What is this place? A top-secret Internet café?” I whisper to Wei.
After Biceps dropped us off at Orange Blossom Hutong with an explicit promise to rearrange our faces if Ai got wind that he’d chauffeured us around Hebei, Sun and I woke up Wei and showed her the laptop. She led us to the thrumming door at the end of the hallway by my bedroom. She opened the first door and then rapped a beat on the second—one, two and three, four—and after a minute, a blinking teenager in sweats pulled it open from the other side.
Now Sun and the kid are huddled together, fooling around with the laptop. The room is long and narrow, with rows of classroom tables lining the two walls and another closed door at the opposite end. At identical workstations along the tables, other geeks tap away, about a dozen of them altogether, oblivious to the presence of two variously lethal retainers and a bruised half-breed from the land of opportunity. Under the tables, aside from a minifridge filled with squat orange cans of Chinese Red Bull and a large round trash can overflowing with junk-food packaging, there’s enough server hardware to drain the power grid of a small country.
But we’re not in a small country.
“They are Ai’s army,” Wei whispers in my ear. “These soldiers post on social media, manipulating people’s reputations and that sort of thing. The sergeants like Young Zhang here do espionage and sabotage.”
At the sound of his name, Zhang shoots a puppy glance up at Wei, who is as mesmerizing as ever in blue silk pajamas and no makeup. When we roused her from her chambers in another wing of the compound, she touched my puffy face with her fingertips and looked into my eyes with an expression of tender concern, and for a moment I was glad Ouyang had gotten in a few good punches.
“Sergeant? He looks about eighteen years old. What kind of hours are they working?”
I use my toe to nudge an empty bag of chips under the table. It’s not yet eight in the morning.
“There are three shifts. Fresh troops come in at nine.”
“I was able to circumvent the password protection and log in to the computer,” Zhang says, speaking directly to Wei. “And I found the software client he’s using for email, but everything in it is encrypted. We can’t see the contents without a key.”
“Is there anything else on the hard drive?” Sun asks.
Zhang shakes his head. A disappointed quiet settles over us, and the sounds of tiny fans, whirring drives, and fingers clacking on ergonomic keyboards fill the small room as Zhang looks up at us expectantly. Tired, tired, tired is all I feel, and I wonder if we’ve come far enough: Ouyang dead, Ice halted, and us here at this impasse. Unless—how do I put it politely?
“Is this kind of encryption completely unbreakable? Or are there people who could do it?”
Zhang nods and blinks. “Probably a small number of people with superior resources and experience,” he says, and I silently bless him for his nerdy lack of ego. “Those people are not often available.”
“Say I wanted someone to look at it in the States—could they try remotely?”
“I could take a capture of the drive and send it.”
“Do you have Skype?”
Victor! Holy fuck, man! Are you okay?”
The call quality is full bars, but my Skype window is solid black.
“Hey, Eli.” I dig around in my head for the English language. “You’ve got a Post-it over your webcam.”
“Oh, right.” He peels it off and his dorm room fills the screen, familiar, distant. Eli looks genuinely concerned but also thrilled, and he’s bouncing up and down on the baby blue yoga ball he uses for a desk chair. The bookshelf behind his head is carefully staged with parent-pleasing props: Hanukkiah, tefillin, The Path of the Just.
“Dude, you are not looking your best right now,” he says.
“Yeah. I got in a scuffle. Sorry I haven’t answered your emails. I’m actually coming back really soon. I just need your help with something. You got a minute?”
“Sure, sure, of course I do! What’s going on? Is Sun there?”
“Yeah, he’s right here with me.”
I tug on Sun’s sleeve. He bends into webcam range and waves.
“We figured out who’s behind Dad’s—behind what happened to Dad, and now we’re trying to find evidence that connects them to the people in charge. So we have this guy’s computer, but his email is encrypted. Can you help us read it? Or, like, someone you know?”
Eli stops bouncing and the smile fades off his face. I can tell he’s thinking, because he isn’t talking.
“What makes you think I can do that?” he eventually says in a quiet voice, his brow furrowed.
“I don’t think you can do it, necessarily.” I sigh, and another wave of fatigue crashes over me, the riptide dragging at my legs. “I just thought I would ask.”
Eli is scribbling on a piece of printer paper with a Sharpie. “Well, sorry to let you down, man. That’s way out of my league,” he says, then holds up the sheet of paper with two hands:
SFTP TO: 213.114.212.118
I grope around for a pen, scrawl the number onto my hand. “Okay. Sorry to trouble you.”
