Black Star

CHAPTER 14 — FORTUNE TELLER

He had been in his room only a few minutes.

A rap sounded on the door, and

Colonel Chiu appeared in the doorway. “This came for you on the high-priority net. From the Reagan, I presume.”He handed the message to Maxwell, then didn’t leave. Maxwell unfolded the print-out. While Chiu watched him, he sat on the wooden chair and read the message.

It was typical Boyce, who liked to call himself BATTLEAXE in cryptic communications. His standing orders were that Maxwell was not to proceed with the operation unless he got a final go ahead.

Well, here was the go ahead. Boyce’s message reported that the President — the Bishop — and the chain of command — the monks — all the way down to the strike group command had given their go ahead for the raid on Chouzhou.

Maxwell had to smile at the part about kicking ass for the Gipper — the nickname for the Reagan. More of Boyce’s personal embellishment.

He put down the printed message. Well, here we go. Until the message arrived, he had nursed this secret expectation that at the last minute someone — CINCPAC, the joint chiefs, the National Security Council — would call it off. Too risky. Too interventional. Too explosive.

Too damned crazy.

No more. Crazy or not, it was a go.

He was aware of the presence of Chiu, still watching him.

“You have received a personal message,” said Chiu. “I presume that it pertains to your planned mission. As the commander of the operation, I must ask if you have received instructions that will affect my conduct of the mission.”

Maxwell looked again at the message. “Yes, Colonel. We have received an additional task.”

Chiu gave him a wary look. “An additional task?”

Maxwell held up the printed message. “We have to kick some ass for the Gipper.”

“What are you thinking, Sam?”

Maxwell stopped walking and looked at her. The darkness outside the briefing building was almost total. Blackness covered the mountains around Chingchuankang. No exterior lights were showing on the base. No stars, no moon, no flashes of exploding warheads or incoming missiles broke the curtain of darkness.

“What did you call me?”

Mai-ling seemed startled by his tone. “I’m… sorry. I saw your name stenciled on your bag. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s all right. It’s just that no one has called me Sam for a long time. No one except my father and…”

“Your wife?”

“No wife.”

“Girl friend, then?”

“No girl friend either.” Not any more.

The walk in the darkness had been her idea. To get some fresh air, she said, and he had agreed. They went as far as the flight line, where they could see the sandbagged sentry post.

“But you’ve been married.”

“She died five years ago.”

“I’m very sorry. Did she call you ‘Sam?’”

Maxwell hesitated, not comfortable with this conversation. Yes, that’s what Debbie called me. And Claire. The women I loved called me Sam. “Yes,” he heard himself say.

“It’s a nice name, Sam. How did you become Brick?”

“A Navy thing. Instead of using our proper names, they give us call signs.”

“An odd custom. Why Brick?”

Another flash of memory, this one back to his flight training days. One afternoon at Kingsville, the squadron skipper asked his instructor, Devo Davis, how his student was doing. Maxwell? No problems, sir. He’s solid as a brick. The skipper nodded and scribbled something in his notepad, and that was it. Solid-as-a-brick Maxwell had a permanent call sign.

He didn’t tell her the story. Instead, he pointed to his forehead. “Describes how I think. You know, like a brick.”

“I don’t believe it. You definitely are not like a brick.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I’m learning.”

He kept noticing her face. There was something about the animated expression, the way she seemed to probe his mind with her eyes. Something familiar.

Then it came to him. That rapt, curious look — it was how Claire used to peer at him. They were galaxies apart in looks and background and style, yet alike. In Mai-ling’s intent brown eyes he was seeing that same eager intelligence.

It explained a lot. Like why he was here when it was half past eight and he had to get some sleep. He didn’t want to leave.

He said, “This mission to Chouzhou isn’t something you have to do. You could stay here.”

She shook her head. “I’m the one who knows the ground. Only I can guide you to the right places, save Colonel Chiu’s precious time.”

“He doesn’t like you, in case you haven’t noticed.

“Nor you, in case you haven’t noticed. He doesn’t like anyone outside his own little clique. Chiu is like every senior Chinese military officer I’ve known, Taiwanese or PLA.” She paused, looking off into space. “Like Zhang.”

“Zhang?”

“Colonel Zhang Yu. Commander of the PLA air force’s special operations squadron, the unit responsible for the Dong-jin—what you call Black Star. He is a very well connected political officer, said to be a protégé of the Chief of the PLA air force, General Tsin.” She paused, then said, “I hate him.”

“Why do you hate him?”

“Zhang had the task of purging the PLA air force of political and religious dissidents. He was very good at his job. He arrested over a thousand, mostly officers, and sent them to the Laogai—the retraining camps.”

“So you were you a dissident?”

“More like an enlightened thinker. In the years after the Tiananmen Square massacre and the persecution of the Falun Gong, many of us became enlightened thinkers. Some were more enlightened than others, and those were the ones Zhang arrested. One was my fiancé, Shaomin.” At this, her voice caught and she fell silent for a moment.

Maxwell nodded, letting her collect her emotions.

She said, “He was a good man, very intelligent, perhaps too idealistic for his own good. I loved him for that.”

“What happened to him?”

A cloud passed over her face. “He vanished. I knew that Zhang’s thugs had come to the compound and taken him away to the camps. Then, a week later, I heard through our network that he was not in the Laogai. He had disappeared. We received a report that he had been summarily tried and executed. I knew by then that I was also in great danger because Shaomin and I had been—” her voice caught, then she went on. “We were lovers. It would be assumed that whatever he was involved in, so was I.”

“That’s when you defected?”

She nodded. “There was a network. Many who live in Fujian Province have contacts in Taiwan. When I indicated my willingness to leave China, they assigned someone to help me. We left one night from the port of Xiamen in a fishing boat. It was easy.”

