The Mandarin Club by Gerald Felix Warburg

the years by not blurting out such thoughts.
    “I don’t know, probably some kinda war-gaming. Making sure they won’t be blind if somebody starts jamming them. Just be here by noon. We’ll do one more walk through.”
    “OK, OK,” Mickey grumbled before he calculated. “But listen, how about two o’clock?”
    He could see things getting worse. If they were so anxious for him to baby-sit the next shipment, he probably would have to go back to Washington after all. He would be responsible for making sure the TPB team delivered an export license in a timely fashion. His visions of California leisure were crashing and burning.
    “Good, then—whoa! Mickey? You still there?”
    He was struggling to cling to his plan now.
    “Check out CNN! A bomb’s gone off by the White House!”
    It took a moment to register as Mickey’s eyes darted back to the picture. And then, there it was, in his suite, as well. There were the images before him, marching along as if in a macabre Bourbon Street dream parade.
    He saw drifting smoke on the TV, just over a reporter’s head. A crawler at the bottom of the screen warned of “Graphic Footage.” He couldn’t find the damn remote. It was better without the sound anyway.
    There was the TPB building, with shredded white curtains wafting gently through skeletal window frames—the very same TPB building where, according to the original schedule, he was to have been arriving within the hour. To Mickey, in his momentary horror, it came as no surprise that Alexander Bonner was on camera, too. There was Alexander, dazed and muttering.
    It was the sight of Rachel Paulson’s inert body, her face caked in blood, that slapped Mickey back to reality.

D ANGEROUS GAMES
    L i Jianjun sat on the darkened porch, sipping green tea, waiting for the moon to rise.
    It was a cold night in Beijing, unusually bitter for the beginning of April, although the heavy layer of pollution backing up south from the mountains kept an edge off the chill. The resulting blanket tasted of diesel fuel, exhaust from buses, and industrial plants still encircling the northern capital despite the vaunted efforts of Beijing’s city planners.
    Lee needed the moment of stillness away from the angry voices of his colleagues. He could hear them arguing even now as they lingered in the compound’s conference room. He was eager for reflection, struggling to find context for the third long day of debate over options he considered risky. Were they truly prepared for the confrontations ahead ? He doubted it. In disgust, he flicked the ashes of his cigarette, watching them fall slowly like dying petals letting go.
    They were in a recess on the last night of an extended spring policy planning exercise. His boss, the foreign minister, had left the Zhongnanhai compound to share a dessert toast to his elderly mother celebrating her birthday at a restaurant not far from the senior government employees’ enclosure. But he would be back to see his deputy Lee, the head of the North American Section, and to wrap up the session.
    Lee had expected to be arriving in Washington at this hour, tending to Ministry business with his Chinese Embassy counterparts. He had abruptly aborted the trip, though, intercepted en route to the airport by a call from an anxious colleague. He had been tipped off to some mischief the boys at Defense were planning to spring at the conclusive policy session.
    The call had proved prescient. The hotheads working under the old generals were pushing the envelope once more, proposing to launch another in a series of provocations, to test Taiwan and its vacillating American protectors. Taiwan, again. Lee had grown weary of the dangerous games the army boys were ever so eager to play.
    Now he was drained, his bones stiff in the sharp night air. He stood and stretched, eyes closed. Gingerly, he executed a few toe touches. His hamstrings clutched. He thought of his father exercising amiably with the day nurse, Xu An, whose