Feeling calmer, Hongmei told those black eyes what sort of person she was: a follower, too easily swayed by shallow sensual pleasures. More than a decade ago, for the sake of that first caress with Glen on the bus, she’d sacrificed everything, her job, her reputation, her marriage. The evening when four soldiers in full military dress escorted her from her classroom, she’d turned like the heroine of a tragedy and taken one long, last look at the light in Glen’s hostel window.

That had been at the start of November, the coldest time in Beijing, a couple of weeks before the heating came on. Behind her were the twenty or so evening self-study classmates who’d watched as the soldiers had surrounded her. A military jeep was parked outside. She knew this was the vehicle that would take her away. She was mainly a translator of machine operation manuals but at that moment was accused of leaking Chinese military technology secrets. As absurd as the charge was, she had no choice but to comply. The jeep took her to a patch of wasteland. What would Glen do? Wait for her at the “usual place”? Or would he give up and start wandering around, searching for her? Soon, her classmates would tell Professor Glen where the girl called Qiao Hongmei had gone—a place she’d never come back from; a few rows of simple huts in the wilderness, one of which had been turned into a temporary cell.

The soldiers brought her into a large room filled with piercing light. Waiting there were three officers, one deputy regiment commander and two company commanders. The interrogation began. She sat in the position of the accused, her icy hands clenched into fists. They asked what she thought of Professor Glen. She said: “Scholarly, upright.” They said, “When he passed on the secret reports you gave him, he only used one word to describe you: ‘unique.’” She said she’d never passed on any so-called secret reports. They told her Professor Glen’s letters home to America had been decoded, and they contained huge amounts of classified information. She said that was impossible. She spoke a great deal, trying to make them grasp a simple fact: from the start of her job to the present moment, she’d not been in contact with a single document containing the word “classified.” Besides, her main task was to translate English instruction guides into Chinese, so what secrets could she possibly pass on? The questioning went on for weeks. She became severely sleep deprived and lost her appetite. But the greatest torment was not having fresh underwear to change into. She knew they intended not just to punish but also to humiliate her.