by John Gapper
The man stared at her stonily. “Too much fun. I envy you. Take your passport and travel home safely. You are welcome in China, Miss Lockhart, but you must respect our laws.”
It was only as Mei crossed over the bridge to the Hong Kong side of the border, above the canal that divided the mainland from the New Territories, that she realized she’d joined a different world.
At elementary school in Guilin, boys had teased her about her name because it sounded like America—Mei Guo, the beautiful country. Mei was slang for American. Meirican. Two of them had weaved around her, putting on accents and calling her a Yankee.
Well, she was an American now.
Beijing, 1989
When the phone rings, Lockhart is at the window, looking down at the gates of the compound. Two military vehicles have been parked outside for the past three days, their soldiers sweltering in the August heat wave under the green canvas roofs. He feels sorry for them, having to arrive each day to intimidate the residents when a poster of Li Peng, the premier who sent tanks into Tiananmen Square two months before, would do the job just as well. Two of them have already fainted and been taken away.
The heat is intense, and August has been worse than July. It is nearly 100 degrees and humid. People move slowly in the streets, conserving energy. The police posted at Tiananmen to stop anyone making trouble sweat in their caps. The part of the square where the tourist buses park is empty, and Mao’s portrait stares across from Tiananmen Gate to the Great Hall of the People. Beijing has a dreamlike air, as if June had never happened.
He props one arm on the windowsill, trying to generate a breeze, as he watches Margot pack. She is on her hands and knees on the floor, sorting out papers and pictures, placing them in boxes for the movers. He feels low and irritable, like the city. Political life has ground to a halt while the Party’s leaders tussle in Zhongnanhai over the next step. He’s been sent home from the embassy with their tickets and passports, booked on a flight to Washington, where a desk job beckons. His adventure is over.
“Is this Tom Lockhart?” The gravelly voice pronounces the vowels in a formal accent.
“It is. Who is this?”
“Economic counselor at the U.S. embassy?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Until recently.”
Lockhart doesn’t say anything. The man has shown too much inside knowledge for comfort—Tom rather than Thomas, his job, the fact that he has been instructed to leave. He looks at his watch. Four o’clock in the afternoon in Beijing, four o’clock in the morning on the east coast of the United States. He likes that he spends his day with his case officer asleep and thus unable to offer guidance. He’ll miss Beijing—an unpredictable challenge, with an excuse to do what he wants and justify it to Langley later. Besides, the seventh floor is empty in August. Sedgwick is on Cape Cod with his second wife.
“I want to show you something,” the voice says.
In the silence, Margot gazes at him inquiringly. Lockhart raises his eyebrows, as if in bemused exasperation, and tilts an imaginary cup to his lips. She smiles and goes to the kitchen.
“Tell me who you are.”
“You’re familiar with where I am,” the man counters. “At a siheyuan near Gulou Xi Dajie.”
Lockhart looks around. Margot is still in the kitchen.
“That means nothing to me.”
“A lady has been living here, but she does not pay the rent for herself. It comes from the China Postal Savings Bank, which receives a monthly deposit from an account at Wing Hang Bank in Hong Kong. You control this account, on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“I think you are mistaken. It is the first I have heard of any of this,” Lockhart says.
“One hour,” the voice says. “You will not be in danger. I want you to see something.”
When the call ends, Lockhart checks his watch. Sedgwick is out of reach, at least for two hours. “I’m going out,” he shouts. “Won’t be long.”
He takes his bicycle from the gate—the good thing about military rule is that he doesn’t need a lock—and cycles through the embassy district to Dongzhimen Road, then turns west amid the flow of bicycles. He rests his jacket on the handlebars, enjoying the wind in his shirtsleeves. Passing the red and green edifice of the Drum Tower, he enters the hutong district, its ancient siheyuan courtyard houses tiled in thick terracotta, with carved wood façades.
