Chapter 47
Kai-wen, Ming-na, Alice, Vivien, and Liu looked up at the old sign.
It had hung outside Auntie Gugu’s bakery for decades. Ever since Liu had set her up, after the catastrophe of Tiananmen. She was a founding member of Pangu. Liu’s eyes and ears in Hong Kong.
As such, she had spent her life baking pineapple and coconut buns and listening in on the drunken conversations of businessmen and government workers. Ministers even. Spies. Informants. Agents. Diplomats.
Some there to deliberately exchange covert information. Most there to get sober, and exchange the information by mistake. To blab.
Tired. Drunk. Alone. Eating sweet buns that made them think of their poh pohs, their grandmothers. Made them think of comfort and safety.
And then they talked.
Too much.
No one noticed the woman serving them. Or the writing on the wall.
“What does it say?” asked Ming-na.
Alice was on her phone, now recharged, inputting Nüshu characters on a translation app.
“Hello. May I help you?” A young woman, not the one they had met previously, had appeared at the counter.
“We’d like to speak to Auntie Gugu.” Over time, everyone had taken to calling her that.
The young woman looked stricken and bowed. “I’m sorry. Haven’t you heard? She’s gone away.”
Liu flashed his ID, and the five of them walked past her into the tiny kitchen. Then up the stairs, where Auntie Gugu was sitting peacefully sipping tea, the cat on her lap.
“How did you know?” was all she said.
Alice handed her the old photograph of a solemn, determined, bemused little girl.
Auntie Gugu nodded. Then looked into Alice’s eyes. “It was a mistake to underestimate you. Do you even know what the code means?”
“It’s in Nüshu. The same symbols in the embroidery are on your sign. They’re names, right?”
“Shi. My great-grandmother’s. My grandmother, who made the embroidery; my mother, who taught me Nüshu. All there.”
“And your own name. And in the middle? The symbol that started and stopped the attack? I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s Nüshu for woman.”
They were back in the Oval Office, the President sitting at his desk, Kathleen in her usual place, standing by the large sofa, watching the monitors.
Pardington had showered and changed, and even managed some sleep over the twenty-four hours since the final attack was stopped and the perpetrators arrested. Including the ringleader in Hong Kong. An elderly baker.
Including his own Secretary of Defense.
“They’re here, Mr. President,” said his private secretary.
President Pardington and his Chief of Staff turned as the curved door to the Oval Office opened and Vivien and Alice entered. The security agent, instead of leaving, took up a position at the door.
The President came around the desk, extending his hand.
“I’m glad you’re back on American soil. Thank you. Thank you for what you did. Please sit. I’ve read reports, but it still seems incredible. Please.”
He gestured to the sofas. Vivien placed a large box on the mahogany coffee table.
“We have something for you, Mr. President,” said Vivien.
Pardington opened it. His brows shot up and he looked perplexed. Amused but baffled.
From the box, he lifted out a torn and filthy and, frankly, stinky garment.
Pardington smiled at them. “Thank you?”
Vivien laughed. “There’s a reason we’ve brought this. It’s the final piece of a master puzzle. My daughter actually worked it out.” She turned to Alice and ceded the stage.
“When we were brought here, to the White House, not that long ago—”
“After all those alarms went off,” said Kathleen.
“Yes. And you told me about Liam’s murder.
There was a polite exchange at the end of the meeting, between two women.
One admired my mother’s jacket.” Alice indicated the garment the President had carefully lowered back into the box, then wiped his hands on his slacks.
“And I admired the woman’s scarf. It was more to be polite than anything else. Though the pattern was unusual.”
Pardington was listening. His shrewd eyes bright. He gave a quick glance over to the door, then back to Alice Li.
“That pattern turns out to be a language. Nüshu. The secret language of women.”
“Yes,” said Kathleen. “We found a photograph of Secretary Clavelle wearing it.”
“On the phone, you told me who the Pangu leader in the White House was. In my inner circle. I wasn’t sure then that I believed you, though I was inclined to.” Pardington turned to Kathleen. “I invited Vivien and Alice Li here because they’ve earned the right to witness the final event.”
“We told you that the woman running Pangu wasn’t Secretary Clavelle,” Vivien said.
“It was your scarf I admired,” Alice said to Kathleen. “Your scarf with the Nüshu.”
President Pardington turned to his security, who had been warned.
