by Fritz Galt
He reached across his sore left leg and plucked the phone off the wall. Once again, he punched in Jade’s cell phone number. While he waited for her to pick up, he played a quick guessing game with himself. What was she doing at the moment? Taking a bath? Changing her stockings? Pinning Liang to the wall with an Uzi? With a kiss?
To his surprise, there was a click and the phone picked up.
“Wei?” It was Jade with a nervous tremor in her voice.
Earl began rummaging around his backpack for his passport to come and rescue her. “What’s going on?” he said, foregoing all the cooing they normally engaged in.
“I am desperate.” Her normally calm veneer was peeled back. “I am in Durango, Colorado, and I have just lost May.”
“That’s not a very big place. You should be able to find her.”
“You don’t understand. She is lost in the desert. And there is no transportation out of town.”
Earl began to realize that he needed to back up a few steps. “Why exactly are you in America?”
“Listen, Earl,” she acknowledged knowing who he was for the first time. “All I can tell you is that May and I ran into Liang at a nightclub in Breckenridge, and we woke up in jail the next morning.”
“Why were you in a nightclub?”
“That is not the point.”
“And ended up in jail with Liang?”
“No. With May.”
He closed his eyes. That came as a relief. “What did they charge you with?”
“We can talk about that later. But Liang disappeared in the meantime and took my BlackBerry and May’s cell phone. Fortunately, once we got released from jail, we found him and chased him across Colorado. Then this morning, May followed him in a glider plane, which I am hoping she landed safely somewhere near him on a mountainside.”
Earl opened his eyes and stared out the window as dusk fell on the city. It was hard to picture May in the desert from his vantage point. “Do you think May can handle Liang alone?”
“I doubt it. She has no weapon, and she has been complaining about voices in her head.”
So she was chasing after Liang just as he’d suspected. At least May and Brad had one thing in common. Voices in their heads.
“Why don’t you stop her?”
“Stop her? I want to help her.”
“Why would you want to help her?” He began conjuring up images of a ménage à trois, and wondering how he might fit in.
“Help her capture Liang. He has kidnapped May’s father.”
“Oh, so you’d go out and help her capture Liang.”
“All the gas stations are closed. There are no cars on the road. Everyone is by himself.”
“I’d like to tell you that Brad can come and help you. He’s in the States, but he’s trying to get to the bottom of the trade embargo.”
“What trade embargo?”
“Just trust me, there’s a trade embargo. Ergo, no gasoline.”
“Oh. Then tell Brad not to worry about us.”
He didn’t buy her bravado. But she was right. He couldn’t pull Brad away from the economic crisis, even if it meant losing May.
“I’ll tinkle you back, little twaddles,” he told her. “Just keep your phone turned on this time.”
“Okay. I’ll put it on vibrator.”
Brad West heard back from his buddy in Beijing almost immediately. Earl’s first piece of news was that Liang had stolen May’s cell phone, not her. Which was good news.
Brad was elated. “So she hasn’t shacked up with Liang? I knew it all along.”
He sank into his hotel seat with a sense of unreality. He had a Chinese girlfriend again. He didn’t know how much longer he could have survived thinking that she had run off with Liang. It was all a misunderstanding created by Liang’s cunning conversation over the phone, and she wasn’t unfaithful in the least. It pleased him more than he could say.
“But there’s bad news,” Earl said.
Brad sat up straight.
“She’s still running after the big brute.”
Running after Liang? Once again, Earl had it all wrong. “She is a dutiful daughter running after her father.”
“Right.” Earl went on, “Jade informs me that May is hearing voices.”
“Come again?”
“Are you deaf? I think what she means is voices like the one in your head. You still have one, right?”
“A voice or a head?”
“Maybe you both need a shrink.”
“Skeeter, you don’t know us. We’re like this…” But he couldn’t demonstrate their closeness visually over the phone.
“Okay,” Earl said slowly. “I’ll have to imagine that.”
“Why don’t you just give me Jade’s number and I can get in touch with May directly.”
“Er, I don’t think May’s available at the moment. But here’s Jade’s number anyway.” Earl recited the number over the phone.
“Thanks, Bud.” Brad jotted the number down on hotel stationery. He was feeling like a million bucks. “I’ll be in touch.”
Brad waited for the sonorous bells of St. Paul’s to finish their noontime gonging before he placed a call to his father.
“Sullivan, here.”
“Dad, it looks like May hasn’t run off with Liang after all. He just stole her phone and made it sound like they were shacked up.”
“That’s good news. You know, I always trusted that girl.”
“But she seems to a have developed a problem. And it’s sort of the same problem that I’ve been having for the past year.”
“Okay,” Sullivan took a deep breath. “I’m listening.”
Brad didn’t need to remind his father about the psychotropic drug experiment that Sullivan’s friends had run on him in Tucson—that had resulted in him slipping in and out of different realities and enabled him to play one off the other. It had also implanted the voice of a Peruvian tree spirit in his left ear. After all, Sullivan had been the one behind the experiment.
