13 Days to Die

by Matt Miksa

  CHAPTER

  74

  Sanya, Hainan Island, People’s Republic of China

  DR. ZHOU WEILIN removed her shoes so the powder-white sand could squeeze between her toes. A predawn mist wafted across the South China Sea, fleeing from the rising sun’s first light. The air was warm but not yet heavy with humidity. She could stay on Hainan Island for all eternity if the universe were more accommodating. For now, two blissful weeks would have to suffice. Extending her vacation any longer would raise too many questions. Soon enough she’d return to the real world and all the inquiries and investigations that would entail. Of course, they’d all conclude that the events at the Black Egg had resulted from “inadvertent mishandling of volatile materials.” A blameless accident. General Huang was gone and Zhongnanhai had returned to civilian control. No one wanted to dwell on the last sixteen days. The state-run media had already pivoted to stories about the Mid-Autumn Festival and moon cake recipes.

  For Jo, a return to the banal beat of normal life wouldn’t be so simple. Not after all she’d seen.

  A soft clinking, like wind chimes, accompanied the hush of the waves. Jo turned to see an older woman in a sapphire one-piece gliding across the beach in her direction. The woman carried a brightly colored drink in each hand, both embellished with festive pink umbrellas. Jo gave a toothy smile.

  “The bar wasn’t open, but a delightful young man was gracious enough to make an exception. You’ve seen him, the one with the glorious backside. Well, in any case, I’ll introduce you after brunch.” Aunt Jin handed Jo a glass and leaned in for a double-cheek kiss.

  “A bit early for a cocktail, don’t you think?” Jo asked.

  “Honey, when you’re my age, it’s never too early,” Jin answered. “Certainly not for a mai tai,” she added, taking a quick sip. Plum lipstick stained her straw.

  “How did you know I’d be here?”

  Jin ignored the question and stared out to sea. “An admiral once told me this island guarded a deep secret. It’s hollowed out, he said. Underneath those hills behind us is a gargantuan, hidden shipyard. The Chinese navy has spent years building the world’s most advanced blue-water fleet. Any day now, the side of that mountain will open up and the ships will sail right out, one by one.”

  “Don’t tell me you believed him,” Jo said.

  “I stopped believing men with stars on their shoulders decades ago.”

  The two women shared a laugh, but the moment quickly passed.

  “I’m officially out, you know. I tendered my resignation yesterday,” Jo said. “I’m through with the MSS.”

  “Out. In. You make it sound so binary. Have I taught you nothing, Zhinü?”

  “I mean it,” Jo insisted.

  “I’m sure you do.” Jin linked arms with her niece. “The ocean is calm now. Let’s take a walk.”

  Aunt Jin and Jo followed the shoreline, letting the frothy tide lick their ankles. The old woman gleefully drained her mai tai (and then Jo’s), and after a mile or two, she broke the peaceful quietude.

  “Your parents’ death—”

  “Aunt Jin, please, you don’t have to explain anything,” Jo interrupted.

  “Hear me out. An old woman has something to say—something that ought to have been said long before today.” Jin paused, took both of Jo’s hands, and looked deeply into her adopted niece’s eyes. “Your parents died that tragic afternoon in Tiananmen Square, in June of 1989. This you know.”

  “They were working undercover. They infiltrated the dissidents camped out in the square. Some trigger-happy soldier mistook them for students trying to foment rebellion.”

  “No, the PLA soldier who shot your parents made no mistake,” Jin said.

  “What do you mean? My parents worked for the Chinese government. They were MSS. You should know; you recruited them.”

  “Zhinü, your mother and father were magnificent human beings. They fought for what they believed in.”

  “Where is this going, Aunt Jin?” Jo grew impatient.

  “I didn’t recruit your parents. In fact, they recruited me.” Jin squeezed Jo’s hands harder, before she could rip them away. “They didn’t work for the MSS. They worked for the NSB. For Taiwan.”

  Jo crossed her arms and hugged herself, facing the water.

