The Shanghai Factor (24 page)

I interrupted. “It’s a simple question,” I said. “What’s the answer?”

“I was about to tell you,” Lin Ming said. “The package came from me. The guy on the bicycle is a man I sometimes use for errands. He’s a recovering addict, he’s not Chinese, he’s unwitting, he has no curiosity, he rides fast. He charges twenty dollars a delivery, anywhere in Manhattan.”

Just like the psycho who, a while ago, was handing out flyers at the right time and place in Greenwich Village.

I said, “Name?”

“The guy on the bicycle. Have you read the material?”

“Yes.”

“The whole thing?”

“Yes.”

“You know that many ideograms?”

“I have a dictionary,” I said. “I also have a question.”

“Ask it.”

“I only asked for the information day before yesterday. It arrived yesterday.”

“True. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“A lot,” I said. “How did you produce it so fast?”

“It already existed.”

“So all you had to do was copy it?”

Lin Ming shrugged. What business of mine were these trivial details?

I said, “I’ve been told that in your service no one is allowed to be alone with a classified document, that only one copy of any document exists in any one place, that they are never taken outside of the safe room where they are stored, and that making photocopies is regarded as prima facie evidence of treason. So how did you happen to have an extra copy on hand?”

“My, my,” said Lin Ming. “If those really are the rules, you’re a lucky man to have that thumb drive in your watch pocket.”

He was smiling—smirking. The subdued Lin Ming I had bullied in Riverside Park had turned himself into a different Lin Ming. Now he was turning into a third version, this one a comedian.

I said, “You expect us to believe that this file was created in a matter of hours?”

“No,” Lin Ming said. “As I’ve already said, the file already existed.”

“Why?”

“Because it was obvious that you would ask for it sooner or later. You Americans are a very strange people. You’re always in a hurry and then when something happens fast you get suspicious. Do you imagine you’re the only quick people in the world?”

“So how many more of these files already exist?”

“To find that out, you must give me something,” Lin Ming said. “Like you, I must give my superiors reasons to trust me.”

“I’ll be in touch,” I said.

“Make it soon.”

“I’ll call when the time comes.”

“No more Planetarium, if you don’t mind,” Lin Ming said.

He strode away to the east. I went in the opposite direction, seething. Around Seventy-fifth Street my everyday cell phone rang. It was Alice Song. Apologies welled up in me. I spoke her name. Before I could say more she cut me off and said, “How much ransom are they demanding this time?” Her voice was cheery but extra loud, as if she were waking up a dozing juror. I could have heard her perfectly well in the Planetarium. She said, “Listen. There’s a nice snooty little California cuisine restaurant.” She named it. “Look it up on your iPhone,” she said. “If you’re not seated at the table by seven o’clock, it’s all over between us.”

I said, “Will I need a jacket?”

“They probably wouldn’t let you in if you showed up in one,” Alice said.

33

Dinner at the snooty restaurant consisted of microportions of organic stuff arranged on oversize square plates by some Zen abstractionist in the kitchen and haughty service by a meager young man who clearly thought I didn’t deserve and couldn’t possibly appreciate the extraordinary creations he placed before me. The courses, four of them, were mere specks of color on the bone-white crockery. The food had no odor, little taste. Decidedly, The Quail, as the restaurant was called after its specialty (two tiny birds, disjointed and garnished with what looked and tasted like steamed leaves of the gingko tree), was in the front line in the battle against morbid obesity.

However, the company was good. Alice, watching me as I ate the two forkfuls that comprised tonight’s special, grinned and said, “Do you eat like this every night?”

“Usually it takes a little longer to finish.”

“What’s your favorite food, just so I’ll know next time?”

“There’s going to be a next time?”

“Why wouldn’t there be?” Alice asked.

“Well, I stood you up twice. Usually that’s grounds for an unhappy ending.”

“Being kidnapped is always a defense,” she said. “So what’s your favorite food?”

I told her. She looked amused. She looked as if she had been prepared to be amused.

Because the wait between courses was long in order to provide time for meditation, the meal lasted a couple of hours. Afterward we sipped herbal tea, of which The Quail offered a great variety. The check came. Alice grabbed it. I was not surprised, because I had been given the menu that did not show the prices. She paid it in cash—three hundred dollars and change.

