because it cut through the tension of the long wait. I was ashamed by how edgy I was feeling; at this early stage, to avoid drawing attention to myself, I had my phone in my hand and the hard plastic casing was sticky and damp against my ear.
“Not long now,” Joe said. “Try to look as though you’re waiting for your girlfriend. A lot of washed-up European perverts get lucky at foreign-language schools.”
I looked across the street and Joe was smiling at me, looking extraordinarily relaxed; he’d done this sort of thing dozens of times before. Just then, the first of the students started trickling out of the entrance and he said “Here we go” in a way that made my pulse kick. About five of them hung around on the pavement in front of me, all Caucasians in their late twenties, and they were soon joined by a flood of others. This went on for about ten minutes until I was lost in a thick swarm of foreigners.
“I can’t see you,” Joe said. “That’s good. Blend in. Try to keep the camouflage. And don’t look at the door. When he comes out, I’ll tell you.”
I must confess that Professor Wang Kaixuan had become so mythologized in my imagination that I was half- expecting him to look like Pat Mo rita, the wizened martial arts guru who offers instruction to Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid. I had said as much to Joe over dinner and he had attempted to describe Wang’s basic physical characteristics.
“He’s stocky and fit. At least he used to be. A broad face with smooth, dark skin. No distinguishing characteristics except intelligent, contemplative eyes, the sort that encourage young people to do things that they shouldn’t be doing. I probably wasn’t the last person to fall for them.”
“And you say he’s about sixty now?”
“About that. Might look younger.”
Wang finally came out at five-fifteen. Joe recognized him instantly and I heard his voice quicken with excitement.
“OK, he’s here. White, short-sleeved shirt. Black flannel trousers. Coming down the steps carrying a blue canvas bag over his shoulder. Stay where you are, Will. A student is going towards him. Tall black girl in the red T- shirt. A smile, he knows her. Looks like she’s thanking him for his class. Our man seems very popular with the students. Apples all round for Professor Wang. He’s facing in your direction now. His head is completely shaved…”
“I see him,” I said.
Joe’s commentary ran on as Wang loitered on the pavement in front of me. He was no more than ten feet away. I kept him in my peripheral vision with my eyes on the entrance to the school, as if waiting for somebody to come out. Joe became increasingly certain that Wang was waiting for a lift.
“It probably won’t be a taxi,” he said. “Not on a teacher’s salary.”
Sure enough, after three or four minutes a dark blue Hafei Saima with Beijing plates, driven by a blonde woman who can’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three, pulled up on the street in front of him.
“That girl came out ten minutes ago,” Joe said quickly, and I was astonished by his powers of recall. “Probably one of his students. Let’s bank on that. She’s probably giving him a lift somewhere.”
Wang was talking to a tall, extraordinarily ugly German with tattoos on his arms as the car came to a halt. He shook the German by the hand, said “Now go home and study” in Mandarin, and then ducked into the front seat. I looked across the street. Joe was already walking east towards his waiting cab. Both of us were muttering the Lord’s Prayer into our phones as a way of looking like we were talking.
Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Taking my bike off the wall, I plugged the earpiece into my cellphone, clipped the microphone to my T-shirt and fell in behind the car.
“Are they moving?” Joe asked. It sounded as though he was already inside the cab.
“Just taking off now.”
I managed to stay with the Hafei for the next fifteen minutes. The driver headed south in dense traffic on Landianchang Road, which runs along the western side of the Jingmi Canal. Joe was in my earpiece the whole time, talking openly about Wang’s position because he had made sure that his driver didn’t speak a word of English. It was extraordinarily hot and the pollution in my mouth was like a chemical liquefying on the lungs. God knows what I must have looked like to passers-by: a sweating, panting laowai, riding a second-rate bicycle surrounded by mellow, drifting flocks of Beijing cyclists. I became concerned that the Hafei would make a turn on Fushi Lu towards either the second or third ring roads which surround downtown Beijing. As soon as that happened, Wang would be on a three-line highway and I would no longer be able to follow him on the bicycle. Yet the car continued as far south as Fuxing Road.
“You’ve done well,” Joe said, passing me for the fourth time and accelerating ahead to stay within touching distance of Wang. We were on a wide avenue, surrounded by billboards advertising Western brands of clothing and cigarettes. At times it was difficult to hear precisely what he was saying because of the noise of the traffic. “It looks like he’s following signs to Tiananmen Square. Don’t worry if you lose us. There’s nothing more you can do. I’ll call you when I get a fix on his position.”
Two minutes later the Hafei was travelling east on Fuxing Road, doing an average of about twenty miles per hour. The line went dead in my ear and Joe’s cab was nowhere to be seen. I looked ahead at a blur of traffic near the subway station at Wanshou Road and tried to reach him on a different number. There was no answer and therefore nothing more that I could do. If Joe had him, he had him. If Wang had disappeared, he would doubtless call me back and we would have to go through the whole, exhausting process all over again at the same time tomorrow.
41
Wang stepped out of the Hafei at the southern end of Jingshan Park, having taken a somewhat circuitous route to get there. Jingshan is just to the north of the Forbidden City, in the very heart of old Beijing, and the young female driver, perhaps ignorant of the city’s basic geography, could have cut east far earlier in their journey. Carrying the blue canvas bag over his shoulder, Wang headed directly towards an outdoor exercise area, where he proceeded to change into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Joe kept a distance of between seventy and eighty metres between them, settling on a bench with a novel in his hands while Wang stretched and worked out. He was still in excellent physical condition, bench-pressing weights which would have troubled a man half his age.
He remained there for about twenty minutes. During this time Joe removed a green long-sleeved shirt he had been wearing to reveal a grey T-shirt underneath. He also took a red baseball cap from a moneybelt around his waist and placed it on his head to effect a basic change in his appearance. While Wang was doing pull-ups, Joe moved to a grass clearing two hundred metres away and made conversation with a small group of tourists so as not to draw attention to the fact that he was on his own.
Just after six o’clock, Wang crossed to the north corner of the gym area and drank water from a public fountain. He had changed back into his work clothes and draped a towel around his neck and now began to walk slowly towards the north-eastern corner of the park. Joe tailed him through an oasis of dappled light and evening birdsong, blending easily with the large numbers of tourists who were passing through the park on their way back from the Forbidden City. Throughout this time I was waiting for Joe to call me in, but he had decided not to risk the small chance that Wang might see me and recognize my face from the school. He was also certain that Wang lived nearby; with any luck, he would not have to tail him for more than a few blocks.
The professor left the park via a gate on Jingshan East Road, walked for three minutes along a crowded side road, purchased a copy of the Beijing Evening News and then turned into a hutong a few hundred metres from the Times Holiday Hotel. Hutongs are quiet, crumbling Chinese neighbourhoods, characteristic of old Beijing, most of which have been gradually and systematically torn down by the communist government in recent years to make way for yet more concrete-and-glass skyscrapers with no discernible purpose; in Shanghai, they are more commonly known as shikumen. As Wang disappeared, Joe broke into a sprint to catch up with him. Turning into the hutong he saw the professor up ahead at the end of a narrow alley criss-crossed by washing lines. There was nobody else
