Flypaper: A Novel

by Chris Angus

  “Of course. The mission here is in fine shape. I commend you, Mr. Ren. Nonetheless, the general will play a key role in our long-term planning, especially if he’s encouraged to take over the country. Frankly, I can’t understand what’s delaying him. Last I heard he was in Hohhot, preparing his forces.”

  “That information may be out of date, sir. The epidemic shows signs of breaking out. I have word that Beijing is practically a ghost town. Only the very poorest and most ignorant citizens remain in the city. The entire leadership has fled, and government functions have all but ceased. You’ll be taking an extreme risk if you go to see the general.”

  Littlefield pondered Zhu’s words. He wasn’t a coward, by any means. He considered his life but a single cog in God’s plan. Nevertheless, he believed it was an essential cog. He couldn’t imagine that God intended for him to die from some ridiculous pestilence before his work was done.

  “Diseases—even epidemics—come and go, Zhu. Perhaps it’s God’s way of making the people more open to salvation. The godless Communists will be blamed for the outbreak. It will stimulate our cause. I think the time may be ripe to expand, to construct many more missions. This is the opening we’ve been waiting for. The breakdown in government functions will allow us to move quickly, with minimal interference.”

  “You may be right,” Zhu replied, thinking quickly. “I’ll make a tour of the western provinces to investigate new locations.”

  He’d already decided to stay out of the cities and avoid the masses of people now moving about China. The epidemic scared the hell out of him, even if that fear didn’t seem to enter into Littlefield’s calculations. His boss had just handed him the perfect excuse to head for the remotest regions and stay put until the sickness faded. And who knew? If Littlefield was to die from some pestilence, then he might be the one to take over Littlefield Enterprises. It was not an unhappy thought.

  Littlefield’s private plane circled the Hohhot Airport. The pilot had been unable to raise anyone in the control tower, and was extremely uneasy about landing without making contact. But Littlefield simply waved a hand.

  “Pick your landing strip,” he said. “They all looked available the last time we flew over.” He’d been in touch with General Zhou by phone and been promised someone from the general’s staff would pick him up. The connection had been poor and the conversation brief, but he didn’t detect anything out of order.

  The plane landed and taxied back to the main terminal building. As Littlefield waited for the door to open, he looked out the window and saw a dozen army trucks and two tanks approaching. By the time he descended the steps, soldiers had encircled the plane. A major met him at the bottom.

  “Mr. Littlefield, sir,” the man said. “The general gave orders to bring you straight to his headquarters. We’ll leave a contingent to guard your plane.”

  “Is that necessary?”

  “We’re at the northern edge of the worst of the migrations that have begun, sir. But the situation is volatile and could explode at any time. The general, frankly, was surprised you came.”

  Half the vehicles and both tanks stayed with the plane. The rest accompanied them into the city of Hohhot. The first thing Littlefield noticed was that the streets were empty, not just of people, but also of vehicles of any kind.

  “Where is everyone?” he asked.

  “Fled west, sir, along with every car, truck, bus, bicycle, and donkey cart in the city.”

  “I understood there was sickness in Beijing, but are you telling me everyone has left Hohhot as well?”

  The major just nodded grimly.

  Twenty minutes later, they pulled up to the general’s headquarters. The place was surrounded by troops. Littlefield got out of the car and went inside to meet the commander.

  “Paul!” General Zhou stood from behind his desk when Littlefield entered. “It’s good to see you. What on Earth possessed you to come here?”

  Zeli considered Littlefield his spiritual advisor, the man who had convinced him to join the church years ago. He fully believed in his friend’s mission, but didn’t realize the extent to which ­Littlefield was counting on the general’s assumption of leadership to help promote that mission.

  “I’ve come to see what’s holding up your takeover from the godless Communists. This is our time. The government is weak and we’ll be able to set up missions across the country.”

