22
“I thoughtwe had control of the area.”
Zhang Ru let Liú Zuocheng’s comment rest lightly on the warm evening breeze. He had to be careful in how he answered. He and Zuocheng might bear the same title, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, but General Liú had held the post for years. It was only Ru’s second year on the CMC and less than a year since he’d discredited General Chen Hua and ripped the co-Vice Chairman position from his dying clutches.
Ru had uncovered Hua’s weakness shortly after his own ascension to the CMC—a taste for brutally raping lesbian couples. He’d set a trap, using his wife Daiyu and the delectable young mistress he’d recently acquired. Hua had rammed his dick into the trap with absolute abandon.
Ru’s timing had been bad. By the time he’dunexpectedlyreturned, planning to catch Hua in the act, Hua had choked his mistress to death even as he’d taken her. Daiyu lay on the floor.
Grabbing the heavy scissor tongs from the fireplace, he’d clamped them around Hua’s neck and crushed his windpipe. He’d held it so until long after the girl’s eyes had bulged in death and Hua’s matched them.
Càobut he still missed driving himself into the girl’s exquisite ass.
The dead girl, Daiyu’s teary testimony, and a dead general had proved most efficient in opening up his seat for Ru’s ascendency to replace Hua as co-Vice Chairman. He’d also managed to choose his own man to take the vacated seventh seat on the CMC, now guaranteeing him four of the seven votes.
In retribution, he’d utterly destroyed General Chen Hua’s family, shredding it to the last soul. Hua’s ancestral burial grounds had been razed, his image had been purged from all state media present and past, and his fortune was now in Ru’s hidden accounts.
He had considered keeping a particularly comely granddaughter, a recent pageant winner, to replace his mistress, but decided it was best not to wake up some night with a knife in his heart. So he’d enjoyed her thoroughly, then altered her records to say she was an Uyghur terrorist and had her incarcerated in a Xinjiang reeducation camp. She hadn’t lasted long among the guards.
Ru and Zuocheng sat on the veranda of his new apartment in Opus Hong Kong. Ru appreciated General Chen Hua’s taste, the penthouse suite was remarkably luxurious. The exotic woods, the plush furniture, and the wall hangings of rare art created a mix of ancient wealth and modern perfection.
Well up the side of The Peak on Hong Kong Island, it commanded a sweeping view of the entire width of Victoria Harbour, Kowloon, and most of the New Territories. The air was fresh here. It didn’t smell of the city but rather of the dry oak and myrtle stonewall trees—so called because they were planted to stabilize the retaining walls and steep slopes of The Peak.
It also smelled of money. The wealth here was obscene, and it had been well past time for these people to be brought into line from their little democratic games. It had been his and Zuocheng’s first collaboration on the CMC.
Yet it was not so luxurious that Zuocheng might envy him the location, as he had acquired a house on Peak Road during the suppression of those misguided uprisings. That was an unimaginable luxury worth twenty times Ru’s apartment.
“Not bad for a pair of old pilots. Hard to believe that we started out flying Chengdu J-7s against Vietnam.” They’d been young jet jockeys who’d cut their teeth on the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. A propaganda triumph…and a loss in every other measurable way. Over forty years later and the Vietnamese were still a tricky problem. Their alignment with Russia and growing alignment with the West would have to be dealt with someday.
Zuocheng nodded his agreement and sipped his glass of Crown Royal 18—General Chen Hua had excellent taste in whiskey, which Ru could now afford to continue at four hundred US a bottle. The man had stashed awayimmensesymbols of wealth over the years.
Daiyu was overseeing the preparation of an elegant meal. She had learned to enjoy her power over the household and would often provide him with particularly delectable treats in his bed, joining in herself only when he requested her. Tonight she had promised him twins. She’d known how the anticipation would arouse him pleasantly all through the evening. But he’d have to wait until Liú Zuocheng was gone as he insisted on being true to his one wife.
Two serving women arrived with a plate of delicatehar gao.The steamed shrimp dumplings looked perfect, as did the two women.
The twins! Daiyu was delightfully teasing him. So identical he couldn’t tell them apart.
Their semi-sheer high-neck white blouses hinted at their equally white underclothes and pale skin. One blouse was buttoned to the left and one to the right, the only discernable difference between them. A small nicety that added to the intrigue. Their unusual height, within centimeters of his own, and slender faces made them slightly exotic to his Beijing eyes. Yes, Daiyu had chosen very well.
Liú Zuocheng accepted the engraved narwhal-ivory chopsticks from the tray one held and selected the second-besthar gaofrom the platter the other offered. Zhang Ru was careful to select the third best dumpling.I will not question your position, but don’t forget how closely I lurk.
Apparently lulled into believing that Ru was wholly his puppet, Zuocheng selected the most perfect one next. Yet he was sufficiently distracted by the twins’ beauty that he didn’t notice when he dribbled a spot of the dipping sauce on his pant leg. He then applied so much pressure to thehar gaowith his chopsticks that it burst even as he placed it in his teeth.
Ah, not so pure as you would have me think.Perhaps Zuocheng would be with the twins before the night was out, seeing as his wife had remained in Beijing after all—no one here to see. There was always Daiyu for his own satisfaction if needed.
Time to distract his superior and let the anticipation simmer within. He returned to Zuocheng’s prior comment.
“Wedocontrol the South China Sea. The surrounding countries barely dare contest this anymore. It is only the Americans who ignore our sovereign claim.”
“And the accident on their aircraft carrier?”
It was hard to know. Within minutes of it, the Americans had put up a no-fly zone. Any ship or plane approaching closer than a hundred kilometers had been sternly warned aside.
Two pilots, ordered to test the Americans’ resolve, had actual gunfire shot close by their aircraft at ninety-six kilometers out. Very close by.
It was terrifying how quickly the Americans had protected the zone. They had locked down thirty thousand square kilometers within minutes. And they’d done it over ten thousand kilometers from their own shores, yet only seven hundred from China’s mainland. Despite all of the PLAN’s boasting, he knew their own navy couldn’t do that more than a few hundred kilometers off their own shores. Past the reach of their own land bases, they would be easily overwhelmed. The effort required for the Americans to enforce such a large no-fly zone in unfriendly waters was beyond imagining.
The twins had moved to a discreet distance, preparing the veranda table for the meal in graceful unison. Zuocheng’s attention was most focused, watching their every move with a distracted half smile. Ru might well have to arrange a later night with them for himself.