by Fritz Galt
Mick had better get back from Mucha before everything that wasn’t tied down started flying around. And Alec ought to be smart enough to stay indoors and away from dangerous waves.
As for herself, she wouldn’t budge. If the storm blew her office away and knocked her dead, she wouldn’t resist. She had it coming.
Except for one small detail. She was right.
The Communists weren’t behind the pending invasion of Taiwan. Someone else was behind it. Someone had blown her remarks out of proportion. Someone in China took advantage of the press blooper. She had uncovered too many intriguing coincidences and too much tampering. Something in her bones told her that she was right.
Someone was orchestrating something big.
She resolved to approach Bronson one last time just as her telephone rang. She picked it up and heard a brushing noise and a thud as the phone hit the floor.
“Who’s this?” she asked.
She heard a low, hollow wail blow through a crack in a window. Broken glass crunched underfoot. A chair’s leg squeaked, and she heard a body fall to the floor.
“Hello? Hello?” she shouted.
Moments later, she heard a groan and heavy gasping.
“Alec? Is that you? What’s happening?”
“I just got to a phone. They knocked me out. Divers wearing anti-contamination suits.”
“Are you okay?” she cried over the storm.
“I couldn’t dial,” he continued as if he couldn’t hear her. “My hands are tied. I had the receptionist place the call.”
“Are you safe?” she shouted.
He paused. This time he seemed to hear her. “Broken glass. Blowing.”
“Are you bleeding? Can you get out of there?”
“A bomb is set. Anti-contamination suits. Earthquake is imminent. Take cover.”
“What earthquake?” she cried. “We haven’t felt a thing.”
“Next few minutes. Major fault in the tectonic plates.”
She could barely hear him over the raging storm that seemed to occupy his room. “Are. You. Safe?”
“Nobody’s safe. They’re setting the earthquake off with a bomb,” he groaned.
“What do you mean ‘a bomb’?”
“An atomic bomb is set to go off. They knocked me out.”
She leaned into the phone, and said harshly, “Alec, can you get out of there? What can I do to help?”
“Take cover.”
The line was still open, but she no longer heard a response. The telephone emitted a terrifying bluster as an arm of Typhoon Ivan crashed through Alec’s hotel room. A minute after his last words, the line went dead.
She looked up and saw her staff standing awkwardly in her doorway.
She tried to redial. The phone rang and rang. The hotel didn’t pick up.
The typhoon had cut off Orchid Island’s telephone links to the rest of the world.
She dialed Mick’s mobile number.
“Please wait and redial. All lines are busy.”
She looked frantically at her staff. “What’s the emergency number, 911 or 119?”
“119,” someone said.
She dialed Taipei’s emergency operator.
“I’m Natalie Pierce from the American Institute in Taiwan. Er, I need to report an earthquake.”
“There is no earthquake.”
“There will be one soon.”
Mick dropped Steve off at Mucha’s bus terminal that consisted of a round ticket booth where passengers transferred from large city buses to smaller mountain transportation.
As Steve headed back into town by bus to get in touch with Eli Shaw and ask him to look into Johnny Ouyang, Mick drove up into the hills of Mucha. Along the way, he passed a highway tunnel construction site that spilled stone from the insides of the mountain out into the ravine below. He passed numerous small betel nut and Tieguanyin tea plantations clinging to the sides of hills.
Finally he spotted the temple complex. He swung into a parking lot that was shaded by an ancient scarlet-blossomed flame tree.
He put on his tie in his rearview mirror. Then he locked the phone in the glove compartment and walked past food stands to the temple walkway. Below him, distant Taipei sat placidly beneath misty clouds.
He turned down a white, carved walkway. Soft music played from hidden speakers. He was eye-level with pine trees and palms that soared up from the ravine below. An elegant temple emerged in the mountain mist. Precariously perched on the hillside was the Chihnan Temple.
