by Fritz Galt
“Look out.”
“It says ‘look out?’” Brad stepped out of the hole and cast a glance across the valley, then down to the base of the mountain. Below lay a haphazard grouping of temples, gardens, footbridges, shrines and pavilions. The complex was an eye-opener for any student of Chinese architecture. Its very asymmetry defied all known customs of design.
Clever generals had diverted water from the spring to flood the walls of distant Taiyuan City. Miraculous rains had fallen at crucial times to save the people from drought.
“Look out!” Earl repeated, this time with some urgency.
Only then did Brad notice a shadow passing over the steep terrain. At first it looked like a raptor, then he realized it was a soldier on the chairlift heading straight for him.
The soldier swooped closer. The cable gave a deeply unnerving twang. Brad’s boots slipped on the gravel as he tried to get away. He flailed his arms to keep from pitching into the valley. His sunhat flew off in a sudden gust of wind.
“Skeeter, help!” He was certain he would somersault to the valley below.
His friend looked transfixed as Brad was snatched off the side of the mountain.
The soldier’s powerful, claw-like hand reached down and plucked Brad up by a shoulder strap. The next thing he knew, his feet were dangling midair and he was traveling high over the scruffy vegetation.
At the last instant, the strong hand drew him upward and his boots narrowly missed becoming entangled in the top of a tree.
“What the—?” he choked under the pressure against his throat.
He craned his neck to look up. Who was dragging him into the sky? It was a Chinese soldier with an uneven row of teeth.
The soldier screeched something excitedly. He sounded like an attacking bird of prey.
If only Brad had his girlfriend there to translate.
You have me, a gravelly voice whispered in his left ear. It was Xenhet, a remnant of the scientific experiment conducted on him by his father the previous year.
“Hi Xen.” Brad’s overalls cut deep into his armpits and neck and choked off his windpipe. “What did the soldier say?”
I’m not so good with the northern dialects.
Brad winced. Xenhet was a tree spirit from Peru, not an expert in oriental languages.
He saw the soldier look ahead.
“Yikes!” Brad was heading straight for a chairlift tower and the chair was swaying in an increasingly wider arc. Was the guy trying to swing him into the tower, or out of harm’s way?
Excellent question.
“Well, how about an answer?” Brad growled. He kicked out in a vain attempt to stop the swaying.
You may never live to know the answer.
That did it. His life lay in the balance while he second-guessed the soldier’s intentions. Brad reached overhead with his free hand and gouged his fingernails deep into the back of the soldier’s hand. But the soldier wouldn’t relax his grip.
So Brad arched his back away from the tower they were fast approaching. An instant later, he swung out of danger’s way.
He took a moment to catch his breath. The cable dipped down before a steep rise to the end station.
He jabbed his fingers deeper into the soldier's hand until he felt the warm flow of blood. The soldier howled in pain. It served him right, having nearly plastered Brad’s brains all over the chairlift tower.
Brad looked up at the next danger he faced. He was going to slam into the cement foundation of the cable station.
Blood from the man's fingers seeped into Brad's shoulder strap, but his grip didn’t slacken. Brad needed another way to disengage himself. So he turned his head and bit into the man’s thumb.
“Ay-ee!” the soldier screamed.
Brad felt the fingers loosen. Suddenly he slipped out of the soldier’s grasp. He plummeted straight into the grassy slope at the base of the platform. He hit the ground with his back to the drop-off.
“Oh no!”
He began to tumble ass over appetite straight down the hill. His path nearly sent him into the metal tower that he had just narrowly avoided. His momentum was sure to carry him all the way down to the Jin Temple.
“Help!” he shouted. He had little time to think up the Chinese equivalent.
“Hold on, buddy,” came Earl’s voice in a rush.
Brad suddenly spun sideways. His legs sprawled out to one side and he came out of his backwards roll.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Earl cried.
The side of Brad’s head cracked against the tablet he had been attempting to excavate. It stopped his momentum, but good.
The last thing he heard was Earl’s acerbic, “Why in the world did you bite the guy’s hand? He was trying to rescue you from falling off the mountain.”
In the gloom that descended over Brad's consciousness, the low, mature voice of his spirit guide echoed as if in an empty chamber.
Good job. I’m with you on this one.
Brad tried to move. He sensed a thin mattress beneath him. Someone was playing a Cheech and Chong recording in another room. He opened his eyes. A breeze billowed the curtains and brushed warm and dry against his cheek. He caught a glimpse of a deep blue sky through the window. Suddenly, he realized where he was. He had returned to his old temporary quarters, a fleabag house on the outskirts of Tucson.
Panic struck. Where was May? Why was he wearing a sweaty tank top and sleeping shorts? Where was his spacious apartment in Beijing? What had happened to his research grant with Dr. Yu?
“Steady, lad,” came a cheery voice.
Brad looked up and saw a slim man with a long nose and a comically miniscule mustache. “Dad?”
It was Igor Sullivan, his biological father and CIA handler all rolled into one.
“What happened to me?” Brad said. “Send me back. I don’t want to be here.”
