He said: ‘It doesn’t matter what you wear, does it? As soon as you get to the studio they’re going to put you in some fantastic costume.’ Sometimes he suffered the dark suspicion that she dressed up for the handsome young male actors she worked with. She had so much more in common with them than with him.
Ting said: ‘It always matters what I wear. I’m a celebrity. People expect me to be special. Drivers, doormen, cleaners and gardeners all tell their families and friends: “You’ll never guess who I saw today – Tao Ting! Yes, her from Love in the Palace!” I don’t want them to say that I’m not so beautiful in real life.’
‘Of course, I get it.’
‘Anyway, I’m not going straight to the studio. They’re filming a big sword fight today. I’m not needed until two o’clock.’
‘What are you going to do with your free morning?’
‘I’m taking my mother shopping.’
‘Nice.’
Ting was close to her mother, Cao Anni, who was also an actor. They talked on the phone every day. Ting’s father had died in a car crash when she was thirteen. The same crash left her mother with a limp that had blighted her career. But Anni had found a new line of work doing voice-overs.
Kai liked Anni. ‘Don’t make her walk too far,’ he said to Ting. ‘She hides it, but her leg still hurts.’
Ting smiled. ‘I know.’
Of course she knew. He was telling her to be thoughtful about her own mother. He always tried not to act like a parent with Ting, but sometimes it happened anyway. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘I’m glad you care about her. She likes you, too. She thinks you’ll look after me when she’s gone.’
‘I will.’
Ting made a decision and pulled on a pair of faded blue Levi’s jeans.
Without looking away from her, Kai turned his mind to the day ahead. He had a rendezvous with an important spy.
He was booked on a lunchtime flight to Yanji, a mid-size city close to the border with North Korea. Although he was now the boss of the foreign intelligence department, he still personally ran a few of the most valuable spies, mostly those he had recruited when he was lower in the hierarchy. One such was a North Korean general called Ham Ha-sun. For some years now Ham had been the Guoanbu’s best source of inside information about what was going on in North Korea.
And North Korea was China’s great weakness.
It was the soft underbelly, the Achilles heel, the kryptonite, and all the other images for a fatal weakness in a strong body. The North Koreans were key allies, and they were desperately unreliable. Kai met Ham regularly, and between scheduled meetings they could contact one another to request an emergency assignation. Today’s meeting was routine, but still important.
Ting put on a bright blue sweatshirt and stepped into a pair of cowboy boots. Kai looked at the clock beside the bed and got up.
He washed quickly and put on his office suit. While he was dressing, Ting kissed him goodbye and left.
There was smog over Beijing, and Kai took a mask in case he needed to walk anywhere. His overnight bag was packed ready for the trip. He took out his heavy winter coat and carried it over his arm: Yanji was a cold city.
He left the apartment.
*
There were four hundred thousand people in Yanji, and almost half of them were Korean.
The city had expanded fast after the Second World War, and as Kai’s plane descended he gazed at the ranks of modern buildings packed closely together both sides of the wide Buerhatong River. China was North Korea’s main trading partner, so thousands of people crossed the border every day in both directions to do business, and Yanji was an important entrep?t for such trade.
In addition, hundreds of thousands of Koreans – perhaps millions – lived and worked in China. Many were registered immigrants; some were prostitutes; not a few were unpaid agricultural workers or purchased wives – never actually called slaves. Life in North Korea was so bad that to be a well-fed slave in China might not have seemed a terrible fate, Kai thought.
Yanji had the largest Korean population of any Chinese city. It had two Korean-language TV stations. One of the Korean residents of Yanji was Ham Hee-young, a bright and capable young woman who was the illegitimate daughter of General Ham, a fact not known to anyone in North Korea and very few people in China. As manager of a department store she earned a high salary plus commission on sales.
Kai landed at the domestic airport, Chaoyangchuan, and took a cab to the city centre. All road signs were bilingual, with Korean above Chinese. Some of the young women on the city streets wore the chic, sexy styles of South Korean fashion, he noticed. He checked in to a large chain hotel, then immediately went out again, wearing his heavy coat against Yanji’s bitter cold. He ignored the taxis at the hotel entrance then walked a few blocks and hailed a cab on the street. He gave the driver the address of a Wumart supermarket in the suburbs.
General Ham was stationed at a nuclear base called Yeongjeo-dong, in the north of North Korea, near the border with China. He was a member of the Joint Border Oversight Committee, which met regularly in Yanji, so he travelled across the border at least once a month.
Many years ago, he had become disillusioned with the regime in Pyongyang, the capital, and had begun to spy for China. Kai paid him well, channelling the money to Hee-young, Ham’s daughter.
Kai’s cab took him to a developing suburb and dropped him at the Wumart, two streets away from his actual destination. He walked to a building site where a large house was going up. This was where Ham spent the money he made from the Guoanbu. The land and the house were in Hee-young’s name and she paid the builders out of the money Kai sent her. General Ham was close to retirement, and he planned to disappear from North Korea, adopt a new identity furnished by Kai, and spend his golden years with his daughter and grandchildren in their lovely new home.
Approaching the site, Kai did not see Ham, who took care never to be visible from the street. He was in the half-built garage, talking in effortlessly fluent Mandarin to a builder, probably the foreman. He broke off immediately, saying: ‘I must talk to my accountant,’ and shook Kai’s hand.
Ham was a spry man in his sixties who had a doctorate in physics. ‘Let me show you around,’ he said enthusiastically.
All the plumbing had been installed and now carpenters were putting in doors, windows, closets and kitchen cabinets. Kai found himself envying Ham as they toured the building: it was more spacious than any home Kai had lived in. Ham proudly pointed out a bedroom suite for Hee-young and her husband, two small bedrooms for their children, and a self-contained apartment for Ham himself. We gave him the money for all this, Kai thought. But he had been worth it.
When they had looked around they stepped outside, despite the cold, and stood at the back of the house, where they were hidden from anyone on the street and could not be overheard by the builders. There was a cold wind and Kai was glad of his coat. He said: ‘So how are things in North Korea?’
‘Worse than you think,’ said Ham immediately. ‘You already know how completely dependent we are on China. Our economy is a failure. Our only successful industry is making and exporting armaments. We have a woefully inefficient agricultural sector that produces only seventy per cent of our food needs. We lurch from crisis to crisis.’
‘So what’s new?’
‘The Americans have tightened up sanctions.’
This was news to Kai. ‘How?’
‘Just by enforcing existing rules. A shipment of North Korean coal destined for Vietnam was seized in Manila. Payment for twelve Mercedes limousines was refused by a German bank because of suspicion that they were destined for Pyongyang, even though the paperwork said Taiwan. A Russian ship was intercepted transferring gasoline to a North Korean ship at sea just off Vladivostok.’
‘Small things in themselves, but they get everybody scared of doing business,’ Kai commented.
‘Exactly. But what your government may not realize is that we have only six weeks’ supply of food and other essentials. That’s how close we are to famine.’
‘Six weeks!’ Kai was shocked.