“But then I changed my mind,” she shot back. “I decided to let you chase me instead. It’s a girl thing.”
Ethan looked surprised. “So that’s why you think I’m in Hong Kong? To chase you?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?” She smirked.
“Well, I’m actually here on business,” he said, hiding a smile.
“You mean visiting this market at the exact moment when I’m here. A grocery that I just happen to frequent on a regular basis—something you learned from a local Remnant member you pumped for information yesterday after you arrived on the island. You mean that kind of business?”
Ethan chuckled. “Okay. I give. I’m duly impressed. Look, I know this market is run by one of our people, so let me sign the barter slip for your groceries. It’ll go on my tab.”
Rivka’s eyes lit up. “Great. If that’s the case, I’ll change my menu—I’m going for the whole lobsters and rare fish.”
The two of them had a good laugh, and Ethan took her basket and followed her around dutifully while she finished her shopping. After that, they started strolling back to her apartment, which was when the mood changed. Rivka started talking about their common mission. “So you’re here to see Jo Li?”
Ethan rolled his eyes. “I see the underground rumor mill is alive and well. So much for confidentiality.”
“You don’t expect me to forget everything I learned in the Mossad about intelligence gathering, do you?”
“Well, I know a few things about your activities too. Like the fact that you met with Hadley Brooking, the English solicitor, trying to locate Jo Li.”
“Ex-solicitor. I now wonder whether his office might be a front for Jo Li.”
“The point is you should have consulted with me before you met with him.”
Rivka bristled. “I knew you were hunting for Jo Li. And I was already here in the area. I was doing fieldwork for you.” She added, “And you’re welcome, by the way.”
“I think you should have talked to me first. My mission here could have been compromised.”
Rivka stopped in the alley they found themselves in and whirled around to face Ethan. “Hey, this is me, Rivka, remember? You and me. We were almost . . . well, I’m not sure what we were. But it was a whole lot more than friends.”
“That’s true. But it’s also beside the point,” Ethan said with a tone that was getting firmer. “We are trying to maintain some kind of command and control. Some structure to the Remnant.”
There was no anger in what Ethan was saying, and Rivka could see that. It was something else, and it had to do with Rivka, and it surprised her, though she didn’t know why. She wondered why all of a sudden she had a strange desire for the old Ethan—the guy she used to know, the man who always had a touch of wild unpredictability about him. But then, that harkened back to a time before Ethan, and then later Rivka herself, had committed their lives to following Christ, before the inner spiritual revolution that took place in both of them that had changed everything. Of course she never wanted to go back to that, not since having experienced the overwhelming reality that God loved her and that He had a plan for her.
So, if all that was true, why all these messed-up feelings about Ethan? Rivka needed to sort that out. She reached out and grabbed the bag of groceries from Ethan’s grip. “Thanks for the help,” she snapped. “But I can take it from here.”
Ethan tried to put a patch on it. “Okay, Rivka, I’m sorry. It looks like I blew it.” He studied her, but she didn’t soften. “Why do I think I just lost a dinner invitation?”
Rivka wouldn’t look him in the eye, instead gazing down the alley while she spoke. “Ethan, I’m sorry if you think I went rogue on this Jo Li thing. Just trying to help. So . . . anyway, maybe you and I should skip the interpersonal stuff and stick strictly to business.”
“Or, on the other hand,” Ethan shot back with a half smile, “maybe we can do both.”
Rivka shrugged, threw him a quick wave good-bye, and turned to leave with the bag of groceries in her hand. Ethan called out to her, offering to walk her home for the sake of her safety, but she simply shook her head. She moved quickly down the alley without turning back, and then slipped into the back door of a small laundry shop, just one more sidetrack for the benefit of anyone who might be trying to follow her.
