by Laer Carroll
The woman's face and body may have reflected the shock she must be feeling. Only a being as perceptive as Jane could have detected it, however. Now the woman betrayed a slight smile.
"Put your gun away, Companion. We are clearly at a disadvantage here. Captain Kuznetsov, your dossier said you were an athlete and a soldier. It said nothing about you being accomplished in the gentle arts."
Jane looked calmly at her and said nothing. She might have been waiting for a Flyt ride or a taxi.
"The Glorious and One True People's Republic of China extends a gracious invitation to visit. We promise friendly discussions of how the best interests of our two countries could be served."
"I accept," said Jane in Chinese. "But first I need to say something to this garbage."
She went to the three downed men and retrieved her purse and remote with its attached keys. She also took a pistol from each of the three men. She tucked two of them into her waist band. The third she held by the barrel and hanging down by her side. She had Robot dissolve many invisibly tiny holes in the body of each gun.
She waited silently near the three men as they got themselves together. Standing, each of them coddled some part of their bodies. Finally, when they turned their attention to her, she spoke.
"I left you alive only to deliver a message to everyone in your business. NEVER threaten my family or friends. I will kill anyone who disregards this warning."
Jane lifted the gun before her chest and took hold of the butt. This made a sort of upside-down V of the weapon. With one abrupt jerk of her hands outward and upward she broke the gun into halves with a loud crack.
She dropped the two pieces in front of Whitey to her right. They clanged then clanked to a stop just before his feet. He squeaked and jumped back two feet.
She shifted her gaze to the face of the middle of the three, the driver and leader of the small gang. Taking a second gun from her waist band she repeated the breaking of the weapon. The man stepped back from her as she dropped the pieces at his feet. His face turned pale.
She did the same with the third pistol and spoke to the three.
"I could have done the same and worse to you, just with my bare hands. Those are the least of my weapons. I could burn you alive where you stand with a wave of my hand. Now get out of here and pass the word. Mess with me and you mess with a dragon. For real, not out of some movie."
The men hurried to their SUV and drove quickly away.
Jane watched them for several long moments, then turned back to the two Chinese.
The woman looked at Jane very closely and was silent for a moment.
"An interesting claim, Captain, to be a dragon" she said in English. "Shall we go aboard?"
Jane said in Chinese, "Of course. I look forward to visiting a country and a people I've admired for many years."
The being who had said she was a dragon walked to the fold-down stairs into the plane. The two Chinese followed her. Soon its engines whined up toward their higher power settings and the craft began to move. It turned toward the airport runways and shortly was in the sky, heading westward out over the Pacific.
<>
On entering the plane Jane had briefly merged with Robot and the plane to ensure it was in good working order. A military aircraft made to seem a civilian small business jet, it was.
She was silent until the plane had reached cruising altitude and speed. Then she turned to the woman seated beside her in the seat across the aisle.
"Your name?"
"Zhang Jing. I am no one important, only a messenger dispatched to invite you to join us in talks of mutual interest."
"'Spreading Quiet,'" Jane said in English, then returned to Chinese. "An interesting name. It could mean one who brings tranquility. Or if one had a sinister cast of mind, it could also refer to an assassin who silences others. A working name, of course.
"And as for the fiction that you are merely a messenger, I'll let that stand in public. But in reality my guess is that you are a colonel in the People's Army attached to the Glorious Republis's External Affairs Intelligence Agency. Spare me the false humility. Someone who's in her thirties and has reached that rank is a formidable person, especially a woman."
The woman laughed a contralto sound rather than the usual falsely high-pitched voice most ethnic Chinese women adopted.
"What a delicious imagination you have. You can have no such knowledge. I am quite entertained."
"You are no doubt familiar with the fictitious Great Detective Sherlock Holmes. I am a real-life example of such a being. I could tell you a dozen more deducted facts about you and, if I explained the reasoning, you would be amazed to find you understood my thoughts. But that would bore me."
The woman made a dismissive gesture.
"You call yourself a dragon. An interesting claim."
"It expresses an essential truth about me. If you knew the full extent you would cringe in fear."
She paused. Her gaze might have been looking at something very far away.
"No, not you, quiet woman. You might pretend such an emotion to fool your enemies. But in reality you would be too busy deciding how to destroy them to feel fear."
The two women sat in silence for a time, looking at each other. The Chinese agent was turning over in her mind what had been said. The events so far disturbed her. This assignment had looked simple but it had developed into something which might jeopardize her career. And possibly cause her execution.
Jane's expression was perfectly calm, her body totally relaxed in her luxurious seat. She betrayed not the slightest hint of an emotion even to a woman who had made an intensive study of judging her opponents' signals so as to control or destroy them.
The woman who was said by some to be the smartest person on the planet might be thinking wise thoughts or nothing. That appearance hid the fact that Robot had tapped into the jet's communication system and was ranging far ahead of the aircraft. It was deep into the electronic brains of the country ahead, vacuuming up information about their destination and the organization which thought it had captured a great asset to be exploited.
