by Fritz Galt
Liang reached for his luggage on the carousel. “Take your bag.” He pointed to Yu’s old suitcase.
Yu made a show of trying to chase after it, then stopped and shrugged. He would let it go around one more time. And then once again after that.
Meanwhile, Liang straightened up and looked around, bewildered by what to do next.
A skycap approached with a red-carpeted cart. “May I take your bags?”
Liang grabbed his luggage. “Don’t touch.”
“That’s okay with me.” The man had plenty of other customers.
“Mr. Leng?” The voice intoned from behind them.
Yu turned around to see a large man in a cowboy hat. He wore a patriotic button on his lapel with the picture of the preacher who was running for president. “May I take your bags?” the cowboy said.
“Take the old man’s,” Liang said, and held fast to his own.
Yu’s hopes were dashed. Why had he been so naive? It would take far more than a logistical glitch to bring Liang down.
Yu pointed out his suitcase, and several minutes later they were walking into a parking garage. There the cowboy stuffed the luggage into the trunk of a sedan. He took the driver’s seat and pulled them out of the darkness into bright sunshine. He turned to look at the stone-faced Chinese in the back seat. “Some airport, huh? Just ten years old.”
They passed the white peaks of the terminal roof, a massive fiberglass structure designed to keep heat out and allow limited sunlight in.
“It looks like a circus tent,” Liang said.
The man took a second look at the structure. “No, it’s supposed to look like the mountains.”
“What mountains?” Yu glanced around. They were surrounded by flatlands.
The man pointed ahead through the glare of the noonday sun. They passed over a slight rise and came face-to-face with a long wall of foothills and peaks. It was nearly as impressive as approaching the Yellow Mountains or perhaps the Himalayas in Yunnan Province.
“Where are you taking us?” Liang said curtly.
“The Reverend wants to meet you at his lodge in Breckenridge.”
“How long a ride is that?”
“Just relax. It’s another hour and a half up into the mountains.”
Yu settled back. So they were going to meet a holy man in the mountains. It couldn’t be all that bad.
Reverend Terry Smith stepped up to a raised platform between home plate and third base at Coors Field. He cast an approving eye over the 50,000 strong who had been bussed in to lower downtown Denver from around the great state of Colorado.
Not only was Colorado a hotbed of evangelism, it was a crucial swing state in that fall’s presidential election. Colorado’s vote could decide the presidency. And judging from the enthusiasm on display, President Nelson Burrows wouldn’t have a prayer, literally.
Terry raised a hand to acknowledge the rousing welcome. It would take five minutes before he could quiet them down and speak.
He took the opportunity to check where the television cameras were set up. Camera operators stood huddled behind their machines in the right field bleachers, affording their audiences a stunning view of the Rocky Mountains behind the presidential candidate. It was just the photo op he had hoped for, and thankfully the weather cooperated. There was nothing more pleasant than a seventy-five degree day with mere twenty-five percent humidity.
“God bless you.” Cheers drowned out any more he could say.
He set the sheet of paper down. He barely needed to refer to the five points on his outline. They were imprinted in his brain.
Number one, he would warn of attempts by other countries to influence the American economy. Therefore, number two, he would press for a curb on immigration into the United States. And number three, he would raise trade barriers to protect the American worker. Number four was his promise to bring strong world leadership back to the White House. And finally the “savior” plank on his platform, he would return religious values to American society.
These five points would be his mantra for the next eight months as he campaigned across the country and debated the other candidates.
But he would not be speaking into the wind. He checked his watch. Liang should have arrived in Denver by then. With Liang’s help, there would be plenty of evidence in the coming days to support his call for tightening immigration and trade barriers and his claim of American religious superiority.
With the crowd in awe, Governor Herman Stokes of Colorado stepped onto the platform and handed Terry a baseball bat. Terry raised it triumphantly over his head and the crowd went nuts.
Their ball team was hot, and now they had a candidate for president who was a clear winner.
Terry leaned toward Governor Stokes and shouted in his ear. “I’ll knock this speech out of the park.”
The governor was eager to show his support, and the two men posed together holding the bat between them.
“You a baseball fan?” Terry asked the governor over the noise of the crowd.
“I played college ball.” The governor was clearly basking in the glory of the moment.
Terry reached back to Barney and handed him the bat. “Guard this with your life. I’ll need it this afternoon.”
Then Terry offered the governor a firm handshake. “We’ll get together on my way home,” he confirmed to Stokes. “I’d like a personal tour of that amazing airport of yours.”
The governor nodded solemnly and patted his hand, then left the podium.
The crowd was finally taking their seats, row upon row of green seats throughout the seductive, old-fashioned baseball stadium. His eyes rose to the twentieth row in the upper deck where the seats were painted purple to signify one mile above sea level.
When the presidential campaign was over, even on those high grounds the crowd would feel threatened by the sea that surrounded them.
“My fellow Americans,” he began. “We are a nation under siege…”
Chapter 9
Dr. Yu stood staring out the window at the mountains. The Reverend Terry Smith’s ski lodge was a multi-million dollar faux-log home built right on the main ski slope below the popular Peak 8 Lift. It was a perspective experienced by only the rich and privileged.