Two police cars have forced their way up a narrow street and are parked by a gate that leads into an alley. Lockhart gets off the bicycle and rests it on a wall by a clay pipe shop five hundred feet short of them. He has a bad feeling, but something in the voice on the phone pushes him forward. It had an air of disdainful certainty—as if the speaker knows all about Lockhart and isn’t impressed.
The police are expecting him when he walks up the street. The officer in charge holds out a hand for his black diplomatic passport and, after flicking through it, points at the gate. Lockhart walks up the alley to a one-story siheyuan at the end. He is curious to see it—he knows the address but has never been to the place, only paid the bills. He pushes open the door and crosses a dingy kitchen, with pots on the walls, to a tiled courtyard.
A tall man stands in the courtyard, his blue Mao tunic unbuttoned and his shirt open at the collar, smoking a cigarette. There are two butts at his feet; as Lockhart enters, he pulls a red-and-gold pack of Chunghwas from a pocket to offer him one.
“I smoke Marlboros,” Lockhart says.
The man shrugs. “These are better.” He indicates the door that leads to the rest of the house. “Look in there.”
There is a wide bed in the first room, facing a silk wall hanging of a crane on the roof of a temple. It is hot, and there is a smell like rotten eggs. Two flies buzz around the bed, on which lies the body of a woman. Another sits in a pool of blood that has collected from a deep wound in her chest. To judge by the smell, she’s been dead for some time. She was beautiful, with long, dark hair and a feline face. Lockhart has seen her photo but it didn’t do her justice, even dead. He looks at his watch again and then stands by her, closing her dull, sightless eyes with his fingertips.
He goes into the next room, past a screen that hides a basin and shower, toward the sound of crying.
Two babies lie side by side in cots in the darkened room. They are tiny, mirror images, with delicate eyes and tufts of dark hair. One sleeps, but the other’s face is red and clenched, bawling in hunger. They wear tiny white embroidered dresses, as if for a visitor.
The man comes into the room.
“You didn’t know?” He offers the cigarettes again, and this time Lockhart takes one. It tastes of plums as he inhales.
Lockhart shakes his head. It is a goddamned mess. He can imagine what Sedgwick, who didn’t like the plan in the first place, will say. He is on his way out of China, and this is the coup de grâce.
“This is what you got for your dollars. Was it a good investment?” The man leans on the wall, staring at Lockhart. He is in his forties, and it looks like this isn’t his first corpse.
“Who are you?”
“I work for the Ministry of State Security.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“You didn’t answer mine. Look at what your money bought. Silk covers and pretty dresses, an apartment for a mistress near Zhongnanhai. A bloody death. You are responsible for this.”
“We didn’t pay for it, and we didn’t want it.”
The little girl still cries, but softer now.
The man shakes his head. “Americans. You think everyone wants to be like you. We also want a society where the rich are indulged and the poor suffer, where addicts and criminals fill the cities. You forget that emperors have ruled China already. The people do not wish to return to that.”
“And if they do, you send in the tanks.”
The man snaps at him. “China is still finding its way. It is changing, but the Party cannot risk chaos.”
“How will the
Party deal with this?”
“That is not your affair. It will be handled.”
“What about these two?”
“There are facilities to care for them.”
Lockhart laughs bitterly. The man is quite convincing in his way, but he knows what his country’s orphanages are like. Kids there can scream for food or attention and not be helped for days, like the twins across the courtyard. They will lie in their own dirt, two abandoned girls.
“You’ll put them in a Social Welfare Institute? You might as well throw them in the garbage.”
“You know about it, do you?”
“I’ve done some research.”
The man smiles. “Ah, your wife. She made inquiries, I believe. Why would a child receive better care from the wife of a CIA spy who bribes and corrupts and is a party to bloodshed, than from the Chinese people?”
Lockhart has heard enough from this self-righteous apparatchik who cares nothing for love and humanity, only for the rule of the Party, at whatever cost in lives. Margot would have made a better mother than anyone he can think of, if nature hadn’t denied her.
“Because she’d love her, not treat her as propaganda.”
“They will have a better life here than they would in America,” the man says, stepping on his cigarette.
