“Who?” Clarissa replied.
Her father shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know. Capitol Hill Police found these little things all over the place! High-tech, state-of-the-art stuff, they said. They said they’d never seen anything so sophisticated.”
Clarissa sat back and cupped her hands behind her head. The FBI, she thought. Baker’s fucking K-G-B! The president was abusing the very National Secrecy Act that he had assailed as a violation of rights to privacy, that hypocritical bastard! Baker and Hamilton Asher were warping a good law written by her father — the single most decent man in Washington and Bill Baker’s former political guardian angel — and using it against him! She was incensed.
“I have to tell you something,” Clarissa said. “Baker is meeting with Han Zhemin!”
“I guess he knows what he’s doing,” Tom Leffler muttered.
Clarissa rolled her eyes and huffed theatrically. “You don’t get it! It’s treason!” She decided to embellish the story a bit. “At the NSC meeting, he talked about, Jesus, outrageous things. Like ceding southern Florida to China! It was unbelievable!”
Instead of focusing, her father drifted off, which he now did more and more frequently. He hissed not in anger, but with lips moving in some half-spoken interior monologue. His jowels shook, and he blinked as if he had lost his train of thought. Clarissa almost cringed as he began to mumble — mouthing something just under his breath. “Are you saying something, Dad?”
“What? No. Nothing.”
“Because it looked like you said something like, ‘Now is the time for all good men to…’ ”
“Sh-h-h-h!” he erupted, leaning right up to the lens until his eyes and the bridge of his nose filled Clarissa’s screen. “Where did you hear that?”
She laughed at the absurdity of his behavior. “From you, Dad! You just…!” She stopped herself. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party, she thought. It was a patriotic call to arms. A motto, at the least, or perhaps even a coda before the launching of some daring undertaking. It was brilliant! She felt goose bumps.
“Don’t ever say those words again,” Tom warned sternly.
“Where did that come from?” she asked.
“Sh-h-h-h-h-h!”
“Jeeze, don’t strain yourself, Dad! I meant, was that some great line or phrase from a famous patriot or something?”
Her father was now slumped and holding his face with spotted hands. “It was a typing exercise,” he answered. “Something to type when you learned keyboard skills as practice.”
“Oh,” Clarissa said, slightly deflated. “But still.” The feeling of inspiration lingered. “Listen, Dad, I can help. I want to help. With the, you know.” Before he could shush her, she said, “I’m an adult now, Dad. I’m in a position to help.”
Tom refocused and shook his head. “Too dangerous, Clarissa. Don’t do anything till we talk. I’ll be in touch.” He searched for a mouse or button then remembered and said, “Computer, hang up now.”
Clarissa huffed in frustration when the screen abruptly went blank.
Forty-two-year-old Han Zhemin deplaned to a blaring military band on the steaming tarmac of Havana’s airport. A military band played strident martial music. Han wore a dark wool business suit despite the unbearable heat. Pausing at the top of the stairs, he saw no platform or podium awaiting him. There were throngs of press but no General Sheng, the army commander.
Waiting instead, to Han’s great surprise, was Han’s son. The eighteen-year-old Lieutenant Wu — fresh out of military school — saluted his father crisply. Han put an end to the military greeting by shaking Wu’s hand. “Why are you here?” Han shouted over the noise from the army band.
“I just arrived! I’m on General Sheng’s staff! General Sheng sends his apologies, sir!”
“Who said you could come to Cuba?” Han asked. “I want the name of the person who authorized your deployment.”
“It was Defense Minister General Liu Changxing, sir!” Wu replied somewhat sheepishly.
The answer rocked Han. Its implications were numerous. “I see,” was all he said. Han turned and walked through a gauntlet of bright television-camera lights. Wu followed. A colonel marched by Han’s side with his sword unsheathed but never said a word to Han or seemed authorized even to make eye contact. The band was intensely loud, and Han winced and rushed for the terminal, pausing only for the requisite minimum number of poses. Wu, in particular, was the photographers’ favorite because of his half-Caucasian, foreign mix of features. The cameras lingered on the boy, and Han waited.
It was his son’s debut. His first exposure to the voracious international press corps. File photos, Han thought with amusement, watching the blinking, uncomfortable boy. But he replaced the smile creeping onto his face with the more appropriate look of gravity. Despite almost twenty hours advance notice of Han’s flight from Caracas, Sheng hadn’t met him at the airport. It was an intentional insult, and Han had to be furious. That was the only correct response.
Han strode briskly to the terminal building. Wu again followed. The moment the doors closed, Han asked his son, “What is your deal with Liu?”
Wu looked all around to ensure they were alone. Good, Han thought. He is careful. “I asked General Liu if I could serve at the front like all my classmates. Everybody’s here! Tsui has command of a platoon!”
“I don’t know who Tsui is, and I don’t care,” Han replied icily.
“He was my roommate at school,” a deflated Wu explained, “for the past six years.”
“When did you meet with Liu?” Han demanded to know.
“It was at my graduation,” Wu answered. “General Liu said that I could serve on General Sheng’s staff.”
Han had also talked to Liu at his son’s military academy graduation. For thirty tense minutes in the school’s plush senior officers’ lounge, they had agreed upon the ground rules for the coming American campaign and the governance of occupied territory. “No surprises,” had been Liu’s personal pledge to Han. It had been the only commitment that Han had been charged with obtaining from the man who commanded all of China’s armed forces.
“Where is Sheng?” Han asked his son.
“General Sheng is at the port, sir.”
“Then let’s go see him.”
“Right now?” Wu questioned. “He’s probably very busy, sir.”
Han was weary from the whirlwind diplomatic mission that he had just completed. Ten Latin American capitals in seven days. Ten small countries jockeying for position via the fine nuances of agreements made with China in Spanish and Portugese. It was exhausting, vital work.
“Do you know why I’m here, Wu?” Han asked simply and in a conversational tone. Wu shook his head. Two Chinese film crews shot the scene from a distance of thirty feet. One crew wore civilian clothes and had longish hair. The other — standing side by side with them — wore combat fatigues and had no hair at all. Han raised his voice loud enough to be overheard by both. “I have been appointed the Administrator of Occupied American Territory! I have full ‘gubinatorial authority’!” he said, using the two words in English employed in Beijing to define the very highest level of colonial administrative power. “General Sheng and all units of the Chinese military in the Americas report to me!”
Wu stared at his father in silence before finally turning to the stoic colonel with the chin strap, who had sheathed his sword but stared straight ahead, as before. “Organize a motorcade,” the teenage lieutenant commanded the middle-aged colonel, who immediately set off to comply.