Rings of Fire

by Gregory Shepherd

  “I’m from a dirt-poor family in Kentucky. We practically had to draw straws to see who ate at night, so I’ve never understood this whole ‘white privilege’ thing. Or the ethnic sensitivity thing, for that matter, not that I give a rip what color anyone is. I wouldn’t know sensitivity if it bit me in the ass. And, you know, Japan gets along fine without diversity. They don’t have the chaos you have in other places, and they don’t need to build a wall. They’ve got a giant moat around the whole damn country. Well, not anymore. That’s one thing Proctor got right.”

  Patrick checked the time and remembered something he wanted to ask.

  “Kirsten mentioned something about a conversation you had with a Chinese diplomat. That there’s more to the China Solution than meets the eye?”

  “Oh yeah, that guy. He hasn’t been around to the bar for a few days. Hope nobody heard him blabbing away to me. That’s a one-way ticket back to Beijing and probably a firing squad. He didn’t elaborate on it, so it might have just been talk, trying to impress me kind of thing. Oh, by the way, I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I’ll be going on vacation right after the Games officially end. It’s my usual time off, and I can’t stand those after-action circle jerks. I put in for leave before all this shit happened with these Nork knuckleheads. Gonna go lose some money at my favorite Macau casino.”

  Patrick nodded. He had one more question but hesitated before coming out and asking it. Finally, he blurted it out. “I’ve got to ask you. How do you get away with everything? Saying whatever you like, pissing people off left and right. I mean, what’s the saying? ‘You can catch more flies with sugar than vinegar’?”

  Phibbs relit the cigarette he had stubbed out. He took a single drag and stubbed it out again. Then he gulped the rest of his drink.

  “I don’t catch flies, Featherstone. I kill them,” he said, unexpectedly serious as he set his glass down. His tone threw Patrick off guard. “Actually, I know all sorts of shit. That Srebrenica thing I mentioned? Milosevic had help, and not just from other Serbs. That’s all I’ll say. And no matter what anyone tells you, he didn’t die of natural causes. I’ll also tell you this: if I turn up facedown in a ditch…” He left the thought unfinished and called for the waitress to bring his check, which he signed with the speed and legibility of a seismograph.

  “Well, I guess it’s time for some people to get back to work. Me? I’m going to head over to Kabukicho,” he said, referring to a notorious red-light area of Shinjuku. He bid Patrick a good night, and Patrick stared at his back, wondering exactly what Phibbs knew about whom.

  CHAPTER 35

  The White House

  August 5

  President Dillard sat at his desk rubbing his eyes with one hand and sipping dark roast with the other. He had hardly slept the night before, thanks to the latest poll numbers in the upcoming presidential election which had dramatically shifted after seventy-nine Americans, among victims from many other countries, were killed in the attack on the Yoyogi Gymnasium. One poll from the previous day had Dillard’s opponent, Jon Friel, pulling within one point as a result of his seizing on the acceptance of the China Solution as a platform plank. He had even hinted that Dillard was a racist for not accepting it. The presidential race was now a statistical tie.

  Dillard was startled out of his grim daydream by the trilling of his phone. His appointments secretary was on the line.

  “Mister President, Ambassador Wu to see you.”

  “Give me a minute.” He carried his coffee cup over to a tea trolley at the other end of the room, straightened his tie, and checked his face in the wall mirror. “Jesus,” he said out loud to the old man who stared back at him.

  “Send him in,” he said over the intercom. A moment later, in walked the Chinese ambassador. Dillard walked over to greet him.

  “Welcome, Mister Ambassador. Please have a seat.”

  “Thank you, Mister President.”

  Wu sat down at the coffee table across from Dillard. From the president’s demeanor, Wu sensed that polite chitchat was not on the agenda, so he opened his briefcase and took out a file folder.

  “Mister President, if I may get right to the point. We have new estimates on both the economic situation in North Korea as well as the number of refugees who might be expected to pour over the border into China in the event of a civil war.”