The temple’s numerous tiers were stacked on pillars like an elaborate wedding cake. White balconies and red arches ascended toward a magnificent double-tiered roof. There, the golden tiles, festooned with teal-colored serpents and dragons, curved outward on all four corners.
It was both an active temple and the home of a Taoist university. Students lived in a dormitory and attended lectures on the bottom floors. Offices and shrines occupied the floors above.
Mick watched a blur of performers dancing on an open terrace as part of the rededication ceremony. Incense drifted his way, as did the sporadic bang of a deeply resonating gong and the constant rhythm of two sticks flailing against a suspended drum. Two lines of children in wispy white costumes swept by in symmetric circles. Each held a spike that ended in a long white feather.
A purple-robed priest and Nan-an, the elderly politician, stood and watched from a raised platform. Dignitaries and onlookers lined the fringes of the open space. When the music paused, the priest with Nan-an recited a story, told in two-sentence fragments and interrupted by more music and graceful dancing.
Mick was too far away to make out the solemn tale.
With no detectable climax, the story and music suddenly ended. The two men walked forward holding lit incense sticks, bowed several times and placed the incense in an enormous iron censer.
Emerging from the covered walkway, Mick felt raindrops land on his head and shoulders. The crowd didn’t stir.
The boys and girls in white resumed sweeping in and out of the fragrant smoke and red wooden pillars. The two men disappeared into the back of the temple. The gong performed a slight crescendo and suddenly stopped. The terrace was left with onlookers milling about, incense blowing everywhere and rain falling silent and fast.
Mick had failed to meet up with the priest at the start of the performance, so he would have to find him inside the temple and pay his respects. But it was Nan-an that Mick really wanted to meet. Was the old man’s candidacy for real?
Mick retreated under an overhang and edged past sacrificial objects and hundreds of burning votive candles to reach a temple door. Worshipers wandered freely in and out of the temple. Entering, they bowed to the brilliant golden altars and offered fresh fruit, unopened bottles of beer and various sweets and crackers to the departed.
He developed a mild headache from the smell of melting candle wax mixed with the musty scent of wet clothes.
At last he reached an interior passageway and slipped in. There was no need for stealth. At the end of the room, a priest’s office, had already become a public gathering place.
The elderly priest had disrobed and donned a neat black business suit. He and Nan-an sat in twin chairs in the center of the square room. The priest singled out people from the hubbub of visitors to talk with Nan-an. Meanwhile, ladies served tea and cookies to newcomers.
Mick tried a cookie. It was stale. He would skip the tea.
Visitors called the priest “Councilman” in Chinese, and Mick gathered that he had been a politician at one time. In the past, all politicians had belonged to the ruling party, the only party. It was no great contradiction to see Nan-an, a stooped, bespectacled politician, soliciting votes at the priest’s event.
The priest seemed to revel in the attention that Nan-an brought. While his esteemed visitor’s thick glasses passively reflected the fuss he had caused, his straight eyebrows indicated a harder core.
As he shuffled forward to offer his salutations, Mick took in th
e room’s ambiance.
In an office where the doors were constantly opening and shutting, he saw as much wildlife on the walls as he’d expect to see outside.
Its red tongue flashing in and out hungrily, a green gecko with sticky globs for fingers slithered up the white wall behind the two men. In the window frame, an enormous black spider with twin yellow lines on its back was mending a broken web.
The next couple bowed and peeled away and suddenly Mick was confronted with the men of honor. Thank God, he had rehearsed a few lines in Chinese.
“Hello, gentlemen. My name is Mick Pierce. I’m sorry that the director of the American Institute in Taiwan could not attend the ceremony today. However, I’m here on his behalf. It was a most auspicious occasion.”
The councilman cum priest rose, and Mick bowed and presented his business card with both hands. The priest slipped him one in return, then turned to Nan-an.
