As I boarded the train, I wondered if Rebecca was in love with Larry. Were they secretly lovers? It didn’t make sense. I thought about what she’d said about the planets. I felt like that shattered planet and I’d just gotten back from Pluto. Only I didn’t know if I was going to a brighter place or that oblivion beyond our solar system from which there was no return.
8. Machinations of a Prince
I.
I waited for George outside of his Beijing apartment in the morning. He smelled of bacon and beer. A group of people were practicing tai-chi outside despite the poisonous mist. Workers in gas masks were cleaning up the streets with traditional brooms. When George saw me, he quickened his pace and asked, “Vhat you doing here?”
“I came by to say hello.”
“Hello. Goodbye.”
He tried to walk past me. “George, what the hell, man?”
“I can’t be seen talking to you.”
“Why not?”
He looked up at the apartments, then down the street, a paranoid tension in his movements. “I can’t compromise my family.”
“It’s just me, George,” I said. “Do you not work for Larry anymore?”
He became extremely nervous, his eyes like tiny, scared slits. “Vhat you need?”
“I was hoping for light bombs and some other gadgets.”
“Vhat for?”
“I’m investigating something.”
George shook his head. “I can’t help you.”
He hurried forward, but as he did, he stumbled on the curb and fell. I immediately ran over to assist him. He whispered in my ear, “Go to Vudaokou Storage #301 and scan your fingerprints.”
He rose to his feet and hurried away.
In all the years I’d known him, I’d never seen him so scared.
I took the subway to Wudaokou Station. Vendors sold used shoes, oxygen refills, and bottled water. It was always busy and the subway was jammed with people rushing to work, home, their lovers, and wherever else they needed to have been an hour ago. The subway TVs were covering the Mars launch, the first joint expedition between China and Brazil. Space was pitch black from the frontal cameras and I wondered what the astronauts talked about between the long hours adrift. I thought of the cells within my own body, venturing into different arteries, traveling along the river of my bloodstream. Every organ was a sprightly city, every neighboring cell a potential neighbor or rival. Were there blood scientists that studied the physics of my body, a history of a universe that would one day come to an end upon my death?
“Dao le,” the automated voice told us as we arrived at the Wudaokou Station.
A flood of people rushed out of the train. Another flood filled it back up. After Linda and I had gotten married, a part of me wished we would have stayed in Beijing. Despite its cancer-inducing atmosphere, it was still the city we met in. Could love conquer tumors? Most people here had gas masks hooked into their noses, plastic tubes sticking out of their mouths. It was the capital city and smog wasn’t going to deter ambition. America’s capital was relatively clean when it came to air pollution, but it was infested with crime. Washington D.C. had been declared a war zone eight times in the past decade, struggling with poverty from the neighboring areas. I still remembered a visit for a photo shoot outside the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. We were staying at a hotel and both Linda and I were starving after a late release. We asked the concierge what restaurants he’d recommend and he told us, “I would recommend not going outside.”
“Why not?”
“You most likely will not be coming back, even with armor on.”
We had to settle for junk food as delivery services ended after five p.m. throughout the city for safety purposes. Chips, cookies, and a soda salad tasted great when you were hungry.
Wudaokou Storage #301 was close to the station and there were Korean restaurants all over as this was Beijing’s Koreatown. I’d have to save my craving for Korean BBQ. The storage warehouse was enormous but the front lobby was tiny, a red brick-affair with a young lady at the front desk playing some game through her goggles. She was flailing her fingers and hands in front of her as she controlled objects only visible to her.
I cleared my throat to get her attention.
“Scan in,” she said.
Above her desk, there was a scanner. I put my palm against it and a retinal check followed. There was a confirming ring tone. To the right of me, a part of the brick wall slid open and an elevator awaited. I looked to the girl, but she was still playing her game. I entered the elevator. The door shut and I felt motion. When it opened back up, I was in a small room filled with weapons. It was dusty and the light had a motion sensor that triggered as I stepped in.
On the shelf, there were light bombs, an electric blade that could cut most metals, a small wooden gun that fired chemically coated paralysis darts, as well as a sleek flesh-toned skintight suit. If I wasn’t mistaken, this was an adaptive armor suit that warded off most bullets and protected against knife thrusts. It was military-grade, something George must have salvaged from the African Wars. Even though it was designed to fit Larry, it was adaptive and shrunk to fit my body. I put it on under my clothes. Though it didn’t provide protection for my head, there was also a black wig shaped like a crew cut that had titanium coating in-between without feeling too heavy on the scalp. I picked up a lens that would go over my eye like a contact lens and acted as a binocular, albeit with streaming data and thermal visuals that could be toggled. All the weapons were nonlethal. There was also a suitcase filled with cash, standard currency.
There wasn’t any message or a note. But George had prepared this, probably at Larry’s behest. What was it all for and why include me on the entry codes? What was George so scared of? I had no answers and contented myself with the equipment. I could barely feel the armor under my clothes. I took a stack of cash just in case.
When I left the warehouse, the girl was still playing her game. She didn’t even notice my departure.
II.
As soon as I stepped outside, a man in a black suit approached me. He was one of those “faceless”’ men I’d heard about but only rarely seen. He’d had plastic surgery/image facilitation to make his face generic, plastic almost to resemble that of a mannequin, skin stretched like Botox gone awry. They were part of a special agency that provided guards that were indistinguishable from one another and could get away with anything since no one could differentiate between the thousands they hired. “My boss would like to see you,” he said.
“Who’s your boss?”
“Miss Rina Zhang-Gibson.”
The Colonel? Chao Toufa’s principal rival and the most dreaded military officer in the African Wars. “What does she want?”
“She wanted to welcome you back to Beijing. You can use the phone in the car.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Of course.”
He led me to a red limo and I entered the backseat. There was a logo inside that was labeled Zhang Zhang, the brand name for her line of wigs. The projectors created a perfect 3D image of her in front of me. I’d never seen her up close. She didn’t have a wig on, was older (60s maybe?), wrinkles as battle scars under her eyes. There was a tough duress imprinted in her face, a no-nonsense tautness in her lips. Even when she smiled, there was venom in her gaze. She’d seen things I couldn’t begin to fathom. She wore a two-piece purple business suit with a white tie that resembled our old UN uniforms and I could read the tattoo from the insignia of her former African battalion on her scalp; a desert tiger. The King of Hell was there too, and I cringed when I saw the necklace of teeth around her neck.