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This was an old complaint. Their arguments, it seemed to David, had always revolved around work, responsibility, principles. Of course, Jean had had a very different perspective on their disagreements. “Our lives together can’t just be about your career, about which bad guy you’re going to nail or which good guy you’re going to save,” she used to say. “What about me, David?”
A few years back, when he was still at Phillips, MacKenzie, he had tracked down the hidden assets of a deposed dictator. He’d flown to Manila, Hong Kong, London, Cannes, and Frankfurt. He’d been passionate about the case, giving interviews, talking to anyone who could help, even once going to Washington to meet with a group of senators to discuss foreign aid. It was exhilarating to feel that he was making a difference in the lives of thousands of people he had never met.
After one two-week trip he had come home flush with the excitement of success. He was a fool, he knew now, but he’d chosen that moment to ask Jean if they should start a family. “A family? Children?” she’d scoffed. “You’ve got to be kidding. You don’t even have time for me.”
He’d been surprised at her reaction. “You can’t begrudge my work. It’s so important. What I’m doing—”
“Is applying your excess of principles to me and our marriage,” she’d finished for him.
“But I’m helping an entire country.”
“Yes, you are, at the expense of our relationship.”
“But I have to do the right thing.”
Jean had sighed. “David, your moral code is awfully hard to live with day after day. I can’t snuggle next to it in bed. It doesn’t comfort me at the end of a hard day.”
“Are you doubting my feelings for you?”
She had looked at him squarely as she said, “I don’t come first for you. Can’t you see that? How could I bring children into the world who wouldn’t come first for you either?”
That was the turning point in their marriage. Later, he’d tried to argue his position as he might in a courtroom, but he hadn’t gotten very far. Jean was stubborn, smart, fearless, and she deserved a husband who would love her wholly.
During this last phone call he’d wanted to talk about the things that had been happening to him. But where could he start? And how many of them really were state secrets? This was another thing that had driven Jean crazy during their marriage. “Who do you think I’m going to tell? The New York Times? The National Enquirer?” But many of his cases were “sensitive,” and he wasn’t supposed to discuss them. So another wall had built up between them.
When David had pushed past her chariness and told Jean that he was going to China, a long silence had followed. Finally Jean had spoken again. “I hope you find what you’re looking for,” she’d said softly, then the phone had gone dead.
Outside this building was a whole new world. Maybe he would find what—who—he was looking for.
6
JANUARY 30
The Ministry of Public Security
David woke abruptly at 3:00 A.M. He tossed and turned for a while, trying to go back to sleep. At four he got up, searched around for a brochure outlining the hotel’s facilities, and discovered that breakfast wouldn’t be available until seven. Too tired to read a book or do any work, he turned on the television to International CNN. How strange the news was on this side of the world. He watched sports reports on cricket in England and soccer in India. He saw a documentary on the sultan of Brunei. He listened with vague interest to a report on the rupture in U.S.-China relations caused by the arrest of several Chinese nationals caught smuggling nuclear trigger components into Northern California.
At six, he pulled open the heavy drapes and looked out at a cold sepulchral dawn. Just below him, the Liangma River crept past. Across the river, which seemed little more than a canal, the German-owned Kempinski Hotel and Department Store rose up. To his left, across a large thoroughfare and a raised highway, he could make out the Kunlun Hotel.
David knew that only exercise would clear his head. He pulled on a warm-up suit and went down to the front desk to ask directions to a jogging path. When the clerk suggested David use the hotel’s treadmill, he decided to take his chances outside.
Before leaving Los Angeles, he’d looked up the weather for Beijing in the newspaper, but nothing could have prepared him for the freezing air that hit him as soon as he swung through the hotel’s revolving doors. Two doormen stared at David in wonder as he nodded and set out, jogging over to the path that bordered the river. The cold stabbed his lungs and hurt his eyes, but as his muscles warmed with activity and his body reached an easy rhythm he began to take in the sights around him. Where the hotel’s grounds ended, low buildings spread as far as David could see. This residential neighborhood seemed ancient, gray from age, closed off from the modern world. Looking down the few alleyways that cut between the buildings, he saw laundry frozen on bamboo sticks, piles of refuse, a bicycle leaning up against an earthenware jar. Once he caught the eyes of a woman as she threw the contents of a slop bucket out her door. He saw an old man loading large baskets onto a low-slung boat. Some of these he hefted easily onto his back, while others made him bend over until his face nearly touched his knees.
