The Interior (Red Princess 2)

But the story didn’t end here. Quo Xuesheng, David’s assistant, translator, and secretary, was shown in a tight evening dress getting out of a limousine. “Is Miss Quo, daughter of Quo Jingsheng, the victim of these Western influences, or is she one of the co-conspirators? Her father, who is a well-respected member of our government, has been unavailable for comment, as he is in the United States on tour.” In other words, the press, for now, was withholding judgment on Miss Quo. They might have to wait a day, a month, even a year or more before the government made its final decision on her and her father. But that didn’t offer any solace to Miss Quo, who continued to weep.

And of course, those few grainy clips of David and Hulan dancing many months ago in the Palace Hotel appeared on the screen. More surprising was a shot of

Hulan and David getting out of the Mercedes just last night in front of the Beijing Hotel. One of the video men who’d been there to record the arrivals to a wedding banquet had probably opened the morning paper, remembered the mixed-race couple from the night before, replayed the tape, found their faces, and had promptly gone down to China Central Television hoping for a little remuneration. However, the anchor gave the film a rather more sinister interpretation, reporting that her station’s cameras had spotted Hulan and David as they went in for a clandestine meeting with Henry Knight and Governor Sun. (Hulan supposed that all across Beijing the handful of people who had been at the banquet were hoping that they hadn’t been filmed by the wedding video crews, that the other shots taken by the official photographer wouldn’t be released, that their names wouldn’t arise in this mess.)

Once again the good and bad of Hulan’s family background were dredged up. Reporters suggested that Hulan had been tainted by the West, by David, and by Governor Sun, who was of the same generation as Hulan’s father. The implication was that if Sun and Hulan’s father had been friends, then they were both equally wicked. If they were corrupt, then Hulan was without question corrupt as well. It wasn’t a matter of what was false but rather what parts, if any, had been true.

“Where do they get this stuff?” David asked when Hulan stopped translating.

“This wouldn’t happen if there wasn’t agreement somewhere high in the government.”

“But I don’t understand why they would do such anti-American stories,” David said.

Hulan looked at David in surprise. What did he think was happening here?

David tried to clarify what he meant. “I thought it was anything for profit. Business relations with foreign countries should be preserved no matter what the cost.”

“Come on,” she said, her fatigue deteriorating to impatience. “With China and the U.S. it’s always the same. One minute they’re friends; the next minute they’re enemies. These things have little to do with us or even how things really are.”

David thought back to his country’s yearly hullabaloo over whether or not to give China most favored nation status and the ongoing conflicts over human rights while at the same time investing billions of dollars. These thoughts brought back the conversation they’d had with Pearl Jenner in the bar of the Shanxi Grand Hotel. All of that work she had talked about—the manufacturing of toys, computer chips, clothes—all of that went on even as American politicians beat their chests about China’s unfair trade practices, its selling of nuclear technology to rogue nations, and its attempts to influence American elections. It was part of the American psyche not to look at the shades of gray in the big picture.

“We’re so close-minded,” Hulan said, as if reading David’s mind, except that she was speaking of her own people. “The Chinese were the first explorers. It is said that we were the first ones to the Americas. We had fleets going across the Pacific, exploring, trading, but we looked, we saw, then we came home, shut the door, and built our walls even higher. I listen to these people on the news…” She shook her head in disgust. “They speak with smiling faces and tell one story as though it were true, but tomorrow they may have a completely different agenda to sell. One day we’re forbidden to use the Internet; the next we’re encouraged to use it. The day after that? Who knows? We might be forbidden again. Yesterday, every time a new deal was signed with an American company, these same reporters were covering it as though it was a great gift to China. Today those same deals are stained. Tomorrow, you may still see the deal with Tartan and Knight go through. If it does, these people will be doing stories about how the factory is bringing prosperity to the countryside. Three months ago you were our new friend, our hero; today you are once again a suspicious foreigner.”

“How do you stand it?”

