by Fritz Galt
At first the setup seemed so trivial it had to be a joke. But now it felt as if it were boring a hole into his arm. The ceaseless repetition against his skin seemed to reverberate through time and space.
He suddenly began to experience the rhythm as a counterpoint to his own pulse. He felt the steady beat of water overwhelm his heartbeat, a throb that began to race in his chest and temples despite his best efforts at meditation.
Was this what made the technique so effective?
The welcome return of his analytical mind seemed to momentarily take off the edge, as he was fascinated by the effect of so simple a mechanism.
It was as if the subtle pit-pat of the drops became an overwhelming thunder that threatened to disrupt all his biological rhythms. One could easily imagine himself drowning, unable to breathe.
Sullivan looked up as Liang eased closer with a cat-like movement. “Where is Bradley West?”
Drip.
“Has he come to China looking for May? What does he know about May’s father? Speak!”
Drip. Drip.
He had to stall for time. The longer he kept Liang occupied, the better the chances Brad had of warning the Central Committee. But he had to offer some tidbit of information to keep Liang on the hook or throw him off track. Something with enough truth and deception in it to lead Liang down the wrong path and gain Brad more valuable time.
“Brad West is Richter’s son,” he said at last.
“Bradley?” Liang said, dumbfounded. “Professor Richter’s son?”
“And on top of that, Brad knows of a scientific discovery that will shut down this dam.”
Liang Jiaxi picked up the toppled table and sat on it. Who was this skinny American? Was he a spy or some other crazy anthropologist like that Bradley or Richter or May’s father?
But there would be no more discoveries. As General Chen confirmed, May’s father had drowned the day before. Then his eyes narrowed. Unless there was some other discovery that he wasn’t aware of.
He turned to General Chen. “Get me Professor Richter on the phone at once.”
A minute later, the general handed Liang a cell phone.
“Is there some sort of problem?” Richter asked broadly on the phone.
“Yes, there may be,” Liang said. “I believe that you and I have something in common that we didn’t realize.” He turned his back on his prisoner and spoke in a low tone. “Bradley.”
“Bradley?” Richter repeated. “Bradley who?”
“I will tell you who,” Liang said. “Your son.”
Richter was silent for a moment. “What’s Brad got to do with this?”
“Plenty,” Liang spat out. “He is in China, and I think he may have some of our deceased Dr. Yu’s treasure.”
“That’s impossible if you’re talking about my stepson. He couldn’t find a herring in a handbag.”
Liang paused. That was a pretty derogatory thing to say about one’s own family.
The general interrupted him from the doorway. “Sir, it’s five o’clock. The press is ready.”
“So you’re saying there’s nothing Bradley can do that we need to worry about,” Liang said.
“I could crush him with a single word.”
“Very well.”
He allowed himself a smile. Richter certainly had no loyalty to his stepson. That was a relief. Richter wouldn’t feel betrayed if Liang got his hands on Bradley and choked the life out of him.
He closed the cell phone and looked at his general. “Don’t worry about the crazy American for now. But bring May to me.”
Music was playing in the distance. The opening ceremony was at hand. China was on the ascendancy!
He readjusted his tie and loosened up his stiff shoulders, then aimed for the door.
“And make sure our informant here has plenty of water to make him talk.”
General Chen checked the IV bottle. Then Liang led him out of the windowless room, turned out the light, and slammed the thick door shut with a metallic clang.
The prisoner was left with only the steady drip of water on his upturned right wrist for company.
Drip. Drip.
Sullivan tried to wrench his arm free. He couldn’t move it in or out of the buckled straps. Nor could he twist his wrist away from the splashing droplets of water. He had trained to resist drugs, but not this.
Drip.
He struggled to tip his chair over, but its legs were bolted to the floor.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
He sighed and tried to ease the tension in his shoulders. He stared in the darkness at the metal door through which the two men had just left.
Maybe he had bought Brad enough time. And maybe he could keep his sanity long enough to tell Brad the truth about his father.
Meanwhile, the water continued down its inevitable path of driving him insane.
Chapter 27
While the sampan made slow progress up the valley, Brad examined the limestone layers of the surrounding cliffs. Recent erosion had revealed the many strata clearly and unveiled an enormous number of interesting-looking rocks.
The last sampan of the committee’s flotilla was still visible heading upstream. As long as he was that close, he could surely take a moment to follow up on what Dr. Yu considered the answer to his life’s quest.
“Stop here,” he called over the singing. He pulled a bill out of his pocket and waved it at the boatman.
The prow swung toward shore at a crook in the wide river.
Brad handed the money to the man, balanced briefly on the boat, and stepped ashore. “Please wait for me here, my good man.” He gestured with both hands toward the ground.
The oarsman smiled and shoved the bill in his pocket. Brad turned away. He was in a geological wonderland. The yellow rocks were porous and crumbled easily. He peeled off several pieces that broke away in his hands. They were full of delineated forms.
Fossils.
And not just trilobites and shells.
He was holding the fossilized remains of broad-leaved plants.