“Next time, me,” I said.

“Great!” Alice said. “I love Subway.”

It was raining again. Just as we walked out the door a taxi pulled up. “Our lucky night,” Alice said. A couple got out of the cab and dashed toward The Quail. Alice got in. I leaned over and gave her a little wave good-bye through the cab’s open door. She said, “What’s that for?”

“Thanks for dinner. I enjoyed the company a lot.”

“So you’ve had enough enjoyment for one night?”

She was not smiling. A car splashed by in the other direction, its headlights lighting up her face. Her almost-black eyes were filling up with scorn, as in an animated film. What was the matter with this guy? It was nine o’clock. I had planned to take the next train to Washington so as to brief Burbank bright and early the next morning. Instead, I got into the backseat with Alice.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I thought I was still on probation.”

“You are,” Alice said. “But there’s such a thing as time off for good behavior.”

She gave the driver an address on Park Avenue. I didn’t get a look at her apartment, which felt large and smelled of books, because she did not turn on the lights, but holding my hand, led me to the bedroom. In the next few hours I learned a lot about being in bed with a six-foot woman. Like Mei, though less acrobatic, Alice was an originator. She didn’t talk or make any sounds at all while things were happening, but in between she liked to chat. She did not murmur and cuddle as did nearly every other female I had ever slept with, but propped herself up on one elbow and conversed in her customary half shout. For the first hour or so this was disconcerting, but as the night wore on I grew used to it. It was a treat, in its way, to hear every word she spoke instead of the usual muffled commentary into the pillow. Although Alice had had no small talk when fully clothed, she now expressed her opinion about just about everything except Kierkegaard. Things like, “In college I had a professor—Wendell Pitt, do you remember him?”

“No. I was warned.”

“You were lucky to have such thoughtful friends,” Alice said. “Wendell Pitt said that
Finnegan’s Wake
had to be read as if it were music. What do you suppose he meant by that?”

“He didn’t tell the class?”

“No, he just read aloud from the thing. Every day. It was torture. The music sounded like a truckload of pots and pans falling off a truck. Listen.” She quoted Joyce from memory, her gem-cut diction almost proving Professor Pitt right by turning Joyce’s Dadaesque gibberish into a vaudeville routine. “I hope I haven’t bored you,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Have you read the book since you took the course?”

“Are you kidding?”

“I’ve never heard of anyone memorizing that stuff. How did you do it?”

“I have positive reinforcement to thank. Regurgitate and you get an A. Come here.”

There was a fast train to Washington at 6:00
A.M.
At four-thirty I slipped out of bed. Alice lay on her side in a wash of feeble streetlight, a living Velázquez—curved hip and spine, glorious legs, luminous skin, fan of silken hair on the pillow, as if it had been combed instead of just falling naturally into place. I wanted a shower but did not want to wake her up. Then I realized it would be a bad idea to leave without saying good-bye, so I took the shower. When I returned, Alice was wide-awake. She had turned over. Naked and supine, one knee raised, she had become a different woman. Her face was softer, her eyes, filled with sleep, had changed from umber to chocolate, her movements were languid. She had made love with languor, the opposite of Mei’s ride-’im-cowboy style. This was the first thought I’d had of Mei since Alice took off her clothes.

Once again Alice said, “Come here.”

I thought I was going to miss my train, but all she wanted to do was to sniff me. She said, “You smelled better before you took the shower.”

“Sorry about that,” I said.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry about.” She turned on the bedside lamp. “I didn’t realize you were so furry,” she said, stroking my chest hair.

I started to tell her she had been a surprise to me, too, but thought better of it. I told her I was going to take the train to Washington. Early appointments.

Her demeanor changed. Suddenly she was all-business. She said, “You’ll never get a cab at this hour. Get dressed and I’ll be right with you.”

