Читать книгу Strike Zone - Dale Brown - Страница 5

Chen Lee waited until the chime of the antique grandfather clock at the far end of his office ended, then rose slowly from his desk, following a ritual he had started many years before. His movements were weighted by eighty years of exertion, and so it took longer for him to cross the large office than it once had, but the familiarity of the afternoon ritual filled him with pleasure. He had long ago realized that, no matter how much wealth one had – and he had a great deal – the more important things, the things that gave life meaning and value, were less tangible: family affection and respect, dreams and ambitions, ritual.

Chen Lee went to the chest at the right side of his large office and took the bottle from the top, carefully pouring two fingers’ worth of Scotch in the glass tumbler. He had developed a taste for single-malt Scotch as a young man during the last days of the war with the communists when he’d been sent to London as part of a delegation working to persuade the Western allies that Mao must be stopped at all costs. The mission had been a failure; worn out by the World War, the British couldn’t stop their own empire from slipping through their fingers, let alone send an army to help Chiang Kai-shek and the rightful rulers of the great Chinese nation. Not even the Americans were willing to help them until the communist treachery was made obvious in Korea. Even then, the only assistance they would begrudgingly afford was to prevent the invasion of Taiwan by the mongrel bastards who had marched among the peasants, pretending moral superiority when all along practicing opportunism.

The tingle of Scotch as he took his first sip reminded Chen Lee of his bitterness, and he welcomed it wholeheartedly. For it was only by acknowledging the past that he could look toward the future.

Much had changed in the nearly fifty years that had passed since his stay in London. Chen Lee had left the government to become a man of business; he had started humbly, as little more than a junk man. He took discarded items, first from the Japanese, then from Europe and the US, and turned them into useful materials. Metals first, then gradually electronics and chemicals and even, eventually, nuclear materials. He had made a fortune, and then lost much of it – a loss he blamed on the treachery of the Japanese he was forced to deal with in the early 1980s. But this loss had tempered him; he would not willingly wish it upon anyone else, but he had managed to overcome it, and applied its lessons well.

His assets now totaled close to a billion dollars US; he owned pieces large and small of businesses throughout the world as well as the Republic of China – Taiwan to the outside world. In fact, his wealth was so extensive he needed two of his three grandsons – his only son had died more than a decade before – to manage it. They were given relatively free hands, as long as they did not break his cardinal rules: no investment in Japan, and no dealings with the communist mongrels under any circumstances.

Others on the island were not so fastidious, and in their eagerness to enrich themselves had prepared the nation for the ultimate treachery – surrender to the communists.

It was coming. Several months before, the provinces had clashed. At first, the Americans had seemed to help them; Mainland bases were bombed in a spectacular campaign referred to by the media as ‘Fatal Terrain.’ Had the war proceeded then, reunification might have been possible. But the Americans had proven themselves interested only in preserving the status quo. Worse, the government on Taiwan – the rightful representatives of all China, in Chen Lee’s view – lost face and gave way to a group of men who could only be called appeasers. In a matter of weeks, the president was due to fly to Beijing for talks with the mongrels who had usurped the homeland.

The meeting would be the first of many.

Chen Lee was determined not to let it take place. He was willing, in fact, to spend his entire fortune to stop it.

He was willing to go further. He would give his own life so that his grandchildren’s children might once more live freely in their homeland.

Was he willing to give their lives as well?

The Scotch burned the sides of his tongue.

He was willing to let them die, yes. Even his favorite grandchild, Chen Lo Fann. Indeed, Fann had volunteered to do so many times already.

Would he give up the lives of his great-grandchildren, the sweet little ones?

As he asked the question, he saw the faces of the little ones, whose ages ranged from two to ten.

No, he would not wish any harm to them, boy or girl. That was why he must act immediately.

The Americans had interfered, preventing what should have been a war between the communists and India – a war he had clandestinely encouraged.

Chen Lee took another sip of his drink. He had to encourage a wider war, one that would involve all of South Asia and the mongrels. Even if the war did not lead to conquest of the stolen provinces, it would at least halt the present slide toward accommodation.

It might yet yield conquest, thanks to the weapons he had developed and secreted away. But he felt he could not share them with the present government, headed as it was by traitors. He would have to follow his own path.

Chen Lee was bitterly disappointed in the Americans, whose ill-considered attempts at imposing peace merely made the world safe for the mongrel usurpers. During the course of his life, Chen Lee had had many dealings with Americans; he admired them in many ways. But ultimately, he found them weak and undisciplined.

He knew too that their aims were not his aims. They protected the Republic of China only when it suited them.

So be it. If the Americans intervened again, their blood would flow.