It was true: there were so many suspicious things that I hardly knew where to start. In fact, a lot of this must have been planned right from the moment that I first set eyes on Xiaoyu. This really was a secret world, where a marriage was an adjunct to your work, a smoke-screen, a security measure. And so the following day, as part of this smoke-screen, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a memorial ceremony for Xiaoyu, with a further article in their own internal newsletter, so that everyone would know that while working overseas Xiaoyu had been tragically killed in a car crash, ‘dying in the line of duty’. As if that weren’t enough, Director Tie ordered Secretary Li to take away the casket containing Xiaoyu’s ashes so that when I got to Unit 701 I discovered that her ashes were already in residence: there was a spirit altar in my room, wreathed in incense, and the commemorative photograph of Xiaoyu looked at me through the mist of smoke, as if we were separated by a thousand miles of mountains and rivers.

I understood that this was all being done so that as many people as possible would know that Xiaoyu was dead. How did she die? In a car crash. News would soon spread of the altar in my room, and pretty quickly everyone in Unit 701 would know about it. People in this organization are very thorough.

3

Getting back to the story: that day when I met Director Tie, the Bureau Chief was also present, Comrade Liu.

If Secretary Li represented Director Tie’s body – running around doing errands for him, making him tea, fetching and carrying, making sure that everything ran smoothly from day to day – then Bureau Chief Liu represented his brain, his intelligence – helping him to see which way the wind was blowing, coming up with new plans, keeping control of his little empire. Bureau Chief Liu was one of the first generation of PRC cryptographers: his people could be found in every cryptanalysis unit in the country. Not long after I got back from Xiaoyu’s memorial ceremony at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bureau Chief Liu came to the guest house to see me. He was very polite and kept referring to me as ‘Deputy Director An’, which made me extremely uncomfortable. To begin with we were just chatting, talking about some mutual friends and colleagues, then somehow or other the conversation got round to ciphers, since I would soon be taking over this part of his work. While we were discussing RECOVERY, he suddenly asked me, ‘Deputy Director An, you were in the Soviet Union for such a long time, I was wondering if perhaps you had heard of a particular mathematician … ?’

‘Who?’

‘Liljeva Sivincy.’