Never, page 20
Abdul said: “Does your father still have the original store?”
“My father passed away,” Tony said. “He was shot in his store by a guy who tried to rob him.” Tony paused, then added: “An African American guy.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Abdul said automatically, but he was thinking about Tony’s afterthought: an African American guy. You had to say that, didn’t you, Tony? he thought. It means My father was murdered by a Black man. As if no murders were committed by white people. As if Tony had never heard of the Mafia.
Annabelle took the pressure off by talking about her work, and for the rest of the evening Abdul mostly listened. That night Annabelle came to his room in her pajamas, and they spent the night in each other’s arms, but they did not make love.
They never moved into an apartment together. Tony refused to lend them the deposit, but that was only the beginning of a family campaign to prevent her from marrying Abdul. Her grandmother stopped speaking to her. Her brother threatened to have Abdul beaten up by some people he was “connected” with—though he dropped the threat when he found out who Abdul worked for. Annabelle swore she would never give in to them, but the conflict poisoned their love. Instead of a romance, they were living through a war. When she could stand it no longer she ended the relationship.
And Abdul told the Agency he was ready for undercover work overseas.
Chapter 11
Tao Ting came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her body and another around her head. Chang Kai, sitting in bed, looked up from reading the newspapers on his tablet. He watched her open the doors of all three closets and stand gazing at her clothes. After a few moments, she dropped both towels onto the carpet.
He drank in the sight of his naked wife and thought how lucky he was. There was a reason why millions of television viewers were in love with her. She was absolutely perfect. Her body was slim and shapely, her skin was the creamy color of ivory, and her hair was luxuriant and dark.
And she was fun.
Without turning around she said: “I know what you’re looking at.”
He chuckled. “I’m reading the People’s Daily online,” he said, pretending to protest.
“Liar.”
“How do you know I’m lying?”
“I can read your mind.”
“That’s a miraculous power.”
“I always know what men are thinking.”
“But how?”
“They’re always thinking the same thing.”
She put on her panties and bra, then stood a little longer contemplating the racks of clothes. Kai felt guilty staying in bed watching her. There was so much he had to do, for himself and for his country. But it was hard to tear his gaze away.
He said: “It doesn’t matter what you wear, does it? As soon as you get to the studio they’re going to put you in some fantastic costume.” Sometimes he suffered the dark suspicion that she dressed up for the handsome young male actors she worked with. She had so much more in common with them than with him.
Ting said: “It always matters what I wear. I’m a celebrity. People expect me to be special. Drivers, doormen, cleaners, and gardeners all tell their families and friends: ‘You’ll never guess who I saw today—Tao Ting! Yes, her, from Love in the Palace!’ I don’t want them to say that I’m not so beautiful in real life.”
“Of course, I get it.”
“Anyway, I’m not going straight to the studio. They’re filming a big sword fight today. I’m not needed until two o’clock.”
“What are you going to do with your free morning?”
“I’m taking my mother shopping.”
“Nice.”
Ting was close to her mother, Cao Anni, who was also an actor. They talked on the phone every day. Ting’s father had died in a car crash when she was thirteen. The same crash had left her mother with a limp that had blighted her career. But Anni had found a new line of work doing voice-overs.
Kai liked Anni. “Don’t make her walk too far,” he said to Ting. “She hides it, but her leg still hurts.”
Ting smiled. “I know.”
Of course she knew. He was telling her to be thoughtful about her own mother. He always tried not to act like a parent with Ting, but sometimes it happened anyway. “Sorry,” he said.
“I’m glad you care about her. She likes you too. She thinks you’ll look after me when she’s gone.”
“I will.”
Ting made a decision and pulled on a pair of faded Levi’s blue jeans.
Without looking away from her, Kai turned his mind to the day ahead. He had a rendezvous with an important spy.
He was booked on a lunchtime flight to Yanji, a midsize city close to the border with North Korea. Although he was now the boss of the foreign intelligence department, he still personally ran a few of the most valuable spies, mostly those he had recruited when he was lower in the hierarchy. One such was a North Korean general called Ham Ha-sun. For some years now Ham had been the Guoanbu’s best source of inside information about what was going on in North Korea.
And North Korea was China’s great weakness.
It was the soft underbelly, the Achilles’ heel, the kryptonite, and all the other images for a fatal weakness in a strong body. The North Koreans were key allies, and they were desperately unreliable. Kai met Ham regularly, and between scheduled meetings they could contact one another to request an emergency assignation. Today’s meeting was routine but still important.
Ting put on a bright blue sweatshirt and stepped into a pair of cowboy boots. Kai looked at the clock beside the bed and got up.
He washed quickly and put on his office suit. While he was dressing, Ting kissed him good-bye and left.
There was smog over Beijing, and Kai took a mask in case he needed to walk anywhere. His overnight bag was packed, ready for the trip. He took out his heavy winter coat and carried it over his arm: Yanji was a cold city.
He left the apartment.
* * *
There were four hundred thousand people in Yanji, and almost half of them were Korean.
