Shadow of the Condor (20 page)

Malcolm felt slightly cold, a little old and very nauseated. He swallowed before he said, "Yes, I see what you mean."

Chou smiled and stepped back. "I thought you would. Sheila," he said lightly, turning to the girl, "why don't you and Malcolm walk around the farm for a while? I want you both to have mild exercise and it will give you a chance to get to know each other better. I must check and see that our plan has received final approval and clean up one or two other little details."

Chou turned back to Malcolm. "I'm leaving now. I trust you and assume you are intelligent enough not to attack Sheila. For one thing, while she is nowhere near my proficiency, she is armed and she is far better than you, even if you were armed. I also doubt you could defeat her hand-to-hand. In any event, the nearest neighbor is miles away, wouldn't believe you and would blow your cover. I have removed the telephone's mouthpiece so you can't call out. Your vehicle is in the shed, but I will have both it and the pickup's distributor caps with me. You are practically stranded. I shall return in a few hours."

Chou took a few paces toward the building, then turned and, almost as a polite, habitual afterthought, said, "Have a nice day."

Malcolm and Sheila stood by the grove in silence while they watched Chou drive away. They moved together after his car disappeared, almost on cue. They walked across the open fields, headed nowhere in a direction vaguely away from the house. They walked in silence for several minutes, then Malcolm said, "He's crazy, sick. Absolutely crazy.11

Sheila turned to look at him. She smiled, then looked ahead once more. She seemed to watch the ground as they walked. "Do you think so?" she asked. Do you really think so?"

Malcolm looked at her. She had undone her thick hair. The top of her head came to his shoulder, and as she bent forward, the thick black strands obscured her face. He had already decided to be as honest as he could as often as he could with Sheila. For one thing, he knew she had questioned him while he was drugged more than Chou had. That meant she probably knew him fairly well. For another, she seemed the more vulnerable link in the Chinese team.

She is also, thought Malcolm, more human. He frowned as he asked, "Don't you?"

"No."

"I don't understand. You certainly don't call that little display, that lecture, his general 'every thing-is-fascinating-, shoot-it-through-the-eye-challenge' attitude and almost everything else he does as normal, healthy behavior, do you? Even by Chairman Mao's standards?"

Malcolm heard amusement in the girl's reply. "That little display was just that, a display designed to impress you with the futility of resisting or attacking him, us. For Chou it wasn't all that much. Remember his comment about the birds? If you've notice, there aren't many sparrows around here, even though with the garden there is a good deal of food to attract them. That's because Chou practices daily-and what - he likes to practice on are sparrows. He shoots them only when they're in full flight and at what he would consider a 'challenging' distance. He seldom misses-. If he does, it's only one or two missed rounds. Less than three seconds per bird.

"His lecture? I'm sure you've heard more ego-oriented lectures in American college classrooms and taken notes on them so you could self-righteously regurgitate them in an approved fashion. I hear such things at the college where I'm 'studying' for my 'citizenship.'

"As for his health, your thinking him sick, that's absurd. He can't be sick, he's successful. Only failures are insane. By definition Chou will never be 'sick,' 'crazy' or 'insane' until he fails. In our business failure brings death. At that point what is sanity?"

For a long time Malcolm found no reply. They walked in a silence broken only by dirt lumps crunching underfoot and the occasional swoosh of moving clothing. Finally Malcolm stopped, his action pulling the girl up short also. She turned questioningly to face him and he said, "But do you like him?"

"What relevance has that?" She turned and resumed walking.

By now they were over half a mile from the buildings. They stopped at the -edge of an irrigation ditch. Spring runoff wag slowly raising the waterline and increasing the stream flow. The stream carried more silt and water than when it had "permanently" thawed for the year three weeks before.

"Chou said we should get to know each other better," Malcolm finally said. "From what you and he have already told me, I gather you already know most of my life story." He left the invitation hanging in the wind.

Sheila smiled at him but said nothing.

"Well," he finally prompted in exasperation.

"Well," she replied half mockingly, "you know the name to call me. You know I'm Chinese, an intelligence agent, a communist. What more is there?"

