The Shanghai Factor (26 page)

Finally, when it was quite late, we moved into the living room and got down to business. Burbank seemed reluctant to do so. I expected a long inquisitorial session, but he was not eager to start. He stretched, yawned, sipped the last of the wine.

“So tell me,” he said. “Where does this thing go next?”

He expected me to do the talking yet again? My spirits sank. At this point I would have been glad to be given instructions. I had hoped for instructions. I was tired of doing all the thinking, making all the meetings, taking all the responsibility, setting myself up for all the blame if things fell apart.

I said, “You tell me.”

Burbank said, “Sorry, I can’t do that. This is your baby. It’s up to you to get the stroller across the street.”

My instinct, almost irresistible, was to rise to my feet, thank Burbank and the absent caretaker for a lovely dinner and an enjoyable evening, quit my job, and walk out. Just go. Find another way of earning a living, start over again in some honest low-stress occupation like foreclosing mortgages on poor widows while writing poetry by night in an idyllic small town. Marry a sweet local girl without too many smarts, get laid every third night. Have kids. Shoot baskets with them in the backyard, sing in the choir, drink beer and eat pizza while watching football on TV with the idyllic village’s other bachelors of arts. Every spy’s daydream. But instead of acting on my impulse, I answered Burbank’s question.

“Apart from more of the same,” I said, “I haven’t got a clue what’s next.”

“You asked that fellow in New York for six case histories,” Burbank said. “He delivered the first one the next business day. You should be encouraged. Motivated.”

Really?

“Are you not curious about the fact that Lin Ming acted so fast?” I said. “That he gave us information that was already in our files? Don’t you want to know who gave it to
him?”

“That’s the entire purpose of this meeting. But do you think that what we already know will lead us to the culprit?”

“No. It will lead us around the mulberry bush.”

“So get more information. Get the other five files from your guy. Plod. Dig. Make comparisons.”

“And if I fail?”

“So far you’ve succeeded beyond any reasonable expectation,” Burbank said. “Beyond my expectations, which I admit were and are anything but reasonable.”

I said, “Suppose information is not enough?”

“Then do what you have to do.”

“Meaning what?”

“Just do it.”

“Are you telling me to use my own judgment?”

“Up to now that’s worked out pretty well.”

“Up to what limits do I use my own judgment?”

“Short of treason, premeditated homicide, or grand theft of government funds, there are no limits.”

“I can go where I want, see whoever I want to see, do as I see fit?”

“You’re as free as a bird,” Burbank said. “You know the mission. Accomplish it.”

He smiled like a fond father sending his boy off to school after stuffing him with good advice. He all but patted me on the head.

36

On Saturday evening
I was the first to arrive at Alice’s place. She opened the door and said, “You! Early! What next?” A firm dry handshake, a whiff of the same perfume I had smelled on the night we met in the bar of the club. The light in the hall was low. In her black dress against this dark background she looked like one of those half-smiling rich women in a Sargent portrait—dark, tall, aloof, hair dressed, face painted, beautifully gowned, and richly bejeweled, the favorite wife of the King of Qin. She gave me a drink and disappeared. I heard her talking to someone, another woman, in the kitchen.

I wasn’t the only punctual one. Soon the other guests began to arrive, two by two. All the rest except one blonde wife were Chinese. Everyone was better dressed than me. My best Shanghai suit and a good shirt were shoddy in comparison to the Armani suits and designer dresses on display, not to mention the jewelry. Since abandoning my father’s Rolex I wore a Timex.

No one went quite so far as to look me over and make a face. This was a well-mannered crowd. The conversation was in Mandarin. Everyone except the blonde seemed to assume that I knew the language. She took pity on me and spoke to me in English. Her name was Fiona Wang. She and her husband, a neurosurgeon at Mount Sinai, were just back from a medical conference in Hong Kong. Caitlin was an endocrinologist. The couple had met in medical school—Harvard, actually. She had chosen her specialty because it gave her time to be a mother, and her beeper rarely went off during the night. Wesley, on the other hand, was forever leaping out of bed to repair some motorcyclist’s damaged brain. The Wangs had a girl and a boy aged five and seven. Did I have children?

