MINERAL DEL MONTE, PACHUCA, MEXICO
Harris Chang felt the change in altitude as the car rumbled up the Sierra Madre. It was like being back home: high, dry air; the hum of tires on pavement. He could smell the pine forests until it got chilly and the driver closed the window. The driver was playing Mexican pop songs on the radio. For a big man, he seemed to have a taste for ditzy pop music. Over and over the radio pulsed with upbeat, mindless songs and a breathless DJ trilling the names: “Thalia!” “Belinda!” “Anahi!” as if they were goddesses.
The blindfold was tight, so Chang had no sense of where they were, other than the feel of the terrain in his lungs and nostrils. The car began ascending more steeply, up a series of switchbacks, until it finally came to a halt. The driver uncuffed Chang’s hands and gently eased him out of the back seat to his feet but kept the blindfold on. He led him up stone steps and into a room where he seated him in a comfy chair. Chang could feel the warmth of a crackling fire to his right and the cool breeze from a window, straight ahead.
The driver removed the blindfold. In the low light, it took a moment for Chang’s eyes to adjust. Out the open window was a vista of high hills at sunset, pine forests climbing the hillsides. A half-mile below was a town, the buildings painted in fading, early evening tones of pink and ochre, illuminated by streetlights. A pale stucco church stood in the center of the little town, its twin bell towers fronting on the town square.
Chang didn’t see, at first, the man sitting in shadow to his left. But the flicker of the fire caught his face for a moment. He was Chinese with high, hard cheekbones. He had long hair that stretched to his shoulders and a wisp of a goatee. He was wearing a beret, tilted on his head. He was smoking a cigarette, each puff illuminating his features. It was a face that Chang had seen in pictures; up close, he looked more like his reputed role model, Che Guevara, than Chang had expected.
“Hello, Harris Chang,” said the voice in the shadow. He spoke English with a Spanish accent rather than a Chinese one. “I am sorry for the long and bumpy ride. This was the only way to meet in confidence. I hope you were not too uncomfortable.”
“Wang Ji,” answered Chang. He spoke the name slowly. “You are a mystery that lures people from a great distance.”
“You will call me Carlos, I hope. I like that name, especially here in my dear Mexico. Do you like this place? I thought it would remind you of Flagstaff, Arizona.”
Chang smiled. This was a carefully constructed piece of theater. In the flames of the fire, his skin and Carlos’s were the same lustrous tan, sparking when the flames rose like golden wheat on fire.
“Flagstaff is special,” said Chang. “No place quite like it. What’s this town? Does it have a name?”
“We are in Mineral del Monte. It is high in the mountains, beyond Pachuca. We are in a little safe house I found many years ago. I didn’t like to tell anyone, it was so beautiful. I never knew how I would use it, until now.”
“Now that you’ve brought me all this way, what do you want from me? I’m here to listen.”
“I want to talk with you about China. About your life as a son of China.”
“Come on!” Chang snorted. “Are you shitting me? I am the least Chinese man you ever met. I bleed red, white, and blue. If that’s why you invited me, it’s a waste of time.”
“Really?” asked Carlos Wang.
He took another long puff on his cigarette. The glow illuminated his eyes, bright with intelligence. He said nothing more for a long while, just smoking on the cigarette. He offered one silently to Chang, who refused, so Carlos puffed away until the ash fell to the floor. Carlos rose and went to the pantry of the little mountain chalet. He returned with a bottle of Mexican red wine and two glasses. He poured one for himself and one for Chang.
“Try it,” said Carlos. “It’s from Baja. ‘Único.’ It’s very good, I think. Americans don’t like it, but as with many things, they are mistaken.”
Chang tasted the wine. Carlos was right. It was delicious.
“I know many things about you,” said Carlos. “I know that you are from Flagstaff, yes. I know that you were in the Army. In Iraq, too, sorry for that. I know you work for the CIA. I know you were in Singapore. So I know pretty much, you might say.”
“You do your homework. That’s good. But you didn’t bring me here to show off, did you?”
“No, I told you. I want to talk to you about China.”
“I have no authority to make any deal. I have to check back with Langley.”
Carlos snorted and waved his hand.
“Listen to me, please, young Chang. Here’s what I want to tell you. Your great-grandfather came to America to work on the railroad. Do you know where he was from in China?”
“Canton.”
“Yes. Guangdong, we say now. He was recruited there with so many other poor men. I know the town he was from and even the village, too. Would you like to hear?”
Chang knew that he should feign disinterest and change the subject. But in fact, he did want to know where his great-grandfather had come from. He had asked, as a boy, and his father had said he didn’t know. But he had always been curious. Now this proffer of information. It wasn’t free, but the price was elusive.
