He nodded once, but his eyes left hers.
“If your family is so rich and powerful,” she asked, “why are you fighting?”
Wu said. “That’s a very strange question coming from you.”
“But things are different,” Stephie replied, “in my country.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, suddenly keenly interested.
“Well, in America, there’s politics. My father can’t, you know, pull strings to get me out of the draft.”
“So,” Wu summarized, “you are saying that how things appear to the masses is important. The fact that they see you — the president’s daughter — at the front has meaning. Political importance.” Now it was Stephie’s turn to nod. “Have you ever considered,” Wu asked, “going into politics yourself?”
Stephie snorted. “Me? God no!”
Wu stared down at the floor, seeming lost in thought, while Stephie scrutinized him. She studied the strange new entrant into her family circle until he raised his gaze to meet hers. “Things are not so different,” he said, “in my country. At least when it comes to politics.”
She shook her head and rushed to explain. “I’m not saying that the only reason that I fought was because of politics! I fought because, because I love my country! Because fighting for it is right! Because I couldn’t live with myself if everyone else…!”
Before she could finish, Wu was nodding. “Me too,” he said softly.
The road leading down to the bridge was bumpy. It had been pitted with craters and refilled with soft earth that was already deeply rutted. The limousine squeezed past truck after truck returning empty up the hill from the riverbank.
The last few hundred of the ten thousand American POWs waited impatiently to join the single file that extended from the Chinese side of the river to the American. The chain of men — many wounded and leaning on comrades — carefully skirted the large holes in the bridge that looked melted straight through the pavement. In places the bridge tilted precariously. But the antlike procession crossed the perilous span heedless of the danger that lay ahead. The American soon-to-be-former prisoners of war knew too well the dangers that lay behind.
Stephanie, John, and Wu emerged from the limousine into a blaze of camera lights so bright that Stephie had to shield her eyes. From behind — in a whisper — a Chinese military officer in dress uniform politely asked her to lower her arm. When she did, the throng of cameras pressed close, leaving only a tight corridor that led to a raised wooden platform.
Wu and Stephie each took one of John’s arms and helped him ascend the few steps onto the open-air stage. There they joined waiting Chinese dignitaries above the sea of journalists.
The Chinese general and the colonel who had murdered Becky smiled at their approach, but a well groomed man in a dark civilian business suit stepped forward. Cameras flashed as he grinned and clapped his hand on an unsmiling Wu’s shoulder. Stephie saw the Chinese civilian wink. Wu did not reciprocate.
That’s his father, Stephie realized. The handsome man turned his attention to Stephie, ignoring John. “Ms. Roberts,” he said, “I am Han Zhemin.” He reached out and deftly grabbed Stephie’s hand for a shake. But when he raised it to his lips for a kiss, she snatched her hand out of his.
There was laughter from the gathering on the stage and from the larger crowd around it. A rapid-fire series of flashes meant to record the kiss had instead recorded her insult. Han’s smile faded briefly before it lit anew with disingenuous humor that he feigned to share with the throng. Stephie watched him boldly present his amusement at her rejection to the gathered corps of Chinese reporters.
His son — Lieutenant Wu — watched also. He was not in the least amused. In fact, he seemed nervous. Fidgety.
Ringing the podium were dozens — perhaps hundreds — of cameras. Large round lenses of high-def TV cameras held by civilian and military film crews. Digital still cameras with long lenses trained on them by Chinese photographers in uniform and in blue jeans. And dozens of small cameras and camcorders held not by professionals, but by individual soldiers, mostly officers. All expectantly recorded the historic moment by focusing on the star attraction: the daughter of the president of the United States.
The last in the long line of American prisoners was now on the bridge. Stephie imagined their joy at returning home, but it was an emotion that she couldn’t share. For somewhere at the far end of the bombed-out bridge was her father, who was about to make the ultimate sacrifice. Stephie was sickened by the thought and almost lost her balance.
Wu’s hand shot out to grab her arm, a fact recorded by a hundred flashing cameras.
The sun glinted off the Potomac, whose gray water flowed into a finger of the Chesapeake a few miles to the east. Hart could see that the carpenters had built not gallows, but a raised wooden stage surrounded by platforms now filled with cameras and lights. All lay on the shoulder of the road at the foot of the Highway 301 bridge five hundred meters from Hart’s vantage. He risked raising his head a few inches above the ground. The brown plastic leaves that hung from the mesh covering his helmet, which matched the fall foliage that littered the Virginia woods, tickled his cheeks and jaw.
From his position on the forward slope of a hill facing the bridge, platform, and river, a swale descended to his left toward a dry stream that ran through a saddle between the hills. Both would afford him his only hope of survival. His eyes traced the swale and then the bed until it disappeared into a concrete pipe running under the tracks of a rail line.
The only problem was that he couldn’t see where the pipe came out.
Bill’s limousine door opened, and he jumped with a start. But it wasn’t quite time yet. Outside, Baker caught a glimpse of the river and bridge beside which they were parked. Richard Fielding got in and closed the door behind him.
“Are you about ready, Mr. President?” Fielding asked. The question left Bill petrified, but he nodded. The doctor, who had given Bill a final check-up, had advised him to eat well. They had made him a sumptuous lunch before leaving the White House. Bill and Clarissa had sat silently across the dining room table. Neither had touched their meals.
Bill hadn’t managed to choke any food past the lump in his throat. It was probably a good thing, he thought, as his unsettled stomach now churned. As if reading his mind, Director Fielding produced a pill that Bill assumed was an antacid or a sedative. The small capsule lay in his dry, meaty palm. Bill looked up at him before reaching for it.
“It’s not water soluble,” Fielding said, hand extended. “Just put it in your mouth between your cheek and lower gum. If you accidentally swallow it, you’ll be okay. Just wait for it to come out — intact — and you can use it then.”
Bill nodded. He understood now. He took the small, hard capsule. “What do I…?” he began, but quieted when he heard the quaver in his voice. “How do I do it?”
“You bite it,” Fielding answered. “Just bite it. That’s it. You’ll have to bite hard, but once it pops, well, that’s all you have to do.”
“Ho-okay,” Bill said with a sigh meant to mask the quakes in his lungs. He tried slipping the pill into his jacket pocket, but found that the pockets on the strange, heavy suit were there only for display.
Fielding tried to make light of his unsuccessful efforts. “The Chinese do a remarkably good job on these Kevlar suits,” he said, holding it open so that Bill could slip the pill into the breast pocket of his dress shirt.