by Dean Koontz
"I don't understand it," Canning said.
Lin's face was twisted, blush-red beneath his olive complexion. "What sort of trick is this?"
"It's no trick," Canning said.
"This entire affair has been some sort of hoax."
"I don't think so."
"You don't think so?" the general raged.
"If it was a hoax," Canning said, "then I was a victim of it too. I don't know why the CIA would want to hoax you or me."
The general moved closer to him, glared up at him. "I want to know why you've come all the way around the world to waste my time here in Peking. What have you really been doing in China?"
"Exactly what I've told you I've been doing," Canning said, exasperated. But he could understand the general's anger.
"Sooner or later you will tell me what the trick is."
"There is no trick."
"I'm afraid you will not be permitted to leave China until I am given a full explanation," General Lin said. "Perhaps the rules of diplomacy forbid me to drag you out of your embassy and beat the truth from you. But I can see that you remain here, grow old, and die here if you will not explain your real purpose in Peking." He turned away from them and started toward the drawing-room door.
Webster came out of his armchair as if propelled by a bad spring in the cushion. He hurried after Lin and caught up with him in the downstairs hall. "General, please wait a moment. Give me a moment to explain. I can explain this entire affair. Just come up to my office for five minutes, and I'll put your mind at rest, sir."
"Then there has been some trick?" General Lin asked.
"Let's not discuss it here," Webster said. "Upstairs. In my office. That's the proper atmosphere."
When they had gone up the steps, Lee Ann said, "What could Webster know that we don't?"
"Nothing," Canning said. "He's in the dark too. But he can't let Lin go away that angry. He has to play the diplomat for a while."
Pushing a lock of her black hair from her face, Lee Ann said, "My opinion is that if the general goes all the way upstairs just to hear a bunch of diplomatic goo, he's going to be twice as angry as he is now. Just my opinion, of course."
"Then he's Webster's problem, not ours."
"What about Dragonfly?"
"Maybe there is no such thing."
"How could that be?" Her eyes were huge.
"Maybe McAlister was using us."
"For what?"
He said, "God knows. But it happens in this business."
"I think Bob was sincere," she said.
"Then he might be misinformed."
"He's not the kind to make a move unless he's positive of what he's doing."
Canning agreed with her. He felt uneasy. He felt as though he had missed something vital.
"What happens now?" she asked.
"That's what I'm trying to figure." He looked down at Ch'en, who smiled at him and nodded. To Lee Ann he said, "We'll see that our friend here is put in a room on the third floor with Yuan and Ku. Then we'll go down to the communications room and get off a wire to McAlister, asking for his instructions."
In his office, Ambassador Webster went directly to the bar in the corner and put ice cubes in two squat glasses. "Is bourbon all right, General?"
Lin Shen-yang stood by the desk, barely able to control his temper. "I do not want a drink. I want an explanation."
"This is fine bourbon," Webster said. "And I've got good branch water to mix with it. They fly my branch water all the way in from Louisiana. Only way to drink bourbon."
"No, thank you," the general said stiffly.
Smiling, the ambassador said, "Very well." He poured bourbon and branch water into his own glass. "You won't mind if I indulge?"
The general glared at him.
Webster took his drink to one of the two overstuffed armchairs that stood in front of his desk. He sat down and indicated that the general should sit opposite him.
"Mr. Webster—" Lin began.
"Please, let's be amiable," the ambassador said. "Sit down and relax. I will explain everything."
Reluctantly, General Lin sat in the other armchair. He perched on the edge of it; he refused to be comfortable.
Taking a long, cool swallow of his drink, the ambassador said, "Do you know what branch water is? It conies from certain streams, river branches, in Louisiana. It's pure, perfectly tasteless. It is the only way to mix a whiskey. In Louisiana we know how—"
"I am not interested in Louisiana or in your branch water," the general said curtly. "I want that explanation."
Webster sighed. "I was just savoring the moment. But if you insist . . ." He put down his drink on a small round side table. He smiled at the general and said the key phrase: "Yin-hsi is as lovely as a swan in the lilies."
General Lin's eyes glazed. His mouth sagged open, and he leaned back in the armchair.
"Can you hear me?" Webster asked.
"Yes," Lin said faintly. He stared through the ambassador.
"Do you know how to find the home of Chai Chen-tse?"
"Yes."
"Chai Po-han is there now. Do you understand me?"
"Yes."
"You will go to him and say that phrase which you have been taught. Do you understand me?"
"Yes."
"When you have spoken those words to him, and to no one else but him, and in privacy with him, you will return to your house and go to bed. Do you understand me?"
"Yes."
Webster picked up his drink and sipped it. He enjoyed seeing the general sitting there, mouth open and his eyes blank as the eyes of a moron. "When you wake in the morning, you will not remember your visit to Chai Po-han. You will not remember having said anything to Chai Po-han. In the morning you will go about your business as you ordinarily would. Do you understand me?"
The general hesitated.
"Do you understand me?"
"Yes."
"Once more. Do you understand me?"
