Not of course that either Chong or I would have any chance of using stealth, of getting anywhere; I was just analyzing incoming data: visual, acoustic, tactile, olfactory, because at some time we would have to make an attempt to get away from this man, this soldier, this strong-bodied sergeant in his warm greatcoat, who was eyeing me from underneath the red star oh his cap as if I were something he'd found on a rubbish dump.
I didn't like him.
'Chong. Tell him I want to put my coat on.'
Translation.
'He says you can. He wants to know all about you. I give him the story you told me, okay?'
'Yes.'
Gooseflesh. It was too late to do anything if Chong hadn't tested this man to make sure he didn't understand English. But he must have done that. I was to expect, if we remember, professional procedures from anyone Pepperidge would send in. The director in the field, one of his calibre, can ask for blind faith from his executive, sometimes, many times, where the difference between life and death is on the cards.
I put my parka back on while the sergeant watched me; then he walked over to Chong, not turning his back on me, walking sideways a little, keeping me within the periphery of his vision field where the eye detects only movement. He held the big gun level, aimed at Chong's diaphragm, and they began talking.
It wasn't conversation. The sergeant had this gutteral bark, loud and unpleasant to the ear. His squat body jerked forward sometimes from the waist, to put emphasis on what he was saying. Chong looked relaxed, arms hanging, head angled forward by a degree — I liked that too: he wasn't on the defensive, had the confidence of a man who can do no wrong.
'Ta zai ze cheli ganshao?'
Why was I with him in the truck, perhaps, if I were a tourist.
'Ta shige dizhixuejia. Dui kuang chan you xingqu.'
I am not normally worried by guns, for several reasons. They're often held by amateurs, who don't know they should keep their distance when they're using them as a threat, and then it's only a matter of how fast you can move before they can fire. A gun also allows false confidence, and that can be fatal, has been, in my own experience, fatal to those who have held a gun on me. So normally they don't worry me, except that I don't like the bang they make: I am by nature a quiet soul.
This man, though, worried me, with his gun. He wasn't an amateur, and even with a thing this size he was keeping his distance. There was no question of whether Chong or I could move fast enough to make a strike before he could fire. Nor was the gun giving him any feeling of false confidence. He was a professional soldier, trained in the armoury and at the butts, trained to man a roadblock and conduct an interrogation of enemy prisoners.
We got these. Chong, lifting his hands off the steering wheel, dropping them back. But our hands weren't going to be enough. I would have liked to know what was in his mind, Chong's, as we stood here in the blinding light. He nursed a hate for these people, the people in uniform who took orders from the overlords, who themselves had thought fit to turn women into cattle and drive them behind trucks through the streets; but I could only hope that he could control it, his hate, and not let it reach flashpoint and tempt him to rush the gun.
He wouldn't of course do it without thinking: he wasn't mad. But he might let the idea simmer, might watch for a chance. That could be fatal. He might watch for a chance and see it suddenly and take it and get it wrong and go flying back with his feet coming off the ground and the smoke curling out of that thing and the echoes banging their way among the rocks and the people up there at the roadblock turning their heads, go and see what's happening with the sergeant down there, fatal, not just for Chong but for Bamboo, and for Dr Xingyu Baibing, and for me.
I'd have to speak to him, to Chong, if I could. You will not make a move. I repeat: you will not make a move. That is an order. There exists, within the structure of command laid out by the Bureau, a form of ranking that is designed not with any kind of military pecking order in mind, but the concept of safety. It is safer, when a shadow executive is in the field with other people — support, couriers, contacts, sleepers — for this ranking to be recognized and observed, so that everyone knows where he is and what he can do and above all who calls the shots.
'Dao chehoumian qu!'
In any given situation it's the executive who calls the shots, and if this man Chong has been trained in Bureau lore and mores he would know this, and observe them.
'We got to walk to the rear of the truck, okay? He didn't go for our stories. He says you must be a journalist.'
Merde.
I said: 'Don't do anything.'
He didn't answer. I didn't expect him to. Any kind of exchange between us would sound like connivance, and the sergeant would be onto it straight away, no talking, so forth, and that would make things more difficult for us. It was all we had left to save ourselves with, if we could: communication.
More shouting.
'C'mon over here. He wants us side by side.'
I walked past the big radiator, feeling its heat on the side of my face.
We couldn't do anything with heat.
'Not too close, okay?'
I stopped, turning my back to the light, and heard the sergeant's boots crunching across the shale away from us. He was getting into the jeep. It occurred to me that it could suddenly be over, that he'd positioned us close together in the beams of the headlights so that he could pump out a dozen or so shells from the assault gun and then drive away, they tried to sell some kind of story about being geologists but I think they were just a couple of underground revolutionaries and we're better off without people like that, send someone to take the truck in to the barracks, leave them where they are, because that was the way of life in the People's Republic of China now, you wave a placard with the word Democracy on it and they'll shoot you dead, you kneel on a prayer mat and they'll burn your monastery from under you, these are the dark ages in a totalitarian country and if you try to run counter to the requirements of the state then the state will require you to be shot, so it is written so it shall come to pass-
'Zhou!'
'Walk,' Chong said.
The engine of the jeep was throttled up a little, and there was more shouting.
'We keep in front of the headlights.'
Began walking, the jeep behind us, its tires crunching across the ground.
'Chong. Don't do anything.'
'You got it.'
'If I think there's anything we can do, I'll give you time.'
More shouting.
'Keep in front of the headlights.'
The jeep was turning in a curve and we moved with it, our shadows going ahead of us, reaching into the darkness beyond the range of the headlight beams.
'Sure, okay, you'll give me time.'
The spread of light turned in a half-circle and we turned with it, walking, the four of us, two men and two shadow men, across the roof of the world.
We couldn't do anything with shadows.
The truck came into view again and we approached it from the rear, and there was another shout.
'Halt,' Chong said.
Boots rang on metal, then a third shadow moved in as the sergeant walked into the light.
Orders.
'You stay right where you are, okay?'
Chong went forward to the tailboard and hit the pins clear of the posts and it swung down, banging against the stops.
The sergeant walked past us at a distance of fifteen feet with the gun trained on us; then he climbed the side of the truck and sat on the roof of the cab facing the rear. High on the big truck, he was above the full glare of the beams.