The United States Embassy was in one of the city's three diplomatic compounds that were reserved for foreign missions in order that they might be kept apart from the Chinese people. The compound contained a large seven-story office building which was shared by the seven foreign delegations quartered there. The compound also contained seven spacious, boxy four-story pink-brick houses were the diplomats and their staffs lived. The United States Embassy was no larger, no smaller, no different at all from the other six, except that the Stars and Stripes flew from a low flagpole beside the front door.
“Here we are,” Webster said jovially, apparently no longer miffed at Canning. “Home sweet home.”
The higher you went in the house, the more important you were in the diplomatic scheme of things. The first floor contained the drawing room, dining rooms, kitchens, and bedrooms for the servants who had been imported from Washington. Four secretaries also had quarters on this first level. The second floor contained the bedrooms for the ambassador's staff. The third floor was where Webster's chief aide and private secretary had rooms — and it was here as well that important visitors from the States were put up. The top level, of course, was Webster's private domain — except when the President, Vice-President, or Secretary of State came to China, in which case Webster opened a separate three-room suite for his guests. Lee Ann and Canning did not rate the suite — or a room behind the kitchen. They were given separate bedchambers on the third floor.
Canning's room might have been in a house in Washington, New York, or Boston. No concession had been made to the Orient. The furniture, all shipped in from the States, was heavy, dark pine, Colonial. The walls were white and hung with oil paintings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. There was a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence hanging just to the right of the door.
The bathroom, however, was decidedly Chinese-modern. The tub, sink, and toilet were all made from a dark-brown, glossless ceramic material that resembled mud. The fixtures were not stainless-steel or even chrome-plated; instead, they were cast-iron, dull and pitted and spotted with incipient rust — except for the water faucets, which were all rough-cut copper pipe. There was no place for him to plug in his electric razor near the mirror; however, the embassy staff had thoughtfully provided an extension cord which was plugged into and dangled from the socket that for some inscrutable reason had been let into the wall three feet above the tank of the commode.
He shaved lightly, washed his face and hands, put on a clean shut, strapped his shoulder holster back in place, and put on his suit jacket. He took the pistol from the holster and switched off both safeties; then he dropped it back into the leather pocket.
The telephone rang. It was Webster. “General Lin arrived a few minutes ago. He's extremely anxious to get moving.”
“We'll be right down,” Canning said.
The end of the assignment was in sight.
He was suddenly depressed.
What would he do when this was finished? Go back to Washington? Back to the White House assignment? Back to the lonely apartment on G Street? Back to his son's scorn and his daughter's indifference?
Maybe he would ask Lee Ann to stay with him in Washington. She was what he needed. In a short time she had not only patched up his lover's ego, but she had also made him feel decent and clean again. She had given him back the self-respect that he had allowed Mike to bleed from him. Would she stay with him? Would she say yes? She had insecurities of her own, problems to work out; and she needed help with them. Maybe he was precisely what she needed too. Maybe…
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, trying to clear his head, and he told himself that he was not to worry about any of these things. He must stick to the moment, stick to the problem at hand, approach it single-mindedly. If he didn't find the trigger man, if Dragonfly was detonated while he was in Peking, then he would not be going back to anywhere or anything. And neither would Lee Ann. They would either be victims of the plague — whatever it turned out to be— or they would be inmates of a Chinese political prison.
TAIYUAN, CHINA: SATURDAY, 2:00 P.M.
Just outside the city of Taiyüan, in the Province of Shansi, two hundred and ten rail-miles from Peking, the train clattered onto a lay-by. The brakes squealed; the passenger car trembled. The steel wheels shot sparks into the clouds of steam that rushed back from the locomotive's vents and pressed, briefly, against the coach window next to Chai Po-han's face.
Chong Shao-chi, the man in the seat beside Chai, was the manager of a large grain-storage facility near Anshun. He was en route to the capital, where he was to speak before a gathering of agricultural specialists who were interested in his novel and successful ideas about rodent control. He was quite excited — not because of the speech so much as because his aged parents lived in Peking. This was his first homecoming in seven years. Tonight his family was holding a great feast in his honor: cold gizzard and liver, hundred-year eggs, green-bean noodles, fried noodles, buns with silver threads, wheat-packet soup, sesame cakes, fried bread, fried hot peppers, mushrooms, sweet and sour fish, fried eel, three-glass chicken, beef in oyster sauce, and much more — a feast indeed! Therefore, the moment the train came to a full stop, Chong said anxiously, “What is the trouble? Can you see? Have we broken down?”
“I can't see anything,” Chai said.
“We can't have broken down. I must get to Peking no later than nine. My family has planned a feast! They—”
“You've told me,” Chai said, not unkindly.
“Maybe we have just stopped to refuel.”
“I don't see any fuel tanks,” Chai said.
“Please, no breakdown. I have lived well. I am a loyal Maoist. I don't deserve this!”
