Rabbit in the Moon Read online

  “And now?”

  “She lives in San Francisco,” he said, reading the prepared notes. “Widowed, one daughter: Li Li Quan. Su-Wei was recently diagnosed with cancer.”

  “Could she survive a trip to China?” asked the general.

  Han thought a moment, wondering what plan his old friend was conjuring. “I suppose.”

  The general nodded. “She might provide just the incentive our friend needs to talk.”

  “Perhaps we could persuade her to return home,” Han said.

  The foreign minister spent a long time staring at nothing while the aromatic steam from the bitter, dark red tea called Iron Dragon permeated his sinuses. Finally, he looked at his friends and smiled. “Daughter, maybe even granddaughter. Yes, comrades. Perhaps we could.”

  Washington, D.C.

  A few weeks later a visa request came across the American consul’s desk. He gave it no more attention than any other in the stack. After all, since Nixon’s visit in 1972, Chinese students and professors were crossing the Pacific in record numbers. If anything, the People’s Republic of China should be worried that so many of their best and brightest were electing to stay in the States.

  But that was not the consul’s concern. If Dr. Seng’s government agreed to let him go, the American Consulate would not interfere. Provided, of course, that the man was not a spy. That was why the consul now asked his secretary to make a copy and send it to the CIA in Langley.

  Beijing

  At the north entrance to Beihai Park, David Kim watched impatiently as hundreds of ice skaters enjoyed Sunday afternoon on the frozen lake. Checking his gold Rolex for the second time in five minutes, he wondered if this meeting would be a mistake. Would his father approve? He wasn’t sure. Up to now the senior Kim had dealt with the Chinese himself, always following bureaucratic channels, going through the kind of tedious red tape that made Westerners leery of doing business here.

  But then Shin-yung Kim was Korean, imbued with an easterner’s appreciation of the finer points of negotiation. Over many years David’s father had carefully cultivated relationships within strategic Party-connected organizations in China, so that now Kim Company was one of Korea’s largest family-owned chaebols or business conglomerates with a firm toehold in a country of one billion untapped consumers.

  “Forty years ago, these same people invaded our country. Today they buy our TV sets, our textiles, even our monosodium glutamate,” Kim reminded his number one son before sending him off to run the MSG division in Beijing. “No longer will the world be conquered by guns. This time, the admirals and generals will wear finely tailored suits; their weapon, economics; their battlefield, world markets.”

  Although David understood his father’s obsessive drive to beat an old opponent at this new game, the younger Kim was impatient for money and power. He was impulsive. A gambler. That’s why he stood waiting in the insufferable January cold. Lee Tong’s mysterious note suggesting a clandestine rendezvous had been too intriguing to pass up.

  “Annyong haseyo!”

  David whirled as a thirtyish-looking Chinese man with a tousled thatch of black hair and sharp cheek bones dismounted from his black one-speed Flying Pigeon bicycle.

  “Speak Chinese!” David snapped, annoyed not only by the man’s lateness, but by the way his padded cotton jacket and baggy blue trousers contrasted with his own impeccable cashmere coat and Pierre Cardin suit. Lee Tong hadn’t even bothered to shave. Hard to believe such a man owned his own factory. “Anyone hearing Korean will assume we’re spies and I don’t think even your hou-tai,” he said, referring to Tong’s Party connections via his father, “will protect you.”

  “Sorry.” Tong nervously checked the crowd before lighting an unfiltered Camel. He too had second thoughts about this meeting.

  David winced as Tong grasped his cigarette between thumb and forefinger. Vulgar, he thought. Like some low-class coolie. “Why this secret meeting?” he asked Tong. “Aren’t you satisfied with the agreement made between Kim Company and your plant?”

  “You have been most generous. This has nothing to do with MSG.” He took a long drag, then lowered his voice. “Recently I overheard my father, General Pei-Jun Tong, talking with two former Long Marchers. What I learned could make us both very rich men.”

  At that moment two motorcycles, sidecars filled with Public Security Bureau police officers, passed the park entrance. Tong stopped talking, following their progress.