  He handed the file to Dillard.

  “As you can see, the rice crop is expected to be half of what was predicted. Here are some photos we’ve gotten of malnourished citizens.” Dillard looked first at the economic charts, then at the photos, which were shocking in their depiction of barely breathing human cadavers, the likes of which were commonplace in North Korea during the three Kim regimes. Nahm’s government had been predicated on reversing Kim Jong-un’s agricultural failures and turning the once-fertile Hamgyong and Kangwon provinces into the breadbasket of the country. Instead, Nahm had chosen a friend from his insurgency days as agricultural minister rather than someone who actually knew something about farming, with the result that the country was now approaching famine.

  Wu continued. “Chosun Restoration has increased in popularity the hungrier the population has gotten. Nahm may have succeeded in deposing Kim Jong-un, but he’s been a disaster as a leader. He needs help. He needs the China Solution, as does the entire region.”

  Dillard set down the document and photos. “Ambassador Wu, what assurance does the rest of the world have that China won’t bring back the Kim family? Or that the China Solution will be in effect for a maximum of one year?”

  Wu angled his head to one side and chuckled. “Mister President, I assure you, Kim Jong-un was never a friend of China’s. He was like an untrained dog, and we were always having to clean up after the mess he made. In terms of the duration of the China Solution, North Korea is the last place on Earth that China wants any long-term responsibility for. It is of no strategic importance, and our only interest, as I’ve said, is to prevent twenty million refugees from coming over the border. That’s the sum and substance of our interest in North Korea. It was a millstone around our necks during the Kim years, and now it threatens to be far worse. And as I indicated last time, we would be willing to fully restore aid and work with the Rising Tide government of President Nahm to put the country back on its feet. Believe me, we just want to protect our borders from being overrun. I’m sure you understand it from that perspective alone.” Wu tilted his head again and gave a knowing smile. Protecting borders had been one of Dillard’s main platform planks four years earlier.

  “I just can’t get the South China Sea out of my head for some reason,” Dillard said pointedly.

  Wu closed his eyes and let out a nose laugh. “Mister President, let me be completely frank: The South China Sea has value. North Korea is less than worthless.”

  After Wu made his exit ten minutes later, Dillard noticed that he had left the file folder of documents and photos on the coffee table, no doubt intentionally. Dillard picked up one of the photos and winced at the starving child it showed. Then he caught himself. That’s exactly the reaction Wu would have wanted.

  But what’s the catch? he found himself thinking yet again.

  ___________________

  At the next morning’s news conference, several reporters grilled Dillard on the China Solution, and the president said that although he appreciated China’s offer, he preferred to exercise restraint, given China’s track record in recent years. The same reporters were all over him with the point that every minute he waited might result in more deaths at the hands of the terrorists in Tokyo. Dillard repeated his point about exercising restraint, then fed his press secretary to the lions for the rest of the conference, claiming an urgent cabinet meeting.

  Vice President Paul Coppinger came over that afternoon for the postmortem.

  “Listen to this,” he said, reading from the evening edition of the Washington Po
st as he sat down in front of Dillard’s desk. “‘It is clear that voters are tired enough of terrorism in the Middle East. The prospect of it now spilling over from North Korea, as it appears to be doing in Japan, is the final straw. If China wants to help North Korea put an end to the terror, we should get out of their way, seems to be an increasingly common sentiment among voters. President Dillard’s implication that China might possibly be trying to expand its hegemony over Asia is falling on deaf ears.’”

  “Yeah, I saw that,” Dillard said dejectedly. “Idiot voters know jack shit about China, and I’m the only one standing in the way of them controlling the whole continent. They’re also looking to dip their chopsticks into Africa, did you know that? And I don’t care what Wu says, this bullshit move about a ‘temporary one-year protectorate’ over North Korea is just the next step in completely taking over Asia. I bet you anything the first thing they’d do is bring back the Kim family. Wu kept saying Kim Jong-un was no friend of China’s, but he was a lot more valuable to them than this President Nahm has been.”

