She shrugged. “A mistake.”
“Sorry to hear.” He gestured at the closed door. “What now?”
“I’m going to get us out of here.”
“Really?”
“We’ll see. I’ll be trying. Just stick with me.”
The door opened and they watched two men and a woman come into the room.
Qi began to speak in Chinese, quietly but insistently. The three visitors listened to her without reaction at first, but then the two men pursed their lips and looked annoyed, and the woman’s face reddened. Fred wondered what Qi was saying to cause this. Then their three visitors began to look concerned. They weren’t looking at each other. It occurred to Fred that he should try to look dangerous, but in truth he had nothing. It was easier to mirror their worried look.
Eventually one of the men raised a hand and said something, clearly trying to stop Qi from talking. She didn’t stop. Then after a couple more minutes she did, ending with something emphatic and definitive. The whole time her voice had stayed low, but she had spoken quickly and intently, and had sounded as if she were lecturing them about something they should already have known.
Their captors led them out of the room and along another hallway, then down a jetway and into a small jet. They all strapped in and after ten minutes took off. It felt like slow motion to Fred after his landing on the moon, he even worried for a moment that they were going too slowly to achieve lift-off. But the plane rose in the usual manner, and then they were looking down on scrubby steep hills.
“Did it work?” Fred asked Qi.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I think it might have. We’ll find out.”
After about an hour the plane descended over a vast city of lights, into an airport that as they descended seemed to spread all the way to the horizon.
Their jet landed and trundled over to another jetway. They were led through an airport that reminded Fred of the spaceport they had come from: giant steel-girded rooms, glass walls—everything vast, utilitarian, grim.
They were led around customs by way of a side door, and after that were waved along by guards who resolutely ignored them. Through the baggage claim area, then again through closed doors to one side. Then onto a small bus. They got in the backseat and strapped in next to each other. The three people who had been with them from the spaceport looked into the little bus, then stood back. Off the bus went. It seemed to be driving itself; the man sitting in the front appeared to be some kind of conductor or guard. It was dusk. The world reduced to lines of headlights and taillights.
Qi leaned forward to talk to this man. She seemed to be asking questions. The monitor said nothing.
“Where are we going?” Fred asked her.
She didn’t bother to reply.
They got into traffic, slowed down. Fred looked out the window. He had traveled on business to Beijing three times, but that was no help now in determining whether they were there or not.
“What did you say to them?”
“I told them how much trouble they were headed for.”
“And so?”
“I think they might be getting rid of us.”
“Getting rid of us? That sounds bad.”
“We’ll see.”
“Should we jump out?” They were stopped in traffic at the moment.
“We’re locked in.”
“So you think this guy will let us go?”
“The van will do it, but yes. I think he’s just along to make sure everything goes okay.”
Fred shrugged. “Whatever you say.”
“Yes.”
An hour of stop-and-go traffic. Then one sign had English words on it under the big Chinese characters: SECOND RING ROAD. They crossed this broad boulevard. Qi began talking to their conductor.
Finally they stopped. The conductor said something, the door locks thunked.
“Come on,” Qi said.
“What’s happening?” Fred said.
“Just come on.”
They got out of the van and walked across the road, then over a small old stone bridge that spanned a narrow canal, which ran in a stone-sided cleft deep below street level. On the sidewalk paralleling the canal, a crowd strolled in the chill starry night. Qi looked into each of the glass walls fronting the clubs set back from the road. Small bands inside these clubs played music to tightly packed crowds. These venues alternated with restaurants that were stuffed with patrons focused on hot pots and talk. Qi kept Fred on the restaurant side of her, ducking her head down. There were security cameras over most of the doorways. Fred saw there were more such little black boxes hanging like fruit from the branches of the gnarled old trees overhanging the sidewalk.
“Where can we go?” he said uneasily.
“There’s a waffle shop I know,” she said.
“Won’t the cameras there recognize you?”
“They run a fake feed into their camera.”
“How do they get away with that?”
“Gifts. There are people who go there who don’t want to be seen, and people who will take gifts to keep them not seen.”
“How near is it?”
“Just around the corner here.”
“Good. So look, what happened back there? Why did they let us go?”
“They were scared.” She laughed grimly. “There’s no one who wants to be caught in possession of me. They would pay too high a price. That’s what I told those people. I reminded them what would happen to them if they were the ones who had me when my father’s people located me.” Her look turned dark, Fred shuddered to see it. He understood suddenly that this was a person from a different world. Then she glanced at him and laughed again. “No one likes to think some old Ming torturer might grab their family and take them away.”
“Could that happen?”
“What, do you think torture doesn’t happen? Aren’t you an American?”
“What do you mean?”
She stared at him. “I guess I mean that you’re good at ignoring it.”
“I don’t know.”
“Obviously not.”
“But I saw that you scared them.”
“Easy to do. No one wants to cross my father.”
“He’s powerful?”
“Yes. And it’s not just him. Although he is used to getting his way. But his security team, and the whole security apparatus at the top, they’re dangerous people.”
“Is that why you went to the moon?”
“I wanted to get some distance, yes. And I did. While I was there I slipped away from my security too. That was a lot harder than getting away from these people who just had us.”
“You’re good at getting away?”
“Pretty good. Lots of practice, anyway.”
“How come?”
“I was brought up in a Swiss prison.”
“A Swiss prison?” Fred repeated, startled.
“A boarding school,” she explained, looking amused at his literal-mindedness. “Very secure.”
“And yet you got out.”
“Three times.”
“Impressive.”
“Well, I was caught twice.”
“I guess it must be hard to get away these days,” Fred ventured. “Like now. There are cameras everywhere.”
“But their pictures go different places. The system is balkanized.”
“What if these cameras send our pictures to the wrong place?”
“They don’t work as well at night. Only the ones that check your gait, so change your usual stride.”
“How long can that work?”
“Not long. But we have some friends to help us.”
“Us?” Fred asked. “You’re helping me?”
She stopped, so he did too. He watched the sidewalk as she regarded him. “Jiang told me what happened to you,” she said. “You were used to kill someone, from what he said. So if the people who used you for that get hold of you again, they’ll probably kill you.”