by F. J. Chase
The waiter brought tea. Just what Avakian didn’t want after his little workout.
But the commissioner took care of that. “I prefer to drink beer with duck,” he said. “The red wine, I regret, is not good. But they also have Beiju. What would you prefer?”
Beiju was a traditional rice wine, over fifty percent alcohol. No way, Avakian thought. Not the way the Chinese toasted. “I’ll join you in a beer, thank you.”
“Menu?”
“I’ll have what you’re having, Commissioner. Please order for me.”
Commissioner Zhou snapped out a string of orders to the waiter who returned a few minutes later with two huge .75 liter bottles of cold Yanjing beer.
After the pouring, Commissioner Zhou raised his glass and smiled. “Despite all the difficulties, thank you for joining me tonight. To friendship.”
That was a good one. Avakian thought that the Chinese, contrary to their reputation, were the least inscrutable people he had ever met. All you really had to do was recognize how they were trying to play you and you’d see what they were after. “Oh, of course. Absolutely.”
Most Chinese weren’t receptive to irony, but Commissioner Zhou gave him a sardonic smile and a, “Kan Pei.” Bottoms up.
“Peng Pei,” Avakian replied emphatically. Cheers. Which meant only a sip or two. It was breaking protocol—he ought to have followed Zhou’s toast. But he wasn’t about to slam beers all night long. Especially since with the Chinese you didn’t just sip your drink whenever you wanted. Every time you picked up your glass you had to make a toast, and everyone was expected to drink with you.
Commissioner Zhou acceded to that with, “Peng Pei,” and that same sardonic smile. “Colonel Avakian, we Chinese usually prefer not to discuss serious subjects over dinner. I hope you will excuse me if I violate this custom.”
Avakian was wiping his hands with the hot towels the waiter had brought for that purpose. “As you know, Commissioner, we Americans definitely don’t follow that.” He liked that Zhou didn’t feel the need to display the stone-face stoicism that most Chinese officials seemed to spend their day rehearsing. It was a Chinese thing to regard those who smiled gratuitously as either silly or devious. Maybe the commissioner didn’t mind being thought of as devious.
“Then I will begin with a compliment. I have learned a great deal from you this past month. You have a most excellent technique of negotiating by making us extremely uncomfortable. And, since you leave it unclear whether that is your intention, you do so without being insulting.”
As the Chinese became more powerful and assertive they’d become correspondingly harder to deal with. Avakian had been hired to negotiate the security arrangements for the upcoming Foreign Ministers’ conference because it was the trend in U.S. government circles to hire private contractors to do what government employees had always done. Not because it was more efficient or less expensive, but for two reasons. It was a nifty way of funneling public money to political contributors, and if anything went wrong the government employee could now blame the contractor. “There must be some cultural misunderstanding then, Commissioner, because I would never want anyone to feel uncomfortable. Peng Pei.”
“Peng Pei.” Commissioner Zhou sat his glass down. “Thank you for making my point.”
Avakian only smiled.
The waiter laid down some plates of appetizers. The Chinese enjoyed all parts of the duck. All parts.
“Please,” said Commissioner Zhou, following custom by taking charge of the plate and offering the best to his guest. “Try the liver.”
“Thank you,” said Avakian, reaching for a piece with his chopsticks. He’d ignored the knife and fork set at the table only for him. “Excellent.” The liver was fried, and it really was excellent.
“These ducks are force-fed, the same as those raised for fois gras.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“We are not all provincial.”
The Chinese combined an overwhelming sense of racial superiority with a centuries-old inferiority complex that came from being stepped on by the big powers. Something that economic success and becoming a world power themselves hadn’t quite cured. “I can’t recall ever using the word provincial, Commissioner, or even implying that anyone was provincial.”
“Of course you didn’t, Colonel Avakian. My apologies.”
“In any case,” said Avakian, “if anyone’s a provincial here, it’s me.”
“How is this?”
“Because I come from the provinces.”
“But you are a graduate of the United States Military Academy. Forgive me, but I will not pretend that I am ignorant of your biography.”
“That’s a relief,” said Avakian. “Yes, I went to West Point. But I grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and I couldn’t afford to go to college otherwise.”
“And this Bethlehem…?”
“Not like the one in Palestine. A mostly working-class steel town. And when I was a teenager, steel was dying. Other countries were making it cheaper. One day you’ll have to worry about that. So it was West Point for me.”
“Your father was a steelworker?”
“Until he got laid off.”
Commissioner Zhou was quiet for a moment, then he pointed to one of the plates. “Now that I have started you on something familiar, I must ask if you have ever eaten boiled duck tongue?”
“Not to my immediate recollection.” Avakian popped one into his mouth. Kind of rubbery. “Obviously, this duck never said a unkind word to anyone.”
“Very good. When you make another toast to clean your mouth, I will know you did not like something.” And then, “My father was an engineer, here in Beijing. He was always pleased that we shared the surname of Premier Zhou Enlai. He said that Mao was a tiger who would frighten our enemies but also devour China whenever he became hungry. But Zhou was always for the people. When Mao began the Cultural Revolution the Red Guards threw my father from the roof of his factory.”
