“I have …diplomatic immunity …from the … People’s Republic of …” Steingarth’s voice was a near thing, barely there as he gasped for lifesaving air and clutched at his groin.
“Of China, yes, George. I think we know that now,” Buckley said as he sat down. “You have your corroboration, Val. The question now is: what are we going to do with you, both of you?”
“And what do we tell the American people?” the White House counsel added.
“Christ,” the president said as he downed Valerie’s drink.
It was still several hours before sunrise as the two old men strolled through the barely lit Imperial Gardens in the Forbidden City.
Below, in the tightly secured offices that no outsider had previously seen, they had said the facts, the brutish realities that would guide the decisions they must make. But here, among the willows and koi ponds and gentle floral beauty, contemplation only was in order.
They spoke little, then mostly about this plant or that tree. Both men knew the thoughts of the other, the ramparts that they would or would not cross. And neither was anxious to give voice to the realities that bore in on them.
But time—in all forms—was an ally to neither man.
“If what you say has happened
has
happened,” Xi said calmly, “then I’m afraid our countries may be at war with the coming of the sun.”
Herb shook his head. “I came here to turn off one war, not start another. We don’t have to make it more complicated than that.”
“And your country would seek no retaliation for the death of the vice president. Please, Director Stone, neither of us are young naïves.”
Herb nodded. “But we
are
realists.”
Xi studied the eyes of the man he’d made war on for over forty years. “Tell me your reality.”
“War is made between men, not countries. So, too, the peace.”
“Agreed.”
“We want the names of all American citizens involved in the Apple Blossom project. We want the withdrawal of all Chinese advisers and military units from North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and from within one hundred miles of the Indian border. We want, we
expect
, full and active support from the Chinese Mission to the United Nations on all U.S. proposals on human rights. We expect you to allow international inspections of all military facilities that can either stage to or directly threaten Taiwan and an immediate cessation of all hostile acts toward that nation.”
Xi smiled. “Those are essentially political demands, he said simply.” Things for diplomats in their striped pants to negotiate. He gestured at a nearby marble bench. They walked over and sat down. “What do
you
require, Director Stone?” He waited.
Herb took his time lighting a cigar. “I want you to demonstrate, in some material way, your…”—he smiled—“deep remorse and grief over this horrible moment in our relations. He gestured with the cigar.” Something to do with drugs might help.
“And if all the opium fields in Burma, southern China, and Vietnam were to be verifiably destroyed by fire?”
“A good start. But nowhere near complete enough.”
Xi looked off into the waning night sky. “If what you say has happened
has
happened—and you understand I cannot take your word for this?”
“Of course.”
“In that event, I think I might take your proposals to the Central Committee.”
They stood and began to walk again.
“It
was
a beautiful plan,” Herb said sincerely.
“Thank you.”
They stopped by a tree that seemed filled with fireflies—
dancing in the last moment of the night in green shimmering brilliance.
“Will its failure go hard for you?”
Xi shrugged. “All failures are relative, I believe. While the acquisition of positive control over the fortunes of your country were not completely achieved, secondary designs—unrelated to your people
—were
reached.”
Herb was too much of a gentleman (as much as any were in the intelligence community) to ask. “Will you be able to convince the general secretary of that?”
Xi almost—not quite but close—smiled. “Regretfully, our beloved general secretary has taken ill. The prognosis is not good.”
“Indeed?”
“His illness seems to have affected his judgment, causing him to sanction certain operations that a healthy man in retention of all his faculties would never have done. Approved, it seems, by many misguided—similarly ill—members of the Central Committee.”
He hesitated. “I’m afraid this
flu
epidemic may lead to a great many state funerals.”
Herb studied the man’s eyes, his soul—as much as he had one. “Pity,” was all he said as he waited.
“In their benevolent wisdom, in the wake of these tragedies, the Central Committee has asked me to take over our esteemed general secretary’s duties.”
