Read An American Spy for Free Online Page B

hand.
    She didn’t answer, just stared at his large hand enclosing hers.
    “Because of your considerable efforts against them?” he asked.
    She shook her head, smiling, knowing how funny that sounded. Since their marriage, she had ceased all Party work. She’d become, by her own admission, a capitalist slug, yearning to live in a fashion magazine . Finally, she said, “I don’t know why they want to kill me.”
    “Because they don’t.”
    She raised her head, the smile gone, clutching at his fingers with her other hand. “Then it’s you they want to kill.”
    The problem, he knew, was that she’d lived and breathed radical Party doctrine too fully and for too long. For her, Western intelligence agencies sought only one thing—the destruction of Chinese communism—and would stack up as many Chinese bodies as they believed necessary in order to accomplish this.
    “Maybe they don’t want to kill anyone,” Zhu told her, but she didn’t look as if she believed that. He wasn’t sure he did, either.

     
    Zhang Guo had booked a private sea-view room at Yijing Lou, one of the top Qingdao restaurants, and before sitting down they toured the aquariums with the waiter and pointed out their preferences. “That one looks like Wu Liang,” Zhang Guo said, nodding at a tired-looking gray eel on the floor of one tank.
    Zhu bent to look closely into its black eyes, then straightened. “Close enough. I’ll have him fried,” he told the waiter, who bowed with exaggerated formality.
    It was nine by the time their food arrived, and the table was already littered with four empty beer bottles that the waiter soon swept away. Through the open window they watched ships light the surface of the calm water and, above, the snuffing out of stars as clouds drifted in. “How did it feel?” asked Zhang Guo.
    “How did what feel?”
    “Wiping out the Department of Tourism ,” he said in his heavily accented English. “That’s what they call it?”
    “They don’t call it anything now.”
    Zhang Guo snorted, then took another bite. “This trout is delicious. Want some?”
    Zhu didn’t answer.
    “How’s your eel?”
    Zhu said, “They were the most terrifying two days of my life. Afterward, I slept for twenty hours.”
    Zhang Guo chewed thoughtfully, waiting.
    Zhu said, “By the time I woke up, I’d lost my doubt. I’m not a maniac, you know. I knew as I sent out the order that what I was doing would be controversial. I knew why I didn’t ask for permission—I would have been denied it. But we’ve sat back for too long, congratulating ourselves on our economic miracle and not ensuring its future. You well know that we have an agreement with the Chinese people. They will hold their tongues and allow us to do as we please only as long as they see progress. Steady progress in their daily lives. As soon as some agency like the CIA succeeds in its plots to undermine our progress, Chinese citizens will be faced with stagnation or, worse, a reversal of their fortunes. Unlike Jiang Luoke’s deal with al Qaeda, this one is written in blood. A few bad years, and they will be out for ours.”
    “So you’re thinking of the future. A young wife will do that to you.”
    “You’re damned right I am!” Zhu said, louder than he’d said anything that day. He took a breath. “Think, Zhang Guo. One-child policy. In twenty years the average family structure will be one child caring for two parents and four grandparents. How are we going to support that if the Americans are picking at our economy? Think, too, of the fact that we have sixteen percent more boys than girls. How many millions of unmarried men will that make? Men with unsatisfied libidos, crippled by poverty. That’s the next generation, Zhang Guo. Those are the disaffected men who, in twenty years, will hang us in the streets.”
    It had been a long speech, but Zhang Guo didn’t need to spend much time digesting it; he’d heard much of this before. He sipped his beer