The Shanghai Factor by Charles McCarry Page A

possible. In the evening we read a lot—companionably, each of us in a favorite chair under a good lamp, Mother with her Kindle, me with a thriller from long ago I found in my room. Since my stepfather’s departure, Mother had had no television set or radio. She disliked the news, abominated sitcoms and cop shows, thought that pop music was noise. The food was excellent. We made our own breakfasts, always the rule in this house, and a taciturn young woman, a recovering crack addict who had been a chef before she crashed, came in and made the other two meals and put the dishes in the dishwasher. A second woman, a cheerful Latina, came in daily, even on Sunday, and did the housework. On Monday, when Mother and I said good-bye, she patted my cheek. Her eyes were misty. This was not exactly a surprise. Though she had never said so, I knew she had affection for me in spite of the fact that I was my father’s child.
    Late Tuesday afternoon, from Reagan National Airport, I made the call I had been instructed to make at the minute I was supposed to make it. Same routine at the other end, but this time in Sally’s voice. She told me exactly where to wait for my ride. The car that came for me was a gleaming black Hyundai, the luxury model. Remembering the battered motorpool Chevy and Sally’s motorized garbage can, I didn’t think this could be my ride, but it was and it was as shipshape inside as out. The driver was Burbank himself, who maneuvered through rush-hour traffic to Arlington National Cemetery without speaking a word and parked in an isolated lot. It was too hot to walk among the headstones on this day in early June. Leaving the engine running so that the air-conditioning would go on working, he cleared his throat and in his rumbling basso asked the question.
    “Yes or no?”
    I said, “Yes.”
    Burbank said, “You understand what you’re getting yourself into?”
    “I know what you told me.”
    He handed me an envelope. I didn’t open it.
    He said, “Go back to Shanghai. Finish your language immersion. Will a year be enough?”
    “A lifetime probably wouldn’t be enough, but my Mandarin should get better if I can keep the teacher I have.”
    “On the basis of the benefits so far, why would you do anything else?”
    From another, larger envelope he handed me a blue-backed contract. “This changes your status from staff agent to contract agent,” he said. “From now on you’ll be working outside, under cover, on your own except for your case officer, me. The contract provides for a one-grade promotion, so you’ll be making a little more money. You’ll still receive overseas pay and the same allowances, so you should be rolling in dough. If you continue to do well, more promotions will follow. You can also be summarily dismissed, but that’s always been so. Read before signing.”
    The contract was addressed to me in my funny name, the one I had been assigned for internal use only after my swearing-in. I asked about retirement and medical benefits.
    “Nothing changes except the title. Contract agents cannot mingle with the people inside. In theory they cannot go inside. It will be as I told you. No one but me even has a need to know who you are or what you’re up to. You’ll be alone in the world.”
    Just what I always wanted. I said, “One small question. What about the tenor and his friends?”
    “Next time you’ll see them coming.”
    “And?”
    “Evade or kill.”
    “Are you serious?”
    “Everyone has a right to defend himself.”
    “I am unarmed and outnumbered.”
    “That may not always be the case. Buy what you need and expense it as taxi fares.”
    I read the contract twice and signed it. We talked a bit more. Burbank told me to stop e-mailing Tom Simpson and write to him, Burbank, instead, on the seventeenth day of every month. His name for this purpose was Bob Baxter—impromptu cover names like this one, don’t ask me why, almost always began with the same first letter of the