Though no one said anything, they all shifted, expressing their surprise through movement.
Sun Bingjun opened the folder on his lap. “The identity of her murderer can be set aside for the moment, but what cannot be ignored is something she had on her person when she died.” From the folder Sun Bingjun took out the letter, now dry and crisp, kept safe in a plastic sleeve. He held it up for all to see. “It was written, days before his death, by Bo Gaoli. In it, he identifies an American mole within Chinese security.”
More movement. Sun Bingjun ignored the reaction and began passing around stapled sheets of paper, photocopies of the letter. Zhu got up to receive one.
“Take a moment,” Sun Bingjun told everyone, then closed the folder in his lap. As the others began reading, he watched Zhu, who ignored the letter and tried to read Sun Bingjun’s face. There was nothing in there to read.
“Where did you get this again?” asked Feng Yi.
“From Hua Yuan’s corpse,” said Sun Bingjun. “The discoloration you see there is her urine.”
“A letter,” Yang Qing-Nian said, raising his voice. “A single letter? Who knows who wrote this?”
Wu Liang knew when to stay quiet.
Zhang Guo said, “I think, Sun Bingjun, that you should tell us exactly how you came across this letter.”
Zhu listened as Sun Bingjun quietly and patiently told his story. He began in reality, saying that Hua Yuan had called Xin Zhu about a letter, before diverging. “Hua Yuan told him that it had to do with Wu Liang. Zhu, rightly suspecting that his involvement would be viewed with suspicion, called me before going anywhere. I promised to meet him at her house. He waited for me to arrive, and we entered together.”
Zhu would have preferred if the old man had said he’d arrived first, but perhaps the surly Jade guards weren’t amenable to changing their record of Zhu’s entrance.
“We found her body in the kitchen,” Sun Bingjun continued, “and that’s when I noticed the letter in her pocket. I asked Xin Zhu to please remove it. Together, we read it in the dining room. I ordered Xin Zhu to leave the premises, because I wanted him involved as little as possible. I had my people clean up the mess. I’ve discussed the situation with Yang Xiaoming, and he asked that we perform a preliminary examination now before bringing him into it.”
Which was entirely predictable, thought Zhu. Yang Xiaoming, the head of the Supervision and Liaison Committee, wouldn’t want to touch this until it was set in stone.
“Unfortunately,” Sun Bingjun went on, “under the circumstances it’s impossible to leave Xin Zhu entirely out of the proceedings. He is the one who initially raised the worry of an American agent in our midst; it is he who has spent the past months warning us of our lethargy. And what have we given him for his efforts? Grief, largely. While we may believe we had reason, the fact remains that Xin Zhu is the only one qualified to establish if, and how, Comrade Wu Liang fits into the theory that Bo Gaoli apparently believed in before he was taken into custody by Wu Liang and, subsequently, died.”
By the time Sun Bingjun paused, Wu Liang looked sick. His eyes nearly crossed with the effort of his concentration as he stared at Sun Bingjun, then at Zhu. Passively, Zhu met his gaze but said nothing.
“Given this new evidence,” Sun Bingjun said, “I propose that we ask Xin Zhu for a report on his findings. Right now. Is this agreed?”
No one said a thing.
Sun Bingjun said, “To take a line from Wu Liang’s initial attempt to undermine Xin Zhu’s investigations, I don’t want to steer this particular boat. Please. Let us have a vote.”
Everyone wanted to listen to Zhu’s side of the story, including Yang Qing-Nian. Wu Liang abstained from voting, but after the vote he said, “May I say something?”
“Of course,” said Sun Bingjun.
Wu Liang shifted in his chair. He had folded the photocopied letter down the middle, and now he ran his fingernails along the crease, squeezing. “This charade will go on no matter what I say. I know this. For the record, though, I have been, and I remain, loyal to the People’s Republic. Like Xin Zhu, I have been worried about the prospect of an American agent, and it was only after serious thought that I decided the mole theory was an act of subversion by Xin Zhu, aimed in large part at me. We’ve seen how vindictive he is when personally attacked—the death of his son led to thirty-three American corpses—and so we have evidence that his vengeance is great. No matter how Comrade Sun Bingjun dresses this up, we all know that Xin Zhu has orchestrated today’s sham. Either out of vindictiveness or because he himself is an American tool throwing suspicion at his enemies. I don’t claim to know which, but I do intend to find out.”
