An American Spy (35 page)

PART FOUR

PERPETUAL REVOLUTION

MONDAY, JUNE 2 TO

TUESDAY, JULY 1, 2008

1

Among the surprises that came at Xin Zhu over those weeks, Liu Xiuxiu’s stellar performance was perhaps the greatest. He’d brought her on with confidence, sensing in her a natural-born operative, yet he’d known her so briefly that, as soon as she and He Qiang had flown to America, he began to experience doubts. As with the killing of the Tourists, once things were set in motion, doubts only served to interfere with his work, so he set them aside as he dealt with more immediate problems.

Time, for example. He’d been given two weeks to take care of the American problem, but by the second committee meeting on June 2, three weeks before Yevgeny Primakov’s death, he’d only just gained control of Alan Drummond, and Liu Xiuxiu’s seduction of Stuart Jackson was still in its initial phases. When asked how much more time he needed, Zhu made a show of thinking about this, and said, “For progress? Two more weeks. For a definite end? A month, hopefully. Perhaps a month and a half.”

No one spoke for a few seconds. The men examined their laps, the walls, the carpet. Only Sun Bingjun watched Zhu, a light smile playing in the corner of his mouth, as if he were musing over a morning spent with the bottle. This possibility terrified Zhu, for Sun Bingjun had turned out to be his greatest ally.

Wu Liang raised his hands in mock exasperation. “I suppose it’s time for a vote, but beforehand, I would like to remind the committee what Xin Zhu has done when given an abundance of freedom. He has murdered wholesale, and he has saddled good men with such a level of suspicion that one chose to end his own life. I have to wonder how many more corpses we’ll be faced with after another month.”

Sun Bingjun shifted in his chair. “I, on the other hand, have to wonder how many Chinese citizens will become corpses if Xin Zhu is
not
allowed to continue his investigation. I would happily trade the lives of a few Americans for the safety of Olympic crowds.” He paused to let that self-evident truth sink in. “We all know how intelligence works. Xin Zhu may have nothing for three weeks, and then the next day it could all come in a great flood. Let’s not handcuff Xin Zhu.”

The vote was split along predictable lines, 3–2 for giving Xin Zhu whatever time he needed to complete his work unhindered.

This success filled him with pleasure, though the feeling was short-lived. Hector Garza, a.k.a. José Santiago, was spotted in Moscow, and at the same time the Tourist named Tran Hoang entered South Korea—at least, his passport crossed the border—and then disappeared. Then, on Monday, June 9, on his way to Cambodia to meet with Uighur exiles to further the conversation Leticia had begun with them the previous month in Beijing, Alan Drummond skipped his connecting flight in Seattle and vanished in a rental car. Cursing himself, Zhu called Drummond throughout the day, realizing that if he simply
disappeared
, there would be nothing he could really do. You can’t threaten a man you can’t find. So it was a surprise when, the next day, Alan Drummond answered his phone. “What?”

“Where are you?”

“Tokyo. I’m heading out again within the hour.”

“What are you doing in Tokyo?”

“There was a change of plans. Get to Vancouver and start another path. I’m heading to London to meet with some Tibetans.”

“You should have told me.”

“Sorry, comrade,” Drummond said, sounding pleased with himself. “I told you these people are tricky. They’ll keep me in the dark until your head is on a stick. Even then, they probably won’t tell me what happened.”

Then, in London, he did precisely what Zhu had worried he might do—he vanished, leaving only one clue: the name Sebastian Hall. A disaster. He needed good news, and he needed it quickly, for Wu Liang and the committee were waiting for his progress reports.

The day after Zhu spoke for the first time to Milo Weaver, the good news finally came.

As per his request, from the moment of her arrival in Washington Liu Xiuxiu had been sending reports every four days, and perhaps out of a desire to please she wrote at length, giving not only the facts but her reflections on them, putting her inner world on display. Through these reports, he had watched her steady progress and, more importantly, how she gradually settled into her new world. Liu Xiuxiu had arrived on May 20 with He Qiang, and together they had met Sam Kuo, the embassy attaché, in a Dupont Circle–area club. There, Sam Kuo handed off keys to a nearby apartment and gave them a list of forthcoming events—charity dinners, political rallies, cultural nights—that would have a higher percentage of Washington movers in attendance: people like the senator, Nathan Irwin, and the retired CIA officer, Stuart Jackson, who kept his hand in the political pool. Decisions were made, and Sam Kuo arranged invitations for Liu.

Her public face had begun with a dinner for a charity funding research into leukemia, where she arrived as the guest of the embassy’s chief doctor. Neither of the targets were in attendance, but she mixed as best she could. Two nights later, though, on May 27, when she joined Sam Kuo himself at the Kennedy Center for a performance of the opera
Elektra
, they were both pleased to find Stuart Jackson in attendance, and without his wife. Jackson was the only one of the three conspirators that Kuo had a personal acquaintance with. “Luck is already on our side,” Liu Xiuxiu wrote. “He’s a tall man, stiff, white-haired, but proud of it. He’s intimate with religion. Not to presuppose too much, but this should not be difficult. Those with the most barriers don’t drop them in pieces; when they weaken their walls crumble completely.”

Xin Zhu worried at first that Liu Xiuxiu’s confidence was too expansive. She had, after all, built her reservoir of experience within the confines of mainland China. Only a rare bird would be able to master the nuances of another country in such a short time. Nevertheless, he had forgotten that most of her clients had been foreigners, and he had forgotten that she, like the rest of the world, already knew so much about American love and lust from the cinema. In a particularly philosophical report, she wrote, “I don’t imagine that Hollywood produces a perfect reflection of American relationships any more than some of our own films perfectly reflect the lives of working people. However, as with our own films, American audiences witness what they take as the proper rhythm of romance, and are changed by the experience. I’ve seen it in my clients; they think of real sex as something they saw in a pornographic film, something that has always been denied them, and only them. Likewise, Americans feel disappointed when serendipity and little cinematic miracles do not fill their relationships. It goes a way toward explaining the high rates of divorce in this country.”

