by Fritz Galt
Then he caught a glimpse of the tall figure walking along a parallel alley.
That did it.
Brad turned to run, but lunged into a clothesline, upended a cart of bananas, and scared a young woman who was bringing home groceries on her bicycle. He picked himself up and rushed with stiff, cash-laden legs toward the sounds of traffic.
Once again on a busy street, he waved for a taxi. One pulled to the curb at once, and he hopped in.
“Where to, fellow sir?” the driver said.
“Take me anyplace. And fast.”
The taxi pulled into traffic, but had to brake immediately. A limousine flying a Chinese flag had entered the intersection without looking. Then it sped off in the direction of the airport.
“Big shot.” The cabbie tsked disapprovingly at the fast disappearing car. It didn’t even have a license plate.
Brad took a closer look at the taxi driver. He was young. Was he even of legal age? And where had that English come from? If he had learned it in school, then the state of English language education was deplorable.
“How do you come to know English?” he asked.
While other cars were still recovering from the limo, the driver rocketed into the street. He continued chatting without looking over his shoulder. “We all learning English because Olympic.”
That made sense. “Who is your teacher?”
“Very bad teacher. She read from a book. You speak good English.”
“Thank you.” He could take a compliment.
“You teach English?”
Brad took a quick assessment of his situation. “Better than that. I’m a native English speaker.”
“You want job?”
Employment would be perfect cover for his stay in that dusty, exotic city. It might even get him a place to stay, a base of operations from which to find May’s father, and thus May.
“Yeah, as a matter of fact I could use a job.”
The driver hung an abrupt right turn. They pulled onto a wide boulevard that was lined with willow trees. Brad was heading off in a new direction in life.
Brad sat in the back of the taxi bursting with pride. As physically and emotionally bruised as he was, his giant stature among the diminutive Chinese and his advanced university degree, though incomplete in his mind, gave him a sense of superiority.
Suddenly, he was struck by a pang of guilt. Richter’s America-first theory was all too attractive. He looked around desperately for a way to prove that the Chinese might be his evolutionary superior.
Just then, a young woman stepped off a curb without even looking and was nearly creamed by their cab. Okay, bad example.
The driver pulled alongside a dingy block of what looked like industrial storage warehouses. He pointed to a door. This time, Brad had the fare covered.
“There you go, my good man. And here’s a little extra for your services.” He threw in a few spare won as a tip.
At first the driver protested and tried to return two of the bills. Then Brad said, “Consider it a finder’s fee for the job.”
“Okay, mister. So you insist.” The boy reluctantly pocketed the money.
The whole mood of their relationship had changed on a dime. Had Brad just insulted the guy? Perhaps the patronizing, colonial tone in his voice didn’t sit well in communist China. Where had he picked it up, anyway?
The driver pointed with his nose at one of the buildings. “Just go in that door.”
Brad crossed the sidewalk and stepped through an archway into a small alcove. It was austere, the kind of place only visited by trash blowing in off the street. It was hard to believe that students passed through there every day. He found a door that opened into an office.
A plump Chinese man in a white shirt and black tie sat sweating behind a pile of papers. He looked up at Brad and waited for the foreigner to explain why he was there.
Brad nearly gagged on his first morsel of humble pie. “I’m looking for a job,” he croaked. “I’m an English teacher.”
It hurt to sink from his elevated status as a scientist.
“Who send you?”
“Oh, uh, the taxi driver,” Brad said, and pointed out the window.
“You have paper?”
“You mean writing paper? Oh, you mean papers, as in ‘Where are your papers?’”
He had never stooped so low, having obtained an illegal document to enter a country then lied about his job qualifications. On the other hand, he had a higher moral purpose for being there. He had to save May from Liang.
He pulled out his Hong Kong residence card with the Chinese business visa and pushed it across the desk.
Shoot, who was he kidding? He had about as much chance at tracking down May as finding the missing link.
By chance she will come to you, just as before, the calm voice said in his ear.
Oh no! How could he get rid of that schizoid thing?
“Listen Xen-hat, or whoever you are. I’m not interested. So buzz off!”
Crap. He was talking out loud.
The administrator peered at him over the top of his reading glasses. “You speak good English.”
“Er, thank you.”
The fat functionary scowled and turned to stuff the residence card into a safe behind his desk. Then he pulled out an official looking form and a pen. “Tell me your name.”
Oh, man, what was it? The guy had already taken his residence card.
“Evelyn, Levelyn, Devlyn Westenloeb.”
“Please spell that.” The man looked up impatiently.
God he wished he had that residence card. This was impossible.
“Spell it,” the man repeated, puzzled by the delay in response.
“Uh, spell that B-R-A-D-L-E-Y W-E-S-T.”
After another few probing questions such as his date and place of birth, the man shoved the form into an envelope, called in his tea server from the next room, and gave it to her.
Brad heard her start up a motor scooter outside and wondered about the form. “Where is she taking it?”
