Termination Shock

He’d half expected something like this; he just hadn’t known when or where. The Chinese had showed up today in a rented RV, which they had parked next to his truck. They had deployed the awning bracketed to the RV’s side, creating a patch of shade between the two vehicles. A folding camp table and two chairs completed the basic setup. The inevitable middle-aged Chinese functionary was seated in one of them perusing a tablet, occasionally raising it to snap pictures. He had taken the radical measure of removing his suit jacket and loosening his necktie, but drawn the line at undoing his French cuffs and rolling up his sleeves. He stood up theatrically as Willem approached and greeted him in Mandarin while making a semblance of a bow—much better than shaking hands from an epidemiology standpoint. He gestured to the available chair and summoned his assistants, who were in the RV. To judge from the purring noises emanating from its various systems, this was running on generator power and it was air-conditioned. A guy like this would always have aides; god forbid he should ever be seen carrying an object. Tea was produced and served. It was all done according to the procedures and etiquette that had surrounded such things in China since time immemorial and that Willem knew perfectly well.

“Bo,” the man said, and went on in English: “Believe it or not, that is actually my family name. When I first came to the West, they told me I should pick an Anglo name to go by. Tom or Dick or Harry, you know.” He shrugged expressively, playing it for laughs. “I was thinking Bob? But then I got assigned to the South. People are actually called Bo here.”

“B-E-A-U?” Willem inquired. “The Cajun spelling?”

“Considered it. But outside of Louisiana it would just cause panic. B-O is common all across the South.”

“Diddley,” Willem said, after considering it.

“Schembechler. Jackson. So, Bo it is. And I know you are Willem. Your father is Eng Kuok. Do you have a Chinese name?”

“Not really.” Bel had called him by Fuzhounese pet names, but those were totally inappropriate in this context.

“Willem it is, then.”

Bo did not insult Willem’s intelligence by bothering to supply an explanation of how the Chinese had come to know exactly where he was. Willem could work that out for himself later. It was probably some combination of:

(a) they had hooks into PanScan, which was supposedly anonymized but probably riddled with grievous security exploits,

(b) they were monitoring Beatrix and she had inadvertently spilled the beans, or

(c) they learned it from a Chinese grad student in Margaret’s group,

. . . but it was probably something way more sophisticated than any of that, some AI beyond human understanding. The point was the Chinese government knew that he was in Louisiana, they wanted him to know that they knew, and they just wanted to discreetly and politely touch base.

Despite some suspicions to the contrary, Willem had not, in the slightest degree, been “turned” or even influenced by China. And yet they did like to stay in touch with him—perhaps just reminding him that the option was on the table. As always, he would write up a full report later and put it in the record. Bo knew as much. Willem could have gone through the rigamarole of asking Bo for his business card, learning his official title and cover story, but he didn’t have the energy. The dude worked for Chinese intelligence, presumably out of the New Orleans consulate. He would have a cover identity.

Bo was wearing the flimsiest kind of blue paper mask. He reached up with the same elaborate precision as was used to handle the tea and unlooped it from one ear, letting it dangle from the other. Hard to drink tea otherwise. According to PanScan he was a cipher, a ghost. Its neural nets could discern that a human-shaped object was over there, but otherwise drew a perfect blank. Willem sighed and took his helmet off. Then he shrugged out of the reflective vest. Bo made the slightest eye-flick toward a minion, who rushed forward to assist, as if Willem were a grand duchess struggling to get out of her mink coat in the lobby of an opera house. A coat hanger was somehow conjured up and the vest ended up hanging from the awning’s edge to air-dry. Bo regarded it with amused curiosity, then raised his tablet and snapped a picture of it. “ERDD,” he said.

“Long story. Means nothing.”

“The Americans have not been very hospitable, but we thought that the least we could do was reach out and say hi,” Bo said, in Mandarin except for the “say hi.”

Willem was actually pretty sure that hospitality on a pharaonic scale was planned in Texas but saw no purpose in volunteering that.

“You are too kind,” Willem said. “Here, of course, they like their cold sugary beverages.”

Bo made a slight roll of the eyes and puffed out his cheeks, perhaps simulating one who was about to throw up, perhaps trying to approximate the look of one who had put on a hundred pounds’ Big Gulp–fueled adiposity.