Ministers of Fire. Mark Harril Saunders
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General.”
They hurried down the stairs in quick, shuffling steps.
“You don’t even know what I’m talking about,” the general remarked.
Li helped him into the back of the car and climbed into the front seat next to Feng. He turned to meet the general’s dolorous face. “I assume you are speaking of the reactionaries, who see the corruption in Shenzhen as a far bigger issue than it is.”
“We have bred a generation of pirates and slaves,” sighed the general. The shadow darkened around his mouth. “Some will have to be sacrificed. When the time comes, I must take a stand on corruption.”
“Shenzhen is the future of China,” Li agreed.
“It’s a wasteland,” Zu said.
Feng avoided a donkey cart carrying a refrigerator and moved to the center lane, honking at buses and trucks. They went swiftly across the mouth of Tiananmen Square, under the reviewing stand and onto Quianmen, its broad sidewalk a beach where they had piled the new dead, like fish thrown up from a gray, diseased bay. The calm and heavy-lidded, beatific face of Chairman Mao approved the scene.
“You have gotten me started,” said the general, shifting his short, bulging torso on the pinions of his legs. “You always make me think of my son.”
Li chose not to respond. The general’s son ran a factory in Shenzhen, the so-called Special Economic Zone, and Li had seen him, in his Western suits and German car: he had known from the tender way the son regarded his possessions that he was a thief.
Feng skirted Beihai Park, where the old men sat on stumps, fishing the slimy green water with bamboo poles. The general was silent, and Li wondered if he was thinking of the morning they had mustered in the wet grass on the shore. Li could still feel, still hear the squishy boots as they marched, the burning itch on the balls of his feet. A month later, General Zu had been transferred from the Second Department to the Ministry of State Security, a move in which Li had chosen to accompany him. The wily among Li’s comrades had envied his good fortune, offered congratulations or made snide comments about Li’s ambition under their breath; the jealous were also the ones who had turned down commands at the Square. The duller ones had simply come to Li’s farewell party, gotten drunk, and clapped him on the back, as if they were sending him back to Tibet. Thirteen years and nothing had changed.
“We have a more pressing problem,” the general said, rapping the window with his hand. Sweethearts in rowboats sculled against the grim background of the Forbidden City walls. “Yong Beihong has disappeared from his apartment.”
“Yong? I thought I knew all of their names.”
“This one was rounded up again several years ago and has been under house arrest. He was a university instructor who made a short speech on the second day of the uprising. He was signatory to one of those reactionary letters last year.”
“When did he escape?”
“It has been five days ago now. The officers they had watching him were common city police. When Yong went missing, they looked for him for three days before they informed their superiors.”
“It’s the work of the mayor,” Li said. The general’s bottom lip stuck out. “May I ask how long you’ve known?”
“Do not always think of yourself, Li. I received a call last evening at home. I needed to consider.”
“Then clearly you see some connection between this Yong and the American woman you asked to be followed to Nanjing.”
The general’s mud-colored flesh shifted downward into a frown. The folds of his chin hid his collar from view. “It is only a coincidence. Without coincidence, however, we would be lost. Do you have anything more on this woman?”
The car took a hard turn into a side street, and Li had to brace himself quickly against the door. As they went through the gates of the compound, a group of restoration students trooped into a painted hall. The students’ worship of the past, their leisurely study, caused his anger to rise. “I know one thing,” Li said. “She’s been consorting with evil forces.”
The general’s lips clamped together, and Li realized that he must have used the patronizing tone his wife had cautioned him against. “Her name?” the general asked mockingly.
The car pulled to a stop, and Feng hurried from his seat to open the general’s door.
“I apologize,” said Li. “Charlotte Brien.”
“That’s the one.” The general heaved himself out of the car, and together they started down the sandy path. The compound had once been an imperial residence, and later one of Mao’s homes. Seeds from willow blossoms filled the gentle air. The water in the pond was milky with them. “I haven’t told you this but the smuggler apprehended off Fujian last week had it written in his logbook when he died.”
“That’s a connection, then,” said Li, taking out another cigarette. “After getting into Nanjing by train, she visited an American professor called Rank at the Center for Sino-American studies. She spent two-and-a-half hours with him yesterday afternoon.”
The general stopped on the fringe of the path. “He is a Borodin?”
“Pardon?”
“Rank, you idiot!” The general made a spitting noise with his lips. “Your generation doesn’t even know its own history.”
Li shook out the match. “With all due respect, sir, we were schooled to stamp out history of that sort.”
“Borodin was a Russian Jew, an organizer for Lenin and finally here. What I want to know is if this Rank is an American agent, or simply a man with a need to act out his enthusiasms.”
“There’s nothing strange on his visa application. He’s been here before.”
Frowning, the general walked again. “That in itself is cause for worry. Tell me more about the woman.”
“Yesterday evening, she visited a café run by students. It is partially funded by the U.S. Department of State, for which she works, so that in itself is not suspicious, but local cadres did inform me that this place has offered undue intercourse between Americans and our own students at university. When they received the recent directive, the cadres believed that the place should be shut down. As a preliminary precaution, they installed one of their men as a cook.”
“A wise measure,” the general agreed.
“Charlotte Brien stayed late at this Black Cat Lounge, drinking alchohol. She was overheard telling the manager that she would be back in the morning to look at accounts.”
“The Black Cat.” The general had veered off the path onto the still-damp grass, stopping halfway down the slope to the pond. Li saw that he was losing him. The general’s move to the Ministry had been accompanied by a slipping of his mind, and it was often Li’s function to bring him into the present again. “That is named after something.”
Li waited, but after a minute or so the general had still failed to remember what it was. He reached up and tugged at a branch of weeping willow, flicking the buds off the wood with his thumbnail. Li continued to wait for instructions.
“Is there anything else i can get for you, sir?”
The stewardess was standing over Burling, offering another tiny bottle of vodka, cradled in her palm. He politely refused, but her presence, the soft skin and warm perfume, the full breasts in her uniform blouse produced a dull ache that made him feel sick of himself.
“You just looked a bit uncomfortable. Something else to drink?”
He picked up the plastic cup that had held his first screwdriver and was surprised to find nothing but ice. Already, the navigation screen showed the plane crossing the Tetons. “You won’t take this the wrong way?”
“Of course not,” she