The Shanghai Factor (30 page)

Alice’s voice mail picked up. “Please don’t leave a message,” her voice said. “Call me back.”

An hour later I tried Alice’s number again and was told once more not to leave a message. Finally I realized there was no point in calling her again. Sooner or later she would see my number when she checked for missed calls and get back to me. Or not.

With time to squander, I went for a drive, no destination in mind. I needed a new line of thought. I didn’t need to think any more about Albert Dreyfus. I understood the parallel. I knew the reason for my problem, and thanks to Chen Jianyu, I even knew who my Esterhazy was and who his case officer was, and in rough outline, I knew the fate Chen Qi had in mind for me. But how to act on these apprehensions? My situation was like Fermat’s Conjecture—a theorem universally regarded by mathematicians as provable even though its solution eluded them for 358 years. Even if my own conjecture was solved in half that time, assuming that anyone but me was interested in its solution, I would still have ample time to serve the life sentence that was staring me in the face. Who would believe my proof even if I published it? Going to the FBI might make me feel better, it might hatch a conspiracy theory that political loonies could ponder for decades if not centuries, but it would not save me. Or cause justice to be done.

In real time I was alone on a long dark road, no headlights in the mirror. Suddenly I knew where I was going and why. Alice could wait.

Around one in the morning I parked on the shoulder of the road half a mile away from Luther Burbank’s barn and sneaked closer to it through swampy woods. As I went, I assumed I was being picked up by motion detectors, even by cameras, but I put my hopes in the possibility that Burbank was meditating and therefore temporarily blind and deaf. After ten minutes or so I came to the last line of trees and the house came into sight. Burbank’s Hyundai and the black Range Rover that had chased me out of the driveway on my last visit were parked side by side on the gravel. Inside the house, the lights were on, though dimmed. Through the windows I could see fragments of the awful paintings. Also two human figures moving in a rhythmic way. I heard, just barely, the sound of music and realized that these people were dancing. I couldn’t make out their faces, so I moved closer. The man was unmistakably Burbank. He wore tuxedo trousers with a scarlet cummerbund and a white silk shirt. The woman, who was as slim as Burbank, was a brunette. She wore a knee-length skirt of shiny material that ballooned and swung prettily when they turned. Her dark shoulder-length hair, cut straight across, swung in synchrony with the skirt. Her face was hidden in the hollow of Burbank’s neck. They were excellent dancers, almost professional—erect as a couple of honor guards, brisk in their movements, attuned to each other. I wondered if Burbank and this woman entered weekend ballroom competitions under assumed names or dreamed of making it on
Dancing with the Stars.
Obviously they had studied and practiced together. Had Burbank been a little younger—it wasn’t possible to guess the woman’s age because I still couldn’t see her face—they could have been an adagio act on a cruise ship. The music changed. They tangoed—thrusting machismo and sultry femininity, legs entwining. The light by which Burbank and his partner were dancing was only slightly brighter than candlelight. Even though the two of them were farther apart now, I still could not make out the lady’s face.

It was a typical Virginia summer night, temperature and humidity both in the nineties. Fireflies blinked. Mosquitoes bit. I crushed them when I could reach them instead of slapping them because I feared to make a noise. My mind wandered and when it came back into focus, the lights were off in the house. I heard the front door open. Burbank emerged. He still wore his white shirt, so I could make him out in the darkness. A second, smaller white blur moved beside him. I heard a sound I couldn’t quite identify, but then, as Burbank’s movement triggered the floodlights, I realized that what I had heard was the inquisitive whine of a dog that smells something it does not recognize. The smaller white blur—not so very small on closer examination—was a pit bull. Where had it come from? No dog had ever before been part of this picture. The pit bull barked—a long string of baritone woofs. It growled deep in its throat, then barked again, louder.

Burbank could see me as plainly as I saw him. He said, “You. Stand up with your hands above your head or I’ll turn the dog loose.”

At this moment Burbank’s dance partner came outside, also still wearing her dancing costume. She carried the gun-nut machine pistol Burbank had put under my pillow on my first visit to this house. She handed the weapon to Burbank, who handed her the dog’s leash in return and pointed the weapon at me. I stood up and put my hands above my head.

