Dragonfire

by Ted Bell

  “What will you two lovely ladies be having?” Tang asked, caving in completely and ordering a magnum of Pol Roger Brut. And then they were all three off to the races. “Keep it coming,” Ambassador Tang heard himself telling the champagne-bearing waiter. And so it went, and so it goes. . . .

  A short time later, in a moment of wanton indiscretion, fueled by numberless swills of chilled Pol Roger, the ambassador had bedded the voraciously hungry, exceptionally pneumatic, and athletic twins simultaneously in a king-sized bed in the hastily arranged Presidential Suite upstairs.

  “I’m Agnes,” one of them had said, clinging to him in the elevator going up, fumes of some exotic perfume welling up between them. “I’m the quiet one. That’s my sister, Flora. Known in some circles around town as ‘the Human Trampoline.’ She’s the rich one, from Bryn Mawr, the Main Line, Philadelphia. Right, honey?”

  “Please, try not to embarrass me, Agnes. Seriously. No one cares about things like that. Where one went to college. You’re awfully silly tonight.”

  These two ebullient ladies, plainly intoxicated, were staffers in the Office of the Speaker of the House. And very loose-lipped about their famous boss, Sam Rayburn, rumored to have dallied with both. The young ambassador smiled inwardly at the thought: Pay attention. Listen carefully. These two might well prove very helpful to you someday. What fun! An underground pipeline out of the House of Representatives! And he hadn’t even been there twenty-four hours!

  Dear God, it was a miracle he’d gotten out of that madhouse on the twenty-fifth floor alive. He was aware of two black eyes staring at him across the lobby. And there, of course, he spied the omnipresent Yang-Tsing, seated in a wing chair beside a roaring fire, having a coffee and pretending to be reading the morning Post while he surveilled the ambassador. “Ah, there you are, Ambassador,” he said, rising to greet him. “Your car is outside waiting. . . .”

  “Good heavens, man. Have you been here all night?”

  “Yes, sir. My job, you see.”

  “Let’s be off, then.”

  At least he’d had the fortitude and presence of mind to haul himself out of bed in time to find Yang-Tsing and make it back to the Chinese Embassy before dawn, leaving the two sleeping beauties to their dreams. Crept up three flights of stairs and slid into his bed without waking a soul or raising a ruckus.

  He leaned once more into the looking glass above the bathroom sink and inspected himself more carefully.

  Hmm. Ah, yes, the familiar bloodshot eyes. The sallow complexion. And, God, the dry mouth, a condition that none but some godforsaken Gila monster lizard, spending all day splayed out on a flat rock under the broiling desert sun of Arizona, might comprehend.

  Yes, the old Tiger, as he’d been nicknamed at university, was a bit grey around the gills, a bit haggard around the edges this morning. A haze of black stubble on his chin and jaw. Ah, well, a perhaps a wee touch of the Irish flu? Yes, that would explain it. What time was it, anyway?

  He sighed and looked at his father’s gold wristwatch. Patek Philippe, of course. A parting gift from the old man as they’d stood side by side on the pier at Xiamen, waiting for him to board the steamer that would ferry him to San Francisco and thence to the city of San Francisco, the Union Pacific train to Union Station, Washington. It was nearly nine o’clock.

  Christ! There was an extremely important meeting today at noon. And because of the earthshaking events of yesterday, it was a big one. Meaning he had just a few short hours to pull himself together before walking into the lion’s den.

  He was, he had to keep reminding himself, the newly minted Chinese ambassador to the United States. First impressions would indeed be critical in this town for at least the next few months or so. And then there’d been a spot of bad luck. The timing of his arrival simply could not have been worse. He had, after all, arrived at Union Station only yesterday.

  One day after that fateful day, December 7, 1941.

