Two Peasants and a President (48 page)

The bullet that had perforated Virgil’s abdomen had missed areas that could have made recovery far more difficult, but the pain was nonetheless
excruciating and he had spent most of the first day under sedation.  When he awoke, all he wanted to know about was Molly.  The man was clearly in love and though some in the press had said unkind things about the senator’s companion, anyone could see they were meant for each other. 

By the end of the first day, the police had learned that the dead ‘dete
c
tives’ had no past, no records, no finger prints on file, and no relatives to claim them.  It was as if they had materialized in front of Gladys’ house.  The car they drove had been stolen, which wasn’t unusual, but what was unusual was that it had been stolen months ago.  It seems that it had been snatched and put on ice somewhere for future use.  That pointed to an organization. 

The piano tuner would likely have gone unidentified too were it not for a set of prints he had inadvertently left in Tokyo.  They weren’t even close to the victim, but the very thorough Japanese police had picked them up on an object he had handled and thrown into a nearby trash bin.  His gruesome style had also placed him at several murder scenes in Europe and the Middle East, but in those locations only a few grainy surveil
l
ance photos hinted at who the mysterious killer might be.  The identity of some of his victims, his natio
n
ality and his most recent appearance seemed to point to control from China, but that would remain conjecture for the time being.  That he was expected to live was known only to a few.  The press had been told he was dead; indeed with a rather critical part of his lower abdomen missing, doctors had at first declared he would not survive.  Evidently the same tenacity that had made him so good at his trade was, at least for now, keeping him alive. 

As far as the public was concerned, there was more than enough ev
i
dence to implicate China.  That Beijing had attempted to assassinate any United States senator, much less the most popular one in anyone’s memory, ignited an outrage that once again occasioned the staging of riot police near the Chinese embassy.  Several Chinese trading companies in New York and California were either vandalized or firebombed and many Chinese owned restaurants across the country suffered substantial declines in business, which in some cases was manifestly unfair since they were Taiwanese. 

At first the president seemed paralyzed; the very people he needed to fund his government expansion were clearly behind a series of misadventures that could no longer be ignored.  On the second day after the assassination attempt, he addressed the people, first with kind words for the senator he detested and then with vague, undefined threats of retaliation against China.  Given the total lack of specifics and his well known dependence on China’s investment dollars, few felt that there would be any real action from the White House.

In all fairness, there wasn’t much he could do, at least not militarily. 
China had grown so powerful that sending a carrier battle group against it would be suicide; they would be overwhelmed by the thousands of land based missiles, not to mention air and naval assets.  China had become virtually invulnerable militarily, at least near its shores.  Only economic sanctions could even be contemplated and recent events had dramatically exposed their shortcomings.  Without Senator Baines’ rallying cry, the boycott was fast approaching morbidity.

When Vietnam had set up a convoy system, resulting in several co
n
voys safely reaching open ocean, it had seemed to some that China’s bluff had been called.   In reality, it was the powerful voice of Ma
Wen
that had pr
e
vented escalation into actual combat.  Now deceased, his passing gave Li and his PLA allies a free hand and resulted in the sinking of the container ship. 

While compared to the Philippines, Vietnam has a capable Navy, though its total complement of only seven frigates meant that they could not sustain a naval war of attrition with China.  And since any likely conflict between the two neighboring countries would doubtless involve aircraft and missiles as well as ships, Vietnam had stepped back from the brink.  It would seem that, at least for the present, their great naval victories over China in 938 and 1288 would not soon be repeated. 

Li
Guo
Peng
was well aware of this and of his newly elevated position of strength.  He now had no enemies with sufficient influence to challenge him, and he did not intend to wait long before again flexing his muscle.  The drug of power was coursing through his veins and no one had the courage to tell him what he needed to be told: that he had miscalculated badly.  By looking only outward for enemies, he had failed to gauge the depth of di
s
content at home. 

Two days after hundreds of dissidents were swept up in dragnets across China, strikes erupted at more than thirty factories.  Once again, Li misu
n
derstood the significance.  He assumed that the strikers could easily be r
e
placed with those who were already out of work, vastly underestimating the level of determination evidenced by people who still had jobs in a bad economy and who nonetheless made the choice to strike in support of others.

What was even more critical, several of the s
t
riking factories repr
e
sented key defense industries and some of the strikers were highly trained technicians.  Furthermore, instances of sabotage of expensive and indispe
n
sable machinery began to o
ccur
.  In his “let them eat cake”
moment, he o
r
dered that several of the perpetrators be executed as a lesson to others.  Li
Guo
Peng
now wore the mantle of an emperor but, in an age of instant communication, was as out of touch as his ancient predecessors had been when they lived in the Forbidden City. 

******

With the boycott fraying badly and discontent growing, a unifying voice was needed to rally the nation.  Senator Baines would not be giving speeches anytime soon; the bullet had perforated his diaphragm and he could barely speak.  The president’s eloquent but phony oratory no longer brought any but his diehard supporters to their feet.  Not since the darkest days of WWII had the country been so in need of inspiration.

An unlikely
uniter
of the desperate citizens of a desperate nation stepped forward.  Petite of stature but blessed with uncommon determin
a
tion, the side of her head still bore the scar of her own attempted assassination.  Inside her head were worse scars.  Each day she struggled with horrific memories, each night unspeakable nightmares.  Too proud to ask for help, she covered the dark circles under her eyes with makeup and told her face to smile.

