“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 don'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.”
Canning hung up and turned to Lee Ann. “Dragonfly is downstairs right this minute. He's here to ask for political asylum. He doesn't seem to know what he is, and I don't think he's been triggered.”
Without a word she left the room and ran down the fourth-floor hall toward the stairs.
Behind the desk, Alexander Webster seemed to have aged twenty years in two minutes. His muscular body had shrunk in on itself. He said, “I guess you'll call this a miracle when you look back on it years from now.”
“No,” Canning said. “I don't believe in miracles. I don't even believe in coincidence. Somehow, his coming here tonight is tied directly to what you people did to him. I can't guess how, but I'd bet on it.”
Shortly, Lee Ann returned with Chai. He was a slender, wiry, rather good-looking young man. He smiled at everyone.
The night bell rang only in James Chin's bedroom. It shrilled again just as he was sliding between the sheets
“What in the hell is going on here?” he grumbled. He pushed back the covers, got up, stepped into his slippers, and picked up his robe.
The night bell rang again.
“Coming, coming, for God's sake.”
When he was at the head of the stairs, he heard the bell ring again, behind him in his room.
“Must be a night for mass defections,” Obin mumbled to himself. The heels of his slippers slapped noisily on the steps. “Twenty million Chinese have suddenly decided to move to Chicago.” When he reached the first-floor hall he heard pounding at the front door. “You're really not going to like Chicago,” he told the defectors on the other side of the door. “Wait until you learn about smog and traffic jams.” He twisted the lock and opened the door and said, “Oh. General Lin.”
Without being invited, the general stepped inside, squeezing past Obin. He said, “A young man named Chai Po-han has come here seeking political asylum.”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Obin said. “But—”
“I must see him.”
Obin realized that there was something odd about the general. The man was too stiff, too tense — and yet, had that look about the eyes of someone who had been smoking grass or popping pills.
“I must see Chai,” General Lin repeated.
“I'm afraid that might not be possible. He has asked for political asylum. In any event, you'll have to go through Ambassador Webster.”
“Where is Chai?” the general demanded.
“He's upstairs in Mr. Webster's office. And—”
The general turned away from him and went toward the stairs.
Running after him and grabbing him by the arm, Obin said, “You can't just barge—”
During his programming in Seoul, the general had been told to get to Chai Po-han at any cost once Webster had triggered him. He could perform, now, in none but a brutal fashion. He struck Obin across the face and knocked him backward into the first-floor hall. Then he turned and ran up the steps.
They were all listening to Chai Po-han as he explained about the Ssunan Commune. Webster was still behind his desk. Chai was in one of the armchairs, and Lee Ann was in the other. Fortunately, Canning was on his feet, standing beside Lee Ann, facing Chai, the open office door on his left.
Suddenly, heavy running footsteps echoed in the corridor, interrupting Chai's story. An instant later General Lin Shen-yang burst into the room. His face was a reflection of his tortured mind: wild-eyed, loose-lipped, nostrils flared. He saw Chai and lunged toward him. As he moved he said, “Dragonfly must spread his wings.”
Canning brought out his silenced pistol — and was knocked off his feet as a bullet tore through his right shoulder.
Lee Ann screamed.
Rolling, Canning came up onto his kness and saw that Webster had taken a gun from the center desk drawer. The ambassador seemed surprised that Canning was still alive. Before he could get over his surprise, Canning shot him in the face.
An unsilenced gunshot boomed behind him.
He twisted around in time to see Lee Ann fall in a heap, and he felt something snap inside of him. He raised his eyes and saw the general staring stupidly at the smoking revolver in his own hand. The man did not appear to remember that he had drawn and fired it. Indeed, he had probably been following his program and nothing more — an automaton, victim of drugs and subliminal suggestions and modern technology. Nevertheless, Canning put one bullet in his stomach and one in his chest and one in his throat.
The general fell backward, knocking over a floor lamp as he went, landing with a crash.
Chai Po-han, Canning thought.
Dragonfly.
Lin had triggered him.
Where was he now?
Biting his lip hard enough to take his mind off the paint in his shoulder, Canning struggled to his feet and looked around the room.
Chai was standing in a corner by the bookshelves. He had torn open the front of his shirt and was gently pricking his left shoulder with the point of a letter opener that Canning had earlier noticed on Webster's desk. A thin trickle of blood was running down his chest. He stabbed himself again, lightly, gently, then dropped the instrument.
The spansule was broken.
Chai was infected.
