Empire of Women & One of our Cities is Missing (Armchair Fiction Double Novels Book 25)

by Fletcher, John

  At fifteen I began my military training. Six months later, because I was large and strong and quick thinking, I was transferred to the paratroops. Our training was rigid. When we were not practicing in the planes our Russian allies gave us, we were hardening our muscles with athletic drills and hand-to-hand conflict. One hour each morning we had classes for political indoctrination; four hours every night we learned English.

  During the indoctrination sessions, special political officers came from Pekin to explain current news. We had one mortal enemy, they told us: the Fascist government of the United States, which kept its own people in ignorance and slavery.

  I know, now, it was all a lie. My heart is burning with the taste of betrayal. I was a part of it. I marched blindly with the others.

  I learned to hate the enemy with a terrible loathing, for I had cousins who lived in the United States. We had never met; it surprised me that they were even aware of my humble existence. Yet, from time to time, the political officer from Pekin brought me letters from my cousins—pitiful, tragic pleas for us to release them from their reactionary masters. Many of the men in my corps had similar letters from their own kin. Our hatred was inflamed.

  On the day our Russian allies were forced to occupy Paris to protect the people from the Wall Street plutocrats, our military corps was ordered to leave Pekin.

  Our corps flew north to a Russian base in Siberia, a new field more elaborately camouflaged than anything I had ever seen.

  The paratroopers packed into the dugouts were all approximately my age; they had all been separated from their parents in early childhood and reared in government schools.

  During the two days of our confinement the only language we were permitted to speak was English. The officers gave us American newspapers and periodicals to read.

  Toward the end of the second day we heard the bombers overhead. The commissar ordered us out of our hammocks. We crowded together in front of the television screen. Automatic transmitters set up in the cities showed us the holocaust of the bombing, until the transmitters themselves were destroyed. Moscow, Pekin, Shanghai, Canton, Bombay, Leningrad, Berlin, Madrid: we watched them die. Our homes, the cities we prided, the people we knew as friends—destroyed by the sneak attack of American planes. Undeclared war.

  The commissar brought us liquor. We smashed the empty bottles against the earthen wall, as we would have smashed the enemy.

  Shortly before dawn—I am not sure of the hour, because I had drunk myself into a stupor—we were loaded into the transports.

  I slept until a needle pricked my arm. I opened my eyes and saw the commissar jerk out the empty hypodermic. “You’ll feel fine in a minute,” he said as he moved on to the next man.

  Half an hour later we made the jump. Ours was not the first wave of the invasion. Soviet paratroops had landed during the night and seized key points. The morning sun was bright and clear as I parachuted toward Los Angeles.

  I checked in at the nearest Soviet guard post. The Lieutenant in charge recorded my identification number and assigned me to the refugee detail. Our job was to unsnarl the traffic and get the people off the streets.

  An interminable flood of cars continued to crowd in from the desert. And this, I thought, was happening on all the highways leading into the city. By weight of numbers alone the Americans could have subdued us. They seemed unaware of that.

  By mid-afternoon my drugged god-feeling was gone. I had to hold to my post doggedly, fighting fatigue. My nerves were raw. I screamed orders at the prisoners, sometimes forgetting to speak in English. I used my gun more frequently, on very little provocation. My only emotion was hatred.

  A very old, very crowded automobile came toward us. The motor was coughing; steam shot from the open radiator. I strode toward it, swinging my submachine gun angrily.

  The motor stalled again. A rear door banged open and four children spilled out; the eldest was no more than nine. They began to plead with me in their shrill, childish voices. Please, would I be patient? Their mother was sick; she had been burned by the bomb.

  Their words made no impression, but their faces did. For they were Chinese. Chinese like myself.

  The man got out. He began to address me awkwardly in Cantonese.

  “I speak English,” I told him proudly.

  His face relaxed. “Sir, my wife is very ill. A doctor examined her; he said she might possibly live if—”

  “What are you doing with these Fascist pigs?”