Still naked, she walked out into the apartment. Seconds later she called to me. I found her in the hall. She was wearing a trench coat and Keds. In the elevator she gathered her hair into a ponytail and bound it with an elastic ring she pulled out of the pocket of the raincoat. In the basement garage we got into an Audi convertible—spoils of the divorce, she said. She drove fast to Penn Station, and as if under an enchantment found a parking space a block away from the entrance. She went inside with me. We had half an hour to spare. At the gate Alice said, “Wait here.” She vanished and in minutes came back with a fast-food bag. I could smell the meatball sandwich inside.

“Breakfast,” she said. “You must be famished.”

We were standing quite close together. I could smell the bed on her skin. It was ten till six. The announcer called my train.

Alice said, “I don’t think we know each other well enough yet to kiss good-bye.”

This made me smile. She smiled back, as if we had a secret. I felt the greatest goodwill for this woman. Words, I thought again, would spoil the mood. Alice had no such inhibitions.

She said, “Let me ask you this. If I invite you to a dinner party next Saturday, the twenty-third day of the month, will you show up?”

“That would certainly be my intention.”

“Not good enough. You have to say ‘no’ now or show up then. Eight o’clock. My place. I’m not going to remind you.”

“What’s the address?”

She handed me her business card, street address and apartment number already written on the back in a dashing hand. Then she walked away, wiggling her fingers over her shoulder. As she went I glimpsed her legs winking through the vent in her Burberry, bare under the raincoat like the rest of her body.

34

The train was only twenty minutes late,
so it was not yet eleven o’clock when I got to Headquarters. Burbank buzzed before I could sit down. Later I stood in front of him. He didn’t tell me to sit down but, without looking up, continued to work on a paper he was annotating in red ink. No wonder he ignored me. I was unshaved and, thanks to Lin Ming and Alice Song, bleary-eyed after two more or less sleepless nights. The jeans I had worn in New York were wrinkled and stained, my shirt was smelly. Everybody in CI was supposed to dress like a banker. I had missed the Gang of Thirteen meeting. I had not called in to say I was running late. However, when at last Burbank dropped his document into his out basket and looked up at me, his expression was neutral.

He said, “Speak.”

I described my meeting with Lin Ming. Burbank listened with his eyes closed. When I got to the thumb drive and its contents, the deep-set pale blue eyes snapped open.

“This is Chen Qi’s son you’re talking about?”

“Supposedly.”

“You know him.” No question mark.

“We met several times in Shanghai,” I said. “He was, I suppose he still is, a friend of Mei’s.”

“How close a friend?”

It cost me something to answer this question. “Quite close,” I said, “if you believe the pictures in the file.”

“Do you believe them?

“They tend to confirm old suppositions.”

A look, half amused, half contemptuous, crossed Burbank’s face. If I was a cuckold, that fit right in with my being late and unshaven. He held out his hand. I dug the thumb drive out of my watch pocket and handed it over. Burbank rolled back his chair and fiddled with something on the back of his desk. I was still standing up, so I could see him punching an access code into a keypad on a bottom drawer—evidently even his desk was a safe. He took a laptop out of the drawer, switched it on to battery power—no wires for Burbank—inserted the thumb drive, and scrolled through the file until he got to the photographs of Chen Jianyu. He looked at the rest of the pictures, lingering over some, then switched off. He made no attempt to read the text.

“Have you read this?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“All of it?”

I nodded.

“Did you understand all of it?”

“The surface, yes.”

“Have you analyzed it?”

“If you mean have I gone through it with a fine-tooth comb and an all-seeing eye and cross-checked it with other sources, the answer is no,” I said. “It took me all night just to read through the thing.”

“Who originated the file?”

“No identifying marks. It’s sterile.”

“So what does it say about this young man?” Burbank asked.

“He was rebellious, defied his father. As a child he wet the bed. He started fires. He killed a cat….”

“How?”

“Beheaded it with a cleaver.”

“At what age?”

“Seven. He was rebellious, disrespectful to his father—who is never named in the file even by a pseudonym, by the way. He had a quick mind—did well in school, transcripts of marks and teachers’ reports appended. As a teenager, lots of drugs and girls and rock music. He was arrested at seventeen for possession of LSD but the cops let him go after a scare and a lecture. He was a good boy for a while after that, or at least didn’t get caught. Kept up his marks, kept his nose clean. After graduating from Shanghai University with an engineering degree, he went to Purdue for an MBA.”