An American Spy

4

Sung Hui was washing in the bathroom when Zhu’s phone rang Sunday morning. He didn’t recognize the number but guessed he’d find Shen An-ling on the line. The last thing he expected was the voice of Hua Yuan, Bo Gaoli’s wife. They hadn’t talked since that visit to her house at the Purple Jade Villas, and, with everything else going on, he had forgotten about her. She sounded peculiar, even for her, as if after more than a month she’d come out of her house and discovered that the world had been wiped clean during her absence. She said, “Comrade Colonel, we need to talk. Can you come here?”

“Today?” he asked, looking around for Sung Hui-she had left the bathroom, probably for the kitchen.

“Today, yes. Now, actually. It must be now.”

She’d said it in a way that made Zhu think that, no, it did not have to be now, though he couldn’t explain what gave him that feeling. “Can you tell me what this is about?”

“I was cleaning up his things. My husband’s. And I came across a letter he wrote to you. Please, come to read it.”

“I’m busy this morning,” he said.

“Get here fucking now,” she snapped.

He’d lied about being busy to see how she would react, but he wasn’t sure how to interpret her reaction. “In that case, of course. I’ll be there immediately.” He lowered his voice, “Hua Yuan, you’re afraid. Why?”

She didn’t answer at first, and he heard noise in the background. Paper, perhaps the letter Bo Gaoli had written to him. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of weeping. Between sobs, she said, “Please.” A sniff. “If you read the letter,” she said after a moment, “you will understand. Hurry.” She hung up.

He dressed and found Sung Hui boiling water for tea. They had made love the previous night, and there was a pleasant morning-after glow lingering between them-he could feel it. He kissed her forehead. “I need to run now. I’ll be back soon.”

“Let’s go out to dinner tonight.”

“As you like,” he said, and she frowned at him. “What?”

“What do you like, Zhu?”

He began to say, I like what you like, or, I’m happy to see you happy, but he knew how inept those phrases were, so he just said, “What I like is you. Here at home or at a restaurant, or in the desert. It’s all better with you.”

Her frown faded away to nothingness.

His phone rang again as he was driving north on the ring road, and this time it was Shen An-ling, calling from Hong Kong. He Qiang had arrived to run things, but Zhu still wanted someone else there to help direct.

“Has he left his room yet?” Zhu asked.

“No, but Leticia Jones and Milo Weaver are now in town. They appeared at the hotel, then changed their minds and checked into the Kowloon.”

“So they spotted you?”

“I was in the lobby, but it was He Qiang. Weaver saw him in New York.”

“Sloppy.”

“Yes,” said Shen An-ling. “But we gave him a phone, and if you’d like I can patch you through to him once he’s alone.”

“Yes. That would be good.”

“A woman came to his room.”

“To Drummond’s?”

“She was looking for someone named Charlie. Drummond opened the door a little and said a few words to her, then she left. Apparently, she had the wrong room.”

“Is she a guest?”

“Yes. Jennifer Paulson.”

“Let me know if she makes the same mistake again.”

It was after nine by the time he reached the Purple Jade Villas. The guards had been told by Hua Yuan to expect him, so they gave his Guoanbu ID only a cursory glance, then sent him on. He remembered the drive to the villa from his earlier visit, but while everything looked the same, it felt different. Perhaps it was the sight of a laborer driving a lawn mower over one of the distant hills, reminding him that the beauty here took considerable effort to maintain.

Hua Yuan did not come out to meet him, so he parked and walked to the door on his own, noticing that the villas on either side were empty of cars. The air was damp here, as was the grass; his leather shoes came out in dark spots. Only when he knocked on her door did he get the feeling that this house was empty as well. It was as if, knowing that he was on his way, the Purple Jade management had sent in a team to evacuate the street.

There was no answer to his knock, or to the doorbell he rang twice. He looked at the heavy door and then, gingerly, turned the handle. It was unlocked, and it opened smoothly.

He stepped inside and instinctively slipped out of his shoes to pad around in socks. He stepped into the living room, with its square window framed in ivy, looking out at his car and the fields beyond, and called, “Hua Yuan? It’s Xin Zhu.” There was no reply.

