Bai Hsu is an agent with the CIA.
When we first meet him, he is going by the alias of Alan Broccoli, which Hsu puts down as the result of letting "juvenile case officers pick their own aliases for low-priority missions". In this case, the case officer is Hsu so he only has himself to blame for the Anglo-Italian name being used by a Chinese-American. Then again, Hsu tells us in the same paragraph that Bai Hsu itself is a name he was given by the CIA. "When you swear your oaths to God and country, the CIA does away with the name your parents gave you and gives you a new one." What his real name is remains a secret to me so far.
Hsu has been working for Langley for six years when we first pick up on his activities. "When I joined the CIA six years ago, I thought I'd be stationed overseas, chatting up diplomats at swanky parties and trawling for agents in seedy clubs." Instead the mission we join him on is monitoring things at an exclusive, high security high school located in San Diego but officially and legally considered Swiss property attached to its Embassy.
Prior to becoming an operative with the Agency, Hsu earned a law degree at Stanford. At least that is what he tells us but in the same breath, he boasts about being very good at obfuscating.
Hsu is proud of keeping himself in excellent physical shape and in holding a third degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. He also tells us that he has "picked up Muay Thai and Krav Maga after joining the Agency". He also jokes that he "bore a passing resemblance to James Bond ... assuming, of course, that James Bond was tall and Chinese".
Good Line:
- "Lying through my teeth is an integral part of being a counterintelligence officer. Not to brag, but I'm pretty good at it."
- Forced to shoot someone he has been trying to capture, Hsu muses, "I'd rather have a dead suspect than be dead myself."
- "A stranger is a potential enemy until proven otherwise."