But he didn’t want Sullivan to think May was doing drugs.
The room’s radiator began clanking. “Let’s just put it this way. Remember how last year after my little encounter with your mind-altering drugs, I got that side effect. That voice stuck in my head? Mind you, he’s a very nice guy, sometimes a bit cryptic, but generally helpful.”
“You’ve alluded to the voice before.”
“Have I?” The room was beginning to feel too hot and stuffy. “Well, now May has the same sort of thing. Earl tells me that she’s hearing voices, too.”
Sullivan didn’t respond at once. Surely Brad could make a better choice than that.
“Hey, let’s not be judgmental or sexist here,” Brad warned. It wasn’t like they were planning a family anytime soon. They weren’t even talking marriage yet.
But that wasn’t what turned out to be on Sullivan’s mind. “Your drugs were administered by American scientists,” Sullivan reminded him. “With controlled conditions under which we could monitor the reaction.”
“And you’re wondering what kind of drugs May is on?”
“More than that, I want to know who administered them.”
“Not her.”
“Don’t worry. I’m certain of that.”
Brad wiped his brow. “You’re sure it’s not the Agency?”
Sullivan paused as if needing time to wrestle with his thoughts. “Son,” he finally said, “I think it’s time to let you in on a few top secret experiments that we’ve been conducting.”
“On May?”
“No. But in this field. Let me send out a Company jet to pick you up.”
Brad had to admit that he was intrigued. “But I’d rather go meet up with her right now. I think she needs me.”
“I think that she might benefit more once you understand this.”
He didn’t want to squander his time. “Where are you taking me?”
“I can’t divulge that information, and don’t ask the pilot either. You w
on’t even know where you are once you get there.”
How perfectly paranoid. “I appreciate the need for secrecy, but if I don’t know where I’m going, I’d rather take my chances with May.”
“All I can say is that it’s a top secret, underground CoG location.”
CoG? What was that?
Okay, he was definitely intrigued.
Moments after finishing his conversation with his father, Brad rang up Jade’s number. With luck, May would be with her and Jade could pass the phone over to her.
“Hi Jade. Is May there?”
“I am sorry, Brad.” Jade sounded distraught. “She can’t come to the phone right now.”
“What’s going on there? Both you and Earl are being evasive on this subject. Where exactly is she?”
“We just didn’t want to worry you.”
“Well, now you’ve got me freaked out. Give it to me straight.”
“Give what straight?”
She knew what he was talking about.
Jade finally broke into tears. “I am sorry. I have lost her in the desert. She is out chasing after Liang, and I have lost touch with her.”
“Is she okay?”
“She doesn’t respond by radio. And I am worried about what Liang might do to her if he catches her.”
“That does it,” he said. “Just hang up and stay put.”
He threw the phone back into its cradle and jumped to his feet. The hotel room was a major mess and he had to stuff everything into his backpack. He grabbed his cell phone to call May’s number and let it ring while he packed. He needed to give Liang a piece of his mind.
He worked busily for a minute. But the line didn’t pick up. He checked his watch and gave Liang another minute to get the earful he deserved. Still no answer. Okay, one more minute and he’d come out there personally. He zipped the backpack up.
The number still rang.
Okay, that did it. He stared at the cell phone. He was really getting tired of it. He was trying to knock heads together and tease out information in places as far flung as Colorado and China from his little room in Cambridge. How could one save the world, much less his girlfriend, through phone calls?
He gave Liang one more minute. Could it be that May got to Liang already and put him out of commission? Or maybe Liang had dropped the phone into a gully somewhere. Brad didn’t know because he wasn’t there. He clicked off and slam-dunked the cell phone into the trash.
Maybe all the university folks were right to tell him that he needed evidence, not speculation. He was going to go off to the airport and let the CIA teach him a thing or two.
But he had one more call to make before checking out of the hotel. He retrieved the phone from the trash and dialed Beijing.
“Skeeter. I just wanted to tell you that I’ll be incommunicado for the next day or so.”
“Ooh, that sounds very clandestine. Where are you going?”
Brad had to smile. “Nice try, buddo. Check this out. It’s a top secret location codenamed CoG.”
“CoG? Change of Government?”
Brad was impressed. Earl was certainly up on his Washington acronyms. “But which location?”
“I know ’em all,” Earl said with confidence.
“Not this one, you don’t.”
“Try me.”
“All I’m told is that it’s underground.”
“You mean Site R? Cool. Ask them about the shadow government. You know the former government officials who drop their day jobs as heads of oil and pharmaceutical companies and fly there twice a year to conduct drills as if Washington had just been obliterated by a nuclear bomb and it was up to them to continue running the government?”
“I think you might be a little off track on this one.”
Earl remained serious. “Ask them where the VP disappeared to after 9/11.”
“Come off it. Now I know you’re cracked.”
Chapter 32
Twinkle twinkle little star…
May heard the distinctive sound of her stolen cell phone ringing in the still morning. That meant Liang was nearby! The song bounced off the far wall of the canyon and back to where she and the friendly campers had spent the night. She excused herself and hurried through the stubby pine trees. Within a minute, she came upon the Ford Escort. She had just spent the night fifty yards from Liang and her father!