  And today? It was shortly after the day that the American president had loudly proclaimed would “live in infamy.” He sighed and took a step back from the mirror, straightening his tie. A watery light filled the high-ceilinged cream-colored bedroom. The peaceful snowy view of the Capitol outside the soaring windows of the room was deceptive. Tensions in Washington could not be ratcheted one notch higher. The sleeping town lay under a fresh blanket of pure white snow, but it was anything but peaceful out there. Citizens would awaken to a shockingly new and vastly more dangerous world.

  The entire Western world was suddenly dangling by a thread. With the voracious Nazi wolves at the door everywhere in Europe, and now Imperial Japan eager to devour the Pacific theater in one sitting . . . Tiger could only wonder at Roosevelt’s state of mind at this moment. One of the twins had told him that, during a dinner on the eve of December 7, a White House butler had overheard FDR speculating about the possibility of a Japanese invasion on the West Coast that could spread as far as the Midwest.

  There was indeed widespread shock and panic in most quarters of the government, and gut-wrenching fear in most if not all of the Capitol itself. America’s Pacific Fleet had been decimated, neutralized in a single devastating surprise attack. In the blink of an eye, Japan’s mighty Imperial Navy had seized control of the Pacific. Already, Japan’s Navy and Imperial Japanese Army Air Service were leapfrogging north toward the pole, rapidly building naval bases and airstrips ever closer to the American-held Aleutian Islands. From there, they would be just a short hop, skip, and jump away from America’s Western coastline. And then who the hell knew? Japanese troops marching into downtown Chicago? It certainly seemed possible. . . .

  Tiger grabbed the stack of newspapers and decoded Chinese news and military démarches and dispatches waiting on his bureau. He then went over to the deep leather armchair beneath the window, speed-reading all the relevant articles that caught his eye. He was no stranger to this kind of stuff. He had taken his PhD, a “double first” in history and political science at Oxford, with a focus on American history in both.

  And he had been deep in study of the American geopolitical landscape for months now, perhaps a year, all leading up to his imminent appointment as ambassador. One thing was clear from his survey of the news from the political and war fronts. In a heartbeat, the entire global political landscape had changed. And not for the better. And he didn’t have a whole lot of time to get up to speed.

  Precisely at twelve noon, Ambassador Tang was scheduled to present himself and his credentials to the vice president at a welcoming ceremony for him at the White House. In the East Room, to be exact. The president would not be able to attend, as he would be up on the Hill at that hour, giving what would become his famous speech on the dastardly Japanese sneak attack. “A day that will live in infamy!” Afterward, there was to be a long-scheduled one-hour private meeting with the beleaguered Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself and his right-hand man, the ghostlike, wraith-thin, and mysterious Harry Hopkins.

  Tiger Tang had been amazed that, given the epic events of yesterday, the long-planned meeting was still taking place. He was sure he’d soon be notified that the White House had called to reschedule upon his arrival at his embassy. It didn’t happen. Still on, apparently.

  His adjutant had explained his situation at drinks and over dinner. “You must understand your own unique position in this town, Excellency,” the fellow said. “America is now fighting on two fronts: Europe and Asia. You, and you alone, are now Roosevelt’s only hope for victory in Asia. The war in Europe must take precedence because America’s allies are already struggling for their very survival. Under Churchill, Britain is a formidable foe for Hitler. But it’s a losing battle as of now. U-boats are cutting off most of the food being transported by freighters to the island fortress of England, now in danger of starvation. In all of Asia, only China can provide the military might, manpower, and sea power that America now so desperately needs to bring Japan to its knees.�
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  The ambassador looked at his adjutant and smiled. “I am ready on all counts,” Tiger said. “I’ve been getting ready for this all of my life.”

  And that was the unvarnished truth.

  If you happened to look at it from a certain angle.

  CHAPTER 5

  Washington, D.C.

  December, 1941

  Soaking in his steaming bath, a pungent Cuban stogie clenched in his strong white teeth, Ambassador Tai Shing Tang knew that, in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, today’s meeting at the White House was clearly going to be the most important meeting of his young diplomatic life. A handsome young man, he was possessed of a finely boned face and gleaming jet-black hair sweeping back from a prominent forehead. A man some said was too beautiful for his own good, he was also a chap with some charm and a demonstrably formidable intellect.

