A Map of Betrayal (32 page)

We were seated in my study, just the two of us. Ben, his eyelids a little tremulous, asked about my father, “Do you think he missed his family back home?”

“He did,” I said.

“Did he love my grandmother?”

“Of course. He missed her a lot, especially during the first years of their separation. He was always remote from things around him, and his heart was elsewhere. In his diary he mentioned that he dreamed of your grandmother every once in a while.”

“But he married your mother and kept a mistress on the side,” Ben said, an edge to his voice.

“He was a complicated man. He might have been traumatized.”

“By what?”

“By the separation from his original family. Imagine how much he carried within him. In the beginning it must have been so hard
for him. Then gradually he grew jaded and numbed. Still, he was human and couldn’t possibly have suppressed his longings and pain all the time. The more I work on his story, the more terrible his life appears to me.”

Ben lifted his cup of coffee and took a large sip. He went on, “Was he a good father to you?”

“Absolutely. He was gentle and loving and patient. I must have been the only person on earth he could hold close to his heart, but I went to a prep school when I was thirteen and then to college. I didn’t spend enough time with him. He once told me that someday he and I would go visit his home village together. If only we could have done that.”

“He never saw his son, my uncle, who died at the age of twelve. A couple of articles say Gary was a bigwig in China’s intelligence service. Was he that big?”

“According to his diary, he was a vice minister of national security, holding the rank of major general.”

“I can’t believe this! My uncle starved to death while his father was a high official.”

“I was told he had died of encephalitis.”

“That was what the local clinic said. Some people also said he’d died of a twisted gut. But my grandmother told me he had actually starved to death, his belly sticking out like a balloon. During the famine the family had to eat wild herbs, elm bark, willow leaves, corncob flour, and whatnot. My uncle wasn’t strong physically, but he was hungry all the time, shrunken to the bone. Once he was ill, there was no way his body could fight the illness.”

“Your grandfather didn’t get the big promotion until 1972, long after the famine.”

“Still, we didn’t benefit one bit from his high rank. My grandmother was terrified by the rumor flying around their hometown. It said that her husband had fled to Taiwan and then to the U.S. Some people even threatened to denounce her publicly and drag her through the streets. The true reason was, they were jealous of
the money she received from the government every month. In the 1950s, a hundred yuan was a tidy sum. Grandma had no choice but to cut all the ties to her husband to protect the family. After she left Shandong, she didn’t report her whereabouts to the government and stopped receiving his salary on purpose. She was too scared to be connected with him publicly. So the family had to start from scratch in a mud hole of a village and constantly struggled to make ends meet. My mom did all sorts of work in her teens, even collected manure and dug up sand to sell to a construction company. She also cut grass for a pig farm, and during the winter she sold frozen tofu in the county town, having to set off before daylight. After she and Dad got married, they both toiled in the fields like beasts of burden for many years. My dad almost got killed in a granite quarry, unable to work for months after an injury to his leg. Our family always lived hand to mouth until he became a clerk in the county administration.”

“Would it be possible he got that job because of some official help?” I doubted that the government was really ignorant of where Yufeng was. It seemed to me that very few people could escape its surveillance.

“I doubt it,” Ben said. “Before working in that office, Dad had taught elementary school briefly. He could write well, and the county administration needed someone like him for propaganda work. For many years nobody in our family would mention my grandfather, not until the mid-nineties, when we were informed that he had died in the line of duty overseas. In other words, officially our family had a clean history. When Grandma heard about that, she wept for a whole night.”

I burst out, “The government ought to have paid her all the arrears—I mean Gary’s salary had been accumulating since 1961.”

“They did when she filed a petition. That’s how our family got the funds for starting the seamstress shop.”

I didn’t know what to say and lowered my eyes, which were getting hot and watery. Unlike them, I was the main beneficiary of my
father’s small amount of wealth, which Nellie inherited and later bequeathed to me. (They’d been co-owners of the house.) Reluctant to let on to Ben that my mother had given me the down payment for our apartment building, I remained silent.

Ben continued, “Aunt Lilian, do you think my grandfather loved China to the end of his life?”

