China Star

by Maurice Medland

  She’d long gotten over her feelings of humiliation and now looked forward to the ritual. It was as close as she could come to being outside at night, alone. She looked up at the sky, happy for the moment to be alive. Stars twinkled over a cloudless night. The sweet scent of pepper plants hung on the air. In the distance, she heard the soft crash of waves break against the rocky shore, smelled the salt spray that drifted over the rim of the island. Although it was two oceans away, she imagined that the water washing ashore was the same water that washed up on the beach of her parent’s summer home in Martha’s Vineyard. It comforted her to believe they were connected, that home was at the other end of that water.

  The guards stood apart from the stench of the barrels, urinating, breaking wind, laughing, jabbering in Cantonese. She tuned them out and looked up at the sky. A shooting star blazed across the eastern horizon. Star light, star bright. The first star I see tonight. There would soon be another star in the sky, one far more deadly than any made by nature. Tears came to her eyes. How could she have been so dense?

  She blinked back her tears and focused on the moon. Americans had actually walked there. If we can do that, surely someone can get me out of here. She didn’t deserve to be rescued after what she’d done. Even though her contribution had been completely unintentional, America should disown her. Still, maybe someone would come. Please, God, let it be in time to stop them. It was the one thought that sustained her.

  A slight movement in the brush caught her eye. Wildlife on the island was said to be nonexistent, wiped out long ago by starving prisoners. More curious than afraid, she inched closer. She looked down, frozen, as a hand emerged from the brush and patted her bare foot twice, as though to comfort her. What? She felt a tiny roll of paper being slipped into her left hand; then all was still.

  She thrust the note into a pocket, dumped her bucket into one of the filthy wooden barrels, rinsed it out with salt water from a pump, and followed the guards back to her cell. After returning her bucket to its corner, she collapsed across the straw mat and pretended to fall asleep. She lay there for what seemed like hours. Finally, she heard her guard’s footsteps shuffle down the hall and fade into silence.

  She slid off the mat and crawled to the edge of her cell, where a thin shaft of moonlight splayed against the wall like a distorted movie screen. She took out the note, a thin sheet of rice paper rolled into a tight cylinder. With trembling fingers, she unrolled the tiny scroll and held it up to the shaft of light. The words in black ink electrified her.

  “Stay strong. We are leaving soon.”

  James Lao sipped his latte and gazed at the television monitor on the wall. He paused the tape with the remote control, rewound it, and watched his American cousin spit in Lee Hong’s face in slow motion. He smiled at the expression on Professor Lee’s face. Beth was just like her mother. His mother, too. The Tang sisters took no shit from anyone. He fast-forwarded and again watched Lee backhand her, knocking her to the floor. He shook his head. The inept fool would kill her before he got her to sign a confession.

  No matter. Beth’s confession would help to hold the family members and American officials clamoring for her release at bay, but even without it, they could be dodged for a while longer. He looked at the calendar on the wall. The tenth of June. Only eleven days to go. After that, she could be released. By then, the American government would know what she knew. In fact, the whole world would know.

  He switched the monitor off and drew himself a fresh latte, an addiction he’d picked up as an MBA student at Stanford. He whistled across the cup, then took a swallow and let the caffeine work on his headache. Standing at the window, he looked out over Victoria Harbor at the Hong Kong skyline.

  The stark contrast between the city created by the British and the squalor created by his own people was a constant source of embarrassment. Tall, elegant office buildings stood side by side as if linking arms to push back the encroaching Chinese slums. In the harbor below, ancient Chinese junks swirled about luxurious cruise ships like bugs on a pond, their owners selling trinkets, taking leftover food that had been thrown out.

  He sighed. Truly he was a man without a country. In the years he’d spent living in the U.S., he’d never felt accepted and had come to despise the arrogant superpower. Yet living in America had made him see China through the eyes of a Westerner, and he now hated what he saw. As a student in the West, he’d learned exactly what the fabled Mao had done. The insane peasant had caused the deaths of 70 million people - in peacetime. Mao was long gone, but the insanity was still there, along with his rotting corpse. Market reform had improved things to some extent, but the country was still decades behind. James detested the Communist fools in Beijing - including his father - who kept the Mao myth alive, clinging desperately to power.

  He no longer had any desire to live in China. When his father ordered him back to head up the development of a new weapons system, James had resisted - until he learned what the new weapon was, and how it would be used. It had been an opportunity he couldn’t refuse, a chance to set things right, not only for China but for himself. It had taken all the skills he’d learned in America’s finest schools, and after an epic six-year struggle, it was finally ready. If his presentation went well tonight, his mother country would soon hold a new place in the world - and so would he.

  The door clicked open behind him. There was no need to look. No one but his father would dare to walk unannounced into the office of the chairman and managing director. James’s secretary wouldn’t challenge him. No one challenged General First Class Lao Jianxing. At the age of eighty-three, standing tall and stiff in his PLA uniform, with a full head of iron-gray hair cut into a severe crew cut, he looked every inch the revered national hero that he was. James glanced over his shoulder.

