Girl Rides the Wind (13 page)

Stone hesitated, glancing from one face to the other, and then handed the remote to his sister. Andie kissed him one more time.

“Thank you, my sweet boy.”

“Here you are,” Carol Lukaszewicz said as she backed through the doorway with an armload of dishes. “The men have already decamped.”

“Oh no,” Andie said. “You guys didn’t need to do that.” She tried to squeeze past to the dining room, but there was no way to get by.

“Too late. Edie and Janet have the rest.”

Once Ellie, the housekeeper, had stacked the dishes, glasses and silverware by the sink, Andie managed to lead her guests back into the dining room.

“Are they out on the patio?”

“I think so,” said Janet O’Brien, SECNAV’s wife. “That is, if the patio’s through there. I think I hear my husband’s voice, so the conversation must be getting interesting.”

“Hold the door, and we can wheel the coffee cart out,” Andie said, just as louder voices erupted again. The five men huddled around a weathered, teak table, at the far side, the glowing ends of cigars carving out emphasis as each one spoke or listened.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tom,” Michael said. The screen door slapped shut after the women. “I only saw it when Will sent it over from State, right Will?” He turned to the Southeast Asian Affairs Deputy for moral support, who shrugged absentmindedly.

“All I know is that it came through the pipeline out of Patuxent,” Admiral Hannifin said.

“I don’t care, Teddy,” O’Brien said. He turned to look directly at Michael. “I’m not an idiot. If it passed through Savaransky’s fingers there, it might as well have been hand-delivered by your Israeli bodyguard.”

“Look, Tom, you’re gonna have to trust me on this. I only saw it after you passed it on to State.”

Andie couldn’t help smiling at her husband’s bald-faced lie, and busied herself about the coffee service to avoid giving anything away. A gentle breeze puffed past the patio and carried the accumulated cigar smoke away, and the other women began passing out cups. Shadowy figures hovered at intervals among the trees along the edge of the back lawn, some fifty or sixty yards away, too far to hear the occasional squawk of their radios.

“Michael, even if you didn’t stick your oar into the ONI network, do you really expect me to believe your girl had no advanced knowledge of a message from the Imperial Household? I mean, the Crown Princess practically thinks she’s a long lost niece or something.”

Yuki handed SECNAV a cup – “Black, no sugar, right, Tom?” – and glowered at him.

“Even if that’s true, what difference does it make here? If the Crown Princess trusts her, then she’s an asset.”

“But whose asset is she?”

“You don’t mean to suggest that my daughter’s a foreign agent, do you, Tom?” Yuki’s face had taken on a fixed scowl, and her fists clenched, as if she might actually strike him. O’Brien was startled to see her, perhaps realizing how his words might have been received. Andie stepped in between them and steered Yuki to the other end of the patio, where the women had taken up a position.

“Are you suggesting we have a mole?” Lukaszewicz asked.

“No, of course not.”

“Then what are you saying?” Michael asked.

“You know exactly what I mean, Michael. Is she my asset or yours?”

“She’s neither, and you know it. She’s a good Marine caught in the middle. You can back me up any time now, Paul.”

“Every report I’ve seen says as much,” Lukaszewicz said.

“Crichton’s account of the animosity between her and the
Jietai
seems to confirm it,” Hannifin said. “There’s no love lost there. I’m not surprised their man turned the letter over to someone higher up the chain.”

“But the only way we have the letter at all is because the Crown Princess wanted her to have it,” O’Brien said, with a glance down the patio. “She’s involved, no matter how you slice it.”

Once Andie had settled Yuki into a seat with the other women, the men’s conversation drifted into inaudibility, aided by a steadier breeze. Even though Michael would brief the two of them fully once the party broke up, she knew the illusion of privacy was crucial to the conversation he meant to encourage now.

“Who were they talking about,” Edie Hannifin asked. “Your husband seems pretty upset about some girl.”

“You know me, I try not to take an interest in Tom’s work,” Janet said.

“It’s my daughter,” Yuki said, after an uncomfortable moment.

“She’s in ONI?” Edie asked.

“Not hardly,” Andie said. “She pilots a helicopter on the
Bonhomme Richard
.”

“Which means she’s in the middle of the joint naval exercises going on over there, right?”

