The Interior

Sun first served the people as a rural cadre in his home village, working as a team leader, then brigade leader on one of the local communes. In 1964 he was elected to the Taiyuan City People's Assembly. During the weeklong gathering a wide variety of subjects had been covered, including the imperialism of the West, how to increase wheat production, and the importance of advancing industrialization. Even though discussions sometimes grew heated, Sun had kept quiet. Two years later, Mao unleashed the terrors of the Cultural Revolution. For many months Sun's reticence at the People's Assembly protected him; he hadn't said anything, so his words couldn't come back to haunt him. But eventually some of his subordinates in his home village, where he had risen to brigade party secretary, saw an opportunity and took advantage of it. They remembered that back during the war Sun had been friendly with American servicemen. He had acquired a taste for their expensive cigarettes, decadent style of dress, and barbaric language. As a result he was made to wear the usual dunce cap, kneel in broken glass, and get castigated in the public square.

But this was nothing! Hulan thought. Given his American co

Whoever had written the comments on this page seemed to hear Hulan's questions many years later and had written the answering characters in a finely trained classical hand: "Brigade Leader Sun Can has a visceral understanding of the old saying which goes, Once you eat from someone, you will have a soft mouth toward that person; once you take from someone, you will have soft hands toward that person. Because Sun has shown himself to be someone who will not accept or pay bribes in any form, nor has he abused his power during this time of darkness, I believe he is a candidate for advancement."

Within a month Sun had been promoted from rural cadre to national cadre, where he earned ninety yuan a month. The next year he rose to deputy chairman of the City Assembly. In 1978 he was sent to Beijing as a representative for the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Party Congress. In 1979, when China opened up fully to the West again, Sun was on one of the first provincial delegations to travel to the United States. Security was tight, but Sun acquitted himself well, earning the respect of his fellow travelers as well as his hosts. By 1985 Governor Sun-responsible now for his entire province of Shanxi -was flying across the Pacific with some regularity. By 1990 he had an additional office and apartment in the Zhongnanhai compound in Beijing awarded him by the government for his contributions to the country, especially his home province. His continuing travel to the U.S. was not only sanctioned but encouraged. As a bureaucrat in 1995 observed: "Governor Sun Gan has impeccable contacts in the West. With these he has brought prosperity to his home province. We must continue to encourage him, for with his help we will build China into the most powerful country on the planet. By the year 2000 Sun should be permanently in Beijing." This pronouncement, like the one during the Cultural Revolution, seemed to have two immediate effects.

First was an even more thorough check of his background and personal habits. The dangan noted that while Sun had never married, he was not known to be a homosexual, nor had he engaged in any illicit affairs with the opposite sex. He lived in the governor's house in Taiyuan, where he kept his staff to a minimum. His maids said that his needs were simple, that he did not abuse his authority, and often made his own bed in the military ma

The second effect, and more obvious to Hulan, was that she could trace her knowledge of Sun to 1995, the year the u

Hulan closed the file and pushed it back across the desk. Her mentor looked up from his work. She could see him trying to read her expression, but she kept her face impassive.

18

WHEN HULAN GOT HOME, DAVID WAS SITTING AT THE kitchen table with several three-by-five cards spread out in two rows before him. As she approached, he put a finger on a card and slowly slid it across the table and up into the top row. Then he repeated the process; only this time he moved a card down from the top row to the bottom row. He didn't look up, not even when she put her hands on his shoulders and began to massage his tense muscles.

"I learned a lot from Miles," he said. "None of it good."

She stopped massaging and sat down next to him. "Tell me," she said, and he did.

With each piece of information he pointed at a matching card. "I've been looking at these since I got back, trying to figure out what happened when. Randall Craig said he knew about conditions at the factory; Henry Knight says they're a complete fabrication; you tell me they may not even be prosecutable in China. Miles practically admitted that he knew that the Knights' disclosures were false; Henry says that they're accurate. When Miaoshan died, she had in her possession documents that suggest that Sun may have accepted bribes; he gave me something that might be related. Then there's Pearl Je

"Maybe you should try a different approach." Hulan picked up the stack of cards and wrote on a few new ones. When she was done, she laid them out in two columns, leaving an area in the middle empty. On the left were the various crimes; on the right were the names of people that were suspicious. Then she went back to her scribbling.

A moment later she looked back at the two columns and began setting down the new cards. "I am looking for a match, but I also don't think we can separate crimes and criminals from jurisdiction, because I think they're interrelated."