“My condolences and congratulations,” Herb said deliberately as he locked blazing gazes with his Chinese counterpart. “When did all of this happen?”
“Approximately six hours from now.” Xi gestured and a car came forward. “Your plane awaits you, Director Stone. A pleasure to have met you.”
“A pleasure,
Secretary
Xi.”
Xi remained in the garden until the sun was fully up, embracing him with its warmth and renewal. A strengthening brought about as he lost a country, and gained a country. And as the sun rose and strengthened in light and intensity, so, too, would
his
China.
That, after all, was the
real
purpose behind Apple Blossom… depending on perspectives, where you stood or who you were.
Finally, almost reluctantly, he got into his car to announce to the general secretary and the Central Committee that a “new age of China, as a member of the community of nations, had begun during the night.”
And that they were no longer a part of it.
“Mr. Attorney General?”
DeWitt stopped at the mouth of the tunnel leading out onto the field. He turned to the men in the suits who had stepped between him and the throng awaiting him. “Who are you?”
“Inspector Lewis Peña, United States Secret Service.” “Oh, right. I remember you, you’re the man in charge here, right?”
“Uh, yes, sir.” He seemed uncomfortable as five more of his men came up around him. “Sir, I can’t allow you to go out onto that field.”
DeWitt smiled bravely. “I know about the sniper, Inspector. But I won’t allow a vague threat to silence me or keep me from the people.”
“Yes, sir,” Peña mumbled. “Very, uh, courageous of you. He hesitated.” But the president has instructed me to return you to Washington immediately.
DeWitt looked confused. “Has something happened that I don’t know about?”
“Yes, Michael whispered as he walked away and disappeared into the crowd.”
“What? Michael? The agents began forcing DeWitt back into the tunnel toward a waiting car.” What the Hell is going on here? Michael!
“Jefferson Wilson DeWitt,” Peña intoned as they moved toward the parking lot, “you are under arrest for the crime of treason against the United States of America.”
“What? Have you lost your fuck—”
He never finished his thought as they came out of the
tunnel, into the sun of the parking lot, and two shots tore through his right eye into his brain.
If he still had a soul, it left his body before it hit the ground.
As Xenos Filotimo withdrew his rifle, rolled up his limousine’s window, and gestured for the driver to leave.
“Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, assembled media, ladies and gentlemen of the nation and the world. My name is Michael Culbertson, formerly chief of staff to the late attorney general, Jefferson DeWitt. I would like it on the record that I appear before this investigating committee of my own volition, without subpoena or pressure from any quarter. I do this because it is my duty—however difficult—as an American citizen, dedicated to those most important principles of truth, justice, and fairness.
“Over the past seven months I began to grow suspicious of some of Attorney General DeWitt’s actions. There were large unexplained absences in his schedule. He began to hold a series of secret meetings without myself or other staff present. There was the installation of an unlogged secure phone line in his home, and other occurrences which I found odd, inappropriate, and deeply troubling.
“Then, when he began to hint about his runaway ambitions, his quote
visions for the country
unquote, I began to realize the form of his madness. Unfortunately, not in time to prevent his plot to kill the vice president of the United States, insinuate himself into his place, foment a war with good and true allies, and eventually to seize control of the country itself.
“When I felt I had gathered sufficient evidence—primarily from video and audio recordings that the man himself had made, that I discovered—I contacted the office of Attorney General Designate Buckley, and, together, we set in motion the machinery that led to Mr. DeWitt’s arrest.
“Unfortunately, those members of organized crime with whom he conspired learned of his imminent exposure and sought to obliterate all evidence of their connection with him. This led to the massacre at Heisenberg House, and eventually to DeWitt’s own death at their hands, moments after he had been taken into custody.”
The president clicked off the television, shaking his head. “I can already see someone running the little shit for Congress.”
