[h1]Russia[/h1]
[h2]Surgut[/h2]

A sharp high-pitched ringing drilled his skull. The world came to swimming in milk, bleached clean of its color. The silver daggers of the sun's light cut his eyes and with his regaining consciousness he shut them close, wincing at the precise pain of the day light scalpels. And slowly, the rest of the world around Yun-Qi came to.

Echoing in the near distance the familiar shouts of men echoed  in the air. His head rested against something soft. Quan Yun-qi squirmed in a panic as he shot up, shooting his head full of hot pain as he rose suddenly. Dizzy and nauseous, he leaned forward, coughing on the bitter acrid smoke that filled his lungs; it smelled like hard industrial diesel, and harsh wood smoke.

“Comrade, are you OK?” a voice beckoned behind him. Dizzy, Yun-qi opened his eyes to a squint and turned. The speaker sounded distant, as it spoken through a megaphone funnel. Yet it was so familiarly near.

As his senses caught up he choked out groggily: “Yeah...” it was all he could master as his world swayed in and out of sense. Raising his hands to his head he pushed in on the sides of his skull. A dull throbbing pain was growing inside his skull. A deep fear spoke softly: it was a hemorrhage.

“I'll call a medic over!” the same voice said. Yun-qi nodded knowingly as he sat on the warm pavement as metal crashed in the distance. The echoing of the voices slowly cleared up, and the sharpness of their diversity became closer. Slowly he discerned the popping of a roaring flame from the rush of boots.

“Hold still, comrade.” a new voice commanded gently as a set of hands held onto Quan's shoulders. He felt someone move him around.

“You need to open your eyes.” the new voice requested.

Dizzily, Yun-Qi prepared for the light and just barely opened his eyes. Silhouetted against the harsh sun a dark figure sat in his field of view.

“More please.” the man bid. Yun-qi answered.

There was a moment of tense silence from this new shade. Yun-qi recoiled against the brief flashes of new light passing through his vision.

“W-what happened?” he asked. His head was groggy, filled with a fuzzy memory of a ride down the street. He struggled and fought with himself, throwing his head over hurdles as he made desperate throws to figure out what had happened. The last thing he remembered was a train whistle, and the feeling of bewilderment that one would now run to Surgut.

“Never mind that, can you stand up?” the medic requested.

“I-” the officer mumbled.

“Then just lay down for a moment, collect yourself comrade.” said the medic in a rushed voice. Through his narrowed eyes he could see his fuzzy figure look behind him, “How's he?” he asked.

“There's a pulse still, but his head's bleeding.” said someone else.

“Bandage it and call a stretcher!” ordered the medic.

“Right away.” his help acknowledged.

“N- no... What's going on? I- I don't remember.” Yun-qi babbled quietly. The world was starting to trickle back and his senses re-adjust. But as they returned so did a sense of dull lead-loaded pain.

His answer hesitated nervously. “A bomb.” reported the medic, “Someone brought a train with a bomb on it, I guess.” he elaborated.

“I don't remember a train.” slowly babbled Yun-qi. He struggled back up into a sitting position and peered into the silver light. The snowy light slowly lifted and bright oranges filled the wounds opening in the silk veil. He watched with first fearful curiosity, and then stunned amazement.

Cratered in the train-yard the sheered husk of a locomotive lay flayed in a nest of twisted rails. Scorched glass and heat-seared pebbles filled the space. Glistening shards of broken glass sparkled from the train-yard side apartments. And the loading cranes at the river's edge stood bent and twisted as debris and a few ropy strands of gore clung to the sheered beams and popped rivets. Soldiers, Chinese and Siberian alike clustered about the yard, hurriedly searching for bodies among the twisted ruins and pulling out torched cinders.

“Oh- Ah- Ah...” Yun-qi meaninglessly blathered as he rose to his feet. He felt his heart strumming wildly in his chest as shock set in. They had been attacked, and not in any expected manner. Every part of his protested it and clung for his breath to ride out in an angry scream. But in the tangled confusion and chaos, bruised with his body they could not come out as nothing but gasping exclamations.

He staggered to his feet, but he was not ready for it and began to drunkenly stagger. The medic threw himself for him and grabbed his superior officer to stabilize him. “NO!” he protested loudly.

“A-an officer has to stand. An officer has to stand!” Yun-qi yelled enraged, “In battle, in victory, in defeat, in peace. An officer has to stand!” he hollered, throwing his arm into the medic and casting him aside.

He took several weak steps forward, swaying on rubber feet he looked down at the cataclysm in the bank below him. He drank in the terrifying details. He swayed as he turned, and saw the man that was laying behind him. A thick bandage wrap around his head held the blood in, but it was already staining itself a deep crimson red from back to crown. A small puddle lay next to his head, near to the corner of the brick wall where he had hit.

