The Great Destroyers

by Caroline Tung Richmond

  It takes a lot of back and forth with the National Guard before they take my request seriously. First, they try to take Sam, Peter, and me into custody for stealing federal property and attacking their soldiers. Then they consider dropping me off at the hospital because I was never formally discharged and they don’t want to risk me falling into another coma while in their custody. Finally, after a lot of convincing, they let me place a single call, and I decide to ring up the one person who actually has some clout in this arena.

  Senator June Appleby.

  I dial for the operator to patch me through to the senator’s office, using the special extension she gave me back at the repair shop the night this first started. The receptionist pauses when I give her my name, but after she has recovered somewhat, I get a direct line to the senator. I proceed to spill everything to her—about Lidiya’s innocence, about Sam’s video camera to prove it, about why we had to stop the attack before Lidiya got hurt or worse.

  Within twenty minutes, Appleby sends a car to pick us up. We make a quick pit stop at the hospital, where I assure my dad that I’m fine. We drop Peter off while we’re there before Sam and I are brought to speak to the senator herself. I figure that we’ll head to her office, but the driver must get mixed up on the way over.

  “Isn’t the Capitol Building in the other direction?” I ask him.

  “Just following orders here,” he replies.

  Sam and I frown at each other as we roll up to the gate that encircles the White House. The last time we were here, the two of us were dressed to the nines for a fancy dinner, but now we’re covered in sweat and have a bad case of nerves.

  “Maybe Senator Appleby is in a meeting with the president,” I think aloud.

  “Guess we’ll find out,” Sam says, drumming his fingers on his knee.

  “Let me do the talking in there.” I can tell that he’s anxious. Heck I am too, but I’m the one who dragged him into this. “I’ll explain that this whole thing was my idea.”

  “Last time I checked, we were both throwing ourselves at the National Guard,” he says, his trademark humor nowhere in sight.

  We enter through the West Wing, and we’re seated in a windowless lobby and told to wait. A beverage bot wheels up to us with a logo of the White House printed on its sides. It offers hot coffee and water from two different taps, along with mugs and glasses stacked on its flat top. I pour myself some water, but I don’t take a sip. I just grip the cup in my hands while I stare around the place. There’s a grandfather clock ticking away in the corner, next to a marble bust of FDR sitting atop a pedestal. All the furnishings look like they could belong in a museum, and then there’s Sam and me in our dirty clothes.

  My pulse is finally starting to slow after the nonstop action of the last couple of hours, but it picks right back up when an older woman in her forties, smartly dressed with a string of pearls around her neck, comes to fetch us.

  “Right this way, please. They’re ready for you,” the president’s secretary, Mrs. Lincoln, says.

  They?

  Sam and I step inside the Cabinet Room, a sun-filled space with butter-yellow curtains and a portrait of James Madison hanging over the fireplace, which seems to watch over the proceedings. A huge oval table takes up most of the room, with twenty leather chairs in its orbit. About half the seats are occupied, and every pair of eyes is trained on Sam and me. The two of us take the open chairs at the end of the table while I glance over our audience. The participants are overwhelmingly male aside from Senator Appleby. She gives me a nod.

  Seated across from her, I see two more faces that I recognize—President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson. My back goes straight at the sight of them, and I really wish that I were wearing something more formal than my sweaty uniform. Or had a shower at least.

  President Kennedy sits in the middle of the table, directly opposite from me, with his hands knitted together in front of him. Vice President Johnson is beside him, leaning back in his chair with his cheek cradled in one hand. I get the sense that they’ve both had a long night and wouldn’t mind catching up on sleep.

  Senator Appleby makes the introductions, rattling off names and titles that I don’t really recognize, but I get the point that everyone here is an adviser to the White House.