Further back he found a dining room and, through a pair of double doors, a long kitchen tiled in white, with a counter stretching down the center of the room. It smelled of rust. The kitchen lights burned brightly, so that when he found her, arms and legs bent as if she were running along the floor, the pool of blood spreading out from the gunshot gash in her forehead created a perfect reflection of the fluorescent lamps in the ceiling.

She was wearing a floor-length robe, a different one than she’d worn before, and it hung behind her-again, he imagined her running, the robe flung up by the wind-and her bare, varicose legs were on display. A blood-speckled white slipper hung off her left foot; the other slipper was against the base of the oven, perfectly clean.

About an hour had passed from the time of her call, which meant that the killer could conceivably still be in the house. He went through the drawers until he found a heavy Hattori cleaver, then walked slowly through the house, from the bottom to the top. With his slow, deliberate pace it took twenty minutes to look into every room, and on the way he wondered why he wasn’t just standing in the kitchen and calling Shen An-ling, or the police, or even Purple Jade security. He knew why, though. For the moment, he had silence and solitude. As soon as he made the call, that solitude would be broken, and he needed some time to figure out what had happened, and who should receive his first call.

Back in the kitchen, he returned the cleaver to the drawer, then crouched, groaning, beside Hua Yuan. He took a corner of the robe and pulled it to cover her running legs, then checked the pocket-empty. There would be another pocket between her and the floor, but he didn’t want to move her.

His phone rang.

“Yes?”

Shen An-ling said, “I’ll connect you to Milo Weaver, if you like.”

“Go ahead.”

As he threatened the health of Milo Weaver’s wife and daughter, he returned to the living room and looked for the letter. If Hua Yuan had been expecting him, the letter would be out, perhaps even on display, but it wasn’t here. He peered around the kitchen, careful to step around the pool of blood as he looked in drawers. By the time Milo Weaver told him that Alan Drummond probably wanted to kill him, he was checking the tables in the foyer, and when Shen An-ling sent a message to his phone, signifying that Leticia Jones was returning to Weaver’s hotel room, he was checking the dining room. After hanging up, he returned upstairs to check Hua Yuan’s bedroom. He found many small items from her life-receipts, letters from girlfriends and family, and bills-but with each failure he became increasingly sure that he was going to have to roll over the woman in the kitchen.

So he returned and first tried to tug the robe out from under her, but when he pulled she slid with it. He stood, lifting the hem of the robe upward, and Hua Yuan rolled a little, farting loudly as the body resettled. Zhu closed his eyes, the robe tight in his fist, and reached into the damp hidden pocket. His fingers found moist, folded paper, multiple sheets, which he removed with his index and middle fingers. Then he stepped back, dropping the robe and backing away as the body expelled more gas. He withdrew to a bathroom, set the pages on the toilet seat, and washed his hands with hot water and soap, focusing all his energy on not being sick.

The moisture on the letter was not blood but urine, and Xin Zhu took the sheets to the dining room and laid them out individually on the long table. Her husband, Bo Gaoli, had written on only one side of each of the five pages, so as they dried Zhu could walk down the length of the table and read the entire message. Once he was finished, he returned to the head of the table and read it again. He pulled out a chair and settled down, then called Sun Bingjun.

“Apologies,” he told the old man. “I’m sure you’re busy.”

“I’m always busy, Xin Zhu, or at least that’s what I claim. What is it?”

“How well did you know Bo Gaoli, Comrade Lieutenant General?”

A pause. “We worked together on occasion. I can’t say we were close.”

“And his wife?”

“Hua Yuan? I didn’t know her at all until after her husband died. I stopped by once to give condolences. She seemed to be taking it rather well.”

“Comrade Lieutenant General, would it be possible for you to meet with me? I am at Hua Yuan’s Purple Jade home.”

“Are you interviewing her?”

“Please,” Zhu said, “could you come?”

“Is this serious, Xin Zhu?”

“More than serious.”

It took forty minutes for Sun Bingjun’s Mercedes to arrive, parking behind Xin Zhu’s Audi. By then it was ten forty-five. Through the square window, Zhu saw a tall, broad driver get out and open the door for Sun Bingjun, who walked alone toward the house, his face grim. Sun Bingjun had never been a man of smiles, and, as he approached, Zhu realized that he had known very few men of smiles, because those were the ones who inevitably sank out of view before long, their little grins wavering only at the last moment. Smiling was not Sun Bingjun’s way, though drinking was, but even when he drank to excess, he never stepped too far. He had more self-control than anyone liked to admit.