  Coppinger nodded sympathetically, but he knew that his boss’s frustration was the result of his cratering in the polls, which was at least partially the president’s own fault. The televised debate two nights before had been a disaster. An overconfident Dillard had dismissed the advice of his handlers, Coppinger included, to prepare with several mock debates, and as a result Friel mopped the floor with him, citing statistic after statistic to support his claims, while Dillard tried to smirk him off as a lightweight flower child.

  “You’re right about you being the only bulwark against Chinese hegemony, Evan, but we need to get reelected first.”

  Dillard narrowed his eyes. “Oh shit, don’t tell me, Paul. You’re thinking I should accept this China Solution too.”

  Coppinger lowered his head to one side. “We definitely need a finger in the dike of these poll numbers. If you’re still leery about the China Solution, how about we come out with some kind of major policy announcement to counter all the negative shit? The Space Force, for example? We’ve been quiet on that lately. It might show strength of the kind voters would favor. We definitely need something after yesterday’s poll. Otherwise, we may be looking disaster in the face in November.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Dillard said, stubbing out his cigarette. “The good news is that the next debate isn’t for another few weeks, so maybe Friel’s numbers yesterday were soft.” Dillard poured them both some coffee while he thought.

  “I’ve got it,” he said, setting down the pot, a look of triumph on his face. “We’re both going to the Olympics.”

  “The Olympics? I thought your daughter was going as the U.S. rep.”

  “That won’t cut it. The public has to see you and me in a high-profile setting, something Friel can only wet dream about, and there’s nothing more high-profile this year than the Olympics. Reagan and Clinton both did it and got reelected in landslides.”

  “But what about the rules of succession? There must be something in there that says the president and vice president can’t be out of the country at the same time. And what about the terrorism going on over there? What if we’re targets?”

  “Obama and Biden were both abroad at the same time once. And we just have to be sure to duck if there’s any trouble in Tokyo. Otherwise, next in line is Jon Fucking Friel.”

  “That’s taking a helluva chance. With us and the country.”

  “We’ll be fine. We’ll be our brave and fearless selves,” he said with an ironic smile. “That’s one of our main strengths in the polls. The voters, in their infinite wisdom, see Friel’s inexperience as a weakness. We can hammer that distinction home just by showing up in Tokyo.”

  “Well, alright, but let’s make it a brief appearance and then come right home. I can’t get Friel taking the presidential oath of office out of my head if the voters in their infinite wisdom choose him instead of us.”

  CHAPTER 36

  August 5

  Almost as a way of distracting himself from his sense of helplessness over the carnage at the Yoyogi Gymnasium, not to mention his frustration with Hayashida and Proctor, Patrick looked over his notes from the past few weeks. He had gotten into the habit of jotting down stray ideas whenever they occurred to him so that he might pursue them when he had more time. He paged through his little pocket notebook and was baffled by most of what he had scribbled. “Cadenza on smartphones” one seemed to read, but he couldn’t recall what it was supposed to mean. On the opposite page, though, there was a scrawl he was able to decipher: “Bozu stress out chain smoke patriotism.” He looked out his window and recalled the look on his young Korean friend’s face the last time they had met. He took out his phone and thumbed in a text.

  “Lunch?”

  An hour later Patrick met Bozu at the Shinagawa Aquarium south of the Tokyo city center. They parked their motorcycles and climbed the steep stairs to the upper deck of the restaurant which was almost empty, since the oppressive heat had worsened and all the other customers were in the air-conditioned downstairs section. The haggard waitress who seated them managed to be polite despite being swamped in her downstairs section, and she took their orders of coffee for Bozu, Calpis for Patrick, and burgers for both. As she went off to fetch their drinks, Patrick noted the same preoccupied look on Bozu’s face as last time as he took out his cigarettes and a book of matches and fired up a Melvius. Patrick leaned in over the table.

