The Mandarin Club (45 page)

B
y nine-thirty the next morning, Mickey was driving west toward the Pacific. He’d seen the kids onto the school bus, gassed up his car, then taken the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge over the placid bay. He rolled past the mustard-colored prison walls at San Quentin, and snaked out Sir Francis Drake Boulevard below the slopes of Mount Tamalpais. Over White’s Hill he sped, past the golf club at San Geronimo, then plunging into the redwoods of Samuel P. Taylor Park, looping back and forth on the S curves bordering the dry creek bed. The one-stop-light towns of Lagunitas and Olema slowed him little. After more than an hour, he crested the last hill and pulled up by the boat harbor of Inverness, on Tomales Bay.

The town was quite still. It was a school-day morning, with few signs of life on the one thoroughfare. A solitary man in a red-checked shirt hosed down the pavement in front of the grocery store. The spray and the sound of tires being installed in the service bay of the gas station were the only noises. It felt as if he was hundreds of miles from the big city. Warm fog overhead flattened the light, and Mickey creaked a bit as he emerged, stiff jointed, from his Ford.

The lobby of the Inn was also deserted. A haunt for bed and breakfasters heading out from the Bay Area for weekends, it was empty on this early fall day. Mickey peered about, feeling awkward and out of place.

A soft, dull voice called from a den behind the lobby counter, startling him a bit. “Would you be Mr. Dooley?”

“Yes, that’s me,” Mickey said as the man emerged. Midwestern. Conservative. A tad formal. He didn’t seem like an Inverness kind of guy.

“A gentleman left this for you.” He handed Mickey a business-size white envelope.

Mickey nodded curtly at the man, walking outside before he opened the envelope. Inside was a simple printed sheet: “Thanks for coming,” it read. “Better to talk in Divine Meadow. See you at noon.”

Mickey ducked into the grocery to grab some snacks and water for the hike ahead, then drove the two miles to the ranger station at the Point Reyes trailhead. He parked his car at the stables and headed down the path toward the woods.

Clutching his paper sack, he paused for a drink before the trail entered the shade. Soon, ferns were all about him, lazily uncurling to reach toward shafts of light penetrating the darkened canopy. A small creek gurgled on his left, rolling through banks of needles and pinecones. Sequoias towered overhead. He could taste the air, with its pungent mix of laurel, eucalyptus, and redwood all about him.

Out the Bear Valley Trail he strode once more, out where they all had played in that time of youthful dreams more than a quarter century before. He could hear the leaves crunch underfoot as he climbed steadily up the grade, deeper into the forest.

After a couple of miles, the trail crested before a familiar clearing. At the top of the meadow was a rough-hewn log bench. Mickey sat there, sipping water, watching, still fifteen minutes early. Slices of fog were spilling up the field of dry grass, two feet high and straw yellow. Fingers of gray would reach up the incline, only to expire in the strengthening sun, just cresting above. Wave after wispy wave tumbled forward, only to disappear in an evanescent dance. The diffuse light accentuated the contrast between the deep greens of the well-moistened ferns and the pale field that lay open before him.

In the stillness, he reflected upon the road he had tread from Stanford to China and back. He reflected upon time spent and time lost, upon life yet to live. He closed his eyes for several moments, half meditation, half prayer, as if waiting for a sign.

He sensed movement nearby, a flicker in the tall grass. Midway down the field, about a quarter mile in length, he saw a white deer, its coat flecked with brown. The doe was standing, ears prone, observing him. A fawn was close behind her, ambling carelessly. It was a vision—ever so brief—of innocence. The mother held Mickey with her stare. Then she was startled by some footfall Mickey could not detect. She fled abruptly, leaping through the sea of downy grass, the fawn scurrying after.

At the foot of the field now, there was a puff of dust. Two figures emerged from the grass, walking deliberately toward him, two purposeful-looking men, military in bearing, in windbreakers and dark glasses.

Mickey flashed back to the Interior Ministry goons at the Beijing departure lounge, like sergeants on some old black-and-white cop show. The figures continued to stride directly toward him, the two men approaching up the quiet field.

He was alone, utterly alone in this wild place. He felt naive and vulnerable.
How stupid can I be?
His stolen time was ended; he knew it. His bill had come due.

“Mickey Dooley?” said the first man, the breeze outlining a shoulder holster beneath the flattened nylon jacket.

“Yeah?” Mickey said tentatively, his heart racing, his head cocked at an uncomfortable angle.

“You come by yourself?”

“You sure you weren’t tailed?” asked the second man before Mickey could answer.

“Sure,” he said, glancing over his shoulder, peering anxiously behind him. “As far as I know.”

The first man reached for a walkie-talkie. “Good to go, Jack. Bring him on.”

The men began to back down the path. Only then did Mickey’s final fears dissipate like the lifting fog. He began to calm, recognizing the security escort now, there as protectors, not executioners. As he turned, ashamed for his momentary fright, a familiar face was walking towards him, not twenty yards away.

It was Lee. Grimacing shyly, looking wan and thin in jeans and a hiking shirt, it was unmistakably Lee. There was a rumpled canvas fishing hat on his head, pulled forward almost to his brow.

“By God, you did it!” Mickey rushed forward to envelop him in a bear hug. Lee felt limp in his arms before Mickey released him. “You pulled it off!”

“Yes, I’m afraid I did.”

“When did you make it here, to the States?”

“Oh, about three days ago, I guess it was.” Lee sounded weary.

“How did they get you out?”

“Probably best not to discuss,” he said.

“But, Branko. . . Branko did it! Well, let me look at you!” Mickey stood back regarding Lee as if he were an apparition. Mickey noticed again how lifeless he stood, shrunken in pants that were too large. “Where are they keeping you, man?”

