This time it was true; it wasn’t a cover story. The strange thing was that Xiaoyu really did die in a car crash. No one has ever worked out the reasons for the crash; some people say that the weather had warmed up and so there was black ice on the roads – very slippery – and that Xiaoyu (who was driving) had accidentally crashed the car. But other people said that the KGB had found out who she really was, and that they arranged the car accident. In fact, how she died is of secondary importance, what matters is that at that time Xiaoyu’s identity had not been declassified, so that meant that even though she was now dead it could not be announced, since she was supposed to have died much earlier.

The people at headquarters told me to keep the matter strictly secret, and to take her ashes away and give them a quiet burial. To tell the truth, at that moment I felt a helpless abhorrence of my work that I had never experienced before. I hated the brutality and heartlessness of it all! Afterwards I went back to Unit 701, and late one night I made my way out into the forest and buried the casket containing Xiaoyu’s ashes next to Huang Yiyi’s grave. I don’t know why I did that, but I felt that the two of them ought to be together. They were sisters-in-arms fighting on an invisible front line, so it seemed appropriate. Besides, the two of them had been so unhappy. This way, with someone to keep them company in the darkness, perhaps they wouldn’t feel so lonely.

They wouldn’t feel lonely any more, but what about me? I had to go on living. I remember that that night I cried silently, and sat for a long, long time next to Huang Yiyi and Xiaoyu’s graves, right up until it got light. It must have been nearly May – the trees and the grass were all green, the flowers were open, and their scent was spread by the night dew, brimming with life. But I felt death around me, as if the very air I was breathing was rotten. For the rest of my life I have lived only for my work. I don’t have any emotions, any enjoyment; those feelings all died on that spring day.