Along with their other assignments, Chau and his partner were to check in with Professor Liu at least once a month, ascertain if anyone else had been chatting him up, document any lifestyle changes, report on his mood.
Chau was twenty-eight and should have been promoted at least one step by now. Jobs like this were more suited to men like Lung, who yammered on about the beer festival in Qingdao and didn’t have the figs for the tough stuff.
At least three of Chau’s cohort from the University of International Relations, the Ministry of State Security training facility in Haidian, were already assigned as intelligence liaisons to charm offensive groups, handing out money like candy for infrastructure programs in Africa and the South Pacific. Chau’s former roommate now spent his days hosting cocktail parties in Canada, offering special consulting fees to engineers from around the world if they could just see their way to helping China with a few problems. At least one of his former classmates had been fortunate enough to bloody his hands capturing Uyghur separatists.
Chau knew that bungling this simple job meant he’d likely be the first one from his class booted from the Service — or worse.
He pounded on the door again, bowing it against the hinges.
Lung worked his way between some evergreen shrubs and the house, cupping his hand between the glass and the spot where his eyebrows should have been to peer through the window.
“I don’t think he’s home.”
Chau shot him a sideways look but said nothing. The door was locked so he put a boot to it, making easy entry. He didn’t care if the neighbors saw them breaking in. They knew better than to say anything. Two well-dressed men would be official, not common criminals. Local police would smell MSS and stay well clear unless they were called.
Lung gave a somber shrug as soon as they were inside.
“Like I said, not home.”
Chau strode through the main room quickly, eyeing the empty kitchen as he went past, thinking he should probably draw his pistol as he neared the bedroom. He would have had he been alone, but Lung would probably think it a weakness and crow about it to others.
Perhaps they would find Liu dead in the bedroom. That would make things so much simpler. They would be blamed, of course, but probably not punished.
No such luck. The low bed was made. Brightly sequined slippers sat alongside on the Persian rug, ready for the professor’s feet when he got up in the morning. A purple silk robe hung on the back of the door. They’d looked in on the professor enough over the past few months to know how he dressed, so none of the flashy jackets or brightly colored shirts in the closet surprised them.
Nothing appeared to be disturbed.
Chau knelt to look under the bed and found nothing but a vacant square in the dust where Liu had presumably kept some kind of box or case. He stood to find Lung rummaging through the dresser drawers.
“What do you hope to find among his underclothes?”
“I will not know until I find it,” Lung said, his voice matter-of-fact. “There is no blood, no sign of struggle. Perhaps he had something to hide that made him susceptible to blackmail or coercion.”
“Perhaps,” Chau said.
“Perhaps he defected.”
Chau blanched at the thought. “Do not say that.”
The place was too clean for a single man’s apartment. A function of Liu’s engineer brain, Chau supposed. All this felt very wrong. No one disappeared, not in China. Cameras and facial recognition were everywhere.
He remembered the entry camera. It was wireless, uploading its images to a cloud-based server. He located the router attached to the wall on Liu’s spotless kitchen counter. The PRC government required tech companies to provide backdoor access to every piece of software and hardware — even those shipped to other countries… especially those shipped to other countries. A quick call to a girlfriend with MSS Information Technology saw Chau logged in through the professor’s router with his own mobile phone, with access to the last month of video surveillance.
Liu had departed for the office at roughly seven a.m. every day and returned at six p.m. On the evenings he went out, he stayed out past midnight. Five times over the past two months he’d brought home women, all in their early twenties. They always left a few hours after they arrived, and Liu departed the next morning at seven, as if he’d not been up all night with a guest.
“Wait,” Lung said, leaning over Chau’s shoulder to watch the surveillance video on the mobile screen. “This one is Caucasian.”
The time stamp read 12:07 a.m., two and a half weeks earlier.
Chau chewed on his bottom lip, deep in thought. The woman looked to be in her twenties, staggering a little, probably intoxicated. She wore a heavy coat with a fur collar that matched her chopped blond hair.
“She is Russian,” Lung said, nodding with a certitude that dared Chau to argue.
Chau obliged him, working hard to keep from rolling his eyes. He could not keep from wagging his head. “And how do you know this?”
