The maid let Hulan in. Hulan said, “Please, I wish to be alone with my mother. Do not disturb us.” Without another word, the maid backed out of the room. Jinli sat in her wheelchair, as she always did, staring out the window.
“Mama, it is Hulan. I am going away for a few days. Don’t worry about me.” Hulan leaned over and gave her mother a gentle kiss. “I love you, Mama.”
Then Hulan went to the desk. In the bottom drawer she found her mother’s papers in a yellowed envelope. Hulan took her mother’s identity card, tucked it inside her coat, and—without looking back—left the apartment.
David and Hulan continued their journey across the city. A couple of blocks from the Sheraton Great Wall, they pulled over again. Hulan took off her greatcoat. Underneath she was dressed as usual in fine pastel silk. She brushed off her clothes and ran her hands through her hair. “Do I look all right?”
“You’re fine,” he reassured her.
A few minutes later, Hulan emerged from the alleyway, turned onto Xinyuan Road, and pushed through the doors of the Kunlun Hotel. She walked through the lobby and down one of the shopping arcades to a travel agency.
“I’d like to book two seats on the next flight to Chengdu,” she said in Chinese.
“Please sit down, madame,” the woman said. “Would you like to arrange a scenic tour?”
“No, I just want to get there on the earliest flight. My mother is very ill.”
The woman regarded Hulan. “You can’t be Sichuanese. Your Beijinger accent is too good.”
“I have lived in the capital many years now. My work unit is here, but my family still lives in Chengdu.”
The woman checked through the flight schedule. “Is this evening at six satisfactory?”
“Absolutely. Two seats.”
“Two seats?”
“I said this already,” Hulan said impatiently.
“I shall need to see your identity cards.”
“Pshaw! You don’t need identity cards to travel in China anymore. You haven’t needed this for ten years.”
The woman tapped her fingers on the desk as though summoning a waiter in a restaurant. “I want to see your…”
Hulan reached into her pocket and quickly flashed her mother’s papers. Then she opened her wallet, took out two hundred-yuan notes, and placed them next to the woman’s hand. “My husband has his card at home.” The woman’s fingers tapped a few more times, then she swept the money off the surface of the desk and into her lap.
“The names?”
“Jiang Jinli. My husband is Zai Xiang.”
After a few more tense minutes, Hulan left the travel agency with two tickets to Chengdu in hand. She met David down the alley, where they once again mounted their bikes, rode parallel to Liangmane Road, chose the middle of the block to cross busy Dongsanhuanbei Road, thereby avoiding the camera at the intersection, then made their way to the pathway along the canal past the Sheraton Great Wall to the little shop for kitchen goods that David had passed each day on his early-morning jogs.
Beth Madsen, dressed in a thick red wool coat with shiny gold buttons, paced nervously along the bank. David pulled to a stop next to her. “Beth,” he whispered. When she turned, she saw a larger-than-average Chinese soldier with most of his skin covered by layers of wool cloth to protect him from the weather. David pulled his scarf down to show his face. “It’s me, David Stark.”
“David? What are you doing out here?”
“I need your help, Beth. I’m in trouble.”
Beth looked over his shoulder to where Hulan was standing next to her bike. “What’s this all about?”
“They’re trying to kill us.”
Beth Madsen laughed. When he didn’t join in, she turned serious. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
He shook his head.
“Go to the American embassy,” she suggested.