With the eastwardly jet stream pushing the Gulfstream G550 nearly four hundred mph, and the outside temperature at twenty-five below zero, Wei Ling curled up into the reclined seat of the private aircraft. She slipped both hands under her head, something she hadn’t been able to do for weeks, and dreamt the dreams of someone set free. Heavy breaths, followed by drool, followed by a light rhythmic snore.
Jake was buried in medical books, dog-earing pages, taking notes, slapping sticky notes on appropriate pages. He read every passage scrawled in Kate’s handwriting on the cheat sheet she had given him. It was a crash course in pregnancy and neonatal care. Armed with a stethoscope, thermometer, and a blood pressure gauge, it was as close to practicing medicine as he was going to get. A doctor for the day, now complete with a fake diploma.
Jake looked at Wei Ling and felt relieved. Her face had good color, a basic indicator of proper health. At least according to his grandmother. The healthy hue was Jake’s medical ace-in-the-hole. Sure Wei Ling was thin, but she wasn’t play-her-ribs-like-a-xylophone thin. And if her spirit were any indication of her physical well being, the girl would be fine.
Tony, the heavy-hitting bone-breaker, looked at Jake with a hint of respect. A young kid who just went halfway around the world and, only God knows how, managed to pick up a girl who was ill. What had transpired in the airport was beyond Tony’s comprehension. All he knew was that Sorrentino had ordered him and the Castello brothers to accompany this kid for a couple of days and see to it that he stayed out of trouble. Tony was following orders. But when he looked at Wei Ling in her chair, and then at Jake in his seat with a pile of books and paper, for a human moment Tony considered that perhaps he had missed the opportunity to do something with his life.
“She’ll be all right, won’t she?” he asked toward Jake, who was almost startled by the sudden question.
“I don’t know, Tony,” Jake answered, flipping through pages. “She should be fine through the flight. She has bedsores, which look pretty bad. Of course, I have nothing to compare it to other than a picture here in this book. She is also running a slight fever, which could be a sign of infection,” Jake said checking his notes. “But the thing that worries me is her high blood pressure. One sixty over one twenty. According to the book, this could be the symptom of something called pre-eclampsia. This can lead to seizures and even death,” Jake added with a serious tone that was at least partially contrived.
Tony nodded.
“Did you know that it is possible for pregnant women to have diabetes during their pregnancy? It’s called ‘gestational diabetes.’”
“I had no idea. Makes you thankful guys aren’t the ones getting knocked up.” And with that statement, Tony turned toward the window and shut his eyes.
The cabin of the plane was quiet, the flipping of pages, the hum of the ventilation system, and the occasional squeak of leather under Tony’s heavy frame were the only sounds. Twenty-four hours without sleep, and Jake shut his eyes with a pull-out diagram of the female reproductive organs spread in his lap. Now that he had the girl, things were bound to get interesting. In a moment of pride, and with thoughts of a senator on his mind, Jake smiled. In five weeks, he had gone from a graduate student who had just buried his mother to a twenty-four-year-old with serious ambition. The latter was infinitely better than the former. In the fifth grade, his mother had dragged him to the Boy Scouts because she thought there were some skills her son needed to learn that she just couldn’t teach him. Twenty-four years old and Jake Patrick, still a Boy Scout at heart, was about to bump bellies with a senator.
After refueling in Sapporo, Anchorage, and Denver, the private Gulfstream touched down and taxied to the general aviation terminal at the southeast end of Reagan National. Tony stepped off the twin-engine private jet first, his frame filling the small doorway, noticeable from the gate window nearly fifty yards away. Al and Kate, self-introduced in the lobby an hour before, stood side-by-side, their faces reflecting in the glass window.
“I can’t believe it,” Al said, giddy. “You have done it now, Korgaokar. Trouble with a capital ‘T,’” he said out loud, using his own last name. “You’ve unzipped your fly and are about to piss on a spark plug.”
“Trouble?” Kate asked, looking at Al with concern over his mental health.
“With a capital ‘T’,” he repeated. Al stared straight ahead, eyes fixed out the window.
With the intuition of a woman, Kate pressed for details. “What have you two done?”
Al didn’t answer. He stood tall and smiled proudly like the father of a son who had just left the house on a date with the prom queen.
Jake walked Wei Ling down the stairs of the aircraft, and Al cherished the moment. With a strong breeze blowing her loose fitting clothes, Wei Ling stepped on the tarmac and looked out across the Potomac at the illuminated white dome of the Capitol Building in the distance. The center of power in the free world was lost on her. She was trusting a complete stranger, the son of someone who had thrown her to the wolves. All she knew was that being locked to a bed had changed a lot of things for her. A chance to save a thousand girls just like her. The words Jake had thrown out there meant everything.
Still smiling, Al looked at Kate. “I guess it doesn’t matter now.”