“I believe so. Otherwise it would have been unimaginable for him to live that kind of isolated existence for so many years while he was always determined to return to his homeland.”

“He sacrificed a great deal for China, in other words. I respect that, but in his trial he claimed he loved America as well.”

“That must have been also true. He had lived here for so many years that he couldn’t help but develop some good feelings for this place. Besides, my mother and I were Americans.”

“Truth be told, that’s what I fear most.”

“Fear what?”

“To love both places and be torn between them.”

“Is that why you can’t make up your mind about marrying Sonya and settling down here?”

“In some ways. Yes.”

He didn’t say more about his plight. I knew he was to some extent controlled by his company in China. In the back of my mind remained the suspicion that Ben might have been collecting intelligence for the Chinese military, though I wasn’t sure how professional he was. I guessed he might be a petty spy specializing in industrial and technological information. Regardless, it was a dangerous business and he might get caught sooner or later.

He stayed with us for only one day and took the Acela Express back to Boston the next morning. I had let him take all six volumes of Gary’s diary with him in the hope that they might shed some light on his investigation.

I urged my husband not to purchase microchips for Ben again. “What’s the big deal?” Henry asked blithely.

“The chips are banned from export to China,” I said. “And some Chinese companies might be their destinations.”

“That’s Ben’s business. Mine is just to buy them.”

“But that might make you an accomplice.”

“Don’t be such a worrywart, Lilian. I do everything legally, and I have no further connection with the chips once Ben has them. How the hell can I be charged for buying something entirely legal on the market? The truth is anybody can get them—if not from the U.S., you can buy them from places like Taiwan and Singapore.”

“This gives me the willies.”

“Sweetie, just take it easy. At this rate I’ll pay off my debt and get rich pretty soon.”

So I left it at that, but still I was agitated.

1978–1979

Twice a year Gary would pass a batch of films to Father Murray, and for every delivery a thousand dollars would be deposited into his bank account in Hong Kong. But he wouldn’t withdraw cash directly from it, afraid of being noticed by the FBI. Since 1976, when the Cultural Revolution officially ended, he’d written to Bingwen regularly, addressing him as his cousin, as before. He asked him about Yufeng and their children, and the man would assure him that everything was fine back home. Bingwen also repeated the instruction that Gary must not attempt to contact his family in China again. That was unnecessary—he’d finally been informed that Yufeng had left their home village to join her brother’s village in the northeast, and Gary couldn’t possibly find out her current address.

He was heartened by the Chinese leadership after Mao. In his diary he wrote about Deng Xiaoping, the new chairman: “That short man can become a Napoleonic figure and should be able to keep China on the right track. He may even outshine Mao eventually. At least he is more prudent and more practical and understands economics.”

For Lilian’s education at Bryn Mawr, Gary had spent most of his savings. Now he was in his mid-fifties and in poor health, suffering from bursitis in one shoulder. Recently he’d been diagnosed with early-stage diabetes, and his doctor had urged him to watch out for starch and sugar in his diet—he had to avoid eating white bread and rice. At most he could have a slice of pumpernickel at a meal, or a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast; he ought to eat more vegetables and protein instead. So Gary had to quit munching all the fine pastries Nellie brought home. In fact, he suspected it was the sweet food that had made him ill. When shopping, at the sight
of fresh coffee cakes, for only ninety-nine cents apiece, he’d be overtaken by such a rush of craving that both his mouth and eyes would water, and he’d have to drag himself away. Never had he been so full of self-pity, which he knew was ridiculous and might be a sign of feeblemindedness. During the daytime he often felt dizzy and thirsty, his limbs heavy. No matter what he ate or drank, there was always a bitter taste in his mouth. He noticed the change in his fingernails, flat and wider now, each a miniature spade. Even his eyesight was deteriorating—he saw more tadpoles and pearl drops swimming around whenever he opened a book or magazine. He got a pair of glasses, but he didn’t like to wear them; most times he pushed them up on his forehead.

