"Thank you, Vice Director Han." She folded her freckled hands.
Through his well-crusted, many-lacquered shell, layered on through the childhood of world war, revolution, then the antirightist movements, the Great Famine, the Chaos, then fi-nally the death of Mao, the gradual normalcy, through it all he felt a brief scratching flare of compassion for her dislocation. He noted this and pushed it aside. There would always be wildcat foreigners in China, running from their lives. There always had been, ever since the arrival of the first Jesuit missionaries five hundred years before. He had never understood it. But he was a busy man, with no time for reflection.
"Wish you good luck," he said brusquely, and ended the meeting.
After he heard the elevator door open for them, Vice Director Han pressed a small metal button, discreetly positioned on the side of his desk. Instantly his secretary appeared. She wore Western-style jeans, a glossy synthetic blouse, and a bright red false flower in her up-to-date, overpermed hair. "Sir?" She shut the door.
"First, get Commander Gao on the line. PLA, Beijing District Command." Commander Gao was his brother-in-law, but this relationship was not something he would mention to his secretary.
"Commander Gao? Oh. Yes, sir." She scribbled.
"I think we’ll have to have these waiguoren followed."
She nodded, pen poised.
"Next, contact Professor Kong Zhen at Huabei University. Archaeology Department. Tell him to come up to Beijing in the next few days." Kong Zhen was the vice director’s cousin.
"Yes."
"Last." He raised his eyes to meet hers. "Start a file on this interpreter, Mo Ai-li. I want to know her background, who she’s worked for, what her habits are. We don’t usually put translators under surveillance. But this one"-he stared out the window at the honking, squealing flood of traffic-"there’s something strange about her. When you see two faces, beware of three knives. Isn’t it so? She hides something beneath her surface. Yes. I’m sure of it."
2
Alice and Adam slid into a vinyl booth in the coffee shop of the Empire Hotel. They had spent the afternoon walking around the Forbidden City, now acres of empty, windswept, magnificent courtyards and silent palace chambers. The Great Within. Then the two Americans had plunged back through the massive gates into the congested, overpopulated present, walking north through the chaotic, shouting shopping district of Wangfujing. As they walked Alice explained that this had been the Tartar City, the sector of the Manchus and the place where the artisans and merchants and bureaucrats who had served the court had lived and worked. She told how the intersections and alleyways had often been named for the outdoor markets they’d housed-here was the place where for centuries decorative lanterns were sold for a particular autumn festival, there was the lane where a hundred years ago one purchased freshly caught water-insects as feed for prized pet goldfish. Adam Spencer tried to take all this in, but to him the city was a seething, homogeneous labyrinth of people walking, pedaling, driving, buying, carrying, talking, eating. And if he raised his eyes from the human herd, then as far as he could see there was nothing but clear white sunlight washing over the graded steppes of gray-tiled roofs.
"But behind those gates," she told him, pointing down one of the hutongs into the warren of stone walls, "the courtyard houses are still there. Very quiet. Very sane."
"Sane? Really?" To him, used to working alone in the desert, Beijing was an exhausting crush.
Then they pushed through the hissing doors of the Empire Hotel, and in that instant entered an abruptly different world: a three-story marble lobby with a waterfall and a massive glass-shard chandelier like a small planet hanging in the center. Uniformed staff members walked efficiently back and forth through the barely perceptible hum of air-conditioning.
They turned into the coffee shop, legs aching pleasantly. "A beer?"
"Great."
"Two Tsingtaos," he told the waitress. "This is bizarre," he said, staring at the waterfall. "It could be L.A."
She laughed. "Most of my clients love it here."
"You’re kidding." He raised his eyebrows.
"They hate being away from home, hate what’s foreign. They prefer to spend as much time as they can pretending they’re not here."
"Unlike you," he observed.
She smiled.
"So where do you live? Not the Minzu."
"No, I’m based at a smaller guesthouse. It’s one of the old ones, a compound, with courtyards. I like it a lot-even though the utilities are, shall we say, unreliable. But I travel. And when I’m working I move to the client’s hotel, so I can enjoy the amenities."
"And keep the other place? Nice."
She shrugged. "It works."
He picked up the menu. "I bet you don’t eat like this, though."
"Definitely not."
"Neither do I." He snapped the menu shut and gave her a good-natured challenge with his eyes. "During this job, I want you to make sure that every meal we eat is Chinese-absolutely local-the weirder the better. Okay?"
"You’re on."
"Good." He opened his notebook and wrote it down, as if it were a contract point and he planned to hold her to it. "Tell me, Alice. What made you decide to learn Chinese?"
"I guess I always wanted to." She closed her eyes. As a child, long before she had known her fate lay in China, when all she’d known was she needed another world to which she could escape, she had made up a private language for her diary. For no one would she translate. This had been her first ticket out. Then she got to Rice University, and found Chinese, and it had been so much better. A door to an alternate self. This self was another Alice, not the childhood Alice: capable, free in the world, independent.
Their bottled beer came, trickling ice-sweat, and each took a long drink. "It’s a relief to have a client like you," she admitted.
"Oh?"
"Most of my jobs-selling oilfield equipment. Distributing peanut butter. Bartering intermediate chemicals for finished compounds. Once in a while it’s something fun. Last year a company that arranges religious tours to remote monasteries hired me to ride the route ahead of time and make sure all the rural buses were functioning. That wasn’t bad. But I don’t meet too many outside people over here who are like you, who are"-she searched for the word-"open minded. Most Westerners seem to look right through China. They don’t even see what’s in front of them." She shrugged, drinking her beer, and he grinned at her. She liked his grin. He was smart, he had a nice human quality despite his oddities. For one thing, he appeared to wear a clean version of the same outfit every day: jeans and a blue chambray shirt. He must have three, four, five sets of the same thing, she thought. Strange. Still, we could be friends. I need friends. I hardly know any outside people in Beijing these days.
Alice had once had a lot of expat friends, but they were all either gone, or married, or had children; nobody’s life now matched hers. And they clung so to their Westernness, their imported newspapers, their Sunday touch-football games in the diplomatic compound, weekly trips to McDonald’s. Alice had drifted away. She spent most of her time with Chinese now, trying to fit in.
"What about you," she said. "You have a family?"
"I’m divorced." He swallowed. It still sounded strange. Divorce was a dark bridge behind him, a bad dream, something he’d never expected. Though he should have expected it. He’d waited so long to get married-until he was almost forty -and then he’d chosen too quickly. Ellen was fifteen years younger and not really ready to settle. There was always something partial and half committed between them. But two years into their marriage she had given birth to Tyler and then, finally, Spencer had known what real love was. With Tyler there was nothing he would not give, no sand-and-grit play-ground on which he would not push a swing for hours, no Saturday cartoon he would not sit through. Ellen complained that he spoiled the child. Maybe he did. But he gave love, and got it back, in a form so unconditional that he could not even bear to go away-to a dig in the desert, say-without a worn piece of baby clothing that carried Tyler’s smell. This was a rapture he’d never known with any other person.