Tan Ching made Wan Chu nervous. It wasn’t just that the older man was with the Ministry of State Security, China’s intelligence service, or even his chain-smoking American Marlboro cigarettes that made Wan’s office smell as bad as the industrially polluted air that filled the city’s skies. It was the man himself, his half-lidded lizard eyes that missed nothing, his habit of nodding from time to time as though Wan had revealed some significant secret. The fact he had sent people who displeased him to Qincheng, China’s political prison, gave no reassurance either.
Wan was unsure of the exact meaning of the man coming here rather than summoning Wan to his office as would ordinarily be the case. And uncertainty did nothing to control the nerves that made it difficult for Wan to sit still.
Ching exhaled a gust of smoke, a fire-breathing dragon. “Your people have secured the problem with the American?”
Wan glanced around for something to use as an ashtray. His only choice was the cup from which he’d just finished his morning jasmine tea. He slid it across the desk.
“Not yet. But they will get him. That’s what they do.”
Ching turned eyes cold as stone toward Wan. “And if he discovers the significance of whatever he took from the glacier first?”
Wan shrugged. “Their significance is subject to debate, comrade.”
Ching’s fist came down on the desk so unexpectedly, Wan flinched. “We do not need ‘debate,’ comrade! We need results!”
“Perhaps you have a suggestion?” Wan asked meekly.
The man across the desk lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the previous one before dropping it into the teacup, where it hissed and went silent. “What motivates these men, these Russians?”
It took a second for Wan to understand the question. “They believe weakening capitalist nations to the point of collapse is a prerequisite for the return and ultimate triumph of Marxism. They see the global-warming cause as one that will move their agenda forward.”
Ching snorted, sending smoke gushing from his nose. “Fools like that are useful. But what really motivates the men who do the work, the ones who you say will ultimately kill this man Peters?”
Wan looked at him blankly.
“Money!” Ching bellowed. “Political idealist or not, cash gets faster results than slogans or agendas.” He stood. “Tend to it.”
“Of course, comrade,” Wan said, thanking whatever gods existed that the meeting was at an end.