The frail Nan-an remained seated, but his magnified eyes were unblinking as he studied Mick. “So the director couldn’t be bothered to attend,” Nan-an said in beautiful Mandarin. “I remember the enormous support that the Americans gave to us throughout the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies. They protected our fragile island from the revolutionaries.”
“Yes, sir. And we still support your defense.”
“Ah, all that has changed. We must fend for ourselves with a large knife and broad ax. We must strengthen our government, rebuild our military and shore up the souls of our people.”
“Yes, well, I wish you good luck.” Hao yun, for good luck, were the most accommodating words that Mick could think up in the face of such paranoia.
The two men bowed and Mick took the hint to move away and allow the next well-wishers to greet the pair.
A young woman in a traditional chibao dress that hugged her figure placed a tray of paper teacups under Mick’s nose. He shook his head and tried to smile.
He took a deep breath to clear Nan-an’s rancorous comments from his mind. The clamor, reptiles, spiders and jostling bodies were suffocating. He loosened his tie and stepped outside for air.
Well financed, Nan-an and his older generation of hardliners were beginning to sweep to power through recent local elections. With a growing mandate from the people, Nan-an’s movement was beginning to undermine the system of one-party rule.
If elected, Nan-an would elevate the provincial government to assume national responsibilities. The ultra-nationalists would supplant the ruling Nationalist Party, and realize Nan-an’s dream of unifying China within his lifetime.
According to Admiral Shi, Mick’s golf partner, Nan-an was a shoo-in for the island’s governorship. He shuddered at the thought of the iron-fisted Nan-an ruling the island. The burgeoning democracy would regress to the days of military rule.
Images of the heavy-handed 2/28 slaughter of supposed “Mao sympathizers,” a mixture of pre-war Japanese Communists and virulent anti-Nationalists, came to mind. And the vision of Nan-an sending current-day professors to jail for life for their political views turned his blood cold.
Fortunately it was a warm day and the frosty moment passed.
Relaxing under the overhanging roof, he watched the sky pour its soul onto the tile terrace. What was once a patter of raindrops on the leafy eucalyptus trees had become a torrent, and wind drove the rain in sheets.
A recorded female voice chanted from a small rusty speaker and the heady smell of sandalwood filled the air.
He thought he could detect a faint, dissonant wail emanating from the valley floor. Was it an alarm?
Curiously, in the distance, flocks of birds were lifting off the trees.
Chapter 21
Alec felt numb lying on the floor of his hotel room. Foggy impressions drifted through his mind. Men in thick suits beating him. Once again, he tried unsuccessfully to squirm free of the desk chair to which his arms were bound.
Rain slashed through the broken glass of his window. He remembered standing in that rain with his two colleagues, the engineer and the geologist. They had watched the Dolphin reach shore and tie up safely. Various figures in clumsy orange suits with air-tight helmets had jumped onto the dock and trotted to the hotel through the drilling rain.
He had waited under a tree for several minutes and then entered the bright, dry lobby. A moment before his elevator reached the third floor, he knew that they were waiting for him. Like overweight robots, they jumped into the elevator and grabbed him. They had pushed him inside his room and tried to tie him up.
He looked around the damaged hotel room. A broken chair lay by the window.
He had fought back. And several pieces of furniture were broken over his bare head.
He had stolen a few looks and recognized the men inside the bulky orange suits. They were the divers who had been added to the project at Orchid Island. He still wasn’t sure why they had singled him out.
The divers didn’t escape without a few injuries themselves. He smiled through his clenched teeth. Somewhere on that small island, frogmen were nursing wounds and taping up holes in their suits from the shards of a mirror.
Suddenly, he was jolted back to the present.
A piercing light burst into his room.
Blinded, he squeezed his eyes shut and shielded his face.
For a full ten seconds, even with his eyes tightly shut, he felt the searing pain of white light.
Then, seconds later, he heard the blunt impact of a nuclear explosion.
On the very first jolt, Mick began reeling back on his heels.