He stepped forward. “Kathleen Wells, you’re under arrest on charges of treason, terrorism, murder, sedition.”
She protested, of course, struggling to yank her arm away from the tight grip. All the way through the outer office and down the hall her raised voice could be heard.
Then the door closed and there was silence.
Fraser Pardington looked down at his hands, and both Vivien and Alice wondered if he was crying.
Then he got up and walked to the other door. He opened it, and in walked Joanne Clavelle. She was pale. But held herself erect.
“I am so sorry to have put you through that, Joanne. She had to believe we suspected you.”
She looked from one to the other, her eyes returning to the President. “Then it’s over. You believe me? I had nothing to do with this.”
“I know. I’ve known since yesterday, when Alice here told me about Kathleen. But I had to say something, do something, to disarm her. And then give our people time to gather evidence against her. I’m sorry,” he repeated and indicated the sofa. “Sit.”
When afternoon tea had been brought in, he turned to Vivien and Alice. “Now, tell us the whole story.”
Mother and daughter were relieved to see there were no coconut buns.
Over delicate finger sandwiches, their crusts cut off, of cucumber, and smoked salmon, and egg.
Over pastries, they told them the story.
Of hubris, of desperation, of a good, even noble plan for democracy that went sideways.
Then south. Before descending into madness.
Over scones with jam and clotted cream, Vivien and Alice took turns describing the tomb. The brilliance and the lunacy.
The President’s eyes widening as they got deeper into the story. Into China. Into the tomb.
When they were finished, and the last slice of lemon drizzle cake gone, President Pardington nodded.
“President Chen assures me that the military has been sent into the tomb, and most of the terrorists have been arrested. Though they still have to be careful about the traps the emperor had set.” He shook his head. “Imagine having that power.”
“Imagine being that mad,” said Vivien.
“True. But also a genius. Chen tells me once the tomb is safe, once the mercury is drained, then the archaeologists will go in. I wish our scientists could get access. God knows what else is in there. I’ve asked permission to send our own team, and the President says he’s considering it, but…”
Pardington raised his hands in the eloquent and universal sign of resignation.
Alice looked down at her phone and thought of the videos she’d quickly taken in the room where those engineers and mathematicians had lived out their last days. Scratching their theorems on the walls. The extraordinary, intricate, delicate designs. That were not simply decorative.
The numbers that were not simple math.
Those videos were now in the possession of her friends from Columbia. The physicist and her engineer husband. On the solemn promise they’d tell her what they meant.
Ming-na joined her husband in the dining room of their noodle bar.
It had been wrecked. Torn apart, not by a mob but by agents of the Ministry of State Security. Looking for Pangu.
Did they even know how close they’d come to finding Tank Man?
Kai-wen sat cross-legged on the floor amid the debris and stared at the mural on the wall. Tank Man sat on the banks of the meandering stream, amid the blossoms, and inhaled the scent of perpetual spring. And was happy.
When he sensed Ming-na beside him, he opened his hand, as he always did, expecting her to put her own in his. But he felt something else.
He looked down and saw an enormous jade necklace, encrusted with emeralds and sapphires and rubies. And diamonds. Huge, dazzling diamonds.
Tank Man raised his eyes and looked at her. And grinned from ear to ear.
When Alice and Vivien finally got home, they smelled beef noodles coming from the kitchen. And something else. Something sweet.
It was not, they knew, Kai-wen or Ming-na. Though they’d been invited to move to DC and live with Vivien, they’d declined. Their home was in Taipei.
“That smells good,” said Alice, standing at the door and watching her father and brother prepare the meal.
“Your mother specifically asked for blueberry pancakes for dessert,” said Liu. “With maple syrup and whipped cream. Go figure.”
Alice put her arm around Kevin’s waist. “Okay?”
“No. But I will be.”
She nodded, then cocked her head. She could hear the piano. Someone was playing Brahms.
She turned to her father. “It wasn’t you?”
“Wasn’t me what?”
“Who played piano every night to help me sleep?”
“No. I don’t play.”
Alice walked into the living room and listened to her mother playing and softly singing, “Lullaby, and goodnight.”
She joined her on the bench. There was a very delicate scent in the air. One Alice found comforting. It was, she realized, flower dew water. Her mother’s fragrance.
“I’m sorry about your Shanghai Tang.”
“Oh, it’s nothing that can’t be repaired.”
Alice smiled. “True.”