“You need to understand something,” she adds. “We are about to reunite with Lillian, and you need to be ready for that. You have no idea what the three of us can do when our intentions are aligned. All we have been waiting for all along, baby, is you. Waiting for Julian Mancer to finally come onboard, and I’m feeling that now. All this mess, all this trouble, is just what was required to finally get your attention. Are you seeing that?”
I don’t reply. I’m not up to any more of Tree’s saccharine and brimstone just now. We’re just about to go confrontational with more or less every bad guy west of Spokane, and I seem to be the only one around here who gets that. One thing Tree does seem to have right, though. Mighty armies are arrayed around us.
Turning a corner, we find a long line of red taxis. We approach the first in line, but before we can touch the door handle the driver waves us off. The second and third drivers do the same. The fourth cabbie allows us inside until Tree declares our destination. We are ordered out of the cab. As we exit, I see him aerosol-spraying the interior.
A horde of starving taxi drivers now swarms around us, grabbing, shouting, jostling, their dirty gauze masks slipping down their faces. Tree shouts our intended destination, and all but one of them walks away. The remaining driver, who looks all of sixteen, goes a bit pale but he’s still standing here. He and Tree negotiate at length in Mandarin.
“He’ll take us nearby,” Tree tells me at last. “We’ll have to walk the last half a kilometer or so. We’re paying triple the meter.”
I nod agreeably, knowing that the meter won’t work.
Tree takes the rear of the taxi and I the front. The taxi zips along suburban Beijing’s broad, empty thoroughfares, the driver all the while slapping his useless meter. The driver exits the main road just before we reach a roadblock where, I note with pleasure, the bus that just refused Tree is mired in a long, unmoving line. The cabbie, grimly silent, turns onto a succession of ever-more-lonely two-lanes. My eyes take in shop after shuttered shop, many of them plastered with humorless black-on-white notices. Finally I submit to the urge to turn and check the road behind us. A taxi seems to be following at a distance.
“Is your past catching up?” asks Tree.
I ignore her and she laughs.
“Listen, Jules, I need to tell you something,” says Tree. “Your past is tracking you. It’s tracked you all the way here, and the last thing we need is to have your past in our present. Understand?”
“No, I don’t. Who is tracking me?”
“It’s someone who used to work for you. He was your right-hand man. You sent him away just when you needed him the most. I think he ain’t over it.”
“Are you talking about Truman?”
“Truman was a mask, Julian. I’m talking about the spirit behind the mask. I’m talking about where that energy is coming from, and it’s coming from your past. Be careful. He may have plans to mess with your big finale.”
“I have a big finale?” I say.
“You better have.”
I feel Tree’s hand on my shoulder. “I took a chance on you. Don’t make me out wrong.”
“This isn’t helping,” I say irritably.
“And one more little thing,” says Tree, and her hand disappears. “All that stuff I said happened on Cetus? It didn’t happen on Cetus.”
I turn to look at her. “You mean the civilization I destroyed?”
Tree says, “I didn’t think you were ready to hear it. Maybe you’re still not ready, but all that stuff happened right here on Earth.”
“Why did I know you were going to say that?”
“You’re returning to the scene of the crime, Jules. Your day of redemption has come at last.”
The driver brakes in the precise middle of nowhere, slams off the dysfunctional meter, and points straight ahead. I look straight ahead. There’s nothing to see except an empty two-lane, a few abandoned buildings, a weedy lot, and a tailless cat. Tree questions the driver, but he just keeps jabbing his forefinger straight ahead.
Moments later, the taxi is turning and speeding away, and Tree and I stand gazing around ourselves at a ramshackle industrial area, evidently idle for quite some time. I take one look at the pitted pavement and pull out the shoulder-straps of Tree’s suitcase.
“Help me with this,” I say, squatting while Tree helps me into the straps. I turn to check the road behind us. There’s a taxi parked some two hundred yards back. That’s nice.
“Let’s go,” I say.
Beneath the haze-filtered sun, we walk within an eerie silence that makes every footfall seem slightly absurd. I offer my water bottle, and Tree shakes her head.
“You’re dehydrated,” I tell her.