  “They’re just cruising,” he said, lowering his voice. Still, he took David’s arm, guiding him toward the bridge. “If you’re not walking, they think you’re up to no good.”

  Xi’an, China

  From his window in the Shaanxi Provincial People’s Hospital, Ni-Fu Cheng could barely make out Xingqing Park on the eastern outskirts of the city. When he was first sent to Xi’an some thirty-four years ago, he spent many hours strolling among the trees and flowers that grew on the ancient site. Once the official residence of the Tang Dynasty, Xingqing Palace’s 123 acres had long ago been replaced by an art gallery, reading room, teahouse, small lake, and children’s playground.

  Ni-Fu had loved coming there. At first it was simply to drink in the beauty, to read and think among the singing cicada. There were great possibilities then, and his heart was filled with hope. In recent years he had sought the shelter of the park for different reasons. The peace he found there helped to drive away his growing sadness.

  But, at age seventy-five, he was now locked inside the Xi’an Institute, deprived of even the park’s small pleasure. He turned to catch the cool winter breeze and was just able to discern the edges of the buildings that made up Jiaotong University. Off and on over the past thirty years he had taught science and medicine there, reveling in the exchange of ideas with eager young men and women hungry for knowledge. And for over thirty years he’d managed to keep his longevity research a secret.

  Damn Dr. Seng! Too bad he had taken over the Institute. Too bad he had understood the implications of Ni-Fu’s work. And too bad, like a good puppet of the Party, Seng had been only too eager to ingratiate himself with the elders.

  Well, at least Ni-Fu had had the foresight to hide his research notes where no one would find them. Not even the torture he’d endured had loosened his tongue.

  Ni-Fu thought he caught the voices of some young students outside. How he missed them. To Ni-Fu they were China’s most precious resource, the hope for his country’s future. To old men like General Tong and his fellow Long Marchers, this young generation was the single greatest threat to the Party’s existence. Fear of losing power had made Ni-Fu their prisoner. He would be their salvation, hopefully producing a potion to literally cheat death; one that would enable them to live long enough to suppress this young generation as they themselves had been suppressed over forty years before.

  Tears came to Ni-Fu’s eyes as he considered the futility of his life.

  CHAPTER TWO

  February 1989

  12:00 p.m.

  Washington, D.C.

  One month later and some twelve thousand miles away, two men sat nursing brandies after lunching at the White Owl, a fashionable Georgetown restaurant. Although they’d known each other for a long time — had gone through Wharton’s MBA program together — each had followed different paths.

  Charlie Halliday joined “the Company” as he liked to think of the CIA, while Martin Carpenter became vice president of Aligen, a leading U.S. pharmaceutical company. Each had the kind of perfectly chiseled features that made you think BMWs, cable-knit sweaters, and weekends in the Hamptons. They could have been twins — except that Halliday’s thick hair had turned to gray, while Carpenter’s was still as black as when they were schoolmates two decades earlier.

  “You didn’t haul me halfway across town just to buy me a hot lunch, Charlie. What’s up?”

  “I hear your company’s looking for a new Tagamet,” Halliday responded.

  “We’re always looking for a box-office bonanza. A new bi
llion dollar pill every few years keeps us one of the big boys in the drug business.”

  “You’re in trouble, Martin.” The CIA officer pointedly lowered his voice. “Aligen has spent over three hundred million on R&D for a herpes cure that the FDA still hasn’t approved.”

  “We’re almost there.”

  “Almost only counts in horseshoes, my friend. If Aligen doesn’t come up with a winner soon, you’re going to be in deep financial shit.”

  Carpenter’s eyes narrowed. “Since when does your Company care what happens to my company?”

  “Since we learned the Chinese may be onto a pharmaceutical miracle.”

  The waitress brought refills. Carpenter waited until she left before responding. “I suppose you have that on the highest authority?”

  “That’s what they pay me for,” Halliday said. “Look, Marty, I know you just spent the morning trying to convince the FDA to expedite your phase-three trials. Unsuccessfully, I might add.”

