided talking about his spying activities and the trip openly, not so much because of Sonya as because the place might have been bugged. In a way, I admired Ben for his composure. He seemed to have inherited Gary’s ability to bear stress and uncertainty. Though knowing the FBI was after him, he was still clearheaded about everything — he must have gone through a considerable amount of mental training. In spite of my admiration, I feared he might not be able to find his way out of danger. Perhaps I should urge him to defect and file for political asylum, but we had to thoroughly consider the pros and cons of such a drastic move.

AFTER WE CHECKED IN to a motel outside Montreal, I phoned Suzie to let her know we had arrived. She said her apartment was too messy for us to meet there. I offered to take her to lunch in Chinatown, where she lived. She suggested Kam Fung, which I knew was a pricey Cantonese place where all the tables had tablecloths. We agreed to meet at eleven the next morning.

At the front desk of the motel, I’d thought Ben might feel uncomfortable about sharing a room with me, but he had stopped me when I asked for two rooms. He said, “Let’s have one room with two beds. This is more natural.” I was pleased he felt that way. We didn’t go to bed until midnight, even though the seven-hour trip had tired me out. We were talking about his family back in Fushan County and about my father. As our conversation continued, I managed to steer it to his current situation and even mentioned the possibility of turning himself in to the FBI. He shook his head and said, “You’re too naïve, Aunt Lilian. Like most Americans, you think only in clear and straight ways. What will happen to my parents and siblings if I defect? China will grind them down, and they’ll never forgive me.”

“I didn’t take them into account,” I admitted.

“You met them and saw how well they were doing in a godforsaken town. Do you think they could succeed like that just on their own? There’ve been powerful hands helping them ever since I started in my profession. If I betray my country, those hands can also destroy them.”

“What should you do?”

“That’s the question I’ve been grappling with these days. My business here is worth one and a half million dollars. It was the Chinese government’s investment. If I surrender to the FBI, the business will be gone and I’ll be blamed for the loss. Worse yet, I’d have to give the FBI a lot of information on Chinese espionage operations, especially in North America. Then to China I’ll become a criminal guilty of high treason.”

“Why can’t you reverse the roles of the plaintiff and the accused? Why is a country always innocent and always right? Hasn’t China used both you and your grandfather relentlessly? Hasn’t your country betrayed you?”

He looked astonished, his eyebrows locked together. I continued, “Ben, things have been changing in China, where many people no longer depend on the state for their livelihood and survival. If your family’s economic situation takes a downturn, I can send them money regularly. So for now, just think about what will be the best for you and Sonya.” I had to mention money to fully convince him that his family’s survival might not depend on the state anymore.

“Thank you, Aunt Lilian! This means a great deal to me. With your help I’ll have my rear base covered. I will figure out a way.”

He didn’t go to sleep for a long time after I switched off the lights. He tossed and twisted in the bed close to the window, now and again letting out a faint sigh. My promise must have set his mind racing.

We checked out of the motel the next morning and drove into the city. It took just fifteen minutes to get to Chinatown. I liked Montreal for its easy traffic. After parking in an outside lot, we headed to Saint-Urbain Street, where Kam Fung was. No sooner had we sat down at a corner table than Suzie appeared, using a cane that had a thin leather strap attached to it. She was much frailer and more bent than ten months before and might have suffered from rheumatism and osteoporosis. Ben and I stood, he drew up a chair, and we sat her down. I hung her cane on the back of the chair. She took out a Kleenex and blew her nose. She tried to smile, but her effort only made her face look sickly. Her eyes were watery, the lower lids a little swollen.

I said, “Are you under the weather, Suzie?”

“No, it’s just the withdrawal symptoms.”

“Withdrawal from what?” I asked.

“Caffeine. I just quit coffee.”

“Why did you do that?” The thought came to me that she might not have many years to live.

“I want to put my life together again.”

“Have you been dating someone?” I asked in earnest.

“Get out of here!” She cackled. “I quit sex long ago. I just want to live longer. When I was young, I thought I’d die before sixty, and I wouldn’t mind that as long as I was happy when I was alive. But since I turned sixty, somehow the older I get, the longer I want to live. Guess I’ve got greedy.”

“That’s natural,” I said. “Life has become more precious to you.”

“What a smart girl. That’s why I like you much more than your mom.”

Ben poured her a cup of jasmine tea and said, “Here, drink this, Grandaunt, and you’ll feel better.”

