A Certain Smile

by Judith Michael

  Nothing, she's a nothing, he told himself: not beautiful, not interesting. Yuan Li isn't interested in her and he's not leaving China; it would never occur to him; he's too stodgy for anything like that, and, besides, there's no way he would walk out on me. He's going to Xi'an for something else; it's obvious.

  Do I want to be rid of him, or not?

  He shook his head angrily. He did not have to answer that question now. First he had to find out why his father was going to Xi'an, and then, why he was under surveillance. They'll be calling him in, you know, to interrogate him. Sheng trembled, suddenly afraid.

  He would talk to Pan Chao. Chao would know whoever would be tailing Li in Xi'an; he always managed to ferret out the dirt the State Security Bureau had on people. He would tell Sheng why his father was under surveillance, and what he was doing in Xi'an. Then, Sheng would know enough to plan his next move. He would make no decisions until he knew what the government had on Li, what they expected to get, and what they were going to do about it.

  And, most important, how it will affect me.

  Chapter

  f

  Li saw the men before they saw him. He was entering his office, thinking about the meeting to bid on a new office complex, about flying with Miranda to Xi'an, about the man who was following him—when he saw two men lounging in armchairs near his secretary's desk. And with that one glance, he knew who they were.

  He could have turned around and ridden the elevator back to the lobby, left the building through a back door, taken a taxi instead of his own car. He could have avoided them for most of the day. But then there would be tonight, when he would be with Miranda, and he did not want to be taken away in front of her. And so he walked through his office door.

  They stood up, as if jerked to their feet. "Anquan Ju. State Security Bureau," said one of them, flashing a small card so that Li could read it. "The director wants to see you." Flanking him, they began to move him toward the door.

  "Just -a minute." His voice surprised him: how calm it was! He turned to his secretary. "I won't be able to attend the meeting on the construction bid or the one on window hardware; please call the supplier and reschedule it for Monday at 7:30. Leave a note on my desk if he confirms that, then cancel my other meetings for today. I don't know when I'll be back."

  She nodded, her face carefully blank. "There was a call from Yuan Sheng." She held out a piece of paper. "I wrote down his message."

  Li skimmed it. A rambling statement about a business trip, very sudden, very vague. Odd, Li thought, but there was no time to think further; the men were moving him to the elevator, standing silent and watchful on each side of him until they reached the lobby, and then.

  outside, a waiting car just behind his own. His eyes met those of his driver, who frowned, knowing he could do nothing, wliile the men propelled Li forward, so smoothly that passersby barely noticed, and those who did knew enough to look the other way, because they had seen it before.

  Li shut down all thoughts except this one: what did they want? It could be about Sheng; was that why Sheng had left town? But this was not the police; this was State Security, dealing with matters more serious than piracy. No, this had to do with Li, and it baffled him. For twenty years he had shown that he was not interested in politics, that he cared only about constructing buildings stronger and more interesting than the shoddy stuff being thrown together by most contractors in China, that he might criticize government policies but never name names, that he was so neutral he could be overlooked, like a perfectly camouflaged caterpillar on an autumn leaf. And so everyone from local police to the military had left him alone. Often he was disgusted with himself for his tameness, but he had had enough of chaos, and his reward was that he was making a great deal of money, avoiding turmoil, and was reasonably content.

  Had been reasonably content. Until he met Miranda and other kinds of longings had come to life.

  How do you know she's really a designer?

  I will not start that again, he told himself. I know her. This has nothing to do with her.

  They drove in silence to an anonymous building on Chang An Jie East, and in silence walked through doorways and down corridors to a comer office, the heavy draperies closed against the brightness of the day, a man in a dark business suit barricaded behind a broad desk.

  "Sit down," he said to Li. "A cigarette? No, you don't smoke. Nor drink, beyond wine and beer with meals. An abstemious man. Careful and cautious. Not one to make trouble or get into trouble."

  The room was heavily hushed, the director's voice almost swallowed up by the dark carpet and darker drapes.

  He read from an open folder Li's address and home and office telephone numbers, his cell phone number, the license plate of his car, the name of his driver. "You lead an exemplary life," he said, looking up. "All-China Construction is a major force in the modernization of Beijing; you build good buildings; you have good workers." He glanced at the folder. "Your wife is dead. Your son, Yuan Sheng, works in your company; has gone into partnership in two nightclubs with Meng Enli and Pan Chao. Ambitious, no doubt greedy. But that describes all our

  sons, does it not? Daughter, Yuan Shuiying, lives in Beijing, computer programmer, husband Chen Zemin, minor bureaucrat, also ambitious. You have a cook and housekeeper who live in your home." He looked up again. "Have I left anything out?"

  "No," Li said. "You're very thorough."

  "It would be good for you, and for us, if you were as thorough in checking the people you entertain at night, and drive in your car around Beijing, and guide through our markets."