Malcolm's frustration had been building since Chou's exhibition. His temper took over, and he shouted, "You're a goddamn shit, for one thing!"

Malcolm's exclamation startled the girl. She jerked, almost as if he had hit her, and for the first time that morning she looked at him intently and fully. For a long time they stared at each other, neither knowing what to say or what to expect. Then just as suddenly as Malcolm had shouted, the girl broke into laughter, loud, boisterous, raucous laughter. And after a moment's puzzlement Malcolm joined her.

"Well," Sheila said at last, her laughter subsiding into a broad smile, "I'm glad we have that settled. It's nice to know where one stands and what one is."

Malcolm started to apologize, to explain, but then be realized to do so was not only unnecessary but unwise. Instead he commented as lightly as he could, "Well, at least couldn't you-as we American bureaucrats say-'flesh that out a bit'? God, is that a disgusting metaphor."

"I'm somewhat older than you," Sheila replied, "about two years."

"That's a start. Now for the obvious question: What brought you into this business?"

The girl turned away from the ditch and headed back toward the buildings. Malcolm kept pace beside her. She still walked with her head bowed when thinking and listening. When she spoke, she looked straight ahead. "Chou's major talent is with firearms. Incidentally, he's just as good with a rifle or an automatic weapon. It's incredible. Like him, I have a very special talent. I have a, she paused to look at Malcolm and smile while she used her next word--proclivity for languages. I speak English, Chinese and several other languages I needn't tell you about with equal fluency. I can even shift dialects and accents, although my '
Boston
' leaves a little to be desired. Such a talent is almost priceless in this business, as you can well imagine. I wonder how much better your employers would treat you if you could speak something besides your pidgin French and graduate-school deaf-mute Spanish."

Malcolm smiled. "I doubt I'll ever know. But that still doesn't really explain why you're why you do this kind of thing."

The girl stopped and faced Malcolm. During the several seconds she stared silently at him Malcolm grew increasingly nervous. Finally she, said, "So that's it. The old 'What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?' I wondered if the question would come. What you really want to know," she said icily, "is why am I serving the totalitarian, evil communist Chinese government? Why aren't I dying to be on your side, the side of good and right and purity?"

"I didn't say that," rejoined Malcolm weakly, "I'm not that-"

That dumb?" interrupted Sheila, the volume of her voice building. "I hope not, Ronald 'Condoe Malcolm, I hope not. You ask why I'm here. I already told you. I'm Chinese. While your ancestors, ran through
Europe
in animal skins, my ancestors studied art. When the West finally pulled itself up using our gunpowder discovery, my
China
was one of the first places you came to wipe your feet and get your laundry done. For centuries you used us. Never again.

"My people aren't starving coolies anymore. We don't have to make the momentous decisions over which car model to buy; we're too busy being alive and staying alive. An American once told me the prevailing opinion when he was a young man was that
China
could never be a world power because the bulk of its people would always doom it to subservience. And you talk about us thinking of 'historic inevitability! Well, we're a world power now and we did it all behind the bamboo curtain you planted: We merely reaped a different harvest from what you thought possible.

"I've seen you look at me and I know what you think. That I don't look quite right for a Chinese. Remember my cover? Part Japanese, with Japanese relatives here. Part of that is true, I am part Japanese. My mother was raped as the last of the Japanese soldiers fled our country at the end of World WarTwo. Her reward for being Chinese. That was years ago, but not a lifetime. In less than a lifetime, in my mother's own lifetime, my country is made strong, strong enough to feed its people, strong enough so no more troops dare invade
China
to rape and rule."

By now Sheila was shouting, her words ' screaming across the prairie to no one but Malcolm's ears. "Why am I here? Obviously an 'enemy,' a threat to 'your' country? An enemy of 'democracy'? Because your democracy didn't feed my people, didn't help my people. Your freedom-loving country did and does what it can to keep us enslaved. Beyond the opium wars, through the changes of the early days, well into your support of your own Chinese puppet, until today, we are where we are in spite of you.

