Heart of the Storm, page 9
“The same people,” he said. “The men changed, their authoritarianism did not.” He leaned forward, and I had a moment's fear that he might topple over, he was so bowed. “I wish it would all come down. I wish my people could be free, like my brother. It doesn't have to be like the West, but it would be nice to have a say in their governance.”
“Well,” I said, “I can't promise you anything...but I'd like to see that, too. A China with her people in charge instead of the oligarchs or the queen dictator that's up there right now...that'd be pretty great, I think. A truly worthy world power.”
“You're going to try?” he asked, staring at me, his neck craned up to look at me. He was so small, and so bowed.
“I'm going to try,” I said.
“Then I leave it in your hands,” he said, and faded away like Yoda on Dagobah. The two thin guys nodded, then faded with him.
“I swear, the dead are so easy compared to the living,” I grumped.
Then I realized...one of them was still with us.
It was the shy guy, and he was looking at me from beneath the veneer of darkness that coated his figure, silhouetting him. He lifted his face, and I saw a smooth cheek, youthful. “You truly mean to do it?” he asked, in a voice that was like taut razor wire. “To kill the Premier?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I feel obliged to mention that the premier I mean to kill is named Fen Liu, not Mao Zedong or any of those guys from the past. It's probably been a long time since you died, and things have changed.”
“We are aware of the change,” he said, drawing his face back into the shadow. “Some of us choose to ignore it, because it can be ignored...until it cannot be anymore. Which was very much like how they treated the Communists in this country.” He stirred in the darkness, and I felt him looking at me again. “Make me believe you.”
“About killing Fen Liu?” I asked. “How?”
“Tell me what you will do to her,” he said, drawing himself up. He'd been sitting, and now he rose; he wasn't tall, probably a little taller than me, at most, but I sensed that darkness around him was almost symbolic, not mere shadow to him.
“I'm gonna wrap my fingers around her throat and squeeze until her head pops off,” I said. “You need more, or is that sufficient?”
“Geez,” Jian said under his breath.
“My name is Zhen Xiang,” he said, “and I know Fen Liu – or I knew her.” His eyes were steely, and a hint of rage seemed to glimmer within them as he added, “For she was the one who killed me.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Zhen Xiang
Anshun
1950
The thing you have to understand about the revolution is that many of us did not know what we were leading our country into. We were young, and foolish, and had we known the scale of death we were going to be unleashing upon our land, upon our people, and how long it would last...we would have done things very differently. At least, I know I would have.
But Fen Liu...I don't think she would have anything differently at all.
“You are energetic, Comrade,” Fen Liu said, stroking her finger across my bare chest as we lay, naked, entwined together in the comfort of a bed in a quiet room in Anshun's Communist Party headquarters.
“I have so much fire for the revolution,” I said, enjoying her tracing a path across my chest with her finger. It was a pleasant sensation, her leg draped over me, her arms clutching me tight to her body. She was warm, and the mountain air was cold. “It overflows into all other areas. You taught me a few new things today, though.” I pulled her tight to my skin.
“Enthusiasm is no substitute for experience,” she said with a sly smile. “Do what I taught you today and you will please me endlessly.”
I smiled at her. “Yes, ma'am.”
She drew from my embrace and stood, walking through the dim tent completely nude. Her skin was perfectly supple. “Where do you hail from, Comrade?”
I chuckled lightly. “Isn't that perhaps a question you should have asked before now?” I rose and began to dress. “Anshun. Which is in–”
“Guizhou province,” she said, pausing with her shirt in her hands. “I know it well. Did you enjoy growing up there?”
“It was all right,” I said, and continued to dress. Our business here was clearly concluded, at least for now. We needed to rejoin our fellow revolutionaries. “Where do you hail from?”
“Here and there,” she said airily, slipping into her pants. They hung off her petite frame. “Most recently, Shanghai. I was with the students there when they decided to commit to Chairman Mao. And now I am here.”
I looked her over. Her flesh was supple, but she had a glimmer in her eye of experience, of wisdom. As evidenced by the fact she seduced me, and easily at that. Her experience also suggested that she was not new to this. But I didn't want to insult her by suggesting she was too old to be a student, because the only insinuations I could think of might inadvertently paint her as some sort of harlot. Which is never a wise insinuation for a man to make, especially if he wishes to continue to receive such favors.
So I kept quiet, and nodded, and received a small smile from her in return as she finished dressing. We left the room, our hands, once coupled together, drifting apart as we walked the halls of headquarters.
I started to say something; something wise, something witty, something to show my appreciation, to suggest that I would be pleased if this were to happen again.
But I didn't get to say any of them. Because instead of parting like lovers, she merely turned and walked away without another word spoken, disappearing into the hubbub of the Communists in the main hall like a puff of smoke caught in the wind.
Somehow, though, I knew it would not be the last time I saw her.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sienna
“I'm sorry to interrupt what I'm sure is an important conversation,” Sierra said, cutting right into ghost guy's monologue, “but the shop's camera system is about to finish rebooting, and I cannot keep it offline any longer.”