  Li's hands clenched, the only sign of his shock. "Mrs. Graham is a designer of cashmere clothing; she is here to work with our garment manufacturers." / do believe this. She has not lied to me. "She has had two meetings with the Beijing Higher Fashion Garments Factory in the Haidian ... but of course you know that."

  "Of course. And what did she do after her first meeting there, day before yesterday?"

  "I assume she returned to her hotel. We met later for dinner. As you know."

  "She delivered a letter." The director named the district and address. "A neighborhood food shop. You are familiar with it?"

  "I know nothing about it. Mrs. Graham went there?"

  "She delivered a letter. You heard me say that."

  "From whom? I don't understand. She told me she knew no one in Beijing when she arrived. She was feeling overwhelmed, afraid of the crowds—"

  "And you were there to meet her."

  "To meet her? No, I had seen a friend off, on a trip to Hong Kong. I met Mrs. Graham by accident. I don't understand what you are implying."

  But of course he did understand. The director was saying that he had gone to the airport to meet Miranda's plane, to join with her in planning ... in planning what?

  Nothing. There were no plans.

  But she had delivered a letter. To whom? From whom?

  The director was reading from his folder. "Mrs. Graham is an intimate friend of Sima Ting, who served a prison sentence for attempting to overthrow the government of China. She was granted a humanitarian release two years ago for reasons of health, and now lives in Boulder, Colorado, in the United States of America."

  Stunned, Li was silent.

  "Of course we keep an eye on all dissidents, wherever they are," the director went on. "The letter delivered by your friend Mrs. Graham was ostensibly to Sima Ting's parents, through the contacts at the food

  shop, but of course it would have been widely distributed to other dissidents if we had not intercepted it."

  They were waiting for her at the airport, Li thought, alerted by whoever was watching Sima Ting in Boulder. And they saw me speak to her, lead her to the head of the taxi line, go with her into the city. As if that was our arrangement.

  And at that point, they began to follow both of us.

  The chill that numbed him was so familiar it dragged him backward in time, to his marriage, to his wife's political alliances, to the week
s when he was interrogated over and over again, then told he was a regressive influence in the China of Mao's Cultural Revolution, and was being sent to Mianning, for reeducation. Now, older, wiser, a solid citizen, owner of one of Beijing's most prominent companies, he sat in the office of the director of the State Security Bureau, and felt the fear of a small cog in the machinery of society, easily flicked aside by a government whose goal was to preserve itself through total control of that machinery and all its parts.

  So it is that all repressive regimes, all tyrannies, keep their people quiet, acquiescent, and in check.

  "Well, then, let us review this." The director leaned back, lit another cigarette, thoughtfully watched the smoke curl to the ceiling. "How did you get the information about her arrival so that you could meet Mrs. Graham's plane?"

  "I did not meet her plane. I knew nothing about her. I was at the airport to say goodbye to a friend who was flying to Hong Kong."

  "And what do you know about her?"

  "She is a designer of cashmere clothing; she works for a New York company called Talia, with an office in Boulder Colorado. The company sent her here to negotiate with three of our garment companies to manufacture Talia designs. She lives in Boulder Colorado and is a widow with two children."

  "How much does she earn?"

  "I have no idea."

  "Without a husband, probably very little. So she would be amenable to earning extra money."

  It took Li a moment. "You mean as a spy? She would never do that. Besides, what information could she gather?"

  "That is one of the things you will help us discover."

  Li stared at him. "You want me to spy on her to find out if she is a spy?"

  "Let us return to our conversation. How many times did you communicate with Mrs. Graham before she came to China?"

  "I never communicated with her. I did not know her until she came to Beijing."

  "Letters? Telephone calls? Telegrams? Faxes? E-mail?"

  "No."

  "No to which of those?"

  "No to all of them."

  "Yet you knew what time to meet her plane."

  "I did not meet her plane. I was at the airport for other reasons. As I was leaving, I saw that she seemed to be in difficulty, frightened of the crowds, unable to get a taxi, and I helped her."

  "You ab-eady knew her."

  "No."

  "You knew who she was."

  "No."

  "But you left your car at the airport and went into the city with her, in a taxi."

  "She seemed to need help."

  "The next morning you had breakfast with her and, that night, dinner at Fangshan."

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "I found her interesting."

  The director's lips twitched. "Interesting. And still interesting on the following day. A trip to the market; another dinner, this time in a private room in a restaurant of which you are part-owner. The door was closed."

  "The noise bothered her."

  "Whom does she expect to see while she is in China?"

  "The executives and staffs of three garment manufacturers."

  "Who else?"

  "No one."

  "You know that for a fact?"

  "She told me she knows no one in China."

  "But she delivered a letter, presumably to people she did not know. She could meet with other people she does not know."

  "I think that is not part of her plans."

  "But she may not have told you all her plans when you went to the airport to meet her plane."

  "I did not go to the airport to meet her plane. I was at the airport seeing a friend off to Hong Kong. I saw her from a distance and she seemed to need help."

  "Why are you spending time with her?"

  "I find her interesting."

  "And an American. Your fatiier was American."

  "Yes."

