The Interior

by Lisa See

  “I’ll come back,” Hulan said. “But I doubt I’ll be calling first. You are guests in my country and you must abide by our rules.”

  Sandy grimaced as he opened the outside door. “Until our next meeting, then.”

  Hulan held his gaze, nodded, then passed through the door to the courtyard. Aware that three sets of eyes were on her, she looked toward the Administration building and held up her arm to get her driver’s attention. Waiting for him to pick her up, she once again took in the vast emptiness of the courtyard complex. Where were the signs of life? She expected to see people walking from building to building either on break or moving merchandise, people sitting together for a late lunch, even people sprawled out asleep for xiuxi. How did this company, administered as it was by what appeared to be just three foreign men and a handful of Chinese women, manage to control such a large population of workers? How had Knight ended up out here at all? Most important, what was going on in those other buildings and on the other side of the Assembly wall?

  Once the car had turned back onto the expressway, Hulan pulled out her cell phone, punched in David’s number, and waited several seconds for the line to connect. If it was 3:00 P.M. here, then it was midnight in Los Angeles. David would be up. She was sure of it.

  7

  WHEN THE PHONE RANG, DAVID KNEW IT HAD TO BE HULAN. It had been four days since they’d spoken, longer than any time since he’d left Beijing. “Where are you?” he asked. “I’ve been worried.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I have so much to tell you,” he said. She did too, but what he said next made her stories seem unimportant. “I’m coming, Hulan. I’ll be in Beijing…” He paused to calculate the time and the dateline, and said, “Day after tomorrow.”

  “How? What for?”

  “I have a job. I’m moving to Beijing.”

  She heard static on the line; then she asked with deliberation, “Is this the truth?”

  He laughed. “Yes! Yes!”

  “Oh, David. I can’t believe it.” Then she asked again, “How?”

  He started four days back with Keith’s horrible death and what that meant about the triads and the FBI surveillance. He confided in her his concerns about Keith and what he’d read in the paper. Then he told her about going back to his office the day after the funeral….

  He’d picked up his voice-mail messages, including one from Keith’s sister. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” she said. “We’re going home today, but I’d like to talk to you about Keith when you have a chance.” She left her home number in Russell, Kansas, then closed with, “I hope you’ll call.”

  At the time he’d had no desire to hear more of her recriminations, so he’d written the number down and put it in his briefcase.

  A few minutes later he’d walked down the hall to U.S. Attorney Madeleine Prentice’s office. She was blonde, beautiful, smart, and politically astute. Rob Butler, the chief of the Criminal Division, was also there. David had known Rob since law school. They’d played tennis together for years. Like Madeleine, he was a brilliant lawyer. David needed to clear up one aspect of Keith’s death before he made any other decisions and hoped now to confirm what Miles had told him after the funeral.

  “What can you tell me about the Keith Baxter investigation?” he asked.

  “There isn’t one,” Madeleine responded.

  “It was in the paper yesterday,” he said.

  “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers,” Rob said. “Haven’t you learned that yet?”

  David ignored the barb. “He was accused of doing something in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.”

  “Bribery?” Madeleine asked.

  “I assumed so, but I don’t know.”

  “Well, it’s not in our office,” Madeleine said. “We haven’t had a single Foreign Corrupt Practices case since the statute was written.”

  “Maybe his name has come up in another matter,” Rob suggested.

  “But we don’t have any bribery cases right now,” Madeleine said.

  “What about in the Washington office?” David asked.

  “Your friend lived in L.A., right? If he was up to something, don’t you think Washington would tell us?”

  David still didn’t know what was bothering Keith, but if Miles said there was nothing to worry about, and Madeleine and Rob verified that, then he could move on—emotionally and perhaps professionally. Except…

  “Can I ask something else? Do you think Keith could have been the target the other night and not me? I mean, the Rising Phoenix has had lots of other opportunities. So why now? Could there be some connection between Keith and the triads? He was doing work in China…”

  Madeleine sighed. “David, you know what happened that night. Accept it, then put it behind you.”

