Edge of War rdr-2

by Larry Bond

  Safely on the sidewalk, he walked through the gaps in the crowd, weaving between the clusters of people. These signs he could read:

  NO NEW VIETNAM!

  LEAVE CHINA ALONE!

  WE DON’T NEED THE UN.

  Unknowingly, Jing Yo had stumbled onto a protest against the war. It was aimed at the UN a few blocks away.

  The prudent thing would have been to take one of the side streets and walk away. Jing Yo guessed that the police would have agents in the crowd taking pictures, and if the authorities decided to move in, they wouldn’t care if he said he was just out for a stroll. But he was too curious to simply turn around. He was surprised, even fascinated by the fact that these people seemed to be supporting China, or at least not criticizing it. None of them seemed to be Chinese.

  A man was speaking from the back of a pickup truck that had been driven onto the island divider at East Forty-first Street. The loudspeaker blared. “Vietnam started this war. Let the Chinese finish it. Keep the UN out.”

  There were several dozen policemen nearby, lining the street behind him. Police cars, lights flashing, blocked the road.

  Jing Yo turned and surveyed the crowd. As he looked at the signs, he realized many had nothing to do with the war.

  BRING DOWN GAS PRICES!

  BIG $$ BLEEDING US DRY!

  HAVE YOU SHOT A BANKER TODAY?

  There had been demonstrations like this in China. Many had turned violent, generally with provocation. The police would pick their moment and wade in to make arrests. Knowing this, the people would pick up rocks and other things to throw. Bricks. They would be waiting, something in each hand, for the inevitable charge. A few would have guns.

  People began jostling Jing Yo, trying to get closer to the speaker. Deciding he’d indulged his curiosity long enough, he started moving back through the knots of people. A few shouted at him, making points that he couldn’t understand through their accents.

  Finally he managed to reach the side street. He walked back west through midtown, then cut around once more in the direction of his hotel.

  Jet lag was setting in by the time he reached it. The four men who’d been outside earlier were still there, still staring blankly across the street as he entered. He glanced at the clerk at the front desk. The clerk smiled but said nothing.

  The elevator seemed to take forever to arrive. Jing Yo stood perfectly erect, as he had been trained from his first day at the monastery.

  Revenge was his purpose, not politics. He had wasted his time at the UN.

  He corrected himself. His mission was repentance, not revenge. He had to atone for causing Hyuen Bo’s death.

  The elevator door opened. A short black man with a chubby face got out. He was wearing a tracksuit and listening to music on an iPod.

  Jing Yo pressed the button for his floor, then stepped to the back of the car. The elevator began to rise.

  It stopped at the next floor. A mother and small child started to get in. Then the woman stopped. “Is this elevator going down?” she asked.

  “No.”

  The doors started to close. Jing Yo threw his hand forward, halting them.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said the woman. She bent, then straightened. “You dropped this.”

  She handed Jing Yo a business card, then stepped back as the doors closed.

  * * *

  The card was from a diner on Second Avenue, in the shadow of the Queensboro Bridge. Not knowing how close it was, Jing Yo took a taxi, handing the card to the man.

  The cabbie’s English was far worse than Jing Yo’s, but he found the place easily and left Jing Yo off in front. Not knowing what to expect, Jing Yo went in and was offered a table toward the back. He asked for a cup of tea.

  He was halfway through the tea when the same black man he’d seen in the hotel elevator came into the diner. Seemingly lost in his music, the man didn’t acknowledge Jing Yo as he passed, walking to a booth at the very end of the room.

  “There is my young friend,” said a cheerful voice across the room.

  It belonged to an elderly Chinese man walking toward Jing Yo from the front of the restaurant. He had a cane, though he didn’t seem to need it for walking; he wielded it like a wand or poker, punching the air before him. He was dressed in a perfectly tailored gray pin-striped suit, with a crisp white shirt and a red patterned tie. A few wisps of hair clung to his temples, but otherwise he was bald. He wore thick bifocal glasses.

  Jing Yo rose as he approached.

  “Sit, sit,” said the old man, raising his cane and waving it at him. “Have a seat. I am sorry for being late.”

  He asked the waitress for tea and a banana muffin. Then he eased himself into the seat, maneuvering slowly, as if he had something in his pockets that he didn’t want to break. “My hips,” he said cheerfully in English. “Both steel.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Jing Yo.

  “Replacements. They taught me to sit a special way.”

  The old man smiled, adjusted his jacket, then looked up at the waitress, who was approaching with his order.

  “Would you like more tea, sir?” she asked Jing Yo.

  “No,” said Jing Yo.

  “You can call me Wong,” said the old man when she left. It was the equivalent in English of asking to be called Jones. “I am in your service.”

  He spoke in Chinese, but not the Mandarin dialect — he used Jing Yo’s own native Jin, with an accent heavily tilted toward Shanxi.

  “Thank you,” replied Jing Yo.

  “English,” said Wong, though he too was using Chinese. “For now. It will raise less suspicion.”

  Then he switched seamlessly to English.

  “What brings you to America, Mr. Srisai?” asked Wong.