  “If time allowed, I would’ve spoken to both of you in private before bringing you in here,” Senator Appleby addresses Sam and me directly, “but since you’re claiming to have evidence that proves Lidiya Federova’s innocence, then we are ready to see it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” My voice comes out high-pitched, and I have to tell myself to relax. I’m not the one on trial here and yet my fingers tremble while I reach for Sam’s backpack and pull out the camera bot. I hand the device to Sam and ask him to get it up and running.

  “Right away,” Sam whispers before nudging me back. “Looks like they’re waiting on you.”

  I notice the vice president staring at me, which makes me gulp.

  “Seems like the two of you caused some ruckus down at the Mall. Care to fill us in on what happened?” Johnson says in his slow Texan drawl.

  “Well, sir …” I fumble for what to say next. Where do I even start? The National Mall? No, I need to backpedal further than that. “As you all probably know, I got hurt at the final match of the Games and was taken to the hospital, where I’ve been laid up until a few hours ago. When I woke up, I was told that Lidiya Federova had poisoned me, but the Soviets were refusing to turn her over. Then Sam showed up with proof that Lidiya wasn’t the one behind this. She’d been framed.” I swallow at the dryness in my throat, but I barrel onward. “By Zhu Rushi of Team China.”

  Murmurs flood the room. Heads snap from me to Kennedy and Johnson, who exchange a few words before the vice president speaks up again.

  “That’s a big claim to make, Miss Linden,” he says, sitting forward now. “What exactly is this proof?”

  “I have it right here, sir,” Sam chimes in. “We caught the footage all on my video bot. It’s my brother’s actually.” He stumbles over his words for the first time since I’ve known him, but he definitely has a good excuse. I silently send him encouragement. “I loaned it to Jo because she thought that someone was setting her up for poisoning the Reds. We figured it would be a long shot to capture anything, but—” He gestures at the bot, which he has set on the table and pointed toward the wall. “It worked.”

  “Now, let’s back up a minute here,” the vice president says. “Zhu Rushi was also poisoned at a match. So you’re implying that she ingested her own toxin?”

  “We don’t know that, sir. That’s something I hope will be investigated further,” I say. “But I do know from this video that Rushi did slip something into my drink ahead of the final match.”

  “Where did this happen? At the dining hall?” asks Senator Appleby.

  “No, in my dorm room.” They’re all looking at me again, and I feel myself flush. “Rushi and I were neighbors, and she showed up at my door before the final match. She said that she didn’t believe the rumors that I had poisoned her and wanted to wish me good luck. Then she offered me tea.”

  “And you drank it?” one of the advisers quizzes me.

  “I did,” I say, fighting to steady my voice. I know how all of it sounds, how naive I must have been, how idiotic I was to even socialize with a Communist. I’m guessing a few of these advisers are silently considering if I’m a Commie myself since they all know that my mom was Chinese.

  Senator Appleby looks at Sam. “Is that video ready, young man?”

  Sam dims the lights before he switches on the bot’s projector setting. The room falls silent as everyone watches the clip play out. There’s Rushi preparing the mugs. There I go to fetch the sugar. And there she is pouring the powder into my cup.

  The men start pointing and talking to one another fast, and before long, the room swells with their heated voices. Senator Appleby has to stand up to quiet them.

  “It’s clear from what we’ve s
een that Zhu Rushi poisoned Jo—not Lidiya as we’d suspected,” she starts out. “But let’s not forget that we discovered a tube in Lidiya’s personal affects with trace amounts of the toxin. Could it be possible that the two of them were working together?”

  “Or maybe Rushi planted that tube in Lidiya’s bag,” I offer. Like what she must’ve done to me with the vial that Malcolm discovered in my drawer. “She’s an official fighter of the Games, so her badge gets her special access everywhere—at the Pavilion and in the stadium.”

  Senator Appleby considers this a moment. “Quite true, but even if Rushi wasn’t in cahoots with Lidiya, I’m inclined to believe that she must’ve been working with someone else. A crime like this requires finesse. For instance, how did she get the poison in the first place? It wasn’t something that she could’ve bought at the corner store. And her age is something to consider as well. She’s fourteen years old. Could someone have ordered her to carry out these crimes?”

