Kim Scott sits at a long, white serpentine table that winds its way artistically around the first floor study room of the Tsinghua University Library. The room fronts a courtyard bright with a late morning sun and changing fall leaves. It is warm and inviting, tempting students away from their studies. The sun finds its way to students lying on the floor in out of the way spots and to those in the vinyl upholstered lounge chairs along the glass outer wall of the room. Some students are caught between morning classes and cat nap, catching up on last night’s lost sleep, oblivious, while the sun highlights dust motes falling lazily onto their still faces. Kim’s fingers waiver over the keys of her pad as she ponders, waiting for words to come to her.
She hears a noise and looks up to see Zak talking to somebody in the hallway outside. His voice is raised.
“Fine!”
He gives a man standing in front of him his student ID. The man looks at it, nods his head, and returns it, letting him go.
As he approaches she can see why Zak was stopped. His clothes are dirty, smeared in places with caked mud and bits of leaves. His pants are wet and his shoes make a squishing sound as he walks. Not exactly very student like. She sits back.
“What the hell happened to you?” she asks.
The table goes on forever curving back on itself throughout the large room and there is basically no easy way to go around it. Zak ducks himself beneath it and pulls a seat over to Kimberly.
“I have no freaking idea what’s going on.”
He is sort of whispering at her sideways, keeping his eyes on the door and glass curtain wall into the main hallway.
Kim is frowning. This is a girl who rarely frowns, who rarely has any reason to. Kim has a particular brand of cuteness, which she wears like wardrobe, but sometimes he wonders if it isn’t really just a façade, a kind of self-defense mechanism.
“Somebody’s after me.”
Kim laughs and he wonders if she is being dismissive. In his mind he hears the sound of clear, tinkling crystal, a chandelier being shaken, the way her voice, especially her laughter, cuts through his world.
“I’m not kidding! There were these guys at our apartment. They were inside, waiting for me.”
She frowns yet again, little lines of concern barely creasing the smooth skin of her forehead.
“What did they want?”
“Other than to kill me you mean?”
“Zak!”
This makes him pause for a second.
He gathers himself. He rallies. He tilts his head as he gets very close and whispers.
“A guy was knifed in the Gardens and I was there. He gave me this.”
He unclenches his fist and shows her the tiny flash drive which he just retrieved from the stacks upstairs.
Kimberly doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry or what. He’s being preposterous and it’s not endearing. Not even a little.
“So? What’s on it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You haven’t checked it yourself?”
“I’ve had other priorities, like not getting killed.”
Kim carefully lays her hand on top of his and takes the flash while looking around. There are a couple of conked out kids ensconced in the lounge seats nearby and an older looking guy powering a laptop not very far away at their table. She loads the drive and gives Zak a look that says: this better not blow up.
Instantly the file boots onto her screen. It is in Chinese but with full English transliteration. There are instructions from somebody named Li Hua Wang. They see millions of files and they try to open a few but can’t. Everything appears to be encrypted.
“It’s huge!” Kim exclaims.
“Try a decrypt.”
She back clicks a file and runs a standard decryption. The instant she hits enter the screen goes blank.
Kim turns and gives Zack a withering stare. For all she knows her computer could be zonked. She pulls the flash and stabs it into Zak’s hesitating hand before restarting her computer. The laptop hesitates, but the recovery screen flashes up brilliantly.
Zak steps behind her.
“See.”
“See what? I’m not trying that again.”
She’s checking her directories.
“You should take it back. Give it to whoever wants it. If somebody got hurt over it in particular.”
“Killed.”
“Zak, don’t be so dramatic.”
His sigh is audible, and intended to be.
He is mystified about the contents of the memory stick, especially its massive numbers of encrypted files. Is it some kind of humongous data dump? He is guessing based on the instructions Wang has provided that the encrypted files could be political. Are they government documents, perhaps even classified? He has trouble understanding what all this could be.
Didn’t Hui give him something, a business card? His hand flies to a shirt pocket. Strange. He was pretty sure that he had put it there. Another thought occurs to him and he reaches for his wallet. Opening it, sure enough, there on top he finds Hui Lee’s card, its Chinese and English characters are in shiny, embossed gold. The guy holding his clothes had probably taken the card he was handed, but Lee had placed another in his wallet when he was examining it. He can feel the heavily raised, brightly colored shield all the way through it.
“This is the guy. Or at least this is his card.”
Zak tries to show it to her, but her fingers are still flying over computer keys. She doesn’t type, that would require having one’s hands in a basically stationary position over the keyboard while reaching appropriate keys in the immediate range of each finger. She has her own self devised method of typing and it’s like nothing he has ever seen. Her fingers seem to be everywhere at once.
