On the evening of the fourth day, I went to the Bureau Chief’s office to report on Abing’s progress. I told him that Abing’s level of proficiency, in all respects, could no longer be considered below that of Agent Lin. The Bureau Chief asked me to repeat what I had just told him. ‘Seeing is believing,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you bring Director Tie along to see for yourselves?’

Without wasting a minute, the Bureau Chief was on the telephone to report to Director Tie. He too could not believe what he had heard and asked for the Bureau Chief to repeat himself. The Bureau Chief’s response was the same as mine: ‘Seeing is believing. You’d better come and check this out for yourself.’

12

We were in the same conference room as before.

If anyone ever asks where Abing officially became a surveillance agent, the answer is in this ugly little room.

In order to avoid the possibility of Director Tie and Bureau Chief Wu being suspicious, I turned off all of the record–replay equipment and invited Bureau Chief Wu to draft at least eight strings of Morse code. Afterwards, I requested the equipment operator to use Bureau Chief Wu’s text and broadcast at the rate of one hundred characters per minute.

‘Dot-dot-dot, dot-dot-dot-dash-dash, dash-dot-dot, dot-dash …’

Once the broadcast was finished, we all turned our attention towards Abing: it looked as though he were asleep. His face was blank.

Bureau Chief Wu looked at me with a puzzled expression, and then looked back at Abing. The Director’s lips opened and closed as though he wanted to say something, but I quickly gestured for him not to make a sound. At that instant, as if Abing were startled by the silence created by my hand gestures, he seemed to awaken from his dream, exhaled long and hard, and in a clear strong voice recited the set of codes he had just heard:

‘X x x x, x x x x, x x x x …’

Eight strings of code.

Thirty-two characters in each.

Not a single string missing.

Not a single character wrong.

Exactly the same as the original!