The city had expanded fast after the Second World War, and as Kai’s plane descended he gazed at the ranks of modern buildings packed closely together on both sides of the wide Buerhatong River. China was North Korea’s main trading partner, so thousands of people crossed the border every day in both directions to do business, and Yanji was an important entrepôt for such trade.
In addition hundreds of thousands of Koreans—perhaps millions—lived and worked in China. Many were registered immigrants; some were prostitutes; not a few were unpaid agricultural workers or purchased wives—never actually called slaves. Life in North Korea was so bad that to be a well-fed slave in China might not have seemed a terrible fate, Kai thought.
Yanji had the largest Korean population of any Chinese city. It had two Korean-language TV stations. One of the Korean residents of Yanji was Ham Hee-young, a bright and capable young woman who was the illegitimate daughter of General Ham, a fact known to no one in North Korea and very few people in China. As manager of a department store she earned a high salary plus commission on sales.
Kai landed at the domestic airport, Chaoyangchuan, and took a cab to the city center. All road signs were bilingual, with Korean above Chinese. Some of the young women on the city streets wore the chic, sexy styles of South Korean fashion, he noticed. He checked into a large chain hotel, then immediately went out again, wearing his heavy coat against Yanji’s bitter cold. He ignored the taxis at the hotel entrance, then walked a few blocks and hailed a cab on the street. He gave the driver the address of a Wumart supermarket in the suburbs.
General Ham was stationed at a nuclear base called Yeongjeo-dong, in the north of North Korea, near the border with China. He was a member of the Joint Border Oversight Committee, which met regularly in Yanji, so he traveled across the border at least once a month.
Many years ago he had become disillusioned with the regime in Pyongyang, the capital, and had begun to spy for China. Kai paid him well, channeling the money to Hee-young, Ham’s daughter.
Kai’s cab took him to a developing suburb and dropped him at the Wumart, two streets away from his actual destination. He walked to a building site where a large house was going up. This was where Ham spent the money he made from the Guoanbu. The land and the house were in Hee-young’s name and she paid the builders out of the money Kai sent her. General Ham was close to retirement, and he planned to disappear from North Korea, adopt a new identity furnished by Kai, and spend his golden years with his daughter and grandchildren in their lovely new home.
Approaching the site, Kai did not see Ham, who took care never to be visible from the street. He was in the half-built garage, talking in effortlessly fluent Mandarin to a builder, probably the foreman. He broke off immediately, saying: “I must talk to my accountant,” and shook Kai’s hand.
Ham was a spry man in his sixties who had a doctorate in physics. “Let me show you around,” he said enthusiastically.
All the plumbing had been installed and now carpenters were putting in doors, windows, closets, and kitchen cabinets. Kai found himself envying Ham as they toured the building: it was more spacious than any home Kai had lived in. Ham proudly pointed out a bedroom suite for Hee-young and her husband, two small bedrooms for their children, and a self-contained apartment for Ham himself. We gave him the money for all this, Kai thought. But he had been worth it.
When they had looked around they stepped outside, despite the cold, and stood at the back of the house, where they were hidden from anyone on the street and could not be overheard by the builders. There was a cold wind and Kai was glad of his coat. He said: “So how are things in North Korea?”
“Worse than you think,” said Ham immediately. “You already know how completely dependent we are on China. Our economy is a failure. Our only successful industry is making and exporting armaments. We have a woefully inefficient agricultural sector that produces only seventy percent of our food needs. We lurch from crisis to crisis.”
“So what’s new?”
“The Americans have tightened up sanctions.”
This was news to Kai. “How?”
“Just by enforcing existing rules. A shipment of North Korean coal destined for Vietnam was seized in Manila. Payment for twelve Mercedes limousines was refused by a German bank because of suspicion that they were destined for Pyongyang, even though the paperwork said Taiwan. A Russian ship was intercepted transferring gasoline to a North Korean ship at sea just off Vladivostok.”
“Small things in themselves, but they get everybody scared of doing business,” Kai commented.
“Exactly. But what your government may not realize is that we have only six weeks’ supply of food and other essentials. That’s how close we are to famine.”
“Six weeks!” Kai was shocked.
“They’re not admitting that to anyone, but Pyongyang is about to approach Beijing for emergency economic aid.”
This was useful. Kai could forewarn Wu Bai. “How much will they ask for?”
“They don’t even want money. They need rice, pork, gasoline, iron, and steel.”
China would probably give them what they wanted, Kai thought; it always had, in the past. “What’s the reaction of the Party hierarchy to yet another failure?”
“There are rumblings of discontent—there always are—but such murmurs will come to nothing as long as China props up the regime.”
“Incompetence can be dreadfully stable.”
Ham gave a short bark of laughter. “Too fucking true.”
* * *
Kai had several American contacts, but the best was Neil Davidson, a CIA man at the American embassy in Beijing. They met for breakfast at the Rising Sun, on Chaoyang Park Road near the US embassy, convenient for Neil. Kai did not use his driver, Monk, because government cars looked official, and his meetings with Neil needed to be discreet, so he took a cab.
