Private Beijing

Chapter 62

We left Gavin and Daisy to deal with the mess Liu Bao had made of their lives and took the elevator down from the apartment.

Daisy had been searching for easy money after college, and Liu, seeing an opportunity in a beautiful, intelligent journalism major, had taken a long-term bet she would be useful. I’d encountered this sort of strategic planning before, in Moscow, but few people could countenance the thought process involved in formulating espionage operations on a ten- or twenty-year time scale. Like the old urban myth of the frog growing accustomed to being boiled in a pot, by the time Daisy realized there was something sinister about Liu Bao’s intentions, she was in too deep and had been sufficiently compromised for him to have leverage on her. Now Liu had started the same process with Gavin Hudson, finding something he desired — in this case Daisy — and using her to compromise him. Thankfully, we’d exposed the plan at an early stage and Gavin was unlikely to suffer any long-term adverse effects on his career.

Daisy was a different matter. The State Department might decide to prosecute, or they could flip her and run her as an asset to get intel from inside Liu Bao’s organization. Either way, it was clear by the time we left that her relationship with Gavin was over.

“I still don’t understand why Liu would target us,” I said as the elevator took us down to the ground floor. “We’ve never crossed paths with him before, right?”

“Never,” Zhang Daiyu agreed.

“Who can be sure though?” Hua added. “He has interests everywhere. He’s brokered arms deals in Eastern Europe and Africa, financed mining activities in Asia and Australia, and has technology investments in North America. He has interests in energy production and mining in South America. A different branch of Private might have crossed his path and not even known it.”

Hua was right, but this felt too targeted to be retaliation for something that hadn’t even registered on our radar.

“I think we need to go back to the beginning,” I said. “I want to talk to David Zhou again. Do you think you can arrange it?”

Zhang Daiyu exhaled sharply.

“Maybe you don’t know how difficult it is to get into Qincheng,” she replied.

“Maybe I don’t,” I said. “But I do know how capable you are, so if I ask the impossible it’s because I know you can do it.”

Hua said something I did not understand and she smiled.

“He says your American football coach psychology is very effective. In the old days you would have got a peasant to try and steal pearls from under the emperor’s pillow.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“It’s not a compliment,” Hua responded flatly. “Crimes against the emperor were punishable by death. I was suggesting to Zhang Daiyu that you are dangerous.”

I didn’t like what he was implying but had to admire his honesty.

The doors opened. We stepped out into the lobby.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Zhang Daiyu said. “The emperor’s pearls had better be worth the risk.”

“I hope so,” I replied. “Now we have new information to trade and understand more of what’s going on, I hope we can convince Zhou to tell us the real reason he’s been sent to prison.”