An American Spy

3

The only similarity between the fried eel and Wu Liang was the indigestion that struck him on the long train ride from Jinan down to Shanghai, making it hard to doze even in the deluxe soft sleeper cabin, with its private toilet and a view of the countryside blackness between stations. Nanjing was lit up like a landing field, even though the sun had risen by then, and it was afternoon by the time he reached Shanghai. Wobbly with fatigue, he stored his bag in a station locker, then took buses over to Fucheng Road and searched until he’d found, among the looming modern towers, a public phone booth. He called the Shangri-La and, putting on a slightly comical Hokkien accent, asked to speak to Mr. Xin Zhu. Two rings, then he hung up and called again, telling the clerk that he’d been disconnected. This time, it only rang once before a man said in a tired voice not unlike Xin Zhu’s, “Wei?”

“Mr. Xin Zhu,” Zhu said, keeping up the accent, “you called us regarding a date for this evening. We’re sorry that your usual friend is not available, but perhaps we can send someone else.”

“That may be acceptable,” said the hotel guest, who was in fact He Qiang, a field agent he had twice before used to impersonate himself. It was a rare man who had the build to impersonate Xin Zhu, though He Qiang still required ample padding.

Zhu stifled a yawn. “She will need to know your room number, of course.”

“Of course, it’s 1298. But maybe, to start, she and I could have a drink in the hotel bar.”

“An excellent idea,” said Zhu. “Might I suggest an eight o’clock rendezvous in the Jade on 36?”

Zhu gave it another half hour, strolling down to the dock and finding, to his delight, a Haagen-Dazs shop, where he bought a scoop of Chocolate Chocolate Chip that he ate while sitting on a bench and gazing at the Huangpu River. He watched faces again, but these were a more developed version of the New Chinese he had seen on the train to Qingdao. The high-rises of Qingdao had their share of business elite, but Shanghai was their breeding ground. They sported suits like second skins, the women comfortable in Western fashions, all secure in the knowledge that their city, the most populous city of the most populous country on the planet, had a reach that stretched around the globe. He hadn’t been lying when he told Zhang Guo that China was the superpower to be reckoned with, and though he could never feel comfortable with the economic policies that Shanghai represented, its very existence proved that their country was now something completely different. Arriving here was like arriving at a future of perpetual motion, and it was part of his responsibility to make sure that nothing external slowed it down. Perpetual motion, perpetual revolution. He ate his ice cream slowly, feeling it cut through the eel that seemed to still slither in his stomach, and thought of speed.

He entered as any guest would, through the glassy front doors and into the packed marble lobby, knowing that whoever was watching-and whether they’d been sent by Wu Liang, the committee, or the Americans, someone was always watching-would think that he’d eluded them on the way out, and that was something no watcher would admit in a report. He breezed past a gathering of Japanese businessmen and shared the elevator with a Canadian couple who were plainly in love. A rare sight.

The door to 1298, though displaying a DO NOT DISTURB sign, was ajar. He pushed it open to find a clean, empty room, the blinds drawn, and a key card left on the foot of the made bed. He closed the door behind himself, heard noise in the bathroom, and found He Qiang, a thick, big-shouldered man in his forties with a small mole on his cheek, sitting on the toilet, smiling. Hanging from the curtain rod, dripping dry, was a padded undergarment-the “fat suit” He Qiang had arrived wearing.

They shook hands, and Zhu leaned close to his ear, whispering, “I’m going to sleep. Wake me at seven.”

He Qiang nodded.

“She’ll make it by eight?”

“You’ll like her,” He Qiang whispered. “Xinyang girl. Very nice, and she knows the town. If you like, she can show you a good time.”

Zhu gave him a look, and He Qiang raised his hands.

“If you like, I said.”

Zhu washed up, and by the time he lay on the large, hard bed it was just after two. He Qiang plugged headphones into the television, settled on the floor, and began watching a DVD that, Zhu realized before falling asleep, was from Bollywood. So He Qiang liked the music and melodrama of those sorts of movies. He’d never have suspected the man was a dreamer. Xin Zhu certainly was not, and his dreamless sleep proved it.

He Qiang woke him gently with a shake of the shoulder, then pointed at a cup of hot black tea on the bedside table, alongside a sheet of paper filled with childlike scrawl. As he sipped the tea, he read over what proved to be He Qiang’s report of his time in the hotel. Who he’d spotted down in the street, how many calls (unanswered, of course) came to his room, and when, and the demeanor of the service staff that visited the room. Upon arriving, he’d changed his room but still found one camera in the overhead lamp, which he’d disposed of, and two microphones-he’d left one of them. No one had tried to replace anything. He Qiang’s assessment, which tallied with Xin Zhu’s, was that while there was no urgency to the surveillance, someone was certainly keeping tabs on him.