He shivered despite the fire that burned cheerily behind him. The rich got rich doing risky things and the powerful got powerful doing dangerous things. Why did Liang need such a lowly scientist?
Slushy snow still lingered on the slope, and a parade of skiers plowed through the final days of the season. Pine forests and aspen groves on the far side of the run made a magnificent sight. They carpeted the mountain up to the timberline a hundred meters below the summits of the peak.
Whatever Reverend Smith had done to deserve such a view must have been either risky or dangerous.
The cowboy driver who brought Liang and him there had unlocked the front door to the extravagant house, carried the suitcases in, and promptly left. Liang had already helped himself to the wet bar and sat relaxing in the warmth of the fire. Yu preferred to stare out the window at the colorful panoply of skiers.
The doorbell broke the silence. Accompanied by a waft of pine-scented air, a large, silver-haired man stepped inside and immediately located Liang.
As Yu watched the two men circle each other, he experienced a tingling sensation in his spine. Where had he seen the two together before?
Liang stood back to look at his friend. “So at last I meet the renowned Reverend Terry Smith.” He had saved his most polished English for the meeting.
The otherwise affable public figure peered into Liang’s eyes. “Who’s that in there?” His voice revealed doubt.
“Relax, it’s me.” Liang pinched himself on the nose.
Yu understood personally the effect of Liang’s plastic surgery. He had been shocked to learn earlier that month that Liang was still alive, and he had been similarly skeptical that the man behind the improved profile was the old Liang.
For his part, Lian
g exhibited similar signs of distrust of the reverend. “May I ask you a question to help me verify your identity?”
Smith laughed. “You have just made me feel like all the months in rehabilitation were worth it. Go ahead and test me.”
Liang looked the man up and down, taking his measure. “Who is the dumbest student you ever had?”
“Brad West, of course,” Smith said.
A smile broke across Liang’s face. That was exactly what he had wanted to hear. “It’s good to see you back, old friend.” They finally engaged in a laugh and a warm handshake.
Then the reverend’s eyes fell on Yu standing by the window. “I have brought something for you.” His voice turned cool. He raised a long club in both hands. Yu backed away, bumped against the glass, and then skittered behind a log-frame armchair.
Smith advanced on him with a vengeful gleam in his blue eyes and the sleek cudgel poised to strike. Was this the behavior of a religious man? A presidential candidate?
Yu dodged behind the next piece of furniture, a couch made of the same type of logs. “What have I ever done to you, mister?”
Smith paused and raised an eyebrow, but did not answer.
“I support you for president,” Yu offered.
“You don’t believe a word of that religious crap you’re spouting these days,” Smith said at last.
Ah, so this was a religious argument. Yu felt on safer ground sparring intellectually rather than physically.
“I believe what I have published in the scientific journals,” Yu defended himself. “I believe it just as much as you believe in your God.”
Smith lowered the club and squared his shoulders. “If you think your theories about spirits will ever replace the angels of Christianity, you’re sadly mistaken. This time you’ve taken on a sacred American cow, and nobody here is going to buy your story.”
Yu spread his hands helplessly. “It’s fine with me if nobody likes my ideas, but that doesn’t make them any less true.”
“But they’re pure fabrication, a tool of Chinese propaganda. Once again you’ve gone too far and only provided me fuel for my political campaign. The longer you preach ancient roots to modern religion, the bigger the backlash will be here. Americans only buy what’s in the Bible, and that’s it.”
Yu shrugged. “I guess that’s the end of the discussion then.”
Smith flipped the club around in his hands and extended the handle toward Yu. “Take this.”
Shocked, Yu accepted it. But he wasn’t about to strike the reverend, either intellectually or physically. What did he care about the man’s political ambitions?
“That’s your totem pole,” Smith said with a snort.
It didn’t look like a Native American totem pole. There were no animal or human faces carved on it. It was just a slim, nicely rounded piece of lumber.
“I’m joking,” Smith said, clearly amused by the confusion he had created in Yu. “That’s the totem, as you call it, of Governor Stokes. It’s a baseball bat. Use it to get into his brain.”
“Oh, a totem.” Yu regarded the club in a new light. “The governor worships this sporting implement.”
“I guess you could say that.”
At that point, Liang cleared his throat and approached Smith. “And I have a gift for you.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a squeeze bottle that he handed over. It looked like a bottle of eye drops.
“The drugs?”
Liang nodded, clearly pleased with himself. “It passed Customs without inspection.”
Smith grabbed the squeeze bottle and took it over to the window.
“Slip a drop of it into the governor’s drink, and it will set the stage,” Liang instructed. “Next you will need to arrange a slight concussion. Then Dr. Yu will be able to implant the spirit guide’s thoughts into the governor’s mind.”
Smith held the bottle up to the blue afternoon sky and examined the liquid inside. “Why rely on drugs? Didn’t the great communist powers develop some powerful tools along these lines?”