His heartbeat quickened. Such plants had developed well after the Triassic Period when much of the earth’s limestone was created from sediment at the bottom of oceans.
He was looking at a far more recent period, perhaps a mere several million years ago.
Then he remembered the committee and glanced up. The last sampan had disappeared around the bend ahead of him. He knew he had to get back into the boat and catch up with the committee before it entered the cave, but the area was so inherently intriguing that he had to give it just a little more time.
His newly bought sneakers slipped on the steep grade as he worked his way further along the water’s edge.
With one hand on the hillside for stability, he found he was fingering unusual rocks. Some were smoothly rounded, while others crumbled into bits. It didn’t add up. He had never seen such a geological hodgepodge before.
If the rocks dated back less than two million years, Dr. Yu could have been looking for remnants of early man.
If so, the anthropologist wouldn’t expect to find a grotto with implements and intact skeletons. If luck were on his side, he would have found a fossilized bone fragment at best. Although scientists could deduce a lot from a single bone, it wouldn’t be tremendously conclusive. Take the great Professor Richter for example, who had developed elaborate theories on the early presence of humans in America based on a single skull.
So what had May’s dad come across?
Earl Skitowsky waited among Professor Richter’s devotees for the great man to return. At last, the big guy sauntered up from an underground facility. Earl stood on the tips of his toes to wave and be seen.
The eminent professor from the University of Arizona looked surprised but pleased to see another of his protégés at the Three Gorges Dam. Personally, Earl felt his loyalties divided, with an increasingly shrinking share for Professor Richter.
Yet, as he accompanied the esteemed and dapper professor toward the
awaiting press, he felt himself slip into his role of assistant, working his way forward in the group to open doors, translate, straighten the professor’s bowtie, and provide a guided tour.
The illustrious professor listened calmly to Earl’s explanations and took in the dam and the elaborate preparations for the ceremony in stride. He was a veteran of public appearances. Earl couldn’t help but admire the man’s composure.
Earl was similarly impressed by his own sang-froid, as he hoped that Liang didn’t spot him in the crowd of reporters, students, and other groupies constantly hovering around Richter.
If Liang picked him out, Earl didn’t particularly relish the role of canary. Because if forced to talk, he knew he would sing his head off.
Liang caught up with Richter and swaggered like a proud new father. “We have a number of heads of state with us today,” he was explaining. “Unfortunately, President Velázquez of Venezuela took ill last night and couldn’t make it. Ah, look who we have here.”
The troupe rounded the final building on the military compound. Earl stepped out into direct sunlight and had to shield his eyes to make out who it was. He had expected to run into a head of state. Instead, a lone woman stood before them in a peacock blue-colored chi pao. Her shapely calves were visible at the knee-length slits in the sides of the slender dress, and her petite but womanly form created an arresting silhouette in the late afternoon sun.
He would have recognized her anywhere. Next to Jade, she was the sexiest woman he’d ever gotten close enough to poke with a stick.
If May recognized him, she didn’t reveal it. Her expression remained cool and receptive to the group.
“Little butterfly, has my grandfather joined us yet?” Liang asked May in Chinese.
Earl sucked in his breath at Liang’s audacity. Here was the man who had likely orchestrated the president’s illness, and he was asking where the president was.
“He is not here.” May lowered her eyes. “I am sorry to report he has fallen ill and cannot make the trip. But he sends his best wishes.”
“Alas,” Liang said. He slipped an arm around her waist and began to usher her forward. “We’ll just have to settle for the Sultan of Brunei.”
Unless he was sick, too. Gee, it seemed like everybody was either getting sick or drowning around there. Very convenient for the scheming psychopath.
A helicopter was just landing halfway between them and the steps up to the ceremony. The group instinctively came to a halt and held onto their hats and skirts as the rotors wound down.
The pilot, clad in a deep red jumpsuit, stepped out of the cockpit and approached, helmet coming off.
Because he had been focusing on May, Earl was the last to notice that the pilot was a woman. It was Jade. Her darting eyes moved from General Chen to Richter to Earl and finally settled on May, cradled in the curve of Liang’s arm.
“I’ve just toured the site,” she reported with frost in her voice. “Everything is secure.”
“Very good. If any aircraft ventures within ten kilometers of this dam, I want it shot out of the air.” Liang brushed past her, with May in tow. “Now, I’ve got a ribbon to cut.”
Richter jerked Earl after him. “Don’t lag behind.”
Earl was suddenly reluctant to fall back into the role of the professor’s principle advisor. “Ah, just a moment, Professor. I’ll be right there. I just want to get this pilot’s phone number.”
He looked back at Jade and caught her eye. Richter just shook his head in disbelief. “Alright. Go and strike out if you must, but join me on the podium, chop chop.”
Earl shuffled up to the lithe figure in her flight suit. “Hey baby, drop by here often?”
“What are you doing here?” Jade said. “If Liang ever spots you, he will throw you off the dam.”
“No danger too great for love.”
“He didn’t hesitate sending me to poison his grandfather. Now he’s going to kill the Central Committee.”