Gary’s poor health made him ruminate about the possibility of an early retirement. He had read some books on spies and knew that most of them had come to grief, unable to evacuate before getting caught. Perhaps his failing health was a signal for the necessity of a clean withdrawal. Yet he also believed that once he retired from the CIA, he might become worthless to China, so he had to take care not to jeopardize his standing in his superiors’ eyes. A useless man is less valuable than a pet, he would remind himself. Indeed, how frightening it would be to become a person no one wanted.

Over the years he had gathered information on the privileges that high-ranking officials in China enjoyed, and he knew that if he lived there, as a vice minister he could have a chauffeur, a secretary, an orderly, a chef, a nurse, special medical care. True, a senior official in China didn’t pull in a handsome salary, only two or three hundred dollars a month, but his life was free from material worries—everything was provided by the state. In contrast, here he’d have to live an uncertain life, the prospect of which unnerved him. On his way to work he would pass a small nursing home, in front of which stood a tall pole flying a U.S. flag; just the sight of the place would remind him of the wretched final years of life that many Americans could not escape. Nellie’s mother had died in 1974, and soon afterward her father went to a local nursing
home. Luckily for the old man, he had only his debt-ridden vegetable farm to lose to the state of Florida. Gary and Nellie once drove down to visit Matt at that place, and the old man wouldn’t stop blaming them for not bringing him a bottle of Jack Daniel’s or Wild Turkey. Matt, frail and addled, claimed that his boy often came to visit him with a six-pack of beer and barbecued wings, though Jimmy, his only son, had fallen three decades ago in the Battle of Savo Island. On their drive back to DC, Gary told Nellie that he’d kill himself before he ended up in such a place. A wheelchair might be acceptable, but he would never be fed and washed by strangers. These days he couldn’t help but be preoccupied with thoughts about his old age. If China didn’t call him home, he’d be stuck in the existence of a lowly CIA translator and then in that of the senile elderly, so he’d better do something before it was too late.

THE PREVIOUS WINTER
Peggy had slipped on her way to the bakery and sprained her ankle. She’d had a slight limp ever since and slowed down considerably. She often used a cane when walking. Lately she’d been saying she wanted to sell her business so she could move to New Orleans to join her daughter. One day Nellie asked her, “How much will you sell it for?”

“One hundred and twenty grand,” Peggy said in a nasal, scratchy voice.

“That’s a humongous amount for a bakery!”

“But it’s worth it. We just updated most of the facilities last fall. We have a steady clientele and have been around for more than twenty years. This place is a small cash cow, you know.”

“If I buy, will you sell it cheaper?”

“Well, business is business, we shall see.” Peggy smiled, which seemed to imply this could be negotiable.

“Can you wait until I figure out how to get the money?”

“Okay, I can hold on to it for a while.”

Since then, the two often talked about the price. They knew
each other well enough to banter casually, so they haggled back and forth. Three weeks later Peggy agreed to sell Nellie the bakery for $105,000, her final offer.

Nellie suggested taking out a home equity loan, but Gary disagreed. He said, “If we miss a few payments, we might lose the house. No, we mustn’t run such a risk. What if I die? You might become homeless.”

“Oh, c’mon, don’t be so pessimistic. I’m more likely to croak before you.” That was what she believed, because she’d always had health problems.

“Let me figure out a way, okay? For now, tell Peggy you’re going to buy her bakery. Just make sure she won’t sell it to others.”

Gary had about forty thousand dollars in his Hong Kong bank account but would need another sixty-five grand. For days he’d been weighing his plan to get the money from China directly and thinking about the repercussions of such a demand. He calculated that such a move might tarnish his reputation in his superiors’ eyes but wouldn’t ruin him, because for better or worse he had made a considerable contribution to their motherland. There wouldn’t be enough reason for them to strip him of his rank when he returned to China. Above all, he felt entitled to make such a request. So he wrote to Bingwen and asked for seventy thousand dollars, saying he needed the cash immediately for some important work here. Within a month the amount was deposited into his account at Hang Seng Bank. Bingwen didn’t even ask how the money would be spent when he wrote back; he just informed Gary: “The goods were delivered.”