The young officer slipped the Flagon into position aft and below Borisov's craft and waited for orders.
"You will be glad to know," Arege Borisov said, "that we are returning to Danjia. That is all for today."
Even though he knew he hadn't, Borisov could have sworn he heard a sigh of relief.
There had been a sign reading 35 km along the side of the road where Shu Li had turned south off the Danjia highway winding around the Songtao reservoir. From that point on, the surface of the narrow, one-lane road had deteriorated rapidly.
The tiny Renault protested, and on one occasion overheated, but Shu Li pressed on until they came to a small rise overlooking an overgrown cemetery on one side of the road and a narrow path leading down to a small stream on the other.
Bogner commented on the fact that a few of the grave sites were marked with whitewashed crosses.
"Christians," Shu Li said matter-of-factly. "Father Hua is permitted to bury them hereit's the only place on the island. Christians are an embarrassment to the Han Ki Po regime."
Shu Li Wan backed the Renault into a crop of tall bunchgrass, turned the car around, and inched the ancient Dauphine into the underbrush. She opened the hood, left the windows rolled down, loosened the distributor cap, wedged a small piece of paper under it until it was hidden, then bent over and began scooping dust and sand on the car.
Bogner watched her, and she anticipated his question.
"The Russians call them 'hooligans.' You Americans call them 'thieves' and 'street gangs.' In China, we call them 'guo.' It's just another way of saying 'trouble.'" She pointed down the narrow road. "The only thing between us and the Danjia installation is about twenty-five kilometers of worthless land. And just about the only people who use this road beside Father Hua and his charges are the 'guo' that can't find jobs at Danjia. If they see my car sitting along the side of the road with the hood up and dust all over it, they'll figure it's been abandoned because it quit running. I loosened the distributor cap just in case one of them knows how to hotwire it."
Bogner looked around. "Where the hell do we go from here?"
Shu Li, dressed in what Bogner would have loosely described as a Chinese version of a safari suit, pointed at a narrow footpath leading down a hill. "It's about a half a mile or soin that direction." Then she added, "I should have warned you, the chanko flies are terrible this time of year."
"Ever been in Greenland in the summertime?" Bogner laughed.
Shu Li shook her head.
"Believe me, they're worse."
Colonel Quan led the aging entourage of Party officials down the ramp into the oily air of hangar 11 and waited for the last of the seven to arrive. The young officer pushing Han Ki Po's wheelchair moved the eighty-seven-year-old Party Chairman of the Fifth Academy around to a vantage point in front of the group. Even though he was seeing the Su-39 for the first time, the old man's expression did not change.
Quan nodded to the waiting Borisov and his interpreter.
"Please proceed, Major Borisov."
"Chairman Han," Borisov began, "what you are looking at is the latest in my country's technology. The Su-39 has been constructed primarily of aluminum, with the liberal use of titanium components in certain critical areas. The exterior is coated with radar-absorption material consisting of magnetic iron, ferrite particles, and polymer binders."
Borisov waited for the translator to clarify some of the terminology before moving closer to the plane's engines.
"The aircraft is powered by two twelve-thousand-pound Tumanski R-35 engines. These engines are nonafterburning variants of earlier models. We have partially concealed the inlet ducts with foils coated with the same radarabsorbing material I mentioned earlier."
Han Ki Po gestured with palsied hands, and in a barely audible voice said, "You shenma tebiede haochi?"
Barisov's interpreter repeated the old man's question. "Chairman Han asks about your plane's specialty."
"Primarily tactical, although it can carry nuclear weapons of a strategic nature. It can fly faster, farther, and deliver a bigger weapons payload than anything the Americans, British, or French currently have in their arsenal."
For the first time Han Ki Po smiled. He had no teeth and his skin was nearly transparent.
Quan gestured for Borisov to continue.
"The cockpit is equipped with most of what we now consider to be conventional equipment in an aircraft of this type. There is a heads-up display and a FLIRforward-looking infrared cathode ray tube. Across the control panel there are four five-inch multifunction display CRTs. Both the FLIR and the HUD are, of course, transparent. This allows both transient and fixed-position imagery to be seen without creating a trackable surface."
Borisov again paused for the interpreter and caught Quan's eye. ''Enough," the Colonel announced. "Chairman Han is weary from his long journey from the compound at Huangliu. We must give him time to rest."
As the entourage of Party officials began filing out, Quan delayed. He looked at Borisov and then dismissed the interpreter. Borisov knew why.
"Lieutenant Li is not qualified," Borisov said flatly. "I have the flight instruction recorder. It is available. You may listen to it anytime you wish. If a pilot cannot master the Su-21, he has no business being assigned to an aircraft with the complexities and capabilities of the Su-39."
"Then they have all failed," Quan said. There was disappointment in his raspy voice.
"It will take more time," Borisov said. "They must receive further training in aircraft with less sophisticated demands."
"Time is a luxury, Major Borisov, we do not have. You must find a way."
Father Hua Xiling was not at all what Bogner had expected. At eighty-two years of age, his once-supple body had been twisted into a caricature, crippled by arthritis and ravaged by time. He spoke English fluently, but his sight was failing and he relied upon a tall and slender, somewhat balding man who seemed so much like the aging priest that he had become an extension of the old man. The man was known as Le Win Fo. Unlike Hua, he offered no welcome even though Shu Li had revealed Bogner's real identity from the outset. There was no mention of the Jade cover.
"I have no sons," Hua explained. "But I have something even better than a sonI have Le Win Fo. He has been with me since the final days of the war. His mother was my sister. The Japanese killed her." Hua spoke plainly, without trying to soften the reality. "He was but a youth then; he brought her home with him. She is buried on the hill.''
Bogner estimated Le Win Fo to be in his late fifties, maybe even his early sixties. With his deep-set eyes and high forehead, his face appeared to have been chiseled out of sorrel stone.
Hua lit his pipe and looked at Bogner. He ignored Shu Li. "Why are you here, Captain?"
Bogner began a methodical account of the last five days: the explosion of the Saratoga oil rig, the Saint Martin's masacre, the abduction of Schubatis, even down to the Americans' conviction that it was the Fifth Academy and not a dissident faction of the Red Army that had perpetrated the terrorist attacks. "From what we've been able to learn so far, the trail leads to the Danjia installation and some of Han Ki Po's more ardent supporters… specifically, a man by the name of Colonel Quan."