  “I am a student,” said Jing Yo. “I have come on an assignment.”

  “Mmmmm.” Wong nodded. “A very difficult assignment. I was surprised when I heard of it.”

  “I need to get to Washington, I believe. I’m not yet sure. I only just arrived.”

  Wong reached his hand across to Jing Yo’s. It was brown, marked with liver spots, and wrinkled. But the grip was strong. “You will have more help here than you suspect. Your progress was marked at the very highest levels of the school. The faculty has taken quite an interest in you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Wong took a sip of his tea. He savored it, then took another. “This tea has gotten better. Or my taste buds have declined. The exact reason doesn’t matter, if the result is the same.” He picked up his muffin and broke it in half. “What do you think of America?”

  “I’ve only just arrived.”

  “Mmmmm.” Wong put a small piece of the muffin in his mouth. “You might order one. They’re very good.”

  “Thank you.” Jing Yo bowed his head slightly. “But I am fine.”

  “I heard you studied to be a monk,” said Wong, shifting to Chinese. “Do you have any dietary requirements?”

  “No.”

  “We believe the Americans plan to use the scientist for propaganda,” said Wong softly. “We have not yet located him. There are several places a person like this could be. We’re watching his family very closely.”

  Wong paused and took another bite of the muffin. He chewed it slowly, as if each movement of his teeth were a dialogue with the food.

  “We have other friends. We have ways of finding things out,” said Wong. “It would be ideal to discover him before he is used. After that, there are questions about what course to take. But…”

  He let the word hang in the air, the silence suggesting many possibilities — and none.

  “I have a theory,” said Wong, returning to his tea. “The president is coming to the United Nations on Friday. When the president makes a speech, perhaps we will see him then.”

  Jing Yo said nothing. Finding the man would be difficult enough, but killing him inside the UN, where security would surely be high, would be nearly impossible.

  Only because of t
he time limit. If he had infinite time, he could easily find a way. He would prepare carefully, and infiltrate. But with only a day and a half to get ready, it would be impossible.

  “You look daunted,” said Wong.

  “Jet lag.”

  “You have more help than you can imagine. Even now, hundreds are at work.”

  Wong took the last morsel of muffin and ate it, a bit more quickly than he had the others. Then he took his cane and started to rise. Jing Yo rose as well, out of respect.

  “Your clothes, even for a student, do not suit you. The clothes make the man.” Wong chuckled. “I have a cousin who is a tailor. He will make you something very suitable, and quickly.” He handed Jing Yo a card.

  Jing Yo took it, and watched as Wong walked to the front and paid the bill. Someone jostled him from behind. He turned quickly. It was the black man with the chubby face.

  “Yo, bro, you dropped this,” said the man, handing him a BlackBerry cell phone. “Better be careful. Brick’s worth a lot of dough.”

  * * *

  This time, the cabdriver spoke very good English but had a great deal of trouble finding the address. He ended up dropping him off at the corner of Clinton and Houston. Jing Yo walked for a few blocks before finally deciding he had to ask someone for help. It took three passersby before he located the address, a small walk-up shop on the third floor of an old building just up from Rivington Street. There was no number outside; the only confirmation that he was in the right place was a small business card taped below the mailbox. There was no business name, no phone number or address, but the logo, a needle and thread, was the same.

  The number 3 was written on the wall next to the card.

  Jing Yo went up the stairs and knocked on the door. A young woman, maybe sixteen or seventeen, answered.

  He froze as soon as he saw her. She could have been Hyuen Bo’s cousin. Slim, long black hair, breasts that seemed to pull him toward her.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  He told her in Chinese that he had been sent by Mr. Wong for a new set of clothes.

  “I don’t speak very good Chinese,” she told him in English. “You want my father?”

  “Mr. Wong sent me,” he said.

  “Come in.”

  Where Hyuen Bo would have been warm and accommodating, this girl was cold and distant. But that was a blessing. He couldn’t afford to think about his dead lover. He needed to stay far from the memories, away from the longing.

  The front room was as small as any of the shops Jing Yo remembered from Hanoi. Old newspapers were stacked chest high against one wall. Fabric samples were scattered in loosely organized piles everywhere. Two wooden chairs, their white paint chipped away, sat on either side of the window. An orange curtain made of velvet hung over a door to the rest of the apartment.

  A large oscillating fan stood in the corner. The girl bent to plug it in before leaving.

  The shape of her body as she bent was so like Hyuen Bo’s that Jing Yo closed his eyes.

  When he opened them, the tailor had shuffled into the room. He wore gray cashmere pants and a blue denim work shirt whose tails hung below his waist.

  “Up,” he said in English.

  Jing Yo rose. A measuring tape appeared in the man’s fingers. The man was as old as Wong had been, and much more frail, but he worked quickly, silently taking Jing Yo’s dimensions. His hands opened and closed, spreading the tape and reeling it in like a magician manipulating cards. He wrote nothing down, and said nothing until he’d finished.

  “Three hour. You come back.”

  “Three hours?” said Jing Yo.

  “Three hour. Done.”

