Darkness Under Heaven

by F. J. Chase

  Avakian was only amused. The kid was quite a piece of work. “It didn’t take us this long to get you out. It took the Chinese this long to let you go.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It means they were sending the message they didn’t want anything like this happening again,” Avakian said, still calmly. “And just so you know, if this was a major competition, and the Chinese thought you were in the running for a medal, you’d still be behind bars.”

  “How the fuck am I supposed to compete after this?”

  “Was that a question for me?” Avakian inquired.

  “Yeah, I’m still talking to you…” Avakian gave her his warning look and she held up before she said motherfucker.

  “If you really cared, you would have paid for your shopping instead of trying to lift it. Now, you want to go to the hospital or the team hotel?”

  “Just take me to the fucking hotel.” And then a lapse into sullen silence.

  Avakian had been leaning over the seat. The bang and squeal of skidding tires turned him back around even before the car started swerving. Avakian instinctively braced his feet against the floorboard, though for all the good that would do.

  The pileup began down the street, the collisions in neat succession as each driver jammed on their brakes too late. Avakian was pretty sure that any advice he might offer Kangmei would be counterproductive at this stage.

  The car in front of them spun out, and Kangmei cut the wheel before they smashed into it broadside. The two cars swapped paint side by side, which was probably a good thing since it slowed them down as they approached the sidewalk. Little Brandi let out a scream so impressive that it felt like someone had forcibly rammed their thumbs into Avakian’s ear canals.

  Even with Kangmei standing on the brakes, they punched between two parked cars, knocking them both out of the way, and went up over the curb and onto the sidewalk. Avakian prepared himself for impact with the upcoming storefront, but the front end only lightly tapped the building as they came to a stop. He let out the breath he’d been holding in and checked the back seats. “Everyone all right?”

  The two women, eyes wide, only nodded. Kangmei, ashen-faced, still gripped the steering wheel. Avakian reached over to shift into Park for him, and turned the key off. “Sit tight,” he said. “I’m going to see what happened.”

  He was able to get out his door, but had to climb over the hood to make his way up the sidewalk. It was about an eight-car pileup, but most of the drivers were already out on the street and shaking it off by screaming at each other. No one seemed badly hurt.

  Up ahead on the sidewalk a China-sized crowd had gathered, and Avakian pushed his way through. The spectators had formed themselves into a neat ring around a young Chinese guy lying in the street. The impact with the pavement had left his exposed skin looking like it had been run through a cheese grater, and the handlebar of his scooter was sticking right through his left leg, just above the knee. He was moaning and thrashing, breathing hard, and rapidly slipping into shock.

  This was going to require the doctor and her bag. As Avakian turned around to get her, he heard her voice on the outer edges of the crowd saying, “Let me through, please, I’m a doctor.”

  That wasn’t cutting any ice with a Chinese crowd, even if anyone did understand what she was saying. Avakian shoved his way through to her, then shoved his way back with her in his wake. They burst into the minuscule open space surrounding the casualty.

  Doctor Rose knelt down to evaluate the injury and immediately saw that every time the agonized young man moved, the wound around the scooter handlebar opened up and arterial blood pumped out. “Keep him still!” she ordered Avakian.

  Avakian felt carefully to make sure the pelvis wasn’t broken before pinning down the guy’s hips. If they weren’t moving, the legs weren’t.

  Doctor Rose already had her medical bag open and a pair of latex gloves on. She ripped the sterile packaging off a hemostat clamp and slid it into the wound along the path of the handlebar, trying to locate the ruptured vessel.

  The patient howled like a banshee. Feeling the hot breath of a hundred Chinese spectators on the back of his neck, Avakian fervently hoped that the kid wouldn’t die out here on the street.

  Doctor Rose located the bleeder and clamped it. She packed gauze into the wound and started a bag of Ringer’s intravenous solution. Shining a light into the young man’s pupils, she checked their reactivity before examining the nose and ears for signs of blood or cerebral fluid. Satisfied that there wasn’t a brain injury, she prepared a syringe of five milligrams of morphine and injected it into the IV line.