  "And you tried to correspond with him when he returned to Amer-ica.

  "I was not bom when he returned to America. When I was older, a student, I tried to locate him."

  The director turned pages in the folder. "That was when you were editor of the student newspaper."

  Inwardly, Li shrugged. In China, the past never became the past; it clung to the present, each moment of today and tomorrow and next year as they became the present, losing nothing with the passage of time, if anything gaining strength simply by virtue of enduring. And so his American father, his student days, his outspokenness about his wife—

  "You did not approve of your wife's activities," the director said. "In arguing against them you used phrases you had written in your sm-dent newspaper. Personal honor, personal integrity, personal responsibility ... always the personal over the communal, the personal over society, the personal over communism. You think too highly of the individual."

  Li was silent. It was the truth.

  "Also, you had a friend, a professor. He dedicated one of his books to you."

  More of the past, Li thought. With the present so filled with change, how do they have time to wallow in the past? "Yes," he said briefly.

  "Professor Ye. He died in 1971."

  He did not "die." He committed suicide. Hounded to death by the Red Guards, his wife in a prison camp, his children fled to Hong Kong, his library burned, his home smashed. And so he killed himself, like so many others in the Cultural Revolution.

  "His widow is still your friend."

  "Yes."

  There was a silence. The director lit a cigarette. "When you met Mrs. Graham's plane and discussed the letter she was to deliver—"

  "I did not meet her plane." That was a mistake, Li thought. No government official liked to be interrupted. But the director went on, and so did Li, repeating the response he had given every time he was asked about meeting Miranda's plane. He used it again and again in the next two hours, as the questions were rephrased, information demanded in different forms, small traps set that kept him alert, even as his annoyance and impatience grew. At last, he came to the conclusion that noth-

  ing was going to come of this, at least not today: he was not going to be arrested or charged with some offense or other; he was going to be given a warning. It was done often; often enough to keep people on a path of caution and fear.

  So, having decided that, he dared to look at his watch and frown deeply. "I have missed four meetings," he said, looking sternly at the director. "We must conclude this so that I do not lose the whole day. We are bidding on a new government office building; it may even have a suite for you and your staff."

  Again the director's lips twitched. "We would not want to put obstacles in the way of better working conditions for our officials." He closed the folder and lit another cigarette. "You understand, Yuan Li, that we will continue to watch your activities. You are a productive citizen of China; you have a large house, a car and driver, a successful construction company, but even the most outstanding citizens can take a wrong turn and destroy a lifetime of work and comfortable living. That is something for you to remember."

  Li bowed his head, like a student who had received a warning. He waited for the final order: Do not see this woman again.

  "If any suspicious activity on your part is reported, we will ask you to return to us to explain it, perhaps with Mrs. Graham, who likes closed doors because noise bothers her." He smiled at his own sarcasm.

  There was no order, Li realized, nor would there be. They wanted him to stay close to her, to lead them to the dissidents they were sure she would meet.

  They don't need me for that, he thought. They could simply follow Miranda and discover that she knows no one. Or that she does. Why do they want me to be with her?

  They think I am her guide, her translator, her confidant. They think she will be more daring with me than without me. And if I fall because of her, that makes no difference to them. In a country of more than a billion people, with absolute power at stake, what is one construction engineer more or less?

  There was nothi
ng more to say. In silence, he left the room. They did not shake hands.

  On the street, he was breathing hard, and he walked slowly, sorting things out. They would follow Miranda whether he were with her or not. They would not find anything (he was sure they would not find anything) but that would not stop them from staying with her until she flew back to America. So it would not help her if he stayed away from her. Still, any suspicion, even if not one fact was behind it, cast a

  cloud that could darken one's life for years, perhaps forever, passed on to children and grandchildren, to friends, to coworkers. So it would be better for Li, and for everyone he knew, if he called Miranda and canceled their trip to Xi'an, canceled all their plans, canceled the pleasure he found with her, the aliveness she had awakened in him, the desire ...

  / can't do that. I won't do that.

  They had nothing with which to charge him; his hfe was exemplary. The most radical thing he did was watch CNN. There was nothing in his life to interest them, or to give them cause to charge him.

  And they had nothing with which to charge Miranda except the delivery of a letter. (Why did she do it? And why didn't she tell me?) With nothing beyond it, no secret meetings, no other contacts, they would not endanger relations with the United States by charging her; it would simply be a small curiosity in a straightforward business trip.

  There was no reason for him to stop seeing Miranda, because there was nothing sinister in her activities, or his, and therefore there was no danger.

  But they would be followed. Well, that could be endured. What would be far worse would be to cut her out of his hfe. He could not do that. He would not do that.

  Unless there is more that she has not told me, plans, arrangements . . .

  He did not really believe that.

  In a taxi, on his way back to the office, he called his secretary. "I'm going home. Were there any calls?" He made notes on a small pad of paper, and dictated answers. "I won't be in the office until Monday morning; I'm leaving this evening for Xi'an, as planned."