“All Americans are interested in their ancestry,” said Chang. “That’s part of what makes us American. We can be proud of our roots and not be embarrassed or worried about where we came from. So, sure, I’d like to know where my great-grandfather came from. If you really know.”
Carlos Wang lit himself another cigarette and poured them both another glass of wine.
“Your great-grandfather’s name was listed as Chung Hoy Co on the manifest. He was from Taishan County in the Pearl River Delta. It is just west of Hong Kong. The name of his village was Baisha. Many Chinese people went from there to California and Canada. Would you like to see a picture of some of your cousins from Baisha? The Xiang family there?”
“Sure. But don’t think this is buying you anything, because it’s not.”
Carlos Wang shook his head. He would never presume on the loyalty of his guest. He pulled from his satchel a photograph of a beautiful young woman, an orchid of a girl, and then a picture of a young Chinese man, dressed in a PLA uniform—smooth tan features, muscular body—who looked astonishingly like Harris Chang.
“You see? He is a soldier, too, your cousin. His name is Xiang Kun-Ming. He asked me to give you this picture.”
“Did he really?” responded Chang skeptically.
“Yes. Take it. He would be insulted otherwise. The woman, too.”
Carlos handed over the pictures gently, like fragments of another world. Despite himself, Chang took them, passing his finger over the faces.
“Very nice,” said Chang. He tried to hand the photos back.
“Keep them, please. The village of Baisha is very proud of its American cousins. It is part of the story that families tell, how during the famine years at the time of the opium wars, so many brave men went to America. They feel a hole, an empty place.”
“Stop it,” said Chang. He was fighting the pull of the narrative, but something powerful in him wanted to hear it.
“Would you like to know more about your great-grandfather?”
Chang didn’t answer. Carlos waited patiently, and then proceeded, with Chang’s silent assent.
“Your great-grandfather worked for the Central Pacific Railroad. He was part of a Chinese labor force recruited in Guangdong by a businessman named Charles Crocker. We found the pay record for Chung Hoy Co in 1866. He worked in Camp 6. His foreman was Mister G. W. Taylor. He worked for 317¾ days. Here. I’ll show you.”
Carlos passed a copy of a faded ledger book page. Chang found the name of his ancestor, Chung.
“The record does not say how much he was paid, but it was probably thirty-one dollars a month. That was the going rate for a Chinese man on the railroad then. In a year, he would have made $372, if there were no accidents. Not so much. But it was better than starving back home.”
“How did you find that? My family looked for those railroad records for years.”
“Please, Harris, if I may call you by your Christian name. Please: We are very expert at this work. And we have so many Chinese people to help us. Everyone shares this story, you see. You should not fight it so hard.”
“I’m not fighting. I’m listening. But if this is the best you’ve got, it’s not working.”
Carlos smiled.
“Your great-grandfather was part of the great Chinese railroad workers’ strike in 1867. Did you know that?”
“No. My father told me about the strike but never about his grandfather’s involvement. I guess he didn’t know.”
“Oh, yes, he was one of them. They were proud men, you see. Working in those high mountain passes, blasting tunnels one hundred feet below the surface, for a quarter mile. And in the winter, too, with the snow and the wind, these poor Chinese boys from Guangdong.”
“They wanted more pay.”
“They wanted dignity. Crocker had raised their pay from thirty-one dollars each month to thirty-five dollars, so they knew that the boss needed them, high up in the Sierra, to dig those tunnels and blast the rocks. They demanded forty dollars a month! Yes, and ten hours a day instead of eleven, and only eight hours in those terrible tunnels. But Crocker said no.”
Chang nodded. “So Crocker called out the cops. I read about the strike.”
“More cruel. He cut off food and water to the Chinese camp, high in the mountains, bitter cold. For eight days, they starved. Crocker finally said he would take them back, same pay as before, thirty-five dollars, if they stopped causing trouble. Your great-grandfather was one of them. He lived to be ninety, I believe.”
“Yes. Brave men. Do you know there was a famous strike, right here in these mountains, too, in 1776? The Spaniards mined their silver here. They treated people like dogs, too. But the workers fought back. They weren’t Chinese, these ones, they were slaves and Indians. But they were human beings. They went on strike! It’s universal.”
“Give me a break with the communist crap. And seriously, you’re making this up.”
“You think so? Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know. I’m still not sure why you brought me here. This is all bullshit. You haven’t asked me anything yet.”
Carlos Wang raised his eyebrows. He gave a thin smile and shook his head.
“I have no questions. You are free to leave anytime you want.”
“Thanks.” Chang moved forward in his seat, about to stand. “How about now?”
“First, maybe you would like to hear about your mother’s family. That is a very complicated story. It will interest you, I’m sure.”
