A Drop of Chinese Blood (12 page)

At that point, things were particularly bad for veterans of the People’s Security Ministry, especially those few like him who had personal experience with embarrassing events involving high-level personalities, information that no one wanted scattered around. He was a little safer living under my protection, but not much. His trips to Harbin were particularly worrisome to me. I didn’t think there would be any attempts targeting him while he was in Yanji, but I couldn’t keep him under lock and key. He knew enough to be careful, and he still knew how to watch his back. At home he affected a lazy image, but on the street, he was sharp and alert. I’d watched, as had Bo-ting, whom I sent out once in a while to tail him. Uncle O said he wasn’t in contact with anyone across the river, and from all I could gather, he was telling the truth. That’s what I thought until noodles suggested otherwise.

He obviously wasn’t going to tell me what he knew about the cook, meaning I would have to find out on my own. Li Bo-ting could poke around; he would eventually come up with something. Meanwhile, I might have to pull in the cook and talk to him directly. Cooks cutting off other people’s hands, especially during business hours, could be a problem, though in this case I was willing to look the other way if I got some cooperation. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but I hadn’t bumped into anything ideal for a long time. It had reached the point that I probably wouldn’t recognize ideal if it jumped into my arms and kissed me on both cheeks.

As my uncle read his book on red sparrow trees, I was totaling the week’s new harvest of household bills, matching them against our income. Even with the infusion of cash from Miss Du, the numbers were not coming out well. They rarely did, though the problem had deteriorated over the past six months. It was time for a serious conversation with my uncle, something I knew would be difficult and would almost certainly end badly. It meant being brisk in tone, plain in meaning, and relentless in pushing home the main point. The main point was simple enough: We would soon be without money. If I applied Miss Du’s advance to the pile of bills, it disappeared, a few raindrops sprinkled on the Gobi Desert. We would not just be low on funds; we would be completely without. We couldn’t keep up the current, widening gap between income and expenses. We were, in the language of the street, peeling our last potato.

The opportunity to convey how close we were to the choice between robbing a branch of the Bank of China or eating once a month arose later the same evening. It was past midnight. We were both still in the library. I couldn’t sleep and was going through the receipts one more time, hoping to discover lifesaving errors in subtraction. Uncle O was at his desk, refining plans for yet another bookcase.

“There are limits,” I said aloud. To my ears this sounded brisk. My uncle didn’t look up. “Limits,” I said the word again and held up a handful of bills. “If we spend, we have to earn. Spend”—I waved the bills in one hand—“and earn.” I held up the other hand, which was noticeably empty. I was pleased. This was the sort of clarity I’d hoped to convey.

My uncle put down his pencil. “There is an ideal relationship between the number of shelves and the length of the whole, did you know that? Theoretically, you could build a bookshelf so small that it would need no shelves at all, if you only knew the right ratio.”

I jumped in before he could continue. “No, actually you could not. Just as you could not build one so big it would need no shelves. And do you know why? Because in another month, you won’t be able to afford any lumber, none, not even a matchstick. We’ll have to start selling the bookshelves you’ve already built. We’ll have to take apart those unfinished ones—”

“Like the emperor of the Southern Sung,” my uncle said neutrally.

“—and use the parts to finish others to sell so we can get enough cash to buy food. You think I’m kidding?”

“If things are so dire, why can’t you take a little on the side, like everyone else in this sparkling land? You’re a policeman! People need favors!”

“I don’t do that.”

“You don’t? Why not? You haven’t lost your job, have you?”

“No, not yet. Of course, when they come to arrest you, they’ll probably take me away as well. At that point, it’s a good bet my employment prospects will become shaky.”

“Then don’t worry. No one is going to arrest me. It would be too much trouble. I don’t do well under arrest. I get cranky.”

“That I have to see.”

“Let’s be clear, your job is to keep me out of trouble. My job, or so your headquarters seems to calculate, is to soak up your excess energy. We’re supposed to balance each other. They’re pleased to imagine we’re even useful to them from time to time. Most ridiculous of all, they have convinced themselves that I keep you informed about what things are like over there.”