  “Honorable Father.”

  “How can you drink that American swill?”

  That was the general, ever the hard-liner. His father had started his career fighting Japanese invaders as a boy and had become a young Communist leader in the civil war against Chiang Kai-shek, marching side by side with Mao. After the nationalists fled to Taiwan, he’d been sent to the Russian Military Academy and had since risen to the rank of four-star general in the People’s Liberation Army. After crushing the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square, he’d been appointed vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, the top military job in the country. Even after decades of seeing the chaos Communism had caused, he was still convinced that it was the salvation of China. Where were his eyes?

  James said, “Not everything in America is bad.”

  “You have too many Western ideas, Jintao.”

  He’d been James for so long in the West, his given name sounded strange, foreign.

  “Yes, but look where they’ve gotten us,” he said.

  “They’ve gotten our heads on the block. This thing had better work.”

  “It will, don’t worry.”

  “Someone had better worry.” General Lao was pacing. “Prime Minister Wen will be here any minute.”

  “It’s been tested and retested. The demonstration will go fine.”

  “Even if it does, this could still blow up in our faces. You bring your half-barbarian cousin over here against my wishes, and she threatens to expose the entire operation. To make matters worse, you have her thrown in prison! Fornicate all gods, Jintao, couldn’t you have found a better solution than that? The whole family’s in an uproar.”

  The family would have been in an even greater uproar if James had followed through on his first impulse, which was to arrange an accident for her. It embarrassed him that he’d been unable to give the order. A weakness like that - when the stakes were this high - could be fatal.

  “Calm down, Father. I’m very fond of Beth. She won’t be harmed, not in any material way. After the launch, we’ll arrange for her release.”

  “Your mother’s sister - Amelia, she calls herself in the West - has been telephoning me non-stop. Aiya, that woman won�
�t shut up.”

  “I know. She’s been calling me, too. I tell her we’re doing everything possible to obtain Beth’s release.”

  “And that barbarian politician she’s married to is high up in the American government - chairman of the senate Armed Services Committee. There’s no telling what he might do.”

  “Relax, there’s nothing he can do. They don’t even know where she’s being held. Cousin Beth is very secure and will remain so until after the launch. After that, she’ll be the least of their problems.”

  “What if she gets word out somehow?”

  “She’s locked up, Father. On an island. And the launch is just eleven days away. What could happen?”

  “If you live to be as old as I am, you’ll learn that anything can happen.”

  James tuned his father out. At precisely 10:00 p.m., he’d deliver a presentation that would be the culmination of six years of work, and he needed to stay focused. An entourage of VIPs was flying in from Beijing for the demonstration. His father had flown ahead to make sure everything was ready, and he’d been driving James crazy since he’d arrived. Squinting through the darkened glass of his thirty-second-floor office window, James could see the lights of Hong Kong International in the distance. The prime minister would normally travel in an official state aircraft, but the need for secrecy was such that James had dispatched a company jet.

  The plane had touched down twenty minutes ago. Bearing the ubiquitous CAT logo, a springing tiger superimposed over a rocket at lift-off, the jet wouldn’t attract undue attention. The Boeing 737 had been directed to a private hangar, where company vans with darkened windows were waiting to take the group to the test facility. As head of the state-owned enterprise, James should have been at the airport to greet such important guests, but because of the secrecy surrounding the prime minister’s visit, his father had insisted they be taken directly to the test site.

  James looked at his watch. 9:40. “We should be leaving now.”

  He picked up the note cards on his desk and ushered his father into the private elevator adjacent to his office. His father watched the lights change above the door, neither speaking. James could feel the old man’s tension. Fear was useful. It was what had enabled his father to survive all these years. The car glided down thirty-three floors, coming to rest below the surface of the earth. James held the door and motioned his father out into a dimly lit passageway, where an electric vehicle resembling a golf cart stood waiting.

  They rode in silence. After a ten-minute drive through the dark green hallway, the vehicle began to slow. Ahead, a set of pneumatic doors tripped open with a whoosh. The vehicle entered the basement of the test facility and came to a stop before an elevator. They rode up to the eighth floor, and James steered his father toward the observation room. Through the thick glass walls, he could see the group from Beijing approaching from the opposite direction. His timing was perfect: He would be there just ahead of his guests.

  Father and son entered the observation room from the rear and came to a stop in the center of the room, facing the double doors of the main entrance. Almost immediately, the doors opened and James’s guests stepped inside. He was glad to see that they, like himself, wore finely tailored Western-style business suits. The dreadful Mao suits had gone out with Deng, but there were still a few diehards in Beijing who wore them.

  James stood facing the man he recognized as Prime Minister Wen, a plump man with a severe haircut and dark-rimmed glasses. He’d never met him, but his photographs were everywhere. The ancient custom of bowing was forbidden under Communist rule. James approved - it was a ridiculous custom - still, some equally ancient instinct made him want to dip his head in the presence of the second highest-ranking man in the country.

