Tesla said, “Airport.”
“But our stuff is at the hotel.”
“Passport?”
“Here.”
“We’ll leave the rest of our stuff. We have to go.”
“Where?”
“Can’t talk to Wiki, can’t talk to Harold. It’s up to us now.”
“So where?”
“Kashmir.”
Thirty-eight thousand feet, but Middleton saw mountains ahead on the right that looked almost exactly level with the plane. Hundreds of miles away, probably, a trick of perspective in terms of distance, but there was no doubt about their elevation. A gigantic range, white, icy, jagged, majestic, shrouded with low clouds down around their knees.
Unmistakable.
Famous.
The Himalayas.
But: on their right?
Middleton asked, “Where the hell are we going?”
Chernayev said, “Who do you think is painted on the innermost doll? Who do you think we all serve, ultimately?”
And at that moment two jet fighter planes rose alongside, one to port, one to starboard, both of them slow and respectful and gentle. Unthreatening. An escort. For safety and for courtesy. The fighter planes were painted with muted camouflage patterns and toward the rear of their slim fuselages they had bright red bars separated by red five-pointed stars.
Middleton said, “China?”
15
Middleton tried to use the mountains to orient himself, keep his bearings. But before long the sky stole them from him, the jet vanishing into the clouds. In the moments of silence that followed, he felt its steep descent in the pit of his stomach. The clouds cleared to reveal the mountains gone from sight and some sort of airstrip below.
“We’re landing.”
His words drew only a smile from Chernayev, and Middleton realized the altitude was playing tricks with his damaged hearing. His voice sounded like someone else’s, and the lameness of his statement made him wish it actually had been. Middleton had landed at enough secret airfields to know this was something quite different from any of them. Far too barren to be military and much too isolated to have ever been civilian. No landing lights were anywhere in evidence until he spotted discolored patches in the ground on both sides of the strip. Those patches, his experience indicated, likely concealed high-powered halogens that could be activated with the proper signal from an aircraft approaching under cover of darkness, upon which the fake turf would recede so the lights could surface.
Someone had taken great measures to hide whatever truth lay here.
The strip boasted not a single building. Not a hangar, tower, storage or refueling facility-nothing. Well, not quite, Middleton thought, as he felt the jet’s landing gear lower. Because parked at the far end of the airstrip, where the tarmac widened into a football field-sized slab, was another jet.
He heard the zooming hiss of their fighter escorts soaring away as Chernayev’s jet touched down and taxied toward the second jet, a 767.
“Come,” Chernayev gestured, after their plane ground to a halt.
Middleton started to rise, realizing he’d forgotten to unfasten his seatbelt. He joined Chernayev in the aisle.
“Where are we?” Middleton asked him.
“Where we need to be. Where the world needs us.” Chernayev stopped and smiled almost sadly at him. “You wanted answers, comrade, and now you’re going to get them. Though I suspect you may regret ever posing the questions.”
The cold assaulted them as soon as they emerged from the jet. It seemed to push out from the mountains now visible again off to the west, their snow-capped peaks poking through the clouds and stretching for the sky. Middleton had known far more frigid colds than this, but the one he felt now was different, deeper somehow which he passed off to the anxiety and expectation racing through him.
As they approached a set of landing stairs set before the 767’s bulkhead, the door opened to reveal a pair of armed Chinese soldiers beyond it. Chernayev led the way up the stairs into the plane. The soldiers stiffened to attention and saluted, seeming to recognize him while ignoring Middleton altogether. Chernayev return their salutes and then led the way through a curtain and into a majestic library, complete with wood paneling and leather furniture, its smell rich in the air. The sight further disoriented Middleton, casting an opaque, dream-like translucence over his vision. He tried to remind himself he was on a plane, but the thought wouldn’t hold.
Then he saw the figure of a Chinese man wearing a general’s uniform rise from a high-backed leather chair and stride past ornate shelves lined with a neat array of leather-bound books. He was tall and thin, his hair raven black except for a matching swatch of white over both temples. The man grinned, approaching Chernayev with arms extended. They hugged briefly, then separated and bowed to each other before the Chinese man’s gaze fell on Middleton.
“And this must be the American.” He extended his hand outward. “I have heard much about you, Mr. Middleton, most of it well before today.”
“Who-”
“-am I? I have many names. Today I am General Zang.”
“My opposite number in the Chinese government,” said Chernayev.
“You mean, military.”
“Same thing,” said Zang. “Retired as well.”
“Somewhat anyway,” the Russian added.
Zang turned again toward Middleton. “We are protectors.”
“Protectors of what?”
Zang shrugged. “Fill in the blank with whatever you choose. Our countries have become much less insular and mutually dependent. You know what the Butterfly Effect is, of course?”
“A butterfly flaps its wings in Boston-”
“And a monsoon sprouts in China,” Zang interrupted, again completing his thought. “Especially appropriate in this case, of course. My Russian friend and I like to think of ourselves as protectors of that mutual dependence. There was a time when we looked on the Western world, rooting for the inevitable fall that would lead to a chaos capable of consuming it. Now we find ourselves dreading that chaos above all else and working to prevent it.”
“Because of that mutual dependence.”
Chernayev said, “Colonel, yes, I have a financial interest in the dam. But this is about far more than money.” He took a pair of cigars from his jacket pocket and handed one to Zang. “Cuban,” he proclaimed. “At least our Communist comrades there are still good for something.”
“Mr. Middleton,” Zang said, still admiring his cigar, “you have spent your career, especially with the Volunteers, fighting the same enemies and battles as we find ourselves fighting now.”
“You just didn’t realize it,” Chernayev added.
“You have fought to preserve order; perhaps not in those words, but that has been the ultimate effect. And