“Son, you’re a valuable asset to the Company,” Sullivan said. “You’re intuitive. You have impressive powers of deductive reasoning. And you’re ballsy. I like all that in an agent. But I’m letting you go.”
“Okay, so I’ve served my purpose.”
“Boy, we could sure use you.” Sullivan sat on the edge of the bed with resignation. “But I won’t force my son to fit into my world, which is a dangerous place. That has to be your choice.”
“I know a thing or two about danger,” Brad said, and rubbed the side of his head. “But I don’t want to lose the stipend, the apartment, the new clothes.”
“Don’t worry.” Sullivan’s voice was full of humanity. “I’ll keep you on the books, but I won’t use you. You’re essentially free to live your own life.”
“Can you guarantee that I won’t get caught up in your shenanigans again?” Brad remembered the grinning face of the nearly toothless assailant on the chairlift. If that wasn’t spy related, what was it?
“I’d like to guarantee you relief from all danger, but I can’t do that. All I can say is that I can guarantee you personally that nothing will ever cause me to reactivate you.”
“That’s a relief,” Brad said. “As long as I’ve still got the bank account.”
“Consider that a payment for services rendered.”
“So, no gunmen? No alternate realities?”
“Well.” Sullivan hesitated. “I can definitely tell you that the alternate reality business will wear off eventually.”
That was a relief. He took one last look around the room before he succumbed to sleep.
“Wait!” he cried. Visions of China were fading from his memory. He was still in sunbaked Arizona. “I want the other reality!”
Chapter 5
May had an old Chinese boyfriend to find and throw into permanent detention.
Public Security Bureau troops had stationed an armored personnel carrier at one end of Liang’s street to block that means of escape. She could see Jade Wang’s calm face whenever her friend bobbed up from behind the mounted machine gun.
Meanwhile, May waited acr
oss the street from Liang’s apartment with a growing contingent of police troops poised to penetrate the building. She watched with approval as the troops arrived and swiftly fell into place behind her.
They were handling Liang with much more respect than they had demonstrated during the botched job at his office that morning. Two hours earlier, the commander had made a less discreet arrival at the Bei Shan company headquarters and subjected the startled staff to a wall of drawn weapons. It hadn’t taken long for the staff to start pointing fingers, and for the last finger to point to the company manager, who ran to the back of his private office.
Troops threw the man’s computer onto the floor, jumped over his desk, spun him around, and shoved his face against the wall. Seconds later, the truth came spilling out. The small biotechnology firm loosely associated with Peking University was actually a front for Liang Jiaxi’s operations. But why a biotech company, and what was Liang up to? May hoped to pose the questions to Liang directly within minutes.
Liang Jiaxi had fled the office, and the manager explained that he didn’t know where Liang was going. Only then had the troops heard the sound of feet landing on the pavement behind the office building. They had rushed to a bathroom off the hallway and found the window wide open. The alley was three meters below and unsecured. Liang had gotten away.
But it hadn’t taken long to get Liang’s personal telephone number out of the secretary. A quick check with China Telecom revealed Liang’s street address. He lived in a shabby corner of the densely packed Haidian District of Beijing.
And that was where May now stood as the assault began.
Jade’s team diverted street traffic and secured the rear of the building while the commander prepared May and her team to move in. On the count of three, the highly trained squad scrambled into broad daylight and charged across the empty street. Unarmed, May followed several steps behind. The building’s front door was already unlocked. Landing by landing, the men secured her passage all the way to the top floor.
With each step May climbed, the vile stench of the place further confused her. How could her erstwhile lover have ended up in such squalor?
At last she reached the landing below Liang’s apartment. A single fluorescent tube illuminated the stairwell. She could barely make out the apartment number, 5 / 2. The commander motioned for his men to step aside, and he knocked assertively on the door.
There was no response from within. Not even the sound of movement.
Could this really be Liang’s lair? May had her doubts. There must have been some mistake.
Surely a man who could fly the latest high-tech helicopter gunships and fighter jets could find more suitable housing. Beijing had a glut of luxury apartments. Why would the man who had made love to her—repeatedly, earnestly, confidently—have chosen such a repulsive building in which to assume a new life?
The commander did not intend to wait long. He tried the door handle. It was locked. He summoned two men with a battering ram, a short log that hung from two straps. The pair of soldiers stood back and took a single swing at the lock. The wood splintered with a yielding crash, but the door didn’t swing open. The lock held fast.
The commander raised a hand and the two men stepped aside. He reached through the newly created hole and felt around for the lock mechanism inside. Within seconds he opened the lock. The door swung inward to eerie stillness.
Then May felt fingers crawling up the nape of her neck. Was he behind her? She pivoted and cocked her elbow in self-defense.
“Wait!” a voice whispered harshly.
In the daylight that filtered through the open apartment door, she made out Jade with an alarmed expression on her face.
“Why did you sneak up on me?” May said.
Jade seemed unable to answer.
“You nearly scared the dumplings out of me.” May knew Jade like the bottom of her noodle bowl. She knew her even better than Earl Skitowsky, Jade’s kinky American boyfriend, ever would.
