by Fritz Galt
“Hate him,” Claudia said.
He could see her point. The guy looked kind of wimpy and he was no intellectual giant.
Then an image of the Reverend Terry Smith came on the screen. The political candidate hadn’t thrown his frock off yet. He was delivering a sermon in his traditional setting, a gold-plated mockup of a church. “What do you think of him?” he said with a snort.
“Love him.”
Brad stared closer at the screen. What in the world could she see in the man? All he saw was an overconfident clown with greased hair who yapped away, shook his fists like Elmer Gantry, and flashed his false teeth at the camera.
The commentator was outlining Smith’s bold new direction. “First he has launched a campaign against primitive religions by stating that modern religions are unique and unsullied by the past.”
Where was that coming from? Since when did televangelists engage in obscure scientific debates over the history of religion, especially at such a vulnerable time for the nation? The anthropology of religion belonged in the hallowed halls of academia where scientific soldiers like Brad and Dr. Yu did battle, not in the public arena during prime time.
“Second,” the announcer continued, “he embraces the barriers we have erected against the nation’s trading partners. His ad campaign states it succinctly: ‘America is for Americans.’ We must be self-sufficient and we must make do. From the reverend’s point of view, the experiment in a global village has come to an end.”
“How can you believe a word he says?” Brad objected.
“I don’t, but he sure knows how to use the cameras.” Claudia was eating it up. “Just think of Burrows, stiff as a board and sniveling away in the White House. He has to get out among the people.”
“Burrows has brains, whereas Smith has…” he couldn’t think of a fitting term.
“Charisma?”
Brad hit the mute button. He set the popcorn aside and faced Claudia. “What in the world have you turned into?”
“Isn’t this the kind of intellectual discussion you’re supposed to engage in when watching TV?”
“Well…well,” he spluttered. She had a point. If he was such a fan of the tube, then he should be prepared to discuss such banalities as camera angles. “Maybe we ought to turn the TV off completely.”
She arched an eyebrow with the smug look of a victor.
Click, the television went dead. And so did the lights.
What the…? Did Claudia have some magic button for the entire house? And exactly what was the meaning of her arched eyebrow? Did she have something extremely naughty in mind?
“I didn’t do that.” Her voice sounded weak.
“I didn’t do that either,” he added, a tad irrelevantly.
His senses began to work overtime. Could he hear a window being pried open? Where were the exits? The specter of another of Liang’s hit men once again raised its ugly head.
“Claudia.” He tried to keep the quaver out of his voice. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“Oh God. You’re married.”
“No. No, I’m not.”
“I was joking,” she whispered harshly.
“I knew that.” Of course he didn’t. “But there’s a high probability…” How could he phrase this without sounding overly dramatic or psychotic? He took a deep breath and plunged in. “…a high probability that a hit man will try to eliminate me.”
In the darkness, it was hard to tell how Claudia was reacting. He didn’t want to paralyze her with fear. At last she let out her breath. “That was pathetic.”
“Huh?”
“But at least you’re trying.”
She stood up and walked to the window. She swept the curtain aside, but the streetlights had gone out as well.
Boy, did he feel like a dope. He felt like a primary student and Claudia was his principal. He was completely out of her league. He closed his eyes. Spending the night at her house had been a mistake.
Suddenly he felt his two cheeks softly encased in two warm orbs. His nose was crushed against the wall of her chest. Her sweater came off and she began working on his shirt buttons. If he was going to die, asphyxiation was not a bad way to go.
Her fingers worked deftly down from his collar, then darted under his arms and pulled his shirt off. She was pressing forward, and he had to lean back onto the cushions of the sofa. Something hard struck his lips, and without thinking, he began to suck.
As if losing consciousness, he let her body take control of his overwrought brain. It was a blackout he would never forget.
Chapter 27
Liang awoke early in Durango, Colorado. He propped himself up in bed and looked about the room in the historic Strater Hotel.
A draft of cold mountain air gently lifted the Victorian drapes to reveal early daylight. A nearby locomotive released steam through its whistle to signal its departure for Silverton. The clink of eating utensils and the tinkle of a player piano drifted up from the Diamond Belle Saloon. Beside him in the four-poster bed, old Dr. Yu lay breathing heavily through his open mouth.
Liang had spent the entire previous day on the road with Yu. In Breckenridge, he had swerved hard enough to fling May off his hood. He hadn’t seen a trace of her since. They had passed through a long string of one-horse towns, and no car had appeared consistently in his rearview mirror. They had passed turnoffs to Colorado Springs, Denver, Gunnison and Pueblo. The large number of possible destinations would have thrown off the best of trackers.
They were a mere forty-five minutes from their ultimate destination. After securing a tent and sleeping bags and a week’s worth of provisions at one of those large American supermarkets, he and Yu would hit the dusty trail.
They would have to find a special place, a spot to concentrate all of the scientist’s energy. For he would ask the old man to summon up the most destructive power on earth and turn it to Liang’s advantage.
