Chapter 32
“Nǐ hǎo, Mengwei.”
The elderly woman had used Vivien’s Chinese name, the one her parents had given her. The one almost no one knew and fewer used.
It was the name registered by the People’s Republic of China.
Vivien froze.
She was in the food stall kitchen. That was what was behind the curtain. That and one of the tiniest women Vivien had ever seen, and she herself was no mammoth.
It was tight, hot, cramped. But it was also bright and cheerful. As was the elderly woman standing so erect in front of her. The baker was a perfect reflection of her domain. Small, bright, cheerful.
She waved a wooden spoon at Vivien as though it were a wand. “Or is it Shu-hui?”
Her smile suddenly seemed less friendly. And the spoon less like a wand and more like a bat.
The wizened woman by the hot stove wore her gray hair in a bun. Which seemed appropriate. There were deep lines around her clear eyes and a mole on the right side of her mouth …
Vivien peered closer. “Auntie Gugu?”
“Shi.”
“Who?” came a voice behind Vivien.
She swung around. “You scared me!”
“I scared you?” said Alice. The others had crowded in behind Alice.
“I told you to wait.” What’s happening? Doesn’t anyone listen to me anymore?
But she was secretly relieved to not be alone. Alone was the worst. She knew.
“Who’s Auntie Gugu?” Alice asked again.
“I am,” said the formidable woman in the flour-caked apron.
“Your father’s aunt.” Vivien kept her eyes on the woman as though on an apparition. “Your great-aunt.”
“What?” said Alice, completely confused.
“You must be Alice,” Auntie Gugu said in Mandarin as she moved toward her, but Vivien stepped between them.
“Nǐ shì shéi?” she demanded. Who are you?
“You know me. You just said…”
“No. I know your name. The fact you’re Liu’s aunt makes you more suspicious, not less.”
Alice, coming out of her daze, did the math. This woman must be in her eighties.
“You know me as Dai-mui.”
“Our contact?” Ming-na’s Mandarin had a Taiwanese edge to it. “You’re the one who runs our Hong Kong network?”
Just as she’d found her footing, Alice was plunged off balance again. Whaaat??
“Who are you?” Auntie Gugu had turned to Kai-wen and Ming-na.
“Shu-hui,” said Kai-wen.
Does everyone except me have an alias? Alice wondered.
“The one I report to?” Auntie Gugu glanced toward the closed curtain, smoothed her apron in a nervous gesture, and lowered her voice. “What are you doing here? Do you know how dangerous this is?”
“We had no idea it was you,” said Ming-na.
“Then why are you here? Not for coconut buns, though”—she looked at Alice—“maybe that is why you’re here. Take one if you want.”
Alice couldn’t help it. First her nose, then her eyes, then her entire body had turned to the tray of fresh baked buns on the battered old stovetop.
“Thank you.”
Auntie Gugu had thought she’d wanted a bun to eat, and she wasn’t wrong. But Alice also wanted to examine the pastry. It was, she discovered, definitely the same one Liam had held. It had the stamp.
“Why’re you here, risking all of our lives?” Auntie Gugu pressed.
“Do you know this man?” Alice put down the sticky bun, wiped her hands on her already filthy slacks, and showed her the photo on her phone.
“Yes. He came here a few days ago.”
“Why?”
Auntie Gugu again looked around and smoothed her apron. “Come with me.”
They followed her up a narrow set of stairs. The elderly woman grasped the worn wooden handrail and hauled herself up one steep step at a time.
At the top, they found themselves in a warm room without windows. Cushions were scattered on the floor, and there was a single mattress in a corner, with a cat curled on it.
Auntie Gugu put a dented kettle on a ring.
“What did Liam want from you?” Vivien asked.
“Maybe you should ask him.” On seeing Vivien’s face, Auntie Gugu’s thin shoulders fell. “I see. What happened?”
