the guys that came out to work the Caloil sites knew what the fuck they were doing. They got extra money.”
“You don’t care about them.”
“Much as I care about you, sweetheart,” which Mi Yin knew was not at all. “C’mon,” he commanded. “Take off your drawers.”
“Close the drapes,” she said.
“Why? I want the whole of Hong Kong to see us fuck.”
He was bluffing and she knew it. As chief executive officer of Caloil, he had to obey, at least publicly, the social mores of Hong Kong. He had to toe the line a bit more regarding sex. But even that didn’t faze him because in the end, when the party’s political purists, the cadres, had their say about good socialistic behavior, it would be the same old story — all a question of money, in this case Hong Kong dollars.
“C’mon,” he said, “go down on me!” She sat on the huge water bed, its surface undulating like a small sea as she pulled her hair back and reached across his hairy body for a condom on the bedside table, her breasts brushing his face. He bit at her nipple.
“Ow—”
“C’mon, you beauty — you love it, right? Or would you like to be having it off with all these saps?”
She cocked her head prettily, like some rare and beautiful bird of paradise. “Saps? What does it mean?”
“You serious?”
“Yes,” she said unapologetically. “I don’t know what ‘saps’ means.”
“Losers,” he said. “All the losers the Chinese are putting in that camp.”
“You really don’t care about them,” she said again, looking puzzled — or was she just putting on a Miss Goody Two-Shoes act? he wondered.
“No, I don’t care,” he answered. “Why should I? They’re all over twenty-one, sugar. They don’t know what makes the world go around by now, it’s tough tit for them — right?”
She shrugged noncommittally.
“What do you think of that?” he asked, looking down at his erection. “That’s what makes my world go round. That and money. Right? You don’t do it for free, do you?”
Mi Yin didn’t answer.
“You love me?” he asked. His laugh was hard and scornful. “You’re a hooker, Mi Yin — an expensive one, but you’re a hooker, right? But listen,” he said, propping himself up on an elbow, grabbing her wrist, “just remember you’re
She nodded.
He fell back on the water bed, causing a wild wave in the water bed, which shivered before it started settling down. “But man, are you built.” He grabbed her ponytail down over the front of her head and pulled her down on him. Her mouth was too dry. He reached out and poured from his drink.
“Now—” He laughed, struck by what he thought was a terrific pun. “—have a scotch on the cock!”
The things she did for Beijing — the safety of her parents in the balance.
So let her go through his briefcase, he thought, checking the seismic and drill reports he received daily by fax from the drill ships, making sure that he wasn’t pulling a fast one — drilling, finding gas or oil, but giving Beijing a different seismic profile from somewhere else in the South China Sea, where there was little if any promise of gas or oil. The trick was to give them a seismic profile made in the same depth as where you’d found good promise of oil, and to return to the true position of the find later on, until ownership of all claims in the South China Sea islands had been settled either by the international court in The Hague or by what busy law professors were calling a “prevailing military presence”—which meant, CEO Breem had told his EOs, “which army in the area has the biggest fucking guns.”
Those that might be involved besides the Vietnamese and the People’s Liberation Army were Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, all of whom claimed part of the islands and reefs scattered over the 35- million-square-kilometer South China Sea, nearly four times bigger than the United States, including Alaska. Breem dismissed Malaysia and the Philippines. The Malaysians didn’t have the balls to start anything with Beijing, not with thirty-six percent of Malaysia’s population being Chinese.
Then there were the Philippines, but Breem thought they had enough trouble at home trying to handle their terminally ill economy. Besides, they’d kicked out the Americans from the big base at Subic Bay and the American jets from Clark Field. “Stupid!” Breem had told his executives. No, the fight, if there was to be any, would be between the big military muscle in the region: China and such traditional rivals and enemies as the Vietnamese and the Taiwanese, with North Korea always a wild card.
Then again, it wasn’t clear whether Taiwan and Beijing might not subsume enough of their differences to team up, making a joint claim for the islands, so rumor had it, along a proposed fifty-one, forty-nine percent China- Taiwan split.
And now the ex-Soviet republics were having a basement sale of everything from the upgraded MiG-29s to submarines, the PLA was modernizing, and part of the ex-Soviets’ sales ploy was throwing in pilot training for the MiG-29s to sweeten the deal. “Smart move,” Breem told his executives, noting that the Vietnamese navy was strictly brown water — coastal patrol — but since China had started purchasing more submarines from Russia to go blue water, so had Vietnam. With the forced withdrawal of U.S. naval forces from the Philippines, Breem said, “The whole region is a goddamn powder keg!” But he was sure he’d backed the right horse. China would win.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Stand up!”
It was said with the same bullying tone as the first time Mellin had heard it years ago in the Hanoi Hilton, the POW camp during the time some Chinese-speaking Vietnamese had helped staff the jail.
Mellin could hardly stand, his legs shaky from both dehydration and the continuing violence of the ship’s peculiar corkscrew motion in the heavy seas. The Chinese sailor stepped back sharply, almost tripping over a hawser. The smell of the paint locker combined with that of old rope, sweat, and vomit hit him with the force of a physical blow. The sailor yelled something at Mellin, to which Mellin, whey-faced and unsteady, nevertheless answered, “Well, how the hell d’you think I like it, you bastard?”
The man struck him sideways with a closed fist, sending Mellin crashing through the doorway onto the deck, momentarily concussed, blood running from a scrape on his cheek. Suddenly, the foredeck and gun housing seemed to come alive with amplified sound as the officer on watch in the ship’s bridge harshly reprimanded the crewman who had just hit Mellin, telling the crewman to help the American up. The man made a motion to help Mellin, but the American pushed the offered hand aside. “I can get up myself, you bastard!”
He saw the Chinese face flush with anger, and Mellin knew if it hadn’t been for the intervention of whoever it was up on the bridge, he most probably would have been sprawled out again on the deck. The man grunted and, motioning roughly for Mellin to follow him, walked off, his legs perfectly balancing against the yaw and crashing of the ship, Mellin barely able to stand, his legs still feeling rubbery. The next minute he was left staggering like a drunk against the remainder of a huge wave that had hit the ship hard amidships, heavy and billowing spray draining off the superstructure and running down the scuppers like a flash flood. But unexpectedly, Mellin felt much better for the bracing, drenching water. The combination of cold water and fresh salty air partially revived him, and though he still felt woozy, he could feel his whole body benefiting. For the first time in hours, the sinus-stuffing stench of paint and associated odors left him.
Along with the rush of fresh air, he felt more confident, his determination returning, whereas in the stinking forward locker his seasickness had been so acute that all thoughts of the future, let alone hope for it, had vanished. He wasn’t proud of the fact, but then he’d never felt that ill before either. And it was a matter of conditioning. When he’d been a young man in Vietnam as part of the U.S. Special Forces, member of an elite team whose elan was the best possible, he was in top physical condition, and as the rigorous training had toughened his body, it also toughened his confidence.
No matter how hard life had been in the oil business, from the deep freeze of an Oklahoma winter to the sweltering days high atop a deck in the South China Sea, life in the Special Forces had been tougher. And it was this that Mellin was harkening back to — imagining, if only momentarily, he was with his old team in the Delta and that
