They had used various forms of electronic misdirection to set up Guangzhou telephone and fax numbers that would ring through to a subterranean room at MI6 headquarters where a small Chinese-British staff was available: a woman playing the role of receptionist and a blond, blue-eyed Englishman, fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin, playing the role of Meng Binrong. So the story would hold up as long as the people she talked to in Xiamen went no further than contacting her uncle by phone, fax, or email. But if anyone got curious enough to visit the offices of Xinyou Quality Control in Guangzhou, they’d find nothing, and the whole story would unravel. And there were any number of other ways in which Meng Anlan’s identify could be picked apart. When that happened, the best possible outcome would be that she’d have to leave, never to come back, never to work in this kind of role again. Other possible outcomes included serving a long prison term or being executed.