A minute later the toothless man in charge of this coach and the two sleeping cars behind it entered at the front and clapped his hands for attention. “We will be delayed here for half an hour. There is a long train outbound from Peking on these tracks. Once it has passed, we can continue.”
Chong stood up and caught the toothless man's attention. “Will we arrive late in Peking?”
“No. This is a scheduled lay-by.”
Chong collapsed into his seat and sighed with relief.
When the outbound train came along ten minutes later, it roared by within a few feet of Chai's window. It was nearly overflowing with young people on their way to the communes. Colorful posters affixed to the flanks of the cars proclaimed the joy and dedication of the young Maoists within. But Chai could not see all that much joy or dedication to the Fifty-Year Farm Plan in those faces that peered back at him from the passing cars. Oh, yes, occasionally there was someone grinning rapturously at the thought of serving the People; but the vast majority of them showed nothing but resignation and, occasionally, despair.
Chai sympathized with them. He ached with pity for them. And he thought, miserably: I have become a reactionary, an anti-Maoist, and an enemy of the People.
Deep down within, he knew that his pity was for himself as well as for these strangers flashing past. It was not merely self-pity for what he had been through — the sixteen-hour days of brutalizing labor, the weeks he had been assigned to collect human waste for use as fertilizer on the rice paddies, the weevils in his food, the fevers which had swept the communes when there was no medicine to combat them — but he was also full of self-pity for those things he felt he might yet suffer. If his father died, or was removed from power, what would become of him? If his father could not protect him, would he be sent back to the Ssunan Commune? Yes. Definitely. There was no doubt about it. He was only temporarily safe, safe only so long as his father's heart continued to beat, safe only so long as his father's enemies in the Party remained weak. Within the next few years he would be back in the country again, a slave laborer again. He was afraid for himself, and he despaired of his future.
There had to be a way out.
And of course, there was a way out.
He saw the door to escape. But t
o open it and pass through was no simple matter. It was a monumental step, a denial of his past, his family, everything. It was a decision that he would have found impossible, a change in outlook he would have thought despicable, before Ssunan.
Leave China.
Forever.
No. It was still unthinkable.
Yet…
Was a return to Ssunan any more reasonable? Did he wish to end up like Chong Shao-chi, this miserable man beside him? Did he want to be forty years old, a champion killer of rats, whose greatest pleasure in seven years was a one-night reunion with his family?
Remembering his trip to America, Chai suddenly saw that there was one great flaw in the social system of the United States — and one great flaw in China's system as well. In the United States, there was an unreasonable selfishness, a destructive desire to possess more and more things and to obtain more and more power through the acquisition of more and more money. In China, there was an equally unreasonable selflessness; the Party was so concerned about the welfare of the masses that it overlooked the welfare of the individuals who composed the masses. In the United States, there had seemed to be no peace and contentment, for life there was a frantic process of accumulation and consumption and reaccumulation to fuel a new round of consumption… Yet in the United States you could live outside the system; selfishness was not dictated by the government or demanded by the people. And even if the greedy capitalistic rabble roared around you — was that not better than to live in the People's Republic, where you had little or no choice, where the self was denied and virtue was not a choice but a requirement?
If only, he thought as he watched the commune-bound train pass, there were some country in the world where the two systems had been merged, where the flaw in each canceled out the flaw in the other.
But there was no such place. That was a child's dream and always would be.
How terrible to be raised to have a fierce belief in your government and society, only to be given the wit, knowledge, or experience to suddenly see that the system was unjust, imperfect. Chai saw that he had been forced by his society to make certain decisions which that same society had taught him were decadent and shameful.
But there was only one escape from an intolerable future, and it was far from the perfect answer: leave China.
Now.
But how?
As the outbound train finished passing and their own train began to move once more toward Peking, Chai Po-han wrestled with his conscience and tried to make himself accept the only future that made any sense at all.
FIVE
CAPITOL HEIGHTS, MARYLAND:
FRIDAY, 9:05 P.M.
McAlister took Burt Nolan's pistol from the seat. He held the gun above the dashboard and studied it in the purplish-white light that filtered into the Mercedes from a nearby mercury-vapor street-lamp. He found, the red safety and flicked it off.
Nolan watched none of this. He stared intently out of his side window at the houses across the street.
Shoving the gun into his coat pocket, keeping his right hand on the butt, McAlister opened his door and got out of the car.
Unarmed but game, Bernie Kirkwood climbed out of the back seat and followed his boss across the sidewalk.
Carl Altmüller's house was a small two-story Colonial saltbox, pale-gray, with black shutters and trim. A neat, matching gray-and-black saltbox garage stood at the top of the sloping driveway. The garage doors were closed. The house was dark; apparently Altmüller was not at home.
McAlister felt somewhat foolish stepping into this peaceful scene with his shoulders tensed and a loaded gun in his pocket. Nevertheless, he kept his hand on the gun butt.