  The Chinese diplomat abruptly stood up, toweled dry, and went to the window. He knew he needed to gather his wits and quickly. He must compose himself. He must be ready with intelligent responses to each and every query, all this before strolling into the Oval Office. Roosevelt would have home-field advantage; that much was sure. The old lion would be ready for him, this young Chinese upstart, fresh from the playing fields of Eton, Le Rosey, Cambridge, and Oxford. His academic pedigree was a match for any in this town. But he also knew that the aristocratic American president always placed character high above pedigree.

  He smiled in spite of himself. The brilliantly educated new ambassador was a man of many diverse talents. But he was also a man of secrets. Secrets he must guard with his very life, which he must protect at all costs. Generational secrets as well as his own. His was the first ray of light to shine on a family that had operated in the shadows for five centuries. The Tangs literally knew where all the bodies were buried because it was the Tang Triad that had put them all there in the first place.

  On a more personal level, one of Tiger’s best-kept secrets was that although he was privately ridiculed by his enemies as something of a dandy, a fop, he was in fact a kung fu master, one of the Highest Order. His ancestors, monks of the Triad Society, had all practiced this highly specialized form of physical self-defense. This to counter the torture and mass murder they had long suffered at the hands of the sadistic Manchu emperors.

  They had perfected the art for themselves in great secrecy; they called it kung fu. The Dark Arts, some called it. Tiger himself owed his high position in the society known as the Triad as a “red pole” or “enforcer”—all was due to his almost inhuman prowess in the art of kung fu. He could, in fact, kill you blindfolded with one hand tied behind his back and only his ears and nose to guide him.

  Although Tiger could never reveal this fact, he actually had a gourmand’s taste for hot blood. He liked a good fight any old time. And there had been times when the dictates of his circumstances had caused him to take desperate measures. Permanent measures. Otherwise, he was the consummate, perfectly well-mannered gentleman dressed in the finest bespoke haberdashery that Savile Row could offer.

  Of all the many Chinese secret societies, none had wielded greater power for longer than his family, the Triad. Mentioned in nearly every history book of the Chinese peoples, their members were bound together by an intricate system of secret oaths, rituals, passwords, ceremonial intermingling of their blood. And, of course, the ancient and mystical Chinese arts of mind control, serving to weld the disparate members of the clan together with unbreakable bonds.

  During the long and arduous years of preparation he’d endured under his father at the ancestral home in Foochow, in Fukien Province, he had learned many things. But the one that had been hammered into his thick skull was that he would have to hide the fierce Tiger burning inside him. Let no man catch a glimpse of the smoldering coal of power that was the engine at the very core of his very being, his soul.

  It was the fire of ancient warriors running in his blood.

  Just as the Mafia was founded by Giuseppe Mazzini in Palermo, Sicily, in 1860 as a guerrilla force to drive out a foreign ruler and unite with mainland Italy in the name of patriotism and liberty, so, too, had the earliest of the Triad Societies come into existence in Fukien Province in the latter part of the seventeenth century.

  His direct monk ancestors had been valiant resistance fighters against the alien oppression of the Manchus, the “barbarian” tribesmen. Godless creatures who had swept across the Great Wall of China and in 1644 defeated the ruling native Ming Dynasty of Emperors to set up their own Ch’ing Dynasty. Legend dates the founding of the first Triad Society to a militant group of one hundred twenty-eight Buddhist monks at a monastery near Foochow in Fukien Province in 1674.

  Such was the largely unheralded birth of Tiger’s extended family nearly five hundred years earlier.

  Before they started writing their history in blood and making a fearful name for themselves.

