by Fritz Galt
Brad looked at him with surprise. “So the dragon has nothing to do with a coup d’état?”
Sullivan shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But we can’t afford to ignore the possibility.”
“And if there is a coup d’état,” Earl added, “the world’s next superpower had better not be run by a madman, at least not by one we can’t negotiate with, bribe, or control in some way.”
“Of course, I totally understand,” Professor Nur said with a chuckle, being used to his foreign colleague’s sense of humor. “It is such a burden for America.”
“There is one more problem,” Earl said. He exchanged glances with the professor. “Professor Nur also informed me that May’s father is dead.”
Chapter 23
Brad was stunned by the news that May’s father was dead. He stumbled out of the mosque and tried to keep up with the others who were dashing back to the airport for the Three Gorges Dam. Hadn’t her father appeared in his dream that very morning, sitting on his lap in a fighter jet?
He found himself wading through stalls that sold meaningless tourist trinkets: embroidered skullcaps, Little Red Books, Mao watches.
Maybe he was being a tad selfish, but without rescuing Dr. Yu, his chances of finding May and winning her heart were substantially reduced. His image of her face was quickly being drowned out by the rising tide of other oriental faces, people he didn’t want to know or love.
With her father’s passing, so, too, would go May’s passion for life. He remembered how distraught she had been, crying on Jade’s shoulder with the letter in hand. All seemed hopeless without Dr. Yu around. But he refused to admit defeat so quickly.
He pushed through the throng of tourists. “I need some proof that he’s dead before I give up on finding her,” he said to no one in particular.
Professor Nur stopped, pivoted around, and bowed to Brad. His long gray hair fell over his eyes “I’ll prove it to you,” he said, with kindness in his voice.
“Okay.” Brad softened his tone. “How?”
The professor called after Sullivan. “May I use your phone?”
Sullivan stopped and returned with his cell.
The professor held it some distance away from his face and punched in a series of numbers. Then he handed it to Earl.
“It’s the civil records department in Chongqing. That’s the administrative capital of the Three Gorges region.”
Earl listened, spoke into the phone, and waited.
Brad sat down on the curb again. People passed in a blur. The professor sat beside him for company.
Earl covered the phone and whispered, “They haven’t found the death certificate yet.”
Something about their surroundings seemed oddly familiar to Brad, as if he had been to that town and met his companions in an earlier life. Maybe it was some story he had read in his youth.
“They found it,” Earl announced excitedly.
Brad suddenly wasn’t so sure he wanted proof. He thought of May. How would she handle the news? A mere letter from her father had driven her to despair.
“Time of death,” Earl related. “Yesterday.”
Yesterday, Brad repeated to himself. Had May even heard the news?
“Place of death,” Earl translated. “The Yangtze River.”
Fitting.
“Cause of death: drowning.”
And so it was.
Brad was devastated. What was the point of finding May any longer? The news would break her heart.
But he felt a strong sense of duty that he couldn’t shirk. Maybe she hadn’t heard the news that her father was dead. In that case, someone had to break it to her, preferably someone who cared for her.
“Take me to the Yangtze,” he said.
“Wait a second. What are we doing?” Earl reacted. He handed the phone back to Sullivan, who looked especially disheartened. “Are we crazy? They’re gonna cut the ribbon on that dam in five hours. The People’s Liberation Army must be swarming all over the place by now. And what’s more, they’re going to begin flooding that valley, if they haven’t started already.”
“It’s okay, Earl,” Sullivan said. “Brad’s got to trust his instincts. We’ll get you there and get you out.”
Then a passage from the deceased Dr. Yu’s letter hit Brad like a bolt of lightning. The old guy had made some “important discovery.”
If the old anthropologist’s view that mankind originated in China was validated, it would strike a mortal blow to his stepfather’s ambitions as well as be the crowning achievement of Dr. Yu’s career. Brad would do anything to contribute to both causes.
“I need to locate those strange limestone formations before time runs out.”
“Man, you guys are both insane,” Earl said. “It must run in the family.”
But Brad wasn’t paying attention. His mind already raced with the twin possibilities of seeing May and discrediting his stepfather.
Chapter 24
By noon, Brad and crew had said good-bye to Professor Nur in Urumqi and were on a China Eastern flight heading back east across the country. The three were bound for Wuhan, the nearest commercial airport to the Three Gorges Dam.
They were flying business class. Sullivan had charged the cost of the tickets to the CIA.
Man, Brad thought to himself, he could get used to such pampering. He looked out the window. The landscape gradually lost its gray-brown tint as it supported more vegetation.
Earl had buried his nose in the China Daily, a nationally published English-language newspaper. Brad had become acquainted with it at his cram school, but found magazine paper less scratchy.
Nevertheless, something had caught Earl’s eye. “Listen to this,” he said. “The man who’s presiding over the ribbon-cutting ceremony this afternoon is the head of the entire hydroelectric project: Liang Jiaxi.”
“Our Liang?” Brad said, skeptical. “Or is that another pun?”
“Our Liang. The article also states that Liang has done everything within his power to expedite completion of the dam, his father’s brainchild.”
