Chapter One Thousand Five Hundred Fifty-Six
10th January 1970
Anhui Province, China
It is well that war is so terrible, or we would grow too fond of it.
Supposedly, those were the words of Robert E. Lee and Sun Li-gen remembered them from his time studying at the Virginia Military Institute in America decades earlier. Looking at the aftermath of the set-piece battle that had occurred between the Cities of Lu’an and Hefei Sun was reminded of that turn of phrase. Thousands of prisoners of war, what remained of the Northern Army’s rear guard, were being herded south by his men, he had standing orders not to mistreat them because they were potential recruits for his own army. Still, he understood that things happened in war, so not all of them would make it to the Yangtze River where boats would take them to where they could be best put to use.
With a strategic crossing of the Pihe river limiting any enemy movement and the Dabie Mountains covering their left flank, Sun had managed to goad Pan Yong’s forces into a battle on the ground of his choosing. He could hardly fault the conduct of Pan’s men. They had bravely followed orders to the letter but their General had not understood the terrain they were fighting on or that Sun had had months to prepare multiple defensive lines. When Pan had managed to push Sun’s men out of their positions, they fell back on their own supply lines on the Yangtze River. It had been that same river that had held Sun’s trump card in this whole campaign.
His superiors in the Southern Provisional Government had not been happy about the details of the deal that Sun had made, but they had begrudgingly accepted the necessity. The British Royal Navy had sent ships up the Yangtze. As soon that as Pan’s forces came to an agreed upon point, they had found themselves under intense shellfire from those ships. This had been the signal for Sun’s own forces to launch a counterattack, hitting the exposed flank of Pan’s army from the north. The result had been a victory, just not a complete one. Sun had been hoping for a rout, but for all his faults Pan was able to keep his men in good order long enough to retreat across the Huai River. It was a tactical victory, and it would severely limit the offensive capabilities of Pan’s army in the coming months.
That would have to be good enough, for now.
Plänterwald, Berlin
It was all stupid. Then again, it seemed to Aurora that everything they had been doing for the previous decade could be described that way after a fashion. All of them had met their professional goals but they would be hard pressed to say that any of it had made them happy. Spending the evening in the cottage that Kiki was living in had seemed fun and it had been, right until she was unfortunately reminded that Kiki tended to get rather maudlin when she was intoxicated.
Over dinner, Aurora that learned that Kiki had ordered a battery of tests on Zella and while she was relatively healthy there was some cause for concern. There had been a host of suggestions of things that Zella could be doing to maintain her health. Apparently, no one was impressed by the late nights, general lack of sleep, and the far less than complete diet of hers. Apparently living off coffee, apples and carrot sticks when she was on assignment didn’t cut it. The worst part though was that her mother had somehow found out that Zella had been to the Hospital and wanted to know exactly what had happened. Her mother had pointed out that she understood that Zella was a grown adult and she respected that, but as long as she lived in her house, Zella owed it to her to be straight about serious matters like that. Eventually, Zella had told her mother everything with her biggest complaint being how smug her mother had looked when she told her the Doctor’s conclusions.
Kiki said that she had ordered the tests almost as a lark when Zella had come in with a minor injury, though it was normally done as procedure to avoid dangerous errors or as a preventative measure. She did regret it if she had caused Zella any trouble in the process. It was a reminder that Kiki had reached her goal of becoming a Physician, only to discover that was only the beginning and that she still had a lot to learn. Aurora herself had worked for the public relations department of Krupp Steel in Essen and while she had enjoyed the work, she had grown tired of being a long way from home. Recently, she had taken a position with a firm that did consulting work with political parties and that seemed like it would be challenging. That was completely unlike Krupp, where her job seemed to have been convincing people that they needed a new toaster or set of knives.
Eventually, the conversation turned to one of the things revealed in the tests done on Zella, how she regularly used cannabis. For her nerves, she said. Aurora was familiar with the drug, mostly because many of her colleagues in Essen had been bewildered that the Americans got so bent out of shape over it. In Germany, it was viewed as being about the same as hard alcohol or prescription strength painkillers. That meant that it was regulated, but it was hardly in the same league as Opiates or methamphetamines. By then, all three of them had finished two bottles of wine that Kiki had liberated from her family’s wine cellar and Aurora had jokingly suggested that perhaps they ought to try the devil weed and make up their own minds. She had not been remotely serious when she had said that, but Zella had taken her seriously. It was only later when Kiki had started talking about how she was a massive fraud and Aurora had told her to shut up because no one actually thought that but her. That was when she realized that they were all acting out of character. She told the others that the whole thing was just stupid, and Zella just nodded and gave her a smile as if she had said something funny.