Before I could answer her question the last couple arrived. Alice brought them directly to me and introduced them in Mandarin—Ole and Martha Olsen. The husband’s unwavering eyes were blue. This created an odd Siamese cat effect in what was otherwise a standard Han face. Clearly his Norse father had passed along very particular genes. Ole Olsen seemed uptight, condescending. He looked me over and didn’t like what he saw.

In Mandarin Olsen said, “Are you the person of the same name who used to work for Chen Qi?”

How did he know that? I hadn’t mentioned it to Alice. “I was one of many who worked for CEO Chen, yes,” I said. “Do you know him?”

“Does anyone?” Ole asked. “I spent some time in the tower just after you left, but in the bowels of the ship, not upstairs like you.”

“Doing what?”

“Legal matters.”

I barely registered his words. My mind was absent, pondering how he knew about me and what he knew and why he wanted to tell me what he knew. Now that I had met Olsen I was uneasy. My time with Chen Qi was no secret, but it was infected by other secrets.

Olsen said, “What did you do for CEO Chen?”

“I often wondered,” I said. “Do you work with Alice, Mr. Olsen?”

“Ole, please,” he said. “Alice and I are at the same law firm. She’s a litigator, I’m a backroom type. I handle the boring stuff. I heard quite a lot about you in Shanghai. When I arrived your name was on everybody’s lips.”

“Why was that?”

“Topic One at the watercooler was that you had been sleeping with Chen’s niece or maybe his daughter and he’d rescued her from disgrace or worse by hiring you and fixing you up with a different woman to channel your animal instincts.”

“No kidding.”

“Some were surprised he hadn’t drowned you in the Yangtze,” Olsen said. “Apparently that was more his style.”

As he spoke these words, he watched my face closely. I tried to look amused. I said, “Obviously the conversation was more interesting downstairs than upstairs.”

“It could get pretty interesting.”

I said, “What was this daughter’s or niece’s name?”

“You tell me.”

There was no lightness in Olsen’s tone. He wasn’t bantering. On the contrary, judging by the look of moral distaste on his face, he looked as if he was annoyed with me for religious reasons.

I started to turn away. Olsen took hold of my arm. “The story was that when the maiden came to her senses and was out of danger he sent you to the States and then fired you,” he said. “The substitute comfort woman, Zhang Jia—is that name correct?—was given a bonus, a promotion, and a suitable husband. Also a transfer. The rumor was that she was a professional, hired for this one particular job.”

He was enjoying this. I thought it was unlawyerlike. Maybe Martha, Olsen’s wife thought so, too. She touched his hand, a little warning, but he paid her no attention.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone in an apron, a female, peek out the kitchen door. She wore a white Nehru-type chef’s cap, her hair concealed beneath it. Her hand, which held a napkin—she was touching her nose with her thumb—concealed the lower portion of her face. I had seen that gesture before. Catching the signal, Alice announced that dinner was served.

To me Olsen said, “Anything you want to say to all that?”

Alice had been listening. She answered for me. “I think the answer to that question is no,” she said. “But I have a question for you, Ole.”

“Ask it.”

“Are you drunk or is this your idea of small talk?”

“Small talk,” Olsen said. “The white man’s name for avoiding the truth. So the answer to that question is also no. This isn’t small talk.”

Apparently he had more to say. He pointed a forefinger at me and started to speak, but Martha took his hand, smiled brightly, bent Ole’s finger back into place, and said, “Dinnertime, dear.” She led him into the dining room.