The agent ventured a comment about a new movie which was currently very popular in China, being introduced there ahead of premiering in the US.
Jane's face and body came alive. To the agent it almost seemed as if she returned from far places.
"My boyfriend admires the director of that film!"
Shortly the two women's idle chatting was interrupted by a young Chinese wearing a flight suit.
He apologized for the interruption and spoke to Jane in English.
"Honorable guest, would you join the captain in the cockpit?"
"Yes, of course," Jane replied in Chinese. "If our companions will excuse us?"
The agent gave a gracious wave of her hand. Jane rose and followed the aircraft's copilot forward.
The agent's subordinate shifted to a seat closer to his boss. He spoke in a low voice even though Jane was clearly unable to hear him.
Or so he thought. Jane had placed invisible patches of super-advanced electronics on everything she'd touched inside the aircraft. Robot was using a trillionth of its awareness listening to and looking at everything which was happening inside the passenger compartment.
The young man said, "I've faced death before and been taught to handle it. But when she spoke to me back there I was absolutely certain my end was seconds away."
"She said you would 'join them' not that you would die. You didn't see the men were still alive?"
"No. It happened so fast. I just saw three men fall. Then she was looking directly at me. I was focused on her, not them. I didn't see a weapon other than hands and feet but I remembered the dossier said she killed seven Venezuelans with a knife."
He looked toward the cockpit a couple dozen feet forward. She followed his gaze. So far there was no suggestion that their captive/guest was returning.
"We'll have to review what our webcam buttons recorded. When we are back home. Not here.
I don't want to chance her learning we have the devices on us."
Robot alerted Jane to the existence of the recordings. She decided to leave them unaltered.
"What do you make of her claim to be 'a dragon'?"
"You are aware that her dossier says our pilots call her The Dragon? The same way Americans call their great pilots eagles. And she has no peer anywhere. Hence, THE Dragon.
"Perhaps she's heard this. She does speak our language very well and seems to admire us. And surely she is embedded in the cultural matrix of pilots everywhere. But her words suggest another meaning. She said 'A dragon.' This suggests a more generic meaning. She flies, is wise or at least intelligent, and hoards knowledge as a dragon hoards treasure.
"One other possibility disturbs me. She said she could burn the men alive with the wave of a hand. And she broke those guns in two with what seemed to be her bare hands. Clearly she is abnormally strong. But I find it hard to believe that she's strong enough to break those guns with human muscles."
"Maybe she's a terminator like in those movies." He said this with a smile, but his boss thought he might be half serious.
"She's not a robot from the future. Or anywhere else. The possibility I mentioned is that she possesses other weapons than her very biological body. Ones we perhaps can't even imagine."
He glanced toward the cockpit. He smiled, a small, wry smile, but a smile nevertheless. His boss was satisfied. She'd helped him re-gather his composure.
That was good. He was one of her more promising protégés. Years from now when she became the head of the intelligence agency he might even be her main assistant, her "executive officer." If she didn't have to kill him for disloyalty first.
"Well, my colonel, I hope you don't order me to shake her down for weapons. I don't think that would go over well."
She gave him a smile in return and took up her slate/computer to re-read the dossier of Jane Kuznetsov with a new appreciation of the strange being they'd been ordered to bring to her bosses. After a pause, her subordinate did the same.
<>
At about 7:00 pm and a half hour into the trip when Jane took the copilot's seat in the cockpit they'd already traveled a thousand miles out over the Pacific. Looking out the window they could see the sun already higher in the sky. At 50,000 feet or almost ten miles the ocean looked like dark blue glass covered with a few wispy white clouds. The sky was blue ahead of them but a darker blue above them.
After the first few minutes of introductions talk turned toward the practicalities of flying shared by all pilots. Those segued into quirky incidents they'd experienced, then into more elaborate stories. Of those the fortyish captain had a goodly number, most of them true and few of them embellished beyond common courtesy. Even the young copilot had a few such stories. All told with much flying of hands to demonstrate important points.
Later the talk turned more toward personal histories. In the face of the friendly interest of The Dragon, the greatest pilot who ever flew in the eyes of some, they opened up somewhat more than their bosses would have liked if they could have heard the men. The elder pilot took to calling Jane "Niece" and the younger to calling her "Aunt." She adopted the first as "Uncle" and the second as "Cousin."
Outside the sun neared setting behind them in the east. Then night enveloped the aircraft. Far below in the vast ocean a few specks of light showed that even in that emptiness humans ventured.
At two and a half hours into the trip the senior agent declared that it was dinner time. The junior agent then became cook and waiter. He was assisted by the junior pilot.
The meal moved up to the seats immediately behind the cockpit and the doors to that room were opened wide, something never done on true civilian aircraft. But on military craft the doors were used only for quiet in the cockpit. The meal took on almost a festive air.
The remaining two or so hours Jane spent with the two agents. The ostensible purpose of the chatting was the education of Jane in the true nature of the Glorious and One True People's Republic of China. Jane listened with pleasing attention to everything, occasionally asking questions which often elicited personal details about the lives of the two agents.