She’d obviously spent a long time thinking about these things, and now she had a chance to put her theories to practical use. To make life easier for Jackson, she had given herself a Western name, Sue. To bring out his curiosity, she claimed to be a painter and filled her apartment with large, unsigned abstracts rented from an artist Sam Kuo knew.

Two days after the Kennedy Center, she ran into Jackson at a coffee shop near his Georgetown house. A smile, a modest laugh, and during their brief talk a hand on his arm—once, and briefly. A slipped confession: “I go weak in the presence of powerful men.” A note for the future: “My girlfriend and I are going to the Flashpoint next Wednesday to see a play—I don’t know what it is, but she swears it’ll be interesting.” Then, as she was leaving, “Sorry—I must have sounded stupid.” It was a statement that demanded his denial—but before he could protest, she fled the store, leaving him with the desire to see her again and clarify that she hadn’t sounded stupid at all.

That he actually showed up at the small theater on Wednesday, June 4, was almost too good to believe. Liu Xiuxiu had come with a Chinese American dancer, Sam Kuo’s mistress, and in the lobby, she pretended not to see Stuart Jackson until he was standing right next to her. He smiled and offered his hand. She took it and then leaned forward to accept his kisses on her cheeks—something Jackson had not planned to do, but could not deny her. She introduced her friend, who knew to smile and remain distant until, during a pause, she suggested that they have a drink after the show. “From what I’ve read about this play, we’ll need one.”

Jackson pursed his lips, considering this. “I may have to juggle some things to make it work.”

“Oh,
please
,” Liu Xiuxiu said, full of childlike eagerness.

The Bridge of Bodies
turned out to be a one-woman play about an immigrant’s return to her birthplace in Haiti, involving numerous costume changes, political commentary, and moments of magical realism that, as Kuo’s mistress had told them, required a postshow drink to digest properly. On their way to a bar, the friend’s phone rang, and she had to bow out—her boyfriend had returned early from Canada, she claimed, and was demanding her presence. “Tell him to come out and join us,” Stuart Jackson said, perhaps worried where this was heading.

“Oh, no. When he’s in this mood, he’s a bore.” As she backed away, she gave Liu Xiuxiu a significant wink.

Liu Xiuxiu did not broach any subjects of significance that first evening, and being, if not a politician, then of a political demeanor, Jackson knew how to charm a woman with questions rather than statements. She gave a story of her life involving immigrant parents who brought her, at ten, to Los Angeles, the strictures of a traditional upbringing, and her attempts to break free and swim in the currents of American life. “Optimism,” she said, smiling. “This is America’s gift to the world.”

Though she made it clear that she lived alone, she made no attempt to bring him back to her place. “If someone is sitting on a fence,” she explained to Zhu, “pushing never helps.” So the night ended chastely, them sharing a taxi to her place and her standing on the sidewalk, waving as the car took him home. He had her phone number, though she had made it a point not to ask for his.

Jackson called her on Monday the ninth, the same day Alan Drummond left for Seattle, and asked if she would like to have dinner with him on Wednesday. A quick check told Zhu that Jackson’s family was out of town for the week, and he passed that information back to Liu Xiuxiu. “This is good,” he told her during one of their rare telephone conversations.

“Yes,” she answered, then paused.

“What is it?”

“It’s too fast.”

“You said he likes you. You said you got along.”

“He does like me, but he’s also careful. He’s from the world of intelligence. I expected to have to run into him at the coffee shop again.”

“His family’s out of town. He sees it as his only chance.”

“Maybe,” she said, and he liked that, despite her confidence, she was suspicious of her successes. She was going to develop into an excellent agent.

It was on Wednesday, after dinner at a small French restaurant outside the Beltway, that she invited him up to her apartment for a drink. He seemed amused by her small place and confused by the paintings, which she refused to interpret for him. “Art is communication,” she told him, “and if it doesn’t communicate on its own, it’s a failure.” However, she could sense his excitement, having been welcomed into the bohemian art world, and when she poured him a second Scotch he said, “Would it be all right if I kissed you?”

She laughed at this, and when she saw the dismay in his face she said, “I’ve been waiting for you to kiss me ever since
Elektra.
”

He left in the morning with a bounce in his step. She could tell that this was new for him; he hadn’t realized how freeing it would make him feel. When she wrote out her report, she even noted that he was generous in bed, ensuring that her orgasm was taken care of before focusing on his own. Despite himself, Zhu thought of his own sex life with Sung Hui, wondering how she would report on him.

Jackson was busy all Thursday, but on Friday, after attending a reception, he arrived at her apartment at one o’clock in the morning, slightly drunk. They spent much of Saturday together, until he had to leave for rural Pennsylvania to join his family. On that same day, in London, Alan Drummond disappeared.

It was going amazingly well. Liu Xiuxiu had not yet broached the target subjects with him, but Zhu trusted her, and knew that this was an area that she understood better than he ever would. Jackson had, however, discussed some of the projects he was working on with various politicians and congressional committees. His role was adviser, he told her, for he had a breadth of experience “that these youngsters can’t even fathom. Sometimes I think that they’d sink if I wasn’t there to plug up the holes in their boats.” Then he mentioned that he even used his vast experience to advise on some project “that deals with issues related to China.”