  “Lousy bureaucrats. Christ, don’t they know that in this business timing’s everything? I’ve got deadlines and all they care about is paperwork. Paperwork!” The veins in Carpenter’s neck distended as if to emphasize his frustration. “This AIDS epidemic has taken most of the steam out of the herpes scare.” A bitter laugh. “Today you thank the doctor when he says you have herpes or the clap!”

  Halliday’s smile was sympathetic. “Two of your highest margin drugs expire this month. Every generic manufacturer is ready to enter your markets.”

  “We plan to sue.”

  “Marty, we both know Aligen is undercapitalized and over leveraged. You can’t afford long, drawn out litigation. You’ve gotta come up with a new drug that’ll knock the socks off the competition. Something that can’t be copied and something that’s really new.” Halliday leveled cool blue eyes at his friend. “I can help.”

  Carpenter snapped to full attention. “I’m all ears.”

  Making certain no one was near enough to eavesdrop, the CIA officer removed a manila folder from his briefcase. He placed a picture on the table of two men in white lab coats, arms around each other. Carpenter guessed the Chinese in the picture to be in his thirties and the Caucasian to be somewhat younger.

  “Dr. Ni-Fu Cheng. Brilliant physician, teacher, and medical researcher trained in England during the ’30s. Returned to Shanghai about ten years before Mao and his boys took over.” Halliday pointed to the picture. “Dr. Cheng was also something of a history buff. Qin Shi Huangdi, known in the West as Ch’in, first emperor of China, was obsessed with immortality. He sent several expeditions into the Eastern Sea seeking the elixir of life. When he died, he was buried in a tomb surrounded by seventy-five hundred life-size terra-cotta soldiers.”

  “Yeah,” Carpenter interrupted, “I’ve seen pictures in National Geographic. Pretty amazing.” He smiled wryly. “Of course since the old boy died, I assume the mission was a failure.”

  “Well, that’s just it. No one thought of his quest for immortality as more than a man’s mad obsession. Until Dr. Cheng. As a student at Oxford, Cheng spent hours holed up in historical archives. Liked to read original documents. By chance he came across a two-thousand-year-old account of Qin’s search written by the emperor’s personal physician. Certain clues suggested one expedition had found a substance that prolonged life. Cheng was impressed enough to ask his Oxford professors to support a research project.”

  “With little more to go on than a few so-called clues in a two-thousand-year-old document? Pretty far-fetched,” Carpenter said, shaking his head.

  “Exactly the reaction of the academics who advised Cheng to concentrate on learning medicine.”

  “I take it he didn’t listen.”

  “He finished his medical degree, but after returning to China as an M.D. in the late ’30s, Qin’s obsession had become his own.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Denton Browning is the other fellow in this picture. An English doctor who worked with Cheng in China until Mao took over in ’49. He was Cheng’s student. Just before the Communists swept into Shanghai, Browning returned to England. MI-5, the British Secret Service, debriefed all new arrivals. Browning testified that Cheng spent all his spare time reading and rereading the document, trying to reproduce this secret formula.” Halliday emptied his glass, creating another dramatic pause.

  “Well?” Carpenter prompted. “Did he?”

  “MI-5 didn’t think so. From Browning’s original account, Cheng seemed far from developing anything concrete. Nothing more than theories. The British opened a low-priority file that collected dust for years. With the isolation of China until the ’70s, it was virtually impossible to keep track of people like Cheng. Then about ten years ago, Cheng’s daughter living in Los Angeles, received word that her father was dead.”

  “For God’s sake, Charlie. Don’t tell me that’s the punch line.”

  “You always were a bottom line man.” Halliday leaned forward conspiratorially. “Three weeks ago MI-5 intercepted an internal memo from the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Cheng is very much alive, but under house arrest in Xi’an. The memo alludes to a major breakthrough Cheng is apparently unwilling to reveal.”

  “You think he’s hit the jackpot?”

  “We do.” Halliday removed two more pictures from the manila folder. The first was a snapshot of a sixtyish-looking, round-faced Chinese man in Bermuda shorts, high socks, and sandals. “This is Dr. Seng, Director of the Xi’an Institute. Our British counterparts believe Cheng is being held there. Three weeks ago, Seng, a known Chinese intelligence operative, applied for a visa to the U.S.”