  Zeli stared at him as though he’d taken leave of his senses. Slowly, he sat back down behind his desk. “I hadn’t realized how little information was getting out of the country. The government is not weak. It has ceased to exist. The whereabouts of the premier are unknown. Some say he may be dead. There’s nothing to take over, because Beijing is empty, except for dead and dying people.”

  Littlefield stared at him fiercely. “If the city is empty, you must move at once to assume command! A bloodless coup is better than I could have hoped. God is doing our work for us, General.”

  “Bloodless? China is awash in blood, Paul.” He stared at him for a long moment. “I suppose you will have to see for yourself.”

  He called his aide and ordered his helicopter to be prepared. Then he and Littlefield took to the air.

  “Follow the main road to Beijing,” the general ordered his pilot. “Stay low so we can see.”

  Almost at once, Littlefield began to see refugees on the highway. There were thousands of them, more than he could even estimate. They staggered and fell. Many lay unmoving by the side of the road. He saw men, women, and children, all in various stages of the sickness. A few stared up at the helicopter as though it was some strange bird. Once or twice rifle shots pinged off the side of the aircraft.

  “Why are they shooting at us?” asked Paul.

  “Why do they do anything?” replied Zeli. “Because they are all mad. This is the China you’d have me take control of, a land filled with drooling idiots, drowning in their own filth as the illness wracks their bodies.”

  General Zhou had grown increasingly despondent at what was happening to his country, for he was first and foremost a patriot. He was also desperately worried about Mei-Li, whom he hadn’t heard from since things had begun to fall apart.

  Paul stared at the throngs below. For the first time, he began to have an inkling about what was happening, but he couldn’t accept it. He wouldn’t accept it! All of China couldn’t be the same as what he saw below. Of course not. They would continue the expansion of their missions in the west, and once this pestilence, whatever it was, passed, they would be in position to further their goals.

  The helicopter engine suddenly stuttered, coughed, and began to lose power. The pilot struggled with the controls, yelling at everyone to hold on.

  “We’re going down,” he cried.

  Littlefield stared at the rapidly approaching ground. They were descending straight into the middle of the diseased hordes below.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  IT TOOK HUANG two hours to negotiate their way through the now-bustling streets of Urumqi. Though there were no sick people in the city as far as anyone knew, most residents understood intuitively that their city was staring down the barrel of a gun. Where else could the masses flee but to the western provinces?

  “Move! Get out of the way!” Huang shouted at a family that blocked his path. Half a dozen children shared an oxcart piled high with possessions. Such poor peasant groupings struggled for room on the city’s streets with the more affluent, who drove cars, pickups, and even a few large motor homes.

  “Watch out!” Diana shouted, as they narrowly missed a young boy who darted in front of them. She had both hands perched on the dash in front of her in the tiny car, attempting to keep her balance as Huang dodged and darted through the traffic.

  At last, they were out of the worst of the crunch and into the clutch of shanty towns that made up the city’s suburbs. Huang increased their speed as they hit the open highway leading toward the Tarim River lowlands and the great Taklamakan desert beyond.


  Diana peeked at Huang out of the corner of her eye. He looked like a man driven. To escape—or something else? For all she knew, he might pull over at the first dead-end dirt track and rape her. China was now all but lawless, and he might view her as simply the spoils of the collapse. She still outweighed him and could probably put up a pretty good fight. He didn’t have any helpers to hold her down and she wasn’t drunk this time. Still, she remembered Logan’s words about how strong small, wiry men could be. Especially when driven by an unquenchable thirst.

  She’d begun to learn something about Huang’s weaknesses, however. For all of his absurd pomposity, he was still only a minor functionary who feared his boss and, no doubt, retribution from Diana’s friends as well. It might not stop him, but at least it gave her something to work with.

  “We should be there by late afternoon, shouldn’t we?” she asked.

  Huang nodded. He shifted gears constantly, according to the demands of the potholed road, but also because every time he did, his hand brushed Diana’s thigh. She tried to move far enough away to prevent this, but it was impossible in the tiny car.

