Rock Paper Tiger

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THEY’RE FROM THE PSB. They say they are, anyway, and one of them shows me a badge in a leather case. I go with them. What else can I do? I cringe as we pass the desk clerk, because even though I’m in all kinds of shit, I keep thinking how embarrassing this is, how Auntie is going to lose face for bringing a troublemaking foreigner to her favored hotel.

The three of us get into the car parked in front of the hotel. I can see it, now that I’m not looking into the headlights: some plain-wrap black car that smells like stale cigarettes. A driver waits.

One of the Chinese Suits sits in the back with me. He’s slight and moon-faced and wears a perpetual smile.

“How do you like Taiyuan?” he asks me as the car pulls away from the curb.

“I, uh… it’s… interesting,” I manage.

He nods. “We have some very interesting scenic places. The Jinci Temple. It is special architecture, unique to Taiyuan. Have you visited?”

“Not yet.”

“In general, foreign visitors don’t spend much time here. With emphasis on heavy industry, perhaps cultural development has suffered neglect,” he admits. “But our vinegar and noodles are the best in China.”

That’s when I remember: Chuckie’s device.

My heart beats like I’m running a race now; I can see the pulse in my chest, and I think: this guy can probably see it too.

Where did I put the jump drive? In my backpack?

No. In my jeans pocket. I can feel it there, against my thigh.

“Are you nervous?”

“Shouldn’t I be?”

His smile broadens. “If you haven’t done anything wrong, then there is nothing to worry about.”

We drive a while, maybe a half hour, finally pulling up to a metal gate flanked by cement walls, stained by rust where the bars pierce the concrete. There are no government seals on the pillars here, no guards in uniform, just some guys wearing white polo shirts and black jackets.

We pull into the courtyard and get out of the car. A few bare floodlights throw crazy shadows on the stained concrete. It’s a U-shaped complex, maybe three stories high. The white tile walls are streaked with black grime.

There are other people here too, a couple dozen of them huddled by one of the L-shaped wings of the complex. Old people. Middle-aged. Women, one with a kid hugging her thigh. A young guy missing a leg, leaning on a crutch.

They see me and start calling out, and I don’t understand what they’re saying, except, “Miss! Miss! Please, can you help?” Some of them clutch papers that they thrust in my direction.

“They think you are reporter,” Smiley says.

One of the guys in black jackets goes over, shouts something; a middle-aged man goes toe to toe with him and shouts back, something about his daughter and justice. Black Jacket slaps his face, shoves him, once, twice, till he stumbles and falls.

They take me to a little beige room with a couple of chairs and a small table.

We sit.

“Do you know why you are here?” Smiley asks me.

His companion doesn’t smile. He sits, slightly behind Smiley, arms folded across his chest, eyes dull, face lifeless.

“No,” I say.

“You don’t have an idea?”

Tell them, a voice in my head says. Go ahead. Just say something. About Lao Zhang. About the Uighur. The Game.

“I really don’t,” I say.

Smiley leans back in his chair. Exhales heavily.

“Why do you come to Taiyuan?” the other guy asks abruptly.

Like Smiley said, foreigners don’t generally spend a lot of time in Taiyuan. They mostly come here because it’s a major rail hub, the best place to make connections to a number of more scenic locales.

“I’m going to Pingyao,” I blurt. “I’ve-I’ve never been there before. I’ve heard it’s really interesting.”

“Pingyao is very interesting,” Smiley agrees. “The entire city is a World Cultural Heritage site.”

“Why did you come to China?” Scary asks.

“Because my husband did.”

“You’re traveling without him,” Smiley points out.

“He left me. For a Chinese woman.”

The two exchange a look.

You see a lot of Western men with Chinese women. Sometimes Chinese men get pretty pissed off about that.

“So you are only taking a vacation?” Smiley asks.

“Yes. I was upset. About my husband. I just wanted to get away for a while.”

“So you visit to Pingyao.”

I nod.

Scary, meanwhile, puts on a pair of latex gloves and starts going through my backpack.

“And will you see anyone there?” Smiley continues.

“No. I don’t know anyone in Pingyao.”

“And here. Do you know anyone here?”

A wave of nausea hits me so hard I think I’m going to puke right in front of them. I don’t. I swallow.

“No… not really-I partied with some guys I met last night. But it’s not like I know them.”

“How did you meet them?”

“I was at a karaoke bar. I met one of them there.”

“What was his name?”

“Chao… something.”

“And the others? Where did you meet?”

“We went someplace. Some office. I don’t know where it was.”

“What were their names?”

“I don’t know. This guy Chao. Leopard somebody. A guy named Li.”

Smiley shakes his head. “You spend the evening with these men, but you don’t know very much about them.”

“It wasn’t anything. We just hung out. Talked. Had a few drinks.”

Scary pulls my Beanie squid out of the backpack. Looks at it. Looks at me.

“It’s my good-luck squid,” I explain.

“Ah.”

Scary puts the squid back in my bag. He turns to me. “In China, leniency for those who confess. Severity for those who refuse.”

