It was now, Nomuri thought, looking deeply into Ming’s dark eyes, wondering what the brain behind them was thinking. She had two cute dimples at the sides of her mouth, and, he thought, a very sweet smile on an otherwise unremarkable face.
“This is such a fascinating country,” he said. “By the way, your English is very good.” And good that it was. His Mandarin needed a lot of help, and one doesn’t seduce women with sign language.
A pleased smile. “Thank you. I do study very hard.”
“What books do you read?” he asked with an engaging smile of his own.
“Romances, Danielle Steel, Judith Krantz. America offers women so many more opportunities than what we are used to here.”
“America is an interesting country, but chaotic,” Nomuri told her. “At least in this society one can know his place.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “There is security in that, but sometimes too much. Even a caged bird wishes to spread its wings.”
“I will tell you one thing I find bad here.”
“What is that?” Ming asked, not offended, which, Nomuri thought, was very good indeed. Maybe he’d get a Steele novel and read up on what she liked.
“You should dress differently. Your clothing is not flattering. Women should dress more attractively. In Japan there is much variety in clothing, and you can dress Eastern or Western as the spirit moves you.”
She giggled. “I would settle for the underthings. They must feel so nice on the skin. That is not a very socialist thought,” she told him, setting down her cup. The waiter came over, and with Nomuri’s assent she ordered mao-tai, a fiery local liqueur. The waiter returned rapidly with two small porcelain cups and a flask, from which he poured daintily. The CIA officer nearly gasped with his first sip, and it went down hot, but it certainly warmed the stomach. Ming’s skin, he saw, flushed from it, and there came the fleeting impression that a gate had just been opened and passed … and that it probably led in the right direction.
“Not everything can be socialist,” Nomuri judged, with another tiny sip. “This restaurant is a private concern, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes. And the food is better than what I cook. That is a skill I do not have.”
“Truly? Then perhaps you will allow me to cook for you sometime,” Chet suggested.
“Oh?”
“Certainly.” He smiled. “I can cook American style, and I am able to shop at a closed store to get the correct ingredients.” Not that the ingredients would be worth a damn, shipped in as they were, but a damned sight better than the garbage you got here in the public markets, and a steak dinner was probably something she’d never had. Could he justify getting CIA to put a few Kobe beef steaks on his expense account? Nomuri wondered. Probably. The bean-counters at Langley didn’t bother the field spooks all that much.
“Really?”
“Of course. There are some advantages to being a foreign barbarian,” he told her with a sly smile. The giggling response was just right, he thought. Yeah. Nomuri took another careful sip of this rocket fuel. She’d just told him what she wanted to wear. Sensible, too, for this culture. However comfy it might be, it would also be quite discreet.
“So, what else can you tell me about yourself?” he asked next.
“There is little to tell. My job is beneath my education, but it carries prestige for … well, for political reasons. I am a highly educated secretary. My employer-well, technically I work for the state, as do most of us, but in fact I work for my minister as if he were in the capitalist sector and paid me from his own pocket.” She shrugged. “I suppose it has always been so. I see and hear interesting things.”
“It is the same with me, industrial secrets and such. Ahh,” he snorted. “Better to leave such things at my official desk. No, Ming, tell me about you.”
“Again, there is little to tell. I am twenty-four. I am educated. I suppose I am lucky to be alive. You know what happens to many girl babies here …”
Nomuri nodded. “I have heard the stories. They are distasteful,” he agreed with her. It was more than that. It was not unknown for the father of a female toddler to drop her down a well in the hope that his wife would bear him a son on the next try. One-baby-per-family was almost a law in the PRC, and like most laws in a communist state, that one was ruthlessly enforced. An unauthorized baby was often allowed to come to term, but then as birth took place, when the baby “crowned,” the top of the head appearing, the very moment of birth, the attending physician or nurse would take a syringe loaded with formaldehyde, and stab it into the soft spot at the crown of the almost-newborn’s head, push the plunger, and extinguish its life at the moment of its beginning. It wasn’t something the government of the PRC advertised as government policy, but government policy it was. Nomuri’s one sister, Alice, was a physician, an obstetrician