A Time for War

by Michael Savage

  When he was finished, Forsyth nodded.

  “We’re just going to call this a suicide, OK?” Forsyth asked. “Saves me having to arrest you for murder.”

  Jack nodded, and an instant later he laughed.

  There could be no other response to the absurdity of the truth Forsyth had just uttered.

  Forsyth wasn’t sure how to respond. He just backed away and motioned at EMTs to bring the oxygen over. Jack accepted the breather but declined a stretcher.

  Unlike the genocidal son of a bitch at his feet, he had earned the right to leave here with his head high and upright.

  ~ * ~

  The sun was warm on the window of Field Director Forsyth’s office as Jack and Dover were shown in. Forsyth stood behind his desk and a young man rose, smiling, from a vinyl-covered couch against the wall.

  “You must be Agent Fitzpatrick,” Jack said as he walked in. “I hear we all owe you our lives.”

  “It was a team effort,” he replied. “And that’s not sunshine I’m blowing. It truly was.”

  “I can go along with that,” Jack said.

  He introduced Dover Griffith then shook Forsyth’s hand. “Sorry that Doc Matson couldn’t make it,” Jack said. “He’s out diving around Abe Cohen’s boat with a speargun. Looking for something.”

  “I want to meet this man,” the field director said. “Sounds like someone I should have in my Rolodex.”

  “Do you still use a Rolodex?” Jack asked.

  “Now more than ever. You never know when the power will go out,” he grinned as he sat. “Anyway, I wanted you all to meet. An official commendation will follow for Agent Fitzpatrick, but I wanted to thank him and the two of you for everything you did—and to tell you what else we’ve learned. Your friend Mr. Hawke came clean and named his contacts. As far as we can tell he didn’t do anything illegal, though the State Department has been in touch with Beijing about the attacks on military and civilian targets by Mr. Sammo Yang, who is presently in custody and will remain so at an unspecified location. Beijing has asked for us to turn him over, but in light of the other events of this week they are not in a position to make demands. One way or another, we will find out who in the Chinese military authorized this program.”

  “We understand it was in retaliation for us attacking their satellites,” Jack said.

  Forsyth’s mouth twisted. “Jack, we’re doing good here. Let’s keep the detente going.”

  “It’s just a question.”

  “I know. But I’m liking you right now. Save the story-gathering for some other time.”

  “Fair enough,” Jack said. His submission reeked of insincerity. “But here’s a story you might enjoy. Right before coming over, I heard that the FCC is revoking the permission it gave for Hawke Industries to run its mobile broadband service. The FCC said its decision was based on a report from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration that ‘there is no practical way to mitigate the potential interference at this time’ caused by the global positioning devices that relay the satellite signals. They had evidence that it affected everything from aircraft landing gear to weather prediction technology.”

  “I saw the NTIA report,” Forsyth said. “What does that have to do with the price of an EMP in China?”

  “It supports what I was saying from the start,” Jack said, “that Hawke was hiding the deadly facts about his technology. I’m going to expose that cover-up.”

  “Once a truth teller, always a truth teller,”

  Forsyth remarked helplessly.

  “What really ticks me off is that Hawke not only knew the danger, he had his scientists perfect it. What was the effective range of the device?”

  “We were at twenty-one-hundred-feet distant with moderate-porous interference. Within specs. And that’s for your ears only.”

  “Longer range than Squarebeam,” Jack said. “The bastard. That’s what he had them doing in Murrieta. Figuring out how to put more bite in those destructive teeth.”

  “Moving on,” Forsyth said pointedly, “they’ve promised to deal with whoever released the pneumonic plague specimens. They didn’t deny that they have a germ warfare program but it doesn’t do anyone any good when those germs get out. Beijing said they know nothing about that part of it and Washington believes them.”

  “Do we know who was behind that project?”

  “We’re still trying to get the lay of the land from the folks we rounded up, the ones from Eastern Rim and also the fellows Doc trussed up at their office. All fingers point to their consulate and to the ranking official in their consulate, Mr. Jing Jintao. Harbor patrol saw him in the harbor last night, on a powerboat, headed out to sea. They stopped him because the boat was traveling without lights. He turned around a few minutes later and went back to shore.”

  “He probably heard that his plan had failed.”

  “That’s our guess,” Forsyth said. “The Coast Guard spotted a yacht out by the Farallons around the same time. Before they could contact it, the vessel headed back out to sea.”

  “A hire?”

  “Possibly,” Forsyth said. “We don’t have any ID on it yet. Now,” he looked at Dover, “I also understand that you’re currently between positions.”

  “You could say that.”