"What next? A lecture from you about freedom of choice? The sterility of our country, our enforced uniformity? Who decided all males in the West should wear bell bottoms this year and straight legs four years ago? Whether cars have big fins? What candidates 'run' for office? Chinese-enforced uniformity?

"Beyond all that, you ask me why I am doing what I am doing. I am Chinese. I feel that.) I live that, I am that. I have my reasons.

"But you, what are you? A petty government clerk, bored, somewhat snobbish, conceited, lazy. Someone who stumbled onto a path and keeps going down it. Why should you ask me anything?"

Sheila paused for breath, her eyes flashing, her hair messed, her shoulders heaving, her breasts rapidly rising and falling under the sweat shirt. Malcolm, pale and shaken, stared at her for several minutes while her fury passed. Even after she had calmed down, he could think of nothing to say. Just as Sheila turned once more to walk toward the house, he reached out his hand and touched her arm. It was the first time he had ever consciously touched -her. She jerked back, slipping into what he recognized as a defensive combat stance. He kept his arm extended. She relaxed in her stance only slightly, although she realized he neither posed nor intended any threat. He slowly licked his lips, hesitating just before he said, "I didn't rape your mother."

Chou found them in separate rooms when he returned two hours later. Sheila stood at the kitchen sink, scrubbing diligently at stains on the copper pots. Malcolm sat in the living room, half concentrating on a game of his own version of
Las Vegas
solitaire, a diversion he had used since childhood. Chou noticed their glum, anger-ravaged mood when he entered the house, but he deliberately chose to ignore it. He thought he knew its source, and his assumptions bothered him not at all. For one thing, he knew the girl would tell, him the whole story on command. He let his enthusiasm bubble through his words. "Ah, Comrades, success! The director has approved my plan!"

"Fine," sighed Malcolm as he turned up an eight of spades-no play. "So what do we do now?"

Sheila had come into the living room to join the two men. Chou motioned her to sit on the couch across from Malcolm while he took the chair at the head of the coffee table. He glanced at his companions seated on each side of him and said, "Do? We go ahead with the plan. You two must now make it work."

"You forget," Malcolm said slowly as he turned over his next card, a three of diamonds-no play. "I don't know anything about 'the plan."

"There's not much to know," soothed Chou. "Essentially you continue with the mission your superiors sent you on in just the same manner. You continue the farcical survey, trying to find out something, anything. In the meantime, we wait to see what your colleagues turn up. My director has also agreed to do his best to find a place to apply some pressure that might find its way to Krumin, although we agree such efforts will probably fail. With all that activity, something is bound to break. Among the three of us we should be able to come down on top of it just before everyone else. When that happens, when we find Krumin-as we must assume we will-all that Sheila and I need is a few minutes with him and her marvelous drug collection to get everything on his China operations. Then he's yours, yours and that old man's in
Washington
."

"I still don't understand," Malcolm said. "I continue with the survey, right? What makes you sure that I'll bring you in on whatever happens?"

"Because," Chou continued, "you won't be alone. Hardly even alone enough to go to the bathroom. Sheila is going with you from now on."

"What?"

"Yes," Chou assured him, "from now on. It seems you have found a need for your assistant, 'so she flew out to
Montana
and is helping you with your survey."

Malcolm stared at Chou for several minutes. He also avoided looking directly at Sheila. He felt her avoiding looking at him too. Finally Malcolm said, "That's a crock of shit. Even if my superiors don't find out, nobody in
Shelby
would believe it. We could never pull it off. The people down there already think the survey is a stupid waste of time and money. If they see two of us working on it, they'll raise holy hell-complain to the Defense Mapping Agency, letters to Congressmen, the papers, the whole bit. My cover wouldn't last twenty-four hours. Neither would hers."

"Exactly," Chou explained, "exactly. That's why we'll give everyone another secret to discover besides your covers. Something they will at the worst mildly disapprove of but will probably not mention. You will let them know your 'assistant' is combining her vacation with assisting you. You might even want to confide your secret to a few people, like the county extension agent and his family. Discreetly, obliquely, of course, but still letting it out."