“He says you’re the expert.”

“Wonder what that’s gonna cost me? But hey, a call for book-larnin’! Let’s get it done before Google digitizes everything and I’m obsolete.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “A minor CCP official?”

Professor Edwards tapped the pile of books at his elbow. Some had English titles, some Chinese. From what I could see they were summaries of reports on this, minutes of meetings of that, and proceedings of plenary sessions about the other. “When Larry speaks, I jump. Reason I didn’t call until tonight, I was busy looking your boy up.”

“Our boy?”

“Chen Kai-rong.”

“He’s in there?” I was surprised.

“References to him. Sketchy, but better than a poke in the eye. You guys are really detectives? How come you’re interested in stuff I can’t even get my students to care about, and if they don’t care they don’t pass?”

Bill looked to me to take the lead, so I said, “We have a case. Everything about it seems to point to what went on back then, but we don’t know much about then. I didn’t even know Chen Kai-rong was a Communist Party member, much less an official.”

Dr. Edwards nodded. “Intelligence Services. Though even with that, his background would’ve made him a shooting gallery duck during the Cultural Revolution. Reading between the lines, he was in for some serious reeducation in the countryside, and he’d have been wiped from the historical record. But he was lucky, he died.”

I wasn’t sure that meant Chen Kai-rong was lucky, but if it meant there was information on him, maybe we were.

“When did he die?”

Professor Edwards consulted a sheet of scribbled notes. Like the books, some were in English, some in Chinese. I guessed it had to do with the text he was taking them from. “In 1966. Just as the Red Guards picked up steam. According to the Party press release, ‘he struggled heroically against a short, powerful illness.’ That wording would’ve meant heart disease or cancer.”

“Any reason to think otherwise?” Bill asked.

“Hah! You mean foul play?”

“I’m not sure what I mean. Just wondering.”

“I don’t think so. They had other press releases for that. Worded one way, they did it; another way, someone else did. I’d say this fellow died of natural causes.”

“What in his background would have brought the Red Guards down on him?” I asked. “His European wife?”

“That wouldn’t have helped, though it looks like she was long dead by then. You know about her? Rosalie Gilder? I didn’t find much on her, besides letters cross-referenced at the Jewish Museum.”

“We have those.”

“Cool. I did dig up an internal CCP report that says they had a son, who by the way Chen sent to the U.S. not long before he died. Chen died, I mean, not the son. That was a good call-the Red Guards wouldn’t have found a Eurasian endearing. And furthermore, Chen was raising, and also sent here, a nephew, his sister’s son, whose father was a Nationalist general who further furthermore had been a collaborationist general-and was once accused of being a Commie spy, which the Red Guards would have liked but it was a big fat lie-before he, the general, switched horses in mid-war.”

“Wait,” said Bill. “I’m lost.”

“Larry always complains about that, too. It’s the dazzling footwork.”

“I followed the son and the nephew,” I said, “but the General? General Zhang was accused of being a Communist?”

“In ’forty-three. He was fingered to the Japanese as a Red spy. He escaped and ran like hell to Chongqing to prostrate himself and his money at the feet of Chiang Kai-shek. Listen, you know all these people? What do you need me for? Did Larry send you here to flatter me for some nefarious reason? He wants my chair, tell him he’s gonna have to learn Chinese.”

“I’ll mention it,” Bill said. “We do know something about these people-General Zhang, Chen Kai-rong, and Rosalie Gilder. A little about Kai-rong’s sister, Mei-lin, too. We’re trying to fill in the blanks.”

“What’s blank?”

“For one thing, we know Kai-rong left Shanghai in 1943,” I said. “ ‘Fled’ was how it was put. But not why.”

“Hah! I can help you with that. And the answer to your first question-the stain on his revolutionary rep-is in the answer to this one, too! There, was that melodramatic enough?” He yanked out a volume and with a warning finger dared the rest of the pile to crash to the floor. It didn’t.

“Okay.” He flipped pages. “In my hand, a compendium of intelligence reports from the U.S. Navy base at Qingdao. Where the beer comes from. German breweries nationalized by Mao. Irrelevant to your boy, but the best thing about Qingdao. During World War II, the U.S., as I’m sure you know”-with a stern look that said he was sure we didn’t know-“was in China, training and supporting Chiang Kai-shek’s troops against the Japanese. After the war Chiang went back to the brawl that really interested him: arm-wrestling Mao. Chiang showed us love, so we stayed, in the business of holding Chiang’s coat, until even the blind-meaning the U.S. military-could see Chiang was headed for the hard fall. Then we cleared out, end of ’forty-eight. With me so far?”

I felt like turning down the speed on the fan, but there wasn’t any fan. “Yes.”

“The U.S. Navy not being allowed to blow stuff up, they needed a hobby. They whiled away their time seeing which trusted comrades were double-agent material. Your boy was one they looked at.”

“Chen Kai-rong was a double agent?”

“No. They thought about flipping him, but they changed their minds.” He tilted his chair back, clomped his boots onto the desk, and cleared his throat theatrically. “ ‘August 30, 1948. File report on Chen Kai-rong, Lieutenant, People’s Liberation Army (formerly Red Army). Born: 1917. Home: Shanghai. Father, Chen Da, merchant. Mother died 1929. Sister, Chen Mei-lin, born 1922, married 1939 to Zhang Yi, General, Nationalist Army, formerly General, Army under Wang Jingwei.’ You know who that was?”

“The puppet government leader,” Bill said.

Oh, you’re so smart, I thought. I bet you just read that yesterday.

“I just read that yesterday.”

“In my book?”

“Yes.”

“Ding ding ding ding ding! So you get it, this General Zhang was a collaborator. ‘Chen joined CCP secretly, 1935. Sent by father to Oxford, 1936. Returned to Shanghai 1938. Married Rosalie Gilder, Austrian Jewish refugee, 1942. One son, Lao-li. Also raising sister’s son, Zhang Li.

“ ‘Chen holds Lieutenant’s rank but work for CCP has been in intelligence. In guise of war profiteer, made numerous trips to Japanese-occupied territory 1938-1943, as courier between Red Army and Shanghai CCP station. Very successful in concealing CCP involvement during that time. However, February 23, 1943, arrested, presumably on a tip (unconfirmed) and taken to Number 76.’ ” Dr. Edwards looked up. “Number 76. You know what that was?”

“No,” I said, though the phrase sounded familiar.

“Seventy-six Jessfield Road. Prison nominally run by the Shanghai Municipal Police. But like everyone else with power, the police were in bed with the Japanese. The Japanese liked to keep the puppet government focused on the Communists because it kept them from focusing on the Japanese, who were, you know, occupying the country? So they encouraged the police to pick up Commies and beat the daylights out of ’em.” He went back to his reading. “ ‘… taken to Number 76. Chen thought to have list of CCP agents in Shanghai. Preliminary interrogation’-that would’ve involved rubber hoses-’produced no results. Interrogation interrupted by call from Japanese military headquarters, requesting on behalf of German military attaché Major Gunther Ulrich that questioning of Chen be suspended. Chen sent back to his cell.’ Hmm. Wonder why?”

“Why they agreed?” Bill asked.

“No. Why the Germans wanted them to stop.”

“Major Ulrich was a friend of General Zhang’s,” I said, thinking back to Mei-lin’s diary. “General Zhang was married to Mei-lin by this time. Maybe he asked his friend to do his brother-in-law a favor.”