Liang threw another log on the fire. He stood and brushed his hands off. “Well, you certainly know about the great Soviet show trials. Political prisoners would stand up in court and make complete confessions along the lines of what the government wanted to hear. Well, that was all accomplished by expert interrogators who could coerce people into saying whatever they wanted the prisoner to say. Leading their subjects toward the preferred confession with a mixture of carrots and sticks. Of course, that was all designed to get out the truth, as the government saw it. The prisoners remained penitent only as long as they were under interrogation.”
Smith furrowed his brow. “I remember stories of Korean War POWs returning to America after spending time in Chinese prisons. Many of them never recanted their belief in communism. Isn’t that where the term ‘brainwashing’ came from?”
“Ah. We called it ‘cleansing the mind.’” Liang hung his head sheepishly. “‘Brainwashing’ is your translation. We had interrogators. We got confessions. But we went one step further. We reeducated. We Chinese think as a group, and we grow as a group. After confession, a prisoner would then live with a group of similar prisoners and together they would reinforce what they learned from us. It was a great way to reintroduce criminals back into society, but it wasn’t a very specific means of mind control.”
“So you turned to drugs.”
“Actually, it was your government that turned to drugs. Like the Russians and Chinese, your methods were an expression of your society and its beliefs. As Americans, you put your faith in technology to achieve shortcuts time and again.”
“What specifically am I holding here?”
“It’s called lysergic acid diethylamide,” Liang said. “You may know it better as acid or speed. You should know LSD well. Your CIA has been conducting mind control experiments with it since the end of the Second World War.”
“And I’m sure your biotech company pored over the results.”
“Naturally. During the Second World War, your military tested out a truth serum that was extracted from marijuana in order to interrogate German Navy POWs about U-boat missions. Then after the war, the OSS, the precursor to your CIA, hired doctors from Germany’s Dachau concentration camp to continue their experiments on subjects using the drug mescaline. Later, in the 1950s, the CIA’s mind-control experiment program code-named M.K.-Ultra concentrated on the drug LSD. Going to more fantastical extremes, the CIA funded numerous parapsychology experiments studying the potential of hypnosis, telepathy, ESP and remote viewing.”
Yu didn’t see what was so fantastical about that.
Liang went on, clearly proud of his biotech company’s achievements. “Naturally, the Chinese military was interested in the findings of the West. We are a modern, scientific country, and we learned much from your research. Furthermore, we have the advantage of selecting subjects at will. In Bei Shan Industries’ review of all these techniques, and working together with Dr. Yu, we found LSD to be the most effective way of entering one’s brain.”
“So they hallucinate,” Smith said.
“They most certainly do not,” Yu shot out. “And we don’t need to use the drugs at all. I can communicate with others solely through meditation. You can read about it in my articles.”
“Believe me, I have,” Smith said.
Yu leaned back, stunned. “You have read my work? Then perhaps you believe my theories.”
Smith shook his head. “I’m only looking for what works. If Liang says LSD works, then we’ll go with that. I have no more time for experiments. Do you have any idea how hard it is to run for president?”
Yu shook his head. He couldn’t begin to imagine all the pressures Smith faced. Instead, he examined the sporting implement that he held in his hands. The end of the instrument read 34, presumably its size. And the brand name “Louisville Slugger” was burned into the barrel. The wood was wine-colored and had curiously little weight. Then he studied a signature burned into
the wood. “Who is this?”
Smith examined the bat. “That’s Mickey Mantle. One of the best switch hitters and power sluggers in the history of the game. He won seven world championships.”
“Maybe I’ll ask Mickey Mantle to reach the governor,” Yu said. “He might be the perfect spirit guide. What should he say?”
Smith blinked with exasperation, but held his words in check. He took a deep breath and stared into Yu’s eyes. “I want the spirit guide to ask the governor to shut down the customs office at Denver International Airport. He is to stop all imports into the country through that facility.”
“Do you mean people carrying luggage?”
“No, I mean cargo. Strictly no imported cargo through Denver anymore.”
Yu shrugged. It wasn’t such a difficult request after all.
Late that afternoon, Governor Herman Stokes seemed in a jovial mood. Fresh from his visit to the mountains, Terry Smith hated to change all that.
Stokes leaned forward in the rear of his limousine and poured two whiskies, one for himself and one for the famous Terry Smith. It was all part of his official tour of the impressive facilities at Denver International Airport.
Terry glanced through the side window as they swept past the seemingly endless airfield. The white-peaked passenger terminal receded in the back window as they approached the cargo facilities.
The governor leaned forward to set the bottle back in the wet bar. It was the moment that Terry had been waiting for, and he seized the opportunity. In preparation, he had already unscrewed the cap of Liang’s vial. With one swift move, he withdrew the bottle from the inside pocket of his suit coat, squeezed a droplet of the LSD into the governor’s drink, and returned it to his pocket.
The action took two seconds, and the governor was completely unaware of it having happened.
“You should know that DIA is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” the governor said. “Our airfield is situated on fifty-three square miles and is one of the largest airports in the world.”
