Mr. Tho had blacked out. He remembered the undercurrent of water pushing him upward, but nothing more. His eyes opened upon four black walls—shiny, with what seemed to him like light pulses of energy passing through them. But he leaned against one anyway and nothing happened. He noticed he was dry, yet in his own clothes. A black metal table sat a few feet out of his reach. Three of Tho’s black marble tablets sat parallel to each other on top of the table. He pondered briefly about the location of the fourth and patted down his clothing to see if he still had it. But his attention turned as a wall opposite him opened straight up into the ceiling creating a rectangular entrance. Sun Quan stepped inside and walked to the middle of the room, towering over the table like an adult would with a doll’s tea set.
“Where’s the fourth tablet?”
Tho paused and itched the side of his face. “I suppose the same place you found these three.”
“Produce it, old man.”
“I haven’t produced much of anything in the last twenty years.”
Sun Quan stepped over the top of the table. His massive feet pinned Tho against the wall.
“Did you see her?” Sun Quan asked. A whisper he tried to hide from the prying walls.
Tho smiled. He remembered her, as unbelieving as his heart felt. Her image rolled over in his mind like a soothing waterfall. “Yes. Yes, I did. I hardly know how to explain it; not that I would to you.” The giant didn’t reply, nor leave. “I can see it’s gotten in your head, such human emotions still eating you alive, knowing she might have a role in this. I find that fascinating.”
“You’re not afraid of me.”
“Why should I be? At my age, what have I to fear? I will say, however, I’m still not fond of pain if that is your inclination.”
“I suppose I should thank you,” replied Sun Quan.
“Thank me? I would prefer that to chopping off my head. You’re welcome.”
“Perhaps you’re weaker than I thought.”
“When you’re 94—or is it 95—strength is not a strong suit. I suppose that sounds rather funny.”
Sun Quan scoffed—almost a laugh. He turned to leave but added, “You don’t know where the fourth tablet is, do you?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. I thought I had them all. Perhaps in the lake.”
“You tell the truth.”
“Only youth have motive enough for lies. Why would I waste these cracked lips on falsehoods? So tell me the truth; are my friends all right?”
“For now.”
Sun Quan exited and the wall closed behind him. Tho pushed himself to his feet with a harsh sigh and took feeble steps to the table. He sat on the edge and lifted the three marble tablets into his palm. “Wherever you went, fourth one, I’m glad you’re there. I would not like to see all four in that beast’s hands.” He lifted his head towards the wall. “Did you hear that? I suppose you did.”
After Sun Quan exited the room, he peered at Tho through the transparent walls. A Chinese gentleman stood beside him. He wore a burgundy-colored Mao collared shirt with black trousers. He had a sophisticated air about him, and even though he stood beside Sun Quan, who dwarfed him, the man looked comfortable in the relationship, like he wasn’t afraid of getting slapped.
“Why don’t you get rid of them? All of them?” he asked the giant without looking upward.
“She will come for them.”
“Let’s lessen our worry. Get rid of them. She’ll come for them either way, but at least we’ll have less to worry about.”
“Why empower her more?”
“Don’t forget how you got here.”
A pause drifted between them as they watched Tho leaning against the edge of the table.
“Don’t threaten me.”
The Chinese man smiled. “Oh, my friend, you know very well we threaten each other.”
“Never kill the wise. It makes you unwise.”
The Chinese man tapped the glass and laughed. “It seems like the old man’s foolish sayings have rubbed off on you. So where is the fourth tablet?”
“Unknown.”
The Chinese man removed his glasses and rubbed the lenses against his shirt. “At least there’s nothing he can do with only three. Why do you let him keep them?”
“Because it gives him hope. Hope will tell us much more than despair ever would.”
The Chinese man shook his head and retrieved an electronic device from his pocket. It had a shiny black touchscreen, which matched the walls.
“Sun Quan, you have an intriguing sentimentality about you. It worries me a little, if I am to be completely honest. You can tempt him with hope if you like, but I’ll use this facility the way I had it built. You have to get into their heads and keep them distracted, wondering, fearing the worst.”