Indeed, a few swallows later she returned to normal, relaxed with her legs folded under her. She grinned, and her face creased, showing a coating of makeup. She glanced sideways at Ben, blinking her eyes, which had lost their almond shape and were almost triangular now. “He’s handsome like your dad,” she said about Ben.

“You bet,” I agreed. “He’s also smart like him.”

We ordered lunch. Suzie wanted only a bowl of wontons, saying she wasn’t hungry and was happy just to see us. Indeed, she’d been beaming nonstop. We resumed making small talk.

When our food had come, I said to Suzie, “One question has been on my mind since we last met. How come my dad left his diary with you?”

“Gary had a feeling that something bad might happen to him. He told me to say nothing about his secret profession to the investigators. Just play the fool and deny knowing anything. He wanted me to keep the diary and let nobody know of its existence. He had a sixth sense for danger.”

“He wanted you to pass it on to me?”

“He said nothing like that, but I assumed that could be his intention. Also, the diary could have become criminal evidence, so he wouldn’t want the FBI to get hold of it.”

“Grandaunt Suzie,” Ben joined in, “one thing I can’t figure out about my granddad — why did he commit suicide? There must have been ways China could rescue him.”

“Baloney! China dumped him,” she said, twisting her mouth a little. “I got a note from Gary after he was in custody. He asked me to go to Beijing and beg Deng Xiaoping to swap some imprisoned U.S. spies for him.”

“You received a letter from him?” I was so surprised that I put down my soup spoon.

“Yes, it came to me through the mail.”

“How could he send you the letter from prison?” Ben asked.

“It’s beyond me too. Guess there must’ve been a secret agent who smuggled the letter out of jail and dropped it into the mailbox. Or someone who visited Gary might have brought it out for him. In any event, the letter reached me without a glitch. So I went to Hong Kong right away and got in touch with Bingwen Chu, Gary’s handler, who helped me cross the border into China. In Beijing I asked some officials to let me speak to Deng Xiaoping personally.”

“Did you get to?” Again I was taken aback.

“Of course not. There was this man named Ding, a big shot in the Ministry of National Security. He received me in his office, but no matter how I begged, they wouldn’t try to rescue Gary.”

Ben put in, “That must have been Hao Ding, the minister of national security. He was in charge of China’s intelligence service in the eighties. What did he tell you, Grandaunt?”

“He said his country had nothing to do with Gary Shang anymore. To them, Gary was a traitor, a blackmailer. Ding told me, ‘He just extorted seventy thousand dollars from our country. What kind of money is that? Let me give you an idea: I make only two hundred dollars a month. That’s thirty years’ salary for me.’ Another man jumped in, ‘Gary Shang got rich in the U.S. He was rolling in cash and always drove a Buick, but he was corrupted by capitalism, greedy like a snake that wants to swallow an elephant.’ The same man went on to say that Gary even had a bourgeois disease, because anyone who ate coarse grains and vegetables every day wouldn’t suffer from diabetes. I realized there was no way I could reason with them, so again I asked to see Deng Xiaoping in person. They laughed in my face, saying I was out of my senses and that Chairman Deng had no time for such a trifle. I got furious and yelled at them.

“Seeing me distraught, Ding revealed to me, ‘To tell you the truth, there’s no need to make such a futile attempt. Chairman Deng was well informed of Gary Shang’s case and already gave instructions: “Let that selfish man rot in an American prison together with his silly dream of being loyal to both countries.” So Gary Shang blew his chance and the case is closed. Nobody can help him anymore.’ Those were the final words I got from them.”

“Then you came back and told my father that?” I asked.

“No, I wasn’t a family member and couldn’t go to the jailhouse to see him. Someone else must have passed the message on to him.”

“I cannot believe this,” Ben said, stupefied. “He held the rank of major general.”

“A general is also a soldier,” I told him. “Soldiers are all expendable.”

“Everybody is,” Suzie agreed.

“I have another question for you, Suzie,” I said.

“Okay, go ahead.”

“This might be personal and embarrassing, but I need to ask. Why was my dad so fond of you? Was it because of your common racial, cultural background? Or simply because you were good in bed? Or something else? To be honest, I don’t think you were superior to my mother in every way.”