  David looked at Rob, who said, “She’s right.”

  David considered, then announced, “Miles Stout has asked me to set up an office in Beijing.”

  Without hesitation Madeleine asked, “How soon?”

  “I’d leave in a couple of days.”

  “A week or two’s notice would have been nice, but it wouldn’t be the first time an assistant left on the spur of the moment,” Madeleine said. Then eerily echoing Phil Collingsworth, she added, “When it’s time, it’s time.”

  David laughed and shook his head. “What’s this? Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?”

  “Not at all, David,” Madeleine said. “It’s a practical move for you. More than that, I’d call it wise. You’ve finished the Rising Phoenix trials, so if you have to leave suddenly, this is a good time to do it. For the office, I mean,” she amended. “Obviously we’ll hate to see you go, but there are other things to consider. You’ve got people after you. We can surmise it’s some last vestige of the Rising Phoenix. Can we prove it? Not yet. Is there any evidence that points directly to them so that we could get a wiretap and go roust some folks? No. So what you’re looking at is uncertainty and having those Feebies following you around. You can’t tell me you like that.”

  “I don’t, but should I run away to China?”

  “You’re not running away,” Madeleine said. “You’re getting out of harm’s way so the FBI can do its job and find those assholes.”

  “But China? The Rising Phoenix is a Chinese gang,” David pointed out.

  “Based in Los Angeles,” Madeleine added as if David didn’t know. “There may be a few hotheads still hanging around the city, but there can’t be any left in Beijing.”

  David knew this was true. The gang members in China had been caught. Those who’d confessed had been treated leniently with hard labor in China’s hinterlands. Those who hadn’t had been tried, sentenced, and executed.

  “Even if they aren’t all dead,” Rob added, “the Chinese will be able to protect you in a way that we simply can’t.”

  David hesitated. There was one more question he had to ask, but it wasn’t an easy one to ask of friends. “This isn’t some setup, is it? You aren’t trying to get me into something I don’t yet know about? We’ve been down that road before and—”

  “David,” Madeleine interrupted wearily, “just get out of here. Be safe…”

  The taxi’s windows were open, and hot hair blew across Hulan’s face. She gazed out over the fields, thinking of the time she’d spent in the U.S. Attorney’s Office with Madeleine Prentice and Rob Butler earlier this year, and of the life that David would be giving up to come here.

  “You love being a prosecutor,” she said into the phone receiver.

  “Yes, but I don’t look at that work the same way anymore.” He was referring to the case that had brought them back together. Both of their governments had played them for fools. She’d expected it; he hadn’t. She’d accepted it; he felt betrayed.

  “Have you spoken to Miles again?” In her mind’s eye she conjured up Miles’s handsome face. He’d always been nice to her—he was polite to everyone—but she’d always felt uncomfortable around him, pr
obably because she’d never been able to read behind his smooth Nordic exterior.

  Picking up on her tone, David said, “I’m not particularly fond of Miles either, and frankly I sense a certain ambivalence in him about this arrangement too. But the firm is made up of many people. Phil and the others have been great, but you guessed right. My negotiations were with Miles. After my meeting with Madeleine and Rob, I met Miles for lunch to go over the particulars. He said he’d give me free rein. ‘Sink your teeth into it. Run with it. The Knights are good people….’”

  “The Knights?”

  “Remember the factory you asked me about? The firm wants me to handle the sale of Knight to Tartan, then stay on—”

  “David, you don’t know anything about those people or their business. I’ve seen things—”

  “Look, they don’t need to be my friends. They sell, we buy. Hell, in twelve days Knight won’t exist anymore except as a division of Tartan. Don’t you see, Hulan? I’ll be going to China with business. I won’t just be representing Tartan, but other business the firm has lined up. Marcia, Miles’s secretary, has already set up appointments for next Monday. Don’t ask me where they’re going to be. I don’t have an office yet.”

