About the same time as people started calling her Angel, rumours about her affair with Zhang Guoqing started to spread. I was expecting that; it was nothing to be surprised about. Any gossip worth their salt could have guessed, and having guessed could investigate, could get proof, could talk. But if Zhang Guoqing’s wife came back to work at the hospital in Unit 701, given that walls have ears, sooner or later she would find out. So for ‘security reasons’ we sent her to work as a nurse in the People’s Hospital in the nearest town. Comrade Wang asked not to return to the training centre – I guess he felt he had lost too much face – he chose instead to go to one of Unit 701’s branch offices at the other end of the country. Clearly he was breaking off all contact with Huang Yiyi.

Zhang Guoqing’s wife’s situation was different; even though she worked in town, she came back every day, since her home was in Unit 701. What was she called? I’ve been trying to remember, but I can’t. It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I just can’t quite get it. I need her name because she’s a part of the rest of this story, and it’s annoying not to be able to remember. But since I can’t call it to mind, I will just have to carry on regardless. She – Zhang Guoqing’s wife – was someone I had never had anything to do with before, and I had managed to completely ignore her existence. But since Huang Yiyi was having an affair with her husband, I had to pay attention to her after she came back, because I was afraid she would find out what was going on and cause trouble. I had heard people in the hospital say she was a real shrew. There is a saying that in this world there are two sorts of people that you really need to watch out for: shrewish women and toadying men. Both are the kind that causes trouble. In this case, the problem was obvious, and I was worried that if she found out the truth and started creating scenes, Huang Yiyi’s reputation would be ruined, with concomitant damage to her work. Outsiders didn’t realize, but after cracking RECOVERY, our superiors set us a new assignment: breaking Russian military ciphers. Given that Huang Yiyi was familiar with Soviet methods, she was the first choice to take charge of this project.