And yet, May didn’t know her friend entirely. Posted at China’s Ministry of State Security, Jade sometimes worked with the Americans, sometimes against them, sometimes behind a desk, sometimes side-by-side with the troops. But she always worked coolly and, to May’s satisfaction, always for the party.
“I’m sorry,” Jade whispered. But her attention had been drawn elsewhere.
May followed her gaze up the stairs.
The apartment walls were covered with newspaper and magazine clippings. Most of the articles had photos of her, a smiling May Hua.
In one picture, May posed with her fighter pilot’s helmet. In another she stood beside the latest Shenzhou Divine Vessel space capsule, a modified Russian Soyuz. Here she stepped through the hatch of the space capsule trainer. There she smiled as she patted a giant Long March booster. May was the glamour girl, the poster child, always posing before a Chinese flag.
The press called astronauts yuhangyuan, or “travelers of the universe.” But May wasn’t one yet. Not until she had actually flown a mission could she be considered a traveler of the universe.
Liang must have clipped out every article ever written about her and taped it to his apartment wall. If there wasn’t a photo, there was her name printed in bold headlines above news stories—stories about her favorite singer, her favorite food, her favorite Young Pioneers activity as a youth, her dreams for the nation.
The guy was infatuated. More than that. He was obsessed. Suddenly, whatever spell Liang still held over her, with his perfect gymnast’s physique, his bold profile, his magnetic charm, the power that flowed from his family, even his infatuation with her suddenly flipped in her mind. These were the manifestations of mental illness. He was a lunatic.
And idolized in such an impersonal way, without any need for reciprocation, she felt the vestigial butterflies that his attentions had once caused in her stomach to turn to fermented soy. It wasn’t the real May Hua that he loved. Take her out of the room, and he would still be in love. He was more captivated by his own sickness than he was with her.
But he wasn’t there.
As the team barged into the small, two-room apartment, it was clear that Liang had fled there as well. No clothes hung in the wardrobe. No personal effects lay about. The food in the refrigerator was still fresh.
“Look at this,” one soldier called out. He had pulled a slip of paper out from under Liang’s bed.
May and Jade peered over his shoulder boards to read it. It was a receipt from a travel agency. There was no flight number or itinerary, only the printed number of the receipt and the name and address of the firm.
The commander grabbed his cell phone and called the number on the receipt. A moment later, he had his answer. “Liang purchased two international plane tickets. He and Dr. Yu Zhaoguo have left the country.”
May’s eyes rose to meet Jade’s. “He has my father.”
Her father’s fate, and by extension her own fate, lay in the hands of a madman.
Brad West regained consciousness to the tune of Star Wars. From the poor audio quality, it had to be the ring tone on Earl’s cell phone. He felt a scratchy surface under one cheek. He opened one eye and made out a heap of rocks piled around a trowel that was stabbed into the ground.
“Wei?” Earl’s voice said. “Hello?”
A slight breeze whispered through pine trees. It was drowned out by a chirpy female voice.
“Sorry, May,” Earl apologized. “I think he’s out cold right now.”
Brad rolled his eyes.
“No, he’s dressed warmly.”
Brad stirred. He tried to reach up to get his friend’s attention, but Earl didn’t seem to notice. So he tried to say something. Powdery dust and a thick tongue were inhibiting his ability to produce a sound.
“I’ll have him call you as soon as he comes to.”
The tone of the response conveyed confusion.
“No, not comes to you. He’s just not conscious.”
The voice sounded more satisfied a
nd resumed its chirpy quality.
“Yup, I think he’s still alive.”
Brad tried to turn his head. It felt as if a vise were holding his neck in place. Pain tore down his shoulder when he tried to lift his head.
“Oh, wait. He seems to be moving. Let me hand him the phone.”
Still prone with his half-finished work staring him in the face, he saw Earl shove the cell phone toward his lips.
“Mmmm,” was all he could say.
“Huh? Are you eating?” came May’s voice.
“Maaaa.”
“Is that a sheep?”
“Ma-ay.”
“Brad! Is that you? What happened? Are you all right?” Finally, Brad detected genuine concern in her voice.
“I’ll be okay,” he croaked. “Whazzup?”
“I am leaving.”
“Wha—? Huh?” There was determination, even finality, in her voice and it instilled sudden panic in him. “You’re leaving me?”
“Yup.”
“Well, don’t sound so cheerful about it.” She had chosen the absolute worst moment to leave him. And the enthusiasm in her voice was unbearable. “I’m sorry, May. Is there something that I did, or said, or didn’t do, or didn’t say?”
“No, silly goose. It is not you.”
“Okay. Then we agree I’m a silly goose.” Now that they had found common ground, he might be able to sort things out. Perhaps this was just another one of their little misunderstandings. He tried to sit up and instantly regretted it. It felt like the last nerve that connected his mind to his body had just snapped.
“Of course. You are a silly goose.”
“Well, I can change.” He reached up slowly to take the phone from Earl. “I don’t want it to end like this.” How could she abandon him when he was hundreds of miles away, when he was deeply invested in her country, its history, and her father’s work?
“What I am telling you,” she said impatiently, “is that I will not be here. You will have to boil your own curds.”