Holly Petersen knew that the United States wa
s staring over the abyss.  She
also knew that from the horror in China had sprung a heretofore unknown gift.  But the angry red slash on her temple reminded her that the gift had nearly cost her life.  In Europe, thousands had been captivated as she r
e
counted her ordeal and her will to survive, but they could not know how it haunted her. 

She needed to find a place where it could not follow her, a place where
she could wash away the horror and
erase the memories, but the horrors had not abated.  She had seen the news reports of the attempted murder of an American hero, reports which had not at first revealed if her beloved Ping was alive.  Her anguish at the images of sheet-covered corpses being wheeled from the senator’s home was beyond description.  Upon seeing the report of Ping in the hospital caring for the senator and his friend, her eyes poured her heart’s relief onto her cheeks. 

When the tears had finally stopped flowing, she knew she had no choice.  She would share the most intimate horrors of her personal journey through hell with the American people in order that they might discover their own reserves of strength.  She would show her countrymen that the impo
s
sible is just a little farther down the path, within reach if they allow the
m
selves to believe.  She would take them back to another difficult time when the American worker saved the nation, every bit as much as had its soldiers, sailors and airmen.  Realizing that the nation needed to hear her voice, a grateful network CEO graciously provided time for her during the most watched evening news commentary program. 

“This morning, as I prepared to speak to you, I was reminded that only a few weeks ago a young woman in a gleaming white dress and shoes walked among loving family and friends to the spot where she married the man of her dreams.  Days later, two young Americans very much in love embarked on a honeymoon cruise that held the promise of an adventure that few newlyweds ever enjoy.  My husband and I had very much wanted to experience the history and charm of the South China Sea, and our wonderful parents obliged by giving us a cruise on a real Chinese junk, one that had actually sailed the waters around Hong Kong for almost a century.” 

“After a delicious dinner aboard the junk, as we stood on the deck watching the city lights fade in the distance, I realized that something was very wrong with my husband.  He was having trouble speaking and could barely stand.  I scarcely had time to call for help before he collapsed.  Seeing a police boat approaching our junk, I mistakenly assumed that someone on board had noticed his distress and summoned assistance.  As I knelt at his side comforting him
,
a woman approached, whom I assumed had come to help, but instead she stuck a needle in my neck and I joined my husband in unconsciousness.”

“I awoke alone and in total darkness in a steel room that I could only measure by crawling on my hands and knees until I ran into a wall, a wall I could not see, a wall that like the floor was metal and damp to the touch.  Save for the endless drone of some distant machine, there was no sound, no voices, no singing of birds, no traffic, no laughter.  The crushing loneliness and utter blackness gave no hint of the passage of time and I could not know that days were passing in my dark prison as I was taken all the way from Hong Kong on the southern coast of China to one of its northernmost cities.  In what was the cruelest stroke of all, I didn’t even know if my husband was still alive.  He had been torn from
me and
my honeymoon.”

“In Tianjin, a small basement prison replaced the damp cell that I learned had been in the hold of a ship.  Aside from a very special cleaning lady of whom you have by now all heard, and a doctor whose only concern was to keep me well enough so that I could be butchered for profit in the hospital from hell, I neither saw nor spoke to a single soul.  Day after day I was left to wonder what they had done to the man I had just married.  I had no idea that the extraordinarily brave cleaning lady and group of courageous Chinese dissidents, along with a retired navy captain who I am proud to say is my grandfather, were planning a daring rescue which could easily have r
e
sulted in all of them being butchered too.” 

“When China’s rulers learned that we had escaped, they sent their entire northern fleet to board and search hundreds of ships across the Yellow Sea in a
frantic effort to find us and prevent my story from ever being told.  In one of many moments that could have been our last, my incredible grandfather, armed with only a pistol, dueled successfully with a Chinese machine gunner aboard a helicopter and killed him.  Even then, China continued to try to pursue us with their warships, and only the intervention at the last instant by the South Korean Air Force and a United States submarine prevented us from being murdered just miles from freedom.”

“But let me speak no more of my nightmare, rather of my transform
a
tion.  As you can plainly see, I am five foot three inches tall and weigh slightly more than one hundred pounds.  I was raised in a loving family and though we were certainly not rich, I had everything a young girl needed.  But nothing in my childhood prepared me for what I would endure in China.  During my many days of imprisonment, I came very, very close to losing my will to resist; I was on the verge of giving myself entirely to the role of a victim.”

“It was at that point that I realized that I could only lose the battle for survival if I gave up the fight, that my captors could not truly claim me until I abandoned myself to them.  Somewhere inside me a voice said that I would not die as long as I refused to give up.  I was raised in a military family and I remember hearing over and over to never quit, to always be strong and to stand up for what is right.”

“My family also taught me the lessons of history and I would like to remind you of one that some of you may even remember.  It was the spring of 1942.  Our battleships had been sunk at Pearl Harbor, Japan was marching undefeated across the Pacific, conquering nation after nation; the Philippines, T
hailand, the fortress of Corregi
dor, the Dutch East Indies all fell.  Even mighty British battleships were overwhelmed by Japanese air assault and sent to the bottom.” 

“Hitler had defeated almost all of Europe and seemed poised to conquer Russia.  Some felt that we would be next.  It would be hard to find a darker time in the history of this nation.  Yet the American people refused to give up.  Men who weren’t fighting at the front went to work producing weapons and supplies for those who were.  Women who were used to heating baby bottles became welders and riveters.  Steel was rationed; there were no new cars.  Fuel was rationed.  Meat was rationed.  And on the West Coast, black out curtains were enforced every night.  Men armed with rifles patrolled our shores searching for spies and enemy submarines.”