The doorbell was set beneath a clear three-watt night light. The chimes produced a four-note melody that sounded like distant Christmas bells striking up “Joy to the World.”
No one came to the door.
“Maybe it's his night for macramé lessons,” Kirk-wood said.
McAlister rang the bell again.
Nothing. No one. Silence.
“He could be at a prayer meeting,” Kirkwood said. “Or counseling a troop of boy scouts.”
Ringing the bell a third tune, McAlister said, “Have you ever considered a career as a comedian?”
“No. You think I should?”
“Well, it would be something to do after I've fired you.”
“Yeah. We could form a team. You'd be the straight man.”
“I don't intend to fire myself.”
“Yeah,” Kirkwood said, “but you won't last long without me.”
Turning away from the front door, McAlister said, “Come on. Let's have a look around.”
“Around what?”
“The house.”
“Why?”
“I want to find a way in.”
“You're going to break and enter?” Kirkwood asked, shocked.
“I won't break anything unless it's necessary. But I damned well am entering.”
Kirkwood caught him by the arm. “Let's get a warrant first.”
“No time for that.”
“You don't sound like the Bob McAlister I know.”
“I've changed,” McAlister said, feeling hollow inside, chilled. “Probably for the worse. But I've had no choice.” He pulled free of Kirkwood's hand. “Bernie, do you realize the trouble we're in if Rice is one of these Committeemen?”
“It's a major scandal,” Kirkwood said, pushing his damp woolly hair back from his forehead.
“It's more than that. We're sitting on a time bomb. Bernie, look, suppose you were a Committeeman with a cover as a famous liberal thinker. Suppose you were a fascist who was the right-hand man to a liberal President who trusted you. You could see, in the years ahead, thousands of opportunities to subtly misuse your power to fascistic ends. You were just beginning… How would you conduct yourself? What would your first priority be?”
Kirkwood thought about it for a moment, then said, “Protecting the power I've finally gotten. Which would mean protecting my cover. I'd lay low. Play it cool. Go easy.”
“And is that what Rice is doing — supposing he is a Committeeman?”
“No. He's taking big risks. Like trying to use federal marshals to monitor our investigations. If one of the marshals rejected his offer and told us about it, Rice would have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Exactly,” McAlister said. “And when he told me that Bill Fredericks hadn't been very cooperative in arranging for the marshals, Rice had to know there was a good chance I'd catch him in his lie.”
“You think he no longer cares whether he's caught or gets away with it?”
“It looks that way to me. Which means Dragonfly will be used soon. So soon, in fact, that Rice figures if we nail him, we won't have time to make him tell us Dragonfly's identity. We won't have time to stop the project before detonation.”
“But he'll end up in jail just the same,” Kirkwood said. “Is he fanatical enough to spend the rest of his life in prison for a cause?”
“Maybe he doesn't think he'll go to trial, let alone to prison.”
“I don't follow you.”
“My imagination may be running wild. I'm beginning to see some very ugly possibilities. Like… Maybe the Dragonfly project, as big as it is, just isn't the whole bundle. Maybe it's only one element in a much larger scheme.”
“Such as?”
“Maybe Rice is taking these risks because he expects his people to seize control of the United States government during or immediately after the crisis in China. If that was what he was anticipating, he would have no fear of jail.”
Kirkwood was dumbfounded. He looked up at the stars, then at the quiet houses across the street. “But that's… Well… I mean… For God's sake, that's screaming paranoia!”
“Paranoia?” McAlister said wearily. “That's just a way of life, like any other. These days, it's just another way to get along.”
“But how could they do it? How could they seize the government?”
“I don't know.”
Kirkwood stared at him.
“Go back to the car.”
Kirkwood didn't move.
“Keep Burt company.”
“We aren't compatible.”
“I can handle this myself.”
“I'll go with you anyway.”
“It's breaking and entering, remember?”
Kirkwood smiled grimly. “If we get sent to the same prison, we can share a cell.”
They circled the house, looking for a barrier that was flimsier than the solid-oak front door. They tried the first-floor windows, but those were all locked. The rear door was as formidable as the front door. Finally, on the north side of the house, they came upon a set of four French doors, and these looked flimsy enough.
Because there were no lights in the house next door, they didn't try to conceal what they were doing. McAlister wrapped Kirkwood's woolen scarf around his right fist and smashed one of the foot-square panes of glass in the first door. He reached through, fumbled around for several seconds, but was unable to find the lock. He broke another pane — and found no lock. He moved to the second door and broke two more panes before his trembling fingers located the cool metal latch.
They went into the house, glass crunching under their shoes.
After he found a wall switch and turned on the dining-room light, Kirkwood said, “By the way, what in the hell are we looking for?”
“I've been waiting for you to ask. We're looking for a corpse.
Kirkwood blinked. “One corpse in particular? Or will we take anything we can find?”
“Carl Altmüller.”
“Are you serious?”
“Deadly.”
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