“You were sent to the countryside,” Avakian said. It wasn’t really a question.
“Shanxi. I became a student in shoveling all types of animal dung. Mostly pig. My older brother cut his arm and died of blood poisoning because the village barefoot doctor was afraid to treat a class enemy. My mother killed herself. I was not permitted to go to school, but the teacher left the door open at night and I would go in and read all the textbooks and do the problems on the blackboard. Over and over.”
Avakian wondered how many people had made it thanks to a heroic teacher. He raised his glass. “To survival. Kan Pei.”
“Kan Pei. How do you do that, drink the glass down without moving your throat?”
“Just a little trick.” Somehow it didn’t seem right to tell Commissioner Zhou that while he’d been shoveling pig shit, the teenage Avakian had been mastering the art of chugging beer. “How did you get out of Shanxi?”
“After Mao died and the Gang of Four were overthrown, my sister and I were rehabilitated. She is a doctor now.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Avakian.
“How ironic that the American is from the rural proletariat, while the Chinese is from the urban intelligentsia.”
“It is, isn’t it? Did you attend the Police University?”
“No, I passed the examinations for the Beijing University of Science and Technology. What were you doing in 1989?”
Avakian had to think for a moment. “I was a captain with the 7th Special Forces Group. In…South America.”
“Ah, yes. Panama. I did not recall. And you fought in the invasion of that country in December of that year.”
Avakian was hardly surprised that Chinese dossiers were much more comprehensive than American. “It’s not much of an invasion if you were already in the country, Commissioner.”
“Your modesty does you credit. In 1989 I was in Tiananmen Square. Protesting.”
Avakian never expected to run into a police commissioner with that kind of history. But the world was a fu
nny old place. “You don’t say?”
“Yes. We were young and naïve. We wanted democracy, and an end to corruption, but we did not want to overthrow the government. Others did, however, and eventually I grew sick of it and went home. On my way I watched a battle on the streets between soldiers and a mob, and I knew China could not withstand any more turmoil. I joined the police.”
It was a good story. And since it seemed tailor-made to gain an American’s sympathies Avakian couldn’t help but wonder how much of it, if any, was true. But just then their duck arrived on a metal tray, burnished brown, almost maroon, with the glossy lacquer of the molasses rub. Head still attached, of course. It was sliced up before them and the meat arrayed on a platter for serving. At other places Avakian had seen the skin removed and presented separately, but Liqun chopped the meat and the skin together.
More plates were set down. Small, thin flour pancakes that weren’t quite as dense as tortillas. Chinese broccoli. Bamboo shoots. Cucumber spears. Slivered scallions. A brown sauce.
The deal, as Commissioner Zhou demonstrated, was to place your choice of duck meat and crispy skin in the pancake, add whatever extras suited your fancy, roll it up, and dip it into the sauce. The broccoli and shoots were the side dishes.
But before he tried rolling his own Avakian plucked a chunk of duck meat with his chopsticks and tasted it. Juicy, tender, and great flavor. Not at all greasy. “This is excellent.”
“I am very happy you enjoy it.”
They both ate with silent dedication. Always a sign of those who’d known what it was like to not just miss a meal but be truly hungry, and learned the hard way that the next meal was a promise not always kept.
Then, after the pancakes had been replenished once, and the pile of duck whittled down to the point where it would have been impolite to snatch any of the few remaining pieces, Commissioner Zhou wiped his mouth and said, “What are your plans after the conference is concluded?”
“I usually take some time off after a contract. Then I get bored and start looking for another job.”
“Perhaps you would be interested in consulting with us?”
Avakian considered stringing that along to see what they had in mind. Then just as quickly dismissed the idea. Either the word would get around that he’d been interested, or the CIA would try to run him as an agent—and those idiots would put you up a tree and then saw the branch off behind you. “I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding between us, Commissioner.”
“Then if I do not understand, I will ask you to explain.”
“That won’t be necessary. I intend to speak frankly.”
“And after you have spent these past months being as subtle as a Chinese? Then I will prepare myself for you to speak as an American.”
“As you please. I don’t work for any country, or any company, that’s a potential adversary of the United States.” Though there were more than a few in the security trade who only cared about the size of the quote.
“Since you have paid me the compliment of such honesty, I will not insult you by mentioning the value of the consulting offer.”
“I appreciate that. It wouldn’t change my mind, but it would almost certainly depress me.”
Commissioner Zhou was giving him that look again. And then said softly, “I would have expected nothing else.” As he was about to go on the waiter arrived with two bowls of duck soup. As the final disposition of the duck’s remains, it signaled the meal’s impending conclusion.
Avakian sipped his soup. “You were going to say something, Commissioner?”
“Only that I appreciated your answer. And I received it as a compliment. Rather than put on a false face and pretend to be the friends we are not, we can be what we are: adversaries, but with a common goal at the present, who can respect each other and enjoy a meal together.”
Avakian raised his glass. “That sounded like a toast to me, Commissioner.”
They both drained their beers, and Commissioner Zhou refilled the glasses. “Tell me, why did you attack those thieves?”