Valerie shook her head. “He can have my seat.” She began to read off the titles of the papers she was signing. “Act accepting terms of presidential amnesty… Copy of terms of amnesty… Letter of resignation from the House of Representatives of the United States of America … Act renouncing citizenship in the United States of America.”
She slammed the folder shut and dropped it in the president’s lap. “Satisfied?”
The president sighed. “Valerie, bottom line, your acts of treason caused the death of that Chinese defector, Pei, the men guarding him, and probably more beside. Important military and intelligence secrets were given to the Chinese. Innocent lives were put at risk and the security of the country
was
compromised.” He shook his head sadly.
“That
, my dear, is treason. Sorry.”
Valerie collapsed in a chair across from him. “But you’re protecting the citizenship and pension rights of my kids, right?” She sounded exhausted.
“It’s in writing and over my signature. Your lawyers already have it.”
She nodded. “Fine.” Finishing off her drink, she stood
and took a deep breath. “What are you going to do now?”
The president looked older than his eighty-plus years. “I’ve asked President Carter to come out of retirement to serve as vice president until the next election.” The people need someone they can trust.
“Don’t we all.” Valerie began to gather her things.
“What are
you
going to do now?” the president asked with genuine curiosity.
“Not watch the news for a few thousand years, she said while holding back the tears that she knew would burst forth later that night.”
“Actually, I’ve been asked to take on international fund-raising for a war orphans hospital in Toulon, France.”
The president stood up, extending his hand. “You have friends there? Any people?”
“I think … no.” She didn’t sound sad or beaten, more like—resigned. “No, I don t, she said as she shook his hand.” But I think I at least
know
some people there.
The president refused to let go of her. “Your nation and I owe you an unpayable debt of gratitude, he said seriously.” I hope you realize that.
“That why I’m getting the bum’s rush?
The president shrugged.” It
was
treason.
“And what would you have done?”
The old man was quiet for a long time. “Probably ended up raising money for war orphans.”
And, for Valerie, it was finally over.
It was a place of warrior grace and poetic ugliness. A monument to greed, an achievement in futility. It had—in its distant past—been a critical piece of the puzzle that was London’s docks, its gateway to the world.
But that had all been decades ago, a storied history of the tough men who hauled the freight that kept the great city alive.
Now the docks were gone, replaced by a glittering
glass and steel construct, crowned by the tallest building in Europe.
The largest single office development in the world
, they said. A throne for the “new London” to sit comfortably on and look out at the world that must flock to it.
But they were wrong.
Recessions, Euro-unions, unrealistic and unrealized ambitions, had all left the place an empty shell; a place abandoned—that the tourists flocked to on the weekend to
ooh
and
ahh
at the magnificently polished gold statue in the courtyard that made as little sense as the development itself.
Whole floors of the grand tower had been left unfinished. The Docklands Light Railway station—capable of holding more people than Heathrow Airport—echoed with the few footsteps of photographers and a skeletal crew of maintenance.
Canary Wharf’s dreams, ambitions, grand plans, and grandiose predictions gone.
But the tough men concerned with the life of the city remained.
They would come in the late evening, when midnight was a memory and dawn a thing they hoped to see again. The minders, the killers, the cops, the callous and the nonchalant. Anyone and everyone—men and women—who had the knowledge.
And the strength.
Some nights they would gather in the station itself, others in the plaza or on one of the desiccated skeletal upper floors with the magnificent views that went otherwise unappreciated. They would remain undisturbed, secure in knowing that some of their own controlled all security and surveillance in the complex.
Over steaming cups of coffee, cutting shots of whatever got them through the night, or pure adrenaline, they would gossip, exchange much-needed information and intelligence, or just take each other’s measure.
There were other places like it throughout the world—Brevin’s Hole in Las Vegas, Nevada; Two Dollar Bill’s in
Hollywood; La Rotunda in Rio—but Canary Wharf was the pinnacle. A place where acceptance as a friend (or enemy) meant you had arrived among the world’s last remaining
truly
tough men.