  “We all wanted the same thing,” Jin continued. “One China. One free, democratic China. The Communists in Beijing should’ve fallen that day in eighty-nine, just as the entire Soviet bloc did that summer. No one expected Zhongnanhai to send in the army. It was a bloodbath. Your mother and father paid the ultimate sacrifice.”

  “All these years, I’ve tried to follow in my parents’ footsteps—to honor their memory—and instead I’ve spent a career serving their killers?”

  “You don’t have to anymore.”

  “You came here to pitch me.” Jo felt sick, wounded, betrayed. “There’s always some hidden agenda with you. I’m supposed to join the NSB now, become a double agent like you, is that it?”

  “God, no. Taipei is just as corrupt as Beijing. Here we are, thirty years after Tiananmen, and nothing has really changed.” Jin picked a bloom from a wild hibiscus bush growing in the sand. “As long as the Chinese Communist Party rules the mainland, reunification is impossible.”

  “What are you planning?” Jo asked.

  “Zhongnanhai makes a great effort to project strength, but we know—now more than ever—there are cracks. There are a handful of us who still see a path to complete regime change.”

  “You’re talking about sedition. Treason.”

  “Yep,” Jin replied, popping her lips.

  “Who do you work for, Aunt Jin?”

  “No more flags, no more corrupt bureaucrats, no more lying men with starry shoulder pads. Our future requires new leadership.”

  “Whose leadership?”

  “We follow HELMSMAN,” Jin answered.

  “HELMSMAN. Sounds awfully cryptic.”

  “Three years ago, I met an American spy,” Jin explained. “We were holding him in a prison cell, actually. He was a tough cookie, so they sent me in to flip him. One and done. It would have been a piece of cake—the man was in rough shape—but then he made a fascinating counterproposal. I considered it for two days and then thought, what the hell. For three decades, I’d tried everything to make things better, but the Communist regime had only grown more powerful, more corrupt. I had nothing left to lose. This half-dead, naked, smelly American spy fell into my lap and changed my life. He offered a new vision for the future—HELMSMAN’s vision.”

  “HELMSMAN is American? How do you know he can be trusted?” Jo asked.

  Jin tucked the hibiscus behind Jo’s ear with motherly affection. “Zhinü, my sweet girl, who said anything about he?”

  CHAPTER

  75

  Annapolis, Maryland, USA

  “YOU SHOULDN’T BE here,” Secretary Darlene Hart said, maneuvering her sailboat into a slip. The breeze whipped up silver strands of hair that slithered around her head like Medusa’s snakes. “But since you are, you might as well make yourself useful.” She tossed Marc a bow line to loop around the cleat.

  “What if I’m done helping you?” Marc shoved his hands into his pockets, and his right palm brushed past the handgun, still concealed underneath the tail of his jacket. Hart noticed the weapon and shot him a surly look. Fine creases webbed the corners of her downturned lips. They weren’t laugh lines. HELMSMAN didn’t laugh.

  “If you think you’re the first man to come at me with a suspicious bulge in his britches, you’re sadly mistaken.” Hart completed the cleat hitch herself and began to lower the jibe.

  Marc bristled at the secretary’s casual nature. This shit storm wouldn’t pass over so quickly. How many people knew about his involvement? How many knew about the outbreak’s true origin? Marc couldn’t be sure, and neither could Secretary Hart.

  “You ordered me to leak the Ngari missile site plans. You assured me no one would find out they were fake. Now
I’m exposed. It’s time to tell the president—” Marc began.

  “Jim would never understand,” Hart spat. “I honestly thought he had the right head for this job, if not the balls, but he’s fighting the last war. He’s no different than all the other Langley eggheads, swinging their doctoral degrees around like ten-inch dicks. Jim’s still obsessed with Al-Qaeda—nothing but desert cockroaches. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China grows more powerful every day. America is still on top, but that only means we’ve got a massive bull’s-eye on our back. The PRC is undermining our authority at every turn, chipping away. The United States must defend its right to greatness, or someone will wrench it away. As long as I draw breath, Officer Chen, I won’t let that happen. President Barlow doesn’t appreciate the stakes. There’s no getting through to him.”