Suzie smirked complacently. “Well, domesticity was never my thing, and I wasn’t good at keeping a man happy at all. In the beginning it was mostly mutual attraction, but bit by bit Gary and I began to get along. When we were together we could talk endlessly, about everything, so after many years an affair grew into a friendship in spite of all the quarrels we had. Besides, compared to Nellie, I was more useful to him.”

“In what way?” I asked, despite knowing of her secret trip to Hong Kong and her failed attempt to look for Yufeng.

Suzie said, “My uncle used to be a senior officer in Taiwan’s intelligence service. That meant Gary could work for the Nationalists at any time. I advised him to do that, because if he was caught by the U.S. government, he could identify himself as a spy working for Taipei. That would make his crime a lot less serious because Taiwan was not an enemy country to the United States. In other words, I could be Gary’s safety net.”

“Did he ever work for the Nationalists?”

“No, never. He wasn’t a triple agent. He would not betray the mainland because he didn’t want to endanger his family there, also because he wouldn’t get me embroiled in the espionage business. For that I was grateful. He never took advantage of me and just remained a good friend. A real gentleman.”

“Did you tell your uncle about Gary’s true identity?”

“Of course not. If the Nationalists had known of that, they could have tipped off the CIA. So Gary and I were faithful to each other to the very end. Wasn’t that remarkable?”

I nodded while she broke down sobbing. I glanced at Ben, who was teary too. “Aunt Suzie,” I murmured, “thank you for loving and helping my father. You allowed us to understand him better — he was at least loyal and decent in his own way.”

“I still miss him,” she mumbled, wiping her wrinkled face with a red napkin, her cheeks streaked with makeup.

After lunch we sent Suzie back to her apartment building, a kind of senior home. Then we hit Expressway 10, headed east. Ben was pensive and reticent while I was driving. When we’d begun cruising along with little traffic on the road, I asked him, “Do you think Minister Hao Ding had a point? I mean, as he said, your grandfather was a blackmailer?”

“No. That was just an excuse.”

“How come? Seventy thousand dollars was a ton of money by Chinese standards then.”

“It was a mere pittance in my grandfather’s case. Remember what Mao said about him? ‘This man is worth four armored divisions.’ An armored division had more than two hundred tanks. A single tank was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

“But that was when Gary was still useful to them.”

“True, they squeezed everything they could out of him. His case was a textbook example of stupidity and misjudgment. In a way, you can say it was his love for your mother that did him in.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He got the money for her fucking bakery! That was like blowing his identity on purpose — no professional spy would make such a dangerous move. How could he have got that lax?”

“I’m not sure if he loved Nellie, but he must have meant to do right by her. After twenty-five years’ living together, he must have developed some feelings for her. Now that he was going to leave America for good, he wanted to make sure she’d be able to survive without him around. We can call that love or honor or a sense of responsibility, whichever name it doesn’t matter. What’s essential is that he finally did something he felt right on his own, and was willing to pay the price.”

Ben looked at me in astonishment. I added, “Don’t you think my mother was also a victim?”

“I can see that. Let me say this then: it was his decency that ruined him.”

“Also because he was ignorant of the nefarious nature of the power that used and manipulated him.”

“You mean China?”

“Yes, what it did to your grandfather is evil. On the other hand, he allowed the country to take the moral high ground and to dictate how he lived his life. That’s also a source of his tragedy.”

“It wasn’t that simple. How could he have separated himself from China, where he still had a good part of his family?”

“That’s another source of his tragedy — he couldn’t exist alone.”

A lull followed. I kept driving in silence. Ben seemed to be dozing off in the reclined passenger seat, but I suspected he was just deep in thought trying to figure a way out of his plight, so I remained wordless.

It started sprinkling, the beads of rain rattling on the windshield, and I flipped on the wipers, which began swishing monotonously. I’d been driving sixty miles an hour, following a tanker truck at a distance of about five hundred feet.

As we were approaching Magog, Ben sat up, pulled a notepad out of his hip pocket, and scribbled on it. He ripped off the page and handed it to me. “Keep this, Aunt Lilian,” he said.

“What is it?”

“An email address and a password. From now on we should communicate only through this account. I’ve already set it up. You just leave a message for me in the draft folder whenever you want to reach me. After I read it, I will delete every word. You must do the same. We must leave nothing in the account after we have read a message.”

“Why should we do that?”

“This is a way to communicate without leaving any trace online. Email exchanges might not be safe. We just share the same account, known only to the two of us. Every time after you’ve read my message, delete the whole thing.”