  * * *

  —

  Now, as he began to fulfill his American mission, his destiny, driving himself ever deeper and deeper into the freshly bleeding heart of his new ally, this country newly under siege, he would take pains to insinuate himself into the bleeding heart of America. Wounded, yes, but possessed of a force still so mighty and powerful as to be the world’s only hope to defy and deny the Axis Powers now conquering Europe. And then there was China. The only country in the world at that moment that perhaps hated the Japanese even more than the Americans.

  Yes, China. He would fulfill his mandate. He would make China and, indeed, himself indispensable to President Roosevelt. He would make a great and trusted friend of the staunch and valiant American president. Shoulder to shoulder they would stand. It would be—yes, he knew it—it would be a Grand Alliance, with the Triad Society providing the steel hand of vengeance, wielded against those who would try to humble America.

  He straightened up to his full height of six feet three inches and brushed his pomaded black hair straight back from the high forehead with two silver military brushes. The suit was good, he saw, a bespoke chalk-striped grey flannel from his Savile Row tailors in London, Huntsman & Co. He straightened his tie. The tie was good, too, a well-worn number from Sydney Sussex, his college at Cambridge. But something was off. What was it? Ah. The bulge under his left arm was going to be a problem. His Nambu 8mm automatic pistol was at issue.

  Would the White House Secret Service guys dare to frisk him, to pat him down?

  He smiled. Of course they would.

  He pulled the automatic from his leather shoulder holster and fondled it, as if it were some iconic piece of art from the Ming Dynasty.

  For the last ten years, the little black Nambu had provided him with a small measure of security. Tiger Tang, as he was known in the provinces and at home, had his enemies’ blood on his hands. Enough to float a bloody sampan on! He was, without ever drawing attention to the fact, an enforcer.

  At home, he never traveled anywhere without his Nambu and several well-armed bodyguards as well. His family had many enemies in Beijing, after all, both within the government and without. He sat atop a powerful family, one with deep and secret tentacles reaching inside the Chinese government and even to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek himself. The man whose power and influence had swiftly elevated himself to such a position of immense power despite all the protests that he was far too young and too inexperienced in statecraft, much less world affairs.

  His enemies in the press, the Asahi Shibumi newspaper, and the Party and elsewhere had screamed that his sudden elevation by Chiang Kai-shek was an outrage. Those enemies had been silenced by soldiers of his family, of course, permanently. In a manner befitting the chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang. Not to mention the Tang Triad Society, his family’s own secret police.

  They had been laid to rest, yes. But not necessarily in peace.

  Still, the Tiger considered that, here in Washington, in America, the Ch
inese ambassador would have formidable security around him at all times. Here at the official residence and at the embassy and wherever he traveled . . . including the White House.

  He removed his jacket.

  The Nambu would have to go. Carrying a concealed weapon into the Oval Office for a meeting with Roosevelt was decidedly a bad idea. China and the Americans were going to war. Together, he would tell Roosevelt, the new allies would roll up the Japanese and push them into the sea. . . .

  Somewhat wistfully, he unfastened the shoulder holster, removed it, and placed it in the top drawer of his dresser. He had a new life now. This was a new day. He was no longer Tiger Tang, a dangerous man-about-town in Beijing. He was now Ambassador Tang, cultured diplomat. His Excellency. America’s most formidable ally in the war against their common enemy. History was in the making. Before he’d left Mainland China, he had vowed to represent his emperor and his country to the very best of his considerable abilities.

  The ambassador grabbed his worn leather briefcase and made his way to the vast kitchens, a sudden desire for hot black coffee having arisen. He was hungry, too, and he then wanted to get outside in the frosty air, pull it deep into his lungs.

  He wanted to go for a long brisk walk, somewhere where he could think for an hour or so in private, alone with his swirling sea of thoughts. He would never admit it, of course, but there were times, like this morning, when the enormity of what was happening threatened to overwhelm him. Tiger Tang willfully slowed his breathing down to meditation rate and recited the comforting verses of the William Blake poem that he had come to revere while at Cambridge. . . .