Thirty Cups

He arrived at the building at six.

The lobby at six in the morning was a different country. The air conditioning had been off all night; the marble was warm to the touch where the rising sun struck it through the eastern doors. A single guard nodded at his card without speaking. The corridor on the fourth floor smelled of yesterday's cigarettes and the floor wax that had been laid down at midnight. Lin Zhaoxu was the first person on the floor.

He let himself into the small office with the key Lao Wei had given him at the end of yesterday's shift. The keychain was a cheap red plastic loop with the office number scratched into it in white paint. He stood for a moment in the doorway, listening to the silence, and then he set down his satchel and began.

He had three and a half hours.

The conference room was on the same floor, three doors down. He had walked the route the night before, twice — once with Lao Wei, who had pointed out the trolley, the side cabinet for cups, the location of the water boiler, the trick to the stiff hinge on the cabinet door — and once alone, after Lao Wei had gone home, when the floor had been empty and he had been able to stand in the center of the empty conference room and place each man, mentally, in his seat.

He had spent the night before, in his boarding-house room, doing nothing else.

He had a folder. In the folder were thirty index cards. On each index card was a name, a position, a seat number, a tea preference, and — in the smallest characters in the corner — three or four facts about the man, written for himself only and meaningless to anyone else who might glance at the cards.

*Mayor Cao Yongzheng. Pu'er, aged eight years or more. The good Pu'er — not the cheap stuff. Loves it strong. Cup #1, head of table. Native of Jianghai. Wife is a pediatrician. Son in second year of high school in Yanjing.*

*Party Secretary Han Yuting. Longjing. Pre-Qingming first picking, if available. Cup #2, second from head. Native of this very city. Three daughters, all married. Drinks two cups before any meeting begins.*

*Deputy Mayor Zhou Jianhua. Hot water only. Cup #3. Stomach problems for ten years. Refuses tea even when offered. Insulted if you do not offer. Pour the hot water exactly three-fourths to the rim.*

*Deputy Mayor Liu Sifeng. Tieguanyin. Strong roast preferred. Cup #4. Native of Fujian originally, married into Jiangbei. Smokes during meetings, wave it away if it bothers you, never complain.*

He had thirty of these cards.

He laid them out across the conference room's long table now, in the dim light of dawn through the eastern blinds, one at each seat. He turned each one face-down. Then he stood at the head of the table and walked the room slowly, naming the men in his head, picking up each card, reading it, and replacing it. He did this three times. Then he put the cards in his pocket and began to set out the cups.

The cups were stored in a long, low cabinet against the wall. Some of them had been used yesterday and not yet washed. He washed them. He washed them again. He dried each one with a clean cotton cloth that he had bought, with his own money, the night before from a small shop near the boarding house. He laid the cups out on a steel trolley in the order in which they would be placed. He counted them: thirty. He counted again: thirty. He counted a third time. Thirty.

Then he began the tea.

He boiled water in three large kettles simultaneously, on the side table outside the conference room, where there was no carpet to be ruined if he spilled. He had arranged, in advance, three separate trays — one for the Pu'er drinkers, one for the green tea drinkers, one for the Tieguanyin and the oolong. He had bought the Pu'er himself, paying for it out of the small advance Lao Wei had pressed into his hand at the end of yesterday with the words *"office expenses, you'll be reimbursed."* Lao Wei had not said *don't use the bricks in the office cabinet.* He had not needed to. The bricks in the office cabinet were the cheap ones. A man who served Mayor Cao the cheap Pu'er on a coordination meeting morning was a man who had already chosen his fate.

He brewed the Pu'er first, in a separate small clay pot he had brought from his boarding house, the one his grandfather had given him when he had left for university. The first pour, he discarded. The second pour was the one he would serve. He timed it on his watch — twenty seconds — and he poured the rich amber liquor into the mayor's cup with a steady hand. He covered the cup with its small porcelain lid. He moved on.

He brewed the Longjing second, in glass cups so that the leaves could be seen. He did not over-steep. He poured the water from a height of perhaps thirty centimeters so that the leaves would tumble correctly in the cup, opening and falling as they were meant to, the way his grandfather had shown him when he was nine years old in a kitchen in Qingyuan County in another lifetime.

He brewed the Tieguanyin third. He brewed the oolong. He poured the hot water for Deputy Mayor Zhou, three-fourths to the rim. He moved the trolley into the conference room. He set the cups, one by one, before each chair, beginning at the head and working outward down both sides. He matched the cups to the cards in his pocket, which he turned over one by one as he went.

It was eight forty-six when he finished.

He stood at the doorway and looked at the long table. Thirty cups. Steam rising in thirty thin lines toward the long fluorescent lights overhead. Each one, he believed — he hoped — correct.

He had not used the rewind. The rewind was a tool for one mistake a day. Today he had decided he would make zero mistakes.

He went back to the small office. He sat at his desk. He drank a cup of plain water. His hands, when he set down the glass, were shaking very slightly. He noticed this and did not feel ashamed of it.

At nine the others began to arrive. Lao Wei first, with his battered thermos and a small cloth bag containing — Lin had learned yesterday — his lunch, a single steamed bun and a salted egg. Lao Wei looked at Lin, looked at his shaking hands, looked at the empty water glass, and said nothing at all. He sat down at his own desk and began to read a document.

Zhao Yifan arrived at nine-eighteen. He was carrying a paper cup of coffee from a Western chain that had recently opened a store on People's Avenue. He smelled faintly of cologne. He set the coffee down on his desk, glanced at Lin, and said cheerfully, "Big day for you, Xiao Lin. Did you sleep?"

"A little."

"Don't mess up the tea." Zhao smiled. "The mayor remembers people who mess up his tea."

