01 Aug Chinese Ambassador – 5

The Chinese ambassador came to the end of his tour. Or, maybe, got recalled for spending too much time with foreigners. Or just wanted to go home and be with his wife. However it came about, he was heading back to China and he invited Peggy and me to say goodbye at his favorite Chinese restaurant. It was an obscure eatery in an out-of-the-way mall known, chiefly, for the ladies clothing store with the best collection of pirated movies in Botswana.

Gaborone had a much more visible Chinese restaurant on the other side of town. It was called the Red Lantern and, according to friends who’ve lived in China, was about as authentic as a Chinese restaurant outside of China gets. The Chinese seemed to think so because, when Peggy and I went there, we were pretty much the only ones who weren’t. We ordered hot pots, which are cauldrons of boiling oil set on burners where you sizzle micro-thin slices of beef, or fish, or shrimp or vegetables right at the table. We dipped and sizzled and ate and laughed and splashed oil over acres of restaurant, and it was wonderful. The second time we went, the owner greeted us at the door.

“You,” she smiled, “pleased to follow me,” and led us to a private table covered with a tarpaulin or, now that I think about it, a table that just seemed private because she’d moved it to a place as far from the other guests as she could manage. The place the ambassador took us to did not have other guests.

Not a single one, just a forgettable-looking guy dressed in brown, sitting beside a door in the back wall of an empty restaurant. The owner had been expecting us, and ushered us toward the door. The forgettable guy turned away and hid his face beneath a brown fedora as we approached.

On the other side of the door the ambassador, and the man who wasn’t named Joe, and the woman who wasn’t named Theresa, were waiting in a private room. Since we’d arrived exactly on time, and since ambassadors are supposed to arrive a bit late so that other people can get there ahead of them, that seemed odd. I don’t remember the room having windows.

The door closed behind us and the food was the real deal, realer, even, than at the Red Lantern. Or, maybe, the owner had been tipped off by the people at the Red Lantern and didn’t want to invest in a tarpaulin. At any rate, the food stretched the envelopes of our palates, and was fun to eat. It must have seemed like comfort food to our companions.

Also, they’d brought along wine. Four bottles, if I remember right. Maybe six.

However many there were, it was a lot just for Peggy and me. The ambassador and Theresa and Joe all poured themselves glasses, but they never seemed to drink more than a sip or two, maybe not even that. When the ambassador proposed a toast, they just touched the glasses to their lips but, when Peggy and I drained ours or even when our glasses got low, Joe, or Theresa, would fill them back up. Sometimes this was followed by another toast.

After a while Joe asked about the housing-market crash. He’d heard that a lot of Americans had been hurt pretty bad. “Anybody in the embassy in that boat?” It didn’t take John le Carré to know what would happen if the Chinese learned the names of people who needed money, and Peggy told him the truth. “Yep, we’ve heard the same thing.”

Maybe the ambassador had gotten the impression that I’d had something other than a personal interest when I asked to see the book he’d written about how our congress works. Or, maybe, he and Joe and Theresa just couldn’t imagine that any government would send somebody like me overseas for no better purpose than to accompany his wife. For that matter, they might not have seen why America would even have a Peace Corps if it didn’t have something to do with gathering intelligence. Whatever they imagined, it made me look pretty cagey for not divulging any national secrets.

Without any beans to spill, that night at the restaurant ended on a convivial note. We stepped out into the dining room and, still, no other customers. Just a darkened room, empty tables, and the very forgettable guy in brown who, now that I think about it, may have had something to do with the reason this was the ambassador’s favorite restaurant.

Months after the ambassador had disappeared back into China, Joe and Theresa invited Peggy and me for a meal at one of the fanciest hotels in Botswana, a hotel so upscale it had a casino right on the premises. When the meal was over, they walked us to our car, Joe next to me and Theresa chatting amiably with Peggy. They’d be heading back to China in a few months, too. “Some of us come here to gamble,” the guy who wasn’t Joe said. “Want to join us?”

It was a nice gesture. Everybody knows Chinese like to gamble and to include me, well it was an offer of friendship. You could see it that way, anyway. There was another way of looking at it.

“No can do,” I said. “I never have any luck in those places. And when I lose money some nice gentleman from a foreign country is going to offer to help me out and no telling what that’ll lead to.” I never saw Joe, again. I guess he went back to China, like he said.

Or, maybe, he finally realized he’d been barking down the wrong alley. The Chinese are supposed to be good at the internet. It wouldn’t have taken more than a few keystrokes to blow my cover as somebody who actually knew something.