Now it was Jake Grafton’s turn to go to the window and look out. “Why don’t you just tell me some lie to get me out of your hair?”
“Ooh boy, that’s rich! Coming from you. When they asked you way back when whether or not you had ever bombed an unauthorized target, what did you say?”
“I said yes.”
“Indeed you did. You were the rarest of rarities, a truly honest man. Sorry, but I don’t have it in me to lie to Jake Grafton.”
“Listen, Tiger. I can’t stay silent for a week. Not if you tell me you’re up to something you shouldn’t be up to.”
Cole cocked his head and looked at Jake with an odd expression. “What should I be up to?”
“Don’t give me that!”
“Do you know what these Communists are? Do you know what they represent?”
Jake Grafton leaned across the desk toward Tiger Cole. “If the government of the United States told me to pull the trigger,” he whispered hoarsely, “I’d be willing to personally send every Communist in the world straight to hell. But as long as I’m in the United States Navy I don’t have the luxury of choosing that course of action without orders. Neither do you when you’re representing the United States of America. Write out that resignation and date it today. I’ll send it in for you.”
Cole leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes.
After a bit he asked, “When are you going to send it in?”
Grafton threw up his hands. “I don’t know!”
Cole spun around to the PC that sat on a stand near the desk, turned it on, put stationery in the printer tray, and started typing. Three minutes later a letter rolled off the printer. Cole read it through, signed it, then handed it to Grafton.
Jake took his time reading the letter, then folded it carefully. “Got an envelope?”
Cole got one from a drawer and handed it across the desk.
Jake put the letter in the envelope, then stowed it in an inside breast pocket of his sports coat.
“Any more questions?” Cole said.
“Want to tell me why?”
Cole leaned back in his chair and stretched. He looked out the window at the slabs of skyscraper glass while he collected his thoughts, then turned his attention back to Grafton.
“I should have died that December day in 1972 when I was lying in the jungle muck in Laos with a broken back. Would have died, too, if I had been flying with an average mortal man. But no! As fate would have it I was flying with Jake Grafton, the warrior incarnate. Jake Grafton wasn’t leaving that jungle without me — it was both of us or neither of us. So he fought and we both lived. I can close my eyes and remember it like it was yesterday. That moment was the most important of my life.”
Cole turned toward the window and the gloomy, rainy day. “And I remember the day I became a millionaire,” he continued, speaking softly. “We did an initial public offering. I went from owing thirty-three thousand dollars in student loans and two thousand on an old Chevy to a net worth of twenty-three million bucks just like that!” He snapped his fingers, turned back toward Jake, and snapped them again.
“One day in September three years ago I became a billionaire. The tech stocks were going up like a rocket, the valuations were… but you know all that. You see, we designed software for complex data networks and wireless telephone systems and burglar alarms and car security systems and toys that talk… magic technoshit. Stuff. In a world full of stuff, we were the kings of the new magic stuff. The world beat a path to our door.
“So there I was, filthy rich, able to buy anything on the planet… and none of it meant pee-squat. My boy died of dope, and I got the hell out. That was where I was when I was asked to help overthrow the Communists.”
Tiger Cole leaned forward in the chair. “I’ve been in Hong Kong two years and gave a hundred million or so to the revolution, and the value of my stock holdings has just kept climbing. I’m worth two billion dollars, Jake. Two billion! I’ve squandered my life on bad marriages to stupid women. Wasted it, and the system gave me two... billion… dollars.”
Cole spread his hands, as if that explained everything. Obviously he thought it did.
“Who asked you to help overthrow the Communists?” Jake Grafton said.
“Ahh…” A trace of a smile appeared on Cole’s face. “You already know or you wouldn’t have asked.”
Jake Grafton stood, went to the door of the office, and pulled it open several inches. He looked back at Cole, still sitting behind the desk. “Some dreams are bigger than others,” he said.
Cole nodded.
“The sandwich was okay. The soup’s terrible.”
Jake Grafton pulled the door completely open and walked out of the office.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rip Buckingham was on a squash court batting balls against the wall when Tiger Cole arrived at the athletic club. “I heard the governor shut down the paper,” Cole said after he closed the door to the court.
“Yep. I spent a couple of nights in the can.”
“You’ve been begging for it for years.”
“Already I feel cleaner, closer to God. I’m going to try to get arrested more often, work up to once or twice a month.”
They played hard for twenty minutes, then returned to the dressing room. They were the only men in the shower. As the water ran, Rip told Cole, “The rain is supposed to stop tonight. Wu says tomorrow is our day.”
“Okay.”
“Kerry is counting on your help with the computers.”
“I can’t guarantee anything. We need another week to verify our methodology.”
“We don’t have a week.”
“I didn’t think he’d wait.”
“Hard to believe the time has come.”
Cole just nodded. He thought, life’s transitions always come at the worst possible time.
“How about the governor? What is he saying to Beijing?” Rip knew that Cole had had the CIA bug City Hall.
“He doesn’t have a clue,” Cole said. “If the Chinese government knows what’s going down, they haven’t told him or Tang.”
“I’d like to bring Sue Lin and her mom to the consulate,” Rip muttered, barely loud enough for Cole to hear above the sound of running water.
“Rip, we’ve been all through that three or four times. Take them to the Australian consulate.”
“If it goes bad the PLA will overrun the Australians. The Americans are the only people they don’t have the balls to take on.”
“Take the women to the airport tonight and put them on a plane to Sydney.”
“The old woman won’t go, can’t go — doesn’t have a passport — and the daughter won’t go without the old woman.”
“For Christ’s sake! Have your father send a private jet; land them somewhere in the damned outback. There has to be at least one immigration official in Australia who can be bought.”
“There are probably dozens, but the women don’t want to leave.”
“Rip, it’s time to stop sweating the program. If we lose we’ll all be dead. The women know that.”
“Jesus, another philosopher!” Rip glowered at the older man.
Cole was right, of course. Still, Rip thought he would feel better if he had somehow managed to get Sue Lin and Lin Pe out of the line of fire. If that made him an unrepentant chauvinist, so be it.
“Had a talk with Sonny Wong a few nights ago,” he told Cole. “The bastard says someone in your consulate is selling him genuine American passports.”
“Think he was lying?”
“No.”
Tiger Cole finished washing and went into the dressing area. When Rip joined him, he said in a low voice, “That explains a lot.”
“A lot of what?”
“China Bob Chan knew far too much. He and Sonny did dozens of deals together through the years.”