They knew he was finished because he finally laid the folded letter on his knee and sighed. Sun Bingjun said, “Your comments are noted, but don’t assume I’m dressing anything up. I’m too old to stick my neck out for anyone I don’t trust implicitly.”
Wu Liang made no sign that he’d heard a thing.
“Xin Zhu,” Sun Bingjun said, nodding.
Zhu rubbed his nose, sat straighter, and began, “Comrades, I wish I was here under better circumstances, and with better news, but such are the times we live in that I’m still catching up to the facts as I understand them, and the picture they paint is disturbing.”
He began by rehashing his initial suspicions culled from the files of the Department of Tourism, the loose assemblage of intelligence that, when added up, pointed to an administrative mole. “There was a possibility,” he admitted, “that, instead of a single higher-level mole, we were dealing with several—five or more—informants. That, of course, is still a possibility, but with the other facts swarming around us now it seems an unnecessary contrivance.
“Let us return for a moment to our first meeting in this room. You’ll remember that Wu Liang told the sad tale that led to the suicide of Bo Gaoli in East Chang’an. I think we all found the story disturbing, none more than me, for I felt responsible. So, I visited Hua Yuan to find out what she knew. After a brief talk, I came away with three facts. One, that Bo Gaoli would not commit suicide. Hua Yuan made it clear to me that nothing—certainly not some minor indiscretion or the shame of being accused of something he hadn’t done—would provoke that. She said this not out of respect, you understand, but with a kind of disgust. This was not a quality she admired. Second, she told me that, when she was cleaning out her husband’s belongings, she found a box in a closet filled with cash. About three hundred thousand yuan. She had no idea where he’d gotten that kind of money, or why he would have kept it secret. The third matter of importance was that, on April 20, the day before he was picked up by Wu Liang, he was trying to get in touch with me, personally. I have verified this with phone records.”
They shifted, all of them, even Sun Bingjun.
“I never claimed to be a friend of Bo Gaoli. We were no more than acquaintances. So why, I wondered, would he have been seeking me out? I can come up with no reason but one: He knew that, five days earlier, I had sent around a memo claiming that there was a mole in the Ministry of Public Security. Other than that, there was no reason for Bo Gaoli to have me on his mind.”
Zhu paused, looking over the blank, passive faces staring back at him. Wu Liang’s was the only one directed elsewhere; he was examining the fading green paint on the wall.
“We all know, from Wu Liang’s own testimony, what followed. Wu Liang took Bo Gaoli into custody, and by the twenty-third Bo Gaoli was dead. He’d been in a cell for the previous three days, had no contact with the outside world, and, supposedly under round-the-clock guard, killed himself. I’m not going to waste your time with the problems in that narrative; just please note them.
“As I said before, I cannot claim to have really known Bo Gaoli, but I have every reason to believe that he had China’s best interests in mind. If that is true, then let’s consider a new narrative of that week in April. On Tuesday the fifteenth, I send my memo regarding the ministry turncoat. Bo Gaoli has been harboring suspicions of Wu Liang but has had no one to take those suspicions to. We all know that it is a rare administrator who will risk his career on unfounded accusations. By Friday the eighteenth, I had released my twelve-page list of compromised items from the Department of Tourism. Bo Gaoli, using that list, penned the letter each of you has, connecting his own suspicions of Wu Liang to a number of items. Bo Gaoli realized he had a potential partner in me. However, when he called on Sunday the twentieth, I wasn’t available.”
“What were you doing on Sunday the twentieth, Xin Zhu?” Yang Qing-Nian cut in.
“I was with my wife and, distracted by marriage, I let the battery on my phone run out. That’s something I’ll have to live with.”
Yang Qing-Nian nodded, expressionless.
Zhu continued, “Realizing that things were going to come to a head very soon, Bo Gaoli sent his wife, Hua Yuan, to the countryside to stay with family, but it did him no good. By Monday, before he had a chance to send the letter to me, he was in the custody of Wu Liang.”
Zhu frowned, scanning the crowd, but no one showed a sign of anything.