Kai got on well with Neil, even though they were enemies. They acted as if peace was possible even between such rivals as China and the US, given a little mutual understanding. It might even have been true.
Kai often learned something Neil had not intended to reveal. Neil did not always tell him the truth, but his evasions sometimes yielded clues.
The Rising Sun was a midpriced restaurant patronized by the Chinese and foreign workers in the central commercial district. It made no effort to attract tourists, and the waiters did not speak English. Kai ordered tea and Neil arrived a few minutes later.
Neil was a Texan but not much like a cowboy, except for his accent, which even Kai could detect. He was short and bald. He had been to the gym that morning—he was trying to lose weight, he explained—and he had not yet changed out of his worn sneakers and black Nike warm-up jacket. And my wife goes to work in blue jeans and cowboy boots, Kai thought. Funny world.
Neil spoke fluent Mandarin with atrocious pronunciation. He ordered congee, the rice porridge, with a soft-boiled egg. Kai asked for soy sauce noodles with tea eggs.
Kai said: “You won’t lose much weight eating congee. Chinese food has a lot of calories.”
“Not as much as American,” said Neil. “Even our bacon contains sugar. Anyway, what’s on your mind?”
That was direct. No Chinese person would be so blunt. But Kai had grown to like the way Americans got straight to the point. He replied equally plainly: “North Korea.”
“Okay,” Neil replied noncommittally.
“You’re imposing sanctions.”
“Sanctions were imposed a long time ago, by the United Nations.”
“But now the US and its close friends are seriously enforcing them, intercepting ships and interdicting cargoes and obstructing international payments that violate the sanctions.”
“Perhaps.”
“Neil, stop dicking me around. Just tell me why.”
“Weapons in Africa.”
Faking mild indignation, Kai said: “You’re talking about Corporal Peter Ackerman. The killer was a terrorist!”
“It’s a pity he used a Chinese gun.”
“You don’t normally blame the crime on the manufacturer of the weapon.” Kai smiled as he added: “If you did, you would have shut down Smith and Wesson years ago.”
“Maybe.”
Neil was stonewalling, and Kai need him to be more honest. He said: “Do you know which criminal enterprise is the largest in the world today, in money terms?”
“You’re going to tell me it’s the trade in illicit weapons.”
Kai nodded. “Bigger than drugs, bigger than human trafficking.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Both Chinese guns and American guns are easily available on the international black market.”
“Available, yes,” Neil conceded. “Easily? Not really. The gun that killed Corporal Ackerman was not bought in a regular black-market transaction, was it? When that sale was made, two governments looked the other way: the Sudanese, and the Chinese.”
“Don’t you understand that we hate Muslim terrorists as much as you do?”
“Let’s not oversimplify. You hate Chinese Muslim terrorists. You’re not so worried about African Muslim terrorists.”
Neil was uncomfortably close to the truth.
Kai said: “I’m sorry, Neil, but Sudan is an ally and it’s good business selling them guns. We’re not going to stop. Corporal Ackerman is just one man.”
“This is not really about poor Corporal Ackerman. It’s about howitzers.”
Kai was taken aback. He had not expected this. Then he recalled a detail from a report he had read two weeks ago. The Americans and others had raided a large and important ISGS hideout called al-Bustan that had truck-mounted howitzers.
So that was what had prompted the UN resolution.
The food came, giving Kai time to reflect. He felt tense, despite his façade of relaxed camaraderie, and he ate his noodles slowly, with little appetite. Neil was hungry after his workout and wolfed his congee. When they had finished Kai summed up. “So President Green is using the North Korea sanctions to punish China for the artillery at al-Bustan.”
“More than that, Kai,” said Neil. “She wants you to be more careful about the end users of the weapons you sell.”
“I’ll make sure that gets through to the highest levels,” Kai said.
That meant nothing, but Neil seemed satisfied to have delivered the message. He changed the subject. “How is the lovely Ting?”
“Pretty good, thank you.” Neil was one of the millions of men who found Ting devastatingly attractive. Kai was used to it. “Have you found an apartment yet?”
“Yes—at last.”
“Good.” Kai knew that Neil had been looking for a better place to live. He also knew that Neil had found one and moved in, and he knew the address and phone number. He also knew the identities and backgrounds of all the other residents of the building. The Guoanbu kept close track of foreign agents in Beijing, especially the American ones.
Kai paid for the breakfast and the two men left the restaurant. Neil headed for the embassy, walking, and Kai hailed a cab.
* * *
North Korea’s demand for emergency aid was discussed at a small high-powered meeting called by the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party. The department’s headquarters, at No. 4 Fuxing Road in the Haidian District, was smaller and less impressive than the Foreign Ministry but more powerful. The director’s office overlooked the Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution, which had a giant red star on its roof.
Kai’s boss, Minister for State Security Fu Chuyu, took Kai with him. Kai guessed that Fu would have preferred to leave Kai behind but did not have at his fingertips all the facts about the crisis in North Korea and was afraid of looking foolish. This way he could call on Kai for any details—and blame Kai for any gaps.
