The huge room was abuzz with dinner conversations among the thousand or so dignitaries in attendance. The tables filling the large hall were all round. Their animated talk was jovial and excited. The people at the long, straight table on the dais faced not each other, but the gathering. The arrangement allowed for little conversation, especially, it seemed, in the immediate vicinity of Han. The lead table’s configuration was also symbolic of public life, Han thought. Family relations existed solely for display to the masses. Behind the facade, passion was reserved for mistresses. There was no such thing as love. It had, through the generations, been bred out of the ruling class.
Han leaned forward over his uneaten dinner to peer down the long table toward the center at his left. The table’s occupants were divided — in equal, negotiated numbers — between civilians on the right as they faced the ballroom, and military officers and their wives on the left. Han was buried — exiled to oblivion — off to the far right of the long, linen-draped table amid minor uncles and distant cousins. People whose names he’d never even bothered to learn. To his left, in the distance, lay the tense border between the civilian and military leadership.
Han’s father and mother sat near the center. Nearer still were the prime minister’s wife and the prime minister. And on the very brink of the great divide sat Wu — deal maker extraordinaire—who wore not a uniform, but a dark business suit. It was the first time that Han had ever seen the boy in civilian attire of any kind. Throughout the long dinner, Wu’s place at the center of the political world had been bathed in television camera light and immortalized in bright flashes for the stills.
Han leaned further out over the table. Next to Wu — on the far side of the dividing line — sat Liu Yi, the beautiful, favorite granddaughter of the defense minister. The match that had — until Wu’s conniving — been intended for Han. The old general, Liu Changxing, and his wholly unpresentable wife were at Yi’s elbow. Then came Yi’s father, also a general, her mother, and all the other officers and wives descending in rank and importance until they reached the dregs of political power toward the far end of the table: junior officers invited to the dais by virtue not of their rank, but for propriety’s sake because they were relations. They were, in order of importance, Han’s military counterparts.
How dizzying had been Han’s fall from power. He had done all that he was supposed to do, followed every order, but still that had not been enough. He had made no major miscalculations — no missteps for which he was being punished — but he had returned to Beijing in the wee hours of the morning to find only a dark car on an even darker tarmac.
Han had spent the day trying to meet with Wu, but his son had been busy with meetings and meals. Everyone in Beijing was beating a path to his feet. A crush of onlookers and spontaneous cheers awaited Wu’s every stop on his whirlwind debut in the capital of the world. National television programming had been interrupted by breaking news stories at Wu’s every sighting. Emerging from the security ministry. Arriving at the ministry of trade. Lunch with the council of ministers, then an afternoon visiting various military commands. The public adoration that awaited him at each stop wasn’t orchestrated by the government, which was what had made it such a phenomenon. China had never seen anything like Han Wushi: prodigal son, military hero, and idol and savior to a television audience numbering in the billions.
For Han Wushi had become the symbol of hope. He was, Han thought, like a gigantic movie screen on which was projected the hopes of viewers all across the Chinese empire. To some, Wu’s dogged determination in combat held out the promise of winning the war. To others, his refusal to continue a suicidal attack meant that the end of the senseless bloodletting was near. To all, Wu meant change, and change was what everyone wanted. A new face. A fresh wind in the stale corridors of aging Beijing power. Wu was perfect in his role as all things to all people, because to the wider world, Wu was a blank. Tabula rasa. Unsullied by years of political infighting.
And he was also, at the same time, both a member of the civilian royal family, and a soldier with a long red wound on his face from a grazing American bullet.
Wu hadn’t done this alone, Han knew. And it hadn’t been done quickly. It was a plan hatched at the very top, months earlier, perhaps even before the invasion. Whose plan it had been — civilian or military — Han didn’t know, but in the end both had endorsed it. Wu had been used by both the prime minister and the defense minister, but he had also done his share of manipulating. The murder of Sheng and Li, Han was certain, had been ordered jointly by the prime minister and General Liu. The former because Sheng had always been a threat. The latter because Sheng might become one. But the return of Bill Baker and his daughter to American hands had been all Wu’s idea, and he hadn’t told anyone about it. It was a measure of Wu’s newfound political power that neither the civilians nor the military challenged him for it, which was wise. Wu’s conciliatory gesture toward the enemy had been, like everything else Wu had done, wildly popular.
Wu, beholden to no one, was now a force unto himself. The old fools on both sides of the bitter political divide thought they could contain that power and use it to their advantage.
The others seated around Han were staring at him just as Han stared at his son. Han sat back and picked at his food. Still jet-lagged, he had arrived at the banquet hall that evening and been ushered to the rear of the receiving line. The queue was long and led, he saw, to the brave, bandaged young Wu and the beautiful, exquisite, beaming young Yi, whom Wu had met for the first time on arrival at the banquet hall. The wait in line gave Han the time to compose his greeting. To Wu, it would be somber pride. A firm handshake. A pinched smile. A nod. To the vivacious Yi, it would be an upbeat, “Perhaps I can show you Disneyland” the next time you visit America.” After all, just before his departure from the soon to be renamed “Han Wushi Airport” in Atlanta, Han had been handed power for administering conquered territory in the west as well as in the east of Occupied America.
But everyone had been called to their tables for dinner before Han had reached the guests of honor. Now, he probably wouldn’t have the chance to speak to either of the newlyweds, whose hurried wedding ceremony was sealed in private at the banquet hall before the deal could come undone. Han had cursed on hearing the news. It had fouled all the plans on which Han had spent the day working. The two halves of the political world at the center of the table had been joined before he could get organized.
The buzz in the great hall fell silent like a field of crickets on the approach of a predator. Defense Minister Liu stood behind his seat. A boom mike held by a soldier hovered just out of the cameras’ fields of view. Before him — sitting mute and expectant — was everybody who was anybody in Chinese politics. Ministers. Generals. Agency heads and CEOs. Ambassadors and governors returned on short notice from the far-flung empire. And each was accompanied by their all-important and rabidly political wives, who had been invited to the supposedly social occasion.
All rose — Han among them — as the defense minister lifted his glass. The sound of a thousand scraping chairs fell silent in seconds. “I would now like to toast,” the general boomed over the PA system and over the speakers of a billion television sets, “a young man who stands for all that we hold dear. A member of one of China’s greatest families. The bearer of the legendary name of ‘Han.’ A decorated war hero who led his men valiantly in the victorious Battle of Washington! And the newest member of my proud family! To Han Wushi!”