Olen Steinhauer - An American spy

Since his first wife’s death in 1989, a month before the June Fourth Incident in Tiananmen Square, Zhu had lost track of the nuances of living with a woman. With Sung Hui he found himself hesitating in a way he hadn’t done since he was a teenager, musing over his replies to her simple questions and standing for too long in shops, puzzling over which brand of wristwatch she would prefer. More than this, though, was the protectiveness he felt. Sung Hui was twenty-eight, thirty years his junior, and he inevitably viewed her as a potential victim. Partly, it was the victimization he had seen and taken part in during his fifty-eight years; partly, it was the memory of his son being hacked apart in Africa. So he kept her separated from as many aspects of his work as possible, and to protect her he even lied to Zhang Guo, his oldest friend, about Leticia Jones’s mission.

On Wednesday, two days before he met with Zhang Guo and five days after Leticia Jones, or Rosa Mumu, left China, Sung Hui’s seamstress arrived at their apartment in a state of distress. Sung Hui made her tea and sat her in the kitchen, and after a series of questions learned that the seamstress’s niece had been questioned at length by an acquaintance at the Blim-Blam, a rock-and-roll venue in the university area of Haidian, not so far from Zhu’s office. The questions concerned Sung Hui and her life with her husband, her daily rituals and regular appointments. Sung Hui called Zhu at work, and he immediately returned home, then drove with the seamstress to meet the niece, who gave a description of the young man-Dongfan Beisan, early twenties, “very sexy,” a musician. He played regularly at the Blim-Blam. His home was a mystery, as he had not registered his address with the authorities.

Instead of sharing this with the Ministry of Public Security and requesting a file on Dongfan Beisan, that night he brought Shen An-ling with him to the club, a dirty basement-level cellar on a narrow, grimy hutong choked with parked bicycles. The Blim-Blam was full of children drinking beer from plastic cups and wearing soiled T-shirts and jeans, disheveled hair, and expressions of complete boredom. The Ramones played from fuzzy speakers. The teens’ boredom flickered briefly at the sight of two men in suits entering their lair, one an enormous, balding older man doing his best to touch nothing, the other a nearsighted, soft-skinned man who squinted at everything in surprise. The rock-and-rollers had no idea what this could mean.

On a hand-drawn sign inside the door, they had learned that the two acts of the night were the Pink Undergarments and Dongfan Beisan’s band, Just Teenage Rebels, and they would be playing in memory of the Sichuan dead. Zhu and Shen An-ling approached the bar; a long zinc affair salvaged from the demolition of the Yugong Yishan Bar-another casualty of Olympic grandeur-and asked the bartender for the bands’ dressing room. That provoked a laugh. “Right over there,” he said, waving at the far side of the club, where teenagers were drifting in and out of a ragged opening in the brick wall.

Beyond was a dim corridor that stank of piss and led to a unisex bathroom with girls checking eyeliner in cracked mirrors and boys smoking and kicking each other at the urinals. Shen An-ling looked like he might be sick.

Through an open stall Zhu spotted three skinny young men with long hair, one in tight leather pants, another with drumsticks shoved into his jeans pocket, sharing a joint. By that point, however, the intruders had been spotted, and the girls were packing up their pencils and scooting past them to leave. The boys by the urinals left still zipping up. It was the drummer who first saw Zhu and Shen An-ling, and he nudged the one in leather. The third, in a T-shirt and knee-length shorts, looked over and panicked, dropping the joint into the toilet.

“Just Teenage Rebels?” Zhu asked.

The one in shorts whispered something, and all he caught was the word “producer.”

“Yeah,” said the one in leather. He, like the girls, was wearing eyeliner. “We’re Just Teenage Rebels.”

Shen An-ling clapped his hands together, clearly over his shock. “And you, I’ll bet, are the great Dongfan Beisan.”

A slow-witted, stoned smile. “That’s right, comrade.” He came out of the stall finally, shoving his fingers into his pockets, playing nonchalance. “You guys from Modern Sky?”

Modern Sky was a large, independent record label. “How did you know?” asked Shen An-ling.

“I knew it!” said the one in shorts.

Quietly, the drummer said, “No, they’re not.”

For a couple of seconds, no one filled the silence. Then Zhu said, “Dongfan Beisan, can we have a word in private?”

“Any deal we make is for all of us.”

From behind, Zhu heard a laughing girl approach, see their backs, grow quiet, then turn and leave. Shen An-ling said to Zhu, “They’re not serious enough. I told you this was a bad idea.”

“You’re right,” Zhu answered, then raised a plump finger to point at Dongfan Beisan. “You looked serious, but I’m often wrong.”

The one in shorts nudged Dongfan Beisan. “Go on, it’s cool.”

The drummer said nothing. His face was bleak.

Dongfan Beisan licked his dry lips, then glanced back at his friends. “Tonight, one for all. Trust me,” he said, then high-fived them and approached Zhu and Shen An-ling, fingers back in his pockets. “All right, then. Let’s deal.”

As they retraced their steps through the club and up to the street, watched closely by a hundred young eyes, Dongfan Beisan throwing thumbs-up at friends, the whole thing struck Zhu as too easy. A man asking invasive questions about your wife simply walks out to the street with you, as if there were nothing to fear-a sign of innocence or stupidity? He leaned toward the latter.

The street was rain-streaked, dirty, and busy, people looking in shops and visiting bars, students everywhere in cheap button-up shirts and ironed jeans. At the sight of the black four-door Audi A6 that they had squeezed into this alley, Dongfan Beisan hesitated. Zhu opened the passenger door and sat down, his feet outside the car. He’d walked too much that day.

“So what are we talking about?” asked Dongfan Beisan. “One, two records? Because I think we should discuss the lineup. I’m thinking about going solo. Mister Clean-that’s my new name.”

“Shut up,” said Shen An-ling, his voice not unthreatening.

Zhu said, “Dongfan Beisan, do you know who I am?”

The musician’s mouth worked the air; then he shook his head. “Not from Modern Sky, that’s for fucking sure.”

“I am the husband of Sung Hui.”

He watched Dongfan Beisan’s face as it shut down. The boy was removing all trace of emotion, first from the cheeks, then the eyes, and finally the twitching lips. Everything relaxed into that blank look that had been the salvation of so many Chinese. Finally, “I don’t know her.”

“Why, then, were you interrogating a girl about her?”

Zhu kept his voice light and measured, but Shen An-ling chose a different tact. From behind the boy, he whispered, “Because Dongfan Beisan wants to fuck your wife. That’s why.” He opened the rear door. “Get in.”

“No,” said the boy, still blank-faced. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Zhu exhaled and rubbed his face as a pair of men on bicycles rode by, keeping their eyes directly ahead. Zhu said, “Let’s talk in the office,” and Shen An-ling, taking it the wrong way, grabbed the back of Dongfan Beisan’s shirt collar and pushed hard, so that the boy’s forehead bounced loudly against the roof of the car. Pain ran through Dongfan Beisan’s face; then he removed all expression again and submitted as Shen An-ling stuffed him into the backseat.