you have watched the world change into a much more dangerous place.”
“Because of the butterfly,” Middleton interjected.
“Exactly. We all grew up in an era of clarity where the enemy announced himself by the uniform he wore. Now we wear the same uniform, a business suit, which makes it all the more difficult to spot the enemies among us and all the more easy for them to disturb the delicate balance we’re fighting to preserve.”
“What does this have to do with-”
“-you, your quest, your daughter… ”
“My
“Our new enemies don’t play by the same rules we used to. In fact, they play by no rules at all. Family members are considered fair game now. The tactics are brutal, revolting. They turn my stomach,” Zang said, lighting his cigar and savoring the first puffs. “You are standing in my home, Mr. Middleton. It is too dangerous for men like myself and Comrade Chernayev to stay anywhere long enough for them to find us. There are fifty airfields like this scattered across China and I never spend more than a single night at a time in any one of them.”
Middleton studied Zang closer, matching the face to a different era, a different man. Same brilliant, confident smile draped in the shadow of hair not yet touched by white. Shorter, slighter, more effusive, but with the same eyes.
“I think I know you,” he started, “from the-”
“-Chinese secret po-”
“The Te-Wu,” Middleton said before Zang could finish.
Zang held his cigar at arm’s distance, frozen. “I’m impressed. Perhaps our paths have crossed somehow.”
“Not yours, your father’s. He was one of the Te-Wu charged with infiltrating the United States after the Korean War.”
“Not just one of. It was his operation!”
“You sound proud.”
“Of his efforts, of our heritage, yes. The Te-Wu dates back to 550 B.C.”
“I’ve heard the group even has its own clandestine dialect that makes infiltrating it impossible.”
Zang spat off some words in Chinese that made no sense to either Chernayev or Middleton. “But now,” he resumed, switching back to English, “we find ourselves with a different enemy, a different mission.”
“Sikari?”
“Chaos in general, of which Sikari represented only a small part, small but very dangerous because of its capacity to inflict incalculable harm on our precariously mutually dependent world.”
“The butterfly… ”
Zang nodded as he blew huge plumes of cigar smoke. “And in this case that butterfly is going to land on the Baglihar dam just hours from now. And if we do not force it to take flight again, the price will be the end of the new world stitched together by the precarious threads of euros and dollars.”
“War between India and Pakistan.”
“Exactly.”
“No,” Middleton disagreed. “We know the explosives Sikari’s people have can’t destroy the dam, and even if they manage to assassinate the secretary of state… ”
Middleton let his voice trail off, something in Zang’s suddenly tentative expression telling him he had it all wrong, that he was missing a crucial piece of the puzzle.
“It’s not the secretary of state who’s coming,” the head of the Te-Wu told him.
Tesla was seated next to Charley Middleton on the last leg of a series of exhausting flights that would ultimately end in Kashmir. The coach compartment was crowded, adding ample camouflage to the clever subterfuge they’d enacted inside Orly Airport. Aware French authorities would be looking for them, as well as Archer Sikari’s people alerted by the suspicious communications over Jana’s salvaged cell phone, Tesla had disguised Charley as an old woman. The ruse was accomplished with a combination of make-up, hair product and clothing, all culled from shops inside the terminal, the transformation handled inside a handicapped restroom stall. Obtaining a wheelchair from the airline proved a simple matter and Tesla had booked the tickets by phone so as not to arouse suspicion spurred by a walk-up sale.
Harried authorities on the alert for two women meeting Charley and Tesla’s descriptions would have no reason to pay heed to an old woman slumped in a wheelchair, chin resting near her frail chest and snoozing while her daughter eased her through the terminal. Sikari’s people would be more astute and discerning, but Tesla doubted even their ability to marshal significant forces in so short a period of time. To throw them further off the track, she had tucked Jana’s phone into the carry-on of a passenger bound for New York, leaving them to chase their GPS tails around the world.
Tesla met Charley’s gaze in the coach seat next to her and managed a reassuring smile. “You’ll be with your father in no time.”
“That doesn’t mean we’ll be safe.”
“Perhaps you don’t know your father.”
“You could be right. I don’t know anything anymore.”
The make-up Tesla had used to age Charley had begun to cake, and she noticed tear streaks down both her cheeks, evidence she had been crying in the moments Tesla had managed to steal some sleep on this final stretch of their exhausting journey.
She didn’t bother to deny the younger woman’s assertion. “You’re right, Charley. Once you go down the road we’re on, there’s no going back.”
“How do you live with it, what you do?”
“Easily, because not doing it is much worse.”
“At the expense of everything else,” Charley muttered, shaking her head.
“If we fail, there will be no everything else. The stakes are that high. People have died and more will if we can’t stop Sikari’s people in Kashmir.”
Charley sniffled. “I just want to go home.”
“It’s not safe, Charley.”
“Will it ever be again?”
“Probably not.”
Charley settled back in her seat, taking a deep breath. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”
Tesla laid a reassuring hand atop Charley’s upon the armrest. “In the end, it’s all we have.”
Standing within view of the now-completed dam, Archer replayed the conversation between Umer and Sanam in his mind. Both were fools, easily manipulated to serve his ends. And, appropriately enough, the business about the detonators and placement of the explosives was a fool’s errand. But they had supplied Archer with the army he needed in the form of the offshoot of Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, 50 loyal soldiers willing to die for the cause.
Archer and his associates had secured press credentials to accommodate all 50. It was left to Archer to complete the process of getting them their video and camera equipment, all constructed to pass the scrutiny of any security check, even one undertaken as expected by the American Secret Service.
Archer held his gaze on the dam, a bit leery over the fact that the building security apparatus was considerably higher than he had anticipated. He felt a knot tighten in the pit of his stomach, anxiety over the fact that his mission had been compromised, robbing him of his destiny and his dream.
You were a fool, father. You should have left this whole project to me.
He knew Sikari had died admiring, even revering the son who would succeed him; actually