Zhu met him at the door and brought him into the living room. The old man looked around, showing signs of impatience. “Where is Hua Yuan?”

“In the kitchen. She’s dead.”

Sun Bingjun’s skin knotted around the eyes, then relaxed. “Did you do it, Xin Zhu?”

“She called me this morning about a letter she’d found among her husband’s things. It was written to me. She was evidently scared but wouldn’t go into details. I came as quickly as I could.”

“But not fast enough?” Sun Bingjun speculated.

“Apparently,” Zhu said. “I had to move her body in order to get at the letter in her pocket.”

“Tampering with a crime scene,” Sun Bingjun said. “I hope this letter was worth it. Oh,” he added, looking out at their cars, “and next time, you might want to suggest I drive myself.”

Sun Bingjun was only testing the borders of Zhu’s stupidity here, for he was now, by his very presence, involved, and his driver was a witness. “Come with me,” Zhu said and led him to the dining room. He retreated to a corner and waited, watching Sun Bingjun read the pages through and, like Zhu, read them again.

“Well,” said the old man.

“You see why I needed you to come.”

Sun Bingjun raised his head to look directly at Zhu. “You wanted someone to believe your desperate lie.”

Perhaps inviting him had been a mistake. “That’s not true.”

Sun Bingjun walked to the first page again and read aloud, “ Comrade Colonel Xin Zhu, I am writing to draw your attention to a conspiracy that threatens the very foundation of our Republic. Where did you get this from? One of those pulp novels the kids find so heartwarming these days? Page two,” he said, taking a small step toward Zhu. “ I am coming to you because, as your adversarial history with Wu Liang is well known, I thought you might be able to view my evidence with a clear eye. ” Sun Bingjun smiled. “Very good, that. You turn your prejudice into a virtue. And here,” he said, lowering a finger to point at a section of page three. “ I’ve been warned that Wu Liang is suspicious of my investigations, and that, within days, I might be called in to answer trumped-up charges, the same charges that I am preparing to level against him. This is why I’ll be sending this by courier as soon as possible. ” Sun Bingjun opened his hands, flat, and tilted them from side to side. “Very chancy, that one. You show him to be wrong because, according to the date here-April 21-Wu Liang picked him up on that same day. This is the drama, of course, because the poor man thought he had more time before the devil caught up with him. Which is why he never sent the letter. Which is why it remained undiscovered until poor Hua Yuan came across it and, like a good wife and citizen, called you. But here,” he said, raising an index finger, “this is the piece de resistance, at least to my mind.” It was on the second to last page, and the old man pointed a stubby finger at it. “ I realize that there will be resistance to you bringing these charges to light if, in fact, I am unable, and so I suggest going to Comrade Sun Bingjun, who is preparing to retire, and who would have fewer concerns about risking his position. He knows he is safe from ridicule. Beautiful!” he said. “It directs you to do exactly as you have done-drag me into this foul mess of your engineering.”

“Comrade Lieutenant General,” Zhu began, but the old man waved at him to stop.

“I know what the stories are, Xin Zhu. I’m an old drunk who will fade quietly away upon retirement. I don’t care about that. When I’m dead, my reputation will be entirely academic. What I do mind is when younger men listen to those stories and come to the conclusion that I am easily manipulated, that I can be a tool for their survival. The fact is that I’ve done something none of you young men have done, and that is to thrive into my dotage in the snake pit of Beijing politics.”

Xin Zhu placed his hands on his thighs, saying nothing. He had no idea what he could say. It was the blood, the body, the urine, and the letter-they had made him stupid. He should have known that Sun Bingjun wasn’t about to put himself out for… for what? For a thorn in the side of Chinese intelligence? For the story of a woman’s death that was only that-a story? Why did he expect he would be believed?

Sun Bingjun sighed loudly and pulled out a chair, sitting in front of the final page of the letter, but he wasn’t reading a thing-he was watching Zhu. He said, “This is how untenable your situation is, Xin Zhu. This is how easily Wu Liang could turn it around and throw it into your face. Every accusation is built on the foundation of a story, and before you speak to anyone you must learn your entire story, every detail.” He grunted a half-laugh. “Why am I telling you this? You’re Xin Zhu, the master of the narrative. You used a story to draw the Americans into a beautiful trap. Yet now you have entered this storyline unprepared. Who committed the murder in the kitchen? Where are the files that Bo Gaoli talks about here, the ones that prove that Wu Liang has been a CIA source for the last twenty years? I certainly hope it doesn’t turn out to be a collection of e-mails like the ones you shared. And how do I really know that Bo Gaoli penned this letter?”