Rivka excused herself with a few words of apology in Chinese as she bumped through the steamy room full of confused laundry workers and out the front door. She picked up the pace along Hennessy Street where the pedestrian crowds along the boulevard of shops thickened, then into a lobby of a hotel, down the stairs into the parking garage, and then out onto a back street. At one point she thought she sensed something behind her and immediately turned, ready to drop her bag and defend herself if necessary. But there was no one there, so she did a one-eighty and continued on her route.
As she headed back to her apartment, she kept going back in her head to her conversation with Ethan. Her meeting with him had put her on an emotional carnival ride. She was surprised at how painful and confused she felt. Sure, she knew he had made a valid point. Before meeting with Hadley Brooking, she had given a quick thought to trying to connect with Ethan to clear it with him first. But she’d decided against it, telling herself that it was easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission, particularly given the difficulty in tracking Ethan down. But that prompted another thought, and it plagued her now.
Okay, but, girl, you never really got to that “ask for forgiveness part,” did you?
Rivka was striding along the familiar streets and alleys of Hong Kong on a kind of mental autopilot by then. She had turned from a small street onto an alley that provided back entrances to a row of restaurants. She passed the rear entrance to a men’s clothing store, where a tailor stood in the doorway smoking a cigarette with his measuring tape slung loosely over his neck. He glanced at her blankly as she walked by, then tossed his lighted butt down, crushing it with his foot as he eyed her, and slipped back into the clothing shop.
She turned left down another dirty alley lined with garbage cans and Dumpsters. On the left was the back door leading to an Indian café. On the right side of the alley was a buzzing neon light over a rear entrance advertising a “girl bar.”
Somewhere in the alarm center of Rivka’s head, the first alert started ringing. But it came too late. She recognized the cocktail bar.
What was I thinking?
She halted and reversed direction. Which is when she saw two large men approaching her, one with his hand in his suit coat.
Rivka wheeled back around. The door to the cocktail lounge on the right flew open, and a man with a billy club ran out and stood in the middle of the alley, blocking her way. After him came Chow. He hobbled on a cane, scooted clumsily out of the bar and into the alley. His other arm dangled to his side, a clip-loaded Chinese semiautomatic clutched in his hand.
“Hello, Rivka, darling,” Chow grunted. “I knew I’d see you again.”
She half turned and saw the two men behind her were now about ten feet away. They both stopped, as if on cue, at a point about six feet from her.
“Sorry,” Chow said with a grin, “but no kickboxing today. I warned them to stay out of your kicking distance.”
“Good idea,” Rivka said. “Now that the introductions are over, I would like you to let me pass.”
“Be glad to,” Chow said. “Just tell me where you’ve got Meifeng hidden. Then I’ll let you go.”
She slowly lowered her grocery bag to the ground, but her eyes never left Chow. “Not as long as I’m alive.”
“Okay. If you insist . . .”
“I’ve settled up my life with Christ,” she said. “I know where I’m going. Do you?”
“Sure,” he said with a laugh. “Back into my girl bar, after I shoot you in your pretty face.”
But the back door to the Indian café had just opened. The men noticed that and turned. Out from the unlit shadows of the entrance a man’s voice came boom
ing out. Rivka recognized instantly who was speaking.
“Chow, you really know how to treat a lady.”
“Who’s there?” Chow screamed. He raised his gun toward the darkened back door and prepared to squeeze the trigger. “Who’s there?” he yelled again.
The darkened entrance to the Indian eatery lit up with a muzzle flash. The bullet from the shot blasted through the palm of Chow’s shooting hand. He dropped both gun and cane and squealed in pain, stumbling to his knees as Ethan March jumped out of the darkness and into the alley, a handgun in each fist.
“It’s me,” Ethan called. “Her date tonight.” He aimed one of his guns toward the guy who was starting to pull his own weapon from his suit pocket. “Drop it or I won’t be shooting at your hand.”
The tough guy in the suit pulled out his weapon and let it fall to the greasy concrete. Rivka pulled in a shaky breath. Ethan kept the two thugs in his sights while he grabbed Chow’s weapon, and then those from the tough guys too.
