At The Golden Dish And Spoon Food Court In Manhattan You Can Get A Plate Of Qyalla, But If The Lips Move Send It Back To The Kitchen.

New York, New York

Chen Yueng Bao was the name everyone knew him as for the last twenty years, but it was not his real name. Not even his wife in Stamford, Connecticut, knew his real name or job.

Part of his legend included owning this trendy food court in Lower Manhattan with thirty-five mostly ethnic food stalls. Think of food trucks without the trucks. Anyone could have some of the best food in the city at The Golden Dish and Spoon Food Court.

Yeung Bo held the military rank of Major in the Chinese Ministry Of State Security. He was highly trained in tradecraft, recruitment, and running agents in the States. 

Yueng Bo sat at the same table in the food court every morning, six days a week, while drinking his tea. With his glasses down on the end of his nose, Yueng read The Wall Street Journal, The South China Morning Post, and The Financial Times in English, all on his tablet daily. He typically dressed in neat work pants, and pullover shirts from a catalog store in Maine. He always looked comfortable, inviting, and warm. Of course he was not any of that.

The dim fluorescent lighting and light sea-green walls in the food court made him happy and reminded him of the office from his last posting in Beijing.

At a young age, he was selected by the Ministry Of State Security for a life in the intelligence service. Yeung showed a natural talent for English and was sent to Florida State University to study and learn the subtleties. This was his other life.

Even after his American immersion at Florida State, Yeung hated America and most Americans. Americans were too self-absorbed and focused on money and things they did not have. 

The reasons he disliked Americans are what made his job very easy. They could all be bought.

Due to his job he had not seen his parents and two sisters in many years. Every Golden Week when most Chinese went home to be with family Yeung stayed overseas on his post. His relatives have never met his three children.

Messages from the MSS came through coded comments in the comment sections of twenty apps on Yueng's tablet or phone. He visited each app that the Ministry of State Security used daily. Yueng knew which app was the hot app of the day.

Once in a while, one of the vendors in the food court would arrive at his table to pay the rent or voice a concern about something they needed from the landlord. Other visitors were rare, but they did show up now and then.

Today was one of those days, and the visit would happen sometime in the next twenty minutes.

Yueng was unhappy about this. He wiped his brow and pounded his fist once on the table, causing his tea to spill. The loss of self-control was highly out of character for him.

The possibility of getting called back to Beijing was real, which would end his career or worse for him and his relatives in China. He allowed himself one moment of self pity, thinking that this life was chosen for him and that he had not chosen it. Then he focussed on how he needed to appear when whoever they sent arrived.

Yueng Bao recalled a story that passed around in his early days as an intelligence trainee.

An upper-level director stationed in Taipei, China (Taiwan) passed the Directorate a final blueprint or mask of an electronic chip of what was supposed to be part of an ordinance aiming device in American and British tanks.

Months later, in North Korean style, this Director was forcibly pulled from his post, returned to Zhongguo (China), and then executed. His immediate family, who lived comfortably in Shanghai, were then reduced in status and sent to rural villages for a life of farm and road work.

His crime? When the technicians in China started back engineering from the blueprint of the chip he sent along, they discovered it had nothing to do with tanks. The chip was for a device to make a plastic wall-mounted fish wiggle and sing songs.

When the engineers manufactured a rudimentary prototype and presented it to the upper levels, nobody laughed when the fish began to sing Swanee River. That prototype still hangs in the MSS offices.

The operator in the chip plant either sent the wrong blueprint or was a spy for the Gweilo (Westerners). She was later found dead in a Western owned Taipei coffee shop after drinking a poisoned large, extra hot hot latte.

Yueng Bao alone hired the Russian. The Spetsnaz Russian Commando had a solid reputation for getting things done.

The very expensive freelance Russian ruined a simple operation in a farmland section of America populated by dolts and imbeciles, Yueng thought to himself. The Russian's amateurish failure to secure a computer put much pressure on Yueng from the Home Office.

Yueng was experiencing the big stick from the MSS upper ministry for the first time since he arrived in America. They were sending someone to speak to him.

Yeung had one eye on his tablet and the other on the elevator door when it dinged, and started to open.