“Yes,” Yuki said. “But she has a knack for getting herself into the middle of all sorts of things.”

“I hope she’s not in trouble,” Janet said.

Yuki opened her mouth as if to speak, until Andie gave a tiny shake of the head, before giving the conversation a nudge in slightly different direction.

“We’ve known her since she was a toddler. She’s the only babysitter Anthony’s ever had. He’s absolutely devoted to her.”

“Isn’t your son heading off to college in the fall?” Edie asked.

“Yes.” Just then, the housekeeper signaled from the screen door, and Andie moved as if to get up. “It’s the pastries.”

“Stay there,” Yuki said. “We can manage it.”

Janet held the door as they walked the tray out and set up a stand to support it.

“Andie, where’s he going?” Edie asked.

“Charlottesville. He decided to stay close to home. Plus, the chemistry department arranged a little scholarship for him.”

“It’s not like you needed one,” Carol said, with a little chuckle.

“No, but it made him feel wanted, I suppose. He’s becoming very much his own man.”

A cloud scudded across the moon and cast the patio into a deeper darkness for a moment, and left a light haze in its wake after it passed, haloing the light. For whatever reason, Andie was reminded of an evening several years earlier, when a similar moon looked on much darker events in her backyard.

“Emily is a very good person,” she said, without any prompting, as the other women looked at her quizzically.

“And Emily is…” Janet began to ask.

“… my daughter.” Yuki said.

“Does she really have some connection to royalty?” Carol asked.

“No, but the Crown Princess seems to think she does,” Andie said. The women pecked gaily over this tidbit, and the conversation turned again down an altogether safer avenue.

She got up to offer the men more coffee or bourbon from time to time, and heard earnest discussions of recent events in Southeast Asia. Apparently, a long dormant civil war in the southern islands of the Philippines, involving an organization calling itself the Moro Liberation Front, threatened to come to life again after a decades-long truce. A bill had passed the Japanese lower house changing the rule of succession to the Chrysanthemum Throne, sparking large demonstrations in Tokyo and Osaka, and protests in several smaller cities. A near-miss incident over the Spratly Islands occurred when a Chinese fighter jet repeatedly challenged a US P-8A Poseidon surveillance plane, and only backed off at the approach of a pair of F-18E Super Hornets from the
USS Nimitz.

“If it gets any hotter, Operation Seabreeze may find some real work to do,” the admiral said.

“I hope not.” O’Brien puffed on his cigar. “Crichton’s last message suggested they may not have worked out all the problems in their comms protocols.”

“A friendly-fire incident would be very embarrassing,” Lukaszewicz said.

“Not as embarrassing as if some actual terrorists manage to sink a tanker right under the taskforce’s nose,” Michael said.

“What do you mean ‘actual terrorists’? Do you know something we don’t?” O’Brien asked.

“Only what I read in the reports you send me. The Chinese intell is pretty thin, and with their satellites, and assets in the islands, if they can’t provide anything actionable, I have to wonder if there’s any terrorists to find. Unless, of course…”

Andie wandered back to the fire-pit that Yuki had just lit to keep the women warm, and they pulled the chairs around it. She already knew what her husband was about to say, that the Chinese weren’t providing genuine intell, and that elements within the People’s Liberation Army may be conspiring with Philippine National Police to gin up an incident, perhaps to provide an excuse for a large-scale offensive against the Moro Liberation Front. When she returned a few minutes later with a tray of pastries, she heard the second half of that reflection.

“It would probably scuttle negotiations for a new base agreement,” Hannifin said.

“I don’t see how Manila hopes to slow down the Chinese dredging operations without our help,” Tom said.

“Unless not everyone in Manila wants to slow them down,” Michael said.

“Who are those kids in your kitchen?” Janet asked, once Andie had returned to the fire-pit.

“That’s a long story.”

“I thought they were yours, Yuki,” Carol Lukaszewicz said.

“I wish.”

“The girl, Li Li, she’s so pretty,” Edie said. “I’d love to have hair like that.”

“She’s the daughter of a friend, who sent her to stay with us for a while,” Andie said.

“How long have you had her?”

“A couple years.” This was substantially less than the truth, but Andie knew it was important to draw as little attention to this arrangement as possible. Who, after all, would understand how the Director of Clandestine Services could have the child of a former high-ranking officer of the Chinese
Guoanbu
living in his home?

