THE CHINA PLOT

Anthony Sciascia, an unknown writer, and his wife, Professor Riva Klein, are visiting Qingdao and Beijing for business and tourism. Even as their plane is landing, both CIA and China's Ministry of State Security are targeting them as pawns in a Cold War-style propaganda gambit. Trumped-up charges of spying and state detention are in play. Zhang Ailing, consummate double-agent and mistress of aliases, is the operative both agencies tap to execute their strangely complementary schemes.

English-language fluency and personal beauty enable Ailing to lure Anthony in. She makes sure he sees her reading one of his novels, then praises the book to his face. This "coincidence" occurs while Anthony is imagining his new novel, set in China. A Chinese woman reading one of his books seems to promise that his novels have a secret following among elite Chinese. His minute of fame seems to have arrived, and his prospective book, his "China novel," promises to be his best yet.

Riva suspects this pop-up reader is a ploy or trap. Anthony talks himself into believing she is genuine because life is stranger than fiction. Their clashing interpretations of Ailing propel the narrative, which resolves with Ailing defying her CIA and MSS puppet-masters. Intimating a counterplot by MSS to exploit the Americans as vectors of viral catastrophe, Ailing urges Anthony to write his "China novel" exactly as it happened -- and here it is.