  She decided to work on the man’s fear of the spreading sickness. “My friends at the Tarim site will help us. You were right to suggest going there. It’ll be a good place to stay until the epidemic plays itself out. It’s remote and unlikely anyone will go there. I know they have enough supplies to last a long time, if necessary.”

  Her unspoken message was clear. If Huang wanted to be welcome in this haven, he’d better treat her well. But he only grunted and said nothing.

  They drove for several more hours until Diana estimated they must be no more than a dozen miles from the Tarim site. Only an occasional car passed going the other way. Not many people were heading toward Urumqi. The ones who were had probably missed the premier’s speech.

  Suddenly, Huang turned the wheel sharply and bumped the car down to the edge of a small stream out of sight of the main road. He turned the engine off. Diana felt a wave of adrenaline surge through her. Was this it?

  “The engine needs water,” Huang said, getting out. He pulled up the flimsy hood and propped it open. He took out a small pail for water, went and filled it, then placed it on the ground. “We need to let the engine cool first. You might as well get out.”

  At that moment, Diana felt like the only way she’d ever get out of the car would be if she was pulled kicking and screaming. Yet she tried desperately to see inside Huang’s head. If he really intended to attack her, being inside the car wasn’t going to save her. She decided the best thing was to be brazen about it.

  There was a deference many Chinese exhibited when they were around Westerners. She’d seen it in Huang on more than one occasion at the dig. He simply might not be up to attacking her, if she could keep up a strong front. It was a slim reed, but the only one she had to grasp on to. She remembered Logan’s advice to tell Huang he was her boyfriend and would be upset if anyone molested her. But she wasn’t at all sure that would be a wise approach to take. It might simply mean that after Huang raped her, he’d feel compelled to kill her so Logan would never learn of the attack. She didn’t know if the little prick had it in him to kill someone, but she didn’t want to find out.

  Slowly, she got out of the car, the movement taking every ounce of her willpower. She went down to the stream and sat on a boulder. Huang made a show of looking at his watch and then gauging the remaining daylight. “I think it would be wise to give the engine a good rest,” he said. “This is a fine place to camp for the night.”

  She almost choked. Christ! If they spent the night here together, who the hell knew what could happen?

  “It can’t be far to the site, Huang. Let the engine cool for a while, then we can make it easily by dark. They’ll have tents for us to sleep in. It will be much more comfortable.”

  He showed his discolored teeth in a broad smile. “I think of everything,” he said. “Watch.”

  He went over to the car and pulled an ancient tent out of the trunk, along with a bundle of tent pegs and ropes. He carried them over to a flat spot and dropped them, then went back and pulled out a pile of blankets.

  “You see? We’ll be safe from the rain and warm as well.” He winked at her. “Maybe, we’ll have to snuggle to keep warm, yes?”

  She now had no doubt what he intended. Perhaps he’d had this spot picked out all along. She watched as he set up the tent and arranged the blankets inside to make a sort of bed. At one point, she stood up and wandered over to the car, thinking she might jump in and drive off while he was inside the tent, but he had removed the keys.

  “There,” Huang said happily, as though he was a scout leader. “We will be most comfortable. Now, I make us some dinner.”

  He rustled about in the car, taking out several cans and a tiny propane stove. He set everything up atop a flat rock and lit the stove. The sun had set and the sky above the Taklamakan shone with a brilliant array of red and purple. Already, a handful of stars were out. It would have been a nice campsite, if only Logan were sharing it with her instead of her small Chinese nemesis. Still, she began to get the glimmerings of a plan.

  “It’s going to be a cold night,” she said. “We should have a fire.”

  “Most romantic,” said Huang. “I will gather firewood after we eat.”

  “I’ll do it,” she said. As she skirted the camp, gathering dry sticks, she concentrated on getting a sure set on her bearings.

