When Totems Fall (5 page)

"And we shall soon rise to the level of our glorious purpose!"

The general waited, making sure he controlled the room before going on. Assured this was the case, notably by cowered looks from those he'd chastised, he motioned to a central figure seated across the table.

"Minister please, lend your voice to this destiny, for all of us."

The leading political official in the room,
Zhou Dhe,
exuded an air of authority, one engendering a ready submission to his desires and directives. His inset eyes focused unwaveringly, powerfully. A big man, six feet two inches tall, he ranked in the 99th percentile in height of adult males with respect to his countrymen. Dhe understood how to make good on these physical advantages. In a room full of subordinates or an intimate exchange, his bearing often left people feeling lesser and weaker at the end of an encounter with him.

He liked it that way.

Though he presumed power and influence, Dhe was nothing more than a common coward.
For him the ancient adage, "Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting" was an escape and not a position of strength. Sun Tzu, author of
The Art of War
and originator of this ideal, would not have approved. Still Dhe was suited, even if mostly functionally, for the role that had been his for the better part of two decades.

Established in the mid-1970s with minimal oversight by the broader executive body, the Strategic Communications Ministry was a well-funded yet largely unknown organ in an already secretive system. The ministry operated in the realms of deepest darkness, where decisions were made by only a few, enjoying the privileges of limitless resources and hidden budgets. As the Director of SCM, Dhe held enormous clout. His word stood virtually unchallengeable, except by those outranking him in the Party apparatus. Even at that, countering him was never taken on lightly. He was a man charged with immense influence in the smallest and elitist of power chambers, in this most populous of nations. These were realities he both embraced and relished. A highly placed fall-man, his life's work encouraged those above him to engage in misdeeds while protecting them from being called to account for anything—officially.

Failure? Exposure?

Dhe would suffer the consequences alone. He had accepted this fact decades ago. In the final assessment, to him, the pleasures well outweighed the risks. Far more pragmatist than patriot, his greatest fear was a worthy opponent rising up and unmasking him. To Dhe, a fair fight was something to be avoided at all costs. He was a man for whom rumors and legend held as much leverage as the truth. At 73 years of age the director's formerly imposing stature now bent forward of the rigid spine, chest-out presentation of his youth. The air of accumulated secrecy he carried more than made up for it. The man knew where every single metaphorical body was buried and had dug many of the holes himself.

Yes, people feared Dhe, and for good reason.

Ten minutes of rehashed propaganda
later he shifted, orienting his body toward Junjie. The move and his words bore down heavily. The young man found it a challenge to look anywhere near the minister's direction as Dhe's eyes burned into place, never lifting off Junjie even as he addressed the rest of the men.

"Today is a momentous day my comrades. The last three years have seen both ample investment and significant gains, promising tremendous returns for many more years to come. I assure you this: our leaders are watching with keen interest and anticipation."

Dhe then changed tack abruptly, directing his comments exclusively to Junjie. Walking over beside him, he leaned in so close that his breath brushed off the CEO's cheek.

"So," he asked, threat and accusation equally present in his tone. "What exactly may I tell them?"

Silence prevailed in the room, the blatant dismissal of cultural protocol shocking all around the table.

Junjie moved on positively, another series of data and timelines playing out on the LED wall.

He was bluffing.

Outwardly he appeared confident and polished. His inner-bearing, however, was anything but that. In fact, the longer he reported on their successes, the more Junjie became conflicted and confused.

Not satisfied, and cutting in before the young man was through, Dhe pressed the inquisition further still, to a point of decision and declaration.

"May we count on your full commitment?"

Leaning in, closer still.

"Are the systems operational?"

Dhe's question stayed there, leaving an awkward pause between the two men. The moment was Junjie's to seize or to squander, the very reason he had been invited into the room. Prolonging his reply by another few seconds, he did something both familiar and foreign to his people.

He prayed; silently, quickly. It was time to choose.

One last plusses and minuses exercise.

They'd met or exceeded every obligation. The contract fostered a far quicker ascendancy than even their loftiest projections. It was an opportunity thousands of other CEOs wouldn't hesitate to accept, not for a single second.

Still, nagging at his mind, what he could not ignore, was the unanswered question of what might happen once the tech was handed over to the government. Troubling him deeply was this: it was likely they had done too good of a job, creating something more potent than was for anyone's good. In his professional opinion the code being written was more appropriate to outcomes other than those stated in the agreement. Yes, for all the good it brought him there were things here that still made no sense. He surmised the worst. Pile on top of this the sudden removal of valued men and women and the hasty installation of their handpicked replacements, chosen by nothing less than high-level authorities in Beijing, and the whole thing took on a weight of uncertainty that was terribly disconcerting.

Maybe I should walk away, make some mistakes, be forced to hand over the work to someone else.

Zang had entertained these thoughts more than once over the last few months. It would not be that simple. Dislodging Dawn Star from her contractual obligations would prove highly impractical at this point. The move would also be quite difficult to explain.

Time was up.

Junjie's mouth opened, his next words formalizing an irreversible decision.

"My firm pledges itself in every way. We are on track for full implementation in the next twenty-four hours."

The statement sounded far more convincing in the room than how it landed in his heart. Nonetheless, the deed was done. They would move forward.