“I had no idea that he was involved with dams,” Brad had to confess. “But you did. Didn’t you?” He turned to Sullivan across the aisle.
“Little Liang is walking in his father’s footsteps,” Sullivan said. “But his ambitions are greater than simply generating more electricity.”
At that moment, the pilot banked low over an impressively wide river.
“That’s it?” Earl said.
“That’s what?”
“The Yangtze.”
It was enormous. The mountains around it took his breath away, and the distances were deep and vast. So Liang was the man who would ultimately take credit for filling it up to the mountaintops. No wonder he was able to sweep Brad aside and try to bury him young. Liang was a god in his country. Brad was a schlemiel who could barely hold onto a job in a third-rate language school.
“Too bad the dam will cover up so many artifacts,” Earl said.
“Like what kind of artifacts exactly?” Brad asked, feeling the old flow of adrenalin returning to his veins.
Sullivan smiled, apparently pleased with the turn in conversation.
Earl filled Brad in. “Religious, historical artifacts. For example, one town they demolished was 2,300 years old. Then there is an intricate set of caves with Buddhist statues that will be lost unless you’re a fish at the bottom of the lake. Aside from these mountains, the caverns are some of the most interesting geological treasures to be lost.”
“Will the lake spread beyond the river valley?” Brad pointed out his window. “Look at all those forks and tributaries. Are they also slated to be inundated?”
“Oh yes,” Earl said. “In fact, they’ll be the first to flood. Much of the surrounding landscape is protected from spring flooding of the Yangtze River only by low natural barriers or manmade dikes, some just a few meters high. These tributaries normally drain through sluices in the levees directly into the Yangtze. But, once the dam sto
ps up the Yangtze, nothing, not the narrow sluice gates or the levees, will hold back the rising tide of water. And as soon as the barriers crumble, the entire side valleys will flood in a matter of seconds.”
“Are you talking about a sudden rush of water?” Sullivan asked.
“When a levee breaks, there’ll be a kind of tidal wave into that valley, I’m sure,” Earl said. “But all the inhabitants have already long since been relocated.”
They were flying over a region where large areas of land had sunk away from a previously level plain. It left tabletops not unlike what Brad had seen in Monument Valley.
The landscape was an excellent expression of Karst topography, doubtless full of sinkholes and underground caverns.
“That’s them,” Brad said with confidence. A series of starkly vertical valleys ran perpendicular to the Yangtze. “That’s got to be limestone, and those are definitely tributaries. I’ll bet balls to babies that the secret to Dr. Yu’s discovery lies down there somewhere.”
“Yeah, and it’s going to be underwater in a matter of hours,” Earl reminded him. “So don’t worry about it.”
Then Brad saw a long object in the water. “Is that a ship?”
“Cruise ship?” Sullivan shot out, suddenly alarmed.
Brad looked more closely. As they flew nearer, he could make it out better. It was a long cruise liner pulling up to a levee at the end of the last large tributary. “Cruise ship alright.”
Sullivan whipped out his PDA and started typing an encrypted message.
Brad turned back to his window. Something huge and manmade was looming on the horizon. He gasped as the jet banked, revealing an enormous white structure that blocked the entire valley like a sausage being chopped in two, like a ribbon being snipped, like a… Then he put the sight of the blocked Yangtze River together with the metaphor in May’s father’s letter.
“Aha!” he said. “Now I get it. ‘We must all play our part to the fullest, else the dragon will lose its head—along with all of us.’ That dam will decapitate the dragon, the river, the lifeblood of China.”
His heart began to race. The site mentioned in May’s father’s letter was directly below. And perhaps May was, too.
Liang set his Z-11 light military transport helicopter down emphatically on a rare flat spot on the north bank of the Yangtze.
Earlier that morning, he had received word from Beijing that Bradley West was still alive and had eluded his would-be assassins. What kind of a survivor was he anyway? Liang longed to confront the young American face to face.
The bad news had been offset by a brief newspaper obituary informing the nation that Dr. Yu Zhaoguo had turned up dead of natural causes in the Yangtze River. Now, instead of an old man threatening his dam, Liang had a cowboy likely there to make a play for May.
That day, he would keep May by his side, which was where she belonged anyway as they inaugurated the dam and launched China’s bright new future.
He turned his attention to the cruise ship that was just approaching from a bend in the river. Of course, it was no ordinary cruise ship. The old men onboard were fated to play a key, and tragic, role in his sudden success.
He walked out onto the earthen levee and waited. The ship’s captain fought the strong current and pulled up to him. Then a uniformed deckhand extended a gangway for Liang to walk aboard.
Above him, he could see the party’s Central Committee already assembled on the sightseeing deck. He mounted the interior staircase and arrived in time to grab a glass of champagne from a passing waiter.
The group of old men turned to him. Some exhibited long faces, while others seemed filled with awe.
He quickly counted their number. Fourteen in all. Good. All the members were there.
Prime Minister Yang Shuping was the first to greet him.
“Welcome aboard, Little Liang. Thank you for suggesting this cruise. We are feeling mixed emotions.”