Ethan then ordered the goons into a nearby Dumpster. With looks of controlled fury, they did as he asked. Pulling his backpack open, Ethan grabbed a piece of nylon zip tie and secured the Dumpster lid shut. “I still think zip ties are the world’s greatest invention,” he said with a grin to Rivka, who had overcome her shock and was keeping watch over a moaning Chow. “I used one to secure a broken cockpit door during a test flight once. Call me crazy, but I still carry them with me.”
Ethan now turned to Chow. “Broken hip. Shot-up hand. Chow, you’re not doing well as a criminal. Why don’t you try doing something honest?”
Chow whimpered and clutched his bleeding hand. Ethan asked him, “Yes or no—is Jo Li part of the crime syndicate? The Triad?”
“No, man,” Chow groaned. “Why don’t people believe me when I tell them? I wanted inside Jo Li’s operation. A lot of other guys in the Triad did too. The guys who ran the gambling joints, the pimps, the sellers and pushers, everybody. But Jo Li won’t work with any of them. He’s just a business guy, that’s all.”
“I’ll call you a medi-ped,” Ethan said, referring to the local EMTs on bikes. “They should be here in a few minutes.” He hit the Red Cross icon on his public Allfone and tapped the Emergency Response key. “There. They should be here in a few minutes.”
“Don’t forget about the GPS function on that Allfone . . .” Rivka started to say.
But Ethan had already dropped his public Allfone to the pavement and was now crushing it with his boot. He flashed a smiled to Rivka as he picked up the pieces and tossed them into another Dumpster.
After tucking his own guns into the pockets of his cargo pants, Ethan grabbed Rivka’s bag of groceries that still stood upright on the ground. He quickly whisked her through the back door of the Indian restaurant, past the kitchen, and out the front door to the street.
“You know, I’m really looking forward to your chop suey tonight,” he said with a grin. He reached out with his free hand and took Rivka’s. “Can we pick up where we left off?”
EIGHTEEN
EAST WING OF THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington, D.C.
Hank Hewbright had decided to meet with his vice president, Darrell Zandibar, in the upstairs personal residence rather than in the Oval Office. Hewbright had begun to question the degree of security even in that area. Besides, it was nice from time to time to have a visitor up in the residential apartments of the White House. With his wife, Ginny, having died from cancer a few years before the election, Hewbright was the first president since Grover Cleveland to enter the White House without a spouse.
He had been on his knees at the side of the living room sofa, praying, when the security buzzer sounded Zandibar’s arrival. The voice of Secret Service agent Kevin Arnold came over the intercom. Arnold was the agent who worked the closest with Hewbright on a daily basis. “Mr. President, the vice president is here to see you, sir.”
“Buzz him in, Kevin. Thanks.”
A minute later the vice president was in the room. After a firm handshake between the men and some small talk, Hewbright apologized that they hadn’t seen much of each other. Privately he knew that each man harbored suspicions about the other, and this meeting would be as good a time as any to clear the air.
Zandibar launched in immediately about the news that was now 24/7 on every media outlet around the world. “When the House votes tomorrow, it seems all but certain they’re going to approve articles of impeachment against you.”
Hewbright managed a smile. “That’s what I’ve been told. Although politics is never certain. It’s always been more art than science.”
“I’m sure you’ve done a rough head count for votes in the Senate,” his VP said. “They seem locked into a guilty vote to remove you. I’m sure your lawyer has already told you how they’re trying to expedite this. A blazing-fast Senate trial, now that the Alliance is threatening to crush this nation with a worldwide economic boycott.” Zandibar paused and added, “You’ve made a, well, interesting choice, by the way, going with Harry Smythe as your defense attorney for the trial, rather than your White House counsel. Harry’s getting a little old and a little tired for a case like this, don’t you think?”