The senior agent realized that Jane's questions were having the possibly unintended but nevertheless real effect of making the agents like her. Despite this, the woman softened toward Jane. If she had to kill the young woman she would do so but with regret.
The sun rose again and day rushed to meet them. Later off to the right Jane, in tenuous psychic contact with Robot and the plane, saw with its senses and those of the aircraft the islands of Japan.
Soon they were in the East China Sea. The aircraft veered more southerly from their more western direction to skirt Taiwan on their right. Still stubbornly independent, the nation had formidable aerial defenses and the pilot wanted to only lightly brush up against them. This had the unfortunate effect of also brushing up against the defenses of the Philippines to their left.
The plane returned to its mostly westerly path. Jane began to glance out the window to her right, hoping to see with her eyes what she already saw with her dual esoteric senses, those of Robot and the plane. But it was toward her left that the senior agent gestured when she announced their approach to Hong Kong.
"Syōng Gǒng," she said.
Jane apologized and hurriedly got up to shift her seat to the one in front of the agent. She eagerly looked out the window.
They were passing several miles to the north of the fabled Island Kingdom. Still, they were at 20,000 feet, nearly four miles, and Jane could see the sprawling city just under the edge of the horizon. Most of the buildings looked like tiny clusters of grey pencils set on end, was her first visual impression.
Numerous radio waves splashed off the plane's skin as several radars continued to paint it. A tenuous version of JANE had already long ago tracked them back to their sources and readied HER dissolution weapon to destroy any oncoming missiles. The nanosecond reflexes of Robot would make those approaching missiles seem almost to stand still.
Then the coast of China swam toward and under the plane. Jane said the country's name in an almost reverential breath.
"Zhōng-guó!"
The senior agent felt an uncharacteristic emotion: love of her country. The warmth in her chest seemed to spread throughout her body. And reach outside it to enfold this strange child/woman/demon in the seat in front of her.
Caution cooled her. Was this...dragon...enchanting her? Was she a monster for real, a wise lethal magical being?
That same coolness also rescued her from fantasy. Of course not. She WAS a formidable foe of the agent's people. To be treated with the cautious fear and reluctant respect she deserved.
<>
The plane had slowed to well below the speed of sound as it approached land. It still took only a few minutes to go the last 80 miles or so to the giant Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport. Then there were the usual delays with traffic control and taxiing to a stop. So it was 4:30ish in the afternoon when Jane first set foot onto the concrete of the Chinese airport.
Zhang Jing followed her down the ladder and stopped beside Jane where she was looking around. A slight drizzle wet Jane's face and body but she ignored it. A vast lightness filled her chest and seemed to lift her up.
"I'm here! Really here!" She sang the words in Chinese and twirled in a circle, almost knocking an arm into her companion. The woman was looking at her with amusement from underneath a pink umbrella with faint blue figures over its surface. She was holding out toward Jane a compact twice-folded umbrella.
"If you weren't in such a hurry you wouldn't be wet right now."
"I don't care!"
"Well, I care. It would reflect badly on me if you got pneumonia and died."
Jane laughed, took the umbrella, flicked its open button, and held it up to block the drizzle. Then she hurried around to the front of the plane and gazed up at the window. She could just see the face of the captain looking down at her with a gri
n on his face.
Jane dropped the umbrella onto its top and jumped up and down and threw wild two-handed air kisses toward him. She THOUGHT she also saw the top of the head of the copilot peering over the captain's shoulders.
She caught up her umbrella again and hurried back to her captor/companion. That woman turned and led the way a hundred feet or so to a shed with large windows looking out onto the concrete of the enormous airport with its dozens of aircraft visible in the air and on the ground.
Waiting for them in the completely emptied out room which must normally contain a busy crowd were four soldiers in uniform-like business suits carrying black automatic weapons. Leading them was an older man in a sharply tailored grey Western suit with a red-and-blue striped tie.
"General, may I present Captain Jane Kuznetsov? She came here completely of her own volition. A point she made clear to the three thugs who mistakenly thought they had kidnapped her. It took her less than three seconds to send them to the ground at my feet. Then she took their guns and broke them apart into two pieces with her bare hands."
The general betrayed no skepticism at this extraordinary story. He inclined his upper body in a slight bow and extended a hand to shake. Jane took it. It was warm and strong. They shook as he spoke.
"Welcome to the Glorious People's Republic of China, honored Captain. If you will, let us take you to your quarters. For the time being we've reserved a suite for you in a nearby hotel. You must be tired after such a long journey."
"Thank you. Not so much, though it is near midnight back home. I'll have to stay up a few hours to get my sleep schedule in step with local time."
The general gestured and Jane obeyed the signal to walk beside him into a hall and from there to an airport garage. Zhang Jing and her assistant followed them with the four soldiers trailing behind.
The garage contained several busy mechanics and drivers who paid no attention to the sleek black limousine in their midst or the troop of strangers who approached it. The general handed Jane into the limo and followed her in. Zhang and her assistant entered and took the backward-facing seat. The four soldiers vanished.