  “Greetings, comrades,” James said in Mandarin. He normally spoke English when doing business in Hong Kong and Kowloon, but when he spoke Chinese in those cities, it was Cantonese. He’d been out of Beijing for so long his command of Mandarin, the official dialect of China, was rusty. “You honor us with your presence.”

  As the one who had organized the trip, General Lao made the introductions. “Prime Minister. May I introduce my son, Lieutenant Colonel Lao Jintao, chairman and managing director of China Aerospace and Technology.”

  The prime minister extended his hand. “It’s an honor to meet you.” He glanced at General Lao and smiled. “I’ve heard so much about you, Colonel.”

  “The honor is mine, Prime Minister.” The military rank was a reference to the commission James held in the People’s Liberation Army. With the passing of Deng, the PLA had dramatically increased its influence in China’s political decision-making process. James’s PLA rank was now an important part of his persona. He smiled. “I hope some of what you’ve heard has been good.”

  “The other distinguished comrades you know,” General Lao said. He nodded to a group of ten men, heads of various ministries and their aides. James had worked with three of them, Xu Junjiu, minister of the State Commission of Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense, Yang Deguan, minister of National Defense, and Zhou Yongzheng, minister of Science and Technology. The other ministers he’d met but didn’t know well.

  “Of course,” James said. He waved his hand toward the food arrayed along the side table. Covered dishes of steamed rice, shrimp, and sea bass had been whisked into place just moments before the honored guests had arrived. James had been especially careful to serve fish. The Chinese word for fish, yu, also meant “plenty,” or “surplus,” and it was traditionally served at celebratory banquets. “Your journey has been long. May I offer you some refreshments?”

  The senior members of the group approached the table. James and his father hung back at a respectful distance. He watched the others at the trough. You could tell a lot about the discipline of a man by watching him in the presence of food or women. The prime minister picked up a cup of green tea, then stood back while the ministers and their aides filled their plates. James’s father, who ate and drank only sparingly, looked at them with poorly concealed disapproval.

  James glanced at his watch. If the prime minister wasn’t going to eat, there was no need to delay the demonstration. When the others’ plates were filled, he said, “Please be seated, comrades.” He motioned toward the black leather swivel chairs mounted on posts and arranged in a curve in the front row of the stadium seating. Behind them were rows of ordinary red plastic seats, ascending to the rear of the stadium. The ministers would be seated comfortably, looking down on a stage forty feet wide with a curtain behind it.

  The guests mounted two steps and took their seats while James assumed his place behind the podium on the far right side of the stage. He retrieved the set of note cards from his inside coat pocket and set them before him, knowing he wouldn’t need them. His headache was gone, and his mind was focused. He looked out over his audience. He knew what the ministers called him behind his back. He was a gaogan zidi, a high-cadre child, one born into privilege. Like the sons of all high-ranking cadres - the name the Communists had adopted for bureaucrats - he was also a Red Prince. Most were dilettantes who’d spent years studying in the West and had amounted to nothing. James suspected he’d been tarred with the same brush. Tonight that would all change. He cleared his throat and started speaking in a clear voice.

  “The famed German military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, in his classic book On War, wrote that, ‘War is the realm of uncertainty; three-quarters of the factors on which action is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.’ Senior military officers in the United States have long talked of the need for a ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’ that would dissipate this so-called fog of war.

  “What the West envisions and is working toward includes a worldwide network of satellites that would allow military commanders to observe the enemy’s movements on the battlefield, a system that would enable them to ‘see’ the battlefield and deploy troops and resources exactly where needed. Obviously, such a system
in the hands of the West would not be in China’s best interest. In response to this threat, we began work some six years ago on a weapons system that would counteract such a strategy.”

  James took a sip of water. “More recently, our president’s New Year’s speech to the Central Military Commission, in which he demanded that the military ‘develop a surprise weapon to give China a distinct advantage over the United States,’ has caused us to redouble those efforts. You will recall that the president asked us to produce ‘a weapon that could be introduced without warning and would provide a decisive victory in a conflict with America.’ I’m happy to report that our scientists have achieved a breakthrough in technology, culminating in a weapons system that will meet this goal.”

  James paused. The “breakthrough” had largely come from an unintentional contribution by an American female scientist.

  “After six years of research and development, and a capital investment of approximately $5.6 billion U.S., we have developed a weapons system that will revolutionize warfare. Mere words are inadequate to describe the power of this weapons system, and so, with your permission, I will let the system speak for itself.”

  James pressed a button on the podium and stepped back with a sweep of his hand as the curtain began to part.

  “Comrades,” he said. “I humbly present ‘Raptor.’”

  The curtain drew back with a hum. The men leaned forward in their seats, peering through the wall of thick dark glass as the light level was raised inside the test building and lowered inside the observation room. Slowly a titanium satellite descended into view, where it hung beneath a gantry crane, supported by a black cable. From the top of the spacecraft, photovoltaic cells stretched out in obeisance to the sun while the lower half bristled with a dozen eyes, each glowing softly, pulsing intermittently.

  From the eighth floor, they were looking into the abyss of the test building, where hundreds of metal disks the size of dinner plates hung at various levels.