“Some safe house out in the suburbs. I am a captive of Middle America.”

“You’re
free
, Lee! I was so worried that day you didn’t take the plane. I didn’t want to leave without you. Thank God you made it out of all that craziness!”

Lee was unresponsive as he gazed down the field to where the two security men were lingering, shades on in the drifting fog. Mickey noticed a third agent with a walkie-talkie now, on the trail back toward the ranger station.

“You should feel great! I’m so proud of you for having the balls to pull it off.”

“Sure. Big balls.”

“To break free of their clutches—”

“Mickey,” Lee interrupted sternly as he faced him, “I am not free. I am like a prisoner.”

“Hey! They probably just have to debrief you for a while,” Mickey said. “Do you have any idea whatsoever how valuable your contributions can be? To stability? To peace? You can help figure out what the hell’s going on back in Beijing. You’re a goddamn hero.”

“Heroes act selflessly for others. Bravado is for those who like to show off. I’m not sure what that makes me.”

“You’re a genuine patriot.”

“I’m a patriot without a nation.”

“You’ve got a window into their game. It’s like cracking the code for the Red Dragons. You can help us stay out of some idiotic war. It’s all I’d asked from you that last night.”

“And after?”

“What do you mean?”

“And after they are done with me? I will still be a prisoner in a foreign land.”

“It won’t be that way forever. I mean—” Mickey caught himself as he began to pace. “Is it your father?”

Lee gazed into the fog again. It was some time before he replied. “My father is dead.”

“Oh, God,” Mickey could only mumble, “I’m so sorry.”

“Yes. You see, I had promised him, Mickey. His nurse did, too. Before he sank into that faraway place, we both promised him we wouldn’t leave him to die alone.” Lee’s eyes were dry and pinched as he spoke, self-reproach in his tone. “I felt we both had to stay, to honor that promise. So I stayed that day you left.”

Mickey could think of nothing he could say to comfort him.

“He fell into a coma in early September. Then he passed in peace,” Lee continued. “I did not let him die alone. And now I will be the one who dies alone in a foreign land. That is not the way of a Chinese hero.”

“You won’t be alone! They just need to protect you. For a while. For your own good.”

“It’s one thing in theory and another in reality—all the interrogations and the isolation. I can never be free here.”

“But they—”

“I am a non-person. A man with no name, like the forgotten dead.”

“We won’t ever forget the—”

“Don’t you see the irony, Mickey? It is so very Western. The individual makes a difference. But, then, it is so very Chinese. The individual is sacrificed for the greater good.”

“Well, shit. I’m just going to call Branko and see if we can’t break you out of this box. Sounds like they’re going way overboard with all this security.”

“You still don’t understand,” said Lee, stopping him with a firm hand. “I
chose
this path. It is my own free will. Now I must walk the path I have chosen.”

“But you knew when you decided to help—”

“I knew only that I could not stay, even if I had wanted to.” Lee thought of Xu An, and the choice pierced him yet again, even as he held onto his hope—to Branko’s promise and to Xu An’s. “I was suspect. They believed I had become the enemy, an enemy who questioned all their empty nationalist slogans.”

“They were so wrong.”

“No, Mickey. They were right.”

“What?”

“They were absolutely right with their suspicions. I
was
contaminated. I became Western in my thinking.”

“The Chinese have sent five hundred thousand students to the U.S. in the last thirty years. They don’t all become a threat because—”

“I became a foreigner in my own land! My country left me before I left my country. China is run by a corrupt clique driven by a dead ideology. They’re men who believe their own rhetoric. They will do anything to cling to power—even turn on their own.”

Mickey was watching him cautiously as Lee seemed to shrink under the weight of his burdens. “So, you
knew
?”

“Knew what?” Lee asked.

“You knew all along, didn’t you?”

“What?

“That someone had tried to kill us. That someone had tried to eliminate us, to screw things up, to play dirty tricks on Washington and Taiwan.”

“I was very slow to see it. It took some time to accept that anybody would really go that far. But those hotheads are without adult supervision in their work. Everybody likes the deniability.”

“Those guys are crazy.”

“No, they are clever—very clever and calculating. They are zealots, neo-Maoists. They are the spoiled children of the Red Guards. They combine the worst of both countries’ modern generations, yours and mine. The impatience, the hunger for instant gratification, the fascination with high tech violence of the West. The rhetorical fury, the chip-on-the-shoulder jealousy of their Asian contemporaries.”

“Couldn’t you see where they were headed with—”

“I didn’t want to believe it. I was distracted by my father, my worries, my hopes for a new relationship. By the time I accepted the reality of my situation—of what the Red Dragons’ game is about—it was almost too late.
Branko
understands. Branko sees it all. He always did.”

“But Branko promised we would try to protect you.”

“Branko has kept his promises from the first day. He always has, Mickey. Your people learned that I was only permitted to join the delegation in Singapore so they could liquidate me there. Make an example of me while blaming it on somebody else—same as the incident outside Rachel’s firm. Branko’s people were just one step ahead.”

“Only because you helped them penetrate the cell.”

“Who really knows how our fates are decided?”

“Well, now you’re free,” Mickey said, repeating himself.

“As you say.”

“You’re a godsend for us, for any hope of stabilizing the relationship.”

“I will always be a traitor in China.”

“No! You betrayed no one.” Mickey grabbed Lee so hard that one of the security men started toward them. “You’ll help us all to live on the same planet without incinerating each other.”

“You flatter me, Mickey.” Lee smoothed his jacket and flexed his arm a bit. “You called me a subversive once.”

“You always were.”

“Maybe it’s true. I warned you before I left America that first time. I admired you all then, for your loyalty to each other, for your promises to never forget. I never had such a family. But I tried to serve China when I returned. I tried.”

“You
did
serve China.”