“Good luck. My mother didn’t talk much. She was from San Francisco. ‘It’s Chinatown, Jake.’ ”
Carlos Wang was quizzical. “Who is ‘Jake’?”
“It means, ‘forget it.’ It’s a line from a movie called Chinatown. A cop tells Jack Nicholson to forget about something, because the truth never comes out in Chinatown.”
“Ah, but it does, when people aren’t afraid. The problem for your mother was that she knew too much.”
Chang was exasperated. Despite himself, he was being pulled deeper into Wang’s narrative. He couldn’t help himself.
“My mother didn’t talk about her father because he was a gangster. I always figured that. Big deal.”
“That is not quite right. Your mother’s maiden name was Rose Kwan. Am I correct?”
“Yup. Her father was Henry Suh Kwan. My mother showed me the fancy Chinese building where he used to go sometimes as a young man, on Stockton Street in Chinatown.”
“The Fung Yee Tien Association,” said Wang.
“Yeah. That’s right. Fancy balustrade. Red-tiled roof. There’s a sign in the masonry that says it was built in 1925. I used to see it as a kid. Just went back, the other week.”
“Ah, yes, a building. Very nice. But do you know what this ‘association’ was? It was a tong, a radical organization for self-defense, created to honor four heroes from ancient times, from the time of the Three Kingdoms. Those four heroes were named Kwan, Liu, Chang, and Chu. So it was your mother’s family that was part of this association, this band that was pledged to fight the warlords.”
“Like I said, we assumed they were a gang. The Chinese Mafia. That was why my mother wouldn’t talk about her father. You’re telling me what I already know.”
“I don’t think so. The line between criminal activity and radical politics is a fuzzy one, don’t you think? When people are scared by a movement, they say it’s an illegal gang. Or a terrorist group! That was what happened with the Fung Yee Tien Association. But your grandfather and your mother were smart. They found another way.”
“The more you talk, the less I believe,” said Chang. But his eyes remained fixed on the man in the beret, whose face was half-illuminated in the light of the flickering fire. Chang poured them both another drink.
“Your grandfather Kwan knew that trouble was coming. It was the 1950s. There was a ‘Red China Scare.’ But the police were cracking down on the associations, too, the tongs. Everyone was waving Kuomintang banners and saying to fight for Chaing Kai Shek. But your grandfather Kwan knew that Chinese people were being used by everyone. Police, politicians. He’d had enough.”
“My mother said once that her father got in trouble, but she wouldn’t explain. What did he do?”
“He tried to be an American. Ha-ha, think of that. He went to the Six Companies, the elders of Chinatown, who formed the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, and said that Chinese people should not be mistreated in this way; they had their rights. But the elders were too scared in that time. He was not scared. You want to see his picture?”
Carlos Wang removed from his satchel a copy of a picture. It showed a handsome young Chinese man, clear-eyed, with a great shock of black hair, wearing a gray cardigan sweater. He was smiling.
“I’ve never seen this picture,” said Chang. “What did my grandfather do?”
“He fought for the truth. He helped start a reform group called The Correct Path. That meant the honest, clean way without the tongs or political bosses. People said it was a radical organization, but your grandfather didn’t care. Then, in the 1960s, he and some friends started a bookstore for Chinese people. Just books! It was called ‘All-American Bookstore.’ They sold books from the Mainland. Even the ‘Little Red Book.’ Ha-ha.”
“Where was it? I’ve never seen it. Never heard of it.”
“It was on Walter U. Lim Place. All the good things in Chinatown were there. All the organizations that fought for Chinese people, so they could be real Americans. Like you.”
Chang shook his head. He was uncomfortable. It was as if someone else had taken possession of his life story. He tried to fend off the Chinese officer.
“Nice try,” said Chang. “You’re making this up. Why wouldn’t my mother talk about her dad starting a bookstore? Give me a break.”
“Because it was too painful. Too dangerous for you.”
“Why? What’s dangerous about a civil rights organization and a bookstore?”
Carlos Wang spoke very quietly.
“Your grandfather Kwan served time in prison. They said he was a communist. He spent five years in a federal penitentiary. Here, I will show you the record of his sentencing. And here’s the discharge picture of him when he left prison.”
Carlos handed two sheets of paper to Chang. As he took them, Chang’s hands trembled slightly. He lowered his head. The photograph showed a man who looked like he hadn’t slept in his five years of captivity. The eyes that once sparked with confidence were now hollow and rimmed in black.
“Uh-huh.” That was all he said at first, as he tried to recover his balance. Then a low mutter: “This is crap.”
