I hope to have the chance to be a better mom to my son. This upheaval has been so challenging for him, needless to say, but I’m ready, finally, to be there for him, to focus on his needs and not the things I desire for him. As for Oli, he’s still processing what I’ve told him; of course that’ll take time. But the fact that he listened, really listened, and that he’s still here—well, that gives me hope. I’ve started looking for a house in Palo Alto. Henri and I will move the instant we’re able. All I want is for the three of us to be a family. It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted. I was a fool to let Winnie convince me otherwise.
Okay, now that’s truly everything. I think you’ll agree I’ve held up my end of the bargain, and please, Detective, I’m pleading with you to hold up yours.
18
Three days after her father’s arrest, Mandy Mak breaks her silence and gives a televised press conference. Winnie notes that she’s traded her high-fashion wardrobe for a muted dark blouse, a thin strand of pearls. When she reads her prepared statement, trembling hands belie her steady voice.
“My father has done nothing wrong. Not only have the Americans locked up an innocent man, but they have also deprived him of lifesaving medical care. In the days to come, I look forward to proving that he’s been framed by his former business associates, Ava Wong and”—here, she lowers the sheet of paper and seems to stare right through the screen into Winnie’s living room—“Fang Wenyi, who is still at large. People of China, I appeal to you for your help. If you have any information on Fang Wenyi and her whereabouts, please, I beg you, come forward and help this daughter clear her father’s name. Justice must be done.” Mandy dabs a handkerchief to her eyes and is escorted off the podium.
Winnie has to admit it’s not a bad strategy—training the spotlight on The Americans. Mandy knows the press will seize on Winnie’s change of citizenship to portray her as a defector, a turncoat, a traitor to China. Mandy’s already shut down the black factory, given up a few rogue employees who were ostensibly in cahoots with The Americans.
Now Winnie finds herself face-to-face with her own image, plastered across the TV screen. The headshot is from her old employee ID card at a German multinational company, her first job out of college. Some enterprising intern must have tracked it down. The photo was snapped before even her first double-eyelid procedure; she reminds herself that she looks nothing like that now.
Turning off the TV, she moves on to the microblogging platforms, where netizens are engaged in fierce debate.
Every time I see a picture of Boss Mak in that wheelchair I feel sad. He’s in his 70s. He deserves peace!
What are the international brands so angry about? If they want Western-style IP protections, then they should pay for Western labor!
That Ava Wong and Fang Wenyi are really ruthless, trading in an old grandpa for their own freedom. I stand with Mandy Mak!
Seeing her and Ava’s names right there, side by side, makes Winnie reel. She’s underestimated Mandy Mak’s social media prowess and reach. She longs to lower the blinds and barricade the door, to stay hidden in this apartment until Ava’s sentencing next week. At least then she’ll know whether she has a future in America, away from this hostile, unforgiving place.
But she’s not here in Beijing on an extended vacation. There’s work to be done—diamond labs to visit, scientists to consult, sales teams to convince. The few times she has to leave the house, she takes every precaution, using the pseudonym Zhou Feifei, wrapping a silk scarf around her head and donning her enormous sunglasses, even at twilight. (She stops going out at night.)
Returning home from another unsuccessful meeting, during which the diamond manufacturer’s sales manager informed her they simply couldn’t work with a business as small as hers, she spots a beat-up Nissan parked across the street from her apartment complex. A bald, hulking man sits in the driver’s seat. Thirty minutes later, when she slips out to the grocery store, car and driver remain in the same spot. He’s smoking a cigarette out the open window, and when she walks past, the cigarette butt dives at her foot, nearly singeing her toes.
She jumps back. “Watch it.”
“Excuse me,” he says. “I didn’t see you there.”
Later she tries to explain to Ava why his words seemed so menacing.
“Nobody but me has any idea where you are,” Ava says. “And you have to get off Weibo. Those people only know what state propaganda tells them, which is to say nothing at all.”
It’s the night before Ava’s sentencing hearing. She and Winnie have been on the phone for hours, replaying the entire confession from start to finish, trying to discern where they stand. As far as they can tell, Ava nailed the trickiest part of the confession—convincing Georgia Murphy that she couldn’t have offloaded those two hundred bags, not while she was at Aimee Cho’s reunion party, surrounded by classmates at all times, even when driving back and forth from the city.
Winnie says, “So no one noticed you went missing for almost an hour?”
“I told her I was locked in the bathroom arguing with you!” says Ava. “There were so many people around, Joanne and Carla weren’t really keeping track of me. Besides, the most convincing detail is the cell phone location data that shows I never left Woodside.”
“Or, rather, that your phone never left Woodside,” says Winnie. “How many problems do you think you’ve solved by simply leaving your cell phone behind?” She can see Ava laugh with her whole body.
It was a smart move on her friend’s part—planting her cell phone in the medicine cabinet of the guest bathroom while she took a Lyft to South San Francisco, did the deal, and then came right back. Her alibi was impenetrable; the detective lapped it all up.
Another point in their favor: Boss Mak has confessed to the charges. To clear his daughter’s name, he’s owned up to running a black factory in his own legitimate factory’s backyard, brazenly copying the blueprints entrusted to him by the world’s most exclusive brands. As promised, the detective has garnered Ava a good plea bargain from the prosecutor.
And yet, and yet, in this business there are no guarantees. The threat of an overzealous judge holding some unknown bias or grudge looms over them all.
Soon Ava starts to yawn, and Winnie says, “You should get some rest,” to which her friend replies, “If we win, the adrenaline will keep me going for another week. If we lose, I’ll have plenty of time to sleep in jail.”
Winnie’s skull seems to contract as though caught in a vise. “Don’t even joke about that.”
“Relax,” Ava says. “It’s all we have right now.”
Throughout the morning Winnie paces the length of her living room, too antsy to consume anything, not even her customary double espresso. Every few minutes she checks the time. Ava should be in court, maybe rising to her feet at this very moment to receive her sentence.
In search of distractions, Winnie turns on the television, landing on a game show involving an eligible young bachelor, charged to choose a date from a group of attractive women (hidden behind a curtain) by interviewing only their mothers. The moms are touchingly cutthroat as they disparage the other daughters to spotlight their own, but the host’s braying voice grates on Winnie, and she turns the TV off.
She paces the living room until her legs grow sore. What is taking Ava so long to call? The hearing is supposed to be straightforward, in and out.
Her phone emits a piercing ring. She flies at it. “Well?”
Ava’s voice pours into her ear. She talks so fast and so loud that Winnie has to tell her to slow down and enunciate.
“Back up,” Winnie says. “I want all the details.”
Ava starts over. Picture her in a new dress purchased for the occasion: somber, black, elbow-length sleeves, a skirt that ends midcalf. She even changed her hair for the first time in twenty years.
“It’s so short it barely grazes my earlobes. No greater symbol of remorse than a woman shorn, right?”