An American Spy (38 page)

Garza rocked his head. He had a habit of sucking on the side of his upper lip, as if digging for errant crumbs. “Staying in, apparently. All we’ve got is the hotel records. He arrived yesterday and hasn’t left the room. Just like London.”

“He’s displaying himself,” said Milo.

“Of course he is,” Garza answered, “but to us, or to them? Or to someone else?”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Leticia. “We get his ass out of here one way or another.”

Milo said, “Let me talk to him first.”

Leticia looked at him. “What about Xin Zhu’s men?”

“What?” asked Garza.

Milo said, “It doesn’t matter now. We were marked as soon as we stepped into that lobby, probably earlier. I’m just going to have a talk with him, and if Zhu decides to pick me up on the way out, it won’t matter—no one’s been honest with me about anything we’re doing.”

“We’re not here for a conversation,” Garza said, and even with the sunglasses, Milo knew he was glaring at him.

“He’s eluded you for weeks,” Milo said, “and now he makes himself known to everyone. Give the man some credit.”

“You’ll get yourself killed,” said Leticia.

“Look,” Milo said, “you can both stand around here trying to figure out how to extract him without anyone noticing, or how to shoot him and escape without getting caught, but Alan knows all of this, too. He came to Hong Kong knowing he’d be trapped in there. He also knew that you wouldn’t be able to get to him. The only thing he could conceivably want is a conversation. I’m the ignorant one here—I’m the least risk to your operation.”

Garza faced Leticia, as if expecting some decision, but she just shrugged. Garza said, “If you try to sneak him out on your own, both of you are targets.”

“Here,” Leticia said. She took Milo’s hand in one of hers and with the other removed a small pistol, a Baby Browning .25, from her purse and settled it into his palm. “It’s a classic lady’s gun, but it should do the work.”

“I’m not going to kill him.”

“I know that, Milo. But you might have to kill someone to get out of there alive.”

Three minutes later, he was in the lobby. The lady’s gun in his jacket pocket was heavier than it had looked. He didn’t even try to find his shadows, because they were everywhere. All he knew was that He Qiang wasn’t among them now. He took the stairs to the second floor.

There was a single open door halfway down, with a maid’s cart. Room 212 was at the far end, beyond it. He walked slowly, easily, and as he passed the open door, he glanced inside. Standing on the other side of the cart was the man he believed to be He Qiang, staring at him. Milo stopped, his hand clutching the pistol in his pocket, but the man shook his head and waved him on. Milo wasn’t sure what to do. He was being guided to the room, and he had an instinctive desire to turn and walk out of the hotel again, no matter what answers lay behind that door. Yet he continued forward. The answers were too compelling. Finally, he stood in front of 212. He knocked. “Alan? It’s Milo.”

There was silence, and he considered repeating himself, but he knew he’d been heard. He waited. Two minutes passed, and during that time he heard whispers behind the door. A conversation, but just one voice. He was on a telephone. Milo kept hold of the Browning. Then he heard the beep of a cell phone being hung up, and the door opened. It wasn’t Alan Drummond. It was an Asian man with a low forehead, features that were definitely not Chinese. The man was Cambodian. Somehow, this did not surprise him.

“Is he dead?” Milo asked.

“Come in,” said Tran Hoang, stepping aside to let him into the dark room.

4

Sung Hui was washing in the bathroom when Zhu’s phone rang Sunday morning. He didn’t recognize the number but guessed he’d find Shen An-ling on the line. The last thing he expected was the voice of Hua Yuan, Bo Gaoli’s wife. They hadn’t talked since that visit to her house at the Purple Jade Villas, and, with everything else going on, he had forgotten about her. She sounded peculiar, even for her, as if after more than a month she’d come out of her house and discovered that the world had been wiped clean during her absence. She said, “Comrade Colonel, we need to talk. Can you come here?”

“Today?” he asked, looking around for Sung Hui—she had left the bathroom, probably for the kitchen.

“Today, yes. Now, actually. It must be now.”

She’d said it in a way that made Zhu think that, no, it did not have to be now, though he couldn’t explain what gave him that feeling. “Can you tell me what this is about?”

“I was cleaning up his things. My husband’s. And I came across a letter he wrote to you. Please, come to read it.”