  Hulan had many questions, but David just kept talking….

  It was amazing how easily he walked away from one life and into another. After lunch he’d gone back to the firm with Miles. Just as Keith had said on the night of his death, the offices of Phillips, MacKenzie & Stout hadn’t changed. The public areas were dark, plush, and conservative. Each partner was given an allowance to decorate his or her own office, which meant that there was a little of everything—from Louis XV to Early American, from mahogany to bird’s-eye maple, from cheap posters to original Hockneys on the walls. As a partner in the top echelon, David was entitled to a corner office on any of the firm’s five floors, the top of which was the acknowledged power center. But since David was going to China, he was assigned a large office between Miles’s on one corner and Phil Collingsworth’s on the other.

  Under ordinary circumstances the partners would have needed to meet to vote on accepting a new partner, but, as Phil had pointed out the day of the funeral, everyone here knew David. A few phone calls to the executive committee resulted in a unanimous decision. Five minutes later Miles asked David for his passport, which he pulled out of his breast pocket. Miles laughed when he saw it and said, “I guess I should have negotiated your points a little harder.” Both men had laughed then, for there was no denying that David had wanted to go back to China from the first moment that Miles mentioned it. The senior partner gave the passport to his secretary and told her to hustle down to the Chinese consulate for a visa. After that Miles and David joined Phil and some of the other partners for an impromptu champagne toast. It had felt like old times…

  “Did you ask about Keith?” Hulan interrupted.

  “What do you mean?”

  “About the bribery?”

  David’s voice was lost in static, and she asked him to repeat his answer.

  “I asked Miles, and I talked to Madeleine and Rob about it too. They all said something along the lines of you can’t believe everything you read in the papers. After what you and I have been through, I have to agree. I can’t remember the last time I was quoted correctly.”

  “I don’t like it,” she said.

  Even over this great distance she heard him sigh.

  “What part?” he asked, the pain in his voice palpable. “Is it that you don’t want me in China?”

  “That’s not it at all,” she said quickly. “I love you. I want you to come, but I don’t like what I’ve seen at the Knight factory and—I don’t know—this is happening so fast. Miles never does anything without deliberation.”

  “But that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Miles isn’t the only voice here. Everyone at Phillips, MacKenzie has been thinking about this for a long time.” His voice faltered, and she understood how deeply she’d hurt him. “It’s sudden,” he said, “but it’s an opportunity. It’s our opportunity.” His words got lost in another wave of static, then: “No more bad connections, just the two of us together.”

  “When does your flight get in?”

  “Seven-fifteen on the tenth,” he said, then clarified, “your Thursday.”

  “You may beat me back to Beijing,” she said. Hulan had yet to tell David about the peculiar circumstances of Miaoshan’s death, the strangeness of the Knight compound, or her now postponed plan to go into the factory, but she would when they met in Beijing. “I don’t know how easy it will be for me to get back to the city, but I’ll try to return in time to meet your plane. If I’m not there, I’ll send my new driver. Don’t worry, he’ll find you.”

  They spoke for a few more minutes, then David said, “Soon we’ll have all the time in the world to talk, but I should go. I have to be at Phillips, MacKenzie in the morning. I have a lot to do tomorrow to close up this life. We’re going to be together, Hulan. We’re going to be happy.”

  Suddenly that old caution crept back into Hulan’s voice. “I hope so, David, I really hope so.”

  They hung up, both knowing that a lot had gone unasked and unanswered.

  The next day David spent his first hour back in the luxurious fold of the firm with Miles’s secretary. Marcia explained that she would handle David’s time sheets and billings from here. She’d manage his workload when he was in town and take care of personal things like forwarding his mail to China. She’d also make sure that he received all interoffice memos in Beijing—or wherever in the world he happened to be—and that any phone calls that did come in for him were routed to his as-yet unknown number in China. She told him that the firm had just hired a Miss Quo Xuesheng as a secretary and interpreter in China. Miss Quo was already scouting out office space and setting up appointments for him upon his arrival.

