Even so, Sorenson had found that this alien place was not as evil as his overlords had claimed. There was certain gentleness to the land, a certain sense of opportunity that he had never experienced at home. Home — that notion seemed more foreign each day that Sorenson lived his American existence. Sorenson had sensed changes in his attitude about this place and the effect those changes had on his every thought.
Sorenson had become increasingly concerned about these changes. He worried how they affected his mission and the life he had molded for himself in this strange world. Sorenson even had harbored a hope that the lessening of turmoil might give him an opportunity to fade into the fabric of American society. These people were not the monsters that he had grown up hating. So far, his duty to his own people had been a contest of will, strength, and intellect with the enemy — not violence. Was this death necessary?
Sorenson walked as if in a slow motion trance. He had to get to the gas can. He had to get it for Walsh, his group leader. He had to get the hell out of here.
Composing himself, Sorenson found the gasoline can and returned to the kitchen. By now twilight had overcome the scene and the kitchen was cast in dark shadows.
Walsh stood in the doorway, calmly smoking a cigarette, his pale blue eyes surveying the results of his handiwork. The corpse lay prone on the kitchen floor, having been cut free by Walsh. A pool of dark red blood continued to spread from his shattered skull.
Whatever secrets you may have carried, Sorenson thought, we will never know them now.
Walsh, upon hearing Sorenson re-enter the kitchen, abruptly turned to face him.
“Let’s get moving. For all we know, Winslow’s fellow gangsters may be searching for him. Let’s get this house burning, right now.”
Without comment, Sorenson mechanically splashed gasoline around the room.
Meanwhile, Walsh methodically wiped the revolver with a cotton handkerchief to smear any fingerprints or other identifying marks. A cigarette dangled from his mouth. Walsh then tucked the revolver under his belt. He would get rid of it later.
After he finished his task, Sorenson quickly walked out of the farmhouse.
Walsh lingered for another moment, making one last inspection of the room. He casually flicked his lighted cigarette into the kitchen as he walked out of the farmhouse toward the Jeep Grand Wagoner parked in the drive.
Sorenson, already in the driver’s seat, had the car started. After taking one last look, Walsh sat down, put on his shoulder belt, reached into his shirt pocket for the cigarette pack, took a cigarette out and lit it. Sorenson drove rapidly down the farm road. Through the rearview mirror, he watched the old, abandoned farmhouse explode in a fireball. Walsh sat calmly in the passenger’s seat, drawing on his cigarette. Neither man spoke.
About ten miles northeast of Mankato, they encountered volunteer fire trucks racing southward toward Mankato. This event provoked no comment. About twenty miles out of Mankato, Walsh quietly asked Sorenson to stop the Jeep. The empty field was marked by a sign that declared: “State of Minnesota — Department of Natural Resources — Protected Native Prairie Reserve.”
Walsh walked slowly across the native prairie to the river bluff amid the evening din of insect songs. He stood there for some time, quietly looking at the Minnesota River, which by now had turned from a sleepy creek to a modest river. Walsh took the revolver out carefully with his handkerchief and tossed it into the dark, muddy waters of the Minnesota. He calmly returned to the Jeep.
Walsh announced he would drive and Sorenson shifted over to the passenger seat. For the remainder of their trip from Mankato the two were quiet. Sorenson mostly looked out the passenger window into the night and the occasional passing light of a distant farmhouse.
Finally, the two reached the center of Minneapolis, the City of Lakes. Stopping at the corner of Hennepin Avenue and Lake Street, Sorenson disembarked without comment and faded into the shadows. Walsh turned right on to Hennepin Avenue and headed home.
1993: Call to Duty
Fifty stories above the streets of New York, the dark, wood-paneled office projected the prestige and power of being a managing director of Franklin Smedley & Associates. Smedleys, as the firm was known on the Street, was one of the leading investment banks in the world. Beside the large mahogany desk and leather chair, the office had a comfortable leather sofa and armchair, mahogany coffee table, dark Chippendale side chairs, and expensive oriental lamps. The dark red, hand-tied Oriental rug on his floor had been handpicked on a trip to Istanbul. An oil painting of a delicate, blossoming dogwood branch stretched out across a brilliant blue sky sat on the wall directly across from his desk.
The dark mahogany bookcase and window ledges were crowded with Lucite, glass, and brass flotsam and jetsam: silent memorabilia of a long and successful investment-banking career. Though of nominal value, the odds and ends of plastic, wood, brass, and crystal represented the aspirations of many would-be fortunes.
The office was quiet, but for the soft hum of the ventilating system and the dull background noise of the city in perpetual motion countless stories below, the honking of a frazzled motorist or the loud noise of a muffler-less diesel truck roaring up the busy streets.
Even the Quotron computer on Mike’s brilliantly polished mahogany credenza made no sound as it chronicled the rise and fall of million-dollar fortunes on its green-lettered screen.
The banker was dressed in a dark blue cotton shirt with white stripes, starched white collar, and white French cuffs anchored by simple gold links, bright red paisley braces holding up custom tailored gray pinstriped suit pants, and a blue and red-patterned tie. He wore a gold school ring with a garnet stone from Mr. Jefferson’s School for Boys on his right ring finger.
The arduous climb to the top had its price, which the banker had paid, though it was not readily evident in his outward appearance, or even to him. He enjoyed his office, his position, and his attainments. He lived for the power and prestige that these things brought to him.
This morning, however, there had been a strange feeling, a gnawing sensation; a premonition that something was not right, that something had been left undone. He had shrugged off the feeling as simply lack of sleep.
The perennial SystemGraphon deal was in trouble, again, and he had endured too many late night negotiating sessions, trying to put it back on track. The SystemGraphon, a “career deal,” seemed never to go away; it just wouldn’t close.
Aloysius Xavier Kang Sheng Liu, his thinning gray hair combed back over his head, was in charge of Project Finance. Aloysius. He had been given that cumbersome moniker by his diplomat father upon their arrival in the United States in 1950. Someone called him “Mike” on his first day in grade school and that nickname had stuck throughout the years.
His rise at Smedleys had been spectacular, marred only by the often-unquiet jealousy of Ivy Leaguers who could not understand how an outsider could attain such position. To them an “outsider” was anyone who could not claim to have grown up rich in Connecticut or Western New Jersey. To have been born into the right circles and to have received the proper education at Exeter or Choate, finished off with a sojourn at Harvard or Yale or, in the exceptional charity case, Wharton — in short: white and rich. Certainly, an outsider could never achieve high stature at Smedleys; that was only reserved for them. As one of a bare handful of Chinese-American investment bankers on Wall Street, Mike was not considered one of the “chosen” by his colleagues at Smedleys.