  He looked me straight in the eye. “I am an American.” He said it without shame. With a dignity that made me writhe, he returned to the car and lifted out his wife. A white man from another vehicle came and talked to him. They put the Chinese woman in the second car; a white woman slid behind the wheel, after first making a pillow of her coat and sliding it behind the Chinese woman’s head.

  That unexpected gesture of kindness gave me my first doubt. The letters from my cousin had said that the Chinese, without exception, were the most persecuted slaves of capitalism. Yet now, with my own eyes, I had seen a white family help a Chinese woman.

  The four children climbed into the second car. Since there was no one left to drive the wreck belonging to the Chinese, I ordered four prisoners to push it into a side street, to clear the road. Until it was out of the way, the second car was stalled, and all the long column of vehicles behind it. The eldest Chinese child—a girl—got out and walked toward me.

  “Do you know a working class man whose name is Lin Yeng?” I asked her.

  “You talk in such a foolish way. What’s a working class? The only kind of classes I know about are the ones in school, and we don’t work unless we have to.”

  My nerves began to tense in anger again; the tone of my voice went up a notch. “Do you know Lin Yeng?” I repeated.

  “No, but lots of Chinese live in Los Angeles.

  “How would I find Lin Yeng?” I asked. “He’s a cousin of mine; we have corresponded for many years.”

  “Try the phone book. But take a tip from me, soldier; I don’t think he’s going to give you the red carpet treatment.”

  Late in the afternoon we were relieved at the barricade by fresh troops. I reported back to the guard post. The Lieutenant gave me my billet assignment in a hotel overlooking the public bathing beach, a mile or so south of the harbor.

  I ate in the hotel dining room, at a table with two infantry privates and a Russian air force sergeant. It was a magnificent meal. We had all the food and liquor of a captured city at our disposal.

  During a lull I asked—simply to be saying something, not because it really mattered to me—I asked why we were so sure the American counterattack would come from the sea.

  The sergeant spoke up, “I was in one of the planes. I saw the orders. We built a wall around the city, so we could have time to bring our troops in.” He drank and the whiskey spilled down his chin. “Not a real wall, you understand. But it works the same. We dropped a ring of baby H-bombs all around the city, a couple of hundred miles back from the coast. One hell of a big ditch. And it’ll stay radioactive maybe a week. After that they can cross it—if they wear the right equipment—but by that time it’ll be too late.”

  So the bombs had been ours. We had murdered defenseless people.

  I gulped the rest of my meal. It was tasteless. I left the dining room. The hotel lobby was jammed with our troops, all very drunk.

  I saw a telephone booth and I remembered what the Chinese girl had said. In the directory I read through the listings until I found the name of Lin Yeng. I copied the address on a scrap of paper.

  His address was south of the hotel, two city blocks back from the beachfront boulevard.

  The houses behind the boulevard were less imposing, although still larger than anything I was accustomed to. Lin Yeng’s address was in a small, secondary shopping district. I passed a vast hall, called a super-market, a drug store, and a cleaning establishment, before I saw Lin Yeng’s place of business —a Chinese restaurant on the corn
er. His name in large gold letters was painted on the window.

  I walked down a narrow alley. Dangerous, perhaps, in an enemy city, but I was well armed. Behind some of the shops there were living quarters. Lin Yeng had an apartment over a big garage, where I saw a gleaming car called a Cadillac as well as a delivery truck with my cousin’s name painted on the panel. My cousin? No, this must be another Lin Yeng. My cousin was a worker. He had told me that many times in his letters. It had to be true; still, something within me drove me to make certain.

  In the apartment I saw a light. I crept up the outer steps, until I could see through a partly opened window, where the curtain had been drawn not quite to the sill. The room was furnished with all the magnificence of a party official’s residence: many comfortable chairs, a lounge, Chinese scrolls on the wall, jade work standing on a side table, at least four reading lamps—in one room!—a tremendous radio, and a television set. This Lin Yeng must have been a very rich plutocrat to be able to afford a private television screen for his own family alone.

