Olen Steinhauer - An American spy

Two soldiers leaped out of the back and helped Leticia down, then assisted her to the steps. She was still in her black dress, with the addition of a soldier’s heavy green coat covering her bandaged shoulder. Once they released her, she began to take it off, but the soldier shook his head and gave her a slight bow, saying something. Leticia gave an answer, flashed one of her notorious smiles, and kissed his cheek before beginning her ascent.

“Well, look at her,” said Alexandra.

It took three hours to reach Hong Kong, where they took rooms at the Regal Airport Hotel to wait for their 8:00 A. M. flight to Tokyo. Milo fell asleep immediately and was woken by Alexandra banging on his door. She gave him fresh clothes that were a size too big, then asked if he’d seen Leticia. “I’ve been asleep,” he said.

“Well, she’s not here.”

“Maybe she’ll meet us at the gate.”

She didn’t, though, and they left without her.

In Tokyo, Alexandra waited with Milo for his connecting flight to Seattle, and then to Denver. “You should come, too,” he told her.

She shook her head. “I’d rather pull a Leticia Jones.” Then, “They’ll be waiting for you, you know.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

Alexandra smiled and took his arm in the crook of her elbow. “If there’s one thing our father taught me, it’s that we always have a choice.”

He couldn’t get Milo Weaver’s statement out of his head. As he sat in the office, trying to feel joy over his newfound security, as he drove home and took that epic elevator ride to the thirtieth floor, and even as he told Sung Hui that he was taking her out to whatever restaurant she wanted, he could not stop thinking that it was true. Alan Drummond would try to kill him and, failing that, kill Sung Hui. It was how the world was. Things change. Nothing remains. The things we do not deserve are taken from us.

Over exquisite plates of dim sum at Sampan, they discussed a friend’s impending wedding, and the groom’s desire for a nontraditional ceremony. “Her parents are about to explode!” she said, laughing, and Zhu thought that if he could laugh like that, laugh with that same unhindered pleasure, he might just make a claim to deserving her. He tried but failed.

When they got back to their building at eleven thirty, Zhu noticed an unmarked Ministry of Public Security Audi parked outside, and in the lobby found a pair of young men with ministry IDs who asked him to come with them. An angry look crossed Sung Hui’s face, the unspoken accusation that he’d known this interruption would come, but he professed his ignorance as he walked her to the elevator and kissed her again.

They were just couriers. They knew nothing of their job beyond its definition: bring a single man to the ministry headquarters on East Chang’an. Not to the front door-no. Around the rear to a quiet entrance, where only the guards would be watching. That was when the worry began to flow freely through Xin Zhu. The young men took him to a small door, knocked, and waited until it was opened from inside by two uniformed ministry soldiers. They then left Xin Zhu to his fate, not even signing a release form, which was perhaps the most terrifying detail. When a Chinese soldier ignores paperwork, you know there is going to be trouble.

After being relieved of his cell phone, he looked into the faces of the soldiers, one of whom looked very familiar. A big man with a face of clay. “Do I know you?” he asked, but the soldier said nothing, only took him down a corridor of empty offices to a stairwell that led deeper into the earth. They stopped briefly at a metal detector beside a glassed-in desk. A guard looked up from his paperwork and, after a moment’s examination, waved his hand for them to continue. They went through a steel door and down into the old stone basement of East Chang’an, where the cells lay.

Once he’d been locked inside one, he settled on the floor and, briefly, thought of 1969, when, as an eighteen-year-old mountain boy used to life in the Qinling range, he entered his first prison cell, corralled by boys and girls eager to teach him the errors of possessing a middle-school education. They’d come early, village kids he recognized, and pulled him out of bed, chanting Red Guard slogans. At first, he’d shared his cell with two others, but by the afternoon there were twenty. Tuan Gang, the asthmatic schoolteacher whose education had gotten Xin Zhu into this trouble, didn’t survive the night, which, perhaps, was a blessing for the old man, for he never would have survived the next five years of farming the hard, selfish earth of Inner Mongolia. Nor would he have been able, as Zhu had been, to learn new lessons. Such as how to speak appropriately in public while creating an elaborate internal architecture of deceit, of finding ways of holding on to your individuality while showing all the outward signs of becoming one with the group. He certainly would not have received, after five years of labor, a visit from recruiters of the Central Investigation Division with a promise of a new life. No, Tuan Gang would have fallen over in those barren fields within three months and would never have lived to see what his favorite pupil was to become.

They had let him keep his watch, and so when the door finally opened he knew that four hours had passed. It was nearly four thirty. He hadn’t panicked, for he knew what this was, and he knew that Yang Qing-Nian would stride in, barking threats. What would those threats consist of? Yang Qing-Nian was young and brash, but he was no idiot. If he was confident enough to pluck Xin Zhu from his home, he must have something powerful at hand. Zhu, however, couldn’t figure out what it could be.

So it was a surprise when Sun Bingjun opened the door and, as Zhu had done with Milo Weaver, brought a guard carrying two worn benches. Slowly, Zhu climbed to his feet. Sun Bingjun sat down, threading his fingers together in front of his stomach, and then Zhu sat. Once the guard was gone, Sun Bingjun said, “How are you feeling, Xin Zhu?”

“Not well.”

“I went to see Sung Hui, to put her mind at ease.”

Zhu looked up at him, trying to read intent in his features, but Sun Bingjun was a virtuoso of the passive expression. “How is she?”

“Worried, of course. I told her you would be home by tomorrow.” Sun Bingjun opened his hands. “I hope I wasn’t telling her a lie.”

It was an odd thing to say, and disconcerting to hear, but as Zhu stared back, wrestling with the possibility that Sun Bingjun’s promise to Sung Hui might prove true, it came to him. It was instinct more than logic; for only after the realization hit him did he work backward through the things he knew to see if it was justified. The visits from members of the Department of Tourism, the nearly unbelievable slip by Stuart Jackson to Liu Xiuxiu, the fact that Sun Bingjun was clearly not the washed-up drunk he had so long pretended to be, and the remarkably timed letter from Bo Gaoli, along with his wife’s murder.

Then he remembered the face of the soldier who had brought him to this cell-Sun Bingjun’s driver was a ministry soldier with access to East Chang’an’s cells.

He shifted, his legs aching, and moved his hands to his knees. He said, “You’re here to make an offer.”

Sun Bingjun just stared back.

Zhu said, “You helped me corner Wu Liang in order to divert attention from yourself.”

“I did nothing,” said Sun Bingjun. “You collected evidence. Hua Yuan called you before she was killed. I have nothing to do with any of this.”

“Was your driver sitting with her when she called me?”

Sun Bingjun held onto his lifesaving face.

“Smart,” Zhu said, for it really was. Sun Bingjun hired a ministry guard, who was able to get rid of Bo Gaoli. Bo Gaoli, who knew what Sun Bingjun was. Aloud, Zhu said, “Why didn’t Bo Gaoli tell Wu Liang about you once he was locked in here?”