“Why did you think he was an agent?” I said.
Tung smiled a little, but not much. “Why did you?”
There seemed to be nothing to say to that either. Tung, however, was waiting for an answer. I let him wait while a fat, heavy silence spread through the room.
“The premier’s most unhappy,” he said after a time, “Really? Why?”
“Because of you, Mr. Dye, and your organization which, I might add, fully lives up to its reputation for bungling. Really remarkable. The premier, of course, is just hopping mad. But I’ve said that, haven’t I?”
“Just what am I charged with?” I said.
“We’ll think of something.”
“I’m sure.”
“You should be. But to return to Li Teh. He told us that he thought you’d go as high as three thousand dollars a month. American. Did you?” When I didn’t say anything, Tung continued. “We offered to pay him something. Of course, we could never match your largesse, but we did offer him one thousand dollars a month (our variety) and the promise that he wouldn’t go to jail which was, I think you’ll agree since you’ve seen our jail, a rather enticing fringe benefit. And by the way, he told us all about you — how you used to meet in out of the way places in Hong Kong and so forth. Even gave us dates and times.”
“He talked a lot,” I said.
“We can be rather persuasive.”
“I can imagine.”
Tung rose and walked over to the window and looked out. He was silent for a time and I thought that he may have been counting the prisoners. With his back still to me, he said, “We’re going to ask your people for thirty million dollars.”
“You’ll never get it,” I said and helped myself to another cigarette.
“That’s our asking price,” he said, turning from the window. “We’ll settle for ten cents on the dollar. A million each for you and your two colleagues.” He lowered himself into his chair again, reached for one of the cigarettes, and this time he did smile. He had good teeth. “But the money’s not really important, of course.”
“Of course,” I said.
“What we really want is a letter of apology.”
“From whom?”
“From your Secretary of State. The premier was thinking of going directly to the White House, but he was dissuaded.”
“You won’t get anything,” I said.
“You think not?”
“I think not.”
“Well, let’s see what we have to offer,” Tung said and laid his cigarette in the tin tray so that he could count on the fingers of his right hand. “On the surface, we have the dead body of a Chinese spy; two insurance salesmen from here, and their managing director from Hong Kong. Minneapolis Mutual, isn’t it?”
“Minneapolis Mutual,” I said.
“That’s on the surface. Now beneath the surface we have the following interesting documentation.” He was using his fingers to count on again. “One, we have a tape recording of the conversation that took place last night in the hotel between you and your two colleagues, even that part where one of them was reassuring Li Teh that the lie detector wouldn’t hurt a bit. That’s one. I’ll play it for you, if you like.”
“No need,” I said and swore silently at Shoftstall for not checking the hotel room for bugs.
“Two, we have Peking’s file on you, Mr. Dye. Li Teh graciously provided us with a copy. Three, we have your tape recorder and the polygraph machine as exhibits D and E. You and your two colleagues, of course, are exhibits A, B, and C. The Peking dossier on you is, I suppose, exhibit F, which possibly could stand for failure. You did fail, didn’t you?”
“I don’t think I should count on a Christmas bonus this year.”
“Tell me something, Mr. Dye, does your organization, which I’ll call Minneapolis Mutual, if you insist, really put that much faith in the efficacy of the polygraph?”
“It would seem so, wouldn’t it?”
“And yourself, Mr. Dye?”
I shrugged. “It’s company policy.”
“A rather strange company and a rather strange policy.”
“It’s the new management,” I said.
Tung rose, tugged at his earlobe, and said, “I really have no more questions. I think I know as much about you as I need to, and even if I did have some questions, I’m sure that your answers would be totally unresponsive unless we used tactics which are far more primitive than the lie detector, but also more — oh, I suppose fruitful is as good a word as any.”
I got up, too, and helped myself to another cigarette. “Take the tin,” he said. “And here’re some matches.”
“Thanks,” I said. “How about a call to my embassy?”
“You don’t really expect me to say yes?”
“No, but I thought I’d ask.”
“We’ll be in touch with your embassy and also your ‘company.’” I could almost see the quotation marks around company.
“When?”
“Soon.”
The guards came and took me back to my cell. Four days later, despite what I considered to be strict self-rationing, I ran out of cigarettes and didn’t smoke until eighty-five days later when Carmingler bummed a pack for me from the pilot of the C-130 that flew us to San Francisco.
The only visitors that I had during those three months were the guards who brought me my bowls of soggy rice and doubtful fish each day. Once a photographer came to take my picture with an old 4 by 5 Speed Graphic. But that was all. I had nothing to read, nothing to look at, and no one to talk to other than myself.
Since the forty-watt light never went out I didn’t know whether it was day or night. They seemed to feed me at erratic times, but I wasn’t even sure of that. I came to realize that time indeed is relative and what I thought was an entire day could have been an hour and what I was sure was three hours could have been fifteen minutes. None of the time that I spent in that cell went quickly. Some of it just dragged by more slowly than the rest.
So I talked to myself and tried to remember stories and novels that I’d read. I rewrote them aloud. I exercised a lot, mostly push-ups and toe-touching and knee-bends and sit-ups and running in place. I wasn’t trying to keep in shape. I was trying to grow tired enough to sleep. I slept as much as possible and hoped that I would have nightmares. They gave me something new to think about.
When I wasn’t talking aloud or exercising or just sitting there staring at the wall, I searched for lice. My record kill was 126. I counted the dead ones carefully every day and then dumped them into the pail that served as a toilet. The guards emptied it daily, but I was never sure whether they did it in the morning or the evening. For all I knew, they emptied it promptly at midnight.
I didn’t shave or bathe for ninety days. I stunk. I couldn’t smell it myself, but I could tell that I did from the way that the guards wrinkled their noses when they brought me the food. They seldom looked at me and they never spoke. I tried to remember the Count of Monte Cristo and Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, whose title I had never fully appreciated until now. I tried to remember what they did to keep themselves busy and entertained and even amused. Apparently, I wasn’t as resourceful as they. The only thing that really amused me was killing lice.
On the ninetieth day the guards took me back up to Tung’s office. He wore tan slacks this time with another white shirt and a black and brown striped tie. He was down to three ball-point pens. He didn’t offer me a cigarette and he didn’t ask me to sit.
“Except for your beard you look well enough, Mr. Dye. A little ripe perhaps, but fit.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ll be released at midnight.”
“Tonight?”
“Tonight.”
“What time is it now?”