“No worries, get home safe.” He flips the sheet of paper over and scowls in concentration as he tries to make his wretched handwriting legible, then holds it up again:
←WHO’S THE MEGAFOX?
DID YOU BONE
I cast a glance over my shoulder at Wei, who’s visible in profile chatting with Zhang in the background.
“I’ll let you know when I have my flight. Lots of stuff to talk about.”
Eli makes the “A-OK” sign with one hand, then looks surprised as the first two fingers of his other hand come along and start penetrating it. I shake my head and click the little red phone in the Skype window. The application plays its “end call” chime, and everyone looks over to me.
“I think he can help. Just one more call to make.”
Unlike Eli, Jules isn’t constantly available on Skype, so I call her phone first and ask her to get in front of her computer. Thus she has a solid minute to prepare a barrage of vitriol for me, and she unleashes it as soon as we’ve got the video call going. Her vocabulary would impress a panel of scholars and sailors, her allusions are startlingly eclectic, and her enunciation crackles like a cattle prod. Pretty soon Zhang, Wei, and Sun have dropped their side conversation and gathered around the screen. As she enumerates to me the myriad ordeals I have brought upon her, since birth in general and particularly in recent days, I do feel guilty, but I have to fight back a tiny smile, because I’ve missed my sister.
“. . . Okay? And think a little more critically about the ramifications of your actions. And most of all, you—hey, who the fuck are these people doing all the hovering? I can see your sleeve, dickbag!”
Sun ducks into view. “Hello, Lianying,” he says, smiling hopefully.
Juliana’s eyes and mouth go round, then narrow to slits. “You! You are waaay deep in the shit with me! None of this would have happened if you hadn’t lured my idiot brother to China with your tall tales and Shaolin Temple charisma. Look at him; you promised me he wouldn’t get hurt, and his face is all fucked up now! What happened to his face?”
“Jules, my face is going to be fine. Look, you’re totally right, okay? I’m sorry. I fucked up, and I owe you big-time. Have you spoken with Lang? Did he find anything in Dad’s computer?”
She shook her head. “The hard drive had been wiped. Lang hasn’t gotten anywhere, no DNA, no leads, nothing. And he’s getting curious about your whereabouts.”
“I’m booking a ticket home as soon as I get off this call. I’ll be on the next flight. Lang can’t solve this unless we help him, Jules. There’s just one thing I need you to do.”
“You’re in no position to ask for favors right now, Victor.”
“I know, I know, just listen to me. You have to go to the Quad and help Eli look at some files he’s decoding. You have to read the Chinese for him and see if there is any information about Rou Qiangjun, Zhao—what’s his name?” I turn to Sun, lowering my voice.
“Zhao Chongyang. Chong like Chongqing, yang like yin-yang.”
“Okay, Zhao Chongyang. And Dong?”
Sun shakes his head. “It’s not even his real name.”
“Well, any references to Zhao Chongyang and a guy called Dong. Jules, these are the guys who called the hit on Dad. I’m coming home now, okay? I’m not in any danger. Please just do this one thing.”
On the screen Jules looks small, deflated. “Victor, I tried to file the claim for the insurance policy, and then Perry Peng called me up out of nowhere. He said there was a mistake and the premiums weren’t paid. He told me there’s no insurance money.”
My head plunges like a stone into a pool of frigid water. I had forgotten about the insurance policy. Four million dollars slipped my mind, and now it’s gone. It disappeared in one sentence. Not that we ever had it, not that it ever sat in our hands. Did it really exist? Was it important? More important than what we’ve done? I have no idea.
“Jules, that was blood money, okay? We don’t want that dirty money. You don’t want to know what those people are doing to make money, because it’s seriously the most awful shit you can imagine.”
“This is too fucked up. It’s all just way too fucked up.”
She’s crying now, and the bubble of pain inside me just bursts, and I start crying, too, and for a minute there we are, finally, two heartsore orphans bearing a load that’s way too heavy. Sun turns away, Zhang is staring, and Wei gently puts her hand on my shoulder.
“I know. It really is. I—I’m sorry.” My voice quavers through salty tears. “Just this last thing, okay? I’ll be home soon.”
She puts her hands on her face, shakes her head, takes her hands away, and exhales.
“Send me your flight info and then I’ll go.”