when I can make it. Send someone else, why don’t you?”
“All you’re doing is staring at the molding on the ceiling. You’re not going to paint it, so leave it be. I need you over at the campus. You’re good at it; you give off the right vibrations. Students don’t clam up when they see you coming.”
“Yes they do. If looks could kill, I’d be scattered to the winds by now. They hate our guts, and you know it. Things haven’t calmed down from when they chased that SSD fool off of the campus.”
“Served him right, trying to break into a student meeting like that. Don’t worry. As long as you stay in the shadows, they won’t bother you and we can keep away from Tiananmen. Just check in with that kid you have on a string.”
“She’s not on a string. Why don’t I do it off campus somewhere?”
“The whole idea, Inspector, is to show the flag.”
“In the shadows?”
“You don’t have to wave the flag, Inspector, just unfurl it a little. Stroll around, sit on a bench, rattle a doorknob, let them know you’re there.”
3
The room was frigid. It hadn’t been heated since the last time the sun shone directly in the windows, and that had probably been in September. The girl was young; she might be pretty one day, but it was far too soon for that. She kept her hands in the pockets of a thin blue coat that couldn’t have done much against the cold. She shivered once or twice.
“I thought you weren’t going to come here anymore, that’s what you promised.” She kept her voice toneless, though it was with some effort. She was holding back. “The last time you showed up, someone almost saw us. If anyone catches me talking to you, I’ll be ordered to leave. You say it’s all been worked out, but that’s not true. Local security will report me, and then I’ll be sent home. You know I’m only supposed to talk to the assigned security people. Why can’t you stay away from campus, like you promised?”
I considered this for a moment. It was gutsy of her, telling me off. Maybe that’s why I picked her to begin with. Her file said she was always outside the group. She’d only been accepted at the university from a nowhere village near Hamhung because she was good with languages, and because she was considered an exceptional pianist. Where she found a piano to play out there in the countryside, I couldn’t imagine. “You like Rachmaninoff?” I looked around the room. The walls were bare. The instructor’s desk had been moved to one side, and there was a three-legged easel with a piece of gray cardboard on it standing at the front. The cardboard had several names printed on it. The last one was Rachmaninoff. I figured she’d like whatever was listed last.
“I do. I want to play his music someday.”
“Which piece?”
“What’s it to you?”
“You think I don’t like music?”
“Do you?”
Four questions in a row. With her, I could keep it up all afternoon, all questions. It would be interesting one day to see how long she could play the game, until she slipped and actually said something. This afternoon, though, I didn’t need anything from her. I just needed to be here. It bothered me a little that someone might see the two of us together. Sent back to the east coast, she might not survive, or she’d leave for China and end up selling herself. I moved away from the window. “This may surprise you, but I have been known to listen to music. More than that, I’ve heard some Rachmaninoff.”
She took one hand out of her pocket, her left one, and looked at her nails. They were broken and dirty. She flexed her fingers. She was aching to get out of the room, but her hands were important. If she took them out for me to see, it was a gesture. She might not know it, but that’s what it was. It wasn’t trust, exactly, but it was coming close.
“Which piece? You have a tape? I like him a lot better than Shostakovich. That’s mostly what we listen to. I think he’s overrated.” She said it as a challenge, but I didn’t pick it up. She sighed. “We had a German conductor here a couple of months ago. All of a sudden he appeared, like he dropped from the sky. He brought some music for us to play, tapes for us