Hewbright shook his head. “No,” he replied. “Harry’s the right man for the job.” Then he shifted the subject. “I was just told that riots have broken out along the Magnificent Mile in Chicago after the news of the potential boycott against the U.S. Several people are lying dead near Water Tower Place. This country is being shaken to its core.”
“Which is why,” Zandibar shot back, “I think the two of us should keep in closer contact through this chaotic time. We need, you and I, to keep talking through your decision to stonewall the Senate’s vote on the Global Alliance Treaty. And you need to reconsider your executive order. Just think about it for a moment—your executive order directing the Pentagon and every federal agency to resist cooperating with the Senate’s vote to bring us into the Global Alliance. We need to deal with the facts as they are. And the facts are that the Senate ratified that treaty, and the Alliance is anxious to bring America into their fold. Your decision makes us an isolated island surrounded by an ocean of trouble.”
“And you know my position on that,” Hewbright snapped back. “The Senate alone doesn’t have the constitutional power to dissolve this Republic. So am I to ignore the illegality of that vote? Stand by and watch our borders disappear and our Constitution get shredded and place us into the hands of international masters?”
Then he went right to the point. “Darrell, are you ready to lead America if I am removed?”
“I’m not looking for the presidency,” Zandibar said. “Not yet. And certainly not that way.”
“But are you ready?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Your trust.”
“If I’m out,” Hewbright said, “will that matter?”
“To me it will.” Zandibar tapped a finger on the arm of the couch where he sat. “I know you’ve cut me out of some of your higher-level strategy meetings.”
Hewbright didn’t hesitate. “True enough. I’ve had some concerns.”
“About?”
“Loyalty. You forget: one of the perks of the presidency is access to intelligence. I know that two weeks ago you and Jessica Tulrude had a private meeting in her suite in the Hay Adams Hotel. Why didn’t you share that with me?”
Zandibar took a few seconds before responding. “I didn’t think I needed to. Frankly . . . I just wanted to hear what she had.”
“Against me?”
“Yes. I know you are an honorable man, Hank. An honest man and a patriot with a great vision. But I just didn’t know—”
“Whether she had some dirt on me that I had been hiding?”
“I had to make sure.”
“And?”
“Actually, the whole thing was a joke. Tulrude kept going on and on with the same tired line against you—your efforts to block America from joini
ng the Alliance. What she called your ‘sick addiction to an outdated view of the Constitution.’ ”
“Oh, that,” Hewbright said with a smile. “You mean that old yellowing piece of parchment paper that I pledged to uphold, with my hand on the Bible, when I was sworn in as president?”
Zandibar nodded and looked thoughtful, as if he was trying to choose his words cautiously. Then he said, “In any event, there was nothing there, Hank. I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” Hewbright said. “If you’re telling the truth.”
“Hank, if you let me, I will do everything in my power to defend you and protect your presidency. But you need to let me in on your strategy. Let’s remember, I am still president pro tem of the Senate.”
“But once the Senate removal trial against me is commenced, the guy sitting up there in the big chair won’t be you. It will be Chief Justice Straworth from the Supreme Court. He’ll be presiding. The man appointed to the Court by Jessica Tulrude as payback, no doubt, for his having done some favors for her when he was back in the Senate. I suspect the whole thing will be a rigged trial.”
“You mean, if the trial commences,” Zandibar added.
Hewbright studied his vice president. Darrell Zandibar was a brilliant man. Top of his class at Harvard Law. A successful New York federal prosecutor and a young rising star in the Senate when Hewbright picked him as his running mate. But he often wondered what he really knew about the other man. What could a person truly know about a man until the testing time came and the pressure mounted? Or when the sweet siren song of temptation floated in? What was it Shakespeare had said about screwing your courage to the sticking place? Or, better yet, the command from God to Joshua in the Old Testament as the journey across the Jordan River and then the entrance into the Promised Land was about to begin, and all those bloody battles to follow. It would be the command for Hank Hewbright as well: to be strong and courageous and to fear not.