“I’m fine,” I insisted, carefully making my way across the rocks before sitting down. The sun was climbing into a brilliantly blue sky over the jungle behind us as incoming waves gently rolled in. It was quite a view.
Ling was quiet for a few moments. She brushed a loose strand of her long, black hair out of her face as she looked out over the ocean. I couldn’t guess what she was thinking; I’m pretty perceptive, I think, but this woman was impossible to read. Before I could say anything, though, she asked me a question. “What changed?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You’ve been with us for quite a while now, and seemed content enough with our hospitality. Until this morning, that is, when you suddenly decided you need to return to the United States. I don’t need to tell you how risky that could be for you. Your former employers are not people to be trifled with. Right now they most likely think you’re dead. Is it not better to go on letting them think that, rather than to risk being tracked down?”
Ling knew more about Project Heartbreaker than she let on. Once again, the Exodus operative seemed to know a lot more about what was going on than I did, and I was getting sick of it. I’d had enough of being the last one to know everything.
“Look,” I said, trying to be firm without being rude. “I don’t really want to get into it. Nothing personal. I just thought about it last night, and I think it’s time for me to go home. I mean, I can’t stay here forever.”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “I see.” She sounded dubious. “I take it you learned something new while using the computer this morning?”
I took a deep breath before I said anything. I hated being spied on, but there was nothing to be gained by getting angry with Ling. I needed her help. “Yes, I did, but I don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry to impose on you again. And please don’t think I’m not grateful for everything you’ve done for me. You saved my life, and the lives of my friends. But I really can’t stay here.”
“When I was thirteen,” Ling began casually, looking out over the ocean again, “my parents were arrested by State Security. They were Christians and tried to flee with me to the South when the war started. I was sent to a Communist Party School to be reeducated. I never saw them again.”
“That’s . . . awful, I said hesitantly. “I didn’t know.”
“Four years later I was conscripted into the Women’s Auxiliary of the People’s Liberation Army. I was wounded in the Third Battle of Shanghai later that year. Our forces were in complete disarray after Shanghai was destroyed by a nuclear weapon. A corrupt officer sold me and a dozen other women to a band of human traffickers from South China in exchange for the equivalent of five thousand dollars. I spent the next two years in hell before I was rescued by Exodus. Like the children you met this morning, I immediately volunteered. I’ve been here ever since.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“I realized that I know everything about you, Michael,” she said, casting me a sidelong glance, “and you know nothing about me. I can tell that bothers you. I will arrange for you to return to America if you wish. But will you please tell me why?”
My expression hardened as I carefully chose my words. “They told me I was doing a great thing, that I was serving my country. We went over there for that reason. For many of us, it was a second chance, an offer of redemption. They sent us on missions that were so dangerous it was a joke. Many of my friends died in the process. We never quit. Not a single one of my teammates asked to go home.”
“Until you contacted me,” Ling injected.
“It wasn’t about me anymore. It was about Sarah. And I saw the writing on the wall. I didn’t trust the people I worked for. I was worried they’d leave us hanging if things went south.” I shook my head bitterly. “I hate it when I’m right.”
Ling gave me a faint smile. “Michael, I could tell that the night you and your friends met me in Zubara. I knew right away it was about her.”
“We went over there trying to do the right thing. No matter what they asked of us, we did it. We accomplished the impossible. I did terrible things, killed so many people, because they told me it was necessary. They told me I was protecting my country. And what did we get for it? They turned us over to the people we’d been fighting and left us all to die. Their brilliant plan didn’t work the way they thought it would, so they made a deal with the enemy because suddenly we were inconvenient.”
“And who is ‘they’?” Ling asked.
“They’re called Majestic, but it’s just a name. I don’t know if it really means anything. I was given a lot of information by my boss before he died, and even with all that, I don’t really understand everything that was going on. There are too many layers to know who’s really pulling the strings, you know? But I do have one name. Gordon Willis. He was the guy that recruited me. He’s the one that sold us out. He’s the reason Sarah’s dead.”
Ling gave me a hard look for a few seconds. “I see,” she said at last. “It is as I thought. I could see it in your eyes when you found me this morning.”
“See what?”
“The hatred, the anger, the desire for revenge. I know these things very well. These are the things that motivated me to join Exodus in the beginning. I volunteered with the idea that I would eventually track down the PLA officer that sold me and my comrades to the slavers. I fantasized about that often when I began my training. And when I was done with that corrupt officer, I was going to go after the Communist Party running dogs that took me away from my parents.” Ling actually chuckled, as if telling a silly story about her petulant youth.
“I take it that didn’t work out?”
“Of course it didn’t. I don’t know the name of the officer that was responsible for what happened to me, even if he survived the war. Exodus doesn’t have the capability to overthrow the Communist government of North China. And operations aren’t planned around the angry wishes of eighteen-year-old new recruits. People who join Exodus only to seek revenge don’t last very long.”
“Ling, I see where you’re going with this, but I don’t—”
“Do you now?” Ling said sharply, interrupting me. “I told you all this because I want you to know that I understand how you feel. I know too well the bitter taste of betrayal, the frustration of being powerless to change a vile injustice. I understand the desire to avenge your dead comrades and bring justice to those responsible, probably better than you do. I’m not trying to talk you out of doing what you think you need to do.”
I said nothing. Now I was just confused.
Ling smiled. “Surprised? Exodus’s reason for being is to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves, to avenge those that the world has forgotten, and speak for those who have been silenced. Look around you. The world teeters on the brink of the abyss; civilization dangles by a thread. On every corner of the earth there is oppression, injustice, slavery, and tyranny. In far too many places freedom is being stamped out under a jackboot. In other places, people are slaughtered wholesale for being the wrong race or religion. Meanwhile the so-called civilized world blithely ignores these horrors so long as they don’t interrupt the latest reality-television program.”
I was taken aback. Ling was one of the most reserved people I’d ever met.
“For six hundred years,” she continued, “Exodus has stood alone against the darkness. For six hundred years, we’ve fought for the dignity and the freedom of the individual. For generations we’ve fought, and died, for the idea that every human life has value, and that the individual is as important as the kingdom or the state. We fight for the idea that every person is accountable for his actions, no matter how powerful or exalted he may be.”