  “We’ve got a pretty good intel division, but we lack Chinese intelligence resources. I have a feeling that’s going to be a growth market. Would you consider relocating to San Francisco and coming to work for us? I think you’ll find the city a little more exciting than Suitland.”

  “It hasn’t let me down yet,” she beamed.

  “So that’s a yes?” Forsyth asked.

  “It is. Thank you, sir.”

  “Go easy on the ‘sir,’” Jack said. “You don’t work for him yet.”

  Forsyth regarded Jack. “You did great work here. Again.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What was the line in the movie? Something about this being the start of a beautiful friendship?”

  “It was Humphrey Bogart to Claude Rains in Casablanca,” Jack said. “And like I just told Dover, let’s not get carried away. This is a big story. I’m going to cover it.”

  “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” Forsyth asked.

  “Hawke told me I would always be a lonely man because ideals were more important to me than anything,” Jack said. “Well, this is still a country with a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, as Mr. Lincoln so aptly put it. They have a right to know what has happened on both sides of the globe.”

  Forsyth stood and offered his hand. “To be continued, then.”

  Jack shook it. The handshake lasted a little longer than it needed to and Forsyth’s eye contact was unwavering. There was respect, at least, in that.

  Dover did not hug Jack in front of her new boss; her broad smile was embrace enough. She stayed to fill out paperwork, Agent Fitzpatrick went back to work, and Jack walked alone into the beautiful San Francisco morning.

  Not quite alone, he thought. And definitely not lonely, as Hawke had once described him.

  He still had his big, vibrant, beautiful city.

  ~ * ~

  Consul General Jing Jintao sat at his desk, thinking about pride and about disgrace.

  The night before, watching the video images from the crawler on his cell phone, he was stirred by the risk and loyalty of his partners. He was on his way to the boat at the time, looking forward to joining them at sea, waiting for news of the impact of their work.

  That had not happened.

  The boat left without him, on his orders, against Liu Tang’s protestations. As Liu Tang journeyed back to China, Jintao spent the night in his rooms at the consulate, waiting to see if any of the strands of the operation threaded their way back to him. He did not believe the members of the cell would talk. They were loyal. He did not think Sammo Yang would say anything about his own mission, which came from Beijing,
not the consulate.

  He had waited until the morning news reports spoke of a plot hatched by anarchists but thwarted by the FBI and informants—a plot to release a toxin through holes blown in the streets of the Financial District.

  “They are said to be Chinese nationals,” said one newscast, “but neither the Bureau nor the State Department will confirm this information, which was provided by controversial former talk show host Jack Hatfield. The Chinese consulate in San Francisco has not returned any of our requests for comment.”

  In fact, Jintao had his own plan for countering these reports. He had spoken with several ministers and fellow diplomats during the night, denying any knowledge of these actions. Today, he had called for a press conference at the consulate this morning to express outrage at the unfounded allegations and reliance on the word of a “disgraced” conspiracy theorist for information.

  Still, the sense of loss and shame was profound. He had hoped that the destruction of this particular Financial District—perched, symbolically, on the edge of the Asian world— would lead to the final decline of the American nation and the natural ascendancy of China. That was to be his gift to his homeland, his legacy. Even if his colleagues never learned of his involvement, the failure would haunt him till death.

  There was a gentle knock on the door.

  “Come,” he said.

  Shing Wei entered. “Excuse me, Consul General, but there is a woman who would like to see you.”

  Jintao looked blankly at his personal secretary. “I assume she has a name?”

  “Bu hao yi se,” he apologized. “It is Maggie Yu.”

  “Do I know her?” he asked impatiently.

  “No, sir, but I thought—”

  “What does she want, Shing?”

  “She says she has had enough of America and wishes to go home. I thought you might wish to see her.”

  The consul general felt a smile pull at the sides of his mouth. “Home.” His eyes seemed far away. “I see.”

  The young secretary stood in the partially opened door, his head slightly lowered in respect, waiting patiently for his superior to speak.

  “Bring her in,” Jintao said.

  The neatly dressed young man stepped back and extended his arm into the office. Maggie was dressed in a traditional costume, a floor-length red skirt and sleeveless, shoulderless white blouse in the style of a bamboo hat dancer.

  She bowed respectfully to the secretary as she passed. It was protocol to leave the door open with all guests who did not come on official government business. These meetings were typically brief. Listening from his desk just beyond the door to the right, the secretary would know what was required without Jintao having to repeat it.

  Jintao rose as the woman entered. He felt it was appropriate. He needed to do it: the gesture was less to honor the woman than to celebrate the idea of his homeland, the desire for an expatriate to be there.

  Maggie approached the desk. “Consul General,” she said softly. “You have disgraced yourself and the Chinese people.”

