Floorboards creaked and the door opened. Mr. Lee was coming out. She stood up and edged along the wall, deeper into the darkness of the corridor, away from the stairwell. Her fingers touched a doorframe. She didn’t dare push the door open in case its hinges were rusty. She pressed herself against the door, hoping the shallow niche of the doorframe and its shadows were enough to hide her.

The staircase creaked with footsteps. Then she heard Mr. Lee speak and her heart lurched. He knew she was still there. But almost immediately another voice replied. A man’s voice. Lee wasn’t talking to her. There was someone else. There were two men coming down the staircase.

“I don’t believe she knows anything about the murder.” Mr. Lee sounded slightly anxious.

“Perhaps it was someone sent by the Juntong,” the second man said. “Will the girl continue to cooperate?”

Juntong. The Nationalist Party’s military intelligence agency. Lian shuddered.

“Anyone suspected of conspiring with the enemy would be torn apart,” Lee said. “She doesn’t want people to know her father was a Japanese spy. If we need her, she’ll do as I say.”

“Well, we can’t ask for much. She’s not trained.” Lian thought the second man’s voice sounded familiar.

“I know, sir”—Lee’s voice was apologetic—“but she was the best I could do on short notice after Shen was killed. But do you really think the Juntong planted an assassin in our midst?”

Lee had called the other man “sir.” Someone more important. And Shen had been the previous student informant.

“If they did, then Wang Jenmei was more of a threat than we realized,” the unknown man said. “Someone murdered that student and didn’t bother informing us. Someone took action because we didn’t. Wang’s death was a warning, to us as well as to the students. We must be even more vigilant.”

“Sir, just one more thing,” Lee said.

The building door opened and slammed shut. Footsteps on the concrete outside. Lian pushed open the door she had been leaning against and tiptoed into the room. Across from the door, sheets of newsprint defined the rectangle of a window. Feeling her way to the window, she peeled aside one edge of the newspaper and peeked out. Lee was walking away, in the direction of the dining hall. The other man paused to light a cigarette. He took a long drag and strolled away. His burly figure, still wearing a white apron, was familiar.

Cook Tam was the man Mr. Lee had called “sir.”

Chapter 21

It seemed as though they would never get to Chengtu. There were so many schools on the move, so many students. Housing, funds, food, and transportation were all difficult to organize. The government was building classrooms and dormitories in Chengtu, but at least three other universities were already on their way there.