“You’re kidding,” Janet said. “Two years. That must be quite a friend.”

“She’s no burden… really. We think of her as a daughter.”

“And the boy?”

“Oh, him,” Yuki said. “He’s just a friend of Li Li’s.”

“He seems a little… off, you know,” Carol said. “I don’t mean to be unfeeling, or…”

“It’s okay. He has a… condition. He doesn’t know how to communicate well, but he and Li Li seem to get along.”

It was important not to tell any simple falsehoods about Stone and, above all, to deflect any sustained interest in his identity. Michael had crafted a suitable paper trail for the existence of an orphan boy indirectly attached to his household, but it wouldn’t stand up to a focused inquiry.

As the party wound down, Andie and Yuki began collecting cups and glasses from around the patio.

“I think you’re mistaken about the Chinese, Michael,” Hannifin said. “Those kinds of troop movements by the PLA are commonplace. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

“Besides, they’re replaced by other units within a few days,” Lukaszewicz said. “There’s no net change in troop strength at any base.”

“That’s my point. It’s an awful lot of dislocation to go through for no net change, don’t you think?” Michael said.

“I suppose.”

“Think about the impact on all those military families. Would you make those moves without a serious purpose?”

“Okay, fine, Michael, so it’s not as innocent as it appears,” O’Brien said. “But there’s still no way to connect any of this to the situation in Japan. No matter how we try to construe the message in that letter… what would be the point of sending all those units into the Gobi Desert? How is that connected to a move on Japan?”

“I’d expect something coming out of the tensions in the East China Sea,” Hannifin said. “They’ve been so preoccupied with whipping up nationalistic fervor over the Diaoyu Islands, it’d be strange not to focus their efforts there.”

“You mean the Senkakus, right?” Yuki asked. O’Brien and Hannifin suddenly noticed that the women were listening.

“I’m sorry,” Andie said, as she scooped up the last of the coffee cups. “We’ll be out of your way in just a moment.”

“In Japan, we call them the Senkaku Islands,” Yuki said. “And I can assure you, the Chinese are capable of much greater… indirection than you give them credit for.”

Michael frowned at her, and Andie pulled Yuki away from the men’s table.

“She’s right, you know,” he said. “Don’t underestimate the Chinese.”

The last thing Andie heard of this conversation, as she held the screen door open for Yuki, was O’Brien saying, “I don’t see how you can think General Diao is behind any of it. He’s totally discredited, last we heard. I mean, they forced him into retirement years ago.”

T
he helicopter ride
to Yonago left Gyoshin feeling queasy, and the flight down to Sasebo on the Takenouchi Corporation’s jet hadn’t done anything to alleviate the pressure at her temples. They’d passed over Fukuoka, skirting the northwest coast, just as the red orb of the sun slipped below the horizon, scattering a jagged streak of gold and silver across the waves. Gyoshin covered her eyes and pulled down the window-shade. The plane banked left south of Iki island, and left again past the point of Azuchi-Oshima, before gliding into a tiny airstrip northwest of the city – two bumps and they taxied past the helicopters available for charter and a row of private planes with covered propellers and intakes. A limousine waited next to the runway.

“Do you really want to give all this up?” Gyoshin asked, as Minoru’s bodyguard held the door.

“I don’t follow,” Jin said.

“All these perks of the private sector, the planes, the cars… all of it. After this is over, we won’t own anything anymore.”

“But we’ll control everything, which is just the same.”

“Our lives may turn out to be comfortable, but they won’t be our own any longer. Don’t you see? We’ll belong to the state.”

“You’re too deep for me, Gyoshin-san.”

Jin paused to adjust her dress before lowering her head to enter the car, then shivered when her bare shoulders touched the leather upholstery of the seatback. The door clicked shut, and Gyoshin reached over to help adjust her wrap without disturbing her hair. With a nod and a smile, Jin acknowledged this friendly act, though it felt to Gyoshin rather more like condescension than appreciation.

“We won’t actually hold any office, you know, or have any titles,” Jin added.

“The most powerful ruler of ancient Rome never held important office,” Minoru said, though it was clear he hadn’t heard the earlier part of the conversation. “He controlled the state more effectively from behind the scenes, unencumbered by petty responsibilities.”