A Time for War (28 page)

“At home, studying satellite photos of Victoria, Texas,” he said humorlessly.

Dover knew enough not to ask for details. In just the few hours they'd spent together she learned that Doc was charmingly loquacious when it came to things he wanted you to know and mute when prudence was required.

Doc had texted Abe while he was speaking, was surprised not to get a response.

“OK, I'm outta here,” he said, putting his phone away. “If you need anything, I'm number two on Jack's speed dial.”

“Who's number one?” she asked.

“Not for me to say,” he grinned as he left.

Dover leaned back on the couch and closed her eyes, but that just brought back the queasiness. With her eyes open she thought she could see the yacht sway, which didn't help. She needed something to distract herself while her inner ear and her gut adjusted to the new motion. She grabbed the nearest printed material, an op-ed written by Jack Hatfield for
USA Today.

Don't Punish Brave Marines

Most of the “men” in the news media—the same journalists orchestrating the attack on Marines who allegedly urinated on Taliban terrorists they killed in battle—have never even been in a fistfight, let alone a firefight. And yet here they are, piling on the real men who have the guts to go into combat against fifteenth-century radical Islamist throwbacks.

The piling on our Marines has done far more damage to the morale of our fighting men than our soldiers' actions. And yet we hear Marine Corps Commandant General James Amos calling the act “inconsistent with [our] high standards of conduct,” then whining about our commitment to “upholding the Geneva Conventions, the laws of war and our own core values.”

This in the face of Taliban atrocities—car bombings, beheadings, the murder of women and children—that flout the Geneva Conventions and yet are routinely ignored by the media and our military higher-ups, who also downplayed the Fort Hood massacre by Major Nidal Hasan.

Our fighting men must be supported at all costs at a time like this. How can we in good faith ask them to put their lives on the line against the vilest, most extreme of enemies while at the same time we attack them in the press at every turn?

I'm not saying that what these Marines did isn't a violation of military code. But unlike murderers who are granted appeal after appeal, these Marines have already been tried and found guilty in the media.

The desecration of war dead is universally condemned, but it is as old as war itself. These boys are not the devils. The Taliban fighters are the devils.

Our Marines are heroes. They should be rewarded for having the guts to go into combat, not punished for stepping over the line. It's the latest attempt by the liberal news media and the increasingly timid military brass to destroy the few, the proud, the brave, the Marines. Remember, “to err is human, to forgive divine.”

Dover thought about that last sentence. She decided that if Jack was right about Hawke and Squarebeam, she would rather not have that sentiment forefront in the minds of a jury.

*   *   *

Maggie loved teaching white belts.

It was the privilege of senior belts at the Market Street Martial Arts Academy to instruct newcomers on the basic forms of the discipline. Most students came into the storefront school with the idea that they were going to go back in the streets after a few weeks as “total badasses,” an expression Maggie heard more times than she could remember. Most of those students left after two or three lessons when they realized that the first step to becoming a martial artist was absolute discipline of body and spirit.

She had studied at the school with
Sifu
John Qishan since the death of
Sifu
Kuhl when she was just seven years old. Now eighty-three years old,
Sifu
Qishan was born and raised in Chinatown. His mother, a poet, was one of the founders of the Chinatown Public Library in 1921. His father was a hatchet man for the “Highbinder” Tongs, criminals who specialized in vice.
Sifu
Qishan honored his parents with a shrine in the back of the school.

After training an early evening white belt class, Maggie waited for
Sifu
Qishan to finish with his beloved black belts. She did not fall in with them as she usually did but sat on a wooden bench just beyond the mats. The class ended with a bow from the
sifu
. It was not a hard stop but an easing away, like receding tides. The black belts stood with their eyes shut then slowly allowed their own worlds to return. There was a tangible dissipation of energy that always made Maggie a little sad.

Short and thin with white hair pulled into a ponytail,
Sifu
Qishan stood at the edge of the mats and watched them go. Maggie knew not to approach him for several minutes. His eyes were also shut as he visualized everything that had taken place during the class.

“If you see it, you possess it,” he often told all his students, explaining the concept.

She waited with her arms at her sides until he opened his eyes. He saw her and smiled.

“Your energy was low today,” he said.

“Spirits have been with me,” she said.

His eyes showed concern. Neither the Qishan family nor the Yus believed in ghosts in the traditional sense. It had been a topic over many dinners shared with close friends and schoolmates; spiritualism was not a subject outsiders took seriously. But Maggie knew that the life force of one's ancestors, the energy of those who had lived and moved around you, endured after death. These forces survived not as identities but as the essence of what a person was—good, evil, strong, fearful, generous, introverted. The essence lived on in the air, the ground, the buildings themselves. It was nourished or repelled by the energy of those who moved through it. But it could never be destroyed.

“When did this start, and where?”
Sifu
Qishan asked.

“Yesterday, in our cellar,” she said. “All the years I have been down there I never felt anything. But there were noises while I did my forms.”

“From beyond the walls,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“That is troubling,” he said.

“Why,
Sifu?
What is there?”

“Physically? Just emptiness…” his voice trailed off.

Maggie's students and fellow senior belts departed, each bowing deferentially to
Sifu
Qishan as they left. They did not interrupt the conversation. The white-haired teacher acknowledged them with a gentle bow. Soon he and Maggie were alone.

“Please tell me,
Sifu.
Do you know what is making the noise?”

“I do not,” he told her. “But I know the history of what went on there.”

“Where?”

He looked around the empty school for a long moment as though he were seeing people, places, another time.