He says this like he’s talking about, I don’t know, vinegar and noodles. Best in China.

“You know, it is good to confess,” Smiley says in soothing tones. “Bad things can disturb the mind. Don’t you think so?”

I can feel the tears gathering behind my eyes. Don’t, I tell myself.

“When you tell the truth, you take the power away from the bad things,” he continues. “So really, if there is something you should confess, it will be better for you.”

All of it, all of it rushes up, and I can’t hold it in any more. I sob, once, twice, and the tears pour out like water.

“It’s just… It’s just… “

“What? What, Mrs. Cooper?”

“Trey,” I sob. “And that… that Lily!”

I don’t know how I latched onto it. Like I’m King Kong, with all those airplanes buzzing me, and this is the one I pulled out of the sky.

Use it, I tell myself.

Smiley looks confused. “Tray?”

“My husband. Trey. And the Chinese girl he’s gone off with.” I wipe the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand. “How come so many American guys want Chinese women? And the Chinese women, they just go for it, you know? I mean, why? They’ve got their own men. Why’d she have to take mine?”

I snuffle loudly. “It’s just not right.”

I steal a glance at Scary. He’s looking down at my backpack, his jaw tight. Smiley’s smile looks a little frozen.

For a long moment, no one says anything. I sit there with my head bowed, looking, I hope, suitably anguished.

Finally, Smiley heaves a great sigh. “Is there something else you wish to tell us?”

I half-shrug and shake my head.

“Are you certain?”

“Be careful how you answer,” Scary says. “If you lie, we will know it.”

“No,” I say, and my voice cracks a little. “There’s nothing.”

Scary zips up my backpack. Smiley rises, walks to the door, then pauses, hand hovering over the doorknob.

He suddenly turns and approaches my chair. Stands in front of me, hands clasped behind his back.

“So, how will you go to Pingyao? By train or bus?”

“Uh… train?”

He checks his watch. “The bus is more convenient this time of day.”

“Oh.”

Scary tosses me my backpack.

Back in the courtyard, the petitioners surround me again, waving their letters, their evidence, shouting their recitations of wrongs. My house. My husband. My son. The guys in black jackets herd them back. We get into the black car.

The sun struggles to rise, melting the chemical soup in the air to a dull orange.

On the way to the bus station, Smiley details Taiyuan’s local delicacies, which include “the steamed dumpling and the Sausages and Mutton Soup.”

As they let me off in front of the station, Smiley has one more thing to recommend.

“I hope you will remember to always cooperate with the authorities, Ms. Cooper, and avoid unpleasant characters and rascals. You will have a much better stay in China if you do.”

Even on the local bus, it takes less than two hours to get to Pingyao from Taiyuan, which is still way too much time for me. It’s already dawn, but sleep feels like something I’ve forgotten how to do. My mouth’s dry, and a headache pounds behind my eyes; I taste bile in my throat, and there’s not enough water in the bottle I bought at the station to wash it down.

So they let me go. For now. I’m not kidding myself that I’ve gotten away. They were playing with me, playing their own Game, and I’m a newbie. I don’t have a clue how to get to the next level.

That place they took me to-it didn’t look exactly official. I’ve read about places like that before, “black jails.” That’s where they take you when somebody in power wants to do something that isn’t legal by China’s own laws.

Off the books.

Like with the OGAs, now that I think about it.

WHEN I GET to the Pingyao bus station-which is basically the parking lot of the Pingyao train station-the place looks like any other Chinese town to me. White-tile disease, taxis, construction cranes, noise, and dust.

I don’t have to go far before I see the difference: a looming wall, complete with towers and battlements, that surrounds an antique city.

I think about getting a room in the new part of town because it would be cheaper, in the Oil & Gas Industry Guest House maybe, but I’m supposed to be a heartbroken tourist, so I figure I’d better play the part and go for quaint and scenic.

I find a room in a traditional hotel in the old city. The Yi De Inn is a remodeled Qing Dynasty courtyard house; the rooms have round, Shanxi-style doors, and the bed in my room is on top of a kang.

The only clothing I’ve got with me aside from what I’m wearing is a change of underwear, and my T-shirt’s greasy with sweat, soaked through in places, from an excess of whiskey and fear.

Now that the adrenaline’s gone, everything aches. I feel like I’m a hundred years old. Like someone’s been twisting my muscles like they were wringing out a wet rag.

I’ve got three Percocets left. I take one, stretch out on the hard mattress, and sleep for a while.

By the time I wake up, it’s around noon. I have a pot of tea in the Qing Dynasty dining room and score a few snacks for the road at the sundries counter.

Armed with a foil pouch of Pingyao’s special “Five Aroma Beef,” I set off.

I wander around Pingyao’s narrow streets and alleys, past temples and courtyard mansions and crenellated towers, all hung with red lanterns. Bicycles pull carts laden with water bottles and scrap and the last honeycombs of coal needed before the summer heat. It looks like the China I pictured in my head before I came here but which hardly exists in real China. Like a giant outdoor movie set, or a theme park.