The water was boiling, and no one spoke until she’d poured it into a well-aged teapot.
“Sit.” She motioned to the cushions on the floor.
They did.
“What happened to him?” she repeated.
“He was killed,” said Vivien. “Right after coming here.”
“How do you know it was then?”
“Because of what he’s holding.” Alice enlarged the photo to the bun and the mark stamped into it.
“Yes. That’s one of mine.”
“Did you give it to him?”
“I don’t normally give away what I can sell.” Auntie Gugu was looking at the sesame seed that clung to the side of Alice’s mouth.
“You don’t remember him buying a bun from you?”
The elderly woman stared blankly ahead of her, thinking; then her eyes came into focus and her brow furrowed as she realized she was staring at Kai-wen.
“You look familiar.” Her gaze shifted to Vivien, then back again. “There’s a resemblance…”
“She’s my sister.”
“Your sister?” she whispered. “Your parents would be proud of you both. But you shouldn’t have come here. You’ve put us all in danger.”
“We had no choice,” said Vivien, but she too was smiling. “Stupidity and bravery are two sides of the same coin.” She was feeling relaxed for the first time in … eons, it felt.
Here she was in a dim room, almost certainly in terrible danger, with a smoldering city outside, and terrorists hunting for them.
But Vivien Li, Mengwei, felt safe for the first time in her life. She was surrounded by family. Her daughter. Her brother and sister-in-law. Liu’s beloved aunt.
She was reminded of a survey from a hospice. Men and women, clearly in their final days, were asked how they felt. Almost to a person, they answered they felt just fine.
They weren’t lying. Their emotional state overrode their physical. They were safe. They were loved. They were dying, but they were just fine.
And now Vivien understood. She too might die soon. But she had family. She had tea. She had a platter of warm coconut buns in front of her.
She was fine. At least for now.
“What did you tell Liam that got him so scared?” asked Ming-na.
“That got him killed,” said Alice.
“I didn’t tell him anything. Liu did.”
“He was here?” demanded Kai-wen.
“Shi. They’d arranged to meet late at night.”
“I don’t understand,” said Kai-wen.
“Liu runs a network of informants. He kept to your original plan, Mengwei. Rising through the ranks. But he never forgot the purpose.”
“Then he isn’t working for Chen?” said Alice, trying to keep up with the conversation. It was not easy, with the Mandarin coming faster and faster.
“God, no. When you two first recruited for the network, the original Pangu, he came to me. He knew I hated the Communists. They destroyed China. Turned family against family.” She glanced at Vivien, but her eyes didn’t linger.
“He asked if I’d set up a pastry stall here and stay open all night. I agreed.”
“What good would that do?” asked Alice.
“Civil servants from Beijing come to Hong Kong and lose all self-control. After a day of high-level meetings, they hit the town. Drinking and carousing. Then, in the early hours, they come here to sober up. They eat breakfast buns, drink tea, and—”
“Talk,” said Vivien.
“And talk,” said Auntie Gugu. “They pay no attention to an old woman. I’m part of the furniture. All they see is a veined hand and a breakfast bun. I listen in to what they say.”
“That’s how you get the information that you pass along to us,” said Kai-wen.
“Some. Some comes from Liu directly, but he has to be careful that it can’t be traced back to him. Mostly he confirms what I hear before I pass it along. And he makes sure I’m safe.”
“So my father is on our side?” Alice asked. There was no mistaking the relief in her voice.
“Yes.”
And yet … And yet, thought Vivien, Liu met young Liam, and hours later, he was dead.
“I wasn’t supposed to listen, but I did.” Auntie Gugu looked more proud than embarrassed. “Liu told that young man about the traitors.”
They stared at the elderly woman who was gently stroking the cat curled up on her lap.
“What traitor?”
Auntie Gugu said, “叛徒. Traitors. More than one. One in each camp. No doubt more, thanks to Double Dragon’s remarkably successful efforts in recruiting agents, but Liu had discovered the two at the top. A member of President Pardington’s inner circle and a member of Chen’s Standing Committee.”