For a moment Canning almost buckled under the knowledge of his defeat. Then an energizing thought hit him like a hammer striking a sheet of white-hot steel: the plague virus required a human host, a culture in which it could survive and multiply, living flesh on which it could feed; no virus grew in a dead man; Chai could not infect anyone if he could no longer breathe…
As if he had just awakened from a trance, Chai said, “What is happening here?”
“Too much,” Canning said. He staggered close enough to put his last two bullets dead-center in Chai Po-han's head.
The boy fell into the bookcases and slid to the floor, dead beyond question.
Dropping his pistol, Canning went back to Lee Ann and knelt at her side. She was lying face-down on the floor. She had been shot in the back, low down, just left of the spine, and she had bled quite a lot. He touched her and began to cry and was still crying when James Obin and the others came up from downstairs
EPILOGUE
NEW YORK CITY: OCTOBER 25
A.W. West was scheduled to have drinks at five-thirty at the Plaza Hotel, where his Swiss attorney was staying during a one-week visit to New York. Prior to that engagement, however, he stopped in at Mark Cross to personally select and purchase a fine matched set of hand-tooled leather luggage that was to be a wedding gift for his favorite nephew.
When he and his bodyguard came out of the Mark Cross store, West decided to walk the short distance to the Plaza. The day was seasonably warm. There was a fresh breeze moving down Fifth Avenue, gently rustling women's skirts. West waved away his limousine, which was waiting at the curb, and set off toward Fifty-eighth Street, where he would cross to the far side of the avenue.
West's bodyguard walked a pace or two behind and to the right of him, studying everyone who approached and passed by them. But he was not particularly worried. He knew that hit men worked around a target's routine, picking a hit point they knew he would cross at a certain time. But this walk was unplanned, unpredictable. There was little chance of any trouble growing out of it.
West wasn't worrying about security precautions. He was just enjoying the walk, the breeze, and the lovely women one could always find on this part of Fifth Avenue.
A Cadillac limousine, not quite so elegant as West's own Rolls-Royce, pulled to the curb a hundred feet ahead, and a well-dressed man climbed out of it. He walked back in the direction of Mark Cross, toward West.
There were so many people on the street who bore watching that West's bodyguard paid scant attention to this one. After all, the man didn't appear to be a thug; he was chauffeur-driven, London-suited, respectable.
As the man from the Cadillac approached West, he smiled broadly and held out his hand.
West frowned. This man was a stranger. Nevertheless, West reflexively raised his own hand to let it be shaken.
“What a surprise!” the stranger said. Shaking with his right hand, he raised his left hand and showed West the miniature spray can that he held.
“What—”
It was very fast, very clean, and probably invisible to anyone nearby. He sprayed West in the face. The spray can went pssss. It was a short burst.
Don't breathe.' West thought. But he had gasped in surprise, and the thought was too late to save him. Although the gas was colorless and odorless, West felt suddenly as if he were smothering. Then there was an explosion of pain in his chest, and he fell.
The stranger went down on one knee beside him.
The bodyguard pushed through the ring of people that had formed already. “What the hell?”
“Heart attack,” the gray-eyed man said. “I'm a doctor. I've seen it before. Call an ambulance.” He tore open West's shirt and began to forcefully massage his chest, directly over his heart. He glanced up after a moment, saw the bodyguard, and said, “For God's sake, get an ambulance!”
The bodyguard got up and ran toward the corner of Fifty-eighth and Fifth Avenue in search of a policeman.
After another half-minute the stranger stopped working on West, and said, “He's gone. I'm afraid he's gone.” He stood up, adjusted his tie, shook his head sadly, and melted away into the crowd a full minute before West's bodyguard returned.
NEW YORK CITY: NOVEMBER 5
Prescott Hennings stopped at the water fountain in the lobby of his office building. He took a long, cool drink. When he raised his head he found that a rangy man with eyes the color of sheet metal had moved in extremely close to him. “Excuse me,” Hennings said.
“Mr. Hennings?”
“Yes?”
“Prescott Hennings?”
“Yes.”
The stranger brought a small aerosol can from his jacket pocket and held it up. This can was so small that the stranger's hand concealed it from everyone but Hennings. “Do you know what this is?” he asked pleasantly.
“I don't know you. If you're some sort of salesman or inventor, I don't want to know you,” Hennings said, beginning to get irritated.
“No, no,” the stranger said, smiling. “I didn't invent it. It was invented by some very clever men at Fort Derrick a few years back. If I spray your face the chemical will give you a fatal heart attack that'll pass any autopsy. That's what happened to Mr. West, you know.”
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