“I’m busy this morning,” he said.

“Get here fucking now,” she snapped.

He’d lied about being busy to see how she would react, but he wasn’t sure how to interpret her reaction. “In that case, of course. I’ll be there immediately.” He lowered his voice, “Hua Yuan, you’re afraid. Why?”

She didn’t answer at first, and he heard noise in the background. Paper, perhaps the letter Bo Gaoli had written to him. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of weeping. Between sobs, she said, “Please.” A sniff. “If you read the letter,” she said after a moment, “you will understand. Hurry.” She hung up.

He dressed and found Sung Hui boiling water for tea. They had made love the previous night, and there was a pleasant morning-after glow lingering between them—he could feel it. He kissed her forehead. “I need to run now. I’ll be back soon.”

“Let’s go out to dinner tonight.”

“As you like,” he said, and she frowned at him. “What?”

“What do
you
like, Zhu?”

He began to say,
I like what you like
, or,
I’m happy to see you happy
, but he knew how inept those phrases were, so he just said, “What I like is you. Here at home or at a restaurant, or in the desert. It’s all better with you.”

Her frown faded away to nothingness.

His phone rang again as he was driving north on the ring road, and this time it was Shen An-ling, calling from Hong Kong. He Qiang had arrived to run things, but Zhu still wanted someone else there to help direct.

“Has he left his room yet?” Zhu asked.

“No, but Leticia Jones and Milo Weaver are now in town. They appeared at the hotel, then changed their minds and checked into the Kowloon.”

“So they spotted you?”

“I was in the lobby, but it was He Qiang. Weaver saw him in New York.”

“Sloppy.”

“Yes,” said Shen An-ling. “But we gave him a phone, and if you’d like I can patch you through to him once he’s alone.”

“Yes. That would be good.”

“A woman came to his room.”

“To Drummond’s?”

“She was looking for someone named Charlie. Drummond opened the door a little and said a few words to her, then she left. Apparently, she had the wrong room.”

“Is she a guest?”

“Yes. Jennifer Paulson.”

“Let me know if she makes the same mistake again.”

It was after nine by the time he reached the Purple Jade Villas. The guards had been told by Hua Yuan to expect him, so they gave his Guoanbu ID only a cursory glance, then sent him on. He remembered the drive to the villa from his earlier visit, but while everything looked the same, it felt different. Perhaps it was the sight of a laborer driving a lawn mower over one of the distant hills, reminding him that the beauty here took considerable effort to maintain.

Hua Yuan did not come out to meet him, so he parked and walked to the door on his own, noticing that the villas on either side were empty of cars. The air was damp here, as was the grass; his leather shoes came out in dark spots. Only when he knocked on her door did he get the feeling that this house was empty as well. It was as if, knowing that he was on his way, the Purple Jade management had sent in a team to evacuate the street.

There was no answer to his knock, or to the doorbell he rang twice. He looked at the heavy door and then, gingerly, turned the handle. It was unlocked, and it opened smoothly.

He stepped inside and instinctively slipped out of his shoes to pad around in socks. He stepped into the living room, with its square window framed in ivy, looking out at his car and the fields beyond, and called, “Hua Yuan? It’s Xin Zhu.” There was no reply.

Further back he found a dining room and, through a pair of double doors, a long kitchen tiled in white, with a counter stretching down the center of the room. It smelled of rust. The kitchen lights burned brightly, so that when he found her, arms and legs bent as if she were running along the floor, the pool of blood spreading out from the gunshot gash in her forehead created a perfect reflection of the fluorescent lamps in the ceiling.

She was wearing a floor-length robe, a different one than she’d worn before, and it hung behind her—again, he imagined her running, the robe flung up by the wind—and her bare, varicose legs were on display. A blood-speckled white slipper hung off her left foot; the other slipper was against the base of the oven, perfectly clean.

About an hour had passed from the time of her call, which meant that the killer could conceivably still be in the house. He went through the drawers until he found a heavy Hattori cleaver, then walked slowly through the house, from the bottom to the top. With his slow, deliberate pace it took twenty minutes to look into every room, and on the way he wondered why he wasn’t just standing in the kitchen and calling Shen An-ling, or the police, or even Purple Jade security. He knew why, though. For the moment, he had silence and solitude. As soon as he made the call, that solitude would be broken, and he needed some time to figure out what had happened, and who should receive his first call.

