A Case of Two Cities

government. Your prolonged stay here may cause you inconveniences, they understand. So they’ll try to do everything possible to make your visit to the city a comfortable one. For one thing, if you would like to call back to China, they have offered to provide you with prepaid international phone cards. As for those of you with cell phones, you may also have prepaid cards. You have a cell phone, Mr. Chen, don’t you?”
     
    “Yes. As the delegation head, I have to take care of a lot of things, but I have just put enough money onto my cell.”
     
    “I have a cell phone too,” Bao said.
     
    She was aware of a surprised murmur among the Chinese, and of a subtle glance from Chen. “Let me put down the number and the mode, so the phone card will work with yours, Mr. Bao,” she said, taking over the phone and jotting the number on a notebook. “Now let’s go to the Arch.”
     
    The hotel had arranged a minivan for them. Most of the Chinese carried cameras in their hands. In spite of the interpreter’s death, they wanted to have a memorable day with the celebrated Arch towering overhead.
     
    Once they arrived at the Arch, the tallest man-made monument in the United States, the Chinese writers started wondering at close range, touching the individual slabs of stainless steel and imagining how all of them had been put together. They began to take pictures, posing with the Arch shimmering in the background.
     
    Visitors usually wanted to go to the top of the Arch and the Chinese proved to be no exception. Catherine went to buy them the tram tickets. There were a lot of people in line for the tram, and their turn wouldn’t come for about forty-five minutes. Looking back, she saw the Chinese were still busy taking pictures. It appeared that Chen was a popular photographer among the group.
     
    So she was left alone. She sat on a bench near the tram entrance. It was ironic. In Shanghai, Chen had played a similar escort role. If there was any difference, it was that he tried to do more than the Chinese authorities had instructed him to. Now things seemed to be coming full circle.
     
    She started thinking about the CIA theory regarding Chen’s secret mission. She failed to see how, what with his delegation responsibilities, and in the midst of his fellow writers, it would be possible. According to the CIA, Chen hadn’t yet made any suspicious moves except for calling on pay phones instead of using the hotel phones. Chen wouldn’t have come all this way to make phone calls.
     
    And Chen apparently had his own suspicions about the homicide case. He agreed with Lenich about probing among the writers, and then there was his hint about Bao’s cell phone earlier this morning.
     
    She opened the book he had given her. A bound galley of Chinese love poetry translated by Chen and Yang, a celebrated scholar persecuted to death during the Cultural Revolution. According to Chen’s introduction, most of the work was done by Yang, Chen only added a few poems not included in the original manuscript. She turned to a poem entitled “The Lines Written in Dinghui Temple, Huangzhou,” written by Su Dongpo, a Song dynasty poet she’d liked in her college years. Chen liked Su too, she remembered.
     
    The waning moon hangs on the sparse tung twigs,
    the night deep, silent.
    An apparition of a solitary wild goose
    moves like a hermit.
     
    Startled, it turns back,
    its sorrow unknown to others.
    Trying each of the chilly boughs,
    it chooses not to perch.
    Freezing, the maple leaves fall
    over the Wu River.
     
    A footnote by Chen said that it wasn’t necessarily a love poem. Still, she wanted to read it as one—in a way that she wanted to be moved. For the lonely wild goose could be about him, and about her as well.
     
    Then she put down the book, frowning, as she took out her ringing cell phone. She recognized the number.
     
    “He’s a conscientious head,” she briefed David Marvin, the CIA officer assigned to work with her, “busy with his delegation responsibilities. I don’t see how he could have the time or energy for another mission, whatever it might be.”
     
    “We’ve just learned that he wasn’t with the delegation for two afternoons in L.A. One afternoon he spent with an old friend of his, and on the other he claimed he wasn’t well, staying at the hotel instead of going to Disneyland with the delegation. Besides, he seems to have spent some time on the computers at a number of college