“Duibuqi, gei ni tian mafan le,” John says. Sorry to trouble you.
And we hustle ourselves down the alley, leaving the two guys moaning on the pavement.
“You’d think Uncle Yang could afford better thugs.”
John shrugs. “They are not bad. I am simply better.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, you had a little help.”
“I did.” He gives my hand a squeeze. “You were very good.”
The two of us are making like boyfriend and girlfriend, riding on the subway out to John’s safe place, wherever that is. Just laughing and touching each other, like we’re an actual couple.
There’s a part of me that knows I should be asking those questions, such as where are we going exactly, but I’m so wired and buzzing from what just happened that I’m mostly just thinking about how good it feels leaning into Mr. Badass next to me here.
“What about your car?” I ask.
“What about it?”
“Can’t they use it to find you?”
John whispers in my ear: “Not with the plates on it. Fake.”
“Smooth.”
“The next station is Sanyuanqiao. Sanyuanqiao is a transfer station. All passengers, please prepare for your arrival.” I half listen to the recorded announcements, wondering as I always do who they got to do the English-the way she says “transfer,” all nasal like she’s from New Jersey or something always cracks me up.
“We can get off here,” John says.
“We going to the airport?”
He shakes his head. “We just look for a taxi.”
We take the long escalator up to the surface, emerging into dusty yellow skies.
Riding in the cab, I’m not sure why, but everything feels heavier somehow. We were having fun on the subway, celebrating that we’d beaten the bad guys. Now the boyfriend/girlfriend act is over. We’re sitting next to each other like near strangers.
We’re out in that patchy no-man’s-land close to the airport. You can’t get here on the subway; the Airport Express doesn’t make stops between Sanyuanqiao and the terminals. Not that there’s much here. Just the highway and scrubby fields and skinny trees, the occasional factory.
We pull off the highway. Close to the interchange, there’s this massive concrete building painted a yellowish shade of beige. It’s about three stories, and I would’ve taken it to be a factory or a school of some kind that was built in the Soviet days, except for the fountain out in front surrounded by a circle of yellow-beige concrete columns and topped by a yellow-beige concrete ring. That and the rooftop sign that spells out airport harmony garden hotel.
“Wait a second-” I say as we pull in to the drive.
John shoots me a look. “We can discuss in a minute. Ni keyi dao houbian ting che,” he tells the driver. You can stop around the back.
I’m liking this less and less. I’m thinking maybe I should just stay in the cab and have the driver drop me someplace else. But I don’t.
John pays the guy, and he gets out, and I slide out after him.
We’re in a small parking lot behind a secondary building, a ragged tennis court to one side. “Wait here a moment,” John says. “I have to make an arrangement.” He trots off toward the main building. I stand there, pissed at myself for going along with him. The two times that Pompadour Bureaucrat had me picked up for tea, it went something like this. Some crappy hotel on the fringes of Beijing. Going upstairs through a side entrance. Never checking in and not knowing if I’d be checking out anytime soon.
But this is different, I tell myself. This is John. I don’t know exactly what his deal is, but he seems to care about me, right?
There are two guys playing tennis in the late-afternoon sun. One wearing jeans, neither very good. I watch them play, the guy in jeans swatting with an awkward hop at a ball that sails past his head and a giggle when he misses.
I stare at the cracks on the tennis court, at the frayed net.
Finally I turn and see John jogging toward me.
“Okay,” he says. “We can go inside now.”
Even though the hall is dark, I can see stains in the worn brown carpet, that the faded white walls are dingy with decades of cigarette smoke. It’s a lot like the hotels Pompadour Bureaucrat had me brought to, except worse, maybe because there’s so much more of it. The halls are wide and strangely empty. Maybe it’s off-season for detaining dissidents.
We pass only one person, a thirtyish man in a cheap leather jacket and dark slacks, Ray-Ban-style sunglasses perched on his forehead. He and John exchange a glance, or am I imagining that? He sure looks like a low-rent undercover nark anyway.
John stops in front of a room close to the end of the hall. Gets out a key card. I hear the little whir as it unlocks. He steps inside, and I follow.
A faded yellow runner over a greying quilt on a bed that I already know is a thin foam pad on top of plywood. Dusty beige curtains. The whole place stinks of mildew.
John stands there, an uncertain look on his face.
“So,” he finally says. “You can stay here awhile. I will take care of things.”
“Awhile? How long? And what things?”
“Just… a day or so. I come back for you.”
“Jesus,” I mutter. “So you’re just gonna leave me here while you go do whatever it is you’re gonna do?”
He gives a little half shrug. I guess that’s all the answer I’m going to get.
“You need to eat some things, you can go to the canteen. They put it on room. You can… you can go to… to jianshenfang, to… to gym.” There’s this weird helpless note to his voice. That’s when it hits me.
“You don’t really have a plan, do you? Awesome.”
“I can manage something. You must trust me.”
“Oh, must I?” I plop down on the bed. The mattress is hard enough to send a jolt up my spine.
It’s not like I have a lot of choices. I don’t have a working phone-well, I have one with no minutes and another that I’m pretty sure is hacked. I do have my laptop, though. I unzip my backpack and pull it out.
John lets out a short, sharp sigh and shakes his head.
Of course there isn’t going to be Internet in a secret black-jail detention hotel room.
“Fine. Whatever.”
“Yili-”
I hold up my hand. “Don’t. Just… just go. Go manage something. I’ll wait here.”
He stands there a moment longer, like he’s looking for something from me. I have no idea what.
“Sorry,” he mutters, and leaves.
Yeah, you should be sorry, buddy, I think. I may not know John’s whole story, but how is he going to deal with a pissed-off Uncle Yang?
I hope the TV works. Maybe there’s an American movie on CCTV-6.
I fiddle with the remote. Nada. Just a black screen.
“Fucking great.”
There’s a teakettle at least. I can make myself a cup of coffee. I usually have a couple of Starbucks VIAs in my messenger bag.
I pull the bag out of my backpack. Slip my hand into the outside pocket. Feel around for the little tube of coffee.
That’s when my fingertips feel something else through the rough canvas fabric, something in the small interior zip pocket. Something round, like a coin. Except it doesn’t feel exactly like a coin somehow. Too thick.
I unzip the pocket and jam two fingers inside, feeling for the thing. I find it and fish it out.
Yeah, it looks like a coin. An old one-yuan model. And yeah, they’re heavier than the modern version. But not like this.
I stare at the rim. Is that a seam down the middle?
Yeah. It is.
I don’t know what this thing is for sure, but if I had to guess, I’m guessing it’s a bug-or some kind of tracker.
Fuck, fuck, the fucking fuck.
I try to think it through. There was plenty of time when I was having my little session with Uncle Yang for one of his men to plant it. But John, he would’ve checked, wouldn’t he? I mean, he knows all about this stuff, right? Granted, things happened pretty fast-maybe he slipped up.