He pressed out a code and the wall behind Tho became as transparent as a windshield. Tho jerked upward and peered upon another old man, seated in an identical room, palms flat against the floor, exchanging stares with Tho from the other side.
“Who’s head are you trying to get into? Tho or the other?”
“Why do I have to choose?”
Tho placed his face against the glass wall and looked carefully. “Can you hear me?”
The other old man nodded his head.
“What’s your name?” asked Tho.
“Mr. Tho. It’s me. It’s Cuong.”
Lien had bruised the bottom of her left fist by repeatedly pounding on the sheen sides of the walls. She, too, had found herself alone and dry inside a shiny black-walled room. She yelled for her son and for Tho, but the hollow echoes bounced harmlessly around her.
Lien remembered everything. She replayed in her mind the strange happenings in the depths of Hoan Kiem Lake and being thrown onto shore by the torrent of water blown from the lungs of Lady Trieu. She remembered Sun Quan standing over them until they blindfolded her and drove her around the city to this location. She had never been taken outside. The vehicle had already been inside the building when she exited, and they whisked her into a small compartment and strapped her on a table while hot air surrounded her on all sides, drying her clothes. Then she was thrown into this room where a young Chinese officer removed her blindfold and restraints. She had been alone for hours without food, water, or a place to relieve herself. But she drowned out all physical worries because of her son, whom she yelled for hour after hour. Eventually, the wall opened.
Sun Quan entered, dipping his head beneath the frame of the opening, and Lien backed herself into a corner on the other side of the room. She wasn’t afraid, she told herself. Her thoughts often returned to the stories she had heard of her grandmother, who helped Ho Chi Minh’s troops drag artillery up the formidable mountains surrounding Dien Bien Phu in early 1954. Her grandmother never complained, spoke only of duty, of freedom for the nation, of sacrifice for the common good as the greatest human deed. She spoke of having little food, open sores, swarms of mosquitoes, walking in torn sandals in the saturated mud, and taking hours to drag a wheel or a lever up a fraction of the mountain, one heroic increment at a time. She imagined the torture, the strained muscles, the desperate cry of a human beast of burden doing what an animal couldn’t have done, what the French didn’t think possible. Her grandmother never thought she would survive, but she was ready to give her all to help the Viet Minh position the artillery in impossible places and rain shells down on the French redoubt below. Her grandmother was there. She was part of it. And she witnessed the day of the French surrender, the day that shook the world and ushered in an era of freedom once again for the Vietnamese people. Lien had nothing to complain about. No physical worry could ever rival those of her grandmother, so as Sun Quan entered the room, she felt an excitement; a thrill, actually. Her turn had finally arrived.
“You’ve been calling for your son.”
“Yes, he’s a strong boy. But you should know. I won’t betray the cause for anyone. Even my son.”
“Oh, I know the nature of your patriotism. I admire conviction. The world has an inadequate supply of it.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to give you your son back.”
“In exchange for what?”
“The answer to a simple question.”
“Which is?”
“Did you see her?”
Lien understood of whom he spoke, but she wondered how to respond; not that answering him would have betrayed anything. Would a simple answer bring her son back to her? For what purpose?
“So if I answer that question, I’ll have my son back?”
“That question and one more.”
“What is the second question?”
“You must answer the first one before you hear the second.”
“Are we playing a game? I’m not afraid to die if that’s what it takes. By all means necessary to drive you filthy Chinese from our land, you butcherous animals.”
Sun Quan patiently smiled. “Did you see her?”
“Yes. What’s the second question?”
Sun Quan moved in closer. His eyes intense. “Is she beautiful?”
Lien paused. She had not expected this question. She recalled the countenance of the lady from the lake and gave the description which flowed freely from her lips. “Like a goddess emerging from a lily pond, painted on the wall of a pagoda. Young, beautiful, innocent, true. She spoke like the sound of bells heralding the beginning of time itself. A bosom like no other. Skin as tough as a snake, yet as fragile as the smoothest silk.” Lien watched Sun Quan’s face fade into the unconscious. He looked far away. “Does that answer your question?”
