by Fritz Galt
Kate Cooper’ labor contractions were hitting hard and fast. She couldn’t remember for the life of her what the breathing patterns should be. Sean had stood by her side, holding her hand and stroking her hair during the birth of her first two children. They had practiced the patterns beforehand and his steady voice had calmed her as she breathed through her contractions five and seven years ago.
But she hadn’t heard from her husband for over eight months, and for all she knew, he had been forced into a different SARS ward and perhaps succumbed there. She didn’t want to think those thoughts. She wanted Sean to see their baby that was on its way.
She clenched her fists as a new pain wracked her body. She clutched the rusty bed frame beneath the thin pad that passed for a mattress in the medical examination room.
This whole childbirth scene was going to be fairly primitive. Mercifully, her lower abdomen relaxed, so she could let go of the bed frame and rub her sore arms.
Paint had peeled from the cement walls, and a malignant rust stain had spread across the entire metal ceiling. There were no midwives present to guide her through the process. She let out a short laugh; at least the hospital bills would be minimal this time around.
The old Chinese doctor looked back over his shoulder at her, concern magnified in his eyes by his thick glasses. He was the entire maternity shift. And he probably hadn’t delivered a baby in fifty years. Besides, she sighed, natural childbirth was rarely practiced in China any longer. She was surprised that, months before, the old guy hadn’t suggested a caesarian and picked out an auspicious date for the operation.
Her muscles began to clench from the bottom up, at last gripping her chest, arms and shoulders. It’s for you, baby, she thought. I’m doing this for you, she told the unborn child.
“God, Sean, where are you?” she cried, her fingers gripping the bed frame like a vise.
The delirium passed after a couple of minutes, and she found herself panting like a dog. Her hospital gown was saturated with sweat despite the icy room.
She frowned at the blue gown spread over her like a tablecloth. Don’t let the editors at Vogue see her like that. They would be horrified. But she would gladly give up her fashion design career if she could only deliver this one baby safely, this one more affirmation of life.
Then, as the doctor rummaged through his medicine cabinet for painkillers, she began to wonder. Maybe the baby wasn’t just an extension of Sean’s love and being. Maybe he had died of SARS, and the baby was just his replacement.
All of a sudden, she regarded her expanded abdomen with horror. She didn’t want the baby. She only wanted Sean.
The final paroxysms of labor were striking now, taking over her body every sixty seconds.
The room spun around, and she lost track of the details. Her only focus was on the corner of the ceiling, the furthest horizon line she had seen in nearly a year. Except for that horrible SARS ward, with the coughing patients sleeping beside her children, the nurses being taken away with fevers, the nerve-wracking races across town wrapped like mummies in the backs of ambulances, the new wards, new doctors with fear in their eyes, the endless IV drips, the frantic search for the right cure.
She and her kids had entered the first respiratory ward healthy, but developed coughs almost immediately. Then came the fevers that they couldn’t bring down.
She knew what was coming next. Jane and Sammy had contracted SARS. Then she had caught it, too.
Was Sean in the next bed over? A different hospital? The statistics in the newspaper had shown that men his age were particularly vulnerable to dying of the disease.
The pains hit her once again. She lost control of her breathing. She should be grunting or something, helping the child along the birth canal. Instead, she found herself fighting it. Pushing back.
“Sean!” she shouted between gasps. “Are you coming?”
The doctor turned away from the medicine cabinet. In one hand he held several long, thin needles. This was no time for acupuncture!
What good was the old fart?
God she needed this to be over, no matter what the outcome. She didn’t care. How could she still care about anything?
The doctor twirled a needle between his thumb and forefinger and bent closer. Kate clenched her eyes shut and felt the needle puncture the skin of her belly. God damn it. She was going to pop.
All her hope was rapidly vanishing.
She felt warm droplets rolling down her cheeks. She blinked several times in the ocean of tears. Her horizon had become blurred. She was losing consciousness.
The airplane swept Hiram and Tiffany and their merry band of travelers high over the City of Angels. The Airbus 340-300 felt agile in the air. Banking to the north, it afforded the passengers a stunning view of the famous HOLLYWOOD sign.
Just beyond the clearly visible, but dilapidated letters, a handful of searchlights raked the sky. The lights seemed to originate from a large, well-illuminated building.
“That’s the Academy Awards,” Hiram said, and turned excitedly to his wife.
Tiffany stared out the window. “What’s that big ball of fire right next to it?”
Hiram shrugged. “Probably just some special effects.”
Slight air turbulence lifted him momentarily off his seat. It gave him a jaunty feeling, just like the buzz he had gotten from the first free mimosa of the flight.
“Yowza!” he said, abandoning himself to the rollercoaster-like thrill of the flight. “This gonna be some vacation.”
Or was he being too reckless? Was he about to throw away his entire life’s savings on a mere three weeks?
No, he reminded himself. The plan was calibrated to fit their budget. It was limited to a round-trip fare and three-week hotel stay. He wasn’t paying for eternity in paradise.
The difference between what he could and couldn’t afford bummed him for a minute. He couldn’t buy eternal bliss. Sooner or later he would have to return to the snowy, traffic-choked streets of Jersey.