The baby has worn herself out and is drifting off to sleep in her cot, by her sister. Lockhart looks at the pair, abandoned in a hutong in Beijing, in a country in turmoil, with their mother dead.
“You want to bet?”
Lockhart drove south on Interstate 280, taking the curves south through the hills toward San Jose. He usually felt at peace on this road, savoring the journey to Silicon Valley with the window down and the sun shining, free of the San Francisco fog. Today, he was weary and despairing.
He’d killed Lizzie, or he’d let her die. In his mind, it made no difference. It had been his role to protect her, and he had utterly failed. The truth was, he’d admired what she had wanted to do. He’d made a halfhearted effort to dissuade her, but they had both known his heart wasn’t in it. She’d told him he would have done the same in her place and he’d thought: You are my daughter. He had worried about her, but deep down, he’d thought of her like himself—that she was charmed.
He had won her in a bet and lost her recklessly. Don’t be so cocky. Luck won’t always be on your side, Sedgwick had warned him years ago, but he’d laughed about it afterward. His talent was to make things work, even if there were bumps along the way. That was why they put him in the field, no matter how much they frowned on him. No one was better at improvising when the book didn’t say what to do next. It had worked for him all his life, in Beijing, Kenya, Vietnam.
He’d thought she was the same.
All this time later, he didn’t know which one Lizzie had been—the one who had slept or the one who had been crying. When Lang had grasped what Lockhart meant, he’d shaken his head, disgusted at the idea. But it was hard to dismiss. They had been alone, beyond the reach of the law. Lang’s task was to cover up the crime, and this was as good a way as any. Lockhart had struck him where he was most vulnerable—his pride. They would be sent to an orphanage as far away from Beijing as possible, down in the south, Lang said. Your wife will receive a call.
For years, Lockhart did not doubt that he’d won his bet, even if he had nobody to tell. Lizzie had had the best life a child could want. She’d won the lottery of life, from a Chinese orphanage to a U.S. suburb. He had sometimes wondered what had happened to her twin, feeling a twinge of guilt that she lacked the opportunities Lizzie had. But that had been the deal and, as China grew and became wealthier, he stopped worrying. Lizzie knew a girl at school who’d been adopted from Guangxi, and Lockhart heard that things were getting better there.
Now he’d lost everything. His life no longer felt like a series of lucky events, but stations on the way to an inevitable tragedy. The affair was over, and he would never go back.
He looped slowly through the Los Altos Hills, descending on the far side toward San Jose. At Sunnyvale, he left the freeway and navigated a maze of roads, lined with red-roofed houses, each standing on a plot like a Monopoly piece. The sun was high in the sky, behind a streak of cloud. As he crossed an empty highway, the Poppy campus stretched out before him. The image stamped on millions of phones stood by one corner of the road—a gold-leafed statue of a poppy flower.
He knew the story. Henry Martin had been a brilliant, rebellious kid who’d abandoned Stanford in his junior year to take off around the world. In India, studying Hinduism, he’d met a guru who achieved a higher state of consciousness by smoking opium. Martin had become a disciple and, when he returned to Palo Alto, had named his startup after the poppy seed. That was the legend. Officially, Poppy’s name referenced the golden Californian poppy, a far more innocuous flower.
He was greeted at the gate by the first of the eager black-uniformed helpers who swarmed the campus, doubling as assistants and concierges. The young man gave him a pass for Building Seven, halfway around the circle on which the low offices were set, and waved him on his way. Others appeared inside the entrance to guide him up the walnut stairs to Martin’s office, where an assistant fetched chilled water. He was on a mezzanine with glass panels looking out over rows of employees sitting at screens, busy designing software for the next product launch.
“Tom!”
Lockhart jumped. Martin was striding toward him, waving. Another assistant walked by him, trying to draw his attention to a piece of paper. Martin took it from her and ripped it in half.
“I hate this stuff, I’ve told you that.” Then his face turned solemn as he approached. “Tom. I’m so sorry for your loss. Let’s talk, man.”
