Ian Slater - Choke Point

“Our money or his, Bill?”

“Haven’t checked, sir. But the point is, if we don’t rein him in, State’s going to get a formal complaint from Beijing and we’ll be in deep shit, pardon my English. And we need all the help we can get from China in this war against terrorism.”

“You’re right, Bill. I’ll have a word with him.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll call him, tell him it’s official. He’s to come back immediately.”

Charlie’s exasperation at not being able to see Chang, the only Chinese official who’d really tried to help him after Mandy’s death, got worse with China Air’s delayed departure to Beijing.

Typically, there was only one attendant at the China Air counter to calm the throng of impatient travelers. “What’s the problem?” asked an Australian backpacker. “Where’s the bloody plane?”

The girl threw up her hands. “China Air all in a mess.”

“You’re right there, sweetheart,” said the Australian. “How ’bout some tucker — you know, food? We’ve been waitin’ here for bloody hours. You owe us a meal, I reckon.”

Other backpackers joined in, most of them trying to leave China as quickly as possible, before the war with Taiwan trapped them. Taiwanese missiles could hit all of China’s mainland coastal airports and Beijing. Riser stayed out of the counter squabble. The U.S. cultural attaché wasn’t hungry. The only reason he ate at all was to keep his strength up for his mission to track down Li Kuan and the thugs who’d murdered his daughter.

The crowd closing in on China Air’s lone clerk was so dense, a wave of claustrophobia passed over him.

“Mr. Riser?” The voice came from somewhere deep within the increasingly angry mob. Charles couldn’t see her but knew immediately it was Wu Ling, Chang’s mistress, who had also been Mandy’s closest friend in China. Then he spotted her. There was fear in her eyes, but he sensed it wasn’t from the threat of the mob getting out of control, a fear every “long-stay” foreigner in China had experienced at least once in China.

Suddenly, the crowd withdrew from the counter, like a wave sucked back into the sea, taking Wu Ling with it. A half-dozen or so airport staff had arrived behind the crowd and were carrying precariously stacked boxes of dinners. Several people were trampled underfoot and there was screaming and general mayhem. It took Wu Ling several minutes to get free. She told Charles she didn’t have much time — that the Gong An Bu were following her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. As her perfume washed over him, he could see Mandy. They had both worn — what was it? — Guilin Mist.

“The General,” she began, buffeted to and fro in an eddy of the mutton-and-rice-crazed crowd. “He has been arrested and put in—” Her English suddenly deserted her.

“Prison,” Charles said.

“Yes. In prison. It is very bad.”

“Why was he—”

“The army in Kazakhstan is being pushed back by the terrorists.”

“So he’s the scapegoat?” said Charles. “He’s being held responsible?”

“Yes. Responsible. I must go,” she said, and disappeared into the throng.

No doubt, Charles thought, the Gong An Bu had been following her.

On the flight to Beijing, the pilot announced that the PLA had won a great victory. The island of Kinmen had fallen to the combined might of the PLA defense forces, and the party was confident that total victory over the “breakaway province” of Taiwan would be attained within a matter of days. The plane erupted in applause and raucous self-congratulations.

“What about those bastard terrorists in Kazakhstan?” someone called out.

A man from first class entered coach class. He didn’t look like a high-level party functionary to Riser, but more like a Gong An Bu agent. There was a thuggish air about him despite the well-tailored Mao suit. He talked to the man who’d raised the question about the PLA’s offensive against the Muslim terrorists in Kazakhstan. The man, a short, pasty-faced individual, looked terrified, the man from first class bending over him.

Charles ordered a Tsing Tao beer. He needed to relax. Everything was getting too hyper. Confusing. Should the U.S. be backing the PLA offensive in Kazakhstan if China had started a war against Taiwan? Whatever the situation, surely the U.S., in its own interests, if not those of the Taiwanese, couldn’t let the island nation be governed by the Communists. It was America’s airstrip in East Asia. The Cold War, Charlie mused, for all its anxiety, was at least clearer, or seemed so. But sipping his beer, he concluded that probably in every war, including this one, the present always seemed confusing, as confusing as the jigsaw puzzle of World War I, which, with benefit of hindsight, seemed remarkably easy to understand. In fact, as any historian knew, it had been a puzzling complex of alliances, backroom deals, and parties who were friends one month and enemies the next— plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose .

He remembered his grandfather, one of the very few World War II veterans still alive, telling him about the utter confusion during that war when it came to who was on whose side. Italy was against us, then with us. The Romanians switched back and forth, some Ukrainians fought with the Nazis, and France was Britain’s great ally, but not Vichy France. Churchill ordered the British navy to sink the great French fleet in North Africa, killing French sailors, allies only weeks before, to ensure that the Nazis could not use the French fleet once France had fallen. Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Far East, accepted the Japanese surrender in 1945, only to turn around and rearm the Japanese, using them as an ad hoc police force throughout Burma and Southeast Asia to prevent rioting mobs, the very people Mountbatten had been fighting for a few weeks earlier.

Great or small, Charlie decided, all war was byzantine, and all he cared about was living to see Li Kuan, like Saddam Hussein, hunted down and killed. That wasn’t confusing.

“I need some fresh air,” announced Aussie. “Anyone else?”

“I’ll come,” said David.

Sal and Choir, ignoring scatological insults from Aussie about Welsh wankers and Brooklyn Dodgers being lazy, elected to catch some sleep in the motel room Freeman had booked for them down the hall.

Outside, the streets were all but deserted, only patrol cars with slit wartime headlights moving slowly to enforce the curfew. A few dark shapes were visible in the weak penumbra of police headlights as people scuttled here and there, briefly silhouetted as they quickly slipped in and out of stores for emergency supplies. The Coast Guard — Canadian as well as American — were assuring the population via radio and TV that there was no danger of leaking radiation from the sunken vessels — that all the reactors on nuclear-powered U.S. warships were built to such rigorous standards that “there is little possibility of a split in the reactor.”

A motorcade passed by Aussie and David, including a Navy staff car bearing Margaret Jensen on a mission of mercy to Woodgate Hospital. Her intention was to show fearlessness in the face of the radioactivity scare and visit as many of the victims as she could. First she wanted to see Alicia Mayne and the other survivors of Utah .

Also, concerned about the welfare of the survivors of the sinkings, the commander of Fort Lewis had called Freeman, telling him it would be a good idea to have Medal of Honor winner Brentwood make himself useful at the hospital. “Be a damned good morale lift for our men and women. And it’d take him out of himself.”

“Good idea,” agreed Freeman, thinking, You wily polecat —can’t let the Navy grab Marte Price’s attention. Army Medal of Honor winner beats an admiral’s wife any day of the week, and the Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon would like what Fort Lewis did. “I’ll send him up, General,” said Freeman.