“You tend to yours. I’ll tend to mine.”
I point to a wooden sign just ahead of us. It’s covered with strident red Chinese characters. “Can you read that?” I ask.
“You know my eyes are bad,” replies Tree.
Just as well, I decide. I just checked behind us again, and there are two taxis creeping along a hundred meters behind us.
“Where’s the traffic?” I ask irritably. “A ten-thousand-bed hospital has to generate more traffic than this.”
“Many paths to the mountaintop,” says Tree, beginning to wheeze, rivulets of sweat starting down her face.
She could actually be right. The taxi driver may have chosen a seldom-used route, a back-door approach that the various welcoming committees may not anticipate.
A moment later, Tree is squinting at the sign. “It’s the characters for SARS. The last character means ‘warning.’ I’d say we’re getting close.”
She turns to me. “Julian, I have to say something—”
“I’m not listening.”
“What happens today will—”
“I’m not listening,” I say testily. “I am what I am, and I do what I do.” I extend the water bottle. “Put this in your mouth.”
Tree smiles as she accepts the water bottle. “That’s all I needed to hear, baby. You’re standing in your power. Halleluiah and praise God.”
As Tree takes a modest sip, three equally-spaced gunshots erupt behind us. I turn to see one of the two taxis squeal a one-eighty and make haste back toward Beijing.
“Fireworks,” I say.
Chapter Fifty-Five
A red taxi passes Tree and me only to stop some ten meters away. Out steps a middle-aged Westerner in a golf shirt. There he stands, smiling broadly, hands on hips, awaiting us. Call me psychic. I know at a glance that this man is Harold Sternbaum.
“Keep walking,” I whisper to Tree. “Don’t say a word.”
“You have picked one very hot day for a stroll!” the man calls to us, his white teeth gleaming. “You might at least be following a golf ball around, for heaven’s sake.”
As we draw closer, the man opens the rear door of the taxi. “Climb in. I’ll take you where you’re going, not that it’s likely to do you much good. My name is Harold Sternbaum, and I’d—”
Tree and I walk wordlessly past.
“Uh-oh,” says Sternbaum. “We aren’t being pleasant.”
Closing the door, Sternbaum falls into step beside me, and the taxi follows.
“Listen, Julian,” says Sternbaum, “I know why you’re here, and I know what you’re up against. There’s no way in hell you’re getting your sister out of that hospital without a lot of help, okay? That’s what I am. I’m a lot of help. But first, I need a little something from you.”
Tree begins to hum a spiritual.
“Oh, we’re musical!” says Harold. “How exciting! Would you care to know, Mrs. Carter, what your Julian did just before leaving Shenzhen? He stole my daughter. Not to mention my wife. I take it from his manner that he doesn’t intend to give either of them back. How do you think that plays with me, Mrs. Carter? Any guesses? Hah?”
Harold takes out a handkerchief and pats his temples. “You will notice that I’m working very hard here. Considering the flow of events, I wou
ld call my approach extremely cordial thus far. But I’ve always believed in approaching complex problems like a rational adult. Julian needs a sister. I need a daughter. We can work at cross purposes, or we can help each other out. I say we help each other out. Would someone please say something? I’m a voice crying in the wilderness, for the love of God.”
Tree continues to hum her spiritual. The warm, throaty melody unfolds before me like a vision. I find myself clinging to each note.
Sternbaum leans closer to my face. “Just like your father, hah? Smarter than everybody else. Got to do it your way. Did you know I’ve done business with your father? I helped him get into that tobacco deal in Guangzhou. He wanted to hybridize a more addictive tobacco strain. Can you believe that? A more addictive tobacco strain?” Sternbaum laughs gaily. “I couldn’t work with the man. Everything’s got to be his way.”
Sternbaum digs his pointy shoulder into my arm. “Know those two fucking pickpockets who were after your father? Barnes and somebody or other? I hear they got a little too close to the action. The cops found them in their room this morning, hog-tied with syringes stuck in their necks. What do you think about that? Hah?”
I turn and look at him for the first time.
“Oh, my God!” cries Sternbaum. “He’s looking at me! Any moment now he’ll begin to speak!”