Alice took my arm and walked me to the table, as if we were dining in a country house on
Masterpiece Theater.
She sat at one end of the table, a gleaming expanse of inlay and veneer, and I sat at the other end, as far away from either Olsen as she could put me. The woman on my right immediately began talking about a new Broadway play. Apart from the conversation there was nothing Chinese about the dinner, but it was very good indeed. A waiter in a tuxedo served, assisted by a short plump woman who also wore a tuxedo. He was Chinese. Although he wasn’t the same man, he reminded me of the waiter who had balanced that enormous tray on the night that Lin Ming and I dined together in the safe room upstairs from the Sichuan Delight. Everybody in the world, except maybe Ole Olsen, looked a little like someone else. The figure in the apron, the one who had materialized in the kitchen door, found her way back into my mind. I knew her, but how? With the help of my imagination, this mental image became a little more detailed than the one I had actually seen. Now I put my finger on a clue. She had touched her nose with her thumb. In that small way she resembled Magdalena, who when Mother was alive used the same gesture to signal when dinner was ready. Maybe it was something all chefs did. Chewing sliced duck breast as these thoughts passed through my mind, I wondered if I would die before morning with the lingering taste of this food on my tongue. The woman next to me—I hadn’t caught her name—was telling me more about the Broadway play. It was called
The Death of Gershwin,
Gershwin was an unhappy woman, not the composer, and death was what she called her marriage to a banker because it had taken the music out of her life.

As the evening wore on the conversation got livelier, more gossipy. Alice made sure I talked to everyone except Ole Olsen. This was the first time since I left Shanghai I had been in a roomful of people who were all speaking Mandarin. I felt contentment, as if I had escaped back into some idyllic parallel existence, as if talk was making sense for a change.

Around ten-thirty, as everyone said their good-byes in the front hall, Olsen smoldered. Martha Olsen held tightly to his arm. I thought he might have something more to say to me—after all, he had never told me whatever it was he wanted to tell me, so I walked over and said good night to Martha.

When I held out a hand to Olsen himself, he ignored it and said, “I’d like a word alone with you before I go.”

He walked back into the empty living room, and placing himself where he could see the door and the people milling about and kissing one another in the hall, he put a hand on my shoulder. He seemed to be a little drunk. His eyes blinked, his speech was slurred, he was having trouble with his balance.

He said, “Sorry the conversation went wrong a little while ago, but this is awkward for me. There’s something I feel I need to tell you.”

“Why? You don’t even know me.”

“I know Alice. I think I know what you really are and that bothers me….” He lost his balance. I grabbed him. Over his shoulder I saw Martha hurrying toward us. “…but I have to break a professional confidence to tell you the facts. That’s hard for me to do.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t tell me. Maybe you should take it to the FBI.”

“You think I haven’t thought of that? You think they’d listen?” He wobbled, took hold of my forearm to steady himself. He said, “You think I’m drunk. I’m not. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me, but listen to me, I’m trying to give you a chance to—what? I can’t think of the fucking word.”

I said, “I hear what you’re saying to me, Ole, but maybe you should sleep on this. We could get together another time for a drink or something.”

“No, Listen to me. The Yangtze was nothing compared to what’s coming. These people are going to destroy you. You’ve got to get away.”

Olsen’s wife took him by elbow. “Time to go, Ole,” she said in loud English.

“Not yet,” Olsen said. “There’s more.”

“That’s enough, Ole,” Martha said.

Olsen really looked sick—addled, as if he didn’t know where he was or who this woman was. Martha dragged him out of the room, Ole loose as a rag doll, Martha saying not a word to me. I followed them into the hall. All the others had left, though voices could be heard in the corridor outside the apartment door. Martha, keeping her grip on Ole, placing herself between him and me, thanked Alice for a lovely evening. Alice patted her on the cheek, then air-kissed both Olsens good night and walked them the five steps to the door.

Alice and I went straight to bed. We were too well mannered to talk about Ole Olsen. I told myself he was drunk, that he had been playing a sick prank. But he knew something, and even if what he knew was a useless crumb of gossip, I’d run him down tomorrow and get it out of him while he was still hungover and vulnerable.

At four in the morning Alice’s phone rang. She felt for her reading glasses (I could hear her doing this in the dark), found them, picked up the phone, read the caller ID, grunted, and answered it.

“Martha,” she said.
“What?”

She switched on the lamp, and wearing nothing but her reading glasses, leaped out of bed. She fired the questions into the phone, then said, “I’m on my way to you.”

I knew what she was going to tell me before she uttered the words.

“Ole Olsen died an hour ago,” she said. “He collapsed on the way home in the car. The Wangs were with them. They worked on him on the way to the hospital, but he’s gone. An aneurysm, they think, but they’re not sure.”