“Hey, cheer up,” Tiffany said, her voice tinkling like the sound of her wedding ring against her champagne flute.
He let the dreaded thought of returning home pass. As they turned out to sea, it felt wonderful leaving the world behind. In fact, wasn’t it okay to live for the moment? Wasn’t that what vacations were all about? An escape from reality?
The ride was turning into more of an emotional than a physical rollercoaster for him.
A tiny overhead television flickered on, and the in-flight entertainment began. The featured movie was an attempt at a period piece, but looked more like a bunch of rollerbladers hanging out in historical costumes.
And the same people were handing out awards to themselves in Tinseltown that night.
But Tiffany seemed caught up in the movie, and wasn’t about to take off her headset for a conversation.
He turned his reading light on and pulled the Purang guidebook from her carryon bag. First, he glanced inside the back cover. The yellowed library sticker showed that it had only been checked out once. It gave him a thrill to imagine that he was about to venture into uncharted waters. Squirming contentedly in his seat, he began to read.
The history and geography of the island nation were fascinating, but only so, perhaps, for someone heading there.
A former British territory, apparently the British had misfiled it and forgotten about it, so the island declared itself independent in 1957. It wasn’t until 1986 that the United Nations got around to recognizing it as a sovereign state.
The language spoken there was English, and there was no official bird, flower or anthem.
Built on an eroded volcanic outcropping five miles in diameter, the single island nation rose less than ten feet above sea level at its highest point. Its chief product was bamboo souvenirs. And the tourist industry was the nation’s primary source of income.
Hiram yawned. It sounded just perfect to him.
The government was a moderate Muslim state, with many of the island�
��s early inhabitants being native Polynesians and Bangladeshis who had worked on the British sugar plantation.
It was not easy to get his broad body comfortable in the narrow seat. How did tour groups fly all the way to Australia?
He turned sideways and leaned his head against Tiffany’s, and drifted off to sleep, a satisfied smile on his lips.
The sun resembled a glowing mango as it slid behind the fronds of coconut palms. The trees lined a small one temple, one mosque port on the western rim of Hainan Island.
A motorized fishing boat was waiting at a concrete pier.
“All aboard,” the skipper ordered.
The skipper no longer held the knife to his back. But then, there was nowhere for Sean to run in the sleepy village. He looked down at the clear water. It was carried on a strong current from Vietnam. Jumping in would get him nowhere.
He was forced to heed the skipper’s command.
A dark-skinned seaman scrambled to release the bow and stern lines while the skipper pushed Sean into the stern. The residue of squid and octopus catches squished underfoot. The skipper tucked his stiletto into a tooled leather sheath and stood guard beside his quarry. His eyes didn’t attempt to intimidate Sean into submission. Instead, they seemed to empathize with his plight.
Then the three men set out across the choppy water. From his position behind the wheelhouse, Sean could see an empty horizon.
The trip took fifteen minutes as they followed the curve of the shore.
Just as the sun dipped into the water, they churned to a halt before the dark prow of a rusty freighter.
The ship was a disgrace. Old paint flaked off her hull.
“Is this your ship?” Sean asked, unable to keep the disdain from his voice.
The skipper nodded, unfazed. He motioned for Sean to scale the steps of the metal accommodation ladder.
He complied, but with each rusty rung he climbed, it felt like he was entering a floating crypt. The ship should have been overhauled years ago. From the creak of her hull to the filthy smell emanating from below deck, he knew that she was living on borrowed time. She should have been sold for scrap years before. How could inspectors continue to grant licenses to such ships?
The fishing boat pulled away, leaving Sean on deck with the skipper and a handful of standoffish men, a mosaic of nationalities, and assumed identities, he was sure.
A white-uniformed man greeted the skipper as soon as he set foot on deck. “A fax just arrived from headquarters, sir.”
“Wait here,” the skipper told Sean. “And don’t try jumping overboard again. It would be a very long swim.”
He disappeared in the cadaverous ship’s superstructure, and Sean turned to watch the final sliver of the sun slip into the sea.
He could remember only one moment quieter than the moment at hand. On a still evening in late May, he had watched grave diggers in Maryland lower Kate, Jane and Sammy’s ashes into the rich, black soil.
Standing along a distant cemetery drive, the local and national press had kept their distance. Sean’s family represented a rare case of SARS deaths among Americans, while the disease continued to rage unchecked in China. He could still hear their shutters snapping.
Clad in a black suit, he had cut a solitary figure before the gravesite, his oil firm knowing better than to extend its sympathies at that time. Representatives of the White House were also notably absent. Nobody wanted to be associated with their deaths. And, having been raised an orphan and having raised his kids overseas, he didn’t expect anyone to show up and commemorate their lives.
The clank of footsteps approached him from behind.
“You’re one of us now,” the skipper said softly. “Stateless and free. Here is your new passport.”
Sean flipped open the blue American passport. His photo had been carefully removed from his own passport and pasted into the new one. Beside his face read a new name, “Robert Block.”
“How would you like to join our movement, Mr. Block, and work your way up?” the skipper offered. “You’ve got potential. With your American accent, you could go a long way.”
