Han and Wu rode in silence in Han’s limousine until Han, looking out the window, said, “Desolate country. It’s not Bali.”
“I’ve never been to Bali,” Wu commented in a soft voice.
“You’ve never been anywhere outside of China!” Han chastised. What he was really saying, both understood, was, “What have you gotten yourself into?” With the rebuke delivered, Han smiled and said, “You will go to Bali when you get back. I will send a girl with you. It’s the only way to see Bali, Wu. With a beautiful girl. Trust me.”
Wu looked out the window at fields full of American POWs digging trench lines around missile batteries. The men were shirtless, dark, and dirty, and they were bent by the labors. Stooped. Defeated. The realization strangely made Wu’s heart no lighter. “The fighting here was bad,” Wu said as he looked out into the thick vegetation. “I spoke to Tsui. He fought here.” Wu turned to stare at his father, who stared back with arched brow. After a moment, Wu sighed and returned to the window. His breath fogged the glass. “Tsui said that the Americans could be three feet away in the cane fields and you couldn’t see them. Sometimes, Tsui said, you smelled them first.”
“Poor bastards,” Han commented.
“Which?” Wu asked. “The Americans or the Chinese?”
“Both,” Han replied. His gaze remained fixed on his son, who returned the hard stare without flinching. “You will never be in combat, Wu,” Han said in a tone more informational than sympathetic. “Learn to deal with it. It has been agreed at the highest levels. It is not your best use.”
Wu turned away, and they fell quiet for a long time, with Wu occasionally glancing at his father. Wu was Han’s only child from a casual affair. Initially, the boy had been unacknowledged and had been given the common name “Wu.” On orders from their family, Han had just attended the military school graduation of the boy, whom he hadn’t seen for years before that. Han had informed the cadet that he would, henceforth, assume the Han family name, also on orders of their family. Thus had his son officially become “Han Wushi,” although everyone still used his old surname “Wu.”
Wu was half-Caucasian, half-Chinese, and he’d boarded at Beijing military schools from ages four to eighteen. As happened with the top graduates at their nation’s elite military prep schools, Wu had opted to receive his commission at age eighteen. Han thought that the boy had appeared proud to have graduated commander of each military school’s corps of cadets as if it had been his accomplishment, and his alone. He hadn’t yet realized that it was all about power. Their family’s power, to be exact. For Han’s uncle — Wu’s great-uncle — was prime minister of China.
“You issued orders well back at the airport,” Han commended his son.
“I’m an officer now, not a cadet,” Wu grumbled.
Han laughed. Wu seemed surprised by his father’s open display of amusement. “But you’re a lieutenant,” Han said, “and you issued an order to a colonel! Why is that? Would your friend Lieutenant Tsui command such deference?” When Wu pondered the question, Han laughed and looked back out the window. Han could feel Wu watching him closely. It was rare extended time with his father. Let him watch, Han thought. Let him learn.
Out of the blue, Wu asked, “Why did the family switch from publicly warning of nuclear war with America, to privately supporting the invasion of the mainland?”
Han was stunned. He held up a hand to quiet the boy and pulled out his sweeper to check for bugs. The sophisticated new Chinese army devices had been miniaturized to near microscopic. Wu watched Han wave the device around the limousine… and directly over Wu’s army tunic. When father’s and son’s eyes met, the father returned the sweeper to his pocket and answered his son’s question. “America’s human capital is the most productive in the world, Wu. I have been sent there to harness it.”
“Is that why the prime minister…?”
“You shouldn’t worry about politics,” Han interrupted. “You shouldn’t worry about anything because everybody knows exactly who you are. The family gives you a shield and a sword, and you fight for the family’s grasp on power. Whether we lose that grasp, Wu, depends on what I do in America over the next precious few months.”
Neither said another word on the drive. “Liu Changxing, what are you up to?” Han thought in English to better frame the question, trying to discern the plot being hatched by the defense minister.
The ocean appeared out of the car windows. Han looked wistfully across the blue water as the motorcade took the coast road. He had fond memories of his college and graduate school years in America. Wu, Han noticed, also stared across the sea. This was the homeland of the mother he had never known.
General Sheng walked along the docks watching troops board transports as Han’s motorcade arrived in the distance. He was worried about the American Campaign far more than any before it. Sullen troops filed up gangplanks showing none of the enthusiasm of earlier armies who had boarded assault ships bound for Japan, India, or Saudi Arabia. Sheng nervously eyed the sky overhead. While at anchor, the invasion fleet was dangerously exposed. Their antimissile defenses — like the Americans’—could stop almost all inbound airborne threats. But if the one that got through was tipped with a nuclear warhead, the damage would be immense.
Sheng’s aide-de-camp, Colonel Li, arrived at his side. “I have part of the information you requested, sir,” he reported. “It’s called ‘Operation Olympic’.” Sheng nodded. “I’ll inform Defense Minister Liu,” Li said.
“No,” Sheng ordered. “There are too many leaks in Beijing. Too many uncertain loyalties.”
Han Zhemin and Wu got out of Han’s limousine and walked down a dirt road to the docks. Han organized his thoughts in silence before the opening moves in the key political battle of the twenty-first century. Han felt rested from the car trip and up to the fight. He’d been groomed for it, in fact, his entire, privileged life.
As a young boy, Han hadn’t appreciated the immensity of his family’s fortune. He had lived a cloistered existence in palatial Hong Kong with an English tutor, an English nanny, a house full of servants, and a nurse, who was in charge of Han’s household.
But a lot had changed when Hong Kong had been handed back to mainland China. In the uncertain times, Han was sent to Princeton and then Harvard. “Do whatever you want in America,” his father had said, “but study political science carefully.” He had then told Han that his family’s plan for him was not to follow his father into business. It was to follow his uncle, instead, into politics, where the true fortunes were to be made in the next century.
Han’s father had turned hundreds of millions of dollars in wealth earned through trading goods in East Asia into trillions of yuan in investments in Communist China. But Han’s uncle had been appointed the governor of Hong Kong by the aging Communists in Beijing. The city had unexpectedly flourished. That success had catapulted Han’s uncle to Beijing during Han’s graduate school years, spent at Harvard.
Those years of Han’s life had been his most carefree. Never having gone to school of any kind, he had immersed himself in local culture and had met many beautiful women, including Wu’s mother, at parties. But marriage to an American could never be. Han had been led to expect that a superb match would be made very soon by his family back in Beijing.