“I didn’t think so,” Yeager said slowly. “It’d be a real kick in the teeth finding out I was wrong. The shiplord and the Red Chinese are a lot more important targets than I’ll ever be, though.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Straha’s driver agreed, adding, “No offense.”
While Sam Yeager yipped Tosevite laughter, Straha stared out at the dead Big Ugly in the motorcar behind his own. That could have been me, he thought, with a chill worse than any Tosevite winter. By the Emperor whom I betrayed, that could have been me.
Back at the Biltmore Hotel after endless questioning by American policemen and others from the FBI (which Liu Han thought of as the American NKVD), her daughter asked, “Were those bullets meant for us or for the scaly devil?”
“I am not sure. How can I be sure?” Liu Han answered. “But I think they were meant for the little devil. Can you guess why?” She sent Liu Mei an appraising glance.
Her daughter considered that with her usual seriousness. “If the NKVD had sent assassins after us, they would not have made such a poor attack.”
“Exactly so,” Liu Han answered, pleased. “The Russians do not attempt assassinations. They assassinate.”
“But”-Liu Mei sounded abashed at disagreeing, as a good daughter should, but disagreed nonetheless-“what about the Kuomintang or the Japanese? They might have sent killers after us, too, and theirs would not be so good as the ones Beria could hire.”
“I had not thought of them for a while,” Liu Han admitted in a small voice. “Next to the Russians, everything else seemed such a small worry, I forgot about it. But that was a mistake, and you are right to remind me of it.” She grimaced. “No one will remind Frankie Wong of it, not now.”
“No,” Liu Mei said. “He helped us.”
“Yes, he did,” Liu Han said. “He did not do it out of the goodness of his heart-I am certain of that. But he did help us, even if he was helping himself and maybe others at the same time. But his wife is a widow tonight, and his children are orphans. And now they have reason to hate us, too. A bad business, oh, a very bad business.”
“The Americans were brave when the shooting started,” Liu Mei said. “They knew just what to do.”
“Major Yeager is a soldier,” Liu Han replied, a little tartly. “His job is to know what to do when shooting starts.” She glanced over at her daughter out of the corner of her eye. “Or were you thinking of his son?”
Liu Mei did not look flustered. Liu Mei’s face had trouble holding any expression. But she sounded troubled as she answered, “The father had a gun. The son had none, but went forward anyhow.”
“He went to aid his father,” Liu Han said. “That is what a son should do. It is what a daughter should do for a mother, too.”
“Yes, Mother,” Liu Mei said dutifully. Less dutifully, she went on, “Will we be able to go outside this hotel again, now that assassins are loose?”
“I do not know the answer to that,” Liu Han said. “In part, it will be up to the Americans. I do not know if they will want to take the chance.”
“Why should they worry?” Liu Mei’s voice was expressive, even if her face was not. She sounded bitter now. “China cannot harm the United States. The People’s Liberation Army cannot conquer America-the People’s Liberation Army cannot even conquer China. We are not the little scaly devils, or even the Russian or German foreign devils. The Americans will not be very worried about letting us go into danger.”
She was probably right. That did not make her words any more pleasant for Liu Han to hear. “Mao would think well of you,” Liu Han said at last. “You see things in terms of power.”
“How else?” Liu Mei sounded surprised. Liu Han was surprised to hear that in her daughter’s voice, but realized she shouldn’t have been. She herself had been involved in the revolutionary struggle since before she’d managed to liberate Liu Mei from the scaly devils. That meant Liu Mei had been involved in the revolutionary struggle for as long as she could remember. No wonder she thought in those terms.
“I hope the assassins were after the little scaly devil,” Liu Han said, tacitly yielding the earlier point to her daughter. “I also hope the Americans can catch them and get answers out of them. That should not be too hard; this country does not have so many people among whom they could disappear.”
“No, but they were in a motorcar-the American who serves the little devil said so,” Liu Mei countered. “With a motorcar, they could go a long way from Major Yeager’s house, to a place where no one was looking for them.”
“You are right again.” Now Liu Han eyed her daughter with respectful curiosity. Liu Mei was getting the hang of the way the USA worked faster than her mother did. Maybe that was just because she was younger. Maybe it was because she was smarter, too. Liu Han didn’t like to admit the possibility even to herself, but she was too much a realist to be blind to it.
And Liu Mei, no matter how clever she was, still had certain blind spots of her own. In musing tones, she repeated, “The Americans were very brave when the shooting started.”
Liu Han didn’t know whether to laugh or to go over to her and shake her. “When you say ‘the Americans,’ you are talking about the younger one, the one called Jonathan, aren’t you?”
Liu Mei flushed. Her skin was slightly fairer than it would have been were she of pure Chinese blood, which let Liu Han more easily see the flush rise and spread. Her daughter lifted her head, which also made her stick out her chin. “What if I am?” she asked defiantly. She was bigger and heavier-boned than Liu Han; if they quarreled, she might do some shaking of her own.
“He is an American, a foreign devil.” Liu Han pointed out the obvious.
“He is the son of my father’s friend,” Liu Mei answered. Liu Han hadn’t realized how much that meant to her daughter till Liu Mei started learning about Bobby Fiore. Liu Han had known the American, known his virtues and his flaws-and he’d had plenty of each. He hadn’t-he couldn’t have-seemed quite real to Liu Mei, not till chance let her meet his friend. Jonathan Yeager drew especially favorable notice in her eyes because he was associated with Bobby Fiore.
Picking her words with care, Liu Han said, “He is one who likes the scaly devils a great deal, you know.” If her daughter was infatuated with Major Yeager’s son, she did not want to push too hard. That would only make Liu Mei cling to him and cling to everything he represented harder than she would have otherwise. Liu Han remembered the paradox from her own girlhood.
“So what?” Liu Mei tossed her head. Her hair bounced, as Liu Han’s would not have; Bobby Fiore had had wavy hair. Liu Mei went on, “Is it not so that having more people who better understood the little scaly devils would be useful for the People’s Liberation Army?”
“Yes, that is always so,” Liu Han admitted. She pointed a finger at her daughter. “What? Are you thinking of showing him your body to lure him back to China to help us against the scaly devils? Not even a maker of bad films would think such a plan could work.” And so much for being careful of what I say, she thought.
Liu Mei blushed again. “I would not do such a thing!” she exclaimed. “I would never do such a thing!” Liu Han believed her, though some young girls would have lied in such a situation. She remembered the scandal surrounding one in her home village… But the village was gone, and the girl who’d had a bulging belly very likely dead. Liu Mei went on, in more thoughtful tones, “But he is a nice young man, even if he is a foreign devil.”
And Liu Han could not even disagree with that, not when she’d thought the same thing herself. She did say, “Remember, he may have a foreign devil for a sweetheart.”
“I know that,” her daughter answered. “In fact, he does, or he did. He has spoken of her to me. She has hair the color of a new copper coin, he says. I have seen a few people like that here. They look even stranger to me than black people and blonds.”