“Really?”
“Yes, really. What the hell for I’ll never know—’less he was going to send it to ‘America’s Funniest Videos.’ I was cussin’ to beat the band. Then you know what?”
Rosemary really couldn’t imagine. “What?”
“Eddie’s mom — old battle-ax — saw it and said it was too bad Andrea couldn’t keep control—’control’! She meant me cussing — old bitch.”
When they got back to the house the sun was shining brilliantly and the water had the oily sheen of a calm. Rosemary tried to adopt its pacific mood, but at the gate the guards kept them a long time verifying ID — which was ridiculous, Andrea said, because they knew her by sight. She didn’t say anything more to Rosemary, however, because she figured from the mood of the guards and their insisting that she open the trunk, something had happened while they were away. She quickly thwarted any fear Rosemary might have by commenting, “Well it’s nice to know our boys are on the ball.”
“Yes,” Rosemary agreed. “It’s reassuring.”
“Uh-huh,” Andrea said, watching the guard in the rear-view mirror. “If he doesn’t close that soon all my frozen stuff’ll turn to mush.”
They were going over it with some kind of detector.
“That sabotage near Tomortei,” Freeman asked before going to bed, standing resplendent in a patchwork silk robe of vibrant squares, each one emblazoned with the logo of an American football team. “Any reaction from the Chinese?”
“Internal, sir. Intelligence has heard murmurs of a punishment detail — three tracks near Huade — but nothing on the trace. The truce is holding, General.”
“Yes,” Freeman answered, “for the present.”
“Harvey Simmet was right, General. There’s a typhoon on the way — miles across. Ground’ll be mush. Cheng won’t be able to move his T-55s or T-72s for long.”
“All right,” Freeman answered, “but keep the trace reports coming in. We’ll be without SATREP until that typhoon has passed us. Once it starts to rain—”
“Yes, sir. We’ll keep our eye on it. Goodnight.”
“Night.”
Inside the small eight-by-four room of the headquarters Quonset hut, the general went through his nightly ritual. He kneeled, his West Point ring pressing hard against his forehead as he prayed that he might “vanquish my enemies and uphold the freedom and honor of the United States,” got up, broke open his pump-action Remington 1200 shotgun, checking the double 0-load, closed it, and leaned it up beside his bed and checked the Sig Sauer 9mm Parabellum beneath his pillow. There had already been two attempts on his life.
In bed he took up his copy of The Art of War by Sun Tzu, which he kept by his Bible that he always read before going to bed, liking best the part wherein an army was described as having to be like a river having to adapt its course as it comes across the opposition, the kind of measure that always separated out those who had initiative from those who did not. It reminded him of Douglas MacArthur’s strategy in the Pacific where MacArthur had simply bypassed several strongly held Japanese islands and attacked others, cutting off the ones he left behind from all supply. Next he put one of, the earphones from his Walkman on, letting the other one lie on the sheet so that one ear could always hear the alarm on the shelf above his bed. On the tape he heard the voice of John F. Kennedy awarding Churchill honorary citizenship of the United States, talking about how Churchill had “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”
“Best damn speech he ever made,” the general murmured, and turned a page of The Art of War, as he did every night, like an athlete always in training, to remind himself of that which could rob you of victory — of how the simplest lack of vigilance could have dire consequences— that one must never underestimate the opposition.
At that moment ten Chinese divisions, 150,000 men, set their sights on the desert around Orgon Tal, the division equipped with East Wind hovercrafts. Sand, mud, or water — it didn’t matter — the hovercrafts could attack at over ninety kilometers per hour.
Freeman could hear the rain drumming sonorously on the metallic roof, it making him feel warm and safe just as it did when he was a child in Missouri. But how much rain would mere be? Freeman lifted his phone.
“Duty Officer Burns, sir.”
“Burns, get Harvey Simmet up here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“On the double, Burns.”
“Yes, sir. Right away.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Tashi delag,” the Tibetan said, smiling, his earflaps giving him a slightly comical look.
“Tashi delag,” the other traveler, a European, answered. The Tibetan nomad’s smile alarmed the European. Was it merely a good-natured greeting, or was it an “I know why you’re here” look?
It had taken months for the man, a Dutchman named William Hartog, to receive the necessary visas to enter Tibet as a health researcher looking for alternate types of medicine and in particular at the effects of AMS — acute mountain sickness — which affected so many tourists, afflicting them with everything from acute headache to dizziness and on occasion death if the AMS victim was not kept warm enough. His company, Royal Dutch Apothecary, was, he said, looking more closely now at the holistic medical systems practiced by the Tibetans, including the nomads who inhabited the enormous plateau at a height of fourteen thousand feet, the plateau stretching from the Kunlun Range to the north southward to the Himalayas. In between there was desert and occasional grassland and salt lakes.
Hartog was interested in various herbal remedies, golden needle acupuncture, and in particular moxabustion, in which small tufts of moxa incense were burned atop a needle so that the warmth could travel down and affect the nerve point. He was also looking for plants that could not only be used to prevent and/or reduce the effects of mountain sickness but could prove curative for a plethora of Western afflictions and diseases. Hartog’s curiosity was equally aroused by the Tibetans’ insistence on there being a balance between wind, bile, and phlegm, that is, the three humors that the Tibetans believe must be in balance if disease is not to gain the upper hand.
Hartog had already watched the fine and intricate art of pulse diagnosis in which various pulses provide a readout, as it were, of the various parts of the sick body. By paying homage to the Tibetan medicines — now called Chinese medicines ever since China had invaded the country of two million in 1950—Hartog was more respected by the locals and was not especially harassed by any of the 120,000 PLA troops stationed throughout Tibet or, as the Chinese preferred to call it, the “autonomous region.” He had become fairly well known in the markets and often advised a PLA member to try this or that remedy for any proffered illness, but always he would take the medicine himself to show good faith. Hartog was one of those patient explorers. He took the time to make copious notes and photographs of the various herbs.
But underneath, Hartog’s pulse wasn’t steady, for he was a very frustrated agent of MOSSAD who, because of Chinese sales of ICBMs to Muslim countries, wanted to know all they could about the missiles ever since the Swedish seismologist had recorded an underground nuclear explosion near the Xinjiang border with Tibet. There was a strong suspicion that, following the B-52 destruction of Chinese ICBM sites on the roof of the world earlier in the war, a new site was now in Tibet. The savings in fuel, launching from fourteen thousand feet above sea level, for example, was enormous. But where the site was, neither satellite nor other ELINT — electronic intelligence — had discovered, much of the movement up the Lhasa Road from the province of Qinghai past Lake Nam having been done either at night or under heavy cloud cover.