Wu arrived at the old office building near the port of Mobile that was, for now, army headquarters. It was one of the few useful structures the Americans hadn’t destroyed, booby-trapped or bugged. The massive explosive charges at the port had failed to fire, which was a monumental stroke of good luck. So far, the mission had been yet another extraordinary success. Another something with which Wu had nothing to do.
Upon Wu’s arrival at General Sheng’s office, a very pretty secretary — General Sheng’s apparently — buzzed her boss’s office. “Just a moment,” she told Wu, smiling. The walls of the old American, 1990s-style office building were cracked and grimy beneath the wainscoting. It was unair-conditioned, poorly ventilated, and hot.
Wu could hear murmurs through the open transom above General Sheng’s door.
“Would you like coffee while you wait, Lieutenant Han Wushi?” asked the girl. She was standing, beaming and solicitous. She faced Wu full on from across the room, looking slender with her arms clasped behind her back. She wore what was probably a strikingly expensive business suit, though her jacket was hung on a hanger on the wall. Her satin blouse was tight and revealed without showing. Her only accommodation to the war effort was that her civilian attire was a rich shade of green. But what Wu noticed most was that she had gleaming hair and sparkling eyes and a perfectly symmetrical, powdered white face and black lips.
Wu nodded.
The secretary lowered her eyes demurely and left Wu alone in the outer office.
He stepped close to the door. The transom above it was open to allow the air to circulate. Wu could see a slowly turning ceiling fan inside.
Sheng asked, “Are we absolutely sure Olympic is not a double agent? What are the chances there would be someone so highly placed in Washington?”
Colonel Li replied. “It’s always a possibility that Olympic is passing American disinformation. You have to be highly suspicious of such things.”
Sheng’s secretary returned with a mug of coffee to find Wu standing by the door. Her smile flickered, and her eyes darted up to the transom just above him.
The door burst open, and General Sheng said, “Ah, Lieutenant Wu! I see you’ve found where we’ve cached our supply of beautiful Chinese ladies!” Sheng and Colonel Li laughed heartily and in unison. His secretary returned to her desk with Wu’s coffee, counting cracks in the floor and trying to suppress a smile. “Are you ready to go meet your father at the airport?” Sheng asked. “I wouldn’t want to make the mistake twice, now would I?”
The shy young secretary avoided Wu’s gaze as he passed her desk. “I’m sorry,” Wu said, “about the coffee.”
“Some other time,” she said. Wu smiled, but his eyes didn’t quite rise to hers so he didn’t know how she meant it.
As soon as Lieutenant Wu left General Sheng’s outer office, the smile drained from her face. She looked Sheng in the eye and nodded once.
Han Zhemin emerged from his personal jet into the bright sunlight and descended to the shimmering tarmac of the Mobile Airport. The runway wasn’t cratered. The terminal wasn’t gutted. The facilities looked entirely unscathed. Something was wrong. Bill Baker would fight for every square inch of American soil, and yet the landings had gone virtually unopposed.
A military band played its strident, martial tune, and an honor guard with glistening bayonets lined a long red carpet. Chinese television cameras — civilian and military — recorded the pomp surrounding Han’s arrival. At the foot of the stairs waited General Sheng, Colonel Li, and Wu. Han shook each of their hands. The military men pivoted and walked ceremoniously along the red carpet to Han’s left, in step with the senior civilian. They passed a military honor guard wearing crisp uniforms and peaked hats, and carrying rifles with polished white slings. Behind them stood a liveried conductor, who stabbed his baton in the air leading a symphony of exaggerated brass and drums through movements of soaring patriotic music. They finally came to a raised platform filled with senior military officers before a crowd of steadily applauding soldiers. Everyone in attendance was Chinese military… except for the bulging international press corps.
I’m being set up, Han thought.
Instead of ascending the platform to speak into the cluster of microphones that festooned the podium, Han kept on walking toward the terminal building. His unanticipated deviation from the highly choreographed arrival ceremony threw Sheng and his aide, who had to grab the gleaming swords they wore and rush to catch up in a few jogging steps. Wu, however, had anticipated the move and remained at Han’s side. In a glance, Han saw that Wu wore an expression that could be either amusement or satisfaction. The general and colonel eventually fell back into step with the lieutenant and the civilian for the long walk to the terminal.
It had been a deft trap by the usually ham-handed military, Han thought. The public announcement of Han’s appointment as civilian administrator against the backdrop of conquered America would have guaranteed wide television coverage back in China and across the Territories. But Han was bred to play the game in which Sheng only dabbled. The point of the photo op was to show the world that the military — not the civilians — had presented China with the great victory. Han would have been handed his power by Sheng in a respectful but overt way. And watching that display of the military’s superiority would have been a hundred million bureaucrats, whose sense of the symbolic was finely tuned. They were readers of tea leaves who, merely from the place where you stood in a photograph, could discern the ebb and flow of political tides. Men and women whose only vote was cast by the secret ballot of loyalty either to Han’s civilians or Sheng’s military.
Once inside the deserted building, Sheng said, “We had actually planned a small ceremony, Administrator Han. I thought your staff had been informed.”
“I wasn’t satisfied with the security situation,” Han replied coolly.
“We have total control here,” came Sheng’s response in his first ever openly menacing tone. By his fixed gaze on Han, Sheng made clear the broader import of his comment.
“I prefer to deal with assessments based on fact, not opinion,” Han said as his next move. “We lost two supercarrier transports and over a dozen surface combatants to American submarine and cruise missile attacks, and over one thousand warplanes were shot down.”
“Those were well within the parameters for a successful landing operation of this size,” Sheng quickly rebutted.
“But how many killed, General? Fifteen, twenty, thirty thousand?”
“We planned for one hundred thousand ground casualties by now, but we have had practically none.”
And that’s what is wrong, Han thought. It’s a trick. He smiled at the strangely unconcerned Sheng. “Perhaps,” Han said, “victory is indeed at hand.”
A group of Chinese, South and East Asian, and South American reporters had collected at a respectful distance from the two most powerful men in the New World. Without looking their way, Han raised his voice and said, “Now, General Sheng, I will inspect the men’s positions and deployments.”
Han took off at a brisk stride down the concourse. He had no idea which way to head, but the act forced Sheng and his aide to follow, not lead.
Han swept his armored limousine for bugs then looked out at the American countryside that streaked by. Wu sat quietly at his side. Han spent the time stewing because there was too much that he didn’t know. Finally, he turned to his son.