“Yes, this is a moving time for me, too,” Liang said. “I am finally fulfilling my father’s dream.”
“Big Liang was a true hero to our nation.”
They raised their glasses and drank a toast to Liang’s deceased father.
Then Prime Minister Yang led Liang to the railing to reminisce. “My parents took their nuptial voyage along this river on a small boat with flowers on the deck. I couldn’t think of anything more romantic.”
Sentimental rubbish. Look at the river, Liang thought. The water was dead, unfit for human use. It was a moving cesspool. How could people romanticize a river that smelled so foul?
Instead of voicing his true feelings, he dissembled. “This river is the heart of our nation.”
They drank a toast to the Yangtze.
“I still find it hard to picture how high the water will rise,” the prime minister said.
Liang pointed up to a white sign high on the nearest hill. “That marks the final water line, over one hundred meters above the original level of this river. Already we are floating over former towns. With the first two phases of the dam complete, the river has grown strong and mighty. This afternoon, we will complete the final phase and soon all you will see are those mountaintops, like islands in a giant sea.”
“So much will be lost,” the prime minister mourned.
Liang took advantage of the sentiment. “To that end, I have arranged a side trip for you and the Central Committee up the final tributary. Sampans will take you upriver for a last view of the ancient, bas-relief Buddhist statues carved out of the cave there. You will be the last people to commune with the statues before the water rises and fills the cave.”
“You are so generous,” Yang said.
And before the day was over, they would also be dead, Liang reflected. He raised his glass in silent tribute to the last of a dying breed.
Back in Beijing, the Chinese foreign ministry put the latest official state guest up at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in the western part of the city.
The pavilion-style houses were well equipped with modern furniture and amenities. The grounds were lavishly endowed with lakes, arched bridges and gardens and were the high point of any visit. The cuisine, often exotic and sensuous, was also highly memorable.
Not a single head of state, whether from France, Italy, the United Kingdom or the United States had ever complained of the accommodations.
And President Carlos Velázquez of Venezuela was no exception. He considered himself to be in select company as he fingered the gold-plated hand mirror on his armoire.
Just think of it. Hillary likely lobbed ashtrays at Bill as they stayed in that guesthouse. Nixon must have talked to some of the same artwork, too. He would have been the first in a long line of greedy capitalists to stay there.
Velázquez examined himself in the mirror. How did he stack up against the other presidents and royalty that had stayed there? He was energetic, but hardly fit or healthy. Fifty-eight years laboring in the harsh sun on a cacao plantation had not been kind to his face or body.
A mountain boy, he wasn’t sure he could stomach the eel and entire fish bodies about to be served up. Was it too late to cancel? He had used ill health to beg out of state banquets in the past.
But this was China. And President Qian would be personally offended.
He sighed. He couldn’t help being a big shot. Not only did the Chinese president need to impress him, but the Chinese needed to woo the people of his South American nation as well. He had recently sent a Venezuelan diplomatic mission to Taiwan in order to stir up concerns in Beijing that Caracas would soon sever diplomatic ties with China. Huge oil-addicted nations couldn’t afford to lose an important source of energy just over the prickly issue of Taiwan’s legitimacy. So China would pay handsomely for the privilege to play at his table.
To up the ante, Velázquez intended to play them against the Americans who were equally voracious in their appetite for all available oil reserves, especially in the Western Hemisphere, which they regarded as their own. How they hated that he
was even talking to the Chinese.
So, Velázquez thought to himself, bring on the eel.
A beautiful young attendant was waiting for him by the door to his pavilion.
“Buenos tardes, Señor Presidente,” she said in flawless Spanish. “Me amo Jade Wang.”
“Hello, Ms. Wang,” he said in English to put her at her ease. He offered her an elbow.
He allowed her to steer him through the lush grounds in the warmth of the noonday sun.
“Jade is such a beautiful name,” he rhapsodized.
“It represents eternity,” she said.
Eternity sounded nice, but a single afternoon in bed would be all he needed.
Even he had to admit that the banquet lunch smelled muy bueno as they approached the dining hall. But a stiff drink would make it go down easier.
Ahead, he could see his staff lined up behind their chairs with expectant looks on their faces.
He entered the room and allowed Jade to guide him toward President Qian, who was already standing in his feeble state at the end of the table. The old man gave him his crystal shot glass and grabbed another for himself off the table.
Jade raised an eyebrow, then yelled triumphantly to the gathering, “To the future of our two nations.”
The two leaders clinked glasses together and turned to do the same with those around them. Jade quickly took a glass and enthusiastically toasted with the aged Chinese leader.
Velázquez couldn’t help but admire the young woman’s effervescent beauty. She certainly was an enticement for older men. He admired the way she made strong eye contact with the Chinese leader while gingerly touching his drinking arm with her free hand.
He tore his eyes away from her. His drink smelled especially bitter. Some kind of distilled rice with essence of moldy rat. Strong alcoholic content, no doubt. It should do the trick.
Everyone waited for the elderly president to take the first sip, which he did, downing it all in a single gulp.
