Razing Beijing: A Thriller (44 page)

“What father has not? Which is why sometimes I wonder what
you see each morning when you look in the mirror.”

Deng allowed his first impulse to pass. Peifu was ever slow
to lower his guard. And who could blame him? It was not he who had chosen to
discuss the one subject sure to provoke strong sentiments.

As was always the case, one other problem lurked beneath
the surface. Deng held his finger to his mouth. He smiled and said, “On second
thought, let’s not spoil the evening with such contentious talk. How about a
refreshing walk?”

“I don’t know. I have exams to go over.”

Deng stood up from the bench, blanching at the sting in his
hip. “Come,” he placed his hand on Peifu’s shoulder. “It will do us both good.”
He grabbed his cane on the way to the door.

They were a good distance from the apartment before either
one spoke, uncertain even then that State Security was not hiding behind park
shrubbery with their directional listening devices, a tactic they were known to
employ.

Peifu spoke in a low voice. “Father, I am sorry I addressed
you so. It is just that you are a national figure—people look up to you.”

Rather than be drawn in by his son’s obtuse judgmentalism,
Deng concentrated on placing his cane on the ground next to his foot with each
step. “How tragic to disdain one’s own father. What is it you would rather I
do?”

Peifu stopped and turned to him in the descending darkness,
distrustful of the conversation’s direction. “It’s not so much what you should
do. It’s more what I think you should
not
do. You
should
do those
things that serve humanity, like modernizing your cherished medical system. You
should
not
kowtow to a corrupt government and an evil military. Earlier
you asked if I was content. Well, these fascists are content only with the
necks of the people securely pinned to the ground beneath their heels, and yet
for these toadies you develop the implements of power. I have never understood
these two faces you wear.”

“The government you despise provides each and every day for
the future of China. A future worthy of your children and grandchildren and
their great, great grandchildren.”

His son pointed back toward the way they had walked. “We
are not even at liberty to freely discuss things in our own home. Is that what
you believe the future should hold?”

“Surveillance is a matter of nothing to hide, nothing to
fear. Their modest intrusions benefit the whole of society. They secure us from
enemies of the state.”
Things cannot be freely discussed in our home
,
Deng was tempted to say,
because of
your
foolish transgressions
.

“They secure themselves.”

Deng considered his son to be something of a pacifist,
albeit an exceptionally rebellious one. He probably still had no idea that
twice he’d been spared the degradation of the gulag due only to the
intervention of his father. “You chafe for democracy. What more proof of the
folly in this does one need than the chaos that prevails over the so-called
democracies? They are perpetually incapable of bestowing power upon worthy and
effective leaders.”

“Nobody would claim democracy perfect. At least it makes an
attempt at legitimacy.”

“Legitimacy like beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“In the eye of the
people
—not the Politburo or a
handful of power brokers. Even the old usurpation of power under the Mandate of
Heaven was more intellectually honest than our present arrangement.”

Deng actually saw a glint of truth and irony in his son’s
point. He once read that the English Magna Carta, upon which most of Western
democracy was based, viewed Heaven’s authority as vested in ‘the people,’ who
bestow it upon whomever they select to lead them. In China’s dynastic era of
regime change by conquest, legitimacy was bestowed by Heaven’s mandate directly
upon the victor. That both concepts, however disparate, happened to promote
Heaven as the arbiter of authority was apparently lost on Peifu.

Deng gestured to an empty bench between the lake and a
patch of trees.

Sitting quietly beside each other for a time, Deng realized
he was nervously probing the dirt with his cane. “I have something to admit to
you. I have dedicated my life to technology. As you know, such intellectual
pursuits China has not always encouraged among her citizens. As commissioner I
have tried to embrace this great opportunity, to discern which technology to
develop for the betterment of China. That is the essence of what I do. At
times, I have known my resolve to waiver.”

“So...you have questioned the Party’s authority, have you?”

“And yet you see only my dedication and mistake it for
blind obedience.”

“I do not see the distinction.”

“We’re talking about my role in providing for the defense
of our country—these implements of power, as you call them. There are times
when my resolve waivers, even to the point of fear. Not fear that these
technologies will fall into oppressively governing hands, as you might. Fear
that they will find their way into the hands of foreigners bent on our
destruction—that, after all, is our history.”

“Really, this is nationalist propaganda.”

“I am
not
a propagandist. Why must you be so insulting?”

“Why have we not discussed this before tonight? Are you
ill?”

“I am not sick!”

“You would tell me.”

Deng dismissed the concern with a wave. “Consider what I am
trying to illustrate, my son. For a millennium, the Europeans were poised at
the dawn of the Bronze Age while China led the world’s innovations. Eventually,
the spice and textile trade flourished along the Silk Road, foreigners arrived on
our shores in their meager, rudderless sailing ships incapable even of tacking
into the wind. It was a time when China freely shared her inventions,
everything from a compass to navigate the seas, a wondrous mixture of
saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal for treating skin ailments, to the crossbow, an
implement of battle perhaps but also an accurate means of game hunting. Our
complacency had set in. Intellectuals ruled with specious Confucianism, the
military class who had fought all the wars were despised, and the burgeoning
advances of the West were arrogantly spurned as petty tricks.

“You see, our enemies noted these attitudes. And when the
foreigners returned to defeat us, they navigated by compass aboard ships with
sternpost rudders, and fired upon us using guns charged with powder—all
innovations of Chinese design. We had hastened our own dynastic decline and
disgrace. Our weakness led the way for invasion by foreigners, their religions,
and their opium. Did you know that opium addiction became so epidemic that
demand for our silk, our tea and our porcelain, known for centuries to be of
such fine quality as to be sought the world over, virtually disappeared? Peking
was too weak to prevent the chemical subornation of their people by foreigners.
And this time they had been conquered not by Mongols or Ottomans but by the
more distant British and Dutch, with their humiliating territorial annexation,
followed by two major Japanese invasions...” Deng shook his head with a sigh.