“It doesn’t make sense. You’re safe now. You have a terrific education, with a brilliant career ahead of you. Why do you want to risk it all by going back to Chouzhou?”

She chewed on a thumbnail for a moment. “Retribution, I suppose. A kind of quid pro quo. And redemption.”

“Whose redemption?”

“Mine. And all the other dissidents who haven’t yet been killed like Shaomin.”

“How will that happen?”

“I haven’t got that figured out yet. I just have this fantasy that I’ll somehow encounter Colonel Zhang.

“And then what?”

“I want him to recognize me. When he realizes who I am, he’ll know that I know he was responsible for the death of Shaomin. He will understand why I’ve come back.”

Maxwell was getting the picture. “And then…”

She made a slashing motion with her finger across her throat. “You know.”

In the shadows Maxwell detected a faint movement of something metallic. Something concealed. He stared into the darkness, then made out the dim outline.

A sentry behind a sand-bagged security post.

“We’d better stop here,” he said. “One of those guys will get nervous and shoot before he asks questions.”

“I needed to get out of that building for a while. Away from Colonel Chiu.”

“Chiu is a strange guy,” said Maxwell. “Why is he so hostile to you?”

“He considers himself a patriot, and he thinks I’m not. As much as he hates the People’s Republic, he hates people like me even more. He thinks I have no loyalty.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. To science. To civilization.” She smiled in the darkness. “To you, maybe.”

“No feelings for the PRC? Or Taiwan?”

“Why should I? The PRC is a repressive government that persecutes its own people. They killed Shaomin. Taiwan? It’s an island. That’s all.”

“What about the United States?”

“What about it?”

He gave up. The concept of patriotism was so ingrained in him that he couldn’t imagine not having it. Mai-ling was a person without a country, and that seemed to suit her. Obviously, it didn’t suit Colonel Chiu.

She fell silent for a while. Then, in the darkness, she said, “Brick, why don’t you have a girl friend?”

“I did. Now I don’t.”

“She left you? Or you left her?”

“It was more her idea.”

She thought about that for a moment, then she took Brick’s hands in hers. Her hands felt warm

and dry.

“A woman who would leave a man like you must have very bad judgment. You are lucky to be free of such a woman.”“Well, that’s putting a positive spin on it.”

After a moment, she said, “You would have liked Shaomin.”

“Your fiancé? Why?”

“He was much like you. Good looking. Very smart.

He loved what he was doing — working on the Dong-jin project and flying fighters.” But there was a secret part of his life that he didn’t discuss with me. I think it was because he wanted to protect me.”“Protect you from…?”

“The PLA security arm. Shaomin was afraid for my safety.”

Maxwell watched her in the darkness, realizing again how very little he knew about her. He could understand, at least from a professional point of view, why Chiu distrusted her. How could you trust someone who had no loyalty to the traditional things — flag, country, homeland?

He didn’t care. He could feel something in the touch of her fingers, like an electric field connecting them. Mai-ling Chen — he unconsciously made the switch from the Chinese usage to the western practice of family name last — was a girl with whom he could be comfortable. He liked her quick brain, the dry humor, her clear-eyed, irreverent world view.

That’s not all, Maxwell.

With a jolt, he realized he was smitten by the wide brown eyes, the lithe, curvaceous figure that even the baggy utilities couldn’t conceal.

More than smitten, actually.

He felt himself wanting to draw her close to him. And it definitely wasn’t her quick brain that he needed.

She sensed it too. She placed her hands on his forearms.

“What if we don’t come back?’”“I can’t predict the future.”

“I can. This is what I predict. You and I will come back and we will become lovers. It will be an intense and very physical relationship. After that, perhaps it will become something else.”

“Like what?”

“Something more advanced. We will appreciate each other for what we really are.”

“When did you become a fortune-teller?”

“When I was born. Chinese women have it in their genes.”

Be careful, said a voice inside him. You’ve got too much on your mind. This is no time to be thinking what you’re thinking.

Right.

With that thought, he felt himself filled with an even deeper longing. He told himself that what he sensed was just the chemistry of shared danger.

Right.

He felt her fingers sliding behind his neck. She was on her toes, her face six inches from his.

He gazed into her eyes for a full ten seconds, wrestling with his thoughts. I’m on a mission that requires total concentration. My country trusts me. Stay focused.

Right.

They weren’t aboard ship. No non-fraternization rule here. What they did was no one’s business except—

Enough thinking. He took her face in his hands and kissed her. Their lips barely touched, almost a social kiss, slow and tentative.

And then it became something else. She pressed herself to him, returning the kiss, her eyes wide open, hands entwined behind his neck.

He could feel her heart beating against his chest. He was aware that the sentry was watching them from his gun position. To hell with him. Nothing mattered at the moment. Nothing except the pressure of Mai-ling’s body against him.

They held each other for what seemed like an hour but was, in fact, less than a minute. She tilted her head upward. Her hands were still clasped behind his neck.

“You’ve done this before, Sam.”

“I have? I don’t remember.”

“You want to make love to me, don’t you?”

“Is that an invitation or an observation?”

“Neither. It’s a question.”

“The obvious answer is yes.”

“Yes, but…?”

“But we have a mission in five hours. And Colonel Chiu is spying on us.”

“Have you always been so honorable?”

“No. I’m just trying to impress you.”

She laughed. “When we’re finished with this mission, I’ll let you really impress me.”

Still holding her hand, he turned and started back toward the compound. Something made him stop. A sound, a low guttural voice behind them.

He glanced back over his shoulder. The sentry was watching them, talking into a radio handset.