“The PSB.” The man cleared his throat. “The Public Security Bureau.”
That sounded safe enough, unless security in China meant something different than in America.
“I will show you sleep quarter.” The man rose to leave.
Brad followed him down the flagstone walkway between cement buildings that smelled of urine. A uniformed old man stood at the entrance to one building with laundry hanging out the windows.
Before entering, the administrator pressed an index finger against the side of his nose and, with a sudden burst of air, shot a stream of snot out his left nostril. Then he casually wiped his hand on his pants and opened the door for Brad.
Brad made a mental note to avoid door handles. He followed the man up several flights of stairs and then along a darkened corridor. Rooms on either side were stuffed with oriental men and women squatting around reading newspapers, puffing on cigarettes, and cooking food on hotplates.
The man took him to the end of the hall and showed him a room with a perfunctory gesture of the hand. That would be Brad’s dorm room.
It was conveniently located right next to the toilet.
His roommates were gone for the moment, but they had left behind three unmade beds and stacks of dirty clothes. He couldn’t wait to meet them.
Behind him, the administrator cleared his throat. Brad took a cautionary step aside, but nothing happened.
Then the guy bowed low and left.
Brad’s room looked out onto the courtyard at the white tiles of another building. He ventured across the hall and looked out his neighbor’s window.
Below was the wide four-lane. There, hoards of students biked past the building. Another similar cram school was located across the street, its sign advertising “Good English Speak Here.”
Well, there he was. Right back in academia.
May had many duties as head of security at the Three Gorges Dam. But the only duty she truly liked was flying insp
ection tours over the site. She climbed with mounting excitement up to the cockpit of her delta-winged fighter jet. From the top rung, she turned to survey the rows of troops and staff that had come to see her off.
She threw a salute to her minions, and they reciprocated. Then she settled into the cockpit and closed the canopy over her head. Her staff dispersed beneath her and hurried back to their assigned posts.
She sighed and watched them go.
Just the logistics of security before the opening ceremony were overwhelming. Not only did she have to prepare the military for the normal types of terrorist attack from air, land and sea, but she also needed to screen the two thousand workers who entered the facility each day, check the ships, barges and river cruises that passed through the new system of locks, vet each visitor invited to the ceremony, and triple-check the safety of the dam itself.
But she was going to put all those responsibilities aside for the next hour. An inspection tour meant time alone to her thoughts. She fired up the engine and began to perform her cockpit check.
Security was a job for a manager, not an air force pilot with dreams of entering the space program. But Liang had heaped the responsibility upon her, and she had had little choice but accept it.
As he had explained it to her, “The only way to avoid the corruption of local officials for the past decade was to exert direct Central Government control over every step of the process. I need someone I can trust to make the dam secure.”
“Why should you trust me?” she had asked.
“Because you have your father to think about.”
She had to fight back angry tears. Liang didn’t hesitate to intimidate people. Now he was using it on her.
Between tight lips, she radioed ground control for clearance to taxi. Soon, she was rolling along, putting the hangar far behind her.
As long as she did Liang’s bidding, her father was free to speak his mind. Not that the official news agency printed anything he said. In fact, she hadn’t heard from him since her return to China. It made her anxious, but she was not surprised. He wouldn’t know where to find her. And how could she find him?
She had phoned his worksite in Fengjie, but the number was disconnected. A quick flyby of the region the previous day showed her why. Not only the shop that had housed his excavation site was gone, but also the entire street where she had grown up had been obliterated to prepare for rising water.
Being raised by a single parent could have meant a solitary childhood, but kids always knew where to find fun. And there had been plenty of that on the streets of old Fengjie.
Just like the city’s famous red and yellow day lilies that bloomed and died in a single day, Fengjie had flourished for two millennia, only to be gone in an instant.
She sighed. Such was the price of progress. But what a heavy toll.
She approached the end of the runway and contacted the tower for permission to take off. Permission was granted immediately. So she taxied into takeoff position.
She had dutifully complied with Liang’s wishes. Stepping into her new role required wearing different uniforms. Sometimes she wore the business suit required to hire safety consultants and staff. Other times, she wore her camouflage fatigues as she assembled the People’s Liberation Army elements required to secure the area. And on other occasions, she donned a construction helmet and work suit and explored the huge generators within the dam.
The previous night, she even had to wear the negligee that Liang had bought her on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. It was not fun, but a duty.
And then, her favorite part, she donned her aviator’s suit and helmet and climbed into a J-10 fighter jet to patrol the length of the reservoir as far west as Chongqing.
She paused for a moment to line up the nose of the jet, then she released the brakes and pushed up the throttle. The roar in her ears was powerful and exhilarating.
The jet gathered speed with tremendous acceleration, and as she felt the wings gaining lift, she gently pulled the control stick aft.
The nose rotated upward, and the plane shot up in the air. She felt like a hawk with the lift of her wings pulling her higher.
