Two Cigarettes
His name was Zhang Xiaodong.
He had been at the General Office for two months longer than Lin. He worked in the Secretariat Section — three doors down the corridor from the small office where Lin worked — and his job was, broadly, to handle the document flow between the General Office and the various bureau secretariats. He was twenty-five. He had graduated from Jiangbei University, the second-tier provincial university. He had a round friendly face, a slight overbite, and a habit of laughing a half-second before whatever joke he had told had finished. He smoked Hongta cigarettes, the cheap reliable kind.
He had spoken to Lin perhaps five times in the previous two months — small corridor exchanges of no consequence.
In the second week of November he started speaking to Lin more often.
It began on a Monday morning. Zhang appeared in the doorway of the small office at ten-fifteen with two folders in his hand.
"Xiao Lin! You're going to the third floor at eleven, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Can you take these for me? My section chief wants them at Land Resources by noon and I have a meeting."
"Of course."
It was a small favor. Lin took the folders.
Zhang lingered. "You're at lunch later, right? Want to grab a bowl of noodles? I know a place near the river. Cheap. Good."
Lin looked up.
He looked at Zhang's face for perhaps a second longer than the social pause required. Zhang's face did not change. The friendly half-smile was unchanged. The slight readiness around the eyes was — perhaps — slightly more attentive than it had been a moment before, but he could not be sure.
"I would like that," Lin said. "Twelve-thirty?"
"Twelve-thirty. I'll meet you at the lobby."
"Good."
Zhang left.
Lin sat at his desk for thirty seconds without moving.
Then he turned to the policy briefs in front of him and began reading them. After ten minutes Lao Wei, at his own desk three meters away, made a small sound — almost a hum, almost a clearing of the throat — that was less than a syllable but more than a breath.
Lin looked up.
Lao Wei was reading his document. He had not looked up. The small sound was already finished.
Lin understood it perfectly.
He went back to his briefs.
---
Zhang took him to a small noodle shop two blocks from the river, in a side alley that smelled of charcoal and pickled vegetables. It was the kind of place where a junior clerk would bring another junior clerk to demonstrate that he knew the city. The noodles were good. They were eight yuan a bowl. Zhang ordered three small dishes — pickled radish, peanuts, a cold dish of cucumber — without asking what Lin wanted. He was the host. He was paying.
"How are you finding the office?" Zhang said, twirling noodles on his chopsticks.
"It is — interesting."
"Director Pang treating you well?"
"Director Pang is very generous with his attention."
Zhang laughed. "Diplomatic answer! You're really a Yanjing graduate, huh."
"Mm."
"Lao Wei?"
"Section Chief Wei has been very kind."
"Lao Wei is" — Zhang paused, his chopsticks halfway up — "a complicated man."
"Is he?"
"He's been here for thirty years, did you know? Longer. He's seen everyone come and go. The new Director Pang, the previous director, the one before that. He was here when the General Office had ten people. People say he could have been a director by now if he'd wanted."
"Why didn't he want to be?"
"Nobody knows. Some say he had a career-killing thing happen to him in the nineties — a memo he wrote that crossed the wrong desk. Some say his wife died young and he stopped caring about promotions. Some say he just doesn't have the stomach for the politics."
Zhang ate a mouthful of noodles. "What do you think?"
"I think," Lin said slowly, "that I have been here for two months and I do not know Section Chief Wei well enough to say."
"Diplomatic again."
"Mm."
Zhang laughed again. He set his chopsticks down. He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He offered one to Lin.
"You smoke?"
"Sometimes."
"Take one."
Lin took the cigarette. Zhang lit one for himself and held the lighter out. Lin leaned in. The cigarette was rough, the tobacco of Hongta cheap and harsh. He drew on it lightly, not deeply. He exhaled.
"So," Zhang said, leaning back. "Tell me about the Western Industrial Park memo."
Lin's face did not change.
"What about it?"
"I heard it was very good. I heard Researcher Qin himself praised you at the banquet last week."
"Researcher Qin was generous."
"What did the memo say?"
It was a casually asked question, between two friendly junior cadres at a small noodle shop, both of them smoking. It was the kind of question a friendly colleague would ask, and a young man — flattered, slightly drunk on the social ease of the moment, and proud of the work — might answer.
Lin took another draw on the cigarette. He held the smoke in his mouth for a moment. He exhaled.
"It was a procedural analysis," he said. "Mostly. About a clause in an old land-use document. I worked on it for nine days. It was nothing remarkable."
"Did you suggest the proposal should proceed?"
"I did not suggest anything. The memo described a procedural difficulty. It did not recommend whether the proposal should go ahead."