“Ha! If only they knew.”

My uncle stood up. “No one would buy a single one of these bookcases. No one understands them. They are not meant for the commercial market. If we have to live off the income from them, we’ll be dead of starvation in a week.”

The phone rang, an ominous sound at that late hour. “If it’s for me,” my uncle said as he disappeared out the door, “I’m not here.”

I picked up the phone.

“You’re needed at the office,” a male voice said.

“Who is this?”

“Never mind who this is.”

“Sorry, you hit the wrong buttons. We’re closed.”

“No, you’re not. We’re sending a car. It’s black.”

“I don’t ride in black cars, especially at this time of night.”

“It’s not night, it’s morning. And for this, you make an exception.” The phone went dead. I dialed the office number.

“What’s going on?” I looked at my watch. “All good children should be in their beds.”

“A flying team flew in.” It was Lieutenant Li. His voice was guarded and a little on the nervous side. “That’s it, the sum total of my comment. See you soon.”

“Someone said they were coming to get me in a black car.”

“Yeah.”

“You know who it was?”

There was a conversation offline. Bo-ting came back on. “It’s busy here right now, like a train station. See you in a few minutes, huh?” He was pleading.

“If you say so.” I hung up with a bad feeling in my stomach. Li didn’t scare easily.

Chapter Five

“You may sit if you wish. This won’t take long.”

“That’s good.” I made myself comfortable behind my desk. It was obviously going to be a long night. The visitors had the air of people who were planning to stay for a while. A woman seated at a small table that had been moved into the office and placed near the door was taking notes. She’d laid out three extra pens neatly on the table. I figured she knew the drill.

The man doing the talking wore the brush haircut of someone from the old school of interrogation. I could tell he’d been around. The others, younger, lounged at each of the four compass points, ensuring I would never be without a reminder of who was running this meeting. They looked a little bored, but I knew they were on full alert. One of them fiddled with a cigarette, put it to his lips, and then took it away. His eyes darted around the room. I noticed they rested for a fraction on the woman. She ignored him.

“Don’t tell me that we’re all friends,” I said, “because I don’t think we are. My friends usually leave me alone at this hour.”

“OK, we’re not friends.” The old man leaned against my desk. He seemed tired, not just from lack of sleep. Too many questions, too many furtive answers. I might have felt sorry for him if he wasn’t in my office at one o’clock in the morning. “But we’re acting friendly, we’re talking friendly. I’m thinking friendly thoughts. How about you, Penguin?”

The one with the cigarette and the white vest nodded. He had a hotshot air about him, maybe because he appeared to be the youngest. “Yeah, I’m awash in friendship.” He looked at the woman. “Never felt friendlier.”

The old man glanced at the clock on the wall. “Is that time right? You’re slow, but that’s normal for this part of the country, right? Lucky for you, we have a convergence of interests. You want to get home, and I don’t want this to drag on. I have a pain in my shoulder these days; questioning people who don’t cooperate makes it worse. They get tense; I get tense. You know what I mean? We flew up here because those were our orders. Let’s keep it simple, and maybe we can clear out of here in time to catch the morning flight. That will leave you the rest of the day free to annoy your staff, and I can get one of those Shanxi farm girls to walk on my back when I get home. Worth a shot?”

Well, at least we had established that they were thinking of no more than six hours for this session. Six hours I could handle.

“Good idea,” I said. “Tell me what this is about. That’s a friendly way to start, don’t you think?”

“Sure. I’m going to jump the monkey, if it’s all right with you. I probably know a few tricks you don’t, but why bother?” He moved the pile of flash messages to the side and sat on the edge of my desk. “What do you know about a source named Handout?”

“Hand down?”

“Smart guy. You heard me right the first time.”

“Sorry. I can’t discuss some things with strangers unless I know they have authorization. You have authorization? A black car doesn’t count.”

“You’re only going to stretch things out past tomorrow if you keep on like this. How about we don’t pick at each other? It isn’t a bad question, nothing tricky, no hidden agenda. Just a simple inquiry.” He turned around and took a couple of papers off the table where the woman sat. “This is a flimsy of the Handout file. It’s from Headquarters. You want to look at it? It’s the same one you have.” He put it on my desk in front of me. “Go ahead, take a look. I’ve got the time.”