The sky was her territory. There she could live in three dimensions. The only time she had come close to flying while still on earth was with that cowboy in Tucson. For all too brief a moment, he had lifted her out of the tangled mess of her existence. Those few, intensely crazy days in Tucson had given her some of the sweetest memories of her life.
She closed her eyes briefly and tried not to think about him.
She had attempted to show him how it felt flying high in the leased helicopter. He had enjoyed it. She could tell from the way he had rolled his eyes and held his mouth, probably trying to prevent a scream of joy.
Then Liang had brought them back down to earth.
That was exactly it. Liang wanted her earth-bound, shackled to her duties as his future wife, unable to soar on her own.
The sun was glinting in her face. It was the end of the day. Tears glistened in the corners of her eyes. Steep mountains fell off to the wide, meandering river below. It all looked so beautiful from a distance.
But soon she would come down to earth, and it would be forever. Securing the Three Gorges Dam would be her last mission.
Liang would make sure of that.
Chapter 17
Brad stood at the front of his first classroom and tried to estimate the caliber of the students who filed in and dutifully took their seats. Judging from their eagerness to please, they seemed to be from the service sector. It was difficult to figure out their ages, but most were in their twenties or thirties, and a few might have been older than that.
For the first time in China, he had access to a group of English speakers. How could he glean information from them while appearing to be teaching them English?
He could tell nothing from their blank expressions. Unlike American students, they acted neither entitled nor jaded. They were simply used to taking orders.
First, he needed for them to open up.
“Hello,” he began with a friendly smile. “My name is John Q. Public.”
That elicited no response. But, he had prepared his lesson well.
“Okay, then. Let’s start with social etiquette. What do you say if I say, ‘Thank you?’”
They looked puzzled.
He pointed to himself. “I say, ‘Thank you.’” Then he pointed at the class. “You say, ‘You are very welcome.’”
The lights seemed to switch on in their heads.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You are wery wercome.”
“Thanks for the dog. He was delicious.” Then, he pointed to his students.
“You are wery wercome,” they said eagerly.
“I’ve enjoyed our night of tempestuous fornication,” he said, and again pointed to his students.
“You are wery wercome.” This time, they were even more enthusiastic.
He gave himself a pat on the back. He always did have a knack for teaching. But, enough frivolity. He had an anthropologist to find.
“Now, can anybody tell me the names of some famous rivers in China, preferably with strange stone formations?”
Only one brave soul dared to raise a hand. A gawky young woman stood up beside her desk. “Professor John, China building largest stone dam in word. Impotan dam. Impotan to China future.”
Her sincerity touched him.
“Thank you.”
“You are wery wercome,” the group responded.
“Can someone tell me the name of this important dam and river?” He had heard of China’s three major rivers, the Yellow River, the Yangtze and the Pearl River.
The young woman stood up again. “Professor, the dam name is Tree Canyons. It will stop the Chang Jiang. It wery big,” she insisted.
Tree Canyons, huh? Well, that would probably be of no help to him. He wasn’t getting very far using his class as a geography resource, but at least he had finally been elevated
to the rank of professor.
After struggling through the day with excruciatingly slow students, Brad dragged himself back to his dorm room. What kind of phony-baloney could he teach them the next day?
He neared his room and caught a sharp whiff of something on fire. Sure enough, a pan sat on a glowing hot plate in the middle of his room. Burnt kernels of uncooked rice smoldered at the bottom of the pan.
He rushed over and unplugged the hotplate.
Jeez, where were his roommates?
That did it. He wheeled out of the room and headed down to the street.
He had some money in his pocket. He wasn’t going to lower himself to Chinese dormitory cuisine.
He passed shop after shop brimming with the most sexy and appetizing lines of products: car parts, plumbing fixtures, and cigarettes. Evidently, shopping wasn’t the national pastime that it was in America. Entire families fed their faces while squatting on small stools out front of their shops. He watched their chopsticks pick up noodles with ease. It smelled good, but where could he get some for himself?
At last he stumbled upon a street of restaurants. Vendors sold breads freshly deep-fried in their small, ramshackle kitchens. Restaurants with their paper lanterns and lion statues advertised exotic delicacies using laminated photographs with English captions. They served eel, fish heads, live shrimp, duck tongues and donkey dumplings. He was pretty sure he knew where the dumplings came from, and he bet a lot of the poor beasts were singing soprano.
He walked the entire block and realized that there wasn’t a single dish he could stomach. It was pitiful. May’s life hung in the balance, and he couldn’t even enter a restaurant without fainting.
He needed to call in reinforcements. Namely, Earl “Skeeter” Skitowsky. Even with Earl’s shaky command of the Chinese language, it would still be a vast improvement over nothing.
Along the way, Brad had noticed several bubble-shaped telephone booths. People seemed to be using coded calling cards to pay for their calls. He had noticed several shops advertising the cards. All he needed was to buy one and ring up Skeeter for help.
