Not exactly, I said, and took out the documentation I had collected in Moscow about Sivincy’s life, and her correspondence with Anderov since her arrival in the United States, which I had inadvertently discovered was in the possession of one of his former students. When I passed through Beijing, Director Tie had given me documentation from the Ministry of Public Security concerning the latest sabotage operations by KMT secret agents on the Mainland, and I handed that over to them and told them to look at it. Finally I told them something that none of us had known before, that when Sivincy was a teenager she had been gang-raped by White Russian soldiers!

Chen was confused. ‘Is that going to help us crack her cipher?’

I said, ‘Of course it is going to help us; it enables us to understand her character. For a young person to go through such a terrible experience is going to have an enormous impact on her; it will affect everything for the rest of her life. If you take that into account it is not hard to understand why she decided to plagiarize Enigma, or why she refused to attend the banquet that Stalin gave in her honour. A completely sane person wouldn’t do that sort of thing, but she has suffered great psychological damage, and so her actions are not entirely normal, and may seem perverse. Her wicked intelligence and her nasty tricks may all be connected to this experience.’ As I spoke I took out a photograph of Sivincy and gave it to them to look at. The icy gaze and arrogant mouth of the ageing woman in the picture startled both Chen and Huang Yiyi.

Comrade Chen said, ‘Bloody hell, she looks a nasty piece of work!’

Huang Yiyi said, ‘I have a feeling.’ We asked her what feeling, and she stared at Sivincy’s picture and said, ‘I don’t see a woman but a black hole, a dark pit crawling with poisonous snakes and vampire bats!’ She wanted me to give her the picture of Sivincy, and I agreed.

Just then Unit Director Luo rang me up, having heard that I was back, and wanted me to go round and report to her, so we finished our discussion there. That evening Unit Director Luo invited me to our guest house for dinner, to welcome me back. Afterwards I was walking past the office block in the dark, when I noticed that the light in Huang Yiyi’s office was still on, so I went in to see her. I found her sitting in front of her desk staring unblinkingly at the photograph of Sivincy in her hand. I asked her what she was doing, and she replied that she was in deep communication with Sivincy. I asked whether she had found anything out, and she said, ‘A lot.’