"Yes."

Zhao crossed the room. He picked up Lin's empty water glass. He looked into it. He set it down again, very gently.

"I noticed you brought your own clay pot," he said. "From home, was it? Cute. My grandfather had one like that."

"Mm."

"I'd be careful, though. Things from home tend to get broken in this building."

He said it without inflection, the way one might mention the weather, and walked back to his desk.

Lin did not respond. He took out his notebook. He turned to a fresh page. He wrote, in small careful characters: *Z.Y. — sees the pot. Has noticed I am here. The first hour.*

Then he closed the notebook, and at nine twenty-five he stood, smoothed his shirt, and walked back to the conference room to wait at the door for the participants.

The meeting began at nine-thirty exactly.

He stood in the back hallway throughout. He did not enter. From his position he could see only the edge of the table and the back of one chair, but he could hear the rhythm of the meeting through the half-open door — the murmur of voices, the silences, who spoke and who did not, the small sounds of cups being lifted and set down.

A cup was lifted, near the head of the table. A pause. The cup was set down. He had heard, very faintly, the small sound of satisfaction with which a man drank the right tea.

He let his breath out slowly.

Forty minutes into the meeting, a chair scraped. Footsteps. The conference room door swung outward. Zhao Yifan came out into the hallway, walking at his easy unhurried pace, carrying his own personal water bottle as if he had stepped out only to refill it. He passed Lin without looking at him.

When he was almost at the corner he stopped, half-turned, and said, conversationally, "Oh — Xiao Lin. I think Vice-Mayor Liu's cup is empty. You should refill it."

He went on, around the corner and out of sight.

Lin stood very still.

A clerk did not enter a meeting in progress to refill a cup unless explicitly summoned. Every clerk on the floor knew this. Vice-Mayor Liu was not a man who would have asked for a refill mid-discussion. Zhao knew this. Lin knew this. The instruction was therefore not what it appeared to be.

Lin walked, slowly, to the conference room door. He did not push it open. He stood close to it and listened. He could hear Vice-Mayor Liu's voice — the slow, careful Fujianese-accented Mandarin that was unmistakable even at low volume. Liu was speaking. He had not just paused. He was, in fact, in the middle of a long argument about land allocation.

To enter the meeting now, in front of thirty officials, to refill a cup that did not need refilling, while Vice-Mayor Liu was speaking, would be to interrupt Vice-Mayor Liu.

Vice-Mayor Liu, Lin's index card had told him, did not forget such interruptions for years.

Lin stepped back from the door.

He went to the trolley. He selected a small thermos of hot water — exactly the kind of thermos a careful clerk might bring to a meeting in the second hour, *if invited.* He carried it in both hands back to the door. He did not enter. He waited.

He waited eleven minutes.

Inside the room, Liu finished his point. There was a small pause. Mayor Cao said something. Several people murmured agreement. The rhythm of the meeting shifted into a softer phase — a phase, Lin recognized, in which a clerk might enter without giving offense.

He pushed the door open. He walked in along the wall, head slightly lowered, footsteps soundless on the carpet. He did not look at any of the seated men. He went first to Vice-Mayor Liu's place — but he did not refill Vice-Mayor Liu's cup, which was, as he had suspected, two-thirds full. Instead he checked, with one quick glance, the cups of the three men nearest the door who had been speaking longest: Deputy Mayor Zhou (his hot water gone, as Lin had anticipated), and two bureau chiefs whose oolong cups were now low.

He refilled those three. He moved silently. He did not catch any man's eye. He was finished in under ninety seconds.

As he passed Vice-Mayor Liu's chair on his way out, he saw — without turning his head — that Liu had glanced up, briefly, at the touch of warm air from the thermos passing at his shoulder, and had gone back to his papers.

He left the room. He closed the door behind him.

In the hallway he stood for a moment with his back against the wall. His heart was beating very fast.

Down the corridor, around the far corner, a figure was waiting. Zhao Yifan, leaning against the wall, watching him. Their eyes met.

Zhao smiled. It was a small, thin smile this time, with something in it that had not been there at nine-eighteen.

He raised his water bottle in a tiny mock salute, turned, and walked away.

Lin walked, slowly, back to the small office. He sat down at his desk. He took out his notebook.

He turned to the page on which he had written, three hours earlier, *Z.Y. — sees the pot. Has noticed I am here. The first hour.*

Beneath it, in the same small careful hand, he wrote a second line.

*Z.Y. — has now tested me once. Failed his test. He will test me again.*

He closed the notebook. He set down the pen.

Across the room, Lao Wei did not look up from his document. But after a moment, without speaking, he reached down to the bottom drawer of his desk, took out a small foil packet, and tossed it across the gap between their desks. It landed beside Lin's hand.

Lin looked at it. It was Tieguanyin. The same grade as yesterday.

He looked across the room.

Lao Wei was already turning the next page of his document, his eyes never leaving it.

Lin took the packet. He stood, walked to the hot water dispenser, and made himself a fresh cup of tea.

He sat back down. He drank.

The meeting upstairs would last another two hours. After it ended, the cups would have to be cleared. After that, there would be a debriefing, the day's documents to be filed, errands to be run. He would not eat lunch until perhaps two in the afternoon. He would not leave the office until perhaps eight at night. And tomorrow he would do all of it again.

He did not mind.

In one morning he had learned more about the men of Qingyuan than he had learned in three weeks of reading newspapers. He had survived the first test of his enemy. He had been given, twice now, a packet of good tea by a man who said almost nothing.

He took out his notebook again. He turned to a fresh page. At the top he wrote: *The Ten Most Powerful Men in That Room.*

He began to make his list.

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