She turned away again.
“I guess we’re having our first fight,” David mused. When she didn’t respond, he said, “Although I guess it isn’t really our first…”
She whipped around again, but this time instead of anger he saw the same caution he had seen the day before at the Ministry of Public Security. Her eyes motioned to the back of Peter’s head.
David continued blithely. “Of course, in my country, colleagues always disagree. That is part of an investigation, part of a trial. We are here under unusual circumstances. I think it would be best if we try to be aware of our different methods and work together.”
“Quite.”
“Tell me, Inspector Liu, has the ambassador changed at all since you last met him?”
“He’s still an arrogant American.”
“So that’s why you provoked him?”
Hulan finally smiled. She glanced toward Peter, who had eschewed his colorful epithets in favor of eavesdropping. “In the MPS, we have a lot of leeway in how we interview witnesses.”
“So I’ve heard,” David said dryly.
“But I try to let witnesses speak for themselves. We are a reticent people, Mr. Stark. Everyone in this country understands the power of the MPS, but sometimes no pressure delivers better than domination. I think of it as the power of silence.”
“I do that too. A witness feels compelled to fill the void. I get some of my best stuff that way.”
“Yes, there’s that, but I’m talking about something more. In China, to be allowed your own thoughts, to be allowed the freedom to speak when you want, creates a situation where your guard is down, where your thoughts begin to flow.”
“You think that wouldn’t work with the ambassador?”
“Americans have all the freedom they want, perhaps even too much. I think the ambassador would use that kind of silence to come up with a good story.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know.”
“I look at that man and see a politician. Nothing more, nothing less. I think you just don’t like him.”
“That’s true. There’s something about that man that—what’s the American phrase?—rubs me the wrong way.”
“I’d say it’s the other way around,” David said.
“Perhaps.”
“Going back to my original question, is he different?”
“He acts the same—the same bluster certainly.”
“He doesn’t strike me as a man in mourning.”
“People deal with grief in many ways,” Hulan said thoughtfully.
She turned to stare out at the traffic. Peter sent an eloquent string of curses out his window.
The headquarters of the China Land and Economics Corporation was a shimmering tower of glass and white granite. The lobby contained a photographic exhibit of the conglomerate’s many ventures: dams holding back treacherous rivers, satellites hurtling through space, munitions coming off an assembly line, thousands of workers manufacturing tennis shoes, wholesome peasants using modern equipment to increase farm productivity, doctors prescribing medicines to smiling mothers and their children. In the center of the lobby, glass and chrome cases highlighted different divisions and subsidiaries of the China Land and Economics Corporation. The Ten Thousand Clouds Company manufactured parkas, rain hats, and galoshes; the Time Today Company created Chinese-red clocks that showed the minute and hour hands as the arms of prominent politicians; the Panda Brand Pharmaceutical Company packaged ginseng, herbal powders, dried flowers, and shredded deer antlers.
David and Hulan were shown directly into Guang Mingyun’s elegant office. Streamlined rosewood furniture glowed warmly. Several large bouquets of tuberoses and rubellum lilies filled the room with their fragrance. The art on the walls—crimson canvases with ideograms rendered in stark black—provided a dramatic and thoroughly modern counterpoint to the view, which looked out over the bloodred walls of the Forbidden City.
“Huanying, huanying,” Guang Mingyun said as he stood to greet them. “Welcome, welcome.” He easily switched to flawless English.
“How do you do, Mr. Guang?” Hulan said. “Let me present to you Assistant United States Attorney David Stark.”