  In an adjoining room I saw two pretty Chinese girls—both my age, or a little younger—at a dining table. A man and a woman, beyond my restricted line of vision, were talking.

  “This cousin of yours in China, my dear—do you suppose he’s still safe?”

  “Chen Phiang?” the man asked in a distressed voice. “No, they would dispose of him now.”

  “But you sent all that money so faithfully for so many years!”

  “Blackmail. Chen Phiang is no use to them any longer. We did all we could to help him; we must remember that. Perhaps they were kind enough to give him a merciful death.”

  I stole away, dazed and sick at heart from what I had heard. This was my cousin; I could no longer doubt that. He had paid party blood money in order to help me, a stranger he had never met. To help me!—and now I stood at his door in the uniform of the conqueror. I felt the anguish of shame and dishonor.

  I reached the oceanfront close to the palace. Two Russian sentries, armed with automatic rifles, challenged me. I fumbled blindly for words. One of them jerked open my tunic and looked at my identification disc. Their military manner relaxed.

  “Out on the prowl, soldier?”

  “Everything was—locked up,” I stammered. I motioned toward the men in front of the big house. “What’s all this for?”

  “Command headquarters. General Zergoff.” The sentry said.

  “There’s another reason for the guard,” the second sentry put in, to make sure I’d be properly impressed. “We have twenty-five prisoners inside. American intellectuals. After the Comrade General finishes their re-education, they’ll sing their song to our tune.”

  “I thought all intellectuals were enemies of the people.”

  “They’re for the firing squad; you can be sure of that.” The Russian grinned. “After we’re through with them.”

  We heard a roar of planes. Every eye turned toward the sky. Anti-aircraft guns in the harbor began to spit angrily. One of the sentries cried, “A Fascist raid!” They began to run for cover.

  I stood where I was, paralyzed with inner horror and disgust, the last bitter ash of shame.

  Then a phosphorous shell from an attacking plane burst over the harbor and in the white glare I saw the rows upon rows of Soviet submarines.

  Since the Soviet submarines were already in the American port, they must have left their Asiatic pens more than a week ago, under orders to begin the invasion. That had been at least four days before the crisis began.

  Built upon that fact, everything else formed a single, terrifying pattern: the English they made us learn; our practice jumps over a plain marked with the streets of Los Angeles; the new, elaborately camouflaged Siberian bases, where the invasion troops had been safely concealed from American bombers. Protesting humanitarianism, screaming peace and brotherhood, we had planned this war for years.

  Somewhere a soldier shouted at me, “Take cover, fool!”

  I was behind the headquarters mansion, in a narrow alley. The guards were gone. I was alone.

  Suddenly a plane soared directly overhead, out of control. A bomb exploded under the bluff and the earth rocked. Another hit the headquarters palace. Debris and dust and flying plaster flew in my face, flinging me back against a wall. I saw a tongue of fire licking at the gapping hole torn in the side of the house. The plane crashed in the street; the fuel tank caught fire.

  In the orange glare I saw two men stumble through the broken wall. One was so badly wounded his face was unrecognizable; the second man was carrying him. They were not in uniform. They must, then, be two of the intellectuals imprisoned in the house.

  I leaped toward them. They shrank away, trying to run. I caught the arm of the man who was unhurt. “Are you Americans?” I demanded.

  Instead of replying, the man swung his fist at me weakly.

  “My name is Chen Phiang,” I said. “I am Chinese; I want to help you. Come, I will show you a place to hide.”

  My shame and dishonor diminished a little. This my paternal grandparent approved; one small thing to make amends for the red nightmare that had so long swallowed up the soul of China.

  IV. The Valley—Friday afternoon Boris Yorovich

  TWENTY minutes after we picked up the wounded Negro, Pat Thatcher pulled the Cadillac to a stop in the village of Big Bear. It was the first American town I had ever seen.

  We stopped in front of a drug store. Pat Thatcher got out and pounded on the door, while Jerry Bonhill and I lifted the Negro out of the car.

