the crucial vote, or a way of hiding his association with Zhu. So within this microcosm of five committee members, there was a perfect balance of indecision, which led to Feng Yi suggesting that Zhu be given some time to present his rebuttal to the charges. “Five days” had been Wu Liang’s immediate suggestion. Sun Bingjun, proving once again that rumors of his alcoholic decline were greatly exaggerated, had laughed at this.
“Give Xin Zhu a chance, however small.”
“We only have two weeks,” said Shen An-ling, dropping into a chair. “Two weeks to chase our tails. We’ve lost our best American source, and whatever intelligence the Ministry of Public Security has isn’t going to make it to us. We’re fucked.”
Zhu smoked and gazed past him at the blinds, through which his employees worked away at their haystacks of facts and half-truths and lies. He didn’t even react to Shen An-ling’s atypical cursing, for it only showed that the younger man saw the situation for what it was: a disaster. Not only were they stuck with two weeks, at Wu Liang’s insistence they’d been saddled with daily progress reports to those five committee members. Yes, it was a disaster, but there was no time for emotional nonsense. He would give Shen An-ling another five minutes to compose himself.
He tried to hold the situation up before himself and see its interlocking parts from different angles. The ex- Tourist Leticia Jones, looking pointlessly at Sung Hui and more pointedly at an Islamic terrorist. The fact that there was a leak in the Ministry of Public Security. The fact that Wu Liang had long been waiting for such a chance to strip him down like a paper tiger.
What about Bo Gaoli? Had shame for an unproven crime really been that hard to take? Though they were only acquaintances, Zhu had met Bo Gaoli on many occasions and had been taken by the man’s cool, businesslike attitude toward his counterterrorism work for the Ministry of Public Security. Had Zhu wanted to reach out to someone in the ministry for help, Bo Gaoli would have made his short list. Yet this same man-a respected administrator and a husband of forty years-had killed himself for something he had not done?
Or had he done something? Had he leaked to the Americans, or had he committed some unrelated crime that he feared would be exposed under interrogation?
Shen An-ling found a pack of Hongtashan and lit one up, waving away the pungent smoke. He said, “What if we were wrong? What if there’s no mole in the ministry?”
“What if there are two, or five?” Zhu answered without looking at him. “The Americans got that information somehow. It was too varied to be from intercepted communication, or even from a single lower-level office. We agreed on that.”
“How many times have you told me that dependence on beliefs is the ruin of intelligence?”
One of Shen An-ling’s finest traits was his ability to throw Zhu’s own words back at him. “If our belief was wrong, the fault was in assuming that all the information came from one source, which is why we believed-no, concluded — that the leak was high in the administration. Five lower-level sources could supply the same information.”
When Shen An-ling said, “It feels like we’re holding on to something because we want to believe it,” Zhu wished he would shut up but said nothing. Again, this was the young man’s great value, his constant agitation against Zhu’s assumptions. It kept the dialectic in motion, never allowing Zhu to rest, and it reflected Chairman Mao’s greatest maxim: the need for perpetual revolution.
“Okay,” Zhu said, placing one hand on the desktop. “What if we are wrong? What if there is no leak in the ministry? What follows?”
“It follows that we’re fucked,” Shen An-ling said behind a cloud of tobacco smoke. “It follows that we’ve ostracized an entire section of the government for no good reason, and that we can reasonably be held responsible for a man’s suicide. It follows that you will be removed from the Pit, and either we’ll be castrated and absorbed into the rest of the Sixth Bureau, or some friend of Wu Liang will appear to take over.”
Patiently, Zhu said, “So if this is the case, and we’re wrong, how did we end up at this point? What was the poor logic that brought us to this terrible end?”
Shen An-ling waved smoke away. “I suppose we were blinded.”
“By?”
“By our dislike for Wu Liang.”
“That doesn’t explain how the Americans got their information. Where did it come from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is this the only thing we don’t know?”
Shen An-ling frowned, puzzled. “There are plenty of things we don’t know.”
“Such as?”
“Such as Bo Gaoli’s reasons for killing himself.”
Zhu nodded thoughtfully. “Yes.”
“We don’t know why the American was looking into your wife’s life.”
“But we do know that she met with Alan Drummond and his friends,” Zhu reminded him. “That’s something that Wu Liang does not know.”
“But Wu Liang’s question is a fair one, and I’m ashamed that I didn’t ask it first-if they have a ministry source, then why did she ask questions?”
“There are more important questions,” Zhu said, finally saying aloud what he’d been thinking during Wu Liang’s extended monologue. “Why did Leticia Jones leave before she could get her answers? And most crucially: Why did she ask her questions so clumsily?”
Slowly, Shen An-ling lowered his cigarette from his face to his knee and said, “Talks to an unsecured consular officer, who talks to a deadbeat rock and roller, who talks to the daughter of a seamstress. Certainly she knew we would trace it back to her.”
“Certainly.”
“She wanted us to know. Yet did she want us to know that she didn’t care about the answer? Did she want us to know that it was a ruse?”
They let that sit between them, each staring at separate points in the mid-distance, until Shen An-ling remembered aloud another of Zhu’s sayings, “Do not always assume motive where human error will suffice.”
The phone on Zhu’s desk rang, and when he picked it up his gaze settled on the white box of rice balls Sung Hui had prepared for him. “Wei,” he said.
He Qiang’s dulcet tones came at him. “Comrade Colonel Xin Zhu, I have returned from Xinyang.”
“The family is in good health?”
“Yes, Comrade Colonel.”
“You said you were bringing a cousin back to Beijing. Did that go well?”
“Yes, Comrade Colonel. She’s staying with me until we get her papers sorted. Shall I come to the office today?”
“No,” Zhu said, because he had no doubt that Wu Liang and Yang Qing-Nian had stationed some street vendors outside the building, or were simply watching through one of the three hundred thousand surveillance cameras installed throughout the city under the Grand Beijing Safeguard Sphere program, which would one day ensure that no one could find solitude outside their own shower cabins. “You take care of your cousin, and we’ll talk again tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Comrade Colonel.”
When Zhu hung up, Shen An-ling opened the office door to admit a new girl, whose name Zhu couldn’t recall. She carried a tea set, but when she began to pour Zhu distractedly sent her away. Shen An-ling thanked her as she left.
“Before we proceed,” Zhu said, “we must fill in as many of the gaps in our knowledge as possible. Let’s make a list.”
Shen An-ling half-stood, reaching out to grab a hand-sized notepad from the desk, saying, “We only have two weeks.”
“Panic is one of the symptoms of belief, Shen An-ling. We will not be rushed.”
He’d considered going out in one of his employees’ cars, or taking one of the more obscure exits to hide his departure, but there seemed little point when his destination was one of the more watched areas of the capital. So, a little after four, he climbed into his Audi, which one of his people had helpfully collected from Nankai Saturday morning, left the underground garage, and drove north of the center, just inside the Fifth Ring Road. High above,