"But you must have an opinion."
"I am a section member, Brother Zhang. I am not paid to have opinions on proposals at that level."
"Come on. Off the record."
Lin smiled slightly. He took another small draw on the cigarette.
"Off the record," he said, "I think the proposal is worth the time of the senior cadres who are studying it. Beyond that I have nothing useful to say."
Zhang laughed. "You're impossible."
"I am a careful man."
"Too careful, maybe."
"Perhaps."
Zhang did not press further. The conversation moved to other things — a film Zhang had seen the previous weekend, a girl Zhang was casually dating, a small grievance Zhang had with his section chief over a leave request. Lin listened. He nodded in the right places. He laughed — a soft brief social laugh — when Zhang made jokes. He paid attention to which subjects Zhang returned to and which he did not.
Zhang returned, twice more before the meal ended, to the subject of the memo.
The first time he asked, casually, whether it had reached Mayor Cao's desk.
The second time he asked, even more casually, whether Director Pang had read it personally before forwarding it to Deputy Director Sun.
Both times, Lin gave answers that were technically true and informationally empty.
Zhang paid the bill. They walked back together. At the door of the General Office building, Zhang clapped Lin on the shoulder — friendly, warm — and said, "We'll do it again. You're a good man, Xiao Lin. I'll come find you."
"Anytime, Brother Zhang."
They went up to the fourth floor. Zhang turned off at his section's door. Lin walked the rest of the corridor to the small office.
Lao Wei was at his desk. He did not look up.
Lin sat down at his desk. He took out the work notebook. He turned to a new page. He wrote, in his small careful hand:
*Z.X. Junior Section Member, Secretariat. Spoke to me three times in two months; spoke to me twice today. Took me to lunch, paid, offered cigarette. Asked three questions about the memo, all three calibrated to extract information about its journey through the office (Mayor C? Director Pang first? Deputy Director Sun second-hand?). Each question phrased as off-record curiosity.*
*Conclusion: Z.X. is collecting information about my memo for someone.*
He paused.
*Possible principals: 1. Director Pang (testing my discretion). 2. A rival faction that wants to know what was in the memo. 3. A bureau threatened by the memo's content. 4. Researcher Qin (extremely unlikely; he could ask me directly). 5. Zhao family (possible — Zhao Yifei may have flagged me at the banquet to her father; her father has now activated a junior to confirm what I am).*
*Most likely: Director Pang.*
*Least likely: Researcher Qin.*
*Plan: feed Z.X. three pieces of carefully harmless information over the next two weeks. None of the information should be false; all of it should be already partially in circulation; none of it should be more than what a reasonably careful observer in the office could have inferred by Tuesday. Watch which piece comes back to me through other channels and how quickly. The principal will reveal themselves by which piece is acted upon.*
He underlined the plan.
He closed the notebook.
He looked across at Lao Wei.
Lao Wei was reading his document. He did not look up.
But after a moment, without raising his eyes, Lao Wei said, very quietly — quietly enough that Section Member Ye, three meters away, did not hear — "Xiao Lin. What did you have for lunch?"
"Noodles. With Zhang Xiaodong from Secretariat."
"Mm."
A long pause.
"Cheap noodles?"
"Yes, Lao Wei."
"Good. Stay with cheap noodles, Xiao Lin. Nothing useful was ever said over expensive noodles."
He turned a page of his document.
Lin smiled, very faintly, at the surface of his desk.
"Yes, Lao Wei."
He went back to his work.
That evening, walking home in the early November dark, he thought through the three pieces of information he would feed to Zhang Xiaodong.
The first would be a casual mention, in passing, that the memo had been finalized over a single weekend — implying the work had been hurried, when in fact it had taken nine days. This was a piece of information that, if acted upon by an enemy, would suggest Lin was less careful than he in fact was. A useful lie, of the kind that costs nothing.
The second would be the true fact that the memo had referenced the 1998 land-use master document. This was a piece of information that anyone who had read the briefs could have inferred. It would not be new to a careful observer; it would be useful to a careless one. Whether it came back through other channels would tell Lin whether the principal was careful or careless.
The third would be a small fabricated detail: that he had submitted the memo to Pang first and only afterward to Sun. The reverse was true. If this fabrication ever returned to him through any channel — and he had three channels he could now monitor, including, very quietly, a thin connection through Section Chief Li Mingxia — then he would know that it had passed through the hands of someone who had cause to act on it. The route the fabrication took would tell him whose hands.
It was a small game.
But by the time he reached the boarding house, he found that he had — almost without noticing — begun, for the first time in his life, to enjoy himself.
He climbed the stairs.
---