  President Kennedy grasps ahold of this last thought and finally offers a couple of his own. “I think it’s safe to say that we must treat the Chinese with caution. They can’t be trusted, not even a fourteen-year-old like Rusee.”

  I flinch and look down at my fingernails, not only because he butchered her name but because of what he said before that. That he can’t trust the Chinese. Does that mean that he lumps me in with all the Maoists? I study his profile, wondering what he really thinks about me, but then I look away. Maybe I don’t want to know the answer.

  Senator Appleby turns to me again. “Jo, you know Rushi better than anyone else here. Could she have had an accomplice? Perhaps her teammate?”

  Honestly, I can’t remember the name of Rushi’s teammate or the last time I even saw him since he got eliminated. But I can certainly think of someone else who might be of interest.

  “You should look into a woman named Envoy Yu. She’s a member of the Chinese delegation, and she has really stuck to Rushi like glue. She even stayed in the room next to Rushi’s at the dormitory.”

  Senator Appleby jots all this down onto her notepad. “Mr. President, I would recommend that we look into this immediately. We’ve had four fighters total poisoned at these Games, and we must find out if Team China is behind all of them.”

  But before Kennedy can reply, the vice president brings up more questions.

  “Here’s what’s bothering me,” Johnson says. “Why would this Rushi girl target other Communists? And why in the world would she poison herself?”

  That seems to be the question of the day, but once again no one has an answer for it. I only have more questions to toss onto the pile, like why would Rushi try to frame me for poisoning Lukas, Lidiya, and herself—but then blame my own poisoning on Lidiya?

  No one seems to know, which makes me want to scream. Aren’t these men supposed to be the best and brightest in the country?

  “Is this Zhu Rushi stable?” one of the advisers brings up. “Mentally stable, I mean. You know how girls her age can get. Unbalanced. Unhinged. Then add in all the Commie propaganda that she has been fed back in China.”

  The people around him—the men—start to nod.

  “Rushi wasn’t unhinged,” I say, the words tumbling out of my mouth because I can’t believe that they’re agreeing with this idea. They can’t put the blame on Rushi’s age or that she’s a girl or that she’s Chinese. That explanation is far too simple and, if I’m being honest, really lazy. Most teenage girls don’t poison their enemies. The same goes with Chinese people.

  Everyone is looking at me again, but Senator Appleby stands up to diffuse the tension.

  “Now, gentlemen, I don’t think we ought to blame this on a simple case of teenage hormones,” she says, for which I’m incredibly grateful. “We all may have done a few things in our youth that we’ve come to regret, but how many of us were poisoning our peers? Lukas Sauer is dead because of that.”

  Kennedy and Johnson dip their heads toward each other again, exchanging a back-and-forth, until the president looks up. “Where is Team China now? They haven’t left for the airport yet, have they?”

  “They were supposed to fly out this evening,” Senator Appleby says.

  “Bring them back for questioning. Now,” the president replies urgently.

  More nods go around the room, and a couple of the advisers make a quick exit, most likely to carry out the new orders.

  Following that, the vice president gestures at Sam and me. “That’s all we need from you two for now. We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.”

  Sam releases a sigh now that our interrogation is over, but I’m not done with them yet.

  “What’s going to happen to Rushi? To Lidiya?” I ask, remaining seated.

  “That’ll get ironed out in due time,” says the vice president, which doesn’t answer my question at all.

  “What about the Games’ title? Shouldn’t the results be nullified?” I press. I know this is likely a long shot considering the IC didn’t toss out the other matches, but I have to ask it.

  Sam clears his throat awkwardly while Senator Appleby pipes up again. “I’ll be speaking to the IC about that. Now, thank you again for your time, Jo. I’m sure you want to rest after everything you’ve been through.”

