‘Remarry? Who would be willing to marry someone like her? She told me herself that she is not expecting to get married again, because no one would really want to marry her. Those men are all just for fun. She’s basically given up on herself, and that’s why she behaves in this uncontrolled way. Well, this is a research institute, and we give our people considerable leeway. Lots of our people have had experience of living abroad, and we let her get away with it. In any other work unit, she wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. She would have been classified as a poisonous weed and been got rid of long ago. Is this really the kind of person you want? Please don’t give her the job. The crucial thing is that you don’t need her. Let me tell you, Comrades Xie Xingguo and Wu Guping are fine mathematicians; anything she can do, they can do. They don’t have any thought or lifestyle problems, so if you take them, they will work well for you. If she goes, maybe even before she has had time to do anything useful, she will have got herself into trouble. When she gets into trouble, will your work unit have any choice other than to get rid of her? And when things get to that pass, even if she wants to work for you, she won’t be able to. So why put everyone through the misery?’

The Party secretary had no idea that the blacker he painted Huang Yiyi, the more determined I was to give her the job. I understood that in the trap-filled, dangerous, evil and cruel world of cryptography, only someone arrogant, wild and ambitious would survive. I also thought to myself that while Unit 701 was a much more conservative place than the institute, if she cracked RECOVERY, we could make allowances for pretty much anything. So in spite of all Party Secretary Wang’s admonitions, I still wouldn’t give up, and demanded to see their file on her.

The Party secretary was in despair. ‘Do you really want her?’

I tried to cheer him up. ‘I can only decide after I have seen her dossier.’

In fact I had already made up my mind. If there weren’t any other problems, I wanted her!

9

Shortly after I got back to the guest house after my conversation with Party Secretary Wang, I heard someone knock on the door. When I opened it, I found Huang Yiyi. She had taken off her coat, and was wearing a tight dark-blue jumper that moulded every line of her body. Her breasts stuck out like two little cushions. I wasn’t intending to look at them, and I turned my eyes away immediately as if I had received an electric shock.

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ I said.

‘Well, this is the second time I have come here to find you,’ she said.