“It was a matter of great shame in those days, never to be talked about. Your family arranged a marriage. They had distant relatives in the Chang family in Arizona. That is how Rose Kwan went to Flagstaff. To meet and marry your father. He was poorer, less educated. But it was an escape. Her own father had just been sentenced. Children were calling her names in school. She had to leave.”
“My mother would have told me later. He was her father. My ancestor. Part of my story.”
“How could she, Harris? You were on the football team. You were going to West Point. You were a war hero. Now you’re in the CIA. It wouldn’t have helped you to know that your grandfather had been a communist. It wouldn’t help you now. It’s a secret because it has power. It’s dangerous.”
Harris Chang sat back in his chair and put his glass of wine aside. His face fell into deep shadow. He held the photographs and other documents in his hands and then let them drop to his lap. He closed his eyes. He wasn’t an introspective man; his whole life had been about control of emotion. But in this moment of personal revelation, he felt deep sadness, even remorse, for the pain that his mother and grandfather had experienced.
Chang brushed a teardrop with his sleeve. He hated giving Wang Ji, his interlocutor, what he wanted. But sitting there, immensely lonely, suddenly, he knew that this would be a very hard story to explain to his colleagues back home.
“This is bullshit,” Chang said again. But his voice betrayed a different emotion.
“You must be hungry,” said Carlos. He rose and went to the pantry. His slim form, seen in shadow, might well have been that of the revolutionary he admired.
“I have prepared meat and bread and cheese,” Wang said. “And a little more wine, perhaps. And then you can sleep. Tomorrow, you can go home. There’s a taxi stand down in the villa. They can take you wherever you want.”
Chang struggled to recover his identity as a CIA officer.
“What do you want to know about Singapore?” asked Chang. “I’ll bet you’re wondering what Dr. Ma told me. That’s why you brought me here. Not all this Chinese crap. Come on, play your cards. Ask your questions.”
Carlos Wang shook his head. He patted the American on the hand.
“We know enough about Dr. Ma. It was you that we wanted to understand. And now, we do.”
“You bastard,” said Chang. “Maybe you think you have power over me, but you don’t. This is a rookie play. I have nothing to hide. From anyone. My whole life story is about loyalty.”
“Of course,” said Carlos. “It’s just a more complicated story than you realized. Now that you know, you must explain it to others. To your agency. To the FBI, maybe. What consequence that will have, I cannot say.”
“Nice try. A non-pitch, using precious facts of my life, if they are facts. But honestly, it won’t work. As good as you are, I’m better.”
Carlos Wang set a plate of bread and cheese and cold sausages before Chang.
“We’ll see,” he said. He lit another cigarette. The gentle look disappeared from his face. Even in the flickering shadows, the anger in his eyes was clearly etched.
“I don’t know what will happen to you when you return home, Mr. Chang. But really, sir, after what you did to Dr. Ma Yubo, you deserve whatever comes. This man was weak, but he was a scientist, a graduate of your own universities. His mistake was that he wanted to be rich and have a pretty girlfriend, like an American.”
“He knew what he was doing.”
“Not really, sir. You took him apart, like a doll made out of paper and thread. He did the honorable thing, which was to kill himself. I wonder about you.”
Chang stared at the plate. He didn’t want to engage in the conversation with Carlos Wang anymore. In truth, he had no answer for him.
“Eat,” said Wang. “You’ll need your strength. Tomorrow will be a long day. And long days after that, too.”
Wang left the room. A door slammed shut, and then a car engine fired. Chang looked around the small chalet. There was a bedroom and a bathroom, in addition to the living room and pantry. He was alone, it seemed.
Chang put another log on the fire and ate the little meal that his host had provided. He had no phone to call anyone, and he wasn’t sure yet what he would say. He finished the bottle of wine and fell asleep undisturbed in the single bed.
Harris Chang awoke at dawn. His head hurt. In the living room, he saw the pictures that Carlos had given him of his grandfather Kwan and the villagers back in Baisha and his great-grandfather’s railroad records, still on the floor by the chair. He thought about burning them, but that seemed wrong. He put them in his jacket pocket, gently so they wouldn’t crease.
He walked down to the village of Mineral del Monte and found a taxi outside the Hotel Paradiso. The driver gave him a wink, as if he knew the story. “It is a senorita in the hills, isn’t it? Now, very early, you must leave her.”
“Yes,” said Chang. “How did you guess?” The way back seemed a lot longer than the ride up had been.
Chang booked a flight for that afternoon back to Dulles but then canceled it and reserved another flight, twenty-four hours later. He needed time to think. He composed a brief operational message for John Vandel about his trip to the mountains and left the rest for later. He wasn’t sure how he was going to explain the hours he had spent with Wang Ji, the head of the American Operations Division of the Ministry of State Security, and he wished that it were possible to say nothing at all.