I didn’t bother to look. I wasn’t about to start taking advice from him. “OK, so you have a flimsy. Good for you. What do you want to know?”

“See, that’s better. We’re getting along already. I knew we could do it. I just wanted to know what you think of Handout. Good source?”

“All I know is what I read. I haven’t picked him up yet. His old case officer left in a hurry; maybe you know something about that. I’m going to arrange a meeting as soon as I have time, when people aren’t calling me into the office in the middle of the fucking night.”

The man on the south wall let out a low whistle. “Angry sort.”

The gray-haired man ignored him. “So, you were about to set up a meeting. Funny, I heard you were trying to get rid of him. Why would you want to do that, if you haven’t met him yet? We spend a lot of money vetting sources and so forth. Why would we want to waste it, that’s the question people are going to ask, don’t you think?”

“You want Handout on your payroll? Go ahead, he’s yours. Did you vet him? You might want to spend an extra ten yuan and do it again.”

There was a low chuckle from the north end of the room, but not from the man in front of my desk. He studied me for a moment, then nodded in the direction of the woman at the table. She turned to a fresh page.

“OK,” he said, “have it your way, leave that for now. We’ll get back to it at some point. Let’s go to something easy. Let’s go over your career. You know the facts. I’m just reading from your file. Presumably, they are the same. If you hear something out of kilter, you’ll let me know. Miss Bao over there will mark it for further study, and we can check the box. Meet with your approval?”

I shrugged.

“Sometimes that indicates yes, sometimes no. I’ll take it as a yes.” He put on his reading glasses. “Subject is chief of the Chinese State Security Ministry’s (MSS) special bureau for the northeast tier, covering the border with North Korea along a particularly sensitive stretch, from Tumen to Quanhe. Subject assumed the post in late 2009, as part of Political Bureau decision to beef up security in tandem with a sharp acceleration and expansion of economic relations with the Korean Democratic People’s Republic. Special note—” The man looked up. “Are you with me?”

I shrugged again.

“Special note: This bureau had gone without a chief officer for over a year previously because the last occupant of the office had defected to North Korea in early 2007. During this interim period, the deputy, Lieutenant Li Bo-ting, was in charge with circumscribed authority.” He looked up. “How are we doing? Anything you think Ms. Bao should mark for correction?”

“No.”

“What a relief. If you had shrugged three times in a row, we would have faced a serious problem.” The man turned the page in the file. “Ah, here is something I want to run by you. It says here that you and your mother lived alone.”

“It’s all in the file. I don’t think we need to go over it.”

“You have friends?”

“Sure, the whole world is my friend. Isn’t that where we started, being friends?”

“What about Ping Man-ho, he your friend?”

I rolled this around real fast in my brain. I hadn’t talked to Ping Man-ho more than three or four times since being assigned to Yanji, all of them at Gao’s. “Ping shows up once in a while. He’s a sharp dresser, borrows money and doesn’t pay it back, but that’s not actually a crime. Bad upbringing, maybe, but not a crime.”

“You know about his upbringing?”

“Nope. Just being chatty. You want us to open a file on him? I’ll tell Mrs. Zhao to make room on the top shelf. I don’t think we’ll have to get to it very often.”

“Maybe you should do a little digging, turn your hunting dog Lieutenant Li loose on the case and see what he comes up with.”

“If you have something, why don’t you just save me the time and hand it over? We’re busy enough up here; I can’t spare resources on vague hints. Better yet, you have a big team. Do it yourself, why don’t you?”

“Why don’t I? Because it’s your bureau, that’s why. It’s your territory. You’ve built up a nice reputation; important people at Headquarters purr when your name comes up. I don’t want to take anything away from you. I’m not in the business of subtracting from other people’s fitness reports. I’m just giving you a tip, that’s all. You decide what to do with it, OK?”

“Anything else?”

The man turned a couple of pages in the file. “I see you have an uncle.”