The security check wrecked any chance they might have had of getting married.

Why? Well, the professor’s father had been a high-ranking official in the KMT, and he had maybe seven or eight siblings, some of whom had gone to Taiwan, some were in Hong Kong, and some were in the US. Given the security considerations of Unit 701, it was strictly forbidden to marry anyone with family connections overseas. Those were the rules, and no one dared to break them. They applied to our superiors and they applied to us. So yet again Huang Yiyi’s marriage plans didn’t work out.

According to my information, in the six months after Zhang Guoqing’s wife came back, Huang Yiyi had no contact at all with him. Later on though – I don’t know why, perhaps it was to do with the fact that she couldn’t find a husband – the two of them got back together. One time I saw with my own eyes Zhang Guoqing leaving Huang Yiyi’s house early in the morning, and that really did give me a turn. Given that we all lived in the same compound, sooner or later the woman was bound to find out. So I went in person to see the mayor and asked him to get the hospital to give Zhang Guoqing’s wife accommodation in town. If they were all living in town, Zhang Guoqing’s wife would have no reason to come up the mountain, and if they went their separate ways the chances of anyone letting the cat out of the bag were much reduced. Most of the time after work Zhang Guoqing would go down to town to join his family, but every so often he would stay overnight with Huang Yiyi on the mountain. I made time to call several times on Zhang Guoqing’s family, to tell his wife that he was so busy at work that he would not always be able to get home, saying something about how I hoped she would support him … I went to a lot of trouble to protect them – I used my power, I told a lot of lies; to use Huang Yiyi’s own words, I pandered to them. Quite honestly, the whole of Unit 701 pandered to them. Even the dogs living on that mountain knew they were having an affair. Everyone was very careful, and they all played their part in making sure that Zhang Guoqing’s wife never found out, no matter what.