“We don’t want you to release Cheng Jinshan, Mr. President.”
He looked up at her, confused. “Then what do you want me to do?”
Lin Yu stood behind the counter of his uncle’s small electronics store in central Guangzhou. He ate a lunch of reheated noodles with steamed vegetables. He used one hand to take another bite with his chopsticks while using the other to scan the social media feed on his phone.
His shop was empty, as usual. Beneath his elbows was a glass display filled with rows of cell phone parts. Memory cards. Screens. Microchips. Some of the big cell phone suppliers were located nearby. Lin Yu’s store sold spare parts and secondary items from those plants. The manufacturers got rid of parts that they didn’t need and reduced their overhead. Everybody won.
Except for Lin Yu, working in this dead-end job. Entire weeks would go by without a single customer. Then the floodgates would open as buyers came in from all over the world, here to find bargain prices for their companies. Lin Yu’s uncle would show up on those weeks. He would take out his calculator and bargain with the men on prices and quantities. The purchasers would use the display cases to point to which item they were interested in. The quantities were often astronomical during those busy weeks. But during the dry season, as Lin Yu called it, manning the store was a dreadfully boring task.
However, Lin Yu needed a job. He couldn’t go home during the day. He still lived with his parents. And the longer he was there, the more likely his mother would be to drive him towards insanity.
All the woman talked about was him finding a woman to marry so that she could have a grandchild before she was dead. She wasn’t fifty years old yet and she was talking about her own death. More likely, she just used the all-powerful bargaining chip that all mothers possessed — guilt.
It wasn’t Lin Yu’s fault that he couldn’t find a girlfriend. It wasn’t like he was uninterested. It was just slim pickings.
One of his friends had forwarded him an article last year that said China had thirty-three million more men than women. His friend had meant for the article as a joking excuse for why they couldn’t find girlfriends. But as Lin Yu had read the article, he had been fascinated — and horrified — at the conclusions. The article had been written by a Western journalist, and it had been deleted on China’s Internet by the censors shortly after Lin Yu had read it. The article claimed that the one-child policy and sex-selective abortions had driven the gender disparity in China. At the height of the problem, in the early 2000s, there had been twenty percent more male babies being born than female.
“Hey, Lin Yu. Get any customers?” His friend who worked at a similar shop down the hall stood in the doorway.
“Nothing. You?”
“Nah. This week will be sleepy, I think. I’m off now, though. Done for the day. I have to go help my mom with something.”
He grabbed a snap pea from Lin Yu’s lunch.
“Hey, stop it — come on.”
“Relax. Just one. I’m hungry. Hey, what are you reading? The stuff about the navy ships?”
Everyone was talking about the recent American attacks on their navy ships in the Pacific. It was a horrible accident. The PLA Navy ships had been on a training mission in the Pacific Ocean, but somehow an American ship had accidentally fired weapons at them. At least, that was the story he read on the state news.
“You know that news is all fake, right?”
Lin Yu frowned. His friend was always telling him that the news he read was bogus. He was one of the rule-breakers. He used a VPN to dig under China’s government-censored Internet—“the great firewall of China.” His friend would often check out foreign news websites. And just as often, dirty pictures of white women.
“What are you talking about?” said Lin Yu.
Feng brought up his phone and tapped a few times. “Here. See? The British news is saying that it wasn’t an accident. They say that some of the Chinese ships were there on purpose. And that one of our submarines fired first.”
“What? That’s crazy. Why would our submarine do that? Tell me you don’t believe that crap.”
His friend grabbed a noodle from Lin Yu’s bowl and held it up, slurping it down.
“Come on. Stop that. This is my lunch.”
“It’s a good lunch.”
“What are you talking about with the navy ships?” Lin Yu didn’t believe him, but it was still very interesting to hear about.
“Something’s going on, Lin Yu. Something big. I can feel it.” His friend tapped his heart. “You’ve seen all the signs about Junxun, right? When was the last time you ever heard about Junxun being held in winter? And the kids who volunteered — they still haven’t come back.” Junxun was the Chinese government-sponsored summer training program for all high school graduates. Each year, millions of Chinese teens were forced to attend a multi-week military basic training program that prepared them for military service, in case that were ever to be required.
“What are you talking about?”
“I have a cousin who volunteered for the Guangdong Junxun a few weeks ago. My aunt hasn’t heard from him this whole time. She wrote to the People’s Liberation Army office where they said parents can call, but they just gave her some line about hearing from him soon. But that was last week. Trust me, there’s something mysterious going on, and they aren’t telling us about it.”
“You’re a conspiracy theorist. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Lin Yu’s friend rolled his eyes. “Okay.”
“Whoa. What is this?” Lin Yu held his phone so that his friend could see.
“Oh my. Is that the president?”
“What? Oh no.”
“Is this live?” His friend tapped the volume button on Lin Yu’s phone so that they could hear what was being said.
Lena walked out on the outdoor patio and waited until both cameras were set up inside. She savored the view, up here atop the city’s skyscrapers. They had another camera positioned on a rooftop across the street. That one would pick up great footage, with maximum psychological impact. It would get a view of the open-air garden outside the president’s suite, where she now stood, and of the ropes that were slung over the thick wooden beam atop the tall awning.
Her men had tested this part out for hours. They couldn’t make any mistakes here — not today. Jinshan had worked with his cyberoperators to ensure the bandwidth could handle such a massive audience for this footage. It would be live-streamed on all of China’s social networks and TV stations.
One of her men approached. “The cameras are rolling, ma’am. We’re on CCTV. The newscasters have been informed. It’s time, Miss Chou.”
Lena thought about her pseudonym briefly. She could use her birth name, now that she was back in China. But she had grown fond of the name Lena Chou. She took in a deep whiff of the garden flowers and said, “Very well. Let us begin.”
Her men began dragging President Wu and his wife out to the garden area. The two of them could see the nooses swinging now, and both were fighting mightily against their restraints. Lena walked back inside, out of view for the moment.
“Why would you do this? Why is Jinshan doing this? Whatever he has promised you, I can give you more.”
She stayed inside the covered area, behind the glass wall, until her white mask was on. Then she walked back outside, speaking through the small cutout for her mouth.
“No. You can’t, Mr. President. That’s really why we are here, isn’t it? Few are capable of leading us to the future that Mr. Jinshan has promised. They don’t have the stomach for it. The world is changed not by mere politicians and statesmen, but by those capable few who build great things — who seize power and force drastic action. China has been moving too slowly, Mr. President. But no longer. You should know that your deaths here today will serve a greater purpose.” She leaned in close. “I want to thank you for your sacrifice.”