“Shit,” I said. “We need to get out of here. How long, Sierra?”
“Thirty seconds,” she said.
“Buddy, we have to move or they're going to catch us,” I said to the ghost of Christmas past. “Can you follow?”
“I will follow,” he said, still barely in shadow.
“Great, let's roll,” I said, but my team was already in motion. Hades was out the door, Lethe was two steps behind him, both trying to look casual as they stepped onto the street. Both long-time pros of this kind of low-key deception. Jian seemed to struggle a bit with it, but his camouflage picked up the slack; his gait and his posture only threatened to give him away.
Wade shot me an apologetic look. “I'll work with him,” he said, and was off after Jian. I followed, shrugging my way through the bead curtain and into the front of the shop with just a glance back at the downed soldiers, dozing their way through the morning around the card table like they'd just had a rough night.
“Zhen,” I said, “we're going to find a place where you can tell me the rest of that story, okay?” I consciously slowed myself at the door, trying to adopt the unhurried pace of a Chinese civilian shopper, not a pissed-off American metahuman with no time to lose and no shortage of vile people to kill. I took a breath. Then another.
Then I stepped out onto the street, and forced myself to stroll along behind Wade, Lethe, Hades, and Jian, away from the scene of my most recent crime. “We need a place to sit, to talk, and to think,” I said, moving down the bustling street of Anshun, keeping my voice meta-low, and glancing back every few seconds to confirm the ghost of Liu was still following us. “It needs to be non-public, and not monitored by the Chinese government.”
“Working,” Sierra declared in my earwig. “My inroads into the Chinese systems are still in the embryonic stage, but through mapping I have identified a disused rail yard one and a half kilometers from here. It possesses a few rail cars that can be used for temporary shelter.”
“You heard the AI,” I said. “Rail yard it is.”
Trying not to look overly suspicious while making my way through the city of an enemy power was an awkward bit of business, even with the digital camouflage on.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Fen Liu
She stared at her computer monitor, at the assembled faces there, dressed and prepared. “Give me your latest reports,” she commanded, in a tone that brooked no delay. Wei Zhang lingered behind her, out of view of the camera, as he should. He was, after all, here to serve her. As they all were.
“We have new reports from Russia,” General Li Guoqiang said, bowing his head as he spoke to her. It was very court-like, the military hat bobbing as he did so. But it showed the proper amount of respect, and she liked it. “The country continues to be in chaos, with little hope of a cohesive national government forming anytime soon.”
Fen Liu frowned. That could be advantageous or disadvantageous; they would have to retake Russia at some point, and the less of a mess it was when she moved to do so, the easier it would be to consolidate her position once she did so. She wanted to curse under her breath; Russia had been hers, solidly, with no nascent rebellions brewing, and no hope of them on the horizon. They'd been well and truly conquered in a way that no one ever had before. That had been her achievement, and a singular one at that – until Sienna Nealon had taken it from her.
She shared none of her thoughts; not with the council. They were but a replacement for the last ones, the ones Sienna Nealon had killed when her forces destroyed Zhongnanhai in Beijing. She did not wish to include them in her thinking – though probably many of her thoughts and concerns were obvious, even to the barely initiated – for fear that Nealon might capture one, or seduce one through dreams, in spite of her best efforts to protect them from such a fate.
Nealon. Had anyone ever been such a blight upon the hopes and dreams of China? Of Fen Liu's vision for China, at least, though she hardly acknowledged a difference between the two. She'd killed Fen Liu's telepaths and empaths, destroying the easiest method she had for controlling her way to her objectives.
“Fine,” she said. Who cared about Russia when Nealon was still to be dealt with? The American crown was about to change heads – to one whom she had no power over, true, but her manipulation would have to be conducted more subtly over the next few years anyway. China was the manufacturing powerhouse of the world, and America was seeing that clearly enough now. Economics would be the battlefield of the future, and she was blessed with all the armaments needed to win there.
Furthermore, she knew Robb Foreman was not the sort of blatant psychopath that would resort to pulling his one singular advantage over her: the nuclear arsenal. That Nealon had managed to pull that coup as well – sending China's nuclear program nearly back to square one with barely a shot fired – more than irked her.
But the fools responsible had died at Zhongnanhai, all save for her. And she did not consider herself a fool.
“What news of the American election?” she asked. That they hadn't led with this most important detail spoke badly of them. She looked immediately to her chief of intelligence.
“It has begun in earnest,” Shao Wenjie said. He was the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and a thin, weaselly man. “Though it is too early to be absolutely certain, it still appears likely Foreman will become the next president.”
Fen Liu pursed her lips. Choosing your ruler? Democracy? She found it a laughable concept. Why give children a vote in what's for dinner? She'd been to America, she'd met its citizens, and most were little better than lambs in intellect, otherwise how to judge the state of their greatest cities? Inherent weakness had seeped in to afflict the coddled, decadent culture of the west. The Chinese had a name for it: Baizuo. It wasn't a particularly kind appellation, but then, what kindness was there for people who only bothered to clean up the filth of their own cities when their Chinese overlords came to visit?
