Page 62 of Air Force One
His final thought was that his Black Jade had indeed become a weapon too dangerous to wield. She was Fei’s tiger turned to consume its master.
57
Daiyu looked away from the Situation Room’s clocks. It was now three minutes after the hour in Beijing. Plenty of time.
“There is a saying often attributed to Sun Tzu, but it is actually from Mario Puzo in The Godfather, Part II, a text that General Liú did not study. It states: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. For three years I cultivated General Liú’s attentions with this precise moment in mind. Though I did not anticipate where I would be sitting.”
No one interrupted her.
“The enemy of everything decent and human in China is our current government. The President has surrounded himself with sycophants and is now ineffectual. The true power in China lies with the CMC. They were all General Liú Zuocheng’s handpicked men, and he was anything but ineffective.”
Again she glanced at the clock. Five minutes. The Novichok agent that she’d managed to acquire from Russia, rather than the American VX nerve agent, could kill in less than twenty seconds with dermal absorption of a few tenths of a milligram, less weight than a mosquito’s wings.
“As of this time, they no longer exist. I used a Russian poison to further sow confusion. Perhaps it will harm any alliance that might have allowed those two fascist regimes to prop one another up to commit more atrocities.”
She wanted to allow time for that to sink in but continued quickly as she didn’t wish to be interrupted prematurely.
“I must warn you that the People’s Republic is not Russia. The President is not quite so beholden to sycophants as some of your Presidents have been. He will replace them with men of skill, but it won’t matter; they won’t be men of competence. Not one will dare gainsay their President. Unlike General Liú, he has not studied Sun Tzu who said: He whose generals are able and not interfered with by the sovereign will be victorious. Instead, he will consolidate the CMC’s power into his own control, losing flexibility and, with that, the power to act.”
Daiyu inspected her hands. They had shaken badly after leaving Zuocheng’s office yesterday morning. The fear of handling the Novichok had only been a part of that. Her worst nerves had been that this whole gambit would fail. But his final message said that his office in the Eight-One Building was now a bunker for the dead. Her hands were rock steady.
“Today I have paid him for that, for the crime of forcing me to marry an abuser so that I could spy on one of his own, for his future plans to use Mei-Li and Mui as weapons against their adopted country, and for many crimes far worse, including his unprovoked power grab in Antarctica and the attack on the US aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt.”
The room remained in stunned silence.
“I, Wang Daiyu, am the traitor to the CMC. No one still alive outside this room knows it. Their deaths will never make the news, but they are all dead by now.” She turned to Mui. “My sole regret is any pain I may have caused you in killing your grandfather.”
58
Mei-Li watched for Mui’s reaction. But, as usual when Mui’s mind worked hardest, Mei-Li couldn’t read her at all.
They had often discussed the threat General Liú posed. Zhang Ru, Mei-Li’s former owner, had been blatant in his actions and therefore predictable. Grandfather Zuocheng had been far more intelligent and very subtle in his machinations, making his actions impossible to predict. Though they were American citizens, neither doubted that someday Zuocheng’s claw would reach out and drag them into his plans.
To have him gone? Mei-Li wanted to leap onto the Situation Room table and improvise her greatest-ever gymnastics routine. She wanted to dance, sing, shout, and cavort about like Fu Sang, the Dragon of the Pearl River who brought wisdom and prosperity. It?—
But Mui continued to study Daiyu in the long silence until Mei-Li almost wished there was a mechanical clock here so that she could listen to the mechanism ticking. When Mui finally spoke, it wasn’t to Daiyu, but rather to her.
“Your life’s goal is achieved, Mei-Li.”
And it was. How many hundred sleepless nights had images of the CMC’s fall swirled about her thoughts? And yet, like so many before, her hands were clean and she had, against all odds, survived.
“You are a fighter, Mei-Li, but you are not a warrior. Together, we will forge a new goal for you…” she managed a deep breath as Mei-Li could see her accepting her grandfather’s death, “…for us. One of life, not death.”
And Mei-Li could do no more than rise to her feet so that she could offer her most formal bow to Mui’s superior wisdom and patience. It was Mui, not herself, who embodied the true spirit of the dragon, of all four dragons: wisdom, growth, beauty, and, most importantly, the harmony of Shen Long, the mighty Dragon of the Huai River.
Then Mui turned to the American President. “I believe that Daiyu mentioned there was a third question she would ask. A question if she was not to be sent back to the People’s Republic of China to be tried for killing so many. I am certain that it is the same question that Mei-Li and I didn’t dare to even hope for when we first came to America. So I will dare for her by asking it in her place. Madame President, for Wang Daiyu, I request asylum for her here in the United States of America.”
59
“Wilson is dead. They’re going to rule it as accidental. Killed by a stray golf ball.” The voice on the other end of the call hesitated. “He was a good man.”
“Well done. Good or not, he served his purpose and you’re the one who said he could no longer be trusted.”
“Yes.”
“Second thoughts yourself?”
“No.”