  Shing leaned across his desk to see into the room, frozen with surprise. Jintao was too startled to move.

  Maggie did not have that problem. She tucked her elbows into her chest and pushed her arms straight out at the diplomat, across the desk, her hands open and facing him. The Dragon Palm strike hit him on the chest and sent him backward, off his feet, into his chair. She was on the desk with a single crouching leap. Her next jump had her legs tucked under her and her hands extended. She landed on the now-seated Jintao, her fingers grasping his shoulders, her knees landing hard in his belly. She was gripping him so hard that eight spots of blood appeared beneath his jacket, causing him to cry out. She released her right hand, curled the fingers into a tiger claw, and buried them in his eyes. His cry became a scream, which she smothered by putting her other arm across his mouth and leaning forward.

  “If you want me, come and get me—if you have the courage,” she said into his ear. “I’ll be on American soil, the soil of my home.”

  Maggie rotated the swivel chair a quarter turn and stepped off backward. She turned toward the door. Shing was standing there, openmouthed and aghast. Without looking at Jintao, she formed a tight fist with her right hand and, with an arcing blow, punched Jintao in the right ear. He fell against the left armrest. A blow to that side sent him to the right.

  “That was for treating your secretary with disrespect,” she said.

  She pulled the telephone from Jintao’s desk and yanked it out, dropping it to the carpet as she walked to the door.

  “I will hurt anyone who tries to stop me,” she told his secretary.

  “I—had no intention of doing so,” Shing told her. He looked back at Jintao. “Though admitting you, I fear, will cost me my job.”

  “Yes. He cannot give a press conference with bleeding ears.”

  Shing looked at the panting heap sprawled in his chair.

  “Leave with me,” Maggie said. “I know people who can give you asylum, help you get a visa.”

  “But my home—my parents, my brothers, they are all in Hāěrbīn.”

  “You’ll have a better chance of seeing them again if your fate is not entwined with what this man has done,” she said. “He will be exposed. Disgraced.”

  The young man was nodding even as he considered what she had said.

  “All right,” he said, shutting the door behind him. “I should distance myself from what has happened here, at least for now.”

  “And it is fitting that we have met. You are at least a Third Pin.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing,” she smiled. “Come.”

  The young man took his overcoat from the rack and led the way from the office.

  ~ * ~

  Bruno’s was closed due to the rattling noise going on under the dining room and kitchen. Officials from the Department of Public Works said they would need at least a day to finish work under this stretch of the tunnel system. But Bruno opened for his old friends when they came for lunch.

  Doc sat in the outdoor area where the sounds and rattling were minimized. Work crews were coming and going from the wreck of the clinic, not only shoring up the tunnel but also sealing it off along its entire length with a series of iron bars. A roped-off hole two feet in diameter, blown by the terrorists, was a hundred yards to Doc’s right, near a natural gas pipeline. A foot closer to the pipeline, the whole street would have gone up. And the hole was just one of a half dozen new potholes that stretched from the clinic through the Financial District.

  Doc had arrived first, as usual. Jack had stayed up most of the night, making notes. Bruno came out with a pot of coffee and a cup when he saw him arrive.

  “Salute!” Bruno said as Jack sat.

  “Yeah, you did it again,” Doc said, raising a glass of grapefruit juice.

  “Stumbled through it,” Jack said.

  “We stumble through most things in life,” Doc laughed. “The trick is not to fall and to recover intelligently, which you do.”

  Jack accepted that and took a sip of black coffee Bruno had poured before hurrying back to the kitchen. Jack’s arms were huddled protectively around the cup and saucer. He noticed that since the last terrorist attack, from the Hand of Allah, he tended to do that more: protect his food. He wondered about the unmeasured, maybe even unrecognized, psychological tolls of living in watchful fear.

  There was a third place at the table. Both men happened to look at it at the same time. Vintage love beads were set in a circle around a glass of herbal tea. Doc had retrieved the beads from the boat. The spotter had showed him the location on a map after some persuasion at the Eastern Rim office involving a soldering iron and a strand of melted lead.

  “Nice of you to have done that,” Jack said.

  Doc shrugged a shoulder. “Abe’s sailing token deserved to be here. Even if it does reek of hippiness. And nearly cost me my left foot in the getting.”


  “That would account for the shark bacon Bruno is preparing?”

  “It would,” Doc replied.

  Both men chuckled and raised their respective beverages to their missing friend.

  “At least Maggie Yu benefited from this,” Jack said. “Her dad texted this morning—asked if I could put him in touch with our contact at the FBI. Seems Maggie not only beat the hell out of the consul general but came back with a young man who might want political asylum. Seems he knows enough to get the boss man in a sea of trouble.”