“What doesn’t matter?” Kate answered. She had been waiting for an answer since Al had started talking to himself.
“You know the girl is pregnant,” Al asked.
“Jake mentioned it.”
“Did he tell you who the father is?”
“I figured it was his father,” Kate said, trying to connect with Al, still waiting for the punch line.
“Are you familiar with Senator Day from Massachusetts?”
As soon as Al’s words registered, Kate longed for the state of ignorance-is-bliss. “Don’t tell me…”
“Right there on the tarmac. In the flesh evidence that will ruin a man’s life.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered. Suddenly, it all made sense. The night on the bed with Jake and the news on TV, the secrecy over the last few weeks, the paranoid behavior—it was both clear and unbelievable. She didn’t know if she liked Jake more or less than before. “Oh my God,” she repeated, touching her lips lightly with the palm side of her fingers.
“I don’t think God has anything to do with it…but I guess there is no harm in asking for His help. Though I’ll be the first to tell you it hasn’t done me much good.”
“You shouldn’t have let him go.”
“Who?”
“Jake.”
“He came to me.”
“But you helped him.”
“Yes, I got him the plane. I helped him on the other end through an old friend. And I’ll do everything in my power to protect him.”
Kate looked at Al, a handsome man in his late forties with weathered skin, reddish brown hair, and striking blue eyes. His suit fit perfectly, his shoes shined, his face shaven. Al was back among the living. Jake was in good hands.
Tony held open the door as Jake walked Wei Ling into the terminal. Kate pushed the terminal’s wheelchair to the door but Wei Ling refused to sit down.
“Bedsores,” Jake said, as if Wei Ling needed an excuse to stand. Kate gave Jake a hug and a peck on the cheek. “You and I need to talk,” she said before turning to Wei Ling, taking the young Asian woman by the arm and offering her a bottle of water. She checked Wei Ling’s pulse as Wei Ling stood at attention, her arm out.
Al stood tall, back straight, arms crossed, and waited for Jake’s eyes to meet his. Jake gave him a head-to-toe once-over, smiling at the suit, the shave, the shoes and their shine. “You clean up well,” Jake said.
“Just in time to get dirty again,” Al responded. The ex-State Department CIA official cover operative stepped forward and shook Jake’s hand, pounded a few pats in his back, and finished him off with a bear hug that lifted Jake off his feet.
“You did it.”
“We did it.”
“How is she?” Al asked with a sideways nod of the head in Wei Ling’s direction.
“Ask her,” Jake said.
Al stepped past Tony and the Castello brothers, who stood in their standard shoulder-to-shoulder, arms folded pose. Al gently touched Wei Ling on her shoulder. He looked her in the eyes and cleared his throat. “Wo jiao Al.” My name is Al. “Ni gan jiao zen yang.” How do you feel? Lu tu shun li ma?” How was the flight?”
Wei Ling’s face lit up, her eyes bugging with appreciation and surprise. Nodding vigorously, Wei Ling answered that she was fine. Al struggled to dislodge the Chinese that had been collecting dust in the corner of his mind for a decade. He heard the words, slowly translated them, and remained a few seconds behind Wei Ling as she spoke. Tony and the Castello brothers stood there, staring, as if they were watching a foreign movie with live subtitles.
Kate finished her cursory standing medical exam on Wei Ling and tugged at Jake’s hand. Jake was listening to Al, the bag with medical books in his left hand, the ear-ends of the stethoscope hanging out from the zipper.
“What’s the prognosis, doctor?” Kate asked.
“She is running a fever. Blood pressure is one sixty over one twenty. Pulse is eighty-three.”
“High blood pressure, huh?” Kate asked.
“What do you think? Pre-eclampsia?” Jake asked, showing off his newfound medical knowledge.
“It’s not pre-eclampsia. That doesn’t occur until well into the third trimester.”
“She looks thin, I think.”
“Thank you for the diagnosis.”
Kate and Jake moved on to bedsores and antibiotics. Al conversed with Wei Ling in Chinese. Tony and the Castello brothers stood around like hired help at a cocktail party.
“Can we get out of here?” Tony asked, breaking up the arrival meeting. The Sorrentino clansman had no idea of the role he had played in the biggest news story of the summer. All he wanted was to get home, call one of his girlfriends, and hit the hay.
Al looked around at the small group. Laughing, still enthralling Wei Ling with his very passable Chinese, he gave the orders. “Let’s get the hell out of here. We don’t need any unwanted attention.”
C.F. Chang arrived on Saipan with an entourage of twenty. Lawyers, bodyguards, advisors, friends. His youngest son was dead and the formality of mourning was a prerequisite to moving on. It was also the perfect excuse. He had every right to raise a little hell. And it was all a show. He didn’t care about his son or the doctor; they were inconsequential variables in his equation. He was looking for a girl, and he was not going home without answers.