Avakian knew what was behind the question. For a Chinese, the idea of sticking your neck out if it wasn’t a matter of personal or family advantage, or the requirement of your job, was totally inexplicable. “The only reason in the world, Commissioner. It was easier to do it than live with myself if I’d stepped aside and someone had gotten hurt.”
Commissioner Zhou was clearly baffled by that. But he let the issue drop, bringing his soup bowl up to his lips and slurping away.
They finished that course in silence, and when the soup bowls were empty the waiter brought a plate of plums and sliced apples.
“This has been a most memorable meal, Commissioner. I can’t thank you enough for your hospitality.” Avakian raided the last of his beer. “Kan Pei.”
“Kan Pei. It has been most pleasurable. But there is something else.”
There always was, at the end. That’s why you didn’t spend the evening slamming drinks. “I’m all ears, Commissioner.”
Unaccountably, Commissioner Zhou giggled. “I have always enjoyed that expression. Such things make learning a language so challenging. I am directed to share certain information with you. It was thought best that it be passed along in a more…informal setting.”
Avakian just sat back and devoured another plum. He had a feeling this was going to be good.
“It concerns the island to the south,” said Commissioner Zhou.
The Chinese even got jumpy when it came time to say Taiwan. No subject was more radioactive among Chinese officialdom.
“Oh?” was all Avakian said.
“There will be a visit,” said Commissioner Zhou. “While the Foreign Ministers’ meeting is in progress. From that island.”
This was very big. So big that it made it hard to maintain the required pose of detachment, though Avakian still managed it. “On what level will this visit take place?”
Commissioner Zhou did everything but melodramatically swivel his head from side to side to check who might be listening. “The highest.”
In 1949, after being beaten in the civil war with Mao and the Communists, Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang, or Nationalist, party fled the mainland for Taiwan.
The Communist People’s Republic of China regarded Taiwan as a renegade breakaway province that had to be restored. And they would have tried, but the U.S. Navy kept them from coming across the Taiwan Straits.
For their part, the Republic of China on Taiwan always felt that one day they would be going back across the Straits to take back all of China.
So with both sides considering themselves to be the true representatives of the Chinese people, there was never any question of Taiwan declaring itself an independent nation. Which worked out fine for everyone. Until the opposition Democratic Progressive Party took power in Taiwan in 2000 and promptly threatened to declare independence. China threatened to invade if that ever happened, backing it up by test-firing ballistic missiles across the Straits whenever they felt they needed to make the point.
The U.S. government was equally displeased by the prospect of the country they’d pledged to defend from attack dragging them into a shooting war with China.
So this visit was huge. Nothing like it had happened in over sixty years. Chiang and Mao had met briefly in 1945, smiling through their teeth as they toasted the defeat of the Japanese, while simultaneously plotting to kill each other.
Now that the Nationalists were back in power Taiwan must have decided that extending the olive branch was their best policy. The mainland was apparently ready to accept it, at least for now. And why not, with a roaring economy, the military balance completely in their favor, and time on their side?
“An official visit, on the presidential level?” said Avakian, not quite believing it.
“Not official,” Commissioner Zhou said firmly. “But a visit.”
Ah, Chinese subtlety at work again. “But presidential.”
“Yes. A visit to Beijing
.”
That just happened to be at the same time as the conference. Okay. It was to give everyone political cover, and save everyone’s face. And while all the Asian foreign ministers, including the U.S. Secretary of State, were together in one place. Maybe to put the stamp on a China-Taiwan détente. This was huge. Like Sadat going to Jerusalem. Secret negotiations must have been going on for a long, long time. “Just a visit. By the president of Taiwan.”
“Exactly,” said Commissioner Zhou, either missing or ignoring the irony. “And, as the United States security representative, it is necessary to inform you that the visitor will also be attending the women’s gymnastic competition all the foreign ministers have been invited to. At that time the United States competitors will also be greeted and congratulated. So I have been directed to inform you.”
If, as Avakian suspected, both the embassy here and the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto embassy there, were in the dark about this little visit, Washington was going to go ballistic. But why the hell were they telling him?
Commissioner Zhou was now munching on an apple slice.
“Anything else?” Avakian asked.
“Not at this time.”
Okay, so it was a trial balloon. If the U.S. was somehow opposed to the visit, both sides wanted to know before any official announcement, so no one lost face. That’s why Taiwan was letting China take the lead on it, and that’s why the Chinese were laying it on their security liaison unofficially over a duck dinner. “I assume more details will be forthcoming.”
“I am told this will be so.” Commissioner Zhou stood up. “Please excuse me for a moment.”
Avakian guessed that he was going to have a chat with the proprietor, assuring him of continued police protection in exchange for the free meal. Hopefully it would be cooler outside. The kitchen was breaking down for the night. He thanked them on his way through, and they bowed him out.
The Beijing night was still hot, with only a faint smell of duck and wood smoke in the air. Along with cabbage that the light breeze had carried in from somewhere else in the neighborhood. Just a faint buzzing of insects, and the skittering sound of rats hunting in the darkness.