  “Then how did you convince him to order the nuclear strike?” Marc asked.

  “Men are simple creatures, for the most part, especially when they are suffering.”

  Hart produced two yellow pills from her pea coat—President Barlow’s missing medication. She flung the pills into the water.

  “James Barlow is no use to us now,” Hart went on, her voice barely audible over the waves slapping the hull of her sailboat. “He wouldn’t understand the importance of our work. But you, Chen, have always understood. The world may see China’s booming economy, how it lifted a billion people out of poverty within a generation. But you know the People’s Republic is no exemplar of human progress. For seventy years, the communists running Beijing have terrorized their own people. Dissidents murdered in the streets, journalists tossed in prison, Christians, Jews, and Muslims persecuted simply for praying to their Almighty. Your grandfather learned this the hard way, didn’t he?”

  Marc’s neck tensed.

  “There is only one path, Chen,” Hart continued. “Complete and total regime change. We’ve tried for decades to spur political dissent, to instigate a domestic movement to overthrow the Chinese government from within. Everything has failed. The Party is far too entrenched. Military confrontation is the only option we have left.”

  Chen didn’t disagree. He wanted nothing more than to destroy the Chinese government, especially after what they had done to his family. Thousands of innocent people would die in a war with the PRC, but if the conflict ultimately liberated one-fifth of humanity—the people living within China’s borders—wouldn’t it be worth the cost? They’d come so close with Blood River virus, but in the end the scheme had failed. Marc wouldn’t give up. There had to be a way to bring down the Communist regime. Of course, he couldn’t do anything from a prison cell, and that was precisely where he’d end up if Director Cameron and the president discovered he’d deceived them.

  “Barlow is a powerful man,” Marc argued. “He won’t just let this go. He’ll launch an investigation. None of us will be safe. Not me or Kalina or any of the others.”

  Hart flicked her hand. “Real power is the ability to manipulate the powerful. I’ll handle Jim. Just as I always have.”

  The blood drained from Marc’s face. “You’ll throw me to the wolves to save yourself.”

  The secretary raised an eyebrow. “What would you do in my position?”

  “You bitch.” Marc gripped the Browning still holstered to his hip.

  Hart snorted. “Do you think that will help you, Officer Chen? Murder me, and this all goes away? More than one body has been dumped into this river, I assure you, but the thing about cadavers is you can’t hold them under long enough to escape the stink.”

  Marc flew across the dock and leveled the Browning at Hart. His arm swayed slightly, but he wasn’t afraid. He was through taking orders from her.

  The silver-haired woman smoothed the sides of her coif, taming the wriggling serpents. “Relax, Officer Chen.” Secretary Hart, HELMSMAN, leaned forward, eyes ablaze. “I’ve got much bigger plans for you.”

  * * *

  Darlene Hart refused to let the aborted missile launch defeat her. Defeat meant she’d lost, and Hart never lost. She just took the long view.

  Ages ago, rumors had zipped around the Beltway that Hart would make a run for the presidency herself. The idea of a fiery southern woman whipping a dysfunctional Washington into shape appealed to disillusioned voters, according to a few snake-oil pollsters, anyway. Hart couldn’t imagine such a ridiculous idea. She’d never let the carnivorous Washington media tear into every carefully guarded detail of her private life only to win an office gunked up with swamp water. The president of the United States couldn’t take a shit without the Washington Post logging the length and weight of the excrement. And there was the small matter of Hart lacking a penis. Regrettably, the American people still preferred residents of the Oval Office to wear their reproductive organs on the outside. Why stall under the bright lights of public scrutiny when she could manipulate the course of history more effectively from the shadows?

  For nearly twenty years, one alliance at a time, Hart had built a network of devoted officers embedded within the darkest corners of the intelligence community. These men and women recognized what Hart knew to be true—the system was simply too rigid to adapt to a changing world. Protecting American supremacy required bending the rules. The man now pointing the pistol at her knew this too, which was why Officer Marc Chen had dutifully followed Hart’s leadership from the beginning. His loyalty would continue, and she’d forget about his injudicious indiscretion. People made stupid decisions when stressed. Besides, Officer Chen was truly gifted, Hart thought. He’d infiltrated General Huang’s inner circle, stolen Blood River virus from the Chinese military, and recruited a Taiwanese intelligence officer to deliver the disease. What glorious talent! A man like Marc Chen could reach incredible heights if properly cultivated. Hart shouldn’t be wasting her energy on a cockwaffle like James Barlow.