  I hear the dismissal in her tone and not long after that Mrs. Lincoln returns to lead us outside, where a military truck will drive us to the hospital. Sam and I climb into the back, and the vehicle rumbles through the gate to exit onto the public street. Only then do I think over everything that has happened today, from waking up in the hospital to stealing a Goliath to fighting Lidiya Federova and then to meeting with the most powerful people in the country at the White House of all places.

  And I haven’t even had dinner yet.

  “At least that’s over with,” Sam says. He slouches in his seat, looking exhausted, but his mouth twitches up as he spots the Capitol in the distance. “And we stopped World War III from kicking off today.”

  I trail a finger against the window glass, staring out at the government buildings that we pass but not really seeing them. My mind is elsewhere. “What do you think will happen next?”

  “My best guess? They’re going to throw the book at Rushi. Conspiracy. Espionage. Attempted murder. Anything else you want to add?”

  I think about that question the rest of the way to the hospital.

  Anything else you want to add?

  The thought comes faster than a heartbeat.

  I want answers.

  When we get back to the hospital this time, I’m taken up to my room in a wheelchair even though I’m feeling fine enough to walk. The doctors scold me for overexerting myself and putting my body under so much strain, which means that they’ll have to keep me longer for further observation.

  “You’re welcome by the way,” I mutter after the docs depart my room. If I hadn’t “overexerted” myself today, we might be heading for underground bunkers right about now because Washington would’ve turned into a hot zone.

  As soon as everyone has cleared out, my dad starts pushing his armchair across the floor and toward the door, leaving Peter and me to stare at him.

  “What’re you doing?” I ask. “Trying to steal the furniture?”

  “I’m blocking the way so that the two of you will have to stay put. No more of that sneaking out and causing a commotion all over the city,” Dad says dryly before he plunks himself into the chair, arms crossed.

  I hold my breath and wait for his lecture to come. He has never been much of a shouter, but he can sure lay it on thick when he thinks I’ve botched something up big-time. But to my surprise, Dad doesn’t say much of anything. His eyes skip right over Peter and me, and they zero in on the television set behind us. It’s still playing the news, and it just so happens that Sam, Peter, and I are the stars of it.

  “Look at that!” Peter gasps. The TV channel has somehow gotten footage of the three of us bolting down the National Mall in our stolen Goliaths and chasing after L
idiya. I guess the whole country now knows what we were up to.

  “So which one of you bozos took down the Federova girl?” Dad asks.

  “That was Jo,” Peter says, pointing at me.

  I bite the inside of my cheek because this time I’m sure that the lecture will come. Dad is going to tell me how irresponsible I’ve been and how I put Peter’s life in danger on top of everything else, but strangely enough he looks pensive, which isn’t a word I’d ever use to describe him.

  Dad chuckles out of the blue. “You really got Lidiya in the end, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe,” I say, trying to smile, but my mouth doesn’t quite cooperate. “Although what I really want is that championship trophy.”

  “The IC better reschedule the match. You would’ve won it,” Peter says, frustrated.

  “Guess we’ll see—” I’m about to add squirt, but I stop myself because I remember how he feels about it. This is going to take some time to get used to. “But they haven’t disqualified the results yet so who knows what they’re thinking?”

  “Turn up the volume. I want to hear this,” Dad says suddenly.

  I look at the screen again to see a live shot of National Airport, a few miles down the road from here. The camera zooms in on Rushi. She’s stepping out of an airplane, followed by a small troop of FBI agents. Envoy Yu pops up behind them, flanked by her own set of agents, and she won’t stop talking. I can’t hear a thing of what she’s saying, but I can only imagine that she’s pleading to make a phone call to her beloved Chairman. Rushi, however, stays quiet. She keeps her head down, but she can’t hide how pale her face has gotten. It’s easy to see that she’s scared.

  Well, good.

  She should be scared after what she has done. Lukas is dead because of her actions. Like Sam mentioned before, I hope the IC throws the book at her.

  But the question nags at me.

  Why did she do it?

  “You’re talking to yourself,” Peter tells me with a nudge.