  “What’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?” Bozu said, clearly startled by the question.

  “Something’s happening that you’re not letting me in on. The last time we met, I got a definite sense that you wanted to tell me something.”

  They stopped their conversation as the waitress brought their drinks. When she had left, Patrick continued.

  “Did something happen?”

  Bozu sighed. “I can’t say.”

  Patrick stared at him and said nothing. They waited in silence until the waitress brought their hamburgers, and Bozu hurriedly began wolfing his down, even though he had texted that he’d eaten not long before. Patrick began eating too and kept watching his friend. Halfway through the meal, he tried a different tack.

  “What did you mean last time we met when you said, ‘If someone was trying to harm your country, would you kill them?’ Was it about these attacks in Tokyo?”

  Bozu put down his half-eaten burger and lit a cigarette. “I can’t tell you,” he said, his voice piped up several keys higher than usual.

  “Are you in danger?” Patrick asked. Bozu shifted uncomfortably in his seat and used a paper napkin to wipe the sweat on his forehead, sweat that had nothing to do with the heat and humidity. Suddenly, he got up from the table. “I’m sorry, Patrick, I have to go,” he said, grabbing his cigarettes and walking quickly out of the restaurant. Patrick’s eyes followed him. He didn’t want to add to his stress, but Bozu obviously knew something about the attacks. He briefly contemplated following him at a distance but dismissed the idea. Bozu was no idiot, and he would realize immediately he was being followed. Then a book of matches on the ground where Bozu had been sitting caught his eye. Patrick held it up: “Toyama Storage.”

  ___________________

  Patrick eased his Harley down a narrow road near where the warehouses fronting the Yokohama docks meet a run-down residential area. A quick Google search had given him the location of Toyama Storage. It was now around 7 p.m., and with the normal workday over, all the warehouses except one were shuttered for the night. A light on the second floor gave Patrick all the bearings he needed. He locked his bike a block from the makeshift morgue and picked up an empty plastic soda bottle that lay on the ground. He took out his knife and cut off the top and bottom, leaving just the middle section, which he cut into a long strip, folded in half, and pocketed. He then began walking unsteadily, as if he’d had one too many in the near
by red-light district. When he was directly in front of Toyama Storage, he staggered down the alley on the side of the building and waited silently for his eyes to adjust and to see if he could pick up any bits of conversation from the second floor.

  All he could make out were muffled snippets of sentences spoken by one person, punctuated by low laughter, as if that person was making a presentation of some sort and the others were his audience. One of the skills he had learned years before in JSOC was parkour climbing, in which one made use of whatever details of a building or terrain that could be used for accessing another part of it. He and Tyler had often stumbled their way back to their barracks only to find that they had missed curfew and that everything was locked up. However, resourcefulness was the main overall lesson they were learning in their training, and it didn’t take long for them to apply parkour skills in vaulting the fence around their compound and climbing the side of the barracks building to their quarters on the third floor.

  A storm gutter ran down the side of Toyama Storage from the roof, and Patrick tugged gently on it, testing its sturdiness. It was a bit shaky, but the only other way to climb the building from the outside was by planting his feet into the almost foot-width corrugations of the aluminum siding and somehow shimmying up back and forth, hoping that he didn’t hit a wet patch and slide, or more likely, fall to the ground.

  After establishing that the storm gutter would support his full weight, he looked around one last time and began his ascent. Halfway up the building, he heard the muffled conversation inside stop suddenly, and he held onto the gutter without moving. His arms began to burn; he wasn’t in reach of any of the support braces of the gutter to use as a foothold. His muscles became more and more rubbery. Sweat poured down his face onto his hands. Just when he thought he’d have to risk a controlled fall down the side of the building, a burst of laughter came from inside. Apparently, someone had been telling an involved joke with a particularly good punch line.