she said, “I came six years ago, to study nursing at Jiao Tong, but…” She faded out. “Academics did not suit me.”
“You have residence papers?”
She nodded but did not elaborate.
“And how do you know He Qiang?”
Another smile. “His cousin was a schoolmate in Xinyang, and when I came here I got in touch. He Qiang has been very kind to me.”
Zhu wondered how kind, and how many rules He Qiang had bent for this pretty girl. He still hadn’t gotten a proper meal, though, and until then he would continue to be magnanimous. “It must be difficult.”
“It has been,” she admitted, bowing her head. “Without friends like He Qiang, it would have been much more difficult. But now, I’ve..” Again, she faded out, then raised her head. “I’ve adjusted.”
There was something piercing about that two-word sentence that, even in English, made Zhu want to weep. He understood why He Qiang had set them up together for this fictitious date. She was lovely, and she would, if asked, go to bed with him, but her true value lay in the fact that she had adjusted to the hard life of Shanghai. She could adjust to anything, even working for a man as problematic as Xin Zhu.
In addition to her fluency in English, which she had first studied and then perfected through her job, she knew a smattering of German. When he quizzed her about Shanghai, he found that she could recall the most insignificant details-the color combinations of shop signs, the names of most of Shanghai’s doormen, as well as their wives-and that nothing he said was forgotten by her. Most importantly, she had-also, no doubt, because of her job-the uncanny ability of making him feel comfortable in his own skin, which was no small feat.
The food was delicious and restorative, but she barely touched her rice, though when he ordered the fruit platter for dessert she ate ravenously. She showed no hesitation when he suggested they go up to his room, but in the elevator, she seemed unsure about what to do, so she left her hands by her sides. He unlocked the door and let her in first, and it was she who first spotted He Qiang, standing in the bathroom doorway, gesturing for her silence. That, remarkably, did not throw her off. She walked to the dressers and, hands clasped in front of her stomach, waited. He Qiang smiled at Zhu.
Taking off his jacket, Zhu said, “You are a very beautiful woman.”
Smiling now, too, Liu Xiuxiu said, “You’re too kind.” Then she said, “Let me help you with your shoes.”
“Thank you,” he said, but when she stepped forward, he waved her back and went to the bed, sat down, and took off his own shoes. “That feels nice,” he said.
Seductively, she said, “Mmm.”
“Come here,” he said, then pushed himself onto the bed so that it squeaked. “Mmm,” he groaned.
Liu Xiuxiu covered her smile with a small hand.
As if he were alone, Zhu fluffed a pillow and closed his eyes, then opened them. He gestured to Liu Xiuxiu, pointed at his watch and held up one finger, then waved her away. She nodded. To He Qiang he showed two fingers, then closed his eyes again. He Qiang led Liu Xiuxiu to the bathroom and quietly closed the door behind them.
As instructed, Liu Xiuxiu left at one in the morning, conspicuously holding her high-heeled shoes in her hand until she was outside his door, where she crouched and slipped them on. In the lobby, as she would later report, she noticed a few different men watching her but was unable to discern who among them had only professional interest.
At two, He Qiang woke Zhu and made him tea; then they sat together at the desk. Each had a sheet of paper and a pen, and they talked in the written word. Specifically, French. Zhu wrote in an elegant script, He Qiang in the block capitals of someone with far less education than he had. Zhu wrote: The things one does to be unheard. He Qiang smiled and nodded.
I like her. She’s available? ABSOLUTELY. HATES HER JOB, LOVES HER COUNTRY. Relationships? EX- HUSBAND, CRIMINAL. NO PROBLEM. Criminal class? GREEN GANG. COLLECTS PROTECTION MONEY, CUTS TENDONS. Divorce? He Qiang nodded.
I want her in Beijing tomorrow-Monday. Possible? Another nod.
She’s not coming back. UNDERSTAND. You come, too.
He Qiang had begun to smile again. Since the killing of the American agents two months ago, he had been left to wander, which was no good for him. The call to fly to Shanghai and again impersonate his boss had been a welcome respite from his aimless days. Now he was being called back to the pit. He wrote, GOOD.
Zhu considered that word, bon, then wrote, Tomorrow the committee will try to get rid of me. I will hold them off, but in the meantime, you and Liu Xiuxiu will work on another project. The Americans are preparing their retaliation.
He Qiang read carefully, then looked Zhu in the eyes before writing again. AGAINST YOU? Maybe. They’re looking at my wife.
Another stare. He Qiang had only met Sung Hui once, at an official gathering where he’d been assigned protection duty, but he’d been visibly taken by the girl. MAKES NO SENSE. It makes sense. We need to find out what kind of sense.
Sung Hui had left the television on when she opened the door for him that Sunday afternoon, and when he settled on the sofa, he was greeted by images of a collapsed middle school in Juyuan that had trapped nine hundred students. Government teams, with the occasional local, picked through the dusty crags, but a week had passed, and the energy the whole country had witnessed just after the earthquake was fading. A female commentator praised the resilience and strength of the Sichuan people.
His phone rang-it was Zhang Guo. “Xin Zhu, I hope you had a restful time in Shanghai.”
“Thank you, I did.”
“I’m afraid I’m walking into walls, though. Concerning tomorrow.”
“Well, it was worth a try,” Zhu said and realized that even this failure told him something important. If Zhang Guo couldn’t learn the details of a meeting that he, too, was scheduled to attend, it meant that Wu Liang was running it with an unusual level of secrecy.
“As for the other,” Zhang Guo said, referring to Leticia Jones, “I’ll need a few days.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then.”
Sung Hui came in with a platter of pork dumplings, apologizing as she turned off the television and the images of disaster. “I know it does no good,” she said, “but I can’t help watching. It makes my own worries insignificant.”
He didn’t like to hear that, even if it mirrored his own thoughts. “You have no worries.”
“Do you want to eat here?”
“I don’t think I can make it to the dining room.”
“Shanghai was difficult?”
He shook his head. “A weekend of reflection isn’t easy for someone as slow-witted as me.”
That provoked a musical laugh, and she settled next to him.
“The flight home was the problem. I should’ve bought two seats.”
“Next time you will buy two seats. You’ll bring me along. I’ll help you with your reflection.”
Like others, he had once been suspicious of this girl’s affection for an old, obese man, but he’d slowly discovered that these were the very characteristics that she enjoyed most. Sung Hai hated the boastful men her own age, and his size gave her a feeling of protection. What, then, had she seen in Delun? This was a subject she had avoided so many times that he was no longer able to ask the question, no longer wanted to. Truth is not always the way.
She pulled her legs up beneath herself and lifted the platter. Using a pair of porcelain chopsticks, she guided a dumpling to his mouth. It was delicious.
As she fed him, she recounted the two days they’d spent apart, which had been filled with drinks and dancing at Vics with a couple of girlfriends, unsuccessfully shopping for new rugs for the foyer, and worrying about Sichuan schoolchildren. During the periods in between, she was reading The Boat to Redemption by Su Tong, a bestseller about a Party official expelled for lying about his revolutionary parentage. “Do you know what he does?” she asked.
“What?”
A pause. Her eyes grew. “He tries to castrate himself!”