“Approach,” Burbank said. “Slowly.”

I was, say, a hundred feet away. Though I have good eyesight I couldn’t quite make out Burbank’s face. The floodlights had switched on and were so dazzlingly bright that they hindered vision. After I had taken maybe twenty steps, Burbank and the woman came into focus. At the same moment so did I, apparently, because the woman told the pit bull to lie down, and it obeyed her instantly. I looked at the woman. For a fraction of a second I saw her as if she were captured in a freeze frame. Then she turned her back, whirling as if executing a tango step, and rushed into the house, taking the pit bull with her.

Quick as she was, different as she looked in her dancing clothes and her new hair color, I made her. I knew who she was. There was no mistake. By this time I was beyond surprise, but wasn’t it odd, wasn’t it intriguing, wasn’t it extraordinary, the way I kept on catching glimpses of Magdalena in the strangest places?

43

Burbank led me
through the dark house to a tiny study. An antiqued print of
Old Ironsides
under full sail, ensign blowing the wrong way, hung on one wall. A print of the Godolphin Arabian, a foundation sire of the Thoroughbred breed, was displayed on the opposite wall.

“Sit ye down,” Burbank said. “I’ll be right back.” A moment later I heard the pit bull’s toenails clicking on the bare floor, then heard the front door open and close and the Range Rover’s throaty engine start up and the car drive away. Soon after that Burbank reappeared, now wearing pajamas and carrying two bottles of artisanal beer. He handed one bottle to me and took a long pull from the other.

“Thirsty work, doing the tango,” he said. “I thought you were on R and R.”

“I am, but I need to talk to you,” I said.

“Is that why you’re here at this ungodly hour? It’s after two.”

I said, “This won’t take long.”

“Then spill it,” he said. “Some of us have to get up in the morning.”

“I was out of town for a while,” I said, “and when I got back yesterday I checked my bank balance.” I paused.

“And?” Burbank said.

“And I discovered that something called the Hanyu Consultants Group had deposited two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in my checking account.”

Now I had his attention, but he was still Mr. Cool. He sipped his beer, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and said, “In return for what?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“What’s the Hanyu Consultants Group?”

It would have been untruthful for me to say that I had no idea, so again I shrugged. I said, “Never heard of them.”

“Never consulted for them?”

“No.”

“Then why are they dropping a quarter of a million dollars into your checking account?”

“I don’t have a clue. I thought you might be able to help me figure it out.”

“Why me?”

Burbank was looking at me as if I might be carrying a concealed weapon.

I said, “Because you’re my superior officer, my only friend at Headquarters, and I don’t know who else to report this to. Because I think the deposit may be an attempt to ruin me.”

“‘Ruin’ you?’” He whistled softly. “How? Why? Who?”

Head cocked, he was smiling in a worried sort of way. Had I lost it altogether?

I went on. “I think the FBI or the IRS or both will investigate as soon as they get word of this. So will CI as a matter of reflex. I think the results of such an investigation could be unfortunate for me and embarrassing for Headquarters and for you as the man I work for.”

“Why unfortunate for you if you’re innocent of wrongdoing? Have you considered just reporting this to the FBI?”

He actually said this—bluffed on the first card dealt. Now his smile was soothing, his tone of voice infinitely reasonable, as though he might be humoring a wife who was working herself up to accuse him of adultery.

I said, “No. I’m reporting it to you.”

“Why not go straight to the Bureau, if you think there’s something fishy about it?”

“Because Headquarters wouldn’t like that. Because whatever illusions may exist about American justice, nobody is ever considered innocent by the Bureau after being taken into custody. Because very few people arrested by the FBI have ever been proved innocent. Because nobody accused of the kind of crime this payment suggests I committed has ever had a friend in the world.”

“Whoa,” Burbank said. “Hold on, there. Have you considered the possibility that the deposit is a mistake? Banks make them all the time. What bank are we talking about?”

I told him. He asked how much I had in my account. I told him that. If he thought that half a million dollars was an unusual amount for a GS-13 making $89,023.00 a year before payroll taxes and deductions to have in a checking account, he did not say so. I was certain that he already knew everything I had just told him. Even so, a sign of surprise, however tiny, would have been a seemly gesture. Burbank made no such sign.