  By the time they’d eaten, it was already dark. Something cried out in the desert night, as mournful a sound as she’d ever heard. It fit her mood, alone here in the middle of Asia, a continent gone mad with fear and sickness, with no one to turn to but officious little Huang, whose only desire was to spend the night under the blankets with her.

  “We should make an early night of it.” He grinned at her. “What else is there to do but sleep in this godforsaken place?”

  What else, indeed? Diana thought grimly.

  He slipped into the tent and she heard him arranging things. Then, with a sickening sound, she heard him slip out of his trousers. “Plenty of room,” he called. “Are you coming?”

  She shivered, got up, and walked over to the tent. Kneeling down as though to enter, she paused. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Take your time,” he said, his excitement nearly palpable.

  She’d placed a canteen at the far edge of the camp. She picked it up as she went, then disappeared down a slope and began to walk along the stream. She’d determined before dark that the water flowed in the direction she needed to go, roughly paralleling the road. Once safely away from the camp, she returned to the road and began to walk along it. There was no traffic at all at night.

  Once, after about twenty minutes, she thought she heard someone yell in the distance. But Huang had no way of finding her in the dark. If he decided to drive up the highway, she could easily slip into the darkness. So much for her duty, she thought, of keeping him interested. He now knew she’d never had any intention of sleeping with him. But even though her scheduled week wasn’t up, it no longer mattered. Her larger duty now was to warn the crew at the dig about the epidemic, and once she was with them, she wouldn’t have to worry about Huang anymore.

  At least, that was what she hoped. However, she’d already experienced what a resourceful little fellow he could be, and wasn’t quite prepared to write her nemesis out of the picture yet.

  Huang was seething. At the very moment of his triumph, she’d run out on him. Now, he was through playing games. He would have her the very moment he next laid hands on the bitch.

  He attempted to follow her footprints along the stream with a flashlight, but soon gave up. The tiny beam was all but useless in the total blackness. He drove the car ten miles in either direction along the road, but saw nothing. Finally, he returned to the camp, crawled into the tent, and lay under the blankets, nearly in tears at the loss of the delight he had expected.


  The more he thought about the past week, the more convinced he became that Diana had been setting him up somehow. Why else would the others have allowed her to go to Urumqi alone with him? Dr. Kessler had never before ordered supplies in such a manner, and the research Diana had done was little more than a joke. He’d been so delighted to have her to himself for a week he simply hadn’t seen through it all. They’d used him.

  But why? What was the purpose of the ruse? Try as he might, he could come up with only one answer. For some reason, they’d not wanted him visiting the Tarim site for that week. He was convinced of it. And that meant they must have made a new discovery, something even more extraordinary than the family group. What could it be? His head swirled with the possibilities. How could there possibly be anything more incredible than the family group?

  Nothing made any sense. Yet, slowly, he began to develop a plan. It would do no good to go on to the dig alone. Diana would be safe amongst her friends. He needed help. Perhaps Mr. Ren would understand and give him soldiers. Provided his boss had not already fled the city and there were soldiers available anywhere in the chaos that was beginning to sweep China. The threat of the epidemic had all but slipped from his thoughts. His need to go after Diana consumed every fiber of his being.

  There was no time to waste. He got up, left the camping equipment where it was, and headed back to the city. Mr. Ren would be interested in what he had figured out. He was certain of it. Hadn’t his boss said at the beginning he thought there was something strange about the speed with which the Americans put this expedition together? The Americans were up to something and, epidemic or not, it just might be his ticket to promotion if he could figure out what.

  Logan paused from his work long enough to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The air temperature was in the forties and a stiff wind blew across the surface of the glacier, making it feel even colder. Nevertheless, the effort of holding the propane torch just right required a constant expenditure of energy. And he’d been at it for hours. He didn’t trust any of the others to do the work. The risk of damaging the iceman if there was the slightest error was too great. He intended to get this strange, waxy figure out in one piece. It could hold the answers to many questions.