“Gotta go,” Shen Shen said into the phone as Wu entered their suite. She punched a button on her cellular phone, and then punched several more.
Erasing her call log, Wu thought as he pretended to ignore the insistent beeping.
Shen Shen slipped the phone into her purse and then looked up at Wu as if on first seeing him at the door. She bounded across the marble entryway wearing a short satin robe that opened to reveal no panties or bra. She kissed him open-mouthed, then drew away. “Are you having an affair?” she asked with knitted brow.
“Yes,” Wu replied. Shen Shen retained her grip around the back of his neck. Her hair hung loose. Her face was still made up from the day. She was obviously preparing to bathe. “With you,” Wu explained, and she grinned. “Why’d you ask?” He pried her hands from his neck, unbuckled his pistol belt, and laid the weapon and holster on a writing desk.
“I smell alcohol on your breath,” Shen Shen explained, embedding a question in her reply.
“I met a friend for a drink downstairs,” Wu said.
“A guy friend?” Shen Shen asked. Wu tilted his head and smirked as he sat at the small writing table. “Well,” she said in a little girl’s voice as she straddled his thighs with her bare bottom and sat, with her robe casually opening further, “those American prostitutes downstairs are so pretty.” She rocked, and rubbed, and crept ever closer to Wu. Her smiling mouth hung half open, and her robe slipped down her slender arms.
“He was a friend from school,” Wu explained as Shen Shen breathed hotly into his ear and kissed his neck.
“I’ll take a shower,” she whispered with her lips brushing against his ear. With a flick of her tongue against his lips and a smile promising more, she rose and headed for the bathroom letting her robe fall onto the floor in her trail.
“I wanta surf the Net while you get ready!” Wu called after her. He pressed the power button on Shen Shen’s laptop, which sat on the writing desk. “What’s your password?” he asked.
Shen Shen returned slowly to his side. “My password?” she asked. On the flat screen of the small portable computer, the cursor blinked in its dialog box. She laughed. “Here,” she said, grabbing the computer from the desk. “I’ll get you onto the Internet.” She walked over to the sofa and sat facing him with the screen facing away from Wu. Her expressions alternated between intense concentration on the screen, and brief smiles and blown kisses at Wu. The muted beeps of the computer belied her hurried work.
She was naked. Her body was smooth and thin. Her breasts were full. But Wu felt the desire drain from him. “Here you go,” Shen Shen said on rising from the sofa, sounding winded as if from frenzied exertion. She handed Wu the laptop. The browser was open onto a page of news headlines from Beijing. “VICTORY AT THE SAVANNAH RIVER” read a banner headline.
Wu drew away from the casual brush of Shen Shen’s nipple against his face. She laughed playfully — hyperactively — and bounded for the shower. Wu found that her E-mail reader required yet another password that he didn’t know.
He fished the memory stick from his pocket and inserted it into the computer’s slot. There were three files — Microsoft V-mails — on the stick. A player launched with a simple click of Wu’s fingertip on the touchscreen. A smiling Stephanie Roberts appeared on the screen.
One after the other, Wu watched the three V-mails. Two from Stephanie Roberts to her father. One from the president to his daughter. The last, particularly, upset Wu. Would she take the easy way out that he offered? Had she seen enough fighting and was done? But that wasn’t what upset Wu, he realized.
“I love you, Stephie, with all my heart,” said the president, sounding like he was on the verge of tears.
When the water in the shower turned off Wu deleted the files and turned off the computer. He tossed the memory stick into the fireplace and headed for the bedroom. “Do you want me wet, or do you want me to dry off?” asked Shen Shen from the bathroom.
“Dry off,” was Wu’s reply. It gave him a few more minutes to think while lying on his back and listening to the whine of the hair dryer.
Clarissa slipped just inside the crowded Oval Office. But standing beside the busy doorway, she kept having to apologize as aides bumped into her, so she edged her way along the wall until she found a quiet eddy amid the frenzy and sat. Her narrow chair was as far out of the way as it could be, almost hidden behind an antique secretary. She searched for but couldn’t find Secretary of State Dodd, who had summoned her to the White House with instructions “to bring good news. Anything will do.”
Clarissa couldn’t see President Baker’s desk through the crowds awaiting their ten-second audience.
“No, no, no, Admiral!” President Baker interrupted with a shout. “I clearly remember that you said that the Chinese navy could not force its way through our blocking positions in the Bahamas!” Admiral Thornton began his unacceptable reply. “If holding fucking Florida was so goddamned critical to your defense of the East Coast,” the president shouted, “then why didn’t you mention it? You just waltz in here with sightings of Chinese surface warships in the Atlantic as far north as Wilmington, North Carolina, and tell me there’s nothing you can do? For the love of God, Admiral! For the love of God.”
The chatter in the room had waned. Some now whispered. Most just looked at the focus of everyone present: the leader of the shrinking Free World. A quieter voice advised that they need to redeploy at least one corps of reserves to defend the Atlantic coast south of Washington.
“General Cotler,” Baker said in obvious distress, “you just told me that the line along the Savannah River just broke! We’re running out of corps, general! And divisions, and brigades, and battalions, and… and troops. One month into this war and we’ve lost 160,000 killed or captured! One month! And 300,000 wounded, 50,000 so bad they’ll either be a year in rehab or they’re permanently disabled!”
The room was quiet. Heads were trained on the president. Some faces showed concern. Others were inscrutable masks. Anything could lie inside those men’s and women’s hearts, but one thing was certain. All of the coup plotters’ faces would fall into the latter category of expression. Clarissa caught the White House chief of staff eyeing her. Frank Adams didn’t look away when their eyes met. Instead, Clarissa did.
She then heard tinny sounds of explosions on a speakerphone. There were rattling machine guns. Booming artillery. Background shouts whose volume was overridden by the thunder of high explosives.
“…most of our observation posts!” screamed a man at the top of his lungs. His shouts were alternately either far too loud, or totally drowned out by a nearby explosion. “There are Chinese landing craft at beaches Saipan, Tarawa…” an explosion scratched at maximum volume, “Okinawa, and Guam! Beaches Saipan and Tarawa appear fully consolidated already!” He kept shouting even through another shattering blast, hurrying to get his report off. “…out of the sixty tanks have been destroyed! We’re attacking the beachhead on Okinawa with unsupported Marine riflemen even though Chinese naval artillery has sealed off the approaches! They’re heading dismounted through a wall of fire, Mr. President! A solid, solid curtain! And if they don’t retake that beach in an hour, sir, we’ll never see blue water again! Not at the rate they’re…!”