Poppy’s founder was six feet four and two hundred pounds, with collar-length graying hair. Everyone else was draped in black, but he wore a gingham suit and vest with a pink tie, like a giant toddler. He put an arm around Lockhart as he led him into an office, then pulled two leather Mies van der Rohe chairs to face each other. Martin squeezed himself into one and sat with his head in his hands, his fingers laced through his hair.
“Tom, I can’t even imagine. I’m so sorry, man. I feel terrible. Can I help in any way?”
Lockhart felt like Mr. Wu, being offered a payoff by Martin to keep his mouth shut about his lost daughter.
“Thank you, Henry, but no.”
“Listen, Tom.” Martin stared at him earnestly. “When this is over, you have to set aside time for yourself. I don’t know if you’re a man of faith, but find someone to talk to. You need closure.”
“Thanks for the advice.” Lockhart ached to leave. He could not bear to listen to Martin’s attempt at therapy. “I came to say goodbye, Henry. You’ll understand that I can’t do any more for you.”
Martin looked puzzled. “But you have to. Don’t you see? You can’t walk away now; you have to carry on. She’d want you to.”
Lockhart stood, his temper flaring. “You have no idea what Lizzie would want. You didn’t know her.”
Martin heaved out of his chair and put a hand on Lockhart’s shoulder, restraining him. “There’s something you don’t know, Tom. We’ve found a new one. Come on, I’ll show you.”
On the other side of the engineering floor, Martin waved a hand at a panel and the door slid back, revealing a room. “Neat, huh? Here, look,” he said, holding up his watch.
“There’s a chip inside. It saves having to keep an identity card clipped to you. The world’s moving toward wearables. It’s going to be a great business.” He looked carefree as he talked, as if he’d already forgotten Lizzie.
The room was flooded with light from floor-to-ceiling windows. Five designers sat at a trestle table, working silently at laptops. White objects were being extruded from a row of 3D printers along one wall. Martin opened a panel and pulled out a tablet. It was silver, with the poppy emblem in gold—the latest model.
“Time for a break, gentlemen,” Martin said. The designers rose silently a
s one and filed out.
When they had gone, Martin put the tablet on the table and walked around it, his face reddening. He picked up an object from a 3D printer and flung in on the floor, then kicked it across the floor, as if reacting to a silent provocation. His mood had changed again, like the weather.
“This is so fucking unfair. We’re being killed, Tom. There’s a piece in the Times every day about how badly we treat the workers, and they’re not ours. We can’t even get inside to find out what’s going on. We send you, and look what happens.”
Lockhart squeezed one hand into a fist to keep himself under control. He badly wanted to leave. “You’re quite safe, Henry.”
Martin’s shoulders drooped. “Hell, I’m sorry. Forget what I said, will you? I’m sick and tired of it. I feel for all those kids, not just her. You’re the only person who can stop it.”
“I can give you other names. It’s over for me.”
Martin shook his head and slid the silver tablet across the table at him. “I told you. You can’t go.”
Lockhart lifted the tablet and pressed the start button. The black screen lit up in silver and white and a Poppy shimmered in the middle as the software loaded. “It’s like the others?” he asked.
“One difference. You’ll see.”
He watched as the poppy dissolved and a set of icons filled the screen, each with a title. Instead of the Mandarin characters he’d expected, they were in English. He tapped an application and the dome of the Capitol appeared. It was the Yahoo weather app for Washington, D.C.
“Whose is this?”
“It was ordered by a young woman for her boyfriend’s birthday. She thought it would be a nice present, so she bought one online. She was right. It’s the most amazing device. This came off the line at Long Tan, got loaded on a ship at Shenzhen, across the Pacific into Los Angeles. FedEx to Indianapolis, then BWI. Loaded on a truck to Washington and a van to Dupont Circle. He was delighted, until a guy from Langley came to the door.”
“How did he know?”
“We told him. He’s an old friend of yours, says he’s looking forward to seeing you. I couldn’t let you go, even if I wanted to.”