“How do you?” she asked back. “It’s not so different in the U.S. Here our ‘truth’ is usually political propaganda. In the U.S. propaganda is disguised as ‘truth.’”

Pearl Jenner reappeared on the screen. “I’m an American by birth,” she said, “but I felt it was my duty as someone of Chinese blood to step forward. In America freedom of the press is a Constitutional right. It’s our duty to expose wrong. That I have been able to help my ancestral homeland…”

Hulan shook herself. What were they doing sitting here, watching television, and having a chat about Sino-American relations? It was only a matter of time before Hulan was arrested. David could probably get her to the U.S. embassy. Rob Butler might be able to finagle political asylum, but this all seemed a pipe dream. Because if they came after Hulan, then they’d come after David too. In the meantime Sun would be tried and executed. Miss Quo, innocent of all charges, would also face prosecution. Henry Knight and Tartan would settle their differences, and tomorrow newspapers in China and the U.S. would talk about the acquisition, about the money that had changed hands, about the profit that would be made. No matter what, Hulan and David shouldn’t be wasting time. They needed to get moving. But it wasn’t so easy to leave Beijing if the government was looking for you. More than a half million of the city’s citizens were engaged in watching. Intersections with traffic lights had cameras to track cars through the city. There were ways around these devices. Certainly David and Hulan had gotten out of Beijing once before when the stakes had seemed as high. But it wouldn’t be so easy this time.

As all this ran through Hulan’s mind, Miss Quo had continued her sniffling. Hulan crossed to her and patted her hand. David too had been lost in thought, and suddenly he said as he pushed himself off the edge of the table, “I’ve got to try and reach Miles. This whole thing has gotten out of hand.” Without moving, Hulan watched as he picked up the phone, dialed, and asked for Miles Stout’s room.

“I called my father in California this morning,” Miss Quo said to Hulan. “I told him not to come home. He has money there. He’ll be okay. But Mama and me?” Two new rivers of tears sprang from her eyes. “I’ve brought disgrace upon our family. My father will be abandoned in a foreign land. I’ll go to jail. Mama will die all alone.” An idea suddenly came to her, and she quickly stood. “I have to run away. Maybe I can leave the country. Dissidents do it. Maybe I could too. I have money. Pay a little here. Pay a little there. I could be in Vancouver by tomorrow.” The young woman quivered in terror. “I don’t want to die.”

Hulan felt sorry for the girl. She’d been raised in a house of privilege. She’d never known hunger or suffering. She was too young to have experienced the Cultural Revolution. Instead she’d partied, swilled champagne, gone to karaoke bars and nightclubs, dressed in designer clothes, traveled the world. In an hour her whole life had fallen apart in a way she could never in her worst nightmare have imagined.

“Did you do anything wrong?” Hulan asked gently.

“They say I did.”

“Do you think you did anything wrong?”

Miss Quo shook her head.

“Then you have nothing to be afraid of.”

In the background Hulan heard David raise his voice. “Listen, Miles, you can’t do that. You need a vote from the full partnership.”

Hulan felt a tap on her arm. It was Miss Quo. “I was asking you, how can you say that? Don’t you know what they’ll do to you?”

“Yes, but I also didn’t do anything wrong.”

Miss Quo’s eyes widened. “You’re not going to stay here, are you?”

Hulan glanced back at David. He gripped the receiver so tightly that his knuckles had gone white. “Special circumstances?” David shouted into the phone. “What are you talking about? When I explain to the partners what’s been going on over here…”

David was talking like he was going to get out of China, but they’d never go anywhere but jail unless they got moving. The more Hulan eavesdropped on David’s conversation and the more she talked to Miss Quo, the more she wanted to go home and wait it out. She was too tired to run. Her arm throbbed, her body burned, and all she wanted was to lie down under a cool, wet cloth and sleep. She registered David’s anxious look and thought he understood what she was thinking, but the words that came out of his mouth were all wrong.