Every fraction of a second registered in detail in his mind.
Timber cracked sharply overhead. Before he fell, he had time to watch three wooden arches splinter midway between each column. He hit the unforgiving ceramic floor on his tailbone and instinctively rolled out onto the terrace.
People lay in the rain gasping, but not screaming. They peered at each other for confirmation that they were not in peril.
After the initial shock rocked the temple, increased trembling began to panic the fallen worshipers. The iron incensory with its flaming offerings walked about on its four legs. Glass struck the ground and fragmented. Cheese Balls rolled down the temple steps.
Pillars groaned as the ground shivered more intensely. Food and people flew away from the altar, as if rejected by the spirits.
Mick became thoroughly soaked. Around him, railings decorated with stone lions toppled. The entire temple shook from side to side. Trees on the hillside thrashed about like victims in the jaws of sharks. He scrambled on hands and knees away from the overhanging tiers.
The deck began to rise and fall like someone shaking an enormous carpet. Safely away from falling objects, he stood gingerly on unsteady feet. He absorbed the waves like a surfer, his arms outstretched. Gusts of torrential rain sprayed in his eyes.
Terrified people pushed out of the priest’s office. Worshipers huddled around their families, afraid to venture onto the terrace where objects rained down from above.
Ceramic serpents fell and pulverized on the deck. They had protected the wooden structure from water and fire, but could not withstand the earth’s powerful spasms. Gold tiles clacked above, slid off the roof and slammed against the terrace.
Mick watched people emerge from the building’s many levels, where they flocked to the outer railings.
He had felt many earthquakes in his life, but this one was different. Its movements were more violent and it seemed to intensify.
As the wave motion amplified, the entire edifice suddenly began to lean. First from the east and working its way west, the arches gave way to the push of a giant hand.
People above screamed and scrambled for internal stairwells. His own level was unsafe. He was standing on five floors of potential rubble.
He searched for an avenue of escape. As trees thrashed on the hillside, the covered walkway sagged and crumbled away.
Suddenly, the wave turned into a teeth-chattering jolt. He was pitched sideways. Then another jolt. Terrace t
iles gave way beneath him. The muddy hillside disappeared from view.
Weightless, he fell into stale air. It was a dormitory lounge. Others crashed down with him. Perhaps twenty more people rained down about him along with the broken timber of the ceiling, the smoking incense burner and the stone railing.
An old velour sofa abruptly broke his fall. He vaulted over the back of it for cover. At least his arms and legs still worked.
There was a stout table with scattered Chinese chess pieces. He grabbed a cushion and slipped under the table. There he held the cushion over his head and looked around.
Wood beams and tile shards pelted the lounge. Walls wobbled crazily then popped, wall by wall, into clouds of dust. Floorboards creaked under the added weight. He could feel the building buckle at its foundation.
The waves returned in a sickening aftershock. He felt like a child being hoisted into the air by a proud father. Up and down he and the room traveled.
Droplets splattered the dusty destruction about him. The quake seemed reinforced by the typhoon’s wind.
Screams echoed in the roofless room.
He closed his eyes. He had promised Natalie to return safely.
Return to what?
Upon alerting the city’s emergency call center of Alec’s warning, Natalie gathered her umbrella and briefcase and pushed her bewildered staff out through the department’s emergency exit. That set off the fire alarm.
Outside, AIT’s wailing horn was drowned out by wind and the din of other sirens. Taipei’s air raid system began to blare at full alert while police cars raced around the city.
Natalie stopped in the middle of the lawn. In the pelting rain with typhoon winds growing in intensity, her umbrella and her confidence were in tatters. She had a briefcase in one hand and a shredded parasol in the other. Where was the earthquake? Had she started yet another panic?
Then a sonic boom traveled across the city. She looked at Michelle Pan, her secretary. Her powdered face was streaked with rain. Beneath it, pale cheeks froze in utter dread.