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think.”
    Mangan didn’t know what to say. “It’s important to report what they do.”
    “Yes, yes. But, we call them a cult.
Xiejiao
. An evil cult. Are we right, do you think?” Grey Suit appeared capable of earnestness.
    “I don’t understand why you—you the Communist Party, I mean—see them as a threat,” said Mangan. “They seem naive, childish.” He could feel Harvey’s eyes on him.
    “Naive. I must say I hadn’t thought of them like that.” Grey Suit paused. “I’m sure you’ve read some Chinese history.”
    “Yes, some.”
    “We’ve seen these movements before, yes? They get dangerous. Demagogues spouting religion. Peasants who think they’re divine, hurling themselves on bayonets. Villages burning.”
    Mangan shrugged.
    “Those old ladies in the street tonight? I don’t see that, I don’t see some fiery rebellion. This isn’t the nineteenth century.”
    Grey Suit looked at him, weighing what he was saying. Then he reached out as if to shake hands, but stopped midway, and in a strange, operatic gesture, quavered his hand from side to side.
    “I think, Mr. Mangan, that we don’t know who they are. I think we don’t know.”
    Harvey dozed for a while, leaning on the table, arms crossed. Mangan stared out of the window through the bars on to a concrete parking lot. The green
wujing
trucks from the previous night stood in lines. A dark, wiry kid hosed them down,spray dripping from the canvas, the drab olive metal suddenly gleaming.
    And then, in the breezy morning light, Mangan watched uniforms walk a group of Followers—fifteen of them, perhaps—across the concrete. They were cuffed, had their faces down and shuffled. No laces? They were all young men. The uniforms walked them to a truck. A sergeant dropped the tailgate. Two uniforms hoisted each Follower up on to the bed of the truck, which revved its engine, sending a black billow across the lot, pulled out, and was gone.
    The wind had picked up and, in the silence, Mangan watched cloud shadow stipple the mountains.
    “You can go,” said Grey Suit.
    They caught an afternoon flight from Nanchang. Approaching Beijing, Mangan was tight and silent. Harvey drank Five Star beer. Beneath them the north China plain darkened from gray to purple. Beijing glistened in the early night as the aircraft banked and the engines hissed.
    They were at Mangan’s flat by ten to look at the pictures. They crashed through the front door, scattering equipment bags, to find Ting, wide-eyed and phone in hand, scolding. Mangan was brought round, her concern breaking his mood and calming him.
    “I’ve been on the phone
all evening
,” she said. “Where have you
been
?”
    Mangan gestured to himself, as if he were making an entrance in fine attire.
    “Here we are,” he said.
    “She missed us,” said Harvey.
    “She did,” said Mangan.
    Ting waved her willowy, bare arms.
    “I almost called London.”
    She was done up for Beijing society: a slender dress in charcoal-gray silk, very short; Tibetan jewelry in exquisite dull silver. Her skin was Manchurian pale, the color of ivory. She sat down hard, gave an exaggerated sigh and ran her hands through short spiky hair.
    “Why didn’t you call? I missed a gallery opening.”
    “State Security ate my mobile,” said Harvey.
    She put a hand to her mouth.
    “Oh, no.”
    Mangan smiled.
    “We’re okay. Really. It was okay.”
    “And… we got the pictures,” said Harvey.
    Mangan dropped his trousers and began picking away at the gaffer on his thigh, wincing theatrically, and they all laughed.
    Mangan poured glasses of vodka, and Ting turned off the lights and the three of them sat on the shabby sofa and watched it all played back on Mangan’s flatscreen television. The pictures were strong. They had the old woman in the purple rain jacket, with her quavering voice and weird stare. They had the chilling
wujing
images taken from the street, before they made their way to the roof. Harvey had silhouetted