A gurgling sound came from the American captain. He had walked as far as he could, hands bound, with a rifle muzzle pressed into the soft underside of his jaw. The cane smacked again with startling force. Wu jumped.
“You don’t have to be here for this,” Sheng commented in a low tone meant to be private.
“General,” Wu replied without looking at Sheng, “I trust that you do not intend to harm this prisoner.”
“President Baker’s daughter?” Colonel Li replied exultantly. “No. We won’t harm her.”
Li pulled his automatic from its holster. With the weapon pointed toward the ceiling, he strode up to the American captain and the quaking female private.
Stephanie Roberts’s bare arms — tied tightly behind the chair — were taut. Tensed. Rigid. Her face and wide-eyed gaze were fixed on her comrades and on Colonel Li. The captain holding the wet cane awaited Li’s cue, then struck Stephanie’s back with a loud smack.
“Stop it!” gurgled the American army captain through a mangled jaw and bloated, black lips. Li put his pistol to the man’s head. Wu expected a fatal shot right then and there, and opened his mouth to call Li’s name, but with Li’s aim held steady on the man’s forehead Li turned to Stephanie Roberts and said, in English, “Perhaps you’ll reconsider.”
“Don’t do it!” the slurring army captain shouted.
“No! — No!-No!” came Stephie’s rapid-fire pleas. They saved the American captain’s life, Wu knew. The man was obviously too valuable alive.
But the female private became hysterical. She screamed and sobbed and fought the restraints while squealing like a wounded, trapped animal.
A shot rang out. It caught the Chinese soldiers holding the woman’s restraints off guard. It took them a moment to realize that they were covered in gore from the shot to the woman’s head. They let her slumped body collapse to the concrete floor. On Sheng’s nod, they dragged her from the room. Both Stephanie Roberts and the American captain stared at the blood trail. The girl had been about Wu’s age, he guessed.
Wu turned to Sheng, but the old general wouldn’t look Wu in the eye.
Li returned the pistol to the American captain’s head. The guards holding the man shied away from the impending splatter. With his jaw set and his fists clenched, Wu glared at Li, but Wu could do nothing more. It wasn’t time. Those were his orders. But this only served to make it easier for Wu. To rid him of paralyzing conflicts.
“I’ll read it! I’ll read it!” Stephanie screamed through spasms of tears.
“Don’t! No don’t!” the American captain shouted.
But it doesn’t matter! Wu wanted to say to them both. Read it. Don’t read it. It’s not in the least bit important!
Stephanie’s hands were unbound, and she slipped them into her army blouse. A female makeup technician tried to fix Stephanie’s face, but Stephanie snarled as if she would bite the woman’s hand. The technician recoiled, then retreated, and Wu stifled a smile. Stephanie sat there, defiant, staring unblinking into bright lights. Her hair was pinned into clumps of strays and tangles. Her face was red and wind burned and shining. Another effort to apply makeup met with a shout of, “Leave me alone!” that brought rifle muzzles hard to Stephanie’s ribs. But they did leave her alone.
She read woodenly, without emotion or inflection in her voice.
“My name is Stephanie Roberts. I am a second lieutenant in the United States Army. My father is president of the United States, and I was captured while fighting your army.” She licked her lips and swallowed before continuing in a voice that cracked and broke repeatedly. “I have personally witnessed atrocities by American troops against defenseless Chinese prisoners. My government has gassed and shot hundreds of thousands of Chinese POWs in violation of the Geneva accords. Illegal chemical and biological weapons have been deployed repeatedly and illegally on order of… of… of my father, the president. I… I regret this horrible sin against humanity and against China, and I deplore all such criminal acts by my government. I beg the Chinese peoples’ forgiveness,” she finished, speaking rapidly, “for the horrible loss of life by so many honorable Chinese soldiers.”
There. It was done. The army television producer smiled and nodded at Li. Stephie bent over and resumed her sobbing. Sheng’s aide twirled his finger in the air to keep the camera rolling. The Chinese public would be treated to a dramatic departure from Stephanie Roberts’s previous stiff manner. The moment the lights went out, she covered her face with her hands, but remained doubled over. Her hands were pried from her face and again bound behind her. Her face, however, remained planted between her knees. Her back heaved repeatedly in anguished but silent cries.
The only thing that drew her attention was the American captain. She watched him being taken away, then again buried her face. The camera, TelePrompTer and lights were removed.
Wu glared at Sheng. “You don’t seriously expect,” he said icily, “that confession to be of any value whatsoever with the American people.”
“Its intended audience is not the American people,” a smiling Li replied on behalf of his boss.
Wu ignored him and asked Sheng, “Is that how you’re going to explain all the casualty notices that we’ve been holding? By claiming that they were captured and then massacred by the Americans?”
General Sheng wouldn’t return Wu’s iron stare. He and Li departed, leaving Wu with the guards and with Stephanie. “Out!” Wu ordered in Chinese. “All of you! Out! At once!” His tone drew a glance from Stephanie. The guards filed past Wu for the door, which was quickly closed behind them.
Wu was now alone with Stephanie.
She stared up at him. At his half-Caucasian features. They had always been apparent to Chinese on first sight. Wu hadn’t thought that they would be so obvious to foreigners.
Wu drew his combat knife. Her eyes went straight to the serrated black blade. He came toward her, and she averted her gaze but said nothing.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Wu assured her in English, but she obviously remained unconvinced. He rounded the chair, and she turned away from him as if to avoid watching her horrible end. She winced in agony as he cut the plastic cuffs that cut into her wrists. She brought her hands to her chin and her elbows to her sides but remained doubled over and resumed crying.
On the floor beside the chair lay a diamond-studded cross at the end of a broken silver necklace. Wu stooped, picked it up, and held it out to her. She didn’t notice, so Wu pried open one of her clenched fists and lay the necklace and cross in her hand.
Her head rose. Her face was newly soaked. Wu reached into the cargo pocket of his trousers for a handkerchief, but he felt something else. He handed the cheap plastic ring that he’d found in the Savannah River bunker to her.
She took it, looking back and forth between it and Wu. With brow knit and face contorted in confusion, she asked, “Who are you?”
“A friend,” he said.
Stephanie Roberts stared straight into Wu’s eyes for what seemed like forever, then said, “Fuck you,” and lowered her face.
Wu hovered there. This wasn’t the way their meeting was supposed to go. But this was the way it was, Wu resolved. He leaned close to Stephie and said, “I’m sorry.” He kissed the part in her hair and left.
Han Zhemin sat in his cold cell living on tiny bits and pieces of intelligence. He had no windows, so he had waited for, but not felt, the nuclear rumble. He had listened for the excited chatter of the guards that had not come. Both should’ve happened by now. According to the prime minister, the army’s plan was to swiftly exploit the breakout after sweeping over Washington. Unlike the large distances that separated objectives in the American South, Midwest, and West, the dominos were close together in the compact Northeast. If all had gone as per the plan — if the army had overrun the capital by midnight — Philadelphia would’ve been under attack by dawn.