Liang lowered his head to the pillow with a sly smile. Even the Reverend Terry Smith didn’t know what lay in store for the world. And Liang preferred to keep it that way. For Liang to come to power in China, it would take a far bolder move than the simple brainwashing that Smith was employing. Whereas the fabric of American society fell apart easily and the government was rendered powerless by the simple brainwashing of two governors, the same would not hold true for China. Back home, the party held absolute power and the people, long accustomed to hardship and deprivation, would prove more resilient.
No, in China it would take a natural disaster of epic proportions accompanied by a military call to arms to prepare the minds of the Central Committee and allow him to quietly wrest power from his grandfather.
Dr. Yu had planted a few seeds in the minds of two Americans and the government had collapsed like a house of cards. It was a wonder that such a fragile system could survive even a couple of centuries.
He sighed deeply. He longed to return to the comfort of his homeland. He enjoyed working alongside the smartest minds in the world, those selected to become members of the Communist Party. At first the party had shunned him. Simply being the grandson of the president didn’t automatically qualify him for membership. He had learned that bitter lesson early on after being passed over by the party in college. He would have to prove himself in other ways.
So he had tried a different approach. He joined the air force, where he rose rapidly to the rank of captain. Again, no offer to join the party. He would have to go the extra mile, literally. He then took the exam and was admitted into the country’s prestigious astronaut program. Only then did the party take notice, for any man capable of flying into space certainly had to be a superior human being. After all, wasn’t the whole point of sending men into space to assert party supremacy?
At last, as an astronaut trainee, he was invited to become a part of the political elite. And once that happened, the world stood at his doorstep. He had contractors, mayors, bankers and military leaders at his personal disposal. Doors opened and welco
med him to private estates, clubs and bank vaults. Only then did he fully appreciate why the party held so tightly to the reins of power.
It was in the interest of the party to horde the wealth. But it clearly wasn’t in the interest of the nation. With time, he had come to see the party as preventing an even larger force from reaching its full potential.
The party was holding China back, and it was up to him to unleash her, ride the tide of success, and guide her toward her destiny.
He had to admit that the previous year’s attempt to take over the government had been a colossal mistake. It had been a failure in execution as well as imagination. But it had made him wiser.
He would not underestimate the incredible luck and deviousness of the Americans, and he would make more contingency plans. Nor would he underestimate the ability of the market to vault him to power. The Central Committee might run the government, but it only had tenuous control over industry, banking and real estate, and no control over market forces such as corruption and celebrity.
What a failure his previous plan had been. There were times when he had thought that he would never return to China, and the nation’s future would be lost. It had taken many months of rehabilitation and facial reconstruction along with rebuilding his network within industry, finance, the military and the internal security apparatus. But he had succeeded. He would rise from the ashes more potent than ever with a nation in desperate need of true leadership.
The old scientist and May were members of the party. Why they consigned themselves to the old levers of power and organs of government was beyond him. Look at the old guy, choking on his phlegm. He would die a forgotten charlatan, his work rewritten by the American Religious Right. And Yu’s daughter would be Liang’s puppet forever.
All that he envisioned would soon come true, but only after he and Yu reached their destination and the old man completed his task.
The early morning train was rumbling through town and shaking the very foundations of the hotel. What was left to derail him? When he had received a phone call on May’s phone from Bradley West, he was forced to face the fact that the young American had eluded the soldier that Yu had sent after him. What a pity. According to his cell phone screen, the call had originated from somewhere in America. Perhaps Bradley had come to America for May. But he couldn’t discount the possibility that he had come for Liang as well.
Liang had tried to demoralize Bradley and claimed that May was back with him. That might hold the American off for another day. Two at most. Liang had come to respect Bradley’s persistence and could expect to hear back shortly. When Bradley insisted on talking with May, what would he do?
As the first ray of sunshine pierced the curtains, it became clear that the only way to get rid of Bradley was to lure him out into the open. He would have to face Bradley and eliminate him in person. He smacked himself on the forehead. What had he been thinking? He had been going in the wrong direction. He shouldn’t run away from May. He needed her in order to lure Bradley into a trap.
He rolled over and slapped the old man’s chest with the back of his hand. “Wake up, you old fool.”
Yu flinched and twitched and turned away.
“I need you to talk to May again,” Liang said. “Put those songs back in her head. I need her to come to us.”
Vivid memories of May in her cowgirl hat dancing with abandon around the disco floor replayed in his mind. What an arousing moment that had been. He needed her within his sphere of influence to draw Bradley out. And to win her heart.
Brad was lying in Claudia’s bed. He tried to let go of a wonderful dream that lingered in the satisfied, yet dark places of his heart. It had something to do with not finding a spare bedroom.
He checked the alarm clock. It read 7:15, a reasonable hour to get up. Then he noticed that the second hand was not moving. The power had been out all night.
Claudia must have opened the curtains to wake him up. Bright sunshine filtered straight down through the trees. It must be mid-morning at least.
