Scene 2

Maille, to nobody's surprise, has little time to get acclimatised to himself. And naturally the phone number provided to him by Anna Schukowa in Moscow belonged to neither any reporter nor any employee of «Nature», even if Maille had never quite believed it did. The «Office», however, found out that the connection belonged to a known Zhang Xiao Ging, an agent with the second division of the «General Staff of Folk Release Army», alias the military secret service. Ging worked there in the so called «Buro 106», a «vigil-keeping network with a special task», as Marie Soussent reported: «We could not find out in exactly what the organization specializes, but the bureau is so named because it was founded on June 10.»

What a darned useless piece of information, thought Maille, one could have guessed that while making small talk in the noodle bar. Marie had, however, managed to send him a photograph of the man, and she knew that he worked in a building west of the Renmin Dahuitang, the Great Hall of the People, directly opposite the Xichan’an Jie, the Great National Theatre.

Early in the morning, Maille assumed his position on a tiny wall in view of the great steps that led up to the offices in which Zhang and his colleagues chewed at their People’s Republic-pencil tips.

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