  The patient’s color had already improved, and he was much calmer.

  “Is there some way you can get the handlebar off that scooter?” the doctor asked Avakian.

  He took a quick look at it, then disappeared into the crowd.

  Doctor Rose couldn’t understand why an ambulance hadn’t arrived yet. She took her patient’s hand and said, “Don’t worry, you’re going to be all right.”

  Reacting more to her tone, the young man gave her an anxious smile. The doctor looked up at the ring of spectators. They regarded her impassively, neighbor commenting to neighbor on her every move. Doctor Rose busied herself in adjusting the IV flow.

  Peter Avakian suddenly reappeared, carrying a hacksaw. He leaned over the scooter and steadied the blade against the handlebar, about six inches from where it entered the leg.

  “Wait a minute,” said Doctor Rose. “Let me push five more milligrams of morphine before you start.”

  After giving that shot a chance to work, she tapped the handlebar with her finger. The patient didn’t make a sound. “Try not to move it too much,” she told Avakian.

  He nodded and began sawing. About twenty strokes and he was through. Just then the sound of sirens filled the air. Of course, Avakian thought.

  Doctor Rose placed an inflatable splint on the leg and pumped it up. That section of handlebar was going to have to stay in his leg until surgery. “I should go with him to the hospital,” she said.

  “Not a good idea,” Avakian replied. “And not just because of the language barrier.”

  “Then how am I going to tell them about the morphine?” she demanded. “If they give him more they could kill him.”

  Avakian reflected that Kangmei would have been helpful just then, for translation purposes. Too bad he wasn’t around. “Does anyone speak English?” he asked the crowd.

  They discussed him in Chinese, but no one answered in the affirmative.

  Avakian sighed and thought it over. “What’s the abbreviation for morphine?” he asked the doctor.

  “MSO4,” she said. “Morphine sulfate.”

  “How much did you give him?”

  “Ten milligrams.”

  Avakian took the Sharpie from his pocket and wrote across the patient’s forehead: .01 MSO4. “That ought to cover it.”

  A policeman pushed his way through the crowd and began interrogating Avakian and Doctor Rose in excited, rapid-fire Chinese. Avakian just held out his hands in a questioning motion.

  The spectators immediately began telling the cop what had happened.

  Not good, Avakian thought. It looked like another call to Commissioner Zhou was going to be in order.

  Two ambulance attendants pushed through the ring with a stretcher. Doctor Rose, using pantomime, showed them the clamped artery. They remarked to each other over the lightweight inflatable splint.

  The cop said something, and the two attendants began arguing with him. Then a couple of firemen rolled in and joined the argument.

  Avakian just stood there, waiting for some resolution, when he received a tap on the shoulder. He turned around and a few of the spectators were gesturing for him to get out of there.

  When in Rome, Avakian thought. He bent down and picked up the doctor’s bag and, with the argument still raging, wrapped one arm around the doctor’s waist and pulled her into the crowd. Which cl
osed in around them, a couple of Chinese patting him on the back.

  “Should we be leaving the scene of the accident like that?” Doctor Rose asked him.

  “If they want us, they can come get us,” Avakian replied. “Otherwise, why bother them?”

  They were now free of the crowd and heading down the sidewalk.

  “Why didn’t any of those people help that man?” Doctor Rose asked.

  “You’re incurring an obligation,” said Avakian. “Which can be a very serious thing. Besides, you open yourself up to all kinds of potential official hassles, as our case proves.”

  “At least someone gave you that hacksaw.”

  “Are you kidding? This is China. I had to buy it.”

  “I still don’t feel right about leaving.”

  “You did good, Doc,” Avakian said. “Besides, it was time for the locals to do their job.”

  “But they could be arguing for the next fifteen minutes, while that man needs to be in the hospital.”