  “How is his visit tied to that memo?”

  Halliday placed the last photo on the table. “It happens that Seng plans to visit L.A. Medical Center where Dr. Lili Quan is a resident.”

  Carpenter whistled softly. “Quite a looker.”

  “She’s Dr. Cheng’s granddaughter,” Halliday reported. “The Company thinks Seng is here to lure Lili Quan to China. Probably in the hope that her presence will make her grandfather talk.”

  “A mighty convoluted scheme, if you ask me.”

  “That’s because you think like an American. In fact, it’s totally consistent with the Chinese way of doing business.”

  Uncomfortable, Carpenter shifted his gaze from Lili’s picture to Halliday. “This is all very interesting, but how the hell do I fit in? Cloak-and-dagger is way out of my league.”

  “Just keep an eye on Dr. Quan for us. Since your company funds medical research at L.A. Medical, we thought Aligen would be in a position to do that.”

  “I see, “ Carpenter replied. “I assume I get something in return for my troubles?”

  “Ever the businessman,” Halliday chuckled. “If Dr. Cheng has discovered the secret to long life, we want it for the U.S. As far as the Company’s concerned, if you help us, it’s yours. Aligen will have the drug of the century. You win, we win.” Halliday snapped his fingers to summon the waitress with the check. To Carpenter: “Not a bad deal, don’t you think?”

  “If you’re right, “ Carpenter responded, “I’d say not bad indeed.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  March 1989

  1:00 p.m.

  L.A. Medical Center

  Though her forearms ached from the strenuous effort of closed-chest massage, she refused to quit.

  “Doctor, we’re losing him!”

  The chaotic, undulating blips on the overhead EKG monitor suddenly appeared to go flat.

  Brushing back a stray wisp of hair now matted on her furrowed brow, the senior resident carefully appraised the apparent straight line on the oscilloscope. The systolic and diastolic readouts were falling rapidly. The patient’s respirations grew shallow.

  “No, it’s a fine v. fib. Stand back!” she ordered, grabbing the paddles on the portable defibrillator.

  Doctors, nurses, technicians, all moved from the bedside as the resident delivered a 400-watt second jolt to Mr. Sanderson’s heart. />
  “Don’t give up, damn it!” she exhorted the unconscious patient.

  The line across the bluish screen of his monitor remained unchanged; his color was the dusky hue of near death.

  “Shit.” The resident recharged the defibrillator.

  The nursing supervisor checked her watch. “Twenty minutes, doctor. No one will blame you for calling it.”

  “Stand back,” the resident snapped once again, simultaneously sending another burst of electricity to the patient. “Come on, come on!”

  This time the EKG monitor responded — first one beat, then two, then three — each perfectly formed and evenly spaced.

  The nurse shook her head in awe. “Great call. He’s back in sinus rhythm.”

  Almost as dramatically, Mr. Sanderson’s coloring improved, his breathing grew strong and steady. Within another few minutes, his eyes fluttered. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded from the resident injecting a bolus of lidocaine into his intravenous line.

  “That’s the doctor who just saved your life.” The nurse smiled.

  “No!” He pushed the resident’s hand away. “No damn Chinks working on me.” The man glared at her. “Get out!”

  “Well, I can see our patient is feeling better,” the resident calmly announced, heading for the door. “I’m late for morning rounds.”

  Just outside the room Lili Quan leaned against the wall. Chink. She knew Sanderson was an ignorant son of a bitch. So why feel the sting of his slur? She closed her eyes, fighting emotions, refusing to lose control. For her that would mean losing face. Funny, she thought. Losing face. How Chinese.

  A tree must have bark to live, a man must have face.

  In all her twenty-seven years she rarely thought of herself as anything but a perfect American. She was born in San Francisco, loved hot dogs, baseball, and Bruce Springsteen, insisted on public school as a kid, double majored in American literature and genetics at Wellesley, and focused on the problems of the aging in America in her medical residency.