To tell the truth, I had no idea that an old habit of mine would result in this poor old comrade enduring more that an hour of completely unnecessary worry. I always used a false name when registering in a hotel; it was part of my job. I had all sorts of different blank letters of introduction on me which I could fill in with whatever name and job description took my fancy when I needed to stay at a guest house, so it all depended which one I pulled out when I put my hand into my bag – the letters were all of about the same dimensions and written on more or less the same weight of paper. That evening the first one I had pulled out was a letter of introduction from the government of a certain northern province for a Section Chief named Xin Xiaofeng, but I didn’t think it went with my drowned-rat appearance so I picked another one, the one for Yang Xiaogang. Obviously I was neither Yang Xiaogang nor a Section Chief in a provincial government: in real life my name is An Zaitian, and I was the Deputy Director of Special Unit 701, code-named 705, meaning that I was fifth in the chain of command at Unit 701. If you want to know how many false names I have used in my time, it certainly wouldn’t be less than a professional confidence-trickster. In fact from the list of all possible Chinese surnames, I must have used at least half. To give you just one example, on my eight-day journey back to China I used six names: Li Xianjin, Chen Dongming, Dai Congming, Liu Yutang and so on. That tells you that I have been through a lot in pursuit of my profession, and that it has made me cautious. I was cautious but not cowardly. The distinction between the two is like that between being cold in manner and being depressed; from the outside they might look the same, but there is a world of difference inside.