  Then Marcia left him alone with several files, which would bring him up-to-date on the firm’s overall business and strategic plan. At noon, David swung back down to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, where Rob and Madeleine held a farewell gathering. Then he went back to Miles’s office for a final briefing on the Knight matter.

  “I’ve handled business for Tartan and Randall Craig for twenty years,” Miles said. “The Knight deal is a great opportunity. There’s a lot of money involved—seven hundred million—but not much can happen now to sour the deal. We’re at that point where the sale has its own momentum and we’re just along for the ride.”

  “Are there any problems I should know about?”

  Miles shook his head. “Smooth sailing. Henry Knight is a widower and has one grown son. Henry’s an ethical guy, a lot like you actually. He’s run his business cleanly even when he could have made shortcuts here and there. Top profit has never been his main motivator.”

  But the factory was in China, David pointed out. That had to cut costs.

  “Sure,” Miles said, “but that’s just a side benefit. He sees himself as a philanthropist. He’s given money to hospitals, children’s organizations, various shelters. For Henry, China’s just another cause. He’s always loved the place. I don’t know. It goes back to the war, I think. Anyway, he thinks he’s helping the people he hires. Having come from a farm myself, I know what a shit life that can be.” Miles shrugged as if to shake away the memories. “When you get over there, you’ll meet Governor Sun and his assistant, Amy Gao. They’re with the local government.”

  “You’ve met them?”

  “I met Sun on my first trip to China, but otherwise I’ve just dealt with his assistant. She has a Chinese name, but like so many of them she goes with an American version of her first name and puts her family name second. Amy Gao is a smart woman, ambitious. She’s come over here, been up at the firm. You’ll like her. If you have any problems, talk to her. I’ll come over for the final signing.” He paused, then said, “Now, don’t get worried that I’ll be butting in. This is your matter now. I mean it when I say go with it. Although I can�
�t say there’ll be much to go with. The work is done. All we need now are the John Hancocks. And as far as that goes, I couldn’t miss the final signing. Randall Craig and Tartan have been a big part of my career.”

  That night, after David finished packing, he tried calling his parents, but they were both out of the country. His father, an international businessman, had separated from David’s mother shortly after David was born and played little part in his life. David’s mother, a concert pianist, was on tour. David left messages on each machine, then went to bed.

  The next morning, Eddie—having promised to house-sit for as long as David wanted—drove him down to LAX. At eleven-fifteen David boarded a 747 and sank into his first-class seat—one of the many perks of being back in private practice. He remembered back to just four and a half months ago when he’d been on this same flight. He’d been nervous and unsure of what to expect. He’d plotted every move, using his legal background to logically plan his life. He’d hoped that somehow he would see Hulan, not knowing at the time that others had long planned their meeting. Looking back, he saw someone lacking in spontaneity, afraid of living on the edge, often in the position of reacting instead of setting things in motion himself.

  Four months later he was a very different man. Sure, he still sought his friends’ counsel and advice before making a decision. (He was cautious. He always would be.) Most definitely he’d haggled over his compensation, firm points, title, and expenses. He’d also thought a lot about Keith’s death. Was David running away now to escape his guilt? But Madeleine and Rob were right. With him out of the picture, the last of the Rising Phoenix renegades might make a mistake. When they did, the FBI would be there.

  As for what had troubled Keith on that last night, David might never know the full story. Clearly an ethical issue had troubled Keith, but maybe it wasn’t as bad as he thought; maybe he’d been more upset about his girlfriend’s death but didn’t know how to talk about it. And maybe, David thought ruefully, Keith had just been tired and stressed, worn down by these brutal transpacific flights and the strain of the deal. What mattered now was that David had found an honorable way to get back to Hulan.