Fong lifted the mattress and quickly established that there was nothing of interest there. He pulled it aside and went through the bedding and the pillows and the box spring. Nothing ripped, nothing opened, nothing there. Tossing them all in a corner, he knelt and ran his hands over the floorboards. They had probably been put down more than two hundred, maybe three hundred, years ago. It would be a clever man indeed who could prise one up and not leave telltale marks. There were none.
He reassembled the bed and quickly headed into the bathroom. More cosmetics than Fong would have thought. Some he couldn’t identify but nothing hidden there.
He returned to the bedroom. He went through the clothing roughly. Nothing.
He tilted the lamp and unscrewed the bulb. Nothing.
He stacked things on the bed so he could reach the overhead fixture. Nothing.
He pulled off the faceplates of the electrical outlets. Nothing.
He pulled off the back of the television and fished around inside, careful not to touch the capacitor. Nothing.
He went into the bathroom and threw water on his face. When he looked up, he saw himself in the mirror – older than he thought of himself. Older than he knew he was. Behind him in the mirror were Geoff’s cosmetics, kept in a rack in the shower.
Fong returned to the bedroom. The tapes, the books and the computer.
He sat on the bed and grabbed the hardcover books that were on the night table beside Geoff’s Arden edition of Hamlet. Geoff was evidently reading three novels by a man named le Carre. John le Carre. A Frenchman named John? Fong flipped over the jacket of the first book and read about Mr. le Carre’s background. An English spy turned writer. Fong couldn’t quite see a Chinese man doing that. Maybe that’s why the guy changed his name when he wrote.
Fong put the three novels on the bed in front of him. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Our Game and The Secret Pilgrim. He opened the first one and looked at the title page. Geoff had said something to him about tinkers and tailors. Fong remembered. That’s what Geoff had said about the two guards in the first scene of his Hamlet. But he had said nothing about soldiers and spies. He held the book upside down and riffled through the pages. Nothing fell out. He then leafed through it. A few things were underlined, but it quickly became clear that Geoff was noting syntax and language usage, not actual subject matter as none of the underlined sections seemed to relate to any other.
In The Secret Pilgrim, Geoff had underlined a lot of the dialogue between a character called Ned and a man who endured capture by the Khmer Rouge in order to rescue his daughter. But it was in the third book, Our Game, that Geoff’s slashing notes were everywhere. It was getting late. Fong turned on the light, sat back on the bed and began to read. Twenty pages in he saw Geoff’s note: I’m Tim!!!
Our Game tells the story of a middle-aged British spy – Tim – who loses his younger wife to another spy who betrays his country and ends up fighting alongside the Chechens in the former Soviet Union. The final image is of Tim picking up a rifle and joining the rebel band – at long last “doing” something with his life. Fong finished skimming the book as the sun rose. Geoff’s notes were all over the text – some underlinings, some in the margins, many right across the print itself. All were urgent, emphatic. Fong found it sentimental. Dangerously romantic. So unlike the Geoff he thought he knew.
“I am Tim. . . . So, what romantic calling were you on, Geoff?” Fong said aloud. Not surprisingly, no one answered.
Fong got off the bed, stretched, then phoned the office and left a message for Captain Chen to get in touch with him. He snapped his cell phone shut and looked back at the room. His eyes lit on the important remaining items: Geoff’s copy of Hamlet, the VHS tapes and the laptop. He sat at the small desk and opened Geoff’s copy of Hamlet. He was surprised how few notes were there. Fu Tsong’s Shakespearean scripts had been a flurry of personal impressions and questions. Geoff’s notes, written in a tight and concise hand so unlike the slashed comments in Our Game, appeared only four times in the entire text.
The first note was at the end of act one where Hamlet has received the information from the ghost about his father’s death. There, Geoff wrote: Could it be that Hamlet now has direction in his life – is happy? The second was in the Polonius scene with Reynaldo where Geoff penned the simple word: Spy. The third was in act four when the story of Hamlet’s escape from the plotting of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is told. There, Fong was astounded to see Geoff’s note: Switch! Should I tell Fong? And Geoff’s last note was in the final act upon Hamlet’s death: Suicide? Suicide as failure? Suicide as success?
A knock on Geoff’s door brought Fong to his senses. Chen entered, surprised to see that Fong had clearly spent the night there.
“What’s the time?”
“Just before eight, sir.”
“Contact Li Chou. Get his people in here. Arrange a full meeting – Lily, Li Chou and his people, our guys – one o’clock.”
Fong stood up.
“Did you find a suicide note, sir?”
Fong looked at Captain Chen, “I don’t know. Maybe in its own way, I did.” He headed toward the door.
“Where are you going, sir?”
“Home. I need a few hours of sleep before the meeting. Hand me those videotapes and notepads. You work on Mr. Hyland’s laptop, Chen. I want to know everything that’s on there.”
Chen pulled out a small rectangular electronic gadget of some sort, detached a metal stick and touched the screen with it.
“What’s that, Chen?
“It’s called a PalmPilot, sir. It’s really quite useful.”
Fong nodded although he had no idea what something called a PalmPilot could be useful for.
“It keeps notes, sir, calendars and the like. And it can even be programmed to monitor radio signals.” Fong smiled and nodded but thought, “Fine, Chen, you use that thing. For me, I’ll use a datebook to keep appointments and a radio to get radio signals.”
At his apartment, Fong was grateful that the water had come back on. While the small gas water heater attached to the shower did its work, he returned to the bedroom and slid one of the tapes into his VHS adaptor then into his machine. He punched the On button. A program called Six Feet Under came up. Fong watched, trying hard not to yawn. When he got the gist of the show, he let the tape run and headed toward the shower.
The water was scalding hot but Fong didn’t care. He put his face up to the pounding heat and allowed it to punish him in the hope it would take away his weariness. Over the sound of the water and the gas heater, he heard the VHS tape droning on. Between gurgles, he caught snippets of dialogue. Something about a cat. Something about these tits cost a fortune. Something about do you know who this was?
Fong reached for the soap and turned off the water to conserve gas. He began to lather up. Then stopped. No sound was coming from the VHS tape. Maybe this was an M.O.S. section. He smiled when he remembered Fu Tsong’s explanation of the term: “Mit out sound, Fong.”
“Mit out sound, what language is that?”
“Well, it’s English with a German accent. Lots of the early Hollywood directors were German and mit is the German word for with. So without sound became mit out sound. M.O.S. – and it stuck.”
Then a loud cackle of a microphone being tapped came from the VHS tape.
Geoff’s voice said, “Don’t do that.” Then, “Three, two, one – play.”
A beat of silence.