His body still heavy with sleep, he struggled to his feet and into the bathroom. A shower might get him over his jetlag. The spray came out like icicles. The water never turned warm.
As was her custom, Claudia was already puttering around the kitchen when he finally made his appearance.
“The butter’s nearly melted,” she said, as if the night had never happened.
He was willing to overlook it, too. It had been like some strange repeat of the past thrust into his present existence. It was so odd it might never have happened. What a self-serving way to look at it. Should he treat something so major, so fulfilling, so dissolute as nothing?
Well, she did.
“There’s no paper this morning,” she said.
He glanced out at the street. Aside from the shuffling of their feet, there were no sounds. Had the whole city come to a standstill, or gone away?
“We’ll just have to make up the headlines,” she said with a smile.
“Okay.” He sucked in his breath and took a seat at the kitchen table. She certainly lived in her own little bubble, if not her own fantasy world. He placed the napkin in his lap. “I can’t believe you’re a Terry Smith convert.”
She shrugged. “Not in a religious sense. I just think he’s the only one with enough clout and forethought to attack the problem.”
He had to admit that Burrows had come across as totally impotent on television—unlike Brad, who had proven himself repeatedly the night before. Still, there was something strikingly odd about the reverend’s attack on spirits and primitive beliefs. “Why in the world was Smith expounding on religious anthropology at a time like this?”
“Well, obviously you didn’t hear his whole sermon.”
“And you did?”
She nodded. “It was broadcast live on all the networks earlier in the day. And he’s got a point. How can a Chinese scientist take on Western religion? Isn’t religion supposed to be a matter of faith?”
“What Chinese scientist?”
“I didn’t catch his name. Smith had a copy of Science and there was an piece by this guy.”
“That guy just happens to be one of the greatest anthropologists that ever lived.”
“Oh, of course you’d defend another anthropologist.”
“Dr. Yu is a respected man of science. He single-handedly disproved the Homo americanus theory proposed by Professor Richter. He started a whole new school of thought on the history of religion that takes into consideration the very origins of religion and how spirit worship is alive today.”
“Spirits? I don’t see any?” she said. “Oh wait. There’s a little flash of light before my eyes. No, wait. What’s that abnormal smell? I sense the presence of someone from my past.”
“Make fun of it if you must. Go laugh at the Haitian voodoo dolls or the Pueblo kachinas or the Tibetan prayer wheels.”
She was pinning him down with a sharp look. Oh no, she wasn’t messing with him. Fortunately not this time. Instead, she looked curious. “Why are you so defensive of Dr. Yu?”
Put aside the fact that Brad had sent the article in question out for peer review. Forget that he had hitched his wagon to Yu’s reputation. “I’m in love with his daughter,” he said simply.
Claudia gave no noticeable reaction. Instead, her hands glided toward the butter dish. “Want more sourdough?”
“No. Thank you.”
So why wasn’t she upset that his heart belonged to another woman? Did his love life mean so little to her? She was preoccupied with getting the jelly onto her bread. Then she worked her tongue between her teeth. He took his eyes off her teeth.
“No electricity yet,” he said, stating the obvious. “No heat. No news. And this is the last of the food.” He stared at her in wonderment. “How can you be so calm?”
She looked more than calm. She looked happy, fulfilled, completely lost in her breakfast as if she didn’t have a concern in the world. Then her eyes landed on him. They narrowe
d and then crinkled around the edges. She leaned forward and took his hand. “It’s because I have complete faith in you.”
“In me what?”
She lifted the packet from the Embassy in Beijing. It was partially open. The little sneak had been reading the classified papers.
Oh well. Who could it harm? For one thing, it gave her confidence in him and that boosted his self-image.
He took a deep breath. He wasn’t so sure he’d find the cure to the nation’s ills, but he did have faith in the packet of statistics.
“Give me that.” He took a swipe at the envelope, but she was already standing up.
“Shall we go to the lab now?”
Armed with the CIA evidence, Brad walked into an old hall that housed the computer lab at the University of Chicago. Like the oblivious scientist at Berkeley, the man in charge of the campus’ computers was still on the job, more dedicated to his work than to his own well-being.
Claudia’s voice echoed down the long corridor as she introduced Brad to Mr. Johnson.
Brad leaned up to her and whispered. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to speak with a professor or some other sort of PhD, not some Mr. Johnson. I don’t want to talk to the janitor.”
Her eyes smiled. “Here everybody is called ‘Mr.’ or ‘Mrs.’ Mr. Johnson is head scientist at the computer lab.”
“Yes, Mr. West?” the man said impatiently.
Suddenly the thought blew him away. Brad pointed to himself. The top computer brain at the University of Chicago had just spoken to him as an equal.
Claudia disappeared into the laboratory where men in lab coats were heroically attempting to recover a night’s worth of lost data.
Brad pulled the statistics out of the envelope. “Claudia called ahead to explain why I’m here. I’ve got the latest financial data from the CIA and I need you to extract the likeliest culprits in the trade embargo mess.”
