The Mandarin Club (43 page)

They made their picnic right there on the shore. They sat unobserved in their own secluded cove, waiting for their clothes to dry. Everything around them was stillness, save the river flowing smoothly past, unheard. Awkwardly at first, they began to kiss. In the silence, they began to caress each other, fingers tracing lines as they lay at the edge of the sand on their private island. Their eyes were open and their bodies warm, absorbing the simple touches.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, his eyes on the sky.

“I was thinking that at this moment, after all these years, we are finally breathing the same air,” she replied, her certainty growing. “I love this air.”

They laughed together and kissed some more, eyes closed now. Then they were entwined, enveloping each other, and they made love in the gentle heat, oblivious to the busy city all around them.

M
ickey Dooley found the irony quite delicious. The CIA recruiters for Asia work now preferred UC Berkeley’s graduates to those from Stanford.

In the old days, the Agency fed off the preppier grads, the more reliably Establishment students from the sylvan haven down on the “Farm” in Palo Alto. Berkeley was then considered suspect: too close to the People’s Park crowd, Telegraph Avenue, and the Viet Cong sympathizers on the radical fringe. Since the Mandarin Club’s campus days, however, Serra House had drawn considerable resources from the local high tech companies most eager to promote U.S.-China trade. Silicon Valley satellite vendors, software designers, high performance computer execs—they were the Serra House champions now. Power politics and analysis of China’s byzantine bureaucratic factions had become a Berkeley specialty. So the CIA talent scouts increasingly targeted the Chinese-American linguists and expatriates at Cal.

It was in post-Cold War Berkeley that Langley had placed considerable assets. These included a modest new investment in Mickey, whose first consulting job back in the States was there on the fringe of the sprawling UC campus.

It was a gorgeous fall—dry days and cool nights—in the Berkeley hills above the noise and smog on Interstate 80. Branko had been good to him, more than fulfilling his every commitment. He had taken the heat from within the administration and the congressional oversight committees for the messy exfiltration effort on July 4. He had also promised to use all available assets on the ground in Beijing to watch Lee’s back, though he gave Mickey no operational details. In the wake of the E-war and the bitterness produced by the cancellation of the Seattle summit, U.S.-China relations remained moribund. Branko had apparently failed to make contact with Lee through back channels, and Mickey had no news of their old friend in the PRC’s Foreign Ministry.

Branko arranged for the Agency to fly Mickey east a couple of times. He sat on an ad hoc committee with some of Branko’s staff reviewing China analysis, providing alternative views, testing old assumptions. While China issues were hot, it nevertheless seemed like make-work. It was as if Langley was just keeping tabs on him or holding him in reserve for some future effort. Mickey knew he wasn’t seeing anything particularly fresh or sensitive, nor was he apprised of any detail on the desperate effort to penetrate the Red Dragons. The riddle of the cowboys deep inside the Second Directorate was too raw for Mickey to see any of the good stuff.

Branko did let down his reserve for an unusual dinner invitation, welcoming Mickey into his home for a family meal. Just seeing Branko calmly serving up plates to his four youngsters, and watching his wife Erika and the new baby, made Mickey ever more reverential. Branko was so purposeful, but such a decent guy for a spook. That was the Branko he had known back in college. That was the man Branko had grown to be. Over the course of that simple meal—Branko had even asked Mickey to say the grace—Mickey felt years of chill between them melt. Lost respect was restored, suspicion replaced by touches of the camaraderie of old. This restoration alone brought Mickey contentment, as if, amongst so many of his failures, here was one mission where success remained at least a possibility.

Mostly, Mickey found himself on the sidelines as events marched onward. He awaited the arrival of some of his clothes and papers a family friend had retrieved from his Beijing closets. He spent some time with a RAND affiliate, doing a long-range study, funded by the CIA, on Chinese technology policy.

Having been terminated by Telstar, he was persona non grata in Beijing, and any overt cooperation Mickey might have offered the company could only have harmed their sales. The Chinese had long memories. So it was a very quick goodbye, a slice of Telstar stock tossed into his abrupt severance package, and Mickey was floating free.

It was a gift from the gods—this isolation that afforded him so many hours with the boys. He would meet their school bus each afternoon, sitting on the curb chatting amiably with the waiting au pairs and mothers, flirting in his jocular manner.

