Dragonfly

“I'm afraid you will not be permitted to leave China until I am given a full explanation,” General Lin said. “Perhaps the rules of diplomacy forbid me to drag you out of your embassy and beat the truth from you. But I can see that you remain here, grow old, and die here if you will not explain your real purpose in Peking.” He turned away from them and started toward the drawing-room door.

Webster came out of his armchair as if propelled by a bad spring in the cushion. He hurried after Lin and caught up with him in the downstairs hall. “General, please wait a moment. Give me a moment to explain. I can explain this entire affair. Just come up to my office for five minutes, and I'll put your mind at rest, sir.”

“Then there has been some trick?” General Lin asked.

“Let's not discuss it here,” Webster said. “Upstairs. In my office. That's the proper atmosphere.”

When they had gone up the steps, Lee Ann said, “What could Webster know that we don't?”

“Nothing,” Canning said. “He's in the dark too. But he can't let Lin go away that angry. He has to play the diplomat for a while.”

Pushing a lock of her black hair from her face, Lee Ann said, “My opinion is that if the general goes all the way upstairs just to hear a bunch of diplomatic goo, he's going to be twice as angry as he is now. Just my opinion, of course.”

“Then he's Webster's problem, not ours.”

“What about Dragonfly?”

“Maybe there is no such thing.”

“How could that be?” Her eyes were huge.

“Maybe McAlister was using us.”

“For what?”

He said, “God knows. But it happens in this business.”

“I think Bob was sincere,” she said.

“Then he might be misinformed.”

“He's not the kind to make a move unless he's positive of what he's doing.”

Canning agreed with her. He felt uneasy. He felt as though he had missed something vital.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“That's what I'm trying to figure.” He looked down at Ch'en, who smiled at him and nodded. To Lee Ann he said, “We'll see that our friend here is put in a room on the third floor with Yuan and Ku. Then we'll go down to the communications room and get off a wire to McAlister, asking for his instructions.”

In his office, Ambassador Webster went directly to the bar in the corner and put ice cubes in two squat glasses. “Is bourbon all right, General?”

Lin Shen-yang stood by the desk, barely able to control his temper. “I do not want a drink. I want an explanation.”

“This is fine bourbon,” Webster said. “And I've got good branch water to mix with it. They fly my branch water all the way in from Louisiana. Only way to drink bourbon.”

“No, thank you,” the general said stiffly.

Smiling, the ambassador said, “Very well.” He poured bourbon and branch water into his own glass. “You won't mind if I indulge?”

The general glared at him.

Webster took his drink to one of the two overstuffed armchairs that stood in front of his desk. He sat down and indicated that the general should sit opposite him.

“Mr. Webster—” Lin began.

“Please, let's be amiable,” the ambassador said. “Sit down and relax. I will explain everything.”

Reluctantly, General Lin sat in the other armchair. He perched on the edge of it; he refused to be comfortable.

Taking a long, cool swallow of his drink, the ambassador said, “Do you know what branch water is? It conies from certain streams, river branches, in Louisiana. It's pure, perfectly tasteless. It is the only way to mix a whiskey. In Louisiana we know how—”

“I am not interested in Louisiana or in your branch water,” the general said curtly. “I want that explanation.”

Webster sighed. “I was just savoring the moment. But if you insist…” He put down his drink on a small round side table. He smiled at the general and said the key phrase: “Yin-hsi is as lovely as a swan in the lilies.”

General Lin's eyes glazed. His mouth sagged open, and he leaned back in the armchair.

“Can you hear me?” Webster asked.

“Yes,” Lin said faintly. He stared through the ambassador.

“Do you know how to find the home of Chai Chen-tse?”

“Yes.”

“Chai Po-han is there now. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“You will go to him and say that phrase which you have been taught. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“When you have spoken those words to him, and to no one else but him, and in privacy with him, you will return to your house and go to bed. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

Webster picked up his drink and sipped it. He enjoyed seeing the general sitting there, mouth open and his eyes blank as the eyes of a moron. “When you wake in the morning, you will not remember your visit to Chai Po- han. You will not remember having said anything to Chai Po-han. In the morning you will go about your business as you ordinarily would. Do you understand me?”

The general hesitated.

“Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Once more. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Go to Chai now.”

The general closed his mouth. His eyes refocused, but they still did not look quite normal. He got up and left the ambassador's office, closing the door behind him.

Webster picked up his drink and took it back to his desk. He sat down in his, high-backed posturmatic chair. From the bookshelves behind him, he withdrew a copy of The Wind in the Willows. He opened the book and removed a flimsy sheet of paper that had been pressed in the front.

The paper was a copy of the order for Chai Po-han's transfer from the Ssunan Commune to Peking. A clerk in the Office of Revolutionary Education had taken it from the files the very day that the transfer had been approved and had passed it to an old gentleman who pedaled one of the few remaining bicycle rickshaws that still operated in Peking. The clerk had received a handsome sum, all in good Chinese yuan, without knowing why anyone would so desperately need to know when Chai was coming home. Like all of his kind, the rickshaw operator was extremely independent; after all, he conducted business in defiance of a Party order outlawing rickshaws, and he had done so for many years now. The Party had decided to let the rickshaw operators die off gradually, while issuing no new licenses. Therefore, the officials ignored the rickshaw men — and the rickshaw men, independent as they were, made good conduits for certain kinds of information. This particular old gentleman had passed the transfer notice to Webster when Webster had taken a rickshaw ride around Wan Shou Shan's lake — as he managed to do once or twice a month. In his turn, the old gentleman had received another substantial sum in yuan. Back at the embassy, after spending hours translating the ideograms into English, Webster saw that Chai was coming home, and he wired the news to Rice.

Now, if the train had been on time — and Chinese trains were always on time — Chai Po-han was at home, and the Dragonfly project could be launched at last. In twenty minutes, or half an hour at most, General Lin would trigger him. Chai would puncture the spansule within a few minutes of the general's visit, as soon as he was alone and could find a sharp instrument. The plague virus would spread rapidly through Chai's system, reproducing in his bloodstream. Within two hours millions of deadly microorganisms would be passing out through the alveolae in his lungs. Then he would begin contaminating the very air that Peking