Any king or emperor in the old world who allowed his land to fall into such disorder when it was possible to fix it rather easily? Who would give over such power to malcontents and derelicts, to allow them to take over the streets, to rule and reign in a spasming anarchy? She would have laughed were it happening somewhere that she had no designs on, but she meant to rule America, one way or another, and every bit of damage they did to themselves, she would someday have to put right. Just like with Russia.
So she fumed about it, and scorned them, and wished that she could skip ahead to the part where she was secure in her power and Sienna Nealon was properly dead. “When will Nealon be officially out of power?”
“The day after tomorrow,” Shao answered. First in his class. Nerd.
“What can she do until then?” she asked. “And what is she up to now?”
“We do not presently have sight of her,” General Guoqiang said, fidgeting on the screen, his jowls moving as he did so. “She was last seen in the White House, but that was some time ago. We presume she has surrendered to the course of fate.”
Fen Liu blinked a few times at that absurdity. “Does Sienna Nealon strike you as the sort to surrender to fate?”
He squirmed visibly. “Perhaps not.”
She rested a steely glare on him, then turned to her Minister of Public Security, Hu Jianjun, a corpulent man in a navy uniform with gold buttons and decorations. “What is going on in the Zhongguo today? Tell me everything.”
“There is little to report,” Jianjun said, looking at a sheaf of papers before him.
“Indulge me,” she said.
“Hui'an Air Base went to high alert after a plane from Iran deviated from its course by a few degrees,” he said, studying the papers. “When it landed at Quanzhou, the entire crew and passengers were detained. No irregularities were found. A Vietnamese fishing boat strayed into our territorial waters and was seized at 2300 last night. Nothing unusual found on board. One of our internet nodes in Anshun went offline unexpectedly less than an hour ago. Upon restoration of power and the surveillance system we observed the crew passed out from drunkenness–”
“Hold,” Fen Liu said, raising a hand. “Were they observed to be drunk beforehand?”
“No,” he said after an uncomfortable pause. “But this sort of thing does happen. These are very boring assignments, and–”
“Tell me more,” she said. “Tell me everything you know. About the station. About the personnel.”
“Uhm,” he said, staring at his papers as though they might produce the answer he sought. “There are six personnel assigned there, all metahumans. It is our internal security office in Anshun, a small satellite facility of our larger one in Guiyang.”
“Minister,” Fen Liu said, “give me the external security feeds of the cameras on the road where that office is located – and for the period in question when they suffered their outage.”
“Very well,” Jianjun said, a touch uneasily, but immediately started to work on a tablet computer. “Allow me a few moments to access that data, please.”
“I'd also like military satellite imaging of that particular location,” Fen Liu said, rising to her feet. “An overhead view. Current, and then rewind to the moment we lost contact.”
“I'll set my people to it immediately,” Li Guoqiang said, nodding his chubby head so hard she feared his empty skull might fall off with his hat and roll away. Within a minute, she was presented with an overhead view of a street in, presumably, Anshun.
“And...here it is from the time in question,” Jianjun said, pulling up on a side-by-side view the overhead satellite view of the street. Differences were minor, but obvious, especially as both views zoomed in. The shadows were slightly different. A few cars had been moved, and the traffic in the pattern was quite different. A bird circled lazily overhead in the previous image, but was absent in the current–
“There,” she said, thumping her knuckles onto the steel desk as she leaned forward to peer more closely at the screen. A smirk popped loose of her face. “Identify that bird.”
“Madam Premier?” Jianjun asked, his face a twisted mass of confusion. She wished it was a twisted mass of blood and bone. Perhaps she would make her wish come true later for this incompetence.
“That bird is not native to China,” she said, pointing at it. “Sienna Nealon has a companion hawk. Identify it, see if it's the same kind. Meanwhile, speed up the video and track its movement into the present moment, so that if it turns out to be her,” and here Fen Liu felt a quiet, lethal satisfaction, “we will know exactly where she is – in China. And we will deploy the countermeasures we have planned for her visit.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Zhen Xiang
Guangzhou
1959
Iwalked into the room I shared with Fen Liu in the Guangzhou CCP headquarters to find her with Mao's Little Red Book across her lap, thin frame draped across the chair, I felt no joy. She must have known immediately, by my face, by my bearing, that something was terribly wrong. “Zhen,” she said, closing her book on its silken page-holder, “you're back. What happened?”
Two weeks I had been out in the provinces, touring with cadres. Two weeks in which I had seen what we had wrought – our new China, which our blood and efforts had bought. Now I had returned to our quarters in Guangzhou. So far from my home in Anshun, but it had been such a tremendous step up from the mountainous province I'd called home. A clear step up in the party hierarchy, a promotion for her which I had shared in. Reflected glory was a fine thing that I was only too happy to accept.
Until now.
I don't even remember how I got into the chair, but I did, as though she'd moved and my legs had collapsed beneath me. “The things I have seen,” I whispered.
“What did you see?” she asked, softly, in my ear.