Sun Quan rubbed his massive right palm in front of his face, his eyes staring at the movement of his hands.
“Where’s my son? You said I could have my son.”
Sun Quan turned and exited in haste, allowing Lien’s hollow words to bounce off his high, broad shoulders. The wall slammed behind him, and Lien ran to it and pounded her fists once again against the wall, blotting out the pain in her mind.
Without warning, the wall to her right retracted into the ceiling, and Minh fell face first into his mother’s room.
“Minh!” She ran over and hugged him. “Are you alright, Minh?”
“Ma!”
“Oh, Minh. Did they hurt you? Did—”
“Ma, I have to tell you something.”
“Oh, Minh—“
“Ma, when I was in the boat, I reached up and—”
Lien placed her hand over his mouth and glanced around the room nervously. “Minh, don’t say anything.” She leaned in next to her son’s ear. “We have to expect they can understand everything we say, even the faintest whisper. Keep it inside you. Okay? Keep it inside. Tell me when we’re out of here. Okay?”
Minh nodded and rested his head against his mother’s shoulder.
“You’re alright?” she asked him.
“Yes, no one even came to see me. And you, Ma?”
“Don’t worry about me. We have my grandmother on our side.”
“And Mr. Tho? Have you heard from him?”
“No, nothing.”
“I hope he’s safe. They wouldn’t hurt an old man, would they, Ma?”
“They would hurt anyone for their cause. But we should never worry about Mr. Tho. If there is one thing he hates, it’s people worrying about him, especially in the middle of a rebellion.”
A whooshing sound wrested their attention. Minh stood up and Lien turned around to see the opposite wall retract into the ceiling, and then one more beyond that. Two old men stared back at them with blank looks as if they indeed had not seen it all. Lien and Minh yelled Tho’s name. Lien led the charge through the open space. Minh moved slower, as if his leg had been injured, but he caught up with his mother who had taken Tho by the arm with a hearty welcome. Tho urged them onward into the other man’s room and circled around him.
The man on the floor had watery eyes, and he barely looked up at them. Bruises covered the sides of his face.
“What have they done to you? They’re animals, beating an elderly man like this,” Lien snapped, crouching down beside him.
“No, Auntie Lien,” said the old man.
Lien jerked her head back and looked closer at the man’s face.
“Yes,” said Tho. “This is Cuong.”
“Cuong!” exclaimed Minh. “How … ?”
“I don’t know how,” Cuong breathed heavily. “I became old without warning.”
“It’s all right. We won’t leave you here,” said Lien.
“There’s nothing we can do,” he replied.
“There’s always something,” added Tho.
“Yes, the tablets. Mr. Tho,” said Minh, “Do you still have the marble tablets?”
“I only have three. I must have lost the other.”
“Where are they?”
“Over there. On the table.” He pointed back to where he had been sitting.
Minh moved quickly toward the tablets with his strange cautious walk. His mother noticed.
“Minh, why are you walking like that?”
“We only have three of the tablets,” reminded Tho. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“Mr. Tho, there’s something I have to tell you.” He reached for the marble tablets, but before his hand touched them, a jarring alarm pulsed through the rooms, and every retracted wall crashed to the ground, sealing Minh off from the others in a split second. Lien ran to the wall and pounded her already bruised fists once more against the solid black barrier. But to no avail.
The Chinese man surveyed a massive open warehouse with dozens of damaged vehicles. He called to Sun Quan, not with any device, but simply a whispered command through the air. The alarms continued their surround sound, and frantic soldiers ran back and forth contending with competing instructions. Sun Quan appeared out of nowhere at the Chinese man’s side to view the cause of the frenetic energy. A dozen armored carriers had been split in two, a clean cut, like a giant laser had melted its way through a stack of butter. The remnants of the vehicles smoldered and radiated intense heat. Chaos encompassed the scene, except for Sun Quan and the Chinese man. They looked on without movement or emotion.
Sun Quan broke the silence and said the unnecessary: “So it begins.”