There was nobody inside the car, although it was still loaded with supplies.
Her phone had slowed down and sunk in pitch and volume, but it was still ringing. It came from somewhere below her. Her heart pounded with anticipation as she searched for a way down. There was a narrow cleft in the rock that she could take. She inserted the pointed tip of a boot into the first notch and climbed down step by step. Near the bottom, she caught a whiff of something exotic cooking. Definitely not Chinese.
She could hear her cell phone playing her favorite ditty, a prayer to a little star, a place she dreamed of reaching someday. But the notes were low and drawn out as if the musician were drunk. The battery was running out.
By the sound of the ring, Liang was only several meters away, just past a tangle of juniper and oak trees.
How I wonder what you are.
She took a step forward, careful not to rustle the damp foliage around her.
“Ouch!” she cried.
Strong hands grabbed her from behind. She slipped free, spun around, and kicked high in the air. The assailant ducked just in time.
Up above the world so high…
May assumed a crouched, relaxed stance, her fists ready to fend off any blows. It was Liang! She launched into a spitting python attack, hands flicking through the air like a snake’s poisonous tongue. She wanted to take the gleam out of those rat-like eyes.
She had taken her old boyfriend to the mats before, in college, in flight school and in taikonaut training. It had kept them fit, their reflexes sharp. And it had made them equals. This time, however, she was at a distinct disadvantage. She was angry.
“Come to find your daddy?” Liang taunted in Chinese.
“You guessed it,” she spat back, and missed with a wild sucker punch to the chin.
“Ha! So you aren’t here to kiss and make up?”
“I would rather kiss a termite.”
She saw his face turn red. Now he was at a disadvantage, off balance, and wanting to get back at her.
Like a diamond in the sky.
“Will someone please answer that phone?” Liang screamed.
She eased back through the trees and used them as shields.
The song stopped. “Just a dial tone,” an old voice said behind her. It was her father.
Then she realized that she had hesitated too long. Liang landed a kick to the side of her face that felt like a slap at first, then jarred her vision, and eventually sent her off balance. The next thing she knew, she was flat on her stomach up against a round, spiky cactus plant. Liang sat atop her and tried to twist one of her arms behind her back.
“You concubine of an American,” he said. “I’m going to give you something that will make you love me. With all your heart and all your body.”
Then a pair of worn black loafers came to a stop beside her. She would recognize them anywhere.
“You leave my daughter alone,” the old man said, his voice trembling.
“I will if you hand me the microchip from my bag,” Liang shouted.
“No! Not that.”
“The microchip.” Liang pulled back on her hair, nearly snapping her neck.
“Do as he says, father,” May said, spitting out the dust in her mouth. She was certain that she could resist anything Liang imposed upon her.
Reluctantly, the scientist shuffled away. When he returned, he was carrying a small black bag.
“So you are still in love with Bradley?” Liang said, his voice full of spite.
“I am. I love him,” she squeaked, despite the increased pain he inflicted on her arm and neck. “I love him.” She broke into tears. H
er shoulder stung as he pressed her harder against the cactus.
“Then take this.” He jabbed a thick needle under the base of her skull.
The muscles of her neck tightened to resist the probe, but that only increased the pain. He jabbed the plunger into the syringe and injected fluid and who-knows-what-else deep into her brain.
At last she felt the needle withdraw. Liang removed his weight from her back and she struggled to her hands and knees. Her shoulder stabbed by the cactus hurt worse than the drug injection. She rose unsteadily and rubbed her aching shoulder. Then Donna Summer began to coo.
Come, come, come into my arms.
Liang held both arms out to her. Her instincts to bolt were met by what felt like a knife plunging straight through the back of her head. She took her hands off her sore shoulder and grabbed her head. She fought against the pain. It twisted deeper.
Could this be the magic at last?
So she turned back to him. Over his shoulder, she saw her father disappear into a hole as he meditated over an object in his hand. It was her cell phone.
Baby take me, high upon the hillside.
And so she approached Liang, and words spilled from her lips, “Baby, I want you.”
Liang’s lips met hers with tenderness, even passion. She yielded and then reciprocated. Euphoria came as much in waves of pleasure as from the easing of that sharp, twisting pain.
Liang ran a hand up and down his bare chest where May had ripped every button off his shirt to get to him.
With Dr. Yu safely out of sight down in his hole, Liang and May had just enjoyed wonderful sex. Their bodies had rubbed together like two pieces of flint generating tremendous heat. He had never seen her like that before, so uninhibited, so eager to please.
Now she was dusting her knees off and fastened her belt. He watched her retreat. Her round buttocks shaped and reshaped the white fabric of her pants. Where was she going? He rolled over on one elbow to watch.
She reached down and grabbed her cowgirl hat, dusted it off, and placed it firmly on her head. She faced him, her blouse still tangled, her bra gone. And then her hips began to gyrate to some internal rhythm that only she heard.