Zhu was able to verify this when he descended in the elevator, wearing one of the suits He Qiang had packed, and found, leaning against a wall outside the Jade, an athletic-looking young man working his way through a copy of People’s Daily. He was dressed like a factory worker ready for a big night out-a peasant’s idea of what the urban rich wear to gala events-but none of the hotel staff was kicking him out. Zhu passed him without a glance and found a place at the end of the Jade’s glowing bar.

The girl was in her midtwenties, small boned with a wide, flat nose and pebbly eyes. She found him as he was finishing his second drink, and introduced herself formally as Liu Xiuxiu, then took the stool beside him. A Caucasian man in the corner was playing progressive jazz on a piano. Zhu ordered her a glass of Chardonnay, while he drank his Glenlivet. She, like Sung Hui, was from Xinyang, but that was where the similarities ended. This girl knew exactly what she was doing.

The conversation began with formalities, and he admired how she was able to ride the flow of topics and then control it without ever seeming to interfere. Like most conversations that week, Wenchuan and the whole devastated Sichuan province soon became its focal point. Liu Xiuxiu said, “Fifty thousand. I can’t even imagine that many people, can you? If forced, I could count that high, but I can’t picture it.”

“After a certain number,” he said, “the mind just balks.”

“Exactly.”

He took a sip of whisky. “Earthquakes are just scratching the surface. In three years, the Great Leap Forward killed at least twenty million from starvation. That’s a number I’ve spent decades trying to grasp. I never will.”

Appropriately, Liu Xiuxiu grew quiet and looked into her glass. A lesser escort would have said, I don’t know anything about politics, but Liu Xiuxiu’s silence suggested she knew enough to hold her tongue. Xin Zhu, however, was drinking on a ravenously empty stomach, and his judgment suffered. He said, “Back then, Xinyang was hit very hard. The political semantics are wonderful-we call it the Three Years of Natural Disasters. There was nothing natural about what happened. The food was there, sitting in the silos, but no one was allowed to eat it because the grain was needed to fulfill quotas.” He smiled, raising his glass. “The Great Leap!”

Hearing his own delirious words, he expected her to set down her glass and walk out. Perhaps she would throw the Chardonnay into his face, but the glass remained in her hand, and she said, “Have you eaten?”

“No.”

“Perhaps a restaurant would be a good idea?”

She was going to take care of him. He Qiang had done very well.

Though she suggested a place up Minsheng Road, he patted his stomach and told her that speed was of the essence, so they hurried to the Fook Lam Moon in another wing of the hotel. Zhu ordered shark’s fin, while Liu Xiuxiu settled on fried rice with chicken and octopus. As he gorged himself on an appetizer of chilled shrimp they looked out over the Bund, where colonial-era European banks and customs houses cut through the high-rises. The sight filled him with the desire to discuss history, but he was starting to slide out of his idiocy and didn’t want to push his luck. “How long have you been in Shanghai?” he asked, switching to English.

She smiled modestly and placed her hands in her lap beneath the edge of the table, and he noticed in this different light of the restaurant that her skin was like opaque glass. It made him think that, if enough illumination were applied, he would be able to see through the skin to her organs and blood vessels. In very competent English, she said, “I came six years ago, to study nursing at Jiao Tong, but…” She faded out. “Academics did not suit me.”

“You have residence papers?”

She nodded but did not elaborate.

“And how do you know He Qiang?”

Another smile. “His cousin was a schoolmate in Xinyang, and when I came here I got in touch. He Qiang has been very kind to me.”

Zhu wondered how kind, and how many rules He Qiang had bent for this pretty girl. He still hadn’t gotten a proper meal, though, and until then he would continue to be magnanimous. “It must be difficult.”

“It has been,” she admitted, bowing her head. “Without friends like He Qiang, it would have been much more difficult. But now, I’ve..” Again, she faded out, then raised her head. “I’ve adjusted.”

There was something piercing about that two-word sentence that, even in English, made Zhu want to weep. He understood why He Qiang had set them up together for this fictitious date. She was lovely, and she would, if asked, go to bed with him, but her true value lay in the fact that she had adjusted to the hard life of Shanghai. She could adjust to anything, even working for a man as problematic as Xin Zhu.

