“You have to help me,” Gu pleaded with utter sincerity. “I cannot turn in an unreadable proposal to an American banker. The translation must be first-class.”

“I cannot guarantee anything. To translate a total of fifty pages will take time. I doubt I will be able to manage in just one or even two weeks, even if I take a leave from the bureau.”

“Oh, I forgot. For such a large project, you will surely need help. What about White Cloud? That girl you danced with in the Dynasty Club, remember her? She’s a college student. Bright, capable, and understanding. She will be a little secretary for you.”

A “little secretary”-xiaomi-another current term, which actually meant a “little mistress.” Newly rich businessmen-Mr. Big Bucks-like Gu made a point of having young, beautiful “little secretaries” in their company. A necessary sign of one’s social status, if not of something else. Chen had met White Cloud-a “K girl”- in the private karaoke room at Gu’s Dynasty Club while pursuing an earlier investigation with triad ramifications.

“How I can afford secretarial assistance, General Manager Gu?”

“It’s in the interest of the New World that you have help. I will take care of it.”

The fragrance from her red sleeves accompanies your uniting deep in the night… a Tang dynasty line rose from the recesses of his mind, but Chen pulled himself back to the present. A free little secretary. Like a bottle of Maotai in addition to the moon cake falling from the skies.

So far, there had been no strings attached, Chen thought. A shrewd businessman like Gu might not play all his cards too obviously, so early, but the chief inspector believed he did not have to worry yet. It seemed that he was being offered a straight business proposition, albeit a very favorable one. If something came up later, he would then decide how to deal with it.

There are things a man can do, and things a man cannot do. That was one of the Confucian dictums his father, a Neo-Confucian scholar, had taught him at the time of the Cultural Revolution, when the old man refused to write a dictated “confession” incriminating his colleagues.