Dhe backed off, nodding triumphantly, signaling they were finished here. The other men stood in unison. Suit coat buttons were refastened and notebooks gathered.

Junjie retrieved his materials, bowed, and then exited the room. His footsteps, far too loud through hallways built to hold secrets, left him wondering anew: had he done the right thing, the best thing. With the door shut behind him the men talked. Dhe spoke first.

"He was not so credible this time. I believe we may have to watch him more closely. We have come too far to allow his weakness to jeopardize the good of the whole."

He was so quick to play the fake patriotism card.

"And need I remind you... the good of the whole is
why
we are doing this."

General
Chien Wie
stared back, unflinching in the face of the stinging rebuke. He knew enough about Dhe to obey him but he would not honor the man. In his long career he'd stood beside many of the same ilk, hiding naked ambition behind a false love of country. His next words came slowly but confidently.

"There are sufficient measures in place. The young businessman will finish what he has started."

"And then?"

"And then he will not be any more trouble, or any more use... to us."

Dhe turned toward the door, expressing nothing—neither acknowledgment nor disagreement—and simply left.

SEVEN

How foolish, Junjie thought to himself. Did he actually believe being forced to decide, to move forward, would bring him peace? That stepping over the line would cure him of his anguish? No, the meeting had only made things worse

Spinning his leather executive chair
around and then sitting down heavily, Junjie peered outward again into the thick cloud-cover.

Perfect.

The irony was not lost on the young executive. The weight he bore was real. The fact someone like himself carried this burden? As close to an absurdity as could be imagined.

In Chinese culture two things: honor and power, matter for much. Junjie lacked both. As a young man he would be required to bide his time before commanding other's respect. Given a normal life expectancy this would come, as this deficit was due only to a lack of accumulated years on the planet. The second issue, though—power—remained as something entirely out of his control.

Junjie held no misconceptions about how business got done in his country. The corporate structure here mirrored much of the world's, where those in positions of influence often came from lineages of means. In every age, he understood, the myth of the outsider rising to glory was exactly that: a myth. In the real world, tribal and clan dominance was as old as humanity itself, only morphing from one epoch to another through the transitional forms of royalty, democratic political power, and economic clout. Junjie knew how these things went, that a family business is probably more family than it is business.

And yet here he was. Dawn Star was enjoying a stunning growth trajectory, outbidding more established tech firms and then having performed better than anyone thought possible. Junjie's team had rapidly gained a reputation and standing that usually took much longer to forge. In an ever-modernizing China this had become more common—a young venture growing this way—especially in the fields of communication and data management. A currently uninterrupted boom in this sector had been in play since the late 90s, by most commentator's timetables. This trendline made successes like theirs far more possible with every passing decade. So no, the factor standing out in this storyline as odd was not the company but its founder. In many ways his name shouldn't be found in the text at all.

Junjie's people arose not from the elite of Beijing or Hong Kong but from the remotest villages of Gansu Province. Far removed from the seats of the powerful, his lineage plied the trades of farming and mining as simple laborers and craftsmen. This central northwestern segment of the People's Republic of China was home for 26 million people, many ethnically Han, and an ongoing convergence of old and new.
For ages Junjie's male forebears had been hard workers and committed family men. The women were competent and hearty as well; strong, physically and emotionally. Tough, resolute. Long days in the fields and mines of Gansu extracted whatever could be wrestled away from a Mother Nature seeming extraordinarily stingy toward her inhabitants in this remote part of the world. As was true of those before him, the same would be required of young Junjie: an honorable life of work and loyalties. And as the firstborn and a son he would carry on the family name
Zang.

This was the predetermined script of Junjie's life. How it played out was strikingly different, in almost every way imaginable. Even now, sitting in his lushly appointed office, a plot twist of this magnitude was hard to believe. Yet Junjie knew it was true. He remembered all too well where he'd come from.

The crops
had failed, again.

Pain and weakness distorted Junjie's overactive imagination, sketching a bleak future onto the canvas of his young mind. Hunger pangs lingered amidst the frail and weak. As irreducible sedimentary remains of the struggle for life they reminded everyone of the unending, "never-enough" cycles in Gansu. It was brutally unfair. The fickleness of temperature, moisture, and sunshine had transformed a modest expectation of survival into a fated acceptance of their frailties. The harvest had not come. Sickness and death surely would.

Junjie read it in his parents' eyes. They'd given everything they had in fighting back against mortality but everyone has their limits. This, one more futile season, was the proverbial straw, finally severing the camel's back. An eerie silence hovered as the dark imprint of fatalism scribed its self-portrait onto the corners of life-worn faces. In light of such circumstances they did what they knew, what they had always done. Keep the sacred fires of their home altars lit. Prevail upon the spirits of ancestors, looking to the supernatural for signs of relief. There was no help to be found there, only fear, as the vacant, stoic expressions of the gods over the hearth fostered little confidence in these despairing households.

The chill.

Not only the physical need for heat. A deeper coldness of heart, permeating everything and everyone around them. At their end they needed a rescuer, a provider, a benefactor.

EIGHT

The well-worn, light blue SUV sat immobilized at a precarious and curious angle, stuck firmly in the wet, clay-rich soil of their village's main street.