In the carpeted halls of the five-star hotel in Bangjain, the Chinese security directorate honey-trapped him into a second room with the zittiest concubine possible, leaving his own door jammed slightly so two techs could waddle in and rifle the hard drive.
They found porn, some random text files about pancreatic Isles of Langerhans, the Simpsons ipad videogame and a solid hashish spheroid that smelled vaguely of balls.
That it was hashish was neither suspected nor ascertained, having found it in the toetread of a running shoe, where ballsy-smelling spheroids could ostensibly be found.
They thought maybe hay and mud and left it for the electronics. They placed two software bugs.
The bug in the phone was knocked out by the e-burst app he had actually downloaded from the internet, much to the surprise of his back office handlers.
At HQ for readin, the tech kind of apologized, and then started talking really fast about his new 90-inch screen plasma tv at home. How it was good for porn, flight simulation, bouncing screensavers, if you liked that kind of stuff.
The computer bug took a normal scan, and plus then he just never turned it on again, wiped it back to factory settings and handed it to the single mom who was in Dutch exile too, with the two daughters whose names he comically mangled at every pronounceable chance.
Prepping them for the inevitable, he always told the mom. Getting them ready to live in America again.
The spy academy. It had a daycare. And the daycare recycled.The revolution would have had no less.
The Chinese translator hired to assist near Shanghai had been a college student in the Italian department, learned by reading books. She had never once before spoken to actual Italians, only people from China or other parts of the world who had been in Italy. Her instructor was English. She learned to pronounce her Italian that way. Like somebody from London.
On the final bus ride out to the airport she sat in the front row and smiled to herself. At times she sighed, then came up blushing, hand to face, not letting the obvious enthusiasm and vitality she felt after a 10-day interpreting session spill out of her normally reserved decorum.
He turned to her, completely passively, and said, you’ll get used to it after a while. A job well done. And you’ll put your head down and start recovering for the next trip. He said that out loud. He knew her English was better in fact than her Italian. He had heard her pass on a hypothetical future threat in the passive voice, correctly. To an Italian who wouldn’t have understood that his life depends on having the right combination of training and acumen to know these things.
She said “He said he should have not had to put the bikes on the truck earlier than when they were put on yesterday”.
Perfectly. He stood back and winked at her for that one. Got the negation wrong, but in a sentence like that, not was the least of her worries. Plus it would have added a had.