"Yes."
"Go to Chai now."
The general closed his mouth. His eyes refocused, but they still did not look quite normal. He got up and left the ambassador's office, closing the door behind him.
Webster picked up his drink and took it back to his desk. He sat down in his, high-backed posturmatic chair. From the bookshelves behind him, he withdrew a copy of The Wind in the Willows. He opened the book and removed a flimsy sheet of paper that had been pressed in the front.
The paper was a copy of the order for Chai Po-han's transfer from the Ssunan Commune to Peking. A clerk in the Office of Revolutionary Education had taken it from the files the very day that the transfer had been approved and had passed it to an old gentleman who pedaled one of the few remaining bicycle rickshaws that still operated in Peking. The clerk had received a handsome sum, all in good Chinese yuan, without knowing why anyone would so desperately need to know when Chai was coming home. Like all of his kind, the rickshaw operator was extremely independent; after all, he conducted business in defiance of a Party order outlawing rickshaws, and he had done so for many years now. The Party had decided to let the rickshaw operators die off gradually, while issuing no new licenses. Therefore, the officials ignored the rickshaw men—and the rickshaw men, independent as they were, made good conduits for certain kinds of information. This particular old gentleman had passed the transfer notice to Webster when Webster had taken a rickshaw ride around Wan Shou Shan's lake—as he managed to do once or twice a month. In his turn, the old gentleman had received another substantial sum in yuan. Back at the embassy, after spending hours translating the ideograms into English, Webster saw that Chai was coming home, and he wired the news to Rice.
Now, if the train had been on time—and Chinese trains were always on time—Chai Po-han was at home, and the Dragonfly project could be launched at last. In twenty minutes, or half an hour at most, General Lin would trigger him. Chai would puncture the spansule within a few minutes of the general's visit, as soon as he was alone and could find
a sharp instrument. The plague virus would spread rapidly through Chai's system, reproducing in his bloodstream. Within two hours millions of deadly microorganisms would be passing out through the alveolae in his lungs. Then he would begin contaminating the very air that Peking breathed, and the flight of the Dragonfly would have begun.
Webster smiled and drank some bourbon and branch water.
Chai Po-han had written a long letter to his parents, explaining his decision to leave them like a coward in the middle of the night and seek political asylum at the United States Embassy. It had been a most difficult letter to compose, and he had wept freely as his pen had drawn the characters which spelled out his future. But now it was done, folded and sealed in a red-lined envelope. He put the envelope on the center of the bed and turned away from it before he lost his courage and tore it to shreds.
Taking only one bag of mementos and remembrances, he slipped out of his room and went along the dark hall to the rear door of the house. Outside, he strapped the leather bag to the handlebars of his brother's bicycle.
The United States Embassy was less than two miles away. Even if he took the long way around, used only the back streets and lanes, he would be there in ten or fifteen minutes. He would need another fifteen minutes to slip into the compound without being seen or stopped by a Chinese patrol. In half an hour he would be talking with the United States ambassador, and he would have taken the last irrevocable step into a new lif e.
The embassy's communications room was in the basement. It was a rather uninviting, thirty-foot-square, concrete-wall chamber with no carpet and no windows. It contained a telecommunications computer as large as four refrigerators arranged side by side. There was also a radio-controlled Telex printer, a Telex sender, a traditional wireless machine, a desk, two chairs, a filing cabinet, and a pornographic Chinese calendar made in Hong Kong: semi-abstract but altogether recognizable human figures engaged in coitus, a different position for each month.
The night-duty communications officer was a man named Pover. He smiled and apologized to Lee Ann for the calendar and asked if he could be of assistance.
"I want to send a message to Robert McAlister care of the White House communications center. Can do?" Canning asked.
"Oh, sure," Pover said. "What's the message?"
Canning handed him a sheet of paper on which he had written:
Three deep-cover agents negative.
Repeat negative. No trigger man.
Send instructions soonest.
"I'll have it out in a minute," Pover said.
"How long do we have to wait for a reply?" Lee Ann asked.
"Not long these days," Pover said. "The wireless is really a laser. It sends the message out on light pulses that are bounced through a telecommunications satellite. The message will be at the White House in maybe two minutes. How long will it take them to get it to this McAlister?"
"No more than half an hour," Canning said.
"Then your reply should be here no more than an hour from now, depending on how fast they are at the other end. You want this put into code?"
"No," Canning said. "As is. It'll save time."
Lee Ann said, "Can we wait here for our answer?"
"Oh, sure," Pover said. He went across the room and took down the pornographic calendar before he sent the message.
Chai Chen-tse watched as General Lin picked up the sealed envelope from Chai Po-han's bed. In answer to the question that the general had just asked, he said. "Yes, open it. By all means."
Lin Shen-yang used his thumbnail to break open the flap. He withdrew several sheets of paper from the envelope and began to read them. Halfway across the second page, he dropped everything, turned, and left the room.
Following him into the hall, Chai Chen-tse said, "What is wrong?"
General Lin was already at the front door.