  Having raised no one by his knocking, Thatcher wrapped the tail of his shirt around his fist and smashed open the window in the door. He slipped his hand through the glass and turned the lock. Bonhill and I carried the Negro into the building. The old man shoved a display of stuffed toys from a table and we lay the Negro on it.

  Cheryl Fineberg and Mrs. Bonhill came in with Jim Riley. Dr. Clapper remained outside on the step, watching us but refusing to have any part in our invasion of private property. The women cut away the clothing from the Negro’s arms, while Thatcher brought jars of salve from a side shelf.

  “People,” the Negro whispered in a choked voice barely audible. “I found people?”

  “You’ll be all right now.”

  “There are others. Help…” His voice trailed off. Mrs. Bonhill stooped beside him and slipped her arm under his head. After a moment he spoke again, his thick, torn lips close to her ear. “They’re back on the hill. On the hill. All right except—except tired. Please help them. They need…”

  INTERIOR ILLUSTRATION #5

  Artist Unknown

  His head slumped forward. Mrs. Bonhill bent over his chest. Then she stood up slowly, her eyes filmed with tears. “He’s dead.”

  “Put up your hands.” A voice sounded behind us.

  We swung around to face a small, plump, white-haired woman wearing a gingham dress and ankle-high mountain boots, gray with dust. She held a hunting rifle aimed at us unwaveringly.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Thatcher apologized. “We didn’t know anyone was here.” He gestured toward the Negro. “We were trying to get drugs for—”

  “You’re from the city?”

  “We’ll pay for what we’ve used.”

  “This isn’t my store. You’re welcome to it.”

  The plump woman seemed less suspicious. She shot a glance suddenly at Cheryl, demanding her name and her street address. The woman asked Mrs. Bonhill the same question. The two answers seemed to satisfy her. She nodded and muttered, “That fits.” Abruptly she lowered her gun. “I had to make sure you weren’t Reds.”

  “These people are subversives,” Clapper hissed from the door. He pointed at me. “That man’s a Russian officer. They stole my car. If you’ll make Thatcher give me my keys—”

  “Dr. Clapper was the only one of you I recognized. If he says you’re subversives, that makes you fine in my book.”

  Clapper turned and stormed off down the street. The woman laughed. �
�He won’t go far.” She told us her name was Virginia Grant. She was a retired high school history teacher.

  “You’re the only one who stayed?”

  “No, Henry Jenkins is here, too. Hank, we call him. An old loafer who has an idea he’s going to strike gold over in Holcomb Valley. As soon as it dawned on him this morning that we were alone, he started out to drink up all the liquor in Big Bear. He’s still in one of the saloons, I imagine.”

  “The Negro told us there were survivors somewhere in the hills,” Cheryl Fineberg put in. “We’ll have to try to find them.”

  “We might pick up his trail and back-track on it,” Jerry Bonhill suggested.

  “You men do that,” the teacher decided. “While you’re gone, we’ll work out some sort of housing arrangement.”

  “I wish we could get some news,” she continued. “Ben Canster had all sorts of fancy equipment in his appliance shop, but I can’t seem to get it hitched up right. Ben didn’t use regular electric outlets. He has his own Delco plant, and I don’t know how to make the thing go.”

  I volunteered, “Maybe I could help, Miss Grant. We had a good deal of basic electronics in our training for—” I caught the slip. “That is, in the school I was attending.”

  “Stay here and see what you can do,” Thatcher suggested. “Jerry and I can round up the survivors.”

  Before they left, Thatcher drove the Negro’s body to a pine-sheltered knoll overlooking the lake, where Virginia Grant said we could bury him. While I scooped a shallow grave in the soft earth, she sent Jim Riley to carry stones up from the lakeside and pile them into a pyramided marker. With a teacher’s eye for detail, she made two legible copies of the Negro’s name and address from the driver’s license she found in his wallet.

  “We must keep an accurate record,” she said. “Someday his family may want to locate the body.”

  Cheryl Fineberg and I were alone by the grave. Cheryl helped me tramp the soil over the body.