‘Oh. So it was really serious.’ Tamara actually felt dismayed that he had gone so far as to propose. Stupid feeling, she told herself.
‘Serious on my side, at least. And she could have carried on her translating work here in Chad – it’s all done remotely anyway. But she said no. Okay, I said, let’s get married and I’ll refuse the posting. Then she told me that she didn’t want to get married either way.’
‘Ouch.’
He shrugged unconvincingly. ‘I was more serious than she was, and I found out the hard way.’
He was only pretending to be insouciant. She could tell that he had been hurt. She wanted to hold him in her arms.
He made a brushing-away gesture. ‘Enough of ancient miseries,’ he said. ‘Would you like something to eat?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I haven’t wanted food all day, but now I’m ravenous.’
‘Let’s see if there’s anything in the refrigerator.’
She followed him into the little kitchen. He opened the fridge door and said: ‘Eggs, tomatoes, one large potato and half an onion.’
‘Do you want to go out?’ she said. She hoped he would say no: she did not yet feel ready for a restaurant.
‘Heck, no,’ he said. ‘There’s enough here for a banquet.’
He diced the potato and fried it, made a tomato-and-onion salad, then beat the eggs and made an omelette. They sat on stools at the small kitchen counter to eat. Tab poured more of the white wine.
He was right, it was a banquet.
Afterwards she realized she felt human again. ‘I guess I should be going,’ she said reluctantly. She knew that when she went to bed alone in her apartment the ghosts would come out and she would have no defence.
‘You don’t have to leave,’ he said.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I know what you’re thinking.’
‘Do you?’
‘Let me just say that whatever you want will be okay with me.’
‘I don’t want to sleep alone tonight.’
‘Then sleep with me.’
‘But I don’t feel like sex.’
‘I didn’t think you would.’
‘Are you sure that’s all right? No kissing or anything? Will you just put your arms around me and hold me while I go to sleep?’
‘I would love to do that.’
And he did.
CHAPTER 6
The air in Beijing was breathable this morning. The weather girl said so, and Chang Kai trusted her, so he dressed in cycling gear. He confirmed her prognosis with his first breath when he stepped out of the building. All the same, he put on his face mask before mounting his machine.
He had a Fuji-ta road bike with a lightweight aluminium alloy frame and a carbon-fibre front fork. As he set off, it seemed to weigh no more than a pair of shoes.
Cycling to work was the only form of exercise Kai had room for in his schedule. In Beijing’s colossal traffic jams it took the same length of time as driving, so he did not lose any of the working day.
Kai needed to exercise. He was forty-five years old, and his wife, Tao Ting, was thirty. He was slim and fit, and taller than average, but he was always conscious of that fifteen-year gap, and he felt a duty to be as agile and energetic as Ting.
The street where he lived was a main artery with dedicated bike lanes to separate the thousands of cyclists from the hundreds of thousands of cars. All kinds of people rode: workers, school pupils, uniformed messengers, even smart office women in skirts. Turning off the main road into a side street, Kai had to negotiate the four-wheeled traffic, winding between trucks and limousines, the yellow-sided taxis and the red-topped buses.
As he raced along he thought fondly about Ting. She was an actress, beautiful and alluring, and half the men in China were in love with her. Kai and Ting had been married five years, and he was still crazy about her.
His father disapproved. For Chang Jianjun, people who appeared on television were shallow and frivolous, unless they were politicians enlightening the masses. He had wanted Kai to marry a scientist or an engineer.
Kai’s mother was equally conservative but not so dogmatic. ‘When you know her so well that all her faults and weaknesses are familiar to you, and you still adore her, then you can be sure it’s true love,’ she had said. ‘That’s how I feel about your father.’
He cycled to the Haidian District in the north-west of the city and entered an extensive campus next to the Summer Palace. This was the headquarters of the Ministry of State Security, in Mandarin the Guojia Anquan Bu, or Guoanbu for short. It was the spy organization responsible for both foreign and domestic intelligence.
He parked his machine in a bike rack. Still breathing hard and sweating from his exertion, he entered the tallest of the campus buildings. Important though the ministry was, the lobby was shabby, with furniture in the angular style that had been excitingly modern in the Mao era. The doorman bowed his head deferentially. Kai was Vice-Minister for International Intelligence, in charge of the overseas half of China’s intelligence operation. He and the Vice-Minister for Homeland Intelligence were equals who reported to the Security Minister.
Kai was young for such a senior post. He was fiercely bright. After studying history at Peking University – which had the top history department in China – he had studied for a PhD in American History at Princeton. But his brain was not the only reason for his rapid rise. His family was at least as important. His great-grandfather had been on the legendary Long March with Mao Zedong. His grandmother had been China’s ambassador to Cuba. His father was currently vice-chairman of the National Security Commission, the committee that made all the important foreign policy and security decisions.
In short, Kai was Communist royalty. There was a colloquial word for people like him, the children of the powerful: he was a princeling, tai zi dang, a phrase that was not used openly but spoken quietly, between friends, behind the back of the hand.
It was a derogatory name, but Kai was determined to use his status for the benefit of his country, and he reminded himself of this vow every time he entered Guoanbu headquarters.
The Chinese had thought they were in danger when they were poor and weak. They had been wrong. No one had seriously wanted to wipe them out then. But now China was on its way to becoming the richest and most powerful country in the world. It had the largest and smartest population and there was no reason why it should not be foremost. And so it was in serious danger. The people who had ruled the globe for centuries – the Europeans and the Americans – were terrified. They saw world domination slipping day by day out of their grasp. They believed they had to destroy China or be destroyed. They would stop at nothing.
And there was a dreadful example. The Russian Communists, inspired by the same Marxist philosophy that had driven China’s revolution, had striven to become the world’s most powerful country – and had been brought down with a seismic crash. Kai, like everyone else in the highest levels of the government, was obsessed with the fall of the Soviet Union and terrified that the same thing would happen to China.
Which was the reason for Kai’s ambition. He wanted to be president, so that he could make sure China rose to its destiny.
It was not that he thought he was the smartest person in China. At university he had met mathematicians and scientists a good deal cleverer. However, nobody was more capable than he of guiding the country to the achievement of its aspirations. He would never say this aloud, not even to Ting, for who could help regarding it as arrogant? But secretly he believed it, and he was determined to prove it.