“Is this how you send intelligence to China?”

He chuckled. “It’s one of the methods. There’re more complex ways too, like classified codes and encrypted fax. For you and me this should be private enough.”

Evidently he’d begun making arrangements. Whatever action he might take, it would be better than sitting tight with apprehension, so I didn’t press him for details.

Back in College Park, I checked our shared email account a few times a day but found no words. I wrote Ben a note, saying I hoped everything was well. The message disappeared overnight, which meant he had read it. That put my mind somewhat at ease.

Henry and I dined out on Wednesday evening, September 21, to celebrate his birthday — he was sixty-two now. Again he talked about Ben, hoping he could get out of his trouble with the FBI soon and quit his shady computer business so he might work for us someday, and so we could live together like a family. Henry knew I would love that. Indeed, if that happened, I’d feel blessed. I always admired immigrant families that had parents and children, even grandchildren, living under the same roof, although I could see that it might be hard for the younger generation, who needed more space for themselves. But I said nothing to Henry about Ben’s current situation, which must have been volatile. Longing for an early retirement, my husband wanted to collect his Social Security without delay. He was not afraid of losing some of his benefits since my employment at the university could cover him. I made no comment but wondered whether it would be good for him to be entirely unoccupied. His job wasn’t that demanding and gave him a lot of free time. Still, he suggested we contract a handyman to lighten his maintenance work. I wouldn’t mind if that was what he wanted, yet I told him that he should keep himself busy so that he could live longer. He laughed and said, “I prefer comfort to longevity — quality but not quantity of life.”

When we came back that night, I booted up my computer and accessed the secret email account again. A message appeared:

Dear Aunt Lilian:

By the time you read this, Sonya and I are no longer in the Boston area. We are very fond of Massachusetts but unable to live there anymore. I just sold my business at a huge discount so that I could get some ready cash. I am not sure where Sonya and I will end up, but we have each other and will share all our good and bad fortunes. As long as she is with me, I can live anywhere and won’t be lonesome. I will cherish her as my sole companion and will love her as my wife and the mother of my children.

There will be consequences for my family back in China on my account, and I won’t be able to do anything for them for a long time, but I believe that with your help they will survive. Among my family members, I am most worried about Juli, who is, as I am, untamed at heart. I fear she might flee home again given that the provincial life can be prosaic and stifling. But as long as she is with our parents, she should be all right. So please always urge her to stay home. Also, don’t let them know of my present situation yet. It’s better to keep them in the dark for now.

I feel liberated as we are traveling along. For the first time in my life I am acting as an independent man, also as a man without a country. I have decided to grow a beard. Yes, let it get as thick as a forest so I will look older and a little fierce. Whether Sonya and I will be able to live decently, I am not sure, but we are willing to accept all the joys and sorrows that come our way. This is the true condition of freedom, isn’t it?

Love from both of us,

Ben

PS: Originally I planned to come to DC next spring to pay my respects to your parents, but I will not be able to do that anymore. When you go visit them in the cemetery next time, please take along two bouquets, of white chrysanthemums or roses, on behalf of me and Sonya.

I felt that Ben’s escape was a natural step, but he might have been rash to dispose of his business like that. On the other hand, that must have been his only way to get funds for the road.

I wondered about Ben and Sonya. Did they cross the border into Canada? That was unlikely. Ben had once said there was too much Chinese influence in Canada when I half-joked that he should consider immigrating to Quebec like a U.S. draft dodger. He and Sonya might still be in the States. Their immediate task was to elude the FBI and the Chinese investigators, so for now they might have to continue to travel. Wherever they went, I was certain they could survive.

I read Ben’s message again, then deleted it. I couldn’t help smiling about his decision to grow a beard, which sounded a shade eccentric. I supposed it could be his way to assert his manhood, at least in appearance. Ben didn’t know my parents had been buried in different cemeteries, but I’d bring them flowers as he requested. I left him a message saying that he and Sonya must take care of each other and must avoid making friends for the time being.

My words got erased the next morning. That pleased me.

Through Juli I informed my sister and her husband that Ben was working on a special project that imposed strict isolation on him, but that he was well and they shouldn’t worry. Juli wrote back and thanked me on behalf of her parents. She reminded me of the next summer’s family reunion, to which I again promised to come.

Weeks have passed, and I still haven’t heard another word from Ben. I try to stay undisturbed. The silence might mean everything is okay.