In addition to her fluency in English, which she had first studied and then perfected through her job, she knew a smattering of German. When he quizzed her about Shanghai, he found that she could recall the most insignificant details-the color combinations of shop signs, the names of most of Shanghai’s doormen, as well as their wives-and that nothing he said was forgotten by her. Most importantly, she had-also, no doubt, because of her job-the uncanny ability of making him feel comfortable in his own skin, which was no small feat.

The food was delicious and restorative, but she barely touched her rice, though when he ordered the fruit platter for dessert she ate ravenously. She showed no hesitation when he suggested they go up to his room, but in the elevator, she seemed unsure about what to do, so she left her hands by her sides. He unlocked the door and let her in first, and it was she who first spotted He Qiang, standing in the bathroom doorway, gesturing for her silence. That, remarkably, did not throw her off. She walked to the dressers and, hands clasped in front of her stomach, waited. He Qiang smiled at Zhu.

Taking off his jacket, Zhu said, “You are a very beautiful woman.”

Smiling now, too, Liu Xiuxiu said, “You’re too kind.” Then she said, “Let me help you with your shoes.”

“Thank you,” he said, but when she stepped forward, he waved her back and went to the bed, sat down, and took off his own shoes. “That feels nice,” he said.

Seductively, she said, “Mmm.”

“Come here,” he said, then pushed himself onto the bed so that it squeaked. “Mmm,” he groaned.

Liu Xiuxiu covered her smile with a small hand.

As if he were alone, Zhu fluffed a pillow and closed his eyes, then opened them. He gestured to Liu Xiuxiu, pointed at his watch and held up one finger, then waved her away. She nodded. To He Qiang he showed two fingers, then closed his eyes again. He Qiang led Liu Xiuxiu to the bathroom and quietly closed the door behind them.

As instructed, Liu Xiuxiu left at one in the morning, conspicuously holding her high-heeled shoes in her hand until she was outside his door, where she crouched and slipped them on. In the lobby, as she would later report, she noticed a few different men watching her but was unable to discern who among them had only professional interest.

At two, He Qiang woke Zhu and made him tea; then they sat together at the desk. Each had a sheet of paper and a pen, and they talked in the written word. Specifically, French. Zhu wrote in an elegant script, He Qiang in the block capitals of someone with far less education than he had. Zhu wrote: The things one does to be unheard. He Qiang smiled and nodded.

I like her. She’s available? ABSOLUTELY. HATES HER JOB, LOVES HER COUNTRY. Relationships? EX-HUSBAND, CRIMINAL. NO PROBLEM. Criminal class? GREEN GANG. COLLECTS PROTECTION MONEY, CUTS TENDONS. Divorce? He Qiang nodded.

I want her in Beijing tomorrow-Monday. Possible? Another nod.

She’s not coming back. UNDERSTAND. You come, too.

He Qiang had begun to smile again. Since the killing of the American agents two months ago, he had been left to wander, which was no good for him. The call to fly to Shanghai and again impersonate his boss had been a welcome respite from his aimless days. Now he was being called back to the pit. He wrote, GOOD.

Zhu considered that word, bon, then wrote, Tomorrow the committee will try to get rid of me. I will hold them off, but in the meantime, you and Liu Xiuxiu will work on another project. The Americans are preparing their retaliation.

He Qiang read carefully, then looked Zhu in the eyes before writing again. AGAINST YOU? Maybe. They’re looking at my wife.

Another stare. He Qiang had only met Sung Hui once, at an official gathering where he’d been assigned protection duty, but he’d been visibly taken by the girl. MAKES NO SENSE. It makes sense. We need to find out what kind of sense.

Sung Hui had left the television on when she opened the door for him that Sunday afternoon, and when he settled on the sofa, he was greeted by images of a collapsed middle school in Juyuan that had trapped nine hundred students. Government teams, with the occasional local, picked through the dusty crags, but a week had passed, and the energy the whole country had witnessed just after the earthquake was fading. A female commentator praised the resilience and strength of the Sichuan people.

His phone rang-it was Zhang Guo. “Xin Zhu, I hope you had a restful time in Shanghai.”

“Thank you, I did.”

“I’m afraid I’m walking into walls, though. Concerning tomorrow.”

“Well, it was worth a try,” Zhu said and realized that even this failure told him something important. If Zhang Guo couldn’t learn the details of a meeting that he, too, was scheduled to attend, it meant that Wu Liang was running it with an unusual level of secrecy.

“As for the other,” Zhang Guo said, referring to Leticia Jones, “I’ll need a few days.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then.”

