the shelter of the phone and then splashed off into the night. His sockless shoes rasped on his feet and he shivered as if the warm rain had given him a chill. He was at the proper corner in six minutes, but there was already a dark car there waiting. He saw from thirty feet away that there were three men as well as the driver, and he knew what sort of car it was and what sort of people were inside.
“Get in.” A man he didn’t know, sitting with his knees drawn up on a jump seat, had opened the door from inside and was holding it open. Loyalty Man was against the far window, a young, foolish-looking stranger closer to Bobby.
“Get in!” the young one screamed.
The air inside was bitter with cigarette smoke. The car pulled away but went slowly, so that he knew they were not really going anywhere yet. Whatever it was, they were going to talk first. Did they know about Andy? Did they know he was helping on an operation he hadn’t told them about? He began to think up excuses—
“I am Qiu,” the foolish one said. “I am your superior, and you will do precisely what I tell you.”
Bobby tried to look at Loyalty Man, through whom this insane youth should have been speaking, but Loyalty Man was looking out the window, as much as to say to Bobby, I have nothing to do with this.
“Yes, sir.”
“I have orders directly from Beijing. I am from Beijing. Flown in expressly for this.” Bobby knew he was from Beijing from his accent.
“Yes, sir.”
“You have been added to my team. I have a strict plan. You will conform to it. Well?”
“Yes, sir.” This didn’t seem so bad as he had feared. Nothing about Andy, at any rate. Merely some stupid, extra work. Bobby kept himself from sighing.
“In—” Qiu looked at his watch, which he had to hold up in the light of a street lamp to read—“precisely one hour and forty-three minutes, my team will report to a site for an operation. You will be there.” The young man paused, perhaps debating how much to tell Bobby, then, if he was at all wise, seeing that time was so short that he had no choice. “I am making a hostile contact in a place called the Orchid House, in a park called Fantasy Island. My arrangements are none of your affair; however, I have been ordered to allow you to observe the meeting. Therefore, you will make yourself available at the Fantasy Island Park at—” He looked at his watch again. “From precisely ten minutes before nine, local time, until completion of the operation. You will do precisely as I say. At six minutes after nine, I will enter a certain entrance of the Orchid House and will proceed to a certain place. You will go in another entrance and find a place from which to observe. If you get in the way or cause any trouble, you will be dealt with. That is all you need to know. Understood?”
Bobby felt nauseated. Surely it couldn’t be happening. Surely—were they testing him? Did they know all about Andy, after all?
“Well?”
Bobby forced himself to mumble, “Yes, sir,” and Qiu spoke to the driver and the car rolled to a stop. Again, the man in the jump seat opened the curbside door.
“Get out,” Qiu said. “You will be at the Fantasy Island Park in precisely—” pausing to study his watch—“one hour and forty-two minutes. Meet me at the main gate. Now get out.”
Bobby Li stepped into a puddle. The car pulled away, sending slow waves over the tops of his shoes. He watched it go, unable even to step up on the curb. At ten minutes after nine, he was supposed to meet an unknown American in the Orchid House for Andy, but at the same moment he was also supposed to watch Qiu meet the same unknown American in the same place. His life had turned into a contradiction. And a mystery: nobody had told him why Qiu was doing this to him!
He walked home. Passing the telephone, he thought of calling Andy and telling him—what? That he was too sick to go? No, you were never too sick for an operation, not when it was Andy, and not when it was for George. Tell him that his Chinese masters also had a job for him? But Andy didn’t know about the Chinese masters, and, because Bobby loved Andy, he couldn’t let him know. It would make Andy hate him, and he couldn’t bear that.
Loyalty, Andy said. It’s about loyalty.
He let himself into his house and sat in the little front room. His wife came in and stared into the dark where he sat, then went away.
Bobby thought it through. He had to do what Qiu said. He knew what the punishment would be if he did not—Loyalty Man’s attitude had told him that the thing was serious and out of his hands. To disobey was to end his life here, his family’s life. Maybe to see his children shipped to China, to disappear there. Therefore, he would have to do as Qiu ordered. How, then, would he keep Andy from knowing what he was doing? If he stayed far enough back, maybe Andy wouldn’t see him through the greenery—was that possible? But even then, there were the photos—Ho was supposed to get photos. Andy would see the photos.
And, of course, Andy would see Qiu meet with the American.
I never saw him before, Andy; he stole The Economist from me and his guys held me and he went into the meeting—
Andy wouldn’t believe it. Andy didn’t believe in unmotivated acts.
Well, the photos. Maybe he could just not hand over the film. No, Andy wouldn’t believe it if he said he lost it or Ho kept it. Or he could expose the film—pull it out of the canister. No, Andy didn’t believe in accidents, either.
But if the photos were simply bad photos—out of focus, for example—
Bobby went to the bedroom and turned on a light without warning his wife and without apologizing. He took his own camera from his drawer, hesitated, and then burrowed deep under his four shirts and took the gun that was concealed there. In the bathroom, he opened the camera—his pride, a good Nikon, 3X zoom, internal motor drive—and smeared Vaseline on the inside of the lens. He put in a roll of film.
Back in the living room, he sat with the gun and the camera in his lap. The gun had lost most of the bluing at the end of the barrel and a lot along the edges of the slide. It was a thirty-year-old Walther PP .32, an old police pistol from somewhere in Europe in the days when policemen could enforce the law with little guns that were now thought too weak for even ladies to carry. He put on a light. He took out the clip. Seven cartridges, their ends open—hollowpoints, segmented for expansion. Like looking into the heart of a flower. Well, you could kill with those.
It had been so good for the first day with Andy. Now it was all awful. He went back to the bedroom and began to change his clothes.
“Is it bad?” his wife said.
“Don’t take the kids to school today. Take them to the place in Tangerang.” He had a shack out there under a different name. Sometimes he went there to be alone. He had a garden out there, like his father. “Park the car in the trees, where it can’t be seen from the road.”
“How bad is it?” she said.
He finished dressing. Out of deference to her, he hadn’t brought the gun back into the bedroom. “It will be all right,” he said. He kissed her and went into the living room and put the gun inside his waistband just by his right kidney, and he picked up his camera and went out. It was daylight.
USSThomas Jefferson.
Cyclic