“When the rest of the world was manufacturing commercial
jets and dreaming of manning rockets to the moon, China had not the fundamental
technology to feed itself. Beginning under the Ming rulers, we had walled
ourselves off from the world, rejected their technology, their methods of commerce.
By the time I was born, China had become a pathetic laggard—the global
imbecile.”

Deng waited as a young couple strolled past and disappeared
in the descending dusk. A police siren wailed somewhere in the distance.

“The lesson of history is clear,” he continued, “as I
assure you it is to our adversaries, whomever and wherever they are. Peace is
preserved only through strength.”

“Where you and I differ, Father, is whose strength we
should labor to preserve.”

“
Our
strength—why is this not obvious to you? China
lay wasted and broken in the midst of feudal destruction, barren and not
arable, our people impoverished and starving. For the life of me, I cannot
understand your refusal to accept the significance of this. As I look back over
history, I find it difficult to comprehend what
possible
spoils China’s
foreign invaders had sought to acquire, yet conquer they did. And why? Because
conquer they could.

“China’s standing in the world can only be elevated through
superior strength. Helping restore her to the pinnacle of civilization has long
been my ambition. Now, we may have stumbled along the way. While I may not live
long enough to see that day, on our ancestral honor, that day will come.”

Peifu slowly shook his head. “I view China in the context
of a different world. You illustrate how vastly that world has changed. I do
not deny that Han people must protect themselves, our disagreement is in the
perception of the threat.” He turned toward his father. “The leaders of our
country preside over a system without checks on their abuses, save one—that the
proletariat will bombard the headquarters.”

“Careful, you will be labeled a black hand.”

Peifu chuckled at his father’s dry sarcasm; no doubt he had
been so labeled, and for some time now. “You labor to protect China from threats
which you perceive lie beyond our borders. I see the threat as already here,
within
our borders. That threat is the unbridled oppression wielded by those unelected
and unaccountable—our political class.”

Deng took a deep breath. “Was it Marx who said the only
thing democracy did for the masses was allow an election every few years, to
decide who would represent and oppress them?”

“We have long disregarded anything Marx had to say. What little,
actual history I have been privy to reads like some fascist utopia, which
succeeded in starving thirty million of its own citizens, our ‘Great’ Leap
Forward, for which we were treated to our ‘Great’ Proletarian Cultural
Revolution—one great atrocity after another. You’ve actually lived through
those unspeakable times, as have we through your stories of them. Under the fraud
of socialism, more than fifty-million people have been exterminated.”

“It was not so straightforward.”

“It was
criminal
. Who has been held to account?
Four
people? Exactly what is it that convinces you another power-mongering despot
will not rise-up to ravage another generation?”

“I am one man. You are one man. One man cannot right the
wrongs of one dark chapter—”

“Who will be there to stop him?”

Deng felt himself sinking into despondency. What father
deserved suffering the lecture of his own child? But there the words were,
hanging in the silence. “Chairman Mao and his Gang of Four were an aberration. That
could never happen again.”

“You mean, history cannot repeat itself?”

A breeze rippled the surface of the lake, distorting the reflection
of lights. Peifu had certainly inherited the tact of his mother, whose memory
Deng cherished. Somewhere within the bastion of power was a man—the butcher of
his family,
gaogan
, one to whom Deng may have unwittingly suborned
himself. How amusing it would be for such a man—from a position of power?—to
have manipulated him, indeed, to have made a
mockery
of him.
What
does my dedication to such men say for the future of my grandson?

Deng Zhen turned to his son. “What type of world would you
have for your children?” His voice sounded unexpectedly weary.

At length, Peifu finally replied. “One free from
manipulation into hatred of the freedom loving people of the world.”

THE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL
INTELLIGENCE
listened carefully, interrupting only occasionally with a
question as McBurney described the convoluted series of events. He tilted his
head back and another two puffs of smoke began a languid drift toward the
ceiling duct. “This really a Beijing attempt to shut her up?”

“I believe it is,” McBurney answered without hesitation.

Burns looked at him.

“We had the lab analyze her so-called blackmail note. Wherever
the message might have originated, the words are cut from newspaper printed on recycled
pulp matching batches used by two Midwestern distributors. Spectral analysis of
the photographic paper revealed trace elements typical of water samples found
in aquifers all around northeastern China. So we can also say that wherever the
photographs were shot, they were printed in that region of the world. Ziegler
reprocessed the image of the forearm in the background, the one seen holding
the playing cards. The dark-green sleeve material appears to be a heavy utility
weight. You can make out what looks like two points of the red star worn on the
sleeve of the PLA standard issue fatigue.”

“Just sloppy work, you think?”

“It happens.”

“This suggests a highly orchestrated, premeditated series
of events.”

“Espionage, executed by an agent in-country.”

Burns nodded, eyeing him patiently. “Are we sure?”

“Sir?”

“Consider the implications. The PRC sponsors sabotage of a
non-military, purely commercial test aircraft, God only knows why, which
crashes on American soil and kills American citizens. In legal terms, that’s an
act of war. It’s astounding to me they would intentionally do something like
that. I find it equally astounding they would proceed to cover it up by risking
attention being drawn to the daughter of the man whom they know we tried to defect.
The odds of a coincidence are unimaginably small.”