Sung Hui came in with a platter of pork dumplings, apologizing as she turned off the television and the images of disaster. “I know it does no good,” she said, “but I can’t help watching. It makes my own worries insignificant.”

He didn’t like to hear that, even if it mirrored his own thoughts. “You have no worries.”

“Do you want to eat here?”

“I don’t think I can make it to the dining room.”

“Shanghai was difficult?”

He shook his head. “A weekend of reflection isn’t easy for someone as slow-witted as me.”

That provoked a musical laugh, and she settled next to him.

“The flight home was the problem. I should’ve bought two seats.”

“Next time you will buy two seats. You’ll bring me along. I’ll help you with your reflection.”

Like others, he had once been suspicious of this girl’s affection for an old, obese man, but he’d slowly discovered that these were the very characteristics that she enjoyed most. Sung Hai hated the boastful men her own age, and his size gave her a feeling of protection. What, then, had she seen in Delun? This was a subject she had avoided so many times that he was no longer able to ask the question, no longer wanted to. Truth is not always the way.

She pulled her legs up beneath herself and lifted the platter. Using a pair of porcelain chopsticks, she guided a dumpling to his mouth. It was delicious.

As she fed him, she recounted the two days they’d spent apart, which had been filled with drinks and dancing at Vics with a couple of girlfriends, unsuccessfully shopping for new rugs for the foyer, and worrying about Sichuan schoolchildren. During the periods in between, she was reading The Boat to Redemption by Su Tong, a bestseller about a Party official expelled for lying about his revolutionary parentage. “Do you know what he does?” she asked.

“What?”

A pause. Her eyes grew. “He tries to castrate himself!”

“Unbelievable!”

“I believe it,” she said. “You really should read it.”

“When I get time.”

“Have you ever had time?”

He exhaled, waiting for the inevitable.

“Time off,” she said. “Someplace with clean air and sun chairs. You can sit by the water and read Su Tong.”

Holding back a grin, he said, “I hear Trier is nice,” then coughed when she punched him in the ribs. Package tours to Karl Marx’s birthplace were advertised in agency windows all over Beijing.

“Oh!” She hopped up and went to a cabinet. “I forgot. I ran into Shen An-Ling at the store. He gave me this for you.” She opened a drawer and took out an unmarked brown envelope. Shen An-Ling had scrawled his signature across the seal. It hadn’t been opened.

Zhu kept a small office in the back of the apartment, and after thanking Sung Hui for the meal, he took the envelope, closed the door behind himself, and settled at the desk that overlooked the city from thirty floors up. It had been her idea to move into this Chaoyang District tower, and only she could have convinced him to willingly place himself so high up. He’d asked the most basic question- What happens if the electricity shuts down? — and she’d stared at him, as if she’d never experienced a power outage, which in Beijing was an impossibility. The problem was that she’d fallen in love with the apartment and, more particularly, the vision of the two of them floating above the city. How could he deny her that?

He tore open the end of the envelope and shook the letter into his palm. It was a short letter, written in an obscure naval code that dated from 1940, and after decoding it, he read it through twice. He paused, considering the revelations Shen An-Ling had assembled here, read it through again, then cracked open the window and used matches to light the envelope, the letter, and the decoded message. As they shrank, he placed them into an ashtray and lit a Hamlet, its strong scent filling the small room.

According to their sources, Leticia Jones changed to another name after landing in Cairo, then flew to London for a connecting flight to Dulles International in Washington, D.C. After two nights in the One Washington Circle Hotel, on Monday the twelfth, the same day as the earthquake, she went to a house in Georgetown owned by a real estate company called Living, Inc, and met with four people: Alan Drummond, former head of the Department of Tourism; Senator Nathan Irwin, Minnesota Republican; Dorothy Collingwood, ranking officer in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, department unknown; and Stuart Jackson, retired CIA, Directorate of Operations (which, by 2005, was absorbed into the National Clandestine Service), now a private consultant.

The meeting lasted nearly seven hours, and lunch was delivered by an aide of Dorothy Collingwood’s. Shen An-Ling’s sources had been unable to listen to anything. They left one by one, at twenty-minute intervals, first Senator Irwin, then Jackson, Collingwood, Jones, and finally Alan Drummond-the youngest of the ringleaders, only thirty-nine-who walked two blocks and took a taxi to Union Station, where he boarded a train to Manhattan, and his home at 200 East Eighty-ninth Street.

Shen An-Ling’s assessment at the end of the note was, like Shen An-Ling, simple and to the point: Something must be done, now. I await your orders. You couldn’t buy loyalty like that-not anymore, at least.