"What is it? Where is my son? What has he done?" the elder Chai asked plaintively.
But the general didn't stop to answer him.
The night air was cool.
The streets were for the most part dark and silent.
Chai Po-han abandoned his brother's bicycle in the park across the street from the back of the diplomatic compound. The gate to the embassies was out on the north side, always opened but always watched. He hid for a few minutes behind a sculptured hedge, cloaked in darkness, until the motorized patrol had passed. Then he got up and dashed across the wide street to the seven-foot-high wall. He threw his satchel over to the other side. Then he jumped, managed to catch the top of the wall with his fingers, pulled himself up, found toeholds between the bricks, and climbed.
At three o'clock in the morning, bells rang in the embassy's communications room. The Telex began to chatter and the wireless set clicked and the computer's print-out screens lit up in a soft shade of green. White letters began to roll up on the computer screens' green background: two identical sets of letters on two screens:
xxxxxxxxxx
WASHINGTON
URGENT URGENT
FROM—R MCALISTER
TO—D CANNING
"Hey," Pover said, "there hasn't been time for them to reply already. We just sent your message out." He ran over to the Telex and glanced at the lines of print that were clattering out of that machine. "It double-checks," he said. "This must be something they sent almost simultaneously with our transmission."
Canning and Lee Ann went over to stand in front of the computer screens.
The screens cleared and more white words rolled up on the electric green background:
SECONDARY TRIGGER MAN
GENERAL LIN SHEN YANG
: : : : PRIMARY TRIGGER
MAN AMBASSADOR WEBSTER
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
REPEAT PRIMARY TRIGGER
MAN AMBASSADOR WEBSTER
"Can this be true?" Lee Ann asked.
Canning stood there for three more minutes, reading the rest of the message, then he turned and ran from the communications room.
Lee Ann ran after him.
When he reached the steps he caught sight of her out of the corner of his eyes. "You stay here."
"Like hell!"
Canning took the steps two at a time all the way up to the fourth floor.
Chai Po-han tore his trousers and skinned his knee coming off the wall. He spat on his hand and rubbed the spit into the wound.
This is not the most auspicious way to begin a new lif e, he thought.
He picked up his satchel and limped past the first four pink-brick houses until he came to that one which displayed the flag of the United States of America. He went to the front door, hesitated only an instant, and rang the bell.
Alexander Webster had the most infuriating smile that David Canning had ever seen. He shook his head and kept smiling and said, "I'm afraid you're too late."
"Where's the general?"
"Doing what he's been programmed to do," Webster said happily.
Canning stood in front of the desk, impotent, his hands fisted at his sides. He wanted to reach out and grab Webster by the lapels of his dressing gown and shake the hell out of him. But that was pointless.
Holding up his glass, Webster said, "Would either of you like a drink?"
Lee Ann came over from the doorway and stood beside Canning. "You'll die in the plague just like the rest of us."
"Oh, no, Miss Tanaka. I've been vaccinated."
"It doesn't matter," she said. "You'll end up in prison."
"By the time I go home," Webster said, "my people will be in charge of the country—and the prisons." He gave them another infuriating smile.
Canning said, "What do you—"
The telephone rang, startling them.
Webster looked at it for a moment, waited until it rang again, and picked it up. "Yes?" He listened for a moment, and tension came into his broad face. His brows beetled. He glanced up at Canning, licked his lips, looked quickly down at the blotter. "No. Don't send him up. Well, I do
n't care what—"
Sensing the sudden panic in the ambassador's voice, Canning leaned forward and jerked the receiver out of his hand. He said, "Who is this?"
"James Obin," the voice at the other end of the line said. "Who are you?"
"Canning. You brought me in from the airport this afternoon. What's the matter? Why did you call Webster?"
"Well," Obin said, "a young Chinese man just came to the door asking for political asylum. It's never happened before. I haven't the slightest idea what to do about it. And he seems to be somewhat important, not just your ordinary citizen."
"Important?" Canning asked. He kept one eye on Webster and saw that the man looked confused and nervous.
On the phone Obin said: "He speaks passable English. Tells me his father is in charge of the Central Office of Publications here in Peking. Father's name is something like . . .wait . . . I have it all written down here . . . have trouble pronouncing these names, so this might not be exactly right . . . Chai Chen-tse."
Astounded, Canning said, "You mean you've got Chai Po-han down there with you?"
It was Obin's turn to be astounded. "You know him?"
Canning said, "Put him on the line."
A moment later a somewhat shy male voice said, "Yes?"
"Chai Po-han?"
"Yes, sir."
"Your father is Chai Chen-tse?"
"That is correct."
"Mr. Chai, do you know a man named Lin Shenyang? General Lin Shen-yang?"
"He is well known. A hero of the Republic."
"Have you seen him this evening?"
"General Lin?" Chai asked, perplexed.
"Yes."
"No. I have not seen him."
Canning shivered with relief. "You wait right there, Mr. Chai. A young lady will be down to meet you and bring you upstairs."
"Yes, sir."