“When I was a boy and my father was a member of the Tongs, I heard him speak with his confederates of the alleyways that were connected to cellars—which were linked one to the other by a network of tunnels.”

“These still exist?” Maggie asked.

“To my knowledge they do,” he said.

“How did one get to them?”

“There were trapdoors in the floor,” the master replied. “Many of these exits had been put there after the great earthquake and fire, as escape routes. Through these, the hatchet men could flee the scenes of their crimes unseen. But that was not their primary function. The Highbinders used these passages to smuggle young girls from the holds of ships to houses where they would serve out their indentures.”

“They were brought from China?”

“Beginning in 1912,” he said. “That era was a time of peril for young women. The Qing Dynasty had fallen and the Republic of China was founded with Sun Yat-sen as the leader. Young women, some only twelve or thirteen years of age, fled to escape attacks from the soldiers—and from dishonor in their homes and villages.”

“Dishonor? They were victims,
Sifu
!”

“Who survived,” the older man said. “Many chose death or mutilated themselves to avoid the unwanted attentions.” He drew an imaginary slash mark across his chest. “Few knew what lay ahead on these shores. They were aware of the hard sea journey in an airless hold with little food or water, and the abuse they could expect from sailors. They were not naïve. But they were assured that any ‘problems' would be taken care of by doctors in America. To them, America was a place of miracles.”

“They were not wrong, Master,” Maggie said. “My parents are evidence of that.
I
am a free, Chinese woman.”

“You are not wrong,”
Sifu
Qishan replied. “Even today, our people there are tortured for their faith, imprisoned for demanding freedom. Then, the women were exploited for just one commodity, used by their own countrymen, passed from Chinese merchants of the sea to Chinese merchants of the Barbary Coast. From 1848 through this period when my father was active, the area within Montgomery Street, Washington Street, Stockton Street, and Broadway was hell for these girls.” He smiled a hollow smile. “And do you know what these girls did when they were not working in the brothels?”

Maggie shook her head.

“They served
zá suì,
‘assorted pieces' of pork, eggs, bean sprouts, and celery.”

“Chop suey,” she said.

He nodded. “It was the bait that hooked American high society from coast to coast, a fad that became a staple. The girls caught the eyes of rich and influential Americans. They were delivered to apartments kept by these men—not through the tunnels, but in carriages. Like ladies, so the men would not be shamed. Yet I have heard that the women were more disgraced by the pretence. Many were Catholics and Protestants who had been criminalized for their faith by the Daoguang Emperor. The women were especially targeted for the chastity they prized—virtue that was now mocked with finery and the trappings of purity, white gowns and veils.”

“It's the spirit of these girls I feel in the basement,” Maggie said gravely. “Their pain is what I feel. They are coming to me for peace?”

“Or revenge,”
Sifu
Qishan cautioned. “This may be bigger than you. I urge you to leave it alone.”

His advice was sound. She would be alone in this. Her father was a pragmatist who did not believe in spirits. He believed in things he could see, count, and sell. He had always dismissed her sensitivity as being the naturally excitable state of a woman.

“Your mother was the same way,”
he would tell her, and laughed when he recalled how they used to attend services at the old Zen Buddhist Church of San Francisco on Eureka Street.
“She would leave an offering of food at the shrine and slip into a state of elation or depression—sometimes both, which is also uniquely female. She said she felt the hopes and sorrows of all who had been there.

“Myself?”
he said.
“I could only marvel at how many groceries I had personally sold, which ended up at the feet of the great teacher.”

The sound of a car alarm brought Maggie back to the present.
Sifu
Qishan regarded her, gave her hand an encouraging squeeze. “Stay away from the basement until this passes. Go to the park or come here to do your forms.”

Maggie was silent. It wasn't just the spirits that troubled her. There was a practical side to the matter as well. Someone had come to buy the grocery, someone who knew about the tunnels underneath the store. What did they hope to find there? Or, what did they hope to use the tunnels for? She had to be sure before she involved her father or went to the police. The only way to do that was by moving shelves that had been there for decades, seeing what lay beneath.

She regarded her
sifu
with an expression that was well known to him. Her father had bandaged her scraped knees. He had been there through romantic heartbreak and shared loss. The Yu father and daughter worked together and had common goals. But
Sifu
Qishan was the one she turned to for confession, enlightenment, spiritual security. Her expression showed that level of love and trust.

There was no hiding her intentions from him.

“Be careful,” he said to her as she stepped away.

“I will,” she said as she went to the small women's dressing room to change.

Tomorrow was her father's mah-jongg night with other Grove Street merchants. She would do it then.

Before leaving, she lit a stick of incense in front of the small Buddha by the door of the school. She knelt in prayer—not for herself but for her mother, who did not have a teacher like the
sifu
to turn to.

I salute your strength,
she thought.
Please watch over me as I ignore my
sifu
's
advice and shock my father.

With a final bow she left the sanctuary to join the noise and chaotic energy of the San Francisco night.

Sausalito, California

In the news business they used to call it “tired but wired.” It was a transitional state before complete collapse that occurred when you had been covering a story without sleep for twenty-four hours or more. Your brain was still running, albeit a little slow, and your body was drained, but functioning, and your senses were compensating by being overenergized.

That's how Jack felt when he arrived at the
Sea Wrighter
. After he drove about fifteen minutes away from the airport he had pulled over at a parking lot to call Carl Forsyth. He ran down the basics of the Squarebeam technology and Forsyth was suitably shaken. But the call took the last of Jack's brainpower and he was too wiped out to stop at his apartment to switch cars. Rachel's Batmobile was just going to have to sit in the parking lot in the Sausalito salt air. He didn't give a damn.