  “Yeah, but they were going to do that whether you were standing there or not.”

  Back at the car Kangmei was arguing with a group of other drivers over potential liability.

  Avakian stuck his head in the window. “C’mon, Brandi, we’re going to walk a few blocks and catch a cab.”

  “It’s about fucking time,” she said.

  There were press and photographers waiting on the curb in front of the hotel, along with a whole herd of gymnastic team suits. Little Brandi bounced out with a brave smile on her face and was embraced by her mother before they were all engulfed by the media scrum.

  Doctor Rose stayed in the cab.

  Avakian had a feeling he was about to receive a sensitivity lecture. Whatever. “You’re not going with her?”

  “It’ll be a while before we get a chance to check her out. I wanted to ask, are the Chinese going to do anything else about this?”

  “Depends on how much she embarrasses them with the press. They may let it go. But they’re just as capable of picking her up for spitting on the sidewalk and either deporting her on putting her on trial.”

  “Why didn’t you tell her that?”

  “I may have been wrong, but she just didn’t seem prepared to listen.”

  “I wanted to tell you that I did get quizzed by the Chinese once you were gone.”

  “You didn’t tell them anything, did you?” Avakian demanded, mock-sternly.

  “Just name, rank and serial number…I want to thank you. This turned out to be very intriguing.”

  She seemed about to say something else, but didn’t. So Avakian did. “Tell me, Doctor…”

  “Please call me Judy.”

  “As long as you call me Pete. Tell me, Judy, do you like dumplings?”

  “As in chicken and?”

  “As in Chinese.”

  “My knowledge of Chinese food doesn’t extend much beyond General Tso’s chicken, I’m embarrassed to say.”

  “Then maybe you’d like to join me for dinner? I know the best dumplings in Beijing.”

  She favored him with a sunny smile. “I’d like that.”

  The smile worked its magic on Avakian. “I’m going to be busy during the gymnastics.”

  “You’re going to it?” she asked, surprised.

  “Business. But dinner right after that?”

  “Great.”

  They sealed it with the modern ritual of entering each other’s cell phone numbers into each other’s cell phone address books. Then he opened the cab door for her and she left.

  “United States Embassy,” Avakian told the driver.

  “That’s good,” said Marquand. “Another diplomatic incident averted. The ambassador will be ecstatic.” He was checking through the release document. “Did you really cross out all this stuff right in front of the Chinese?”

  “You’d better believe it. And good thing, too, otherwise you would have been delivering the formal apology from the middle of Tiananmen Square, dressed in nothing but a Chinese flag jockstrap.”

  “Just as well, then. Red and gold really aren’t my colors. Did you hit on the doctor?”

  “I have to admit,” Avakian said. “She’s not the tight-ass I thought she was. She could have blown the whole deal any number of times, but she kept her head and kept her mouth shut when she needed to. Then we ran into that road accident and she saved a guy’s life, just as cool as you please.”

  “So you did hit on her.”

  “We’re having dinner,” Avakian said grudgingly.

  “Do you good. Your mother probably always wanted you to meet a nice Jewish doctor. And the Chinese don’t think the Indoor Stadium recon is any big whoop either?”

  “Not officially.”

  “Well, look, don’t worry about it. With the Taiwan president in there, they’re going to have that place hermetically sealed anyway. CIA station chief is practically living with his Chinese counterpart over this. All the big eyes and big ears are tuned this way.”

  “I hope so,” said Avakian.

  “He looks like Telly Savalas,” said Doctor Judith Rose.

  Doctor Regine Toussaint, her partner on the team, looked up from her coffee. “And who is Telly Savalas?”

  “You’re kidding. Kojak?”

  “If you make me guess, I have to say a TV show.”

  “Now you’re pretending you’re too young to remember Kojak.”

  “And I must be doing a very fine job of it. What else was this Telly Savalas in?”

  Doctor Rose had to stop and think. “The Dirty Dozen!”

