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Shi looked around but couldn’t find an ashtray. In the end, he dropped the cigarette into a teacup. He raised his hand, and before Chang could even acknowledge him, he spoke loudly. “General, I have a request which I’ve made before: I want information parity.”

General Chang lifted his head. “There’s never been a military operation in which there was information parity. I have to apologize to all the scholars, but we cannot give you any more background.”

“We are not the same as the eggheads,” Shi said. “The police have been part of the Battle Command Center from the start. But even now, we still don’t know what this is all about. You continue to push the police out. You learn from us what you need about our techniques, and then you send us away one by one.”

Several other police officers in attendance whispered to Shi to shut up. It surprised Wang that Shi dared to speak in this manner to a man of Chang’s rank. But Chang’s response surprised him even more.

“Da Shi, it seems that you still have the same problem you had back when you were in the army. You think you can speak for the police? Because of your poor record, you had already been suspended for several months, and you were about to be expelled from the force. I asked for you because I value your experience in city policing. You should treasure this opportunity.”

Shi continued to speak roughly. “So I’m working in the hope of redeeming myself by good service? I thought you told me that all my techniques were dishonest and crooked.”

“But useful.” Chang nodded at Shi. “All we care about is if they’re useful. In a time of war, we can’t afford to be too scrupulous.”

“We can’t be too fastidious,” a CIA officer said, in perfect Modern Standard Mandarin. “We can no longer rely on conventional thinking.”

The British colonel apparently also understood Chinese. He nodded. “To be, or not to be…” he added in English. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

“What is he saying?” Shi asked Wang.

“Nothing,” Wang replied mechanically. The people before him seemed to be speaking out of a dream. Time of war? Where is this war? He twisted to look out one of the floor-length windows. Through the window he could see Beijing in the distance: Under the spring sun, cars filled the streets like a dense river; on a lawn someone was walking a dog; a few children were playing.…

Which is more real? The world inside or outside these walls?

General Chang said, “Recently, the enemy has intensified the pattern of attacks. The targets remain elite scientists. Please begin by taking a look at the list of names in the document.”

Wang took out the first page of the document, printed in large font. The list seemed to have been generated in a hurry, containing both Chinese and English names.

“Professor Wang, as you look through these names, does anything strike you?” General Chang asked.

“I know three of the names. All of them are famous scholars working at the forefront of physics research.” Wang was a little distracted. His eyes locked onto the last name on the list. In his mind, the two characters took on a different tint than the names above it. How can her name appear here? What happened to her?

“You know her?” Shi pointed to the name with a thick finger, stained yellow from smoking. Wang did not reply. “Ha. Don’t know her. But want to know her?”

Now Wang Miao understood why it made sense for General Chang to have asked to have this man who was once a soldier under his command. Shi, who appeared so vulgar and careless, had eyes as sharp as knives. Maybe he wasn’t a good cop, but he was certainly a fearsome one.

*   *   *

A year earlier, Wang Miao had been in charge of the nanoscale components for the “Sinotron II” high-energy particle accelerator project. One afternoon, during a brief break at the Liangxiang construction site, Wang was struck by the scene before him. As a landscape photography enthusiast, Wang often saw the sights around him as artistic compositions.

The main component of the composition was the solenoid of the superconducting magnet they were still installing. About three stories high and only half completed, the magnet loomed like a monster made of giant blocks of metal and a confusing mess of cryogenic coolant pipes. Like a junk heap from the Industrial Revolution, the structure exuded inhuman technological grimness and steel-bound barbarity.