I didn’t dare look at Jack or Bill, though I could hear Bill softly stifling a snort, and from the corner of my eye I saw Jack’s eyebrows shoot up. So what? The look Dr. Yang was giving me had gone from angry disdain to guarded interest. The interest was tinged with desperation, true, but then, his position was desperate. I pressed on before he had a chance to regroup. “When we came in here, we had a plan,” I said. “Now we have new information, so we need to amend it. But I think we can still make it work.”
“You
“Sir,” said Jack, cutting me and my frustration off, “Doug Haig gave you until tomorrow morning to answer him. He’s expecting you to stew, look at your options, realize you don’t have any, and agree. All we’re asking you to do is not answer him until then. For our part, once we have things worked out, we won’t make a move until we run the whole plan by you. If you’re afraid it’ll make things worse or you just plain think it won’t work, we’ll drop it and you can handle things however you want.” Jack gazed evenly at Dr. Yang across the desk. “Fair enough?”
After a very, very long silence, Dr. Yang spoke. “Will my daughter be in danger at any time?”
“Danger? You mean, physical danger?”
“There are gangsters and guns involved. From what you say.”
The “from what you say” wasn’t lost on Jack, but he didn’t rise to it. “I don’t think they have any interest in Anna. The biggest danger she’s in is to her career, and it’s from Haig.”
“And Xi Xao?”
“We understand.” Jack leaned forward again. “Please, Dr. Yang. Give us a few hours. That’s all we need.”
Another long silence. Then, almost imperceptibly, Dr. Yang nodded.
* * *
Back outside, us Three Musketeers stood near the fountain, where a trio of jugglers tossed bowling pins and baseball bats back and forth. “So, what do you think, guys?” I said. “Can we run this scam and not jeopardize Xi? I didn’t like his threats and bribes and all, but if his life’s at stake I guess I can cut him some slack.”
Jack said, “I think we can, just the way we set it up. Whatever excitement it creates about the old days, it’ll die down when we’re through and everyone will look silly. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
He and I looked at each other, and then both of us turned to Bill. “What do you think?”
“I’m with Jack. If this works no one will be looking past it.”
“If?” said Jack. “Hold it, I didn’t sign on for ‘if.’ We’re not doing ‘if.’”
“Fine.
“Much better. Because after all, isn’t this a plan of Lydia’s? So the chances of it working, aren’t they like one hundred percent?”
* * *
So we split up. Each of us had work to do. And I had to change.
“Hi, Ma,” I said, leaving my shoes by the door and entering the living room in my slippers.
“Oh, have you come home in the middle of the day? Why, are you ill?” She must not have been too terribly worried because after a glance she went back to ironing in front of the TV, watching two handsome Chinese actors in Tang Dynasty outfits having a low-voiced discussion. The camera lingered on them so portentously that it could only mean a conspiracy was in the making and an emperor was going to fall. Or else these two guys would end up with their heads chopped off.
“I’m fine, Ma. I just need some things.”
She didn’t say a word, so why did I hear disapproval?
In my room I put the phone on speaker, turned the computer on, and called Linus.
“Cuz!” he greeted me. “Just about done. You want to see it?”
“I sure do.”
“’K, here comes the link.”
I opened my e-mail, found the Web site URL he’d sent, and clicked on it. “Wow, Linus, I’m impressed. You did all this in two hours?”
“Hey, it’s what we do here. I used a template I had from some other site I made for a guy. This one wasn’t a big deal, ’cause it doesn’t really say anything.”
“I can see that.” I was scanning the Chinese text.
“You sure that’s okay? I mean, I just stole chunks from Chinese Web sites, I don’t even know about what.”
“Positive, it’s fine.”
“But in case your guys want to check a little deeper I put in a couple of links, like to the University, and to some artists. Even if they don’t read Chinese they can tell they’re links, so they can click. I also put in a bunch that don’t work, they give you an error message. So it looks like they’re supposed to be live but it’s a crappy Web site.”
“Excellent.”
“And I paid a few bucks to a couple of search engine companies, so this site’ll come up first if you Google him. The real guy, he doesn’t have a site, so you lucked out there. He does have a Wikipedia page, so I put a link on it.” Linus burst into song: “If you liked it then you shoulda put a link on it!”
“Okay, thanks, Linus.”
“Sorry. Anyway, the University, I couldn’t hack their site to put a link back to here.”
