The Shanghai Factor by Charles McCarry

be?”
    “Enemies of mankind. You may think what happened the other night is trivial, but believe me when I tell you it is the seed of something that can be large indeed.”
    “Like what, exactly?”
    “You’ll know more when you need to know it. Nobody but you and me—nobody—will have knowledge of this operation. Ever. You will work for no one but me, report to no one but me, answer to no one but me.”
    I didn’t know what to say to all that, so for once I wasn’t tempted to say anything.
    For a long moment, neither did Burbank. Then he said, “Do you know what a dangle is?”
    “You bait a hook and hope the adversary takes the lure.”
    “Exactly.”
    “And I’m the lure?”
    “I’ve been looking for a long time for someone I thought could handle this, waiting for the opening,” Burbank said. “I believe you can handle it, and I also think no one else can.”
    He did? Talk about the chance of a lifetime. I said, “Why?”
    “Because you’re a good fit,” Burbank said. “Because you keep interesting company. Because mainly you tell the truth if you know it, you’re brave even if you choose to deny it, you have a good ear for difficult languages, you’re arrogant but you try not to let it show. People trust you—especially a certain kind of woman. Most importantly, if I understand what you’ve half-told me, you seem to have died at least twice, or thought you did, and you didn’t care. That’s a rare thing. There’s one more reason, out of your past.”
    “Namely?”
    “You want to be the starting running back, as you deserve to be.”

7
    I was out of Burbank’s officein seconds, out of the building in minutes. It was a Friday. Sally had told me as she took me down in the elevator that Burbank had mentioned that I might want to spend the weekend with my mother in Connecticut, then on Tuesday call a different number at a different hour. I called Mother on the way to the airport. Her voice rose by a tone or two when she heard my voice. For her this was the equivalent of a shriek of delight. She collected me at the train station. I was glad of the chance to be back in the country. Summer was coming in, everything was in leaf and color. I breathed more deeply than usual, as if inhaling my native air awakened some earlier self. Mother seemed glad enough to see me. She smiled at me, rose on tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek. She smelled, as always, of expensive perfume and makeup. In the car she behaved as if I were home from school, asking no questions about where I had been or what I had seen in the last year and a half. She drove her coughing twenty-year-old Mercedes with competence. She talked about her forgetful sister, about the wretched political slough America had become with everyone, even the children, turning into bloody-minded bigots, about a grocery store (“It couldn’t be nicer!”) she had discovered across the state line in Massachusetts that had wonderful produce and excellent fish and very nice cheeses. She was still pretty and slim and dressed by Bergdorf. She had no news. She knew only six people in town by first and last name. Nearly everyone she had known had died or been locked up in a nursing home. She had lived alone since my stepfather died. His name did not arise. Nor did my natural father’s name, but he had been absent from her conversation for many years. It had taken her about three days after the funerals to forget her late husbands—probably even less time in my father’s case. Men died and ceased to be useful, women lived on. Once a protector could no longer protect, though he was still expected to provide, what was the use of thinking about him? As far as I knew she did not have lovers, but how would I know? Remembering the sounds of frolic that issued from the master bedroom when she and my stepfather were together, I reserved judgment.
    I soon fell in with Mother’s routine. By day I went for walks so as to breathe as much of the crystalline air as