  * * *

  Jing Yo used the time to get dinner. He had a hamburger in a small combination bar-restaurant two blocks from the tailor. Jing Yo had had hamburgers before, but this was unlike any of those. The meat had a different taste — bloodier, it seemed to him. And definitely fresher. It tasted as if the cow had been slaughtered in the back. It was also much cheaper than it would have been in Asia.

  The Americans did have this advantage. They wouldn’t have it for long. And perhaps it explained their arrogance — if you were able to eat like this, you must think you were better than everyone else.

  A television was on in the bar, set to a news program. When Jing Yo finished his burger, he watched the report, trying to see what news there was on the war.

  To his great surprise, there was nothing. The news was about sports, movie stars, and crime. There were three different stories about robberies in Manhattan. “Home invasions,” the reporter called them.

  “Serves those rich bastards right,” said a man sitting on a stool. “They got all our goddamn money. I’d shoot ‘em all. The Wall Street bastards.”

  * * *

  When Jing Yo returned to the tailor’s shop, he found the door ajar. He pushed in slowly, suspicious and unsure.

  A pair of suits, one blue, one pin-striped gray, were sitting on a black suitcase.

  “Hello?” said Jing Yo. He put his hand on the curtain and pulled it back a few inches. “Hello?”

  There was no answer.

  He took the blue suit jacket and pulled it on. It fit perfectly, as did the other.

  There were more clothes in the suitcase: underwear, socks, shoes. There was also a map of the city, and a tourist guide. A small traveler’s wallet contained several MetroCards, along with two debit cards and several hundred dollars in different bills.

  Jing Yo’s phone rang as he was sorting through the wallet.

  “Mr. Srisai, I am calling for Mr. Wong. A taxi will meet you downstairs. It will take you to a new hotel. There’ll be an envelope in the backseat of the taxi. In it will be a key for the room. The room number is 1203. You are not to go back to the old hotel. You will receive further instructions shortly.”

  “Thank you,” said Jing Yo, but the caller had already hung up.

  16

  Washington, D.C.

  “Damn it!”

  Greene slammed the phone down, releasing a small portion of the anger he’d kept in check during the conversation.

  A very small portion. The only way to release it all would be to throttle Senator Phillip Grasso.

  Then cut him into little pieces with an ax.

  And he was a member of his own party!

  Greene got up and began pacing around the office. What he really should do was go down to the gym and work out a bit. Or even go upstairs and hit his bike. But he had too much to do. He was supposed to be on the phone right now, sweet-talking Congressman Belkin into voting for his health-care appropriation.

  Belkin would ask for a few more dollars in one of the highway allocations. Greene would bargain a bit, but in the end he would have to relent.

  Everything was a deal. Everything required some sort of quid pro quo.

  And Grasso —

  His phone buzzed.

  “Yes, Jeannine?” he snapped.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. President. Um, you have, uh, Mr. Jablonski is on three-four.”

  “I’m sorry I yelled,” Greene told the operator. “My bark is worse than my bite.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He picked up the line. “Billy, what the hell is going on?”

  “All good,” said Jablonski. “The scientist is a little, uh, well, scientific. Stiff. But he’ll be okay.”

  “That’s in our favor, right? Shows he’s authentic.”

  “I guess.”

  “Did you get him clothes?”

  “I sent him to a friend of ours. Same guy I had cut you the suit.”

  “You don’t think Anna or someone like that would have been better?”

  “You said you didn’t want him to look like a movie star.”

  “All right. It’s in your hands. How’s Ms. Duncan?”

  “That’s why I’m calling. She doesn’t want to go on.”

  “What?”

  “If she goes public, she loses her cover.”

  “This is more i
mportant than her goddamn cover,” said Greene. “The hell with her cover. Who the hell cares about her cover — what does she think she’s going to do, sneak back into Vietnam after the Chinese take it over?”

  Jablonski didn’t say anything. But that was reproach enough.

  “Why the hell didn’t Frost mention that it would be a problem?”

  “I wasn’t involved in the conversation, George.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Billy. I know.” The president rolled his head around his neck, stretching his muscles. They always seized up when he got angry. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t see any need to use her, to be honest. She’s a good story, but if she’s not into it, she won’t add much. The little girl, on the other hand.”

  “Don’t worry about her,” said Greene. “She’s got a hell of a story.”

  “And our scientist rescued her.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “That is pretty compelling. She doesn’t speak English?”

  “Christ, Billy. The child is six. She probably doesn’t even speak Vietnamese very well.”

  “When do I meet her?”

  “She’s coming up with me.”

  “All right. We’ll figure something out. Now — the SEALs.”

  “What SEALs?”

  “Mara told me there were SEALs involved in this.”

  “Yes, they came in and helped her get out. She deserves most of the credit though.”

  “Two of them died on the mission. That — ”

  “I’d rather not emphasize that point,” said Greene. “I don’t want any mention of soldiers in Vietnam.”

  “Uh — ”

  “No.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry. Let’s drop that whole angle. We mention that some CIA people were involved, but we don’t get specific. That’s better anyway. People expect the CIA to be involved.”