It was a fantasy world for him, a voyage back to some wondrous childhood. He’d stay with the boys after school, playing catch, sipping lemonade and eating cookies. The boys, who were shy and quiet at school, would roll about and wrestle at home in the afternoon. Then they would do homework around the kitchen table. Mickey let them have “TV dinners” consisting of decent, mostly Italian food Mickey cooked up fresh and served up as they watched the baseball pennant race games together.

They talked a lot when the sound was off, rambling conversations about California history and Spanish verb conjugations. For some time, Mickey felt guilty that the boys rarely spoke of their mother. He had taken them to a counselor, worried about the psychological toll their flight had exacted. The boys were remarkably unfazed by the new arrangements. They readily accepted Mickey’s declaration that this was the only way he could secure them a solid American education. He never interfered with Mei Mei’s letters or phone calls, which had already become less frequent. The one time they spoke directly on the phone, he promised her access whenever she decided to visit the States.

She rejected the offer once more. She hated America. She hated Mickey for his audacity and for the powerlessness he made her feel ten thousand miles away. She spoke coldly, as if the boys were property in dispute, or that they were complicit somehow, that father and sons were in cahoots. She threatened him clumsily, promising to use her father to ruin his business affairs, ignorant of the fact that Mickey had already been fired by Telstar. She seemed, in the end, resigned to the reality that Mickey and the boys were beyond her reach.

As the weeks passed, Mickey felt the enormous gratification of release. He was lost in a suburban reverie.
Virtual irrelevance—that’s my penance.
Mickey saw it now;
my penance and my liberation
.

He surprised himself with his latent domesticity. He became a compulsive house-father, running laundry, packing nourishing school lunches at midnight, careful to set the breakfast table before he turned in. He rose ahead of the boys’ alarm, taking great pleasure in making pancakes with fresh strawberries and bacon. He relished the domestic routine and the sense of accomplishment it afforded.

He went to the office late and left early. He had no day-to-day boss, and his local Agency contact brought him little work those first weeks. He settled in, determined to enjoy each day. He found himself as contented as he could ever remember being. He’d pay eventually. He knew it in his lapsed Catholic gut.

Once the second wave of news stories from Asia passed and the Albuquerque court granted him custody, he began to dream again—great dreams, satisfying and complete. He would dream of sports and of women. In his nighttime thoughts, his amours were friends from long past. Sometimes, they were women with whom he had shared just one dance or a single furtive kiss. His curious mind now played out the scenes in vivid detail. He dreamed of sports conquest as well, of hitting the last-second basket in a high school game, of sinking a long putt at junior golf. It was typical jock stuff. But Mickey awoke feeling renewed and triumphant.

He saw a good deal of Booth his first couple of months back. They would take a weekday afternoon in San Francisco, meeting at the Giants’ glorious ballpark in China Basin. Mickey would ride over from Oakland on the ferry, a cheerful pedestrian with his windbreaker and newspapers. They would sit high above the bleacher wall, soaking up the rays in left field on September afternoons when most responsible adults were at work and kids were in school. Mickey would drink a Diet Coke, Booth would nurse a Sprite as they munched peanuts and rooted heartily.

Booth had settled in at Serra House, already launched on a solid second career at Stanford. Mickey teased him unmercifully for doubling back to the scholarly world—if only to mask his envy. Beyond his temporary Agency gig, Mickey had no long-term job plans of his own.

“Twenty-seven years it took you to worm your way into that faculty office!” Mickey taunted. “Asia’s a mess. Smithson’s heading to New Hampshire. Where’s Booth? Drinking lattés down on the Farm.”

Booth wouldn’t rise to the bait. He waved off Mickey’s jabs with an easy smile.

“I’ve come full circle,” he acknowledged, his relief evident. “Once upon a time, I promised myself I would balance action and reflection. Live life in the center of the ring, but step outside for contemplation now and again.”

“Corporate America never rests,” said Mickey. “Commerce doesn’t take a sabbatical.”

“And look what happens to them,” Booth observed. “Seems like a lot of big businessmen are heading to prison lately.”

“I suppose they’ll have plenty of time to reflect on the meaning of life,” Mickey conceded.

“‘The unexamined life is hardly worth living.’”

“Socrates?” Mickey guessed, delighted to wear the anti-intellectual hat once more.

“Try Plato.”

“That scrawny guy who plays second base for the Tigers?”

“Yeah,” said Booth, going along with their old gag. “Batted only .198 and got sent down to Scranton.”

They played hooky together, using the time to decompress. They had one particular discussion of baseball cards, Mickey’s lifelong obsession that resonated with Booth for days.