Sean had never considered listing his accent on his résumé. But he did appreciate the attempt to make him feel at home.
“Think it over,” the skipper said, turning to leave. “Fire up the engines.”
Suddenly, Sean became aware that he was not completely alone. The silent pirates on deck created a chill in the air. “Uh, where are you going?”
“I have to send a fax to the White House,” the skipper said over his shoulder.
“Oh,” Sean said. As darkness fell, the men wouldn’t dare to harm the goose that laid the golden egg. He was al-Qaeda’s new, number one bargaining chip.
The decrepit ship shuddered to life under his bare feet, and he saw black smoke begin to puff out of her twin funnels.
And, as the anchor chain clanked back into the bowels of the ship, they steamed southward, destination unknown, the fading twilight glowing purple against the Chinese rooftops behind them. And with the receding shoreline, his hopes of finding his family diminished by the second.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered to Kate, to Jane and to Sammy. “I’ll come back for you guys.”
When his gaze returned to the ship, he saw that several deckhands were edging closer to him.
Of course they’d have to be friendly and treat him well. But then, gang rape hadn’t crossed his mind.
Attorney General Caleb Perkins woke up in a foul mood.
He had spent a listless night alone in the Lincoln Bedroom. The actual experience of sleeping on Lincoln’s bed wasn’t anywhere near as satisfying as he had dreamed it would be, especially since he had fallen asleep knowing that Lori was buried in the president’s arms just down the hall.
He rose before dawn that Saturday morning, and immediately shaved and showered in the room’s private bath. He dug out a fresh pair of briefs and a starched shirt from his travel bag and quickly climbed back into his business attire.
He rushed out into the hallway just as a White House steward was passing by.
The man wheeled about in surprise, and then quickly recovered himself. “Would you care for an eye opener?”
“No, I’m fine,” Caleb replied. It was too early for a drink, even for him. And besides, he didn’t have the time.
He needed to get to a secure phone in the West Wing before the weekend staffers arrived. It was payback time, time to play hardball with the president, time to take matters into his own hands.
No matter how hard he tried to rationalize it, he had changed his mind. He would assign some field agents to find Cooper for the special prosecutor. He was going to dig up the key witness and sink the president once and for all in the Chinagate affair.
It was a long walk from wing to wing in the executive mansion, for a long time the largest residence in America. So when he finally reached the Oval Office, he was out of breath.
To his surprise, some lights were already turned on. Gertrude, the president’s elderly secretary, had driven to the office from her Montgomery County home to finish up work that had piled up during the week. At the moment Caleb entered the office, she was bent over the fax machine that was printing out an incoming message.
“Is that for me?” he asked, trying to gain her favor with a smile.
Her stony, not-amused expression didn’t change.
“Is anyone here to respond to the fax?” he asked, trying to determine if they were alone. The other offices down the hall looked dark.
She was a blank wall.
“Oh, I see,” he said. “You’re here on a personal matter.”
The scarcely veiled accusation by the chief attorney of the United States that she was misappropriating government resources had some effect, and her wrinkled cheeks blushed bright red.
“No, it’s not for me. It’s just that the chief of staff has to look over all the president’s correspondence before anyone else.”
“…and is Chuck here?”
“No.”
He took the paper from her hands and looked it over.
The letterhead was typeset in a sweeping backwards script, probably Arabic. But the message was printed out in English, terse and clear.
“Deliver $20 million to account number 2834457 at the Royal Bank of Riyadh, or I will turn Sean Cooper over to the prosecutor.”
The typed signature read, “Osama bin Laden.”
Holding the fax, Caleb’s fingers turned cold. His knees grew weak. He was looking at a blackmail threat, plain and simple. The world’s Number One terrorist organization had struck again. This time right in the middle of the White House. They were using Chinagate to extort money directly from the president. The scumbags!
But did they really have Sean Cooper in their possession? Nothing about the letter indicated proof of his captivity. Then he thought back to Harry Black’s phone call the previous night from Atlanta. Someone else had abducted Cooper right from under the CIA contractors’ noses. Who else but the captors would know that Cooper was taken?
He stared once again at the typed signature. Osama bin Laden.
Was the president going to negotiate with the terrorist chief? If Bernard White transferred money to the terrorists’ bank account in Saudi Arabia, then he was not only giving in to blackmail, he was digging himself even deeper into a pit.
He felt himself inadvertently licking his lips. The FBI would really have a case against the president then. What more could he ask for? With a little fancy footwork, he could have all the evidence he needed to hold over the president’s head. If his men could monitor the bank account in Riyadh, they might come up with the most incriminating evidence against Bernard White of all.
He needed the account number to make his calls and set his plan into motion.
“Gertrude, dear, would you photocopy this fax for me?” he requested.
Which she did with all the professionalism her duties as the nation’s First Secretary demanded.
A minute later, he took the copy and repaid her with a smile. “I suggest you contact Chuck Romer on this matter right away,” he said. He folded his copy of the fax, slipped it into the inside pocket of his suit coat, and turned on his heels to leave the White House.