War of Eagles

SIXTY-ONE

The state-run newspapers and telecasts said very little about the loss of the Chinese rocket. They reported that there had been an accident at Xichang involving “foreign-built technology” but offered little elaboration.

It was typical of China, Hood thought. Every failure was easy to hide and absorb because every step forward was tentative, uncertain, almost apologetic. Even if Tam Li had succeeded in getting his confrontation with Taiwan, even if he had enjoyed a personal bump in power, he might not have gotten the coup he apparently sought. After centuries of war and upheaval, the giant nation had become entropic. Change would be slow and prompted by outside economic investment, the spread of technology to the remote farms and mountains, the glacial improvement in education and the quality of life. China probably would not change dramatically in Hood’s lifetime.

Hood wondered if that was also true of Anita.

The prime minister’s daughter had come to the embassy to see him off. She had been there before, at official receptions, but never without her father. Hood saw her in the downstairs library. Anita was standing in the center of the room. She was dressed conservatively in a black skirt and white blouse. She turned when he entered. The big, open smile on her face surprised him.

“Well, that’s nice to see,” Hood said.

“What is?”

“Your smile,” he replied.

“Oh,” she said self-consciously as she frowned her way into a more neutral expression. “Is this better?”

“You didn’t have to do that. I liked it,” Hood said. He motioned toward the high walls lined with leather-bound volumes and even occasional scrolls tucked in cylindrical cases. “This is obviously your idea of heaven.”

“If I believed in heaven, it would be,” she said.

She was looking directly at Hood when she said that. He wondered if he had just made a big foot-in-mouth faux pas. This woman did risk incineration to save him, after all.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked.

“Like Rip Van Winkle,” he replied as he reached her side.

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“You?”

“The same,” she said. “My father is sorry he could not be here.”

“I am sure today will be a busy day,” Hood said.

“He barely slept last night,” Anita said. “But it was a good insomnia, if there can be such a thing. He was more energized than I have seen him in a long time.”

“I assume there will be a trial,” Hood said.

“There will be hearings, but I suspect they will be private. My father does not want to give Tam Li a forum.”

“Understandable,” Hood said.

“Do you think so?” Anita asked. “I would have expected you to be an advocate for free speech.”

“I don’t think a government official should be allowed to justify the lies he told and the murders he authorized to send his nation into a reckless and lawless war,” Hood said.

“I am glad to see that we agree,” Anita said.

“If we had the time, we would probably find we agree on a great deal,” Hood told her.

“By the way, my father asked me to tell you that he attempted to thank General Rodgers and your other associates yesterday,” Anita said. “But they seem to have disappeared.”

“Mike left right away on a Lufthansa flight,” Hood told her. “He called and told me they had insurance matters to discuss immediately back in the States.”

“I see. And the others? The young men and women?”

“I suppose they went back to work.”

“At the space complex?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Hood replied. “I did not have time to speak with them.”

Unlike the other night, Anita let the interrogation rest. She had obviously realized there was more to be gained by long-term trust than short-term pressure. She did a little turn around the library. “I like that story very much,” she said.

“Which one?” Hood asked.

“Rip Van Winkle. I like all of Washington Irving, in fact. Now there is an author who captured the real American. Not jingoistic, militaristic ideologues.”

“What is your definition of ‘the real American’?” Hood asked.

“The tough but good-hearted innocent,” she said. “You are that, I think.”

“Is that a good thing?” Hood asked. He was not sure that it had been a compliment, entirely.

“It is very good. Innocence is a clean slate,” she replied. “It is open and receptive to outside ideas. The toughness makes it discretionary. It only allows ideas that are enriching.”

“There is one place where the author may have captured something more universal than that,” Hood said.

Anita’s smile returned. “Waking up from a long slumber and expecting the world to be the same,” she said.

Hood had been formulating an answer more or less along those lines. Her smart and self-aware response stopped his thought process dead. There was nothing he could add to that except an impressed little smile.

“China has indeed been internally focused for many, many years,” she said. “But we do not expect the world to stay still. We expect to learn from the mistakes of others. My father taught me that all of civilization is still relatively young, composed of creatures who are closer to the caves than to the heavens. He believes that if we move too quickly we risk making catastrophic errors. He is correct. Look at what happened yesterday. Our rush to embrace the technology of other nations, to gain scientific parity, nearly resulted in disaster.”

Hood’s smile broadened. “I was not alluding to China,” he said.

Anita was still for a moment, and then her pretty face flushed. Now she was the speechless one.

“I’m sorry,” Hood said. “I did not mean to embarrass you.”

“I believe you did,” she said, still flustered.

“Absolutely not,” he assured her. “You heard the thunder. You heard the sound of little men playing duckpins, but you did not rise with uncertainty or confusion. You jumped up. You saved my life.”

The woman relaxed somewhat. “I thought you meant—”

“That you are a bearded old man with sore knees?”

“That I am living in a political, academic, and cultural cocoon.” She smiled.

“Anita, the chances are very good I would never even have used all those words in one sentence.”

“You’re being modest, which is one of the things I’ve come to admire about you,” Anita said. “Though you were very wrong about one thing. It was ninepins.”

“Excuse me?”

“The little men in Rip Van Winkle were playing ninepins, not duckpins,” Anita informed him.

Hood smiled as modest a smile as he could muster. “I have a suggestion. When you can get away for a week or so, why don’t you come to America. We can take a drive to the Hudson Valley where Washington Irving wrote, see if there are pins of any kind lying around in the countryside.”

“I would like that,” she said.

“I promise there will be fewer fireworks,” Hood said.

“Why? Fireworks can be nice,” she said.

“Then you should come to America on the Fourth of July,” Hood said.

“I was not alluding to pyrotechnics,” Anita said over her shoulder as she walked toward the door.

Now it was Hood’s turn to blush. He did not follow her out but waited. He would not have known what to say after that. Which was almost certainly what the woman had intended.

Hood did not feel too bad, however. Anita did say the ideal American was innocent.

He glanced at his watch and realized he was late. There was a car waiting to take him to the airport. Like Rodgers, Hood would be flying commercial.

That was one good thing about a government job. It was a bureaucracy. Unlike private industry, accountability did not have to be immediate. Which was a good thing. Because right now, a comfortable seat and a few mindless DVDs sounded like a great idea before tackling his mission report for the president.