“Fuck me.”
“Alice!” said her mother.
“She isn’t wrong,” said Auntie Gugu. “Your Liam said the same thing.”
My Liam, thought Alice. My sweet Liam.
Vivien’s quick mind zipped back to the meeting at the White House, only a few days earlier. It was called to figure out what the alarms that had gone off worldwide could mean.
At the time, it had seemed terrifying enough. They’d had no idea how bad it would get.
But now it seemed at least one person in the meeting did know.
“Alan Zhou,” she said.
“Liu didn’t know who, just that they exist.” She stared at Vivien. “Interesting that you should find me. That you know so much about the resurrected Pangu.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Auntie Gugu raised a veined hand, inviting them to come to their own conclusions.
Kai-wen was staring at Vivien, clearly picking up on Auntie Gugu’s less-than-subtle insinuation. And wondering how much he really knew about his sister. What he did know was that, by her own admission, she’d betrayed their parents.
If she could do that as a child, what was the grown woman capable of? Could Mengwei be behind all that was happening?
Alice was also staring, remembering what her father had whispered to her. That Vivien might still be running Pangu. To not trust her.
“Bù,” she said. No.
Everyone turned to Alice.
“Bù.” She shook her head. “Vivien might be shallow, she might care more about her Shanghai Tang than she does her own children—”
“Hey!” said Vivien.
“She might value celebrity over character—”
“Hey!” Vivien protested louder.
“But she’s risked her life for decades to bring down a despotic totalitarian government and restore freedom. She’s exposed injustices, championed those who’ve been imprisoned simply for being a dissenting voice.
“Vivien Li is no traitor. She’s loyal to China. It’s the Communists who’ve betrayed the people. Not her. Bù shì ta.”
Alice finished, her face flushed. She lowered her eyes, stealing a glance at Vivien, whose lips were drawn in a tight line.
“Well, since we’re being honest,” said Auntie Gugu, “maybe you should know who your mother did betray.”
“Stop!” said Kai-wen. “Enough. We can’t be fighting among ourselves.
We’ve all done things we regret. We’ve all betrayed someone or something.
And I suspect, before this is over, we will again.
But for now, we need to work together. I trust my sister.
” He looked at her, and she nodded her thanks before he returned to Auntie Gugu.
“Does Liu know who the Pangu member is close to Chen?”
“No.”
But there was a hesitation.
“But…” said Ming-na.
“But I know he’s worried about Wang Lai. Says he’s losing his mind.”
Alice remembered the disheveled man who looked like an escapee from an asylum. The fact he was head of the MSS was terrifying on all sorts of levels.
“There’s more,” said Vivien. “Out with it. We’re risking our lives too. We need to know everything you know.”
“I don’t know anything, not for sure. But I think Liu suspects Wang is involved with Pangu.” Gugu looked from sister to brother.
“Involved?” said Kai-wen. “Or running it?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. As I said, he keeps these things to himself.”
“But … But…” Alice was finally seeing the way forward.
“If Dad agreed to something as risky as meeting Liam, an American agent, that must mean he needed something from him. The information didn’t go in one direction, did it?
Liam must’ve discovered something. Not just what was going to happen, but how.
I think it was the list of corporations hidden in the li bien ball.
He wanted us to know, he wanted Dad to know, that the attacks were made possible through the food chain, the supply chain—”
“Blockchain, shi,” said Auntie Gugu. She looked at the platter of her baking. “Food has long been a weapon, but this takes it to a whole other level.”
“So Liam and Liu combined what they knew,” said Vivien, “and realized that for any attack to work, someone in Pangu had to have access not just to the international distribution network but to adaptive predictive artificial intelligence. Cyberspace’s Holy Grail.”
“If the cup of Christ was an extinction-level weapon,” said Alice.