With a little work, Ming might have been pretty, Nomuri thought. First of all she needed long hair. Then, perhaps, better frames on her eyeglasses. Those she wore had all the attraction of recycled barbed wire. Then some makeup. Exactly what sort Nomuri wasn’t sure— he was no expert on such things, but her skin had an ivory-like quality to it that a little chemical enhancement might turn into something attractive. But in this culture, except for people on the stage (whose makeup was about as subtle as a Las Vegas neon sign), makeup meant washing your face in the morning, if that. It was her eyes, he decided. They were lively and… cute. There was life in them, or behind them, however that worked. She might even have had a decent figure, but it was hard to tell in that clothing.
“So, the new computer system works well?” he asked, after the lingering sip of green tea.
“It is MAGICal,” she replied, almost gushing. “The characters come out beautifully, and they print up perfectly on the laser printer, as though from a scribe.”
“What does your minister think?”
“Oh, he is very pleased. I work faster now, and he is very pleased by that!” she assured him.
“Pleased enough to place an order?” Nomuri asked, reverting back to his salaryman cover.
“This I must ask the chief of administration, but I think you will be satisfied by the response.”
That will make NEC happy, the CIA officer thought, again wondering briefly how much money he’d made for his cover firm. His boss in Tokyo would have gagged on his sake to know whom Nomuri really worked for, but the spook had won all of his promotions at NEC on merit, while moonlighting for his true country. It was a fortunate accident, Chet thought, that his real job and his cover one blended so seamlessly. That and the fact that he’d been raised in a very traditional home, speaking two native tongues… and more than that, the sense of on, the duty owed to his native land, far over and above that he pretended to owe to his parent culture. He’d probably gotten that from seeing his grandfather’s framed plaque, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge in the center on the blue velvet, surrounded by the ribbons and medallions that designated awards for bravery, the Bronze Star with combat “V,” the Presidential Distinguished Unit Citation, and the campaign ribbons won as a grunt with the 442nd Regimental Combat team in Italy and Southern France. Fucked over by America, his grandfather had earned his citizenship rights in the ultimate and best possible way before returning home to the landscaping business that had educated his sons and grandsons, and taught one of them the duty he owed his country. And besides, this could be fun.
It was now, Nomuri thought, looking deeply into Ming’s dark eyes, wondering what the brain behind them was thinking. She had two cute dimples at the sides of her mouth, and, he thought, a very sweet smile on an otherwise unremarkable face.
“This is such a fascinating country,” he said. “By the way, your English is very good.” And good that it was. His Mandarin needed a lot of help, and one doesn’t seduce women with sign language.
A pleased smile. “Thank you. I do study very hard.”
“What books do you read?” he asked with an engaging smile of his own.
“Romances, Danielle Steel, Judith Krantz. America offers women so many more opportunities than what we are used to here.”
“America is an interesting country, but chaotic,” Nomuri told her. “At least in this society one can know his place.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “There is security in that, but sometimes too much. Even a caged bird wishes to spread its wings.”
“I will tell you one thing I find bad here.”
“What is that?” Ming asked, not offended, which, Nomuri thought, was very good indeed. Maybe he’d get a Steele novel and read up on what she liked.
“You should dress differently. Your clothing is not flattering. Women should dress more attractively. In Japan there is much variety in clothing, and you can dress Eastern or Western as the spirit moves you.”
She giggled. “I would settle for the underthings. They must feel so nice on the skin. That is not a very socialist thought,” she told him, setting down her cup. The waiter came over, and with Nomuri’s assent she ordered mao-tai, a fiery local liqueur. The waiter returned rapidly with two small porcelain cups and a flask, from which he poured daintily. The CIA officer nearly gasped with his first sip, and it went down hot, but it certainly warmed the stomach. Ming’s skin, he saw, flushed from it, and there came the fleeting impression that a gate had just been opened and passed… and that it probably led in the right direction.
“Not everything can be socialist,” Nomuri judged, with another tiny sip. “This restaurant is a private concern, isn’t it?”
“Oh, Yes. And the food is better than what I cook. That is a skill I do not have.”
“Truly? Then perhaps you will allow me to cook for you sometime,” Chet suggested.
“Oh?”
“Certainly.” He smiled. “I can cook American style, and I am able to shop at a closed store to get the correct ingredients.” Not that the ingredients would be worth a damn, shipped in as they were, but a damned sight better than the garbage you got here in the public markets, and a steak dinner was probably something she’d never had. Could he justify getting CIA to put a few Kobe beef steaks on his expense account? Nomuri wondered. Probably. The bean-counters at Langley didn’t bother the field spooks all that much.
“Really?”
“Of course. There are some advantages to being a foreign barbarian,” he told her with a sly smile. The giggling response was just right, he thought. Yeah. Nomuri took another careful sip of this rocket fuel. She’d just told him what she wanted to wear. Sensible, too, for this culture. However comfy it might be, it would also be quite discreet.
“So, what else can you tell me about yourself?” he asked next.
“There is little to tell. My job is beneath my education, but it carries prestige for… well, for political reasons. I am a highly educated secretary. My employer— well, technically I work for the state, as do most of us, but in fact I work for my minister as if he were in the capitalist sector and paid me from his own pocket.” She shrugged. “I suppose it has always been so. I see and hear interesting things.”
Don’t want to ask about them now, Nomuri knew. Later, sure, but not now.
“It is the same with me, industrial secrets and such. Ahh,” he snorted. “Better to leave such things at my official desk. No, Ming, tell me about you.”
“Again, there is little to tell. I am twenty-four. I am educated. I suppose I am lucky to be alive. You know what happens to many girl babies here…”
Nomuri nodded. “I have heard the stories. They are distasteful,” he agreed with her. It was more than that. It was not unknown for the father of a female toddler to drop her down a well in the hope that his wife would bear him a son on the next try. One-baby-per-family was almost a law in the PRC, and like most laws in a communist state, that one was ruthlessly enforced. An unauthorized baby was often allowed to come to term, but then as birth took place, when the baby “crowned,” the top of the head appearing, the very moment of birth, the attending physician or nurse would take a syringe loaded with formaldehyde, and stab it into the soft spot at the crown of the almost-newborn’s head, push the plunger, and extinguish its life at the moment of its beginning. It wasn’t something the government of the PRC advertised as government policy, but government policy it was. Nomuri’s one sister, Alice, was a physician, an obstetrician/gynecologist trained at UCLA, and he knew that his sister would take poison herself before performing such a barbarous act, or take a pistol to use on whoever demanded that she do it. Even so, some surplus girl babies somehow managed to be born, and these were often abandoned, and then given up for adoption, mainly to Westerners, because the Chinese themselves had no use for them at all. Had it been done to Jews, it would have been called genocide, but there were a lot of Chinese to go around. Carried to extremes, it could lead to racial extinction, but here it was just called population control. “In due course Chinese culture will again recognize the value of women, Ming. That is certain.”
“I suppose it is,” she allowed. “How are women treated in Japan?”
Nomuri allowed himself a laugh. “The real question is how well they treat us, and how well they permit us to treat them!”