“No. You?”
He shook his head once. “As you say, this is very irregular.”
“It had better be good, Ambassador.”
“We do not want war,” T’ing said in a low voice.
“Ah.” Wexler felt the tension leave her shoulders, and her stomach start to smolder. “You disappoint me. After all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, I at least expected to hear some new lie instead of the same one you keep repeating at the UN”
“It is not a lie. I am telling you the truth from Beijing.”
“Really? Well, I’m afraid ‘the truth from Beijing’ pretty much equals a lie from my perspective.”
T’ing did not seem offended. “I am not here to bicker, Ambassador. Bickering is for the United Nations. I am here to be blunt.”
She raised an eyebrow. Blunt? An ambassador? A
Still, she was more intrigued every minute. “Be blunt, then,” she said.
“Beijing believes America began the trouble in Hong Kong.”
“Oh, please, not the drug war nonsense again. There’s absolutely no evidence Phillip McIntyre was involved in — ”
“I am not referring to the drug war story. No one in Beijing believes that. This is blunt speaking. However, they
“But… that’s absurd. Sink a boat belonging to one of our own citizens? Shoot down our own airplane?”
T’ing shrugged. Wexler understood, and felt a little chill: He was telling her that his masters wouldn’t think twice about doing such a thing; destroying Chinese citizens if it would further some strategic purpose. They expected it from other governments, as well.
She glanced to the foot of the steps outside the monument, where a family was gathering: three children scrambling around a pair of adults and an infant. With part of her mind, Wexler heard the kids’ shouting voices, and thought,
“Ambassador T’ing,” she said, “you’ve lived in the United States long enough to know that even if our government was into murdering its citizens for political gain, they would never get away with it. It’s not the way we do things here.”
Again, T’ing shrugged. The Dutch family was coming up the steps, and T’ing moved farther behind the pillar. “Nevertheless, my government, like your own, bases its conclusions on the evidence at hand. They look at events in Hong Kong and think, ‘America is doing this.’ My point is simple: Until more evidence surfaces to explain what is happening in Hong Kong, the wise ruler exercises caution. And the rash ruler causes disaster.”
“But meanwhile, of course, you’re suggesting that the stupid United States just sit back and let the PLA kill its citizens in Hong Kong, right? I don’t think that’s going to work out, do you?”
“Many leaders in Beijing speak the same way about dealing with the American military near Hong Kong. This is the pity. And never forget, we have the largest army in the world.” With that, T’ing gave a short bow, turned, and walked away down the steps.
Wexler stared after him, wondering if she’d just been given delicate inside information, or a red herring, or a dire warning… or nothing but an insult.
With the Chinese, it was impossible to tell.
“Heard Robinson’s been bad-mouthing you, brother.”
Jackson Ord looked up at his friend Skinny Washburn. “What?”
Skinny squeezed his 250 pounds behind the table and put his tray down. “Bird Dog Robinson, Mr. Hotshot. He’s been bad-mouthing you all over the hangar bay. You ain’t heard that?”
Franklin’s stomach gave a sour lurch. He scowled. “He can’t bad-mouth me. I didn’t do nothin’ wrong. I tightened that connector, and there ain’t nobody can prove different.”
Skinny raised one massive shoulder; his other arm was busy shoveling food into he mouth. “Don’t matter if they can prove it; once you on an officer’s shit list, you got nowhere to run.”
Franklin’s scowl deepened. “Who you hear talking about that pilot bad-mouthin’ me?”
“I don’t know. Everybody.”
“Shit.” Franklin threw down his fork. “This ain’t fair.”
This time Skinny raised both shoulders. “It’s the navy.”
In his dream, Tombstone could not escape from the UAV. It stayed glued to his tail, banking when he banked, rolling when he rolled, looping when he looped, refusing to be evaded or tricked. And yet it didn’t come in and hit the Pitts, come and blow the little plane out of the sky, either. It just stayed there, not a foot behind the Pitts’ rudder, as if connected with a tow bar. Showing him that it was a better flier than he was. That it could take him out whenever it wanted. That it was the wave of the future…
Tombstone opened his eyes, but the darkness remained. There was a sour odor in his nostrils. His head pounded, and he had to fight the desire to vomit. He remembered the hood being yanked over his head. After that, nothing… but judging by the smell and his symptoms, the bag must have been soaked in chloroform or some other knockout chemical.
He felt a sense of movement. He was stretched out on something, on his back, moving along at a fair clip. His wrists were tied together in front of him; his ankles were tightly bound. He breathed shallowly, and waited.
At last the rolling motion stopped. Someone spoke a few clipped words of Chinese, and Tombstone felt hands clutching his armpits and the backs of his knees. He was lifted, turned vertically so his feet touched the floor, and supported there. Try to fight now? No, not blind.
He heard the sound of a lock turning, followed by the squeal of rusty hinges. The same voice that had spoken before now shouted in English, “Back! Get back!”
Then, without warning, Tombstone found himself hurtling forward. He threw his bound hands out just in time to catch his weight against a floor of hard, cold stone. He skidded and rolled to a stop, then brought his hands up and yanked the hood off his head.
He was in a small, gloomy room. The walls and floor were made of stone, the low ceiling of wooden planks. The only light leaked through a narrow slit window of pebbled glass, mounted up near the ceiling. The glass was translucent, and barricaded behind metal bars.
The heavy
Tombstone’s wrists were tied with hemp rope. As he tugged the knots loose his teeth, he looked around more carefully. There wasn’t much to see — a pair of buckets standing in one gloomy corner, a pile of blankets piled in another. No furniture, no cot, no nothing. The air smelled damp and salty.
Once his hands were free, Tombstone untied his ankles, then got unsteadily to his feet. The nausea rose with him, and he bent over and waited for it to either do its job or go away. He was relieved when it chose to fade without emptying his stomach first.
He was furious with himself. Okay, so he’d never been trained as a spy. That didn’t excuse his climbing right into the trap of the enemy. So now he was a prisoner of the Red Chinese — and nobody on the outside knew it. At least, he assumed they didn’t, unless his captors had chosen to reveal their hand. If not, then it would be at least a couple of days before any of his friends or contacts began to worry about him.
“Idiot,” he wheezed at the floor. “Moron.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw one of the blankets in the corner move. He whirled. “Admiral Magruder?”
