Olen Steinhauer - An American spy

Outside, a bright late-afternoon sun was tempered by the Yellow Sea breeze. He set down his bag, took out a cigar tin, and lit a filtered Hamlet before joining a crowd of young people crossing Feixian Road. They passed two bright, packed restaurants-Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald’s-on their way to Bathing Beach #6. The teenagers raised their voices and hurried down to the water, while he remained on the sidewalk, smoking and watching their lean, young bodies prance across the sand and dive into the sea.

Though his own people had been from the mountains, he had always felt sympathy for coastal people. They shared the pragmatic objectivity of their mountain brothers. He watched the out-of-towners flop in the water while the stoic locals looked on and sold them fried things from steaming carts.

The #501 bus was half empty, and he took a pair of seats in the back for the hour-long journey. An entire life could be filled doing these things.

The sun was low in the west when he got out in front of a high-rise on a broad avenue in Laoshan, at the foot of Laoshan Mountain. He was one of five passengers to disembark: two old women, a nervous pregnant woman, and a teenaged boy in a camouflage T-shirt. The old women left the bus stop together, the teenager was met by his mother, and the pregnant woman was met by no one. She sat on the bench, an empty polypropylene bag clutched to her large stomach, and lowered her eyes to the ground. She was, he suspected, crying.

Behind the high-rise he found the inconspicuous dirty-white Citroen Fukang in a small lot full of a variety of makes in a variety of conditions. Behind the wheel, a fifty-six-year-old man smoked with his eyes closed.

“Wake up, Zhang Guo,” said Zhu.

Zhang Guo didn’t jump; he was too full of himself for that. It was one of his most wonderful traits. Instead, he cracked his eyes and said, “You’re late.”

“Not by much.”

“This whole thing is ridiculous, you know.”

“So you’re doing well, Zhang Guo?”

“The doctor says my prostate is preparing to explode.”

Zhu tossed his overnight bag through the open rear window, then went around to the passenger’s door. As he climbed in, the car groaning on its shocks, he said, “So things are about normal for you.”

“I should be back in Beijing now, with Chi Shanshan; might as well fill my last days with her.”

“I think she’ll manage a day without your loving ways. Your wife will be the one suffering.”

“How about Sung Hui? Is she as beautiful as last summer?”

“More so. She sleeps a lot.”

“Good for her, but not for you.”

“Perhaps it is good; my prostate is fine.”

Zhang Guo flicked his cigarette out the window, then started the car. “It’s remarkable how a man with less time than me can make jokes.”

Zhu stared through a crack in the windshield at overgrown grass and more high-rises.

Zhang Guo said, “I’m not driving up the mountain.”

“It’s a good place to be alone.”

“So is this car.”

“Then let’s drive around the mountain.”

Zhang Guo sighed, put the car in reverse, and pulled out.

They began talking while they were still in town, stopping behind trucks and cars in worse shape than their Citroen, idling at lights as clouds of black exhaust billowed around them. Zhu brought up the earthquake, and they compared bleak estimates of fatalities, wondering aloud whom they knew in Sichuan, and which ones they’d heard from. It was a dismal topic, as well as unconstructive-the dead would not be raised by their concern-so Zhu asked some personal questions, giving Zhang Guo license to complain about life in his prestigious neighborhood of Beijing’s Dongcheng District, his unbearable wife, his jealous mistress, and the atmosphere of paranoia that was enveloping the Supervision and Liaison Committee. “It’s a place full of bad news,” he said as they finally left town and started down the seaside highway that skirted the base of Laoshan Mountain and its famous spirits. To their right, the Yellow Sea opened.

“You heard about Wu Liang?” asked Zhang Guo.

“That he’s preparing to destroy me?”

“The other thing.”

“He’s taking over Olympic security.”

“And?”

“And it’s a smart decision. Jiang Luoke wasn’t organized enough.”

“Jiang Luoke made the truce with al Qaeda.”

“Which is only as good as the paper it’s written on.”

“It’s not written on any paper.”

Zhu clapped his hands twice.

Zhang Guo leaned into a turn as they entered the mountain’s shadow. “Maybe we should have pushed your name,” he said lightly, then shook his head. “Oh, that’s right. You’re the one who started a war with the CIA, then accused the esteemed Ministry of Public Security of harboring CIA vipers. I’d forgotten.”

“You’re being melodramatic.”

“Xin Zhu, you killed three dozen CIA agents.”

“Not quite. A few got away.”

Zhang Guo showed him a pair of raised brows and flat yellow teeth, then returned to the road. “Of course, your mistake wasn’t slaughtering the CIA. It was letting our masters learn of it.”

“I didn’t tell anyone.”

Again, those eyes and teeth. “I’m guessing that your assistant, the one with the girl’s name, boasted like a peacock after too many glasses of baijiu.”

“An-ling is a unisex name. It’s the kind of name you get when you’re cursed with parents from the artist class.”

“This is what happens when you hire from the artist class, Xin Zhu.”

“Shen An-ling said nothing.”

Zhang Guo took a dark, heavy hand off the wheel and patted at his shirt pockets until he’d found another cigarette. “The point,” he said after slipping it between his lips, “is that Wu Liang has you cornered. He’s got his ministry as well as the whole committee in a panic. Yang Qing-Nian is boasting that he’ll get you dismissed.”

“Yang Qing-Nian is a child, and he’s terrified of the CIA.”

“We’re all terrified of the CIA. All except you, of course. People think you’ve gone mad. You realize that, don’t you?”

Through squinted eyes, Zhu gazed at the long mountain shadow reaching across the water, smothering rocks and sailboats and white brushstrokes of wave. If he was mad, would he know? Or would it only take a coordinated effort by those he’d angered over the years to give him a proper diagnosis? Wu Liang and Yang Qing-Nian of the Ministry of Public Security, both ranking members of the Supervision and Liaison Committee, the Party organ that, among other things, oversaw discipline in their particular profession. Zhang Guo was also a member of that committee, from the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, while Xin Zhu was merely a Guoanbu foot soldier. Could men such as these properly diagnose something he would never see in himself?

He said, “The committee also thinks the future of espionage lies in hacking California tech companies. They’re afraid of their own shadows.”

“That’s possible,” Zhang Guo said, “but now you’ve dragged me out to the edge of the country because you’re afraid of them. What are we doing here?”

“The committee wants to talk to me on Monday morning.”

“Does this surprise you?” When Zhu didn’t answer, he said, “They want to know what all of us want to know, Xin Zhu. They want to know why. Why you set up a mole inside that secret Department of Tourism, and then, once the mole was uncovered, you killed thirty-three of their agents in all corners of the world. Without requesting permission. They think they know the reason-revenge. For the death of your son, Delun. But that wasn’t the CIA’s fault. It was the fault of some Sudanese farmers with machetes and sunstroke.”