“Who's he?” he asked.

The medic looked down at the young soldier. His tired wide eyes looked up and down the unconscious figure with dry pity. Thick glasses and a heavy pointed chin was covered in dust and ash.

With a light gesture he ordered his help to open the soldiers pockets and he did. Pulling out a set of small metal tags from his uniform pocket. “Lièbīng Chu Hong.” he read, looking down at the private's tags.

Yun-qi nodded. He looked over at the pool of blood, his head rang and filled with a pain that swarmed like ants as he saw the blood from Hong's own injuries. He staggered on his feet, and held his head to keep it from splitting open. He choked down his fear, his disgust and asked: “What's his condition?”

“I can't make an appropriate diagnoses here.” replied the medic.

“What's his condition?” Yun-qi insisted, lowering his voice to a tense growl.

The medic worriedly bit his lips and looked back down at him. “Maybe he'll make it, but I doubt it. He's been bleeding bad for a while. If he makes it into surgery and survives: I can't tell you what'll happen.” he gave a resigned sigh, “But he did it to save you. You could have just as easily smashed your head on the alley wall in that blast.”

The medic bowed his head. Yun-qi nodded. Still shaken from the blast Yun-qi swaggered back and forth. “Very well.” he said gruffly, “Get him in first. See him through!” he ordered, “I'm fine. Don't worry about me.” he added, walking weakly towards the site of the blast.

He approached the edge of the grassy berm. His soles on both grass and concrete. The rushed foot falls of the stretcher carriers were coming in fast to carry away Hong.

“Are you sure you're OK to be standing?” asked the medic.

“I'm not dead yet.” Yun-qi answered on a heavy breath. The acrid diesel and charcoal air burned in the back of his throat. He wasn't: but somehow a clinging doubt suggested he may someday be.

[h2]Tyumen[/h2]

“I'm sorry, I'm out of coffee.” the cashier said dryly as he rifled up through the shelves. A cigarette hung limp and life-less as it smoldered to the end of its life from his puffy swollen lips, “I do got cigarettes, plenty of those.” he lethargically compromised.

Leaning on the counter, Tsung held his head in his hand. A tired distant stare looked up at the hawkishly propped cashier. In truth her perhaps didn't need it; but he was running low on the can he did keep, “When will you be getting more in?” he asked begrudgingly, turning to look anywhere but the lumpy man on the ladder.

The store wasn't so much a proper business. As an extension of the Chinese supply chain it had simply taken over an existing structure, a bar. Much of it was still unclean and dusty or broken furniture had been pushed aside against the wall only to be hidden behind banks of ready-to-move boxes in even they needed to move elsewhere. And through the hole punched in the far-wall it had begun to double as a warehouse where the storemen lazily moved boxes from floor to truck or from truck to floor.

It also doubled as the mail office, as evidences by the minder handing over a pad of bleached, dry parchment to a waiting riflemen and the stacks of wrapped envelopes beginning to cover the bar counter.

“Dunno.” answered the cashier.

“So you don't know?” Tsung asked.

“No, I just can't say.”

“So you know?”

“No.”

“Well that's what I wanted!” an exasperated Tsung shouted. He dragged his fingers up into his eyes and messaged the sides of the sockets.

“I do have cigarettes.” the clerk reminded.

“I don't want fucking tobacco.” Tsung growled. He felt a deep pricking annoyance with the fat indifferent dog behind the counter, “But do you know if anyone else here does?” he asked instead.

The cashier shrugged as he swept into a basket a stack of outgoing mail. “The regimental quartermaster might have an idea.” he reported, “You should try him.”

“Alright, fine...” Tsung groaned, “Where is he?”

“She.” the cashier corrected without failure, “Tu Ma got set up at a monastery.”

“Ok... So where's that? Which one?” Tsung inquired.

The cashier nodded out the door, “Other side of the river, upstream.”

“Name?”

“I don't pronounce Russian names. Sorry. But are you sure you don't want a smoke.”

Burned out on him, Tsung held his hands in the air. “No.” he griped, “I don't.” turning on his heels he went for the door and stepped out into the sun.

On the street Tsung stuffed his hands into the pocket of his uniform. In his mind the swirling frustrations of his dealings with the army cashier tugged and pulled on him. He moped as he strolled, shoulders slacked and face bent to a disgruntled angle. He just looked ahead, staring down the street as he me moved away from the orange brick building.

To roam a city he had just not long ago been a part of its siege carried an alien cold air. The stillness of its landscape pulsed from its fiber. And as if the air itself the air itself was broken, shattered, and burned there was a deadened stillness. Crawling through its ruin the rumbles and guttural coughs of the Chinese supply network prowled and scavenged from its hallowed corpse.