  “Who else knows that patient zero was working for me?” Hart asked, ignoring the elevated Browning.

  “Except us?” Chen said, lowering the gun. “That’s all. No one else knows we sent Chang to Tibet. No one knows the truth behind Blood River virus.”

  * * *

  For the next hour, Marc walked along Prince George Street in downtown Annapolis, ambling past antique shops and mom-and-pop bakeries selling pistachio macarons. He’d wandered haphazardly, following the disorderly network of sidewalks linking the Maryland State House to the water’s edge. He eventually circled back to the harbor. Hart was long gone, and the docks were quiet.

  Marc removed a small object from his pocket. The Red Guard badge. He rubbed his thumb over the embossed flame. It had belonged to his grandfather, but the old man had never worn it himself. He’d kept it only as a reminder of the dangers surging at the time. Overheated populism. Anti-intellectualism. Mao worship.

  It was 1966, and Chairman Mao Zedong had just declared war on China’s traditional past. Old culture, old customs, old ideas—these were to be destroyed to make room for modern, Communist dogma. A Cultural Revolution. It was a horrifically dangerous time for a young professor of dynastic history. Marc’s grandfather, his research, and his academic courses at Beijing Normal University became the symbols of everything holding China back. Students he’d lectured for years—the studious young men and women who’d sat in the front row of the hall, diligently capturing notes on the Qing dynasty and the Silk Road—transformed overnight into fiendish foot soldiers of Mao’s deranged vision. The student Red Guards defaced historic landmarks on campus, burned priceless scholarly texts, desecrated ancient mausoleums.

  Then they came for the professors. The students, donning olive jackets and red armbands, yanked Marc’s grandfather from his office and hauled him into the university’s central courtyard. They hung a sign around his neck that read BOURGEOIS SWINE, stripped him, and flogged him until his lungs filled with fluid. And then they hung his naked corpse from a tree.

  Terrified, Marc’s grandmother swaddled their baby girl and fled to Japan on a fishing boat. She affixed the pin to the infant’s blanke
t—a display of loyalty, in case the Red Guards accused them of defecting. The pair eventually made it to San Diego by the time Marc’s mother turned three.

  Mao was dead and the Red Guards were history, but the Communist regime had lived on, thriving for decades on a foundation built by evil. Marc wanted to burn it down. He’d never known his grandfather, but Marc carried his name, and with it a responsibility to uphold his family’s honor. He wouldn’t rest until the Party of Mao Zedong crumbled to ash.

  The Severn River looked still now—smooth, like a mirror reflecting the night sky. Marc stood tall on the edge of the sea wall, gripping the Red Guard badge so tight that the flaming torch indented the skin of his palm. Just as his family had worn the pin, Marc had worn a false identity and feigned loyalty to a corrupt, savage government. He’d operated covertly, protected by a veil of secrecy and deception.

  Never again, Marc swore to himself. He wasn’t going to hide anymore. He’d take the fight to the Communists’ doorstep. He’d confront them head on, as himself, Marc Chen.

  With a flick of his wrist, the Red Guard badge sailed over the slick mirror and made two images, one above, one below, until they converged on the river’s surface, sending out deep ripples in all directions.

  DAY 28

  CHAPTER

  76

  Mumbai, India

  OVERSTUFFED PICKUP TRUCKS muscled through vehicular clots clogging up Khara Tank Road. Daredevil cyclists threaded the cracks. Allyson had suggested a cheap restaurant near the medical college on the south side of the city, primarily so she could monitor the street from the adjacent Chor Bazaar—Mumbai’s largest flea market. She wanted to observe her contact approaching the designated meeting spot from a safe distance.