I buy a couple of souvenir T-shirts and a pair of fake Nike sweat pants. Visit a temple and the Risheng Exchange House. Play tourist for Smiley and Scary’s benefit, in case they’re watching. I assume they are.

I’m as ready as I’m ever going to be to call the Suits.

I know I need to call them. There’s no way I’ll know anything by the old deadline, which is less than three days from now. I’ll barely have Little Mountain Tiger resurrected by then, and I don’t know what I’ll be able to find out when I do.

I find a phone booth on a corner across from the north gate of the city wall. I try Macias first-I think he’s the younger, thinner one-and get his voicemail. I’m about to leave a message, but then I change my mind and hang up. What am I going to say?

So I try Carter. On about the fifth ring, someone picks up.

“Hello?”

Definitely the older, meaner one.

“This is Ellie Cooper.”

“Yes?”

“I, uh… I’m working on that thing you asked me to. But it’s going to take a little longer than I thought.”

There’s a brief pause. “Look,” he says. “Don’t think you can stall us. Because that’s not going to work.”

“I’m not,” I say, and I know I sound desperate. “I’m really not. It’s just-it’s just a little complicated.”

“Complicated is one thing. But if you’re trying to bullshit me, you’re not going to like the way it plays out.”

In spite of how scared I am, this really pisses me off.

“I’m not bullshitting you. PSB picked me up. They said they were PSB, anyway.”

“Oh, yeah?” Now he sounds interested. “So? What did they want?”

“I don’t know. They asked me a bunch of questions, and then they let me go.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Nothing. I mean, they didn’t ask me anything about…” I trail off. “You know. My friend.”

“I get it,” he says.

“I don’t.” And I really don’t. Why did they pick me up? Why did they let me go?

“Could be they just wanna rattle your cage. See what you’ll admit to right off the bat. Maybe they don’t know anything and they’re working for someone who does. Could be State Security.” I hear a long, slightly phlegmy exhalation on the other end of the line. “Where are you?”

I can’t help it. “You don’t know?”

He chuckles. “Look, whoever’s on your ass, you better decide what you wanna do. They want something bad enough, they don’t care if you’re a foreigner. The gloves come off.”

The gloves come off. Step it up. Get more intel.

“I told you, I’m trying. It’s complicated. I need more time.”

“How much longer?”

“I, uh…” I squeeze my eyes shut. You can’t fucking panic, I tell myself. Figure it out. “A week,” I say. “If things go well. It might take a little longer, if things don’t.”

“You’re stalling.”

“I swear. If I can’t do it by then, then I’m not going to be able to do it at all.”

“You’d better hope that’s not how it goes,” he says flatly.

“What the fuck do you think?” I snap, before I can stop myself. “I just want this done. I just want you out of my life.”

He chuckles again. “Call me on Friday. Give me your report, and we’ll take it from there.”

I start to object, but he cuts me off.

“That’s three more days than you asked for originally. We’ll look at extending the deadline after that. But if I think you’re shitting me? We’re pulling the plug.”

After that, I decide to take a walk around the city wall. I turn down the pedicab driver, which I might regret, because it apparently takes at least an hour and a half to make it all the way around. But I need some time. Time to calm myself down. Time to think.

So I take my time. Stop and stare out over the medieval roofs, into crumbling courtyards. Here are workers, repairing the intricate tilework atop the wall of what was a Qing Dynasty banker’s home. Here are wooden and wire cages, filled with minks. There’s an old woman, practicing tai chi.

Those PSB guys, or whoever they are, they could be working for anybody. The central government, some local authorities, a PLA general, a random billionaire. You don’t know in China. The central government isn’t a monolith; what goes on in the provinces isn’t necessarily under Beijing’s control, and the different factions in Beijing have their own agendas as well.

Okay, I think. I don’t know how they found me in Taiyuan-maybe through my passport when I checked in at the Good Fortune Guesthouse. Well, there’s nothing I can do about that. I have to show my passport when I check into a hotel.

No matter how they found me in Taiyuan, they know I’m in Pingyao now. Smiley practically carried me onto the Pingyao bus.

As for the Suits, who knows how they keep finding me? I called Carter on a public phone, but I’m wondering: do they have some way to track that? Something as simple as caller ID, maybe?

If it’s electronic, like if I use a credit card or an ATM, I can avoid all that stuff the next place I go.

Except for e-mail. But I have Chuckie’s device for that.

I get more cash out of my disability account from an ATM next to the Oil and Gas Industry Guesthouse, as much as the machine will let me withdraw. Then I buy an overnight ticket to Xi’an for tomorrow.

I’m supposed to be a tourist, and Xi’an is a big tourist destination. Everybody goes there to see the Bingmayuan, the tomb of the First Emperor Qin with his terra-cotta army. I’ve seen it-ranks of soldiers, thousands of them, each one unique, some with chariots and horses. It made me think of that poem we had to learn in high school, the one about a toppled statue in the desert, covered by drifting sand, of some king named Ozymandias, and on the statue it says “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

The point being, I guess, some kind of cheap irony about how you’re still going to die and all your works crumble to dust, no matter how big your clay army is.