“One important question I cannot answer is this: What did Bo Gaoli admit to while in Wu Liang’s custody? Did he admit that his letter existed? I don’t think so, for the most expedient thing for Wu Liang would have been to torch his houses to assure the letter’s destruction. It’s what I would have done. However, I do think that Bo Gaoli at least admitted that he was able to connect Wu Liang to the items on my list, for it was after his arrest that Wu Liang arrived at my office to challenge everything I had written. Then, after disposing of Bo Gaoli, he set out to destroy my career, and perhaps even my life. That I’m still sitting here is not, as Wu Liang would have it, a testament to my political prowess, but a testament to the virtue of our system, which, though slow at times, nevertheless demands justice.”
That last sentence had been a bit of agitprop for the virtue of the digital recorder on the floor, for they all knew that justice was all too rare in these halls. Survival was the only functional word.
“You mentioned money,” said Zhang Guo. “Three hundred thousand. Was there a reason for it?”
“I don’t know,” Zhu admitted. “It’s something I’ve not been able to tie into the storyline as I see it, though I have my suspicions.”
“Perhaps you’d like to share those suspicions,” said Sun Bingjun, looking very serious.
Zhu took a breath. He should have kept his mouth shut about that, for now he wished he’d brought notes. He hadn’t wanted to look as if he were reading a script, though. “If forced into a position,” he said, “I would call it the fruits of blackmail.”
“Excuse me?” asked Yang Qing-Nian, irritably.
“The narrative,” Zhu admitted, “could run essentially the same, but this way: Much earlier, Bo Gaoli discovers Wu Liang’s allegiances but, instead of following the correct route of reporting him, goes to Wu Liang and demands payments for his silence.”
Wu Liang, still staring at the wall, said, “Then why, Xin Zhu, would he threaten his income by going to you?”
“Because he realized it was over. He saw that I was assembling evidence against the mole, and he knew that the value of those payments paled beside the political advantages of joining with someone who could bring you down. If he helped me, things would go much easier if his blackmail were discovered. What he didn’t realize was that you would use the same excuse—namely, my memos—to take him into custody and kill him.”
“Absurd,” Wu Liang said to the wall, but his cheeks were flushed.
“Authenticity?” said Feng Yi. “We’re basing most of this on a letter found on a dead woman. Has Sun Bingjun verified that it was, in fact, written by Bo Gaoli?”
Sun Bingjun said, “His fingerprints were found on the first and last pages.”
“Not the ones in between?” asked Yang Qing-Nian, perhaps remembering that he was here to protect his mentor.
“Perhaps he was wearing gloves,” Feng Yi said, stupidly.
Silence followed, until Wu Liang finally turned from the wall. “Is this really all you have?”
Zhu shook his head. “We could go back again to the list of compromised material. All of it is material you had access to.”
“And you, Xin Zhu. You had access to the same material.”
“As did we all,” Sun Bingjun interrupted, “but none of us have a dead man’s letter with our names on it. Nor did Bo Gaoli die while in our care. Nor, I have to add, did any of us try to spearhead a campaign to crush Xin Zhu’s investigation into the identity of an American mole.”
“Which brings us back,” Wu Liang went on, “to some very basic questions about the Americans. If, as you say, I am a mole—if, indeed, any of us are working for the Americans—then why are they sending agents to China to find out simple answers about Xin Zhu’s private life? Why are they meeting with Turkestan zealots right under our noses? There’s something happening here, and none of our finger-pointing has shed any light on it. Go ahead and arrest me, if you think it’s necessary, but don’t imagine that we’ve answered any significant questions here. What are the Americans up to, and how are they using Xin Zhu for their ends?”
“Would you like an answer?” Zhu asked him directly.
“Oh? So you have an answer?”
“By now I think I do, and this afternoon I hope to have verification. For a while, we’ve known that the Americans were playing an elaborate game of obfuscation. They are drawing our gazes elsewhere, playing on our fears, both to distract us and to discredit me. Our mistake has been the assumption that they were distracting us from a planned attack. We can call it my mistake, if you like. The truth, I now suspect, is that all of this effort has been a simple effort to lay cover for their agent in our midst. For you, Wu Liang. With us distracted by what they’re up to, they are keeping you temporarily safe until . . . until what? Tell us, do you have an escape plan already in motion? Have they already bought you a nice house on the California coast? Will Chu Liawa be joining you, or has she outlived her political utility?”
“You’re making this up as you go along, Xin Zhu. You’re the one who’s the master of distraction.”