Sun Bingjun was right. He was getting ahead of himself, but, faced with a corpse and a urine-stained letter, time was no longer on his side. “I’m rushing,” he admitted.

“And you’ve got too much to deal with already. What have you learned about the Americans’ great act of vengeance?”

“We’re still watching Alan Drummond’s room.”

“Enough, Xin Zhu. That man should be dead by now. You wait, and you appear complicit in his survival.”

“Killing him will only make them change their plans.”

“You don’t even know their plans, Xin Zhu, so it makes no difference if they change them.”

Zhu involuntarily rubbed his cheek, then told him about Liu Xiuxiu’s report on Stuart Jackson and the ferociously ambitious wife of one of their colleagues.

“Hearsay,” Sun Bingjun said, though from the look on his face he was taken aback. “Excellent hearsay, but still hearsay.”

“And I have someone else inside,” Zhu said, “Milo Weaver. He’s working with them, but he’s under my control.”

“You didn’t report that to the committee.”

“Given the clues we now have in our possession, I believe I made the right choice.”

Sun Bingjun looked momentarily irritated. Then, “Did you also leave something out of the report on the murder of Yevgeny Primakov? Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“Who did it?”

“I don’t know.”

Sun Bingjun raised an eyebrow, perhaps signifying his disbelief. “Don’t worry about Hua Yuan. My driver, happily, is loyal, and he knows better than to admit to seeing anything. I’ll talk to the Jade gatekeepers and find out who else visited this morning.”

“That’s extremely generous.”

Sun Bingjun pursed his lips, then shook his head. “It’s pragmatism, Xin Zhu. If you’re not constructing an elaborate scheme to protect yourself, then Wu Liang is truly dangerous and should be exposed. If I help you build the case against him, and it’s successful, then my star rises just before retirement, but if it fails, I leave humiliated. Which is why I’m not going to let you do it on your own. Look at yourself. You haven’t been sleeping enough, and I don’t think it’s only because of your young wife. You’re trying to find a mole while fending off the forces of American retaliation. It’s too much for one man.”

“Either way,” Zhu said, “your help is appreciated.”

“Then let’s make sure I don’t live to regret it. Tomorrow you’ll have a chance to tell the story to the committee, so get it straight. I’ll make sure Wu Liang is in attendance.”

Zhu nodded.

“Finish off these people in Hong Kong. You don’t want their presence used against you at the meeting.”

Again, Zhu nodded.

“Now go, Xin Zhu. I’ll deal with this.”

Zhu silently withdrew. He crossed the lawn and went to his car. Inside the Mercedes Sun Bingjun’s big driver, with one of those clay faces that could be so easily forgotten, watched Zhu’s progress, while Zhu noticed that various neighbors, up and down the street, had returned home.

As he drove, Shen An-ling called again to discuss Milo Weaver’s twenty-minute visit to room 212 of the Peninsula Hotel. The microphones had only picked up a few spare words, the sound of a fistfight, and then silence as they switched, assumedly, to handwritten communication. “After Weaver left the room, He Qiang tried to give him another phone.”

“Tried?”

“Milo Weaver refused. He told He Qiang to go fuck himself. Those words. I think the pressure is getting to him.”

“Or he knows we don’t have his family,” Zhu said. It didn’t matter, not now. Tomorrow, Wu Liang was going to have to answer for his collusion with the Americans, and perhaps he would offer answers to some of these mysteries. Zhu said, “Enough, Shen An-ling.”

“Enough of what?”

“Everything. I want you to close them down.”

A sigh. “Thank you, Comrade Colonel.”

An hour later, in the office, he was connected to everything by a computer and a telephone linked to Shen An-ling, who kept watch in the lobby of the Peninsula. As there were only nine men at his disposal, they would first grab Alan Drummond and then collect the Tourists from the Kowloon. After Milo Weaver’s exit, He Qiang had reported no other sounds from room 212 until, as he prepared to move in, Alan Drummond’s cell phone bleeped an incoming message. Then, the sound of movement, of clothes being pulled on, of luggage being shifted. A door. Then, through the spy hole of his own door, He Qiang watched an Asian man, perhaps Vietnamese, walk past with nothing in his hands.