He said, “I see your problem. I think you may be giving it a little more weight than it can bear.”

“I’m paranoid? Wow, that’s a load off my mind.”

Burbank was displeased by the sarcasm and he amended his performance to let this show. His reaction—a frown, a sad shake of the head—resembled spontaneity, a quality I had not previously observed in him. I felt I was making progress. He was human after all. It was possible to get to him. I thought I had the key to opening him up, I thought I was in luck. I thought that my latest glimpse of Magdalena was the key. So far tonight nearly everything that had happened was unexpected. I had come here with the intention of penetrating Burbank’s shell if I had to waterboard him to do it, but with no plan in mind. I was winging it. I had no idea what I was doing or what might happen next. This was no great change from the life I had been living for months—years, even—and maybe, I thought, the whole dog’s breakfast of this operation, the whole inside-out life into which I had stumbled, was a training exercise for the new Afghanistan in which I was now waking up, wondering where I was.

All during this train of thought, Burbank stared over my shoulder, as if there were someone behind me (Magdalena, syringe in hand?) who was going to tell him in sign language what to do about this psychopath who had somehow gotten into the house. He looked a little wan. He looked, yes, unsure of his next move or mine.

I said, “I’ve been thinking about the obvious.”

Burbank swiveled his gaze and looked into my eyes. He was looking wary but trying to conceal it.

“So far you haven’t sounded that way,” he said. “But tell me more.”

I said, “I know it has occurred to you that the ideal way to penetrate an intelligence service is through its counterintelligence division.”

“And why would that be?”

I said, “CI is above suspicion by definition because suspicion is its turf. It has the need to know everything about everyone, but no one else has the need or the right to know anything about it.”

“That’s true in a twisted sort of way,” Burbank said. “As you know, we’ve had some experience with being penetrated. We learned from the experience. It can never happen again.”

“You believe that?”

“I
know
that.”

“How do you know it?”

“Because the last fellow was a clown doing a clown’s work and we now know how to take clowns seriously.”

“Then one of the clowns is still inside the little trick car in the center ring, because I think it
has
happened again.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that I have reason to believe that Guoanbu has an agent within Headquarters, within CI.”

“Do you now?” Burbank said.

He smiled a dead-eyed smile. He looked at the clock on his desk. He yawned. He turned the clock around so I could see it. Too many gestures, too much disinterest.

I said, “Will you listen?”

“All right,” he said. “Tell me more. Five minutes, my friend.”

He pronounced
five as
fahv,
in an LBJ drawl.

Scientists have established the existence of a parasite called
Toxoplasma gondii
that is transmitted from the feces of cats to human beings, rats, and other mammals.
T. gondii
invades the brain and rewires it, rerouting the connections among neurons. It impels rats to run toward the cat that is hunting them instead of fleeing as instinct would command. In humans, the parasite causes its host to behave in wildly reckless ways, leading to such self-destructive actions as reckless adultery, deliberately crashing cars, or shoplifting. It is suspected of triggering schizophrenia. I had never gone anywhere near a cat turd if I could avoid it, but in Burbank’s study I had a
T. gondii
moment. Something leaped in my brain from one neuron to another, and in the nanosecond this took I was transformed into a nutcase who didn’t know the meaning of the word
consequences.
Had I been standing on a balcony thirty floors above the ground I probably would have leaped onto its parapet and gone for a walk.

I said, “This will take a little more than five minutes.”

Burbank glared at me—
how dared I contradict him?
—and pushed back his chair with a squeal. He started to get to his feet.

I said, “Sit down.”

Burbank, who probably hadn’t been given a direct order in twenty years, looked startled. I was bigger than he was and years younger and my forearm was larger than his calf, and possibly I had a look on my face that gave him pause. In any case he sat down. Maybe he had a panic button under the desk that would bring a goon squad into his study in a matter of minutes, or some kind of concealed weapon that would fire an instantaneous knockout dart designed for tigers and suicide bombers into my body. I didn’t care. I just wanted this whole masquerade to end—now and not a minute later. Enough was enough. Burbank sat down.