“A room-to-room call,” Detective Lenich commented. “It was around five-forty. No one picked up. It proves only one thing. Little Huang must have stepped out of the room by that time. Incidentally, that also rules out Shasha as a suspect.”
They then discussed the delegation activity for the next day. Lenich thought the Chinese writers had better remain in the hotel, but Chen said that they had been complaining. It would be hard to keep them in for another long frustrating day.
“Let’s go to the Arch,” Catherine suggested. “It’s close to the hotel. If there is any new development, Detective Lenich can come over.”
Lenich and Chen left her room around ten-thirty. She walked them to the door with a wan smile. It had been a long, exhausting day, and she looked pale in the corridor light. Chen then accompanied the American cop to the hotel’s front gate.
Back in his room, he found several fax pages about Little Huang from the Chinese Writers’ Association. The information from the official channels showed nothing suspicious in his background. He didn’t start working for the association immediately after graduation; he was assigned to teach a middle school. He got the job at the Writers’ Association when another interpreter suddenly quit. He was reliable and easy to get along with; though not a Party member, he was given the opportunity to serve as interpreter for delegations visiting abroad. This was Huang’s third trip out of China. The last page of the fax also detailed a change in the arrangements for Little Huang’s family’s trip to the U.S. His father had suffered a severe heart attack upon learning the news.
There was also a fax from Fang, his former schoolmate at the Beijing Foreign Language University. It provided more background information about Huang in his college years. A hardworking student from a poor family in Anhui Province, he had worked as a TA for a professor and as a part-time English tutor over weekends. In his student years, Huang hardly had any time for political activities. “He also liked poetry,” Fang added in conclusion, “like you. I think that’s why he went to work for the Writers’ Association.”
Around eleven-thirty, a call came from Catherine.
“Sorry to phone you so late, Mr. Chen,” she said. “I hope you’re not in bed yet.”
“No. I’m not. I thought about calling you too, but a fax came in.”
“I just wanted to double-check our schedule. Eight-thirty tomorrow morning, right?”
“Yes, eight-thirty. Down in the lobby.”
“It’s the first interpreter-escort experience for me. I don’t want to let our Chinese writers down.”
“You are so conscientious.”
“Detective Lenich is an experienced investigator. Don’t worry. Whatever I can do, let me know.” She added, “It’s been a hectic day. Don’t stay up too late.”
“No, I won’t. You take good care of yourself too.”
Nothing but business talk between a Chinese delegation head and an American interpreter. Both knew their telephone lines might be tapped.
Still, she didn’t have to make the call.
Afterward, he looked out of the window, thinking of a Tang dynasty poem Ezra Pound had also translated. He might include it in his talk on the translation of classical Chinese poetry, if he was going to give another one during the remaining days of the visit.
23
IT’LL BE A HECTIC day, Catherine awoke thinking, as if still echoing last night’s conversation, in the company of Chen.
But it was too early. Alone, in her hotel room, she did not want to get up immediately. It was sort of an indulgence to let her mind wander, like a horse unbridled for a short moment, before she braced herself for the day’s work.
She wondered what Chen was doing at the moment, on the same floor, in the same hotel.
She had heard about Chen’s visit before his arrival in the U.S. The CIA had approached her. The unexpected appointment of Chen must have appeared suspicious to them, more so because the change came at the last minute. The CIA was well aware of Chen’s background and his work on an important anticorruption case, which was further complicated by Xing’s application for political asylum. They wondered whether Chen was really here on an untold mission under cover of the literature conference. The Beijing authorities could just have easily chosen somebody else for the delegation.
She hadn’t told anything to the CIA. She didn’t have anything to tell. Since their difficult yet memorable joint investigation in Shanghai, they had barely been in contact with each other, both being aware of their positions.
In China, they had talked about a reunion in the U.S. She had been looking forward to it. So had he, she believed. But when he did come over, he never called her. Busy, understandably so, with a government delegation under him, but not too busy to phone-unless he really was engaged in a special mission. Still, she had expected to hear from him. Even when he arrived in St. Louis, except for a silent message on her answering machine, she’d heard nothing. She didn’t really blame him, but his priorities were obvious.
What had happened to him since their parting in Shanghai, she didn’t know. Smooth sailing in his political career, she supposed. His delegation position spoke for itself. She believed, however, that he had got the position on merit. If Beijing had wanted him to work on the Xing case here, a much better cover should have been arranged. In fact, the CIA learned about his investigation by reading about it in the Chinese newspapers.
Nor did she know anything new about his personal life. He had a girlfriend from a high-ranking cadre family in Beijing, but the relationship was described as “not exactly working out.” On the immigration form, he had still circled himself as single. Then she checked herself, sitting up on the bed and hugging her knees against her chin. She was a marshal and assigned to a homicide case here.
She moved to the window. Looking out, she couldn’t see the U.S. Marshals office building, which wasn’t far from the hotel. This was her city, the streets not yet jammed with the traffic, hardly a pedestrian in sight. Those mornings in Shanghai, strolling on the Bund, seemed so long ago, irrecoverably blurred. A cloud was riding across the sky, steady in its direction.
They had worked together on an anti-illegal immigration case in China, and came to know each other with mutual admiration. But their work came to a conclusion, and they parted, as in the poem he had read to her, rubbing her strained ankle, in the ancient Suzhou garden, “grateful, and glad / to have been with you, / the sunlight lost on the garden.” It was a moment they’d shared and lost. So that’s about it, she told herself again.
When her boss had wanted her to join the delegation as an interpreter-escort, it wasn’t exactly a surprise. She wasn’t so sure, however, about the triple task the CIA specified: finding out Chen’s real mission, helping to solve the homicide, and preventing anything else from happening to the delegation.
The first part was practically impossible. Whatever the circumstance of their meeting, she hardly expected him to give her a straightforward answer. He was a conscientious Chinese cop, and a Party cadre-no mistake about it. As he had quoted from Confucius, there are things a man can do, and there are things a man cannot do.