An American Spy by Olen Steinhauer Read Free Book Online Page A

They sported suits like second skins, the women comfortable in Western fashions, all secure in the knowledge that their city, the most populous city of the most populous country on the planet, had a reach that stretched around the globe. He hadn’t been lying when he told Zhang Guo that China was the superpower to be reckoned with, and though he could never feel comfortable with the economic policies that Shanghai represented, its very existence proved that their country was now something completely different. Arriving here was like arriving at a future of perpetual motion, and it was part of his responsibility to make sure that nothing external slowed it down. Perpetual motion, perpetual revolution. He ate his ice cream slowly, feeling it cut through the eel that seemed to still slither in his stomach, and thought of speed.
    He entered as any guest would, through the glassy front doors and into the packed marble lobby, knowing that whoever was watching—and whether they’d been sent by Wu Liang, the committee, or the Americans, someone was always watching—would think that he’d eluded them on the way out, and that was something no watcher would admit in a report. He breezed past a gathering of Japanese businessmen and shared the elevator with a Canadian couple who were plainly in love. A rare sight.
    The door to 1298, though displaying a DO NOT DISTURB sign, was ajar. He pushed it open to find a clean, empty room, the blinds drawn, and a key card left on the foot of the made bed. He closed the door behind himself, heard noise in the bathroom, and found He Qiang, a thick, big-shouldered man in his forties with a small mole on his cheek, sitting on the toilet, smiling. Hanging from the curtain rod, dripping dry, was a padded undergarment—the “fat suit” He Qiang had arrived wearing.
    They shook hands, and Zhu leaned close to his ear, whispering, “I’m going to sleep. Wake me at seven.”
    He Qiang nodded.
    “She’ll make it by eight?”
    “You’ll like her,” He Qiang whispered. “Xinyang girl. Very nice, and she knows the town. If you like, she can show you a good time.”
    Zhu gave him a look, and He Qiang raised his hands.
    “If you like, I said.”
    Zhu washed up, and by the time he lay on the large, hard bed it was just after two. He Qiang plugged headphones into the television, settled on the floor, and began watching a DVD that, Zhu realized before falling asleep, was from Bollywood. So He Qiang liked the music and melodrama of those sorts of movies. He’d never have suspected the man was a dreamer. Xin Zhu certainly was not, and his dreamless sleep proved it.
    He Qiang woke him gently with a shake of the shoulder, then pointed at a cup of hot black tea on the bedside table, alongside a sheet of paper filled with childlike scrawl. As he sipped the tea, he read over what proved to be He Qiang’s report of his time in the hotel. Who he’d spotted down in the street, how many calls (unanswered, of course) came to his room, and when, and the demeanor of the service staff that visited the room. Upon arriving, he’d changed his room but still found one camera in the overhead lamp, which he’d disposed of, and two microphones—he’d left one of them. No one had tried to replace anything. He Qiang’s assessment, which tallied with Xin Zhu’s, was that while there was no urgency to the surveillance, someone was certainly keeping tabs on him.
    Zhu was able to verify this when he descended in the elevator, wearing one of the suits He Qiang had packed, and found, leaning against a wall outside the Jade, an athletic-looking young man working his way through a copy of People’s Daily . He was dressed like a factory worker ready for a big night out—a peasant’s idea of what the urban rich wear to gala events—but none of the hotel staff was kicking him out. Zhu passed him without a glance and found a place at the end of the Jade’s glowing bar.
    The girl was in her midtwenties, small boned with a