Eagle Station

Twenty-Eight

Once a walled imperial garden, the Zhongnanhai compound’s palaces, halls, pavilions, and other buildings were now the sole province of the higher echelons of the Communist Party’s leadership cadre. In his capacity as general secretary of the Party, President Li Jun conducted most of his day-to-day administrative work inside the compound. Its spacious grounds and buildings were also used for meetings — both public and private — with important foreign dignitaries.

Penglai Pavilion occupied the southern end of an artificial island built six centuries ago for an emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Connected to the rest of Zhongnanhai only by a stone bridge, it was an ideal location for a top secret honors ceremony. Details of soldiers and stern-faced plainclothes security guards now blocked the bridge at both ends. No one without the highest possible clearance could get anywhere close to the island, let alone to the two-story pavilion.

Deftly, Marshal Mikhail Leonov finished pinning Russia’s highest decoration, Hero of the Russian Federation, on Captain Dmitry Yanin’s chest. The five-pointed gold star with its white, blue, and red ribbon dangled next to China’s Aerospace Meritorious Service medal, awarded moments before by Li Jun. He shook the younger cosmonaut’s hand warmly and stepped back.

Each country had, appropriately in Leonov’s view, reserved its highest decoration for its own members of the Federation 2 crew. That was why cosmonauts Lavrentyev and Yanin were now Heroes of the Federation, while taikonauts Tian and Liu had just received China’s Order of August the First from their own leader.

Beaming with pride, the four men stiffened to attention and saluted.

Gravely, Li Jun and Leonov acknowledged the salute. They watched in silence while security guards escorted Tian, Lavrentyev, and the others away. All four crewmen had an enormous amount of hard work and rigorous training ahead as they prepared for further military space missions.

When the two leaders were effectively alone, with their nearest aides well out of earshot, Li Jun turned to Leonov with a pleased smile. “I congratulate you, Comrade Marshal. You argued that many in the West would swallow our deception plan whole. And you were right.”

“Does that include the American government?” Leonov asked.

Li nodded. “I’ve received a report from my Ministry of State Security. Our sources in Washington confirm what we hoped. The prevailing view among official circles is that the Pilgrim 1 mission was exactly what we said it was — an unmanned test flight.” He shrugged. “Naturally, a tiny handful of people remain suspicious. But they are seen by most of those in the American government as either paranoid or wildly unrealistic.”

“Even by President Farrell?” Leonov asked skeptically.

“Perhaps not,” Li admitted. He smiled again. “But the American president is not an absolute ruler. Whatever his personal beliefs might be, he is still constrained, to a degree, by the views of Washington’s bureaucracy. And those officials are both risk-averse and unimaginative by nature and experience.”

Leonov nodded. That much of what the Chinese leader said was true. After all, the former American president Martindale had created Scion, his private military and intelligence organization, largely because he’d so often been frustrated by bureaucratic inertia and caution while in office. But in this case, even if Farrell turned to Scion again, there should be little its paid mercenaries and spies could do. They were trained and equipped for covert operations on Earth or in low Earth orbit — not for missions in deep space or on the moon.

He looked at the other man. “Then you agree that we should press on with Heaven’s Thunder?”

“Of course,” Li said. His pleasant expression changed character, becoming infinitely colder and crueler. Plainly, the humiliating defeat the Americans had inflicted on him in the Paracel Islands still rankled. “And as rapidly as possible. For the moment, the Americans are still blind and deaf, totally ignorant of our true plans and capabilities. But even they will not slumber on in ignorance forever. By the time they do wake up, it must be entirely too late.”