The longer David ran, the more people he saw. Early risers, bundled in bulky padded jackets, bicycled or trudged resolutely to work or school. He saw
faces wizened by age and hard times. He saw sweet-featured children who looked like they could be in storybooks, walking, skipping, giggling along the path with backpacks and book bags. The few teenagers he passed looked as if they might freeze to death. They had dressed in what David realized must be the Chinese version of trendy. The girls wore leggings and bright scarves; the boys wore jeans and black scarves; both sexes completed their outfits with leather jackets and army boots.
In the days to come as David made this run a part of his routine, his presence would become more familiar, but for now most of the people ignored him pointedly. Others looked at him in bewilderment. He could imagine what they thought: Only a foreigner would be so incurably strange as to run for exercise in weather like this. A few people even called out to him in Chinese. He didn’t speak the language, but he was sophisticated enough to hear the difference between the Cantonese that was so prevalent in Los Angeles and the Mandarin of Beijing with its abundance of shi, zhi, xi, and ji sounds.
Back at the hotel, he showered, then went downstairs for breakfast. He perused the buffet, passing on the steamed dumplings and rice gruel with salted fish in favor of bacon and scrambled eggs. He spent the rest of the morning at loose ends—reading the International Herald Tribune and watching CNN in his room. He hated waiting, but he didn’t know what else to do.
Looking at a map, he saw he was far from any of the tourist attractions, and he felt nervous about venturing into the neighborhood that he had run past this morning. With its walls and exclusively Chinese residents—who looked like they were living just above the poverty line—that area had seemed as if it wasn’t for tourists. He didn’t want to risk getting in trouble by going someplace he wasn’t wanted or wasn’t supposed to go. But even as he waited in his room for twelve o’clock to roll around, another part of him wanted to say, Fuck it. I’m on the other side of the world. I’m on an adventure. I can do what I want.
Visitors to Beijing cannot ignore its imperial quality. David too would see this as soon as Peter drove him from the Chaoyang District, where he was staying, to the Ministry of Public Security, where the Eastern City and the Western City Districts meet. The Forbidden City—home to the twenty-four emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties who carried the Mandate of Heaven throughout their reigns—stands at the very heart of the city. Everything else blossoms out from it on a pure north-south axis and an east-west axis. The wide Chang An Boulevard, Avenue of Perpetual Peace, runs east and west before the Forbidden City, dividing Beijing into northern and southern sectors. Just across the street from the Forbidden City lies the broad expanse of Tiananmen Square. Just below this Qianmen Street goes south, while above the Forbidden City Hataman Street heads north. These two streets split the city on its east-west axis.
Beijing’s layout recalls the traditional concepts of yin and yang. Yin represents the north—night, danger, evil, death. The first barbarians—the Mongols—came from the north. Emperors—usually invaders—also lived to the “north” in the Forbidden City. Residents were warned never to insult the emperor by spitting, urinating, or weeping while facing north. Homes and businesses in Beijing, as in most of China, open to the south, allowing the sun to pour in with the attributes of yang: daylight, refuge, goodness, life.
To control this pattern over the centuries, the Chinese built walls. The old empire itself was protected by the Great Wall to the far north. Massive walls with gates at the four compass points defended the ancient city. The emperor fortified himself behind the Forbidden City’s high walls. Even his subjects—meek as they were—screened themselves from bandits and nosy neighbors by living behind walls in courtyards. Since Chinese law decreed that no building could ever be higher than the emperor’s throne, these houses—like those David had seen on his morning run—were built close to the ground. Between them lie the hutongs, an ancient labyrinth of little alleys and lanes. It is the tangle of hutongs that gives Beijing its human character.