The damage onto the city was hardly an all encompassing carpet bombing. Though shelling was liberal, it had carried a certain methodical surgery. Rows of townhouses often stood nearly intact, with the exception of the deep gouging claw marks that had been left behind by heavy shrapnel or the pocked craters of street and metal fragments. And then for hardly a half block another row lay open like sarcophagi torn open and looted; what had been their lids now a dusty mess that spilled into the street as busted waterlines lazily drooled slowly flowing currents of water.

Splashing across a stream-let of that water he passed onto the river-front road. Here the bodies of tanks and armored cars lay pushed aside like discarded carcasses. Their blackened shapes still smoldering from the inside as the sharp bitter taste of cordite and gas clouded the air around them. Pieces of metal and a sheet of charred grass made the carpet on which they sat, waiting to be collected and cut away; relegated to scrap so that they may have their reincarnation.

With his feet growing sore he finally came to a bridge. Its naked span swept clean of debris and cleared of barricades. Lumbering across the concrete and asphalt structure moved the trucks ladden with supplies to come in, or to go out. He stepped out onto the side-walk and began his lonely trek across as from the far-side came the elephantine cabins of the semis that carried the artillery; no doubt things were pushing ahead for them to re-mobilize. The bridge itself rumbled as if a giant underneath was shaking it.

Matte and flat, the long heavy barrels of the Chinese cannons provided no idea of grandeur or promise to greatness. They flaunted little, save for the drab green paint that masked them into the landscape. Though the crews of a few of the five that passed him had painted the long arm of their guns with dragons of clouds, those too were faded against a persistent layer of dust and diesel soot.

Their crews looked no different. Either hidden in the cabins of the trucks that carried them or sitting along the edge of the steel trailers they looked lack-luster and bored. Leaning against each other they took the trip with a leg hanging off the side, or fully laying against the floor of the trailer itself. Detached expressions of boredom and disinterested stares watched the world they helped make go by.

They disappeared on into the city behind Tsung and into the labyrinth of ruins and streets. But there was little doubt in Tsung's mind that there was little that would get in the column's way. Perhaps even they had a road clear, began the very moment the city was forfeit to them.

Crossing to the other side the young soldier walked through a forest of banners. Flags of the Chinese state, unit standards, and all the decoration of Huei Wen's army. Even a silk-sewn image of Hou Sai Tang on a field of cotton and polyester red looked out at the city his army had taken with empty deadened eyes. His image flew taller than the flags themselves, stretched between two heavy poles. Instinctively, Tsung gave a subtle bow to the image before continuing on.
_____________

“I'm looking for Tu Ma.” said Tsung. A idle rifleman stood at the gates of an enclosed set of buildings.

“What for?” he asked, leaning against the red brick of the wall. Next to him a gate of green sheet metal sat closed beneath an arch of the same pinkish-red stone as the wall itself, ivory white trim traced the three respective doorways and the sweeping central point of the gate's crown. A line of trees and bushes shrouded the property's wall from the street, and even the small chapel and auxiliary structures behind the monastery wall.

Tsung wasn't feeling the mood for another argument, and not before his final destination. Yet helpless, he could do little more than appeal to the guard's questioning, “Liebeiing Li Tsung, 1st Liaoning Cavalry. Can I come in now?” he answered defeated.

“Commanding officer?” asked the guard.

“Juunshi Sun Song.” Tsung gripped.

The guard nodded, and reaching into a pocket inside his coat. Pulling out a note-pad he flipped through the pages.

“What's that?” Tsung asked.

“A list.” the guard replied, glancing up from the pages as he ran through the lines.

“For what?”

“Of things, Tu Ma's got enough going on between the city itself and the army quartermaster to be playing shopkeeper. Shit people need only.” the rifleman answered with dry gusto.

There was a long moment of waiting as he ran his fingers down the pages. “Ah.” he said, “I suppose your squad lost a tank, would be you looking to ask what's going on with a replacement?”

Tsung stood in the middle of the side-walk perplexed and rather shocked, “I suppose I am...” he mumbled.

“Suits me.” shrugged the guard, knocking on the metal door. As it slowly swung open he invited: “Right on ahead, Regimental Quartermaster Ma is set up in the chapel.” Tsung bowed as he walked onto the grounds of the monastery.

It was a simple enough space, and hardly large. A yard of faded beige bricks formed a courtyard no bigger than a soccer pitch, grassy patches formed emerald ponds of landscaping at the base of spindly trees and young pines. Along the edges the plaster or wooden walls separated the compound from the city proper, until its furthest point where it marched off to a wood and gravel viewing deck.

Clustering the property, Siberian and Russian soldiers went about their duties, and if the local clergy were