“It’s not him,” He Qiang reported to the others, as well as to Beijing, and gave a brief description. “But he came from the room. Heading for the stairwell.”

“Don’t lose him” was Xin Zhu’s only advice, as he wondered who it could be.

With He Qiang on the same floor, they had two men-Xu Guanzhong and Wei Chi-tao-holding different corners of the lobby, while Shen An-ling observed from behind the concierge desk with two smart phones-one for communication, one for tracking his people. Five more men waited outside the tower, watching rear entrances on Middle Road, side entrances on Nathan Road, and the grandiose main entrance on Salisbury Road. Another kept an eye on the Kowloon lobby. However, after three minutes no one reported anyone leaving the Peninsula stairwell. Shen An-ling called He Qiang’s phone, which rang seven times without an answer. Xu Guanzhong moved from the lobby to the stairwell, keeping an open line, and in that small Beijing office Zhu listened to Xu Guanzhong’s breaths and feet echoing in the stairwell before the feet stopped and Xu Guanzhong said, “Oh.”

“What is it?” asked Shen An-ling.

“I think he’s dead. Yes. He’s dead.”

“He Qiang?”

“Garrote,” came the unnerved reply. “His head is nearly…”

Zhu pulled at his lower lip. He Qiang was dead? There were only five floors to the Peninsula’s original building, but thirty floors had been added in the midnineties with the construction of a modern tower. This could take forever. “Continue up the stairs,” Zhu ordered. “Wei Chi-tao, you, too. Everybody else, move inside.”

On his computer, Xin Zhu had a map of the two Hong Kong blocks that encompassed the Peninsula and the Kowloon, on which he watched his men’s cell phones. Red spots on the screen, all in motion. Three red spots in the stairwell of the Peninsula, and five more closing in. Shen An-ling, in the lobby, began to deliver orders personally, and two more red spots moved into the stairwell.

Xu Guanzhong had more bad news. “He didn’t go back to his room, and the other corridors are empty. We’re going to check the maids’ closets.”

Shen An-ling’s voice, irritably, “You didn’t do that already?”

Xu Guanzhong didn’t bother answering, and Zhu realized that while Alan Drummond might have checked into that hotel, he had probably never gone up to the room. He knew from experience how easy a trick like that was to pull.

On the map of the Peninsula, the red dots were moving through the corridors, and only one remained in the stairwell-the immobile He Qiang. Over the speaker Xu Guanzhong breathed heavily when, suddenly, there was a loud two-tone squeal. “Fire alarm. He pulled the fire alarm. The sprinklers are going.” Noise, voices. “Evacuation.”

“Keep looking,” Zhu ordered. Shen An-ling had kept three men in the lobby. “Watch the crowd.”

A woman’s scream, and Xu Guanzhong stated the obvious. “Someone’s discovered He Qiang in the stairwell.”

Then, after a moment, Xu Guanzhong said, “Wei Chi-tao?”

No answer.

Xu Guanzhong said, “Wei Chi-tao, where are you?”

“He’s on the fourth floor,” Xin Zhu said, though he could see that Wei Chi-tao’s phone was as immobile as He Qiang’s.

Then he heard, “Uhh,” as if Xu Guanzhong had just lost all the air in his body.

“Xu Guanzhong,” said Zhu. On the screen, Xu Guanzhong’s phone, on the third floor, was not moving either. “Answer, Xu Guanzhong.”

A voice spoke to him in English. “He’s coming to get you, Xin Zhu.”

“Who is that?” Shen An-ling shouted.

On the computer screen, Xu Guanzhong’s telephone moved swiftly down the corridor and out a window.

Shen An-ling shouted, “Everyone! Third floor!”

The other spots around the Peninsula swept inward, toward the stairwell, slowed as they fought the evacuating crowds, but Zhu knew that didn’t matter. They wouldn’t find this Sebastian Hall. He was a Tourist.

“Stop them,” Zhu said to Shen An-ling.

Shen An-ling said, “What?”

“Immediately. If he’s still there, he’s going to kill off all our men. Send everyone to the Kowloon, and we’ll see if we can do better there.”

“But-”

“ Immediately, Shen An-ling.”