man could do, to listen and attempt to reconnect with her. He had wanted to do something big, put a score on the board that would keep him out front for a long time. He succeeded and had blown his wife away.
The men had eagerly gathered around him to learn how he had done it. “Simple,” he responded. “I stopped treating her like my wife and started treating her like a target.”
It was both disturbing and brilliant at the same time. Cheng had kicked himself for not having thought of it sooner. He paid more attention to and knew more about his intelligence assets than he did his own wife. It wasn’t for lack of trying. For some reason, he just hadn’t found that secret channel to her heart. He decided to flip everything on its head and treat her like he would any target he had been assigned. He wanted to know everything about her—where she went, what she did, who she saw, right down to what she thought. If he could do that, he would have the intelligence he needed to finally win her over completely.
In his rush to know his wife, Tai Cheng sped right by one of the most popular Chinese proverbs—one known even by every child—be careful what you wish for. And as he sped right by it, he crashed and burned.
The Chinese entertainment industry was littered with the mistakes of young actors and actresses. Some were so desperate for fame and advancement that they would do almost anything. Throw in drugs and a stalled or failed career, and “almost anything” became “anything.”
When Mi had reached the “anything” stage, she had slept with multiple men to support her habit. Pictures had been taken, and unbeknownst to her a video had been made. That video had made its way into the hands of a Communist Party official who could not have shown up in her world at a worse time.
She had gotten her life together, she was trying to learn to love her husband, and she desperately wanted her marriage to work. Things were actually going her way. She was as close to happy as she could ever remember being. Then a snippet of the video showed up in an email. Her husband “never needed to know.” “One time together” and the official would destroy the tape. She couldn’t see any other way out. She didn’t want to lose her husband. As stupid and wrong and deceitful as it was, she agreed to meet with the official.
They had met at a hotel while Cheng was out of town. It was to be a onetime thing. One and done. But it was only the beginning. The blackmailer called her for another meeting within a week.
In his desire to know his wife better, Cheng had violated the trust that should remain sacred between a husband and wife. He had spied on her. And it wasn’t just spying. He followed her, bugged her cell phone, and hacked into her email account. That was how he had discovered the affair. That was when he had gone over the edge.
He sent Mi to her parents in Nanjing. He didn’t tell her why. She was terrified. Did he know? Was their marriage over? What would happen to her? What would happen to her family? She had been given a second chance at life and she had screwed it up. No husband sent his wife away without warning or explanation unless something was very bad. She knew what it was. She knew why she had been exiled.
No sooner had Cheng gotten Mi out of their home in Beijing than he started drinking, heavily. No matter how proficient at meting out violence or death they might be, intelligence operatives were social by nature. Their business involved guns and knives and all sorts of black arts, but at its heart it was about people. You could not recruit and control people if you didn’t understand them. In his way, Cheng understood his wife.
By spying on her, he had come to better appreciate her pain. His only regret was that he hadn’t done it earlier. He blamed himself. He had plucked her from ignominy in Nanjing, polished her up, and brought her back out, all bright and shiny, to be put on display in Beijing. In a certain way, he had asked for what had happened. He had been prideful, boastful, a show-off. He had used his wife’s allure to make him feel like more of