Back in the kitchen, he returned the cleaver to the drawer, then crouched, groaning, beside Hua Yuan. He took a corner of the robe and pulled it to cover her running legs, then checked the pocket—empty. There would be another pocket between her and the floor, but he didn’t want to move her.

His phone rang.

“Yes?”

Shen An-ling said, “I’ll connect you to Milo Weaver, if you like.”

“Go ahead.”

As he threatened the health of Milo Weaver’s wife and daughter, he returned to the living room and looked for the letter. If Hua Yuan had been expecting him, the letter would be out, perhaps even on display, but it wasn’t here. He peered around the kitchen, careful to step around the pool of blood as he looked in drawers. By the time Milo Weaver told him that Alan Drummond probably wanted to kill him, he was checking the tables in the foyer, and when Shen An-ling sent a message to his phone, signifying that Leticia Jones was returning to Weaver’s hotel room, he was checking the dining room. After hanging up, he returned upstairs to check Hua Yuan’s bedroom. He found many small items from her life—receipts, letters from girlfriends and family, and bills—but with each failure he became increasingly sure that he was going to have to roll over the woman in the kitchen.

So he returned and first tried to tug the robe out from under her, but when he pulled she slid with it. He stood, lifting the hem of the robe upward, and Hua Yuan rolled a little, farting loudly as the body resettled. Zhu closed his eyes, the robe tight in his fist, and reached into the damp hidden pocket. His fingers found moist, folded paper, multiple sheets, which he removed with his index and middle fingers. Then he stepped back, dropping the robe and backing away as the body expelled more gas. He withdrew to a bathroom, set the pages on the toilet seat, and washed his hands with hot water and soap, focusing all his energy on not being sick.

The moisture on the letter was not blood but urine, and Xin Zhu took the sheets to the dining room and laid them out individually on the long table. Her husband, Bo Gaoli, had written on only one side of each of the five pages, so as they dried Zhu could walk down the length of the table and read the entire message. Once he was finished, he returned to the head of the table and read it again. He pulled out a chair and settled down, then called Sun Bingjun.

“Apologies,” he told the old man. “I’m sure you’re busy.”

“I’m always busy, Xin Zhu, or at least that’s what I claim. What is it?”

“How well did you know Bo Gaoli, Comrade Lieutenant General?”

A pause. “We worked together on occasion. I can’t say we were close.”

“And his wife?”

“Hua Yuan? I didn’t know her at all until after her husband died. I stopped by once to give condolences. She seemed to be taking it rather well.”

“Comrade Lieutenant General, would it be possible for you to meet with me? I am at Hua Yuan’s Purple Jade home.”

“Are you interviewing her?”

“Please,” Zhu said, “could you come?”

“Is this serious, Xin Zhu?”

“More than serious.”

It took forty minutes for Sun Bingjun’s Mercedes to arrive, parking behind Xin Zhu’s Audi. By then it was ten forty-five. Through the square window, Zhu saw a tall, broad driver get out and open the door for Sun Bingjun, who walked alone toward the house, his face grim. Sun Bingjun had never been a man of smiles, and, as he approached, Zhu realized that he had known very few men of smiles, because those were the ones who inevitably sank out of view before long, their little grins wavering only at the last moment. Smiling was not Sun Bingjun’s way, though drinking was, but even when he drank to excess, he never stepped too far. He had more self-control than anyone liked to admit.

Zhu met him at the door and brought him into the living room. The old man looked around, showing signs of impatience. “Where is Hua Yuan?”

“In the kitchen. She’s dead.”

Sun Bingjun’s skin knotted around the eyes, then relaxed. “Did you do it, Xin Zhu?”

“She called me this morning about a letter she’d found among her husband’s things. It was written to me. She was evidently scared but wouldn’t go into details. I came as quickly as I could.”

“But not fast enough?” Sun Bingjun speculated.

“Apparently,” Zhu said. “I had to move her body in order to get at the letter in her pocket.”

“Tampering with a crime scene,” Sun Bingjun said. “I hope this letter was worth it. Oh,” he added, looking out at their cars, “and next time, you might want to suggest I drive myself.”