Earl sucked in his breath and reevaluated her briefly. “So did you, uh, poison…?”
“Oh, shut up,” she said. “Of course not.”
That came as a relief. It seemed like Jade was everywhere at once. He looked around. “Seen Brad lately?”
“I have just dropped him off in the river basin next to the cruise ship. He is trying to head off the Central Committee from group suicide. Liang has already begun closing the floodgates, and I must get them open again.”
“That’s interesting. But I’ve got some news of my own. May’s dad is dead. She doesn’t have to suck up to Liang anymore.”
“Brad told me. Nothing will stand in Liang’s way.”
“Nothing but you and me, baby,” Earl said, and grabbed her around the waist.
Jade pretended to struggle, but allowed his admittedly clumsy, but amorous advance.
“Cool as a glacier,” he purred, “and twice as hard to stop. What chance has Liang got with us around?”
“Okay, listen,” she said, her voice distinctly non-amorous. “You get May away from Liang. Get her off that platform before the ceremony begins. Understand?”
“Roger wilco,” he said, matching the terseness in her voice. “Get May off the platform. That’s a big ten-four.”
“Ten for what?” Her thin eyebrows formed into question marks.
“Ten bananas for one dollar.”
“Oh, be serious.” She peeled his arm off her posterior. She held his hand backwards in an aikido move, then kissed him full on the mouth. “And you get off that podium, too,” she breathed. “That’s an order.”
“I knew it! You still dig me!”
“Yeah, well don’t get cocky, Captain America. Just get May away from Liang.”
“And what will you be up to, my lady love?”
“I’ve got to fly back to Yichang Air Base for a bigger chopper.”
“Okay. But be careful. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to my little love muffin.”
She tried to straighten her hair that he had just mussed up. Then, with a half-smile, she turned back to her helicopter.
He adjusted his underpants at the crotch and charged like an excited chihuahua up the long staircase to the viewing platform.
May had been requested by Liang to abandon her security supervisor’s wardrobe in favor of hostess attire. He wanted her to swish around in her tight dress and hang onto his arm like a glamour model, not like the military commander and test pilot that she was born to be.
She and Liang approached the reviewing stand, but had to wait as a handful of soldiers replaced a narrow red carpet with a wider one.
A young woman in a business suit approached Liang from the shadow of the stands. May recognized her as the event coordinator. “Sir, the dignitaries are all assembled ahead of schedule as you requested. But the Central Committee has yet to arrive.”
“That’s too bad.” He patted May’s hand. “They must be tired from their river excursion and are watching us live on television from their hotel. Which is good, because this is going to be bigger than sending our first taikonaut into space.”
May watched several television crews at work. Their silhouettes eclipsed the sun, which was losing its brilliance and becoming a distinct round ball in the sky.
The army team seemed to have the new carpet in place, but still had to smooth out several wrinkles.
The nervous young woman bowed low and looked up with distress written across her face. “I am sorry to inform you that your grandfather will not be watching this historic event.”
May was eager to hear more news about President Qian.
Yet Liang’s body seemed to physically relax. “And why might that be?” he asked.
“The State radio reports that Comrade Qian suffered a stroke. Others say it was the food. But I have just received word from his personal doctor.”
“Is he dead?” Liang asked.
May was horrified at the insolence of the question, the irreverence, the coldness, and beyond all that, the eagerness
in Liang’s voice.
The woman bowed again.
“His doctor informs us that he breathed his last just minutes ago.”
Just as May felt her anger at Liang’s reaction peaking, a much larger emotion descended over her, one of loss. Suddenly, the world became empty without the country’s elder statesman, without her personal friend in Zhong Nan Hai. If there was any redeeming aspect to life with Liang, it had been the joyful afternoons she had spent with his wise and kind grandfather. Now Qian was no longer with them, and she wasn’t sure that her heart could take the loss.
“Shall we adjourn the ceremony out of respect?” the coordinator whispered.
Liang took a long moment to study the distant, rugged horizon that would soon become a tranquil sea.
“No. In his name, we will carry on.”
May lifted her eyes to the valley that would be inundated by the world’s third longest river. China’s hopes so nobly expressed and provided by the dam suddenly seemed trivial in the face of all that would be lost. She had been born and enjoyed a childhood in a river town that no longer existed. President Qian had been a valued friend, and he no longer walked on earth. How many other lives had been so carelessly discarded on the road to China’s future? She suddenly envisioned the drowning deaths of a million dreams.
And among them was her own. It was then that she realized with utter certitude that Liang would never let her be the first female Chinese astronaut. She would never even make it into space. She would be nothing more than a fashion accessory, an obedient concubine.
Her eyes drifted down to the river falling into shadows below. She had no dreams left, only a desperate hope to find her father, clutch him in her arms, feel the warmth and security of his embrace, and then disappear with him from Liang forever.
Earl waved from the top of the steps as Jade left in her helicopter. What did she mean by a ‘bigger chopper?’
He turned to shield his eyes from the gust of wind that followed. When he looked up at last, he was alone, left behind to extract May from the ceremony and take her off the dam.
