Jinzhao’s mouth thinned. “The same applies to you. You could pursue any profession you want.”
“Hah.” Tinseng had to disagree. “I don’t know if I have the right temperament for most jobs. I can stick it out two more years here, then go back to Weir.”
“Tinseng.”
“What?” Tinseng couldn’t help but feel a little insulted. “I liked it there. Even if it’s changed a bit, I can adapt anywhere.”
Jinzhao looked a little incredulous. “Tinseng.”
“What, you don’t believe me?”
“You hate them.”
“I hate it here. Hong Kong was better. Weir had his priorities straight.”
Back when he worked in Hong Kong Station, his chief Terrance Weir was a crusty old sinologist turned spy, a legend to anyone who’d worked more than a month in Asia. Weir was loyal to his assets, then to his friends, then to MI6—in that order. He knew what was important. If Tinseng had still worked for Weir when Jinzhao had come to him back in ’61, he would have taken him in, no hesitation.
“You should quit,” Jinzhao insisted.
“I can’t just quit,” Tinseng said, as he always said. This was not the first time they’d had this discussion, or the tenth. “I still have to pay rent, you know!”
“Tutor instead.”
Tinseng sighed and dropped the act. “We need their resources. And if it ends up that you need protection, or a totally new identity, they’re still our best bet. Let me get in contact with Weir. Maybe there’s something he can do there. Maybe we could even send you there. At the very least, you’d be closer to home.”
“Home,” Jinzhao repeated.
“Beijing? Where your brother is?” Tinseng was confused now.
“Oh. Yes.” Jinzhao looked back down at his shoes. “Don’t trouble yourself.”
“Jinzhao. Trouble myself? It’s not trouble! It’s the right thing to do. Besides, isn’t this why you came to me? So I could help?”
“Not at the expense of yourself.”
“Oh, please. Let me tell you what I think, Mei Jinzhao,” he said, just to say something, with no real intent to continue. He liked to hear the cadence of words out loud. But Jinzhao searched his face, taking him seriously.
“What do you think, Tinseng?” A thrill ran through Tinseng. There was a time when Jinzhao never would have asked, would have thought his opinion irrelevant or simply wrong. Now he asked for Tinseng’s advice as though he truly valued it. Tinseng had to honor that by giving a true answer.
“I think you’re worth all the effort in the world. Every person is. Isn’t that the point of it all? I know that can tilt too individualistic for you, but lately I’ve been reading Louise Michel’s speeches,” he began to warm to the topic, “and there’s this common ground between the Confucians and the anarchists: They both stress self-cultivation as the starting point for change. A path that leads to mass enlightenment. That second one’s a little loftier, hah. But we can start the change here, you and me. Me, choosing to help you.”
“路见不平,” Jinzhao said quietly. “拔刀相助.”
The road is rough and full of injustice; draw your sword to help. It was the kind of thing you said about a hero. Tinseng felt the blush on his cheeks.
“Jinzhao, that’s way too much. I’m not like that.”
“You intervene when others would not.”
“Well.” He couldn’t exactly deny that. “I try.” It was Tinseng looking down at his shoes now.
“And you should quit,” Jinzhao said, making Tinseng laugh. Stubborn as always, that Mei Jinzhao. Tinseng wished he didn’t find it so endearing.
“I’ll think about it,” Tinseng promised. “Once this is done, I’ll think about it.”
Nothing was as simple as Jinzhao made it sound. Mei Jinzhao still saw the world in black and white. He wanted a grand sweeping code of morality that would somehow be applied to the entire world and create harmony, if only everyone would adopt it. Back when they were sixteen, Tinseng had told him that outlook was naïve at best and dangerous to the world in the wrong hands.
Yes, but so was every outlook, Jinzhao had said, and the right hands were the hands of the workers.
“And how was that working out in China?” Tinseng had asked, because from where he stood it looked like the same old hierarchy—one that Mei Jinzhao and his parents were complicit in.
The summer had ended with an explosive argument after Tinseng had nearly gotten kicked out for hosting unofficial debates in the dormitories after visiting hours and inviting women into the men’s dorms. Tinseng considered the dorm rules arbitrary, sexist, and—if you really got him going—indicative of the kind of authoritarian tendencies the college should really curb before it became fully fascist. Jinzhao had been unrepentant in his smug assessment of Tinseng’s rule-breaking and subsequent punishment, accusing Tinseng of hyper-individuality. If everyone acted like Tinseng acted, following whims and acting outside the bounds of accepted values, they would have no society at all. Not only that, but Tinseng’s actions were a danger to himself and others. Tinseng accused Jinzhao of only caring about the theoretical—he didn’t care about real people at all; he had no heart.
He didn’t think that way about Jinzhao anymore.
Two days ago, drunk, Tinseng had said, “You know, you could sell me to the CCP. That would convince them you’re loyal.” Jinzhao had walked out of the room. If he had still owned his own apartment, he would have left entirely, but since he now lived with Tinseng out of an abundance of caution, he had holed up in the bedroom and refused to speak to Tinseng for the rest of the night.
Jinzhao wasn’t willing to do whatever it took to help; Tinseng was. That was what it meant to draw a sword when you saw injustice: if you drew a sword, you had to follow through. You had to commit to death before the steel left its sheath, or the gesture was an empty one.
He’d always known he would die for the people he loved; he just hadn’t known he’d kill for them too. Looking back, he must have always felt this way, but he hadn’t known it about himself until Weir had seen it and drawn it out of him. It was as though they’d told him all the mirrors in the world had been fake, what he’d seen in them a lie. He had never wanted to know. He could have gone his whole life without the realization that Jinzhao had been right about him back then: He was a danger to himself and others.
But he was who he was now; he was who they made him. Could he really regret it if it meant helping Jinzhao? If they’d forged him into a person Jinzhao could rely on, it was easy to believe it was all worth it.
Despite treating the mystery of Jinzhao’s parents as his new full-time job, Tinseng still had to go to work, which he was resenting more and more. Once he’d been transferred to Paris, they’d pushed him into interrogations and other, less pleasant work. They saw him as inferior, and he saw them as brutish. He really did need to quit. Jinzhao was right about that too, unfortunately, though Tinseng had no plans to tell him that.