She breaks focus and looks down at the card.
“Hui Lee?”
She takes it, scrutinizing it with care.
“Is he the killer?”
“No, that was some other guy.”
She looks at him, taking this in.
“But he’s the guy who wanted to kill you?”
“Yeah. Kidnap me more like it.”
“How do we know who this guy is? He could be anybody. The card doesn’t mean a thing.”
“No. It doesn’t. But it has a phone number.”
Kim nods.
“We should call it. Or him,” she states with authority.
Kim turns back, places the card at the bottom of her screen and starts in.
“Let’s get a general number for Spyville, shall we?”
“What for?”
“So we can check this guy out.”
He shakes his head.
“Are you in the habit of verifying people’s identities?”
“I am now, since somebody is screwing with my boyfriend.”
“I’m touched.”
“Don’t be.”
She pulls up a general screen that says Chinese Ministry of State Security at the top. The web page looks so ordinary that it could just as well be for a seed corn company. She asks for a list of contacts and sure enough there is a general phone number and it’s in the Beijing area code. Nice.
“Ok Sparky, here’s your phone number. Why don’t you give it a go?”
He’s been punching it into his phone as she speaks.
“Yes. Hello?”
“Hello. Just a minute please.”
He waits while somebody speaking English comes on the line.
“Hello, sir. How may I be of assistance?”
Zak returns to his seat while holding the phone to his ear. Kim watches him intently.
“Hi. You know I just met a very nice gentleman from your agency. He said his name was Hui Lee. Really a terrific guy, and he indicated that I could check with you to verify that he works for you. Would you mind checking that for me?”
He raises his eyebrows to Kim, like “I can’t believe I’m actually doing this.”
“Oh, huh huh. A
Mr. Hui Lee?” She spells it out with barely a trace of an accent. “Just a second please.”
“She’s looking,” he says to Kim.
“I’ll bet,” she says without looking up.
“Excuse me, sir. Can I ask who is inquiring, please?”
“Of course. My name is Joseph Mengele.”
“I see. Well, we have a Mr. Lee who is a supervisor. Would you like me to see if he is in?”
“No. That won’t be necessary. Thank-you very much.”
“Certainly sir. Can I perhaps take a message for Mr. Lee?”
“Very kind of you. No, I don’t think so. Thank-you. Goodbye.”
He clicks off somewhat hurriedly.
“Mengele? Really?”
“She had no idea who that is.”
“I suppose not. But they have your name and location,” she looks at her watch, “about now.”
“Sure. And they could be pulling image from the CCTV over there on the wall for all we know.”
“So they would know who I am too.”
“Why not?”
“You know, this could be really scary if I were the kind of person who got scared at this sort of thing,” she said.
“But you’re not.”
“I don’t know. How about you?”
He holds up the flash drive in a way that is sure to be visible to the CCTV. Even the dude sitting not far away sees him make the gesture.
“I say let’s get rid of this as fast as we can.”
“Sounds good,” she reaches for the business card he placed on her computer and holds it up for him. He hunches over to peer closely at it as he punches in the number.
“Ni hao?”
“Hello. To whom am I speaking?”
There’s a downbeat of a moment. Zak is thinking his phone number must be ID’ing him on Lee’s screen about now. The Ministry of State Security is only a couple miles to the West of Tsinghua University and there has been plenty of time for Lee to return to his office.
“Ah! Mr. Gray! This is Hui Lee, of course. How good of you to contact me.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“Your voice is unmistakable, I assure you.”
“I doubt that.”
“Then you would be mistaken, Christopher.”
“Stop calling me that! I’m Zachary Miller, not Christopher Gray!”
“So you say. Very well, have it your way.” He pauses for effect. “Zak.”
“Thank-you. I want to give you the flash drive that a man in the Jinchun Gardens gave me after he was attacked. It means nothing to me and I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”
“A wise decision, Zak. Where can we meet?”
Zak is thinking on his feet.
“How about Muxidi? You come alone. Stand in the center of the bridge and take off your coat and wait for me. One hour.”
“Very well.”
For Zak, whose life has spiraled out of control in the last few hours, it feels like a major victory to get an assent from a man who he instinctively knows will stop at nothing.
“Nobody else. Just you,” says the determined voice on the other end of the line.
“Got it.”
Zak clicks the connection off.
Kim is looking at a map for the subway.
“Does it look like I can get there in time?”
She stands.
“Sure we can.”
Chapter 9
On Fire Page 8