I turn my head away.
“Okay,” says Sternbaum. “It’s Plan B then. I’ll have my friends shoot you both like the fucking dogs you are, right here on the road, and the Chinese can do what they want with the milk maid. What do you think about that? Hah? Takers?”
Sternbaum leans into me again, his rat-like face inclined. I smell his aftershave. “What kind of man would take something that belongs to someone else? What kind of man would take another man’s wife and daughter? What should be done with a man like that, Julian?”
The remaining phone in my cargo pocket begins to ring. I find that altogether curious, as not even I know the number. I open the phone and punch up the call.
“Hao?” I say. Rhymes with how.
A calm, husky American voice replies, “Would you please tell Harold Sternbaum that, if he touches my son once more, he’ll soon be parting his hair at the eyebrows?”
“You’re a fucking ET,” I say into the phone.
After a momentary silence, Dobbins says, “We’re all extraterrestrials here, Julian. Now would you please—”
“At least you’re dying,” I add. “Wouldn’t you say you’re dying? And the whole pod thing with you?”
Dobbins sighs. “Everything here is dying, Julian. You are the last remaining hope for any of us. Come in. There’s a shelter. Everything has been prepared.”
I say, “Let me guess. The shelter is located beneath the Circular Mound Altar, it’s designed for exactly nine occupants and, once everyone is strapped in, the structure transforms into a spaceship that—”
“Please,” says Dobbins.
“What? Too much?”
Harold Sternbaum says, “Who the fuck are you talking to?”
“Actually, it’s for you,” I tell Sternbaum, “if you’ll just wait a moment.” I turn back to the phone. “Okay. Now, what exactly is the status of Lillian?”
“Forget Lillian. It’s about you now,” says Dobbins.
“Been really nice talking to you.” I hand the phone to Harold Sternbaum. “Don’t use all my minutes.”
“Who is this?” Sternbaum barks into the phone. A moment later, he spins, looking in every direction. After a few angry sputters, he throws the phone as far as he can into the weeds.
“To hell with all of you,” snarls Sternbaum, signaling to the cab driver. “I’m not dirtying my hands. Let the Chinese and North Koreans fight over who gets to hang you up by the fucking thumbs.”
Before climbing into the taxi, Sternbaum shakes a fist at me. “If one hair of that child’s head is harmed, I will personally buy you from whoever has you. Do you hear me, Julian? I will buy you.”
He slams the door, and the taxi burns a one-eighty and disappears.
Tree’s hum becomes a relieved sigh, followed by silence. Again, the silence is too complete. Something is missing. I don’t know what. Now I hear a chortle.
Tree says, “People love you everywhere you go, don’t they, baby?”
“All over the world.”
Tree was right about different paths to the mountaintop. We’re now approaching the ass end of the Peoples’ Beijing SARS Treatment and Quarantine Hospital. No welcoming committees. For now at least.
“Let me do the talking,” pants Tree, limping noticeably. “Don’t say anything. Don’t do anything. I got us in that taxi, and I’ll get us in that hospital. Are you hearing me, Julian Mancer?”
The first thing you see are the light towers, sixteen of them, each at least a hundred feet high. Approaching closer, you notice the gleaming coils of razor-wire atop a forbiddingly tall chain-link fence. Beyond that, ranks and files of anonymous pre-fab barracks brood in the hazy sunlight. All around them, bulldozed earth lies bare where just weeks ago yawned a fallow field. When the Chinese decide to get something done, it’s done in a hurry.
The third thing you notice is the saxophone music oozing from the horns mounted on each light tower. Struggling to not hear it, I study the compound before us. No trace of a rear entrance. There’s no choice but to follow the unpaved perimeter road that skirts the chain-link. This we do, feeling the stares of the masked and heavily-armed guards patrolling the other side. The saxophone music is louder now. I feel it penetrating my DNA, tugging at the strands. I clamp my hands over my ears. It doesn’t help.
“You’re always hating on Kenny J,” complains Tree, panting. “All in the world that boy is doing is trying to make a living with his horn.”
