‘Huang Yiyi? You can’t possibly want her! Are you …’ The Party secretary fell silent, his expression eloquent with suspicion and scorn. This was something quite different from his earlier attitude of caution and unease. ‘I hope you haven’t been misled by the fact I said something good about her?’

I shook my head.

‘Quite honestly, I said what I did because I was quite sure you wouldn’t want her. But if you are thinking of employing her, I can tell you that in my opinion she is unsuitable, completely unsuitable.’ Seeing I wasn’t going to interrupt, he added, ‘Of course, she has her good points. She’s very clever, very erudite, hardworking, successful, and she has done some interesting independent research. But … I really don’t know how to put this … You must believe me, the woman has problems – she really isn’t suitable.’

I asked what problems, and the Party secretary said that it was private and he could not say. I said that as far as Unit 701 was concerned there is no such thing as a private problem. In fact, it wasn’t very clever of him to start talking about something or other being private: it was very disrespectful to us, given that we are ourselves top secret. Besides, who can keep secrets from us? An individual? A country? We investigate other people’s private affairs for a living, and they in return try to discover ours. We don’t like that feeling, we try to keep it to a minimum, and one of the best ways is to remove the word private from our vocabularies. Excise it. Just like you might excise a disgusting tumour.

The Party secretary noticed that I had gone all stiff, and he smiled and said, ‘I can tell you, but you must promise that it won’t go any further.’ Then he laughed. ‘In much the same way as I will not tell anyone about you.’

I didn’t reply but waited for him to continue.

He said, ‘If you’d arrived a couple of minutes earlier, you would have seen the problem. Comrade Huang Yiyi’s problem. About a minute before you came through the door, the woman comrade concerned left here crying.’

‘I met her on the stairs,’ I said. ‘A middle-aged woman, wearing a white dress?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘I noticed she was crying. Why?’

‘Go and ask Comrade Huang. After all, she seduced her husband.’

Huang Yiyi’s provocative gaze and smile, and the sound of her laughter, immediately sprang to mind. I asked stupidly, ‘Are you sure? How do you know who seduced whom?’

The Party secretary said, ‘I don’t need to investigate. I am quite sure that she seduced this other woman’s husband.’

‘If you don’t investigate, how can you be sure?’