Page 47 of Never

Of course she is, you fool, Kai thought. She’s a star, and you’re a narrow-minded old bureaucrat. Women want to emulate her. No one wants to be like you.

Fu went on: ‘My wife watches every episode ofLove in the Palace. She seems to pay it more attention than the news.’ He was clearly disgruntled about this.

Kai was not surprised. His mother watched the show, but only if his father was out of the house.

Kai pulled himself together. With an effort he remained courteous and unruffled. ‘Thank you, Li,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you informed me about these allegations.’ He gave a distinct emphasis to the wordallegations. Without directly denying what Li said, he was reminding Fu that such reports were not always true.

Li looked resentful at the implication, but said nothing.

‘Tell me,’ Kai went on, ‘who made this report?’

‘The senior Communist Party official at the studio,’ said Li promptly.

This was an evasive answer. All such reports came from Communist officials. Kai wanted to know the original source. But he did not challenge Li. Instead, he turned to Fu. ‘Would you like me to talk to Ting about this, quietly, before the might of the ministry is officially brought to bear?’

Li bristled. ‘Subversion is investigated by the Domestic Department, not by the families of accused persons,’ he said in a tone of wounded dignity.

But the minister hesitated. ‘A degree of latitude is normal in such cases,’ he said. ‘We don’t want prominent people brought into disrepute unnecessarily. It does the Party no good.’ He turned to Kai. ‘Find out what you can.’

‘Thank you.’

‘But be quick. Report to me within twenty-four hours.’

‘Yes, minister.’

Kai stood up and walked briskly to the door. Li did not follow him. He would stay behind and whisper more poison to the minister, no doubt. There was nothing Kai could do about that now. He went out.

He needed to talk to Ting as soon as possible, but to his frustration he had to put her out of his mind for now. First he had to deal with the UN problem. Back in his own suite he spoke to his principal secretary, Peng Yawen, a lively middle-aged woman with short grey hair and glasses. ‘Call the foreign minister’s office,’ he said. ‘Say I would like to meet him to convey some urgent security information. Any time today that suits his convenience.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Kai could not move until he knew when that would happen. The Beautiful Films studio was not far from the Guoanbu headquarters, but the Foreign Ministry was miles across town in the Chaoyang District, where many embassies and foreign businesses had their premises. If traffic was bad, the journey could take an hour or more.

Fretting, he looked out of the window, across the assorted roofs with their satellite dishes and radio transmitters, to the highway that curved around the Guoanbu campus. The traffic appeared normal, but that could change quickly.

Happily, the Foreign Office responded promptly to his message. ‘He’ll see you at twelve noon,’ said Peng Yawen. Kai looked at his watch: he could make it comfortably. Yawen added: ‘I’ve called Monk. He should be outside by the time you reach the ground floor.’ Kai’s driver had gone bald at a young age and had been nicknamed Heshang, Monk.

Kai stuffed the messages from embassies into a folder and went down in the lift.

His car crawled through the centre of Beijing. He could have made the journey faster by bike. On the way he mulled over the UN resolution, but his mind kept shifting to his worry about Ting. What had she been saying? He wrenched his thoughts back to the problem the Americans had created. He needed to have a solution to offer the foreign minister. Eventually, he thought of something, and by the time he reached No. 2 Chaoyangmen Nandajie he had a plan.

The Foreign Office was a fine tall building with a curved facade. The lobby gleamed luxuriously. It was intended to impress foreign visitors, by contrast with the Guoanbu headquarters, which never received any visitors, ever.

Kai was ushered into the elevator and taken up to the office of the minister, which was, if anything, more lavish than the lobby. His desk was a Ming Dynasty scholar’s writing table, and on it stood a blue-and-white porcelain vase that Kai thought must be from the same period, and therefore priceless.

Wu Bai was an affable bon viveur whose main aim, in politics and life, was to avoid trouble. Tall and handsome, he wore a blue chalk-striped suit that looked made in London. His secretaries adored him but his colleagues thought he was a lightweight. Kai’s view was that Wu Bai was an asset. Foreign leaders liked his charm and warmed to him in a way they never would to a more hidebound Chinese politician such as Security Minister Fu Chuyu.

‘Come in, Kai,’ said Wu Bai amiably. ‘It’s good to see you. How’s your mother? I used to have a crush on her when we were young, you know, before she met your father.’ Wu Bai would sometimes say things like this to Kai’s mother and make her giggle like a girl.

‘She’s very well, I’m happy to say. So is my father.’

‘Oh, I know that. I see your father all the time, of course – I’m on the National Security Commission with him. Sit down. What’s this about the United Nations?’

‘I got a sniff of it yesterday and confirmed it overnight, and I thought I’d better tell you right away.’ It was always good for Kai to emphasize to ministers that he was giving them the very latest hot news. He now repeated what he had told the security minister earlier.

‘It sounds as if the Americans have made a major effort.’ Wu Bai frowned disapprovingly. ‘I’m surprised my people haven’t got wind of it.’

‘To be fair, they don’t have the resources I’ve got. We focus on what is secret – that’s our job.’