  “This time, I’m going to guess that was a movie.”

  “You’ve never seen The Dirty Dozen?”

  “M’dear, why on earth would I have ever seen a movie called The Dirty Dozen?” Doctor Toussaint’s family had rowed from Haiti to Miami when she was a little girl, and she still had the Creole lilt to her voice.

  “It’s a classic.”

  “What is this Telly Savalas doing now?”

  Doctor Rose sighed. “He’s dead.”

  “You don’t say.”

  Doctor Rose paused to try and calculate how old Doctor Toussaint had been when Kojak was on the air, then abandoned the effort when it began to depress her. She wracked her brain for an age-appropriate alternative. “Vin Diesel!”

  “He looks like Vin Diesel?” said Doctor Toussaint, without an enormous amount of enthusiasm.

  “No, not really. He’s short, and bald, with very strong kind of ethnic features.” That made her pause again. “I’m not making him sound very attractive, am I?”

  “Come to think of it, I seem to remember your new friend from that party. With the shaved head? The craggy face?”

  “Weathered,” Doctor Rose countered. “A distinguished face.”

  “And the large nose?”

  “It’s not that large.”

  “Darlin’, it’s not Cyrano, but it’s not small.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  Doctor Toussaint unleashed a triumphant smile. “Now I see what you’re getting at. He’s a sexy ugly man.”

  “He’s not ugly, Regine. He’s just not…conventionally attractive. How about that?”

  “I always say you can tell a lot about a man by how he deals with male pattern baldness.”

  “You have to admit he’s a striking looking man.”

  “M’dear, I don’t have to admit anything.”

  “He can also pull off wearing a hat with a suit.”

  “Like a Kangol cap?”

  “No, no, I hate those. Dress hat, matching the suit. Just right.”

  “I never look good in hats,” Doctor Toussaint mentioned sadly.

  “You should have seen it, Regine. They led me all the way into the basement of police headquarters, and it sounds like a cliché to say it felt menacing, but it did. There was a room filled with Chinese policemen, all with their arms crossed and refusing to say a word. They gave new meaning to the word hostile. They brought Brandi into this room, and as soon as
she saw me she started the pathetic wailing act she does so well to get her way. Now, I do not know what to do. I can’t examine her in this room full of policemen, and she won’t stop crying. Am I supposed to say something to the Chinese? I’m the surgeon, right? There isn’t a stressful situation I can’t handle, and I was petrified.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. It sounds scary.”

  “My knees were literally knocking together. And then this burly little guy strolled in and took complete control of the situation. Unbelievably cool. He quieted Brandi down in about ten seconds flat. The Chinese were trying to pressure him into one thing after another. And he just deflected it, without a hint of anger or even annoyance. In five minutes time he had them fidgeting around. I would have signed anything, just to get out of there. And everyone knew he was ready to spend the night to get what he wanted. Not only did he insist on an English translation of all the documents, he spent fifteen minutes amending them before he signed them.”

  “It sounds like I need him to negotiate my next contract.”

  “You’d be the highest paid doctor in the country. It was amazing. And then when we left Brandi started acting up again in the car.”

  “The same diva act?”

  “Well, she was a little tired, so she wasn’t on the top of her game. But the volume was right up there. But then this man Avakian took control again, just by telling her the facts of life as if he could care less one way or the other. Never raised his voice. Brandi didn’t know what to do. And listen to this. When she asked how she was going to compete after this, this is what he said: if you really cared, you would have paid for your shopping instead of trying to lift it.”

  Doctor Toussaint laughed uproariously. “Oh, I wish I had said that! This is the problem with being a doctor instead of a…what on earth is he, anyway?”

  “Something to do with security.”

  “A spy? Darlin’, no wonder he got you so excited.”

  “I don’t think so. One of the Chinese officers called him Colonel. And he did not get me excited, Regine.”

  “We always succumb to the man of mystery.”