Blood will fly. That’s all that matters. It no longer matters whose. Something in me is beyond that now. That part doesn’t want an easy solution. I fear there can be no solution because I’ve come too late. So let the various players play it out. Let them fuss over which government finally gets to out-creep all the others, which strain of cooties gets to sing the final stanza, which monkey-grotesque gets to write history for a little while. I no longer even want to know whether it was the kind-hearted people of Shreveport, Louisiana, and Hot Coffee, Mississippi, who did or did not wittingly or unwittingly loose what upon the world’s most populous society in their most vulnerably human moment. If there are even any humans here. Maybe Lillian was right all along. It’s fucked. There’s a part of me that wants it to be fucked.
Tree and I round the final corner, and the entrance of the compound swings into view. Before two gatehouses waits a long queue of trucks. Outside the gate sprawls a forlorn encampment of people napping on newspapers, slouching beneath parasols, awaiting, it would appear, news of family members brought here against their will.
Tree and I approach the gate, working our way through a knot of people confronting a row of soldiers. Behind the row of soldiers is another row of soldiers. All are helmeted and gauze-masked, and each brandishes a bayonet-tipped automatic rifle. Behind the two rows of soldiers is a second gate, bracketed by another pair of gatehouses. Between the two gates, inbound and outbound vehicles are being searched, drivers’ temperatures checked, and clipboards consulted. Razor-wire swaths everything.
What comes to my attention now is a song. Tree is singing it.
“Ohhh-hhhhh, Pharaoh,” she intones throatily, hands spread and fingers skyward. “Let my pee-EEE-eee-eople go.”
Tree, still moving forward, takes a huge breath, seeming to double in size.
“OhhhhhHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHhhhhhh, Pharaoh…”
Every head turns. The crowd begins to part before Tree, who half-walks half-floats toward the compound gate.
“Let my PEEEEEEE-eeeeeeeee-EEEE-eee-eople go.”
The crowd scatters. Two men actually fall down trying to get out of Tree’s way. She reaches the first row of soldiers, their rifles and bayonets leveled. Inhaling deeply, she reaches
for a new octave.
She finds it.
Hands raised, eyes closed: “Oh PHAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA….”
Everything stops. Vehicle inspections. Breathing. An overhead light-bulb explodes. The saxophone music sputters, pops and goes dead.
“—AAAAA-ROHHHHHHHH-HHHHH-hhhhhh—”
Suddenly wobbly, Tree steadies herself against a lamp post.
I step forward until I feel against my chest the point of the nearest bayonet. Beneath the military helmet before me is a pair of dark eyes wide with uncertainty. “What have you done with my sister?” I demand of the darting eyes. All the soldiers before me are young and unsure of themselves. It doesn’t matter. We’re beyond that.
Tree begins to speak in Mandarin, carefully articulating Lil’s name.
“It’s too late for talking, Tree,” I interrupt, hearing once more the strange emptiness in the air. I know what it is now. As though hearing the thought, Tree turns questioningly to me.
“She’s gone, Tree,” I say. “Check for yourself.”
A frown line appears between Tree’s eyebrows. Raising her hands, she uses the palms to scan the area in front of her. “Show me Lillian,” she whispers, closing her eyes and panning her open palms left to right and back. Baffled, Tree shakes her head and scans the area again. Finally the two hands drop to her sides. Tree’s eyes roll open.
An ominous roaring sound begins in the sky. Looking up, I discover a black cloud forming above Tree Carter’s head. As I watch, a funnel shape descends from the cloud, pulling a halo of dust and debris into the air. Tree screams in Mandarin, repeating Lil’s name. An officer runs out of a guardhouse, looks skyward, and begins to shout.
All at once wind hits me like a speeding train. I find myself sprawled on the ground several meters away, bits of sand stinging my face. Wiping my eyes, I see a truck turned on its side, wheels spinning. The chain-link fence and guardhouses are bucking violently. The soldiers all scatter, their helmets flying.
“Tree!”
I begin stumbling toward Tree Carter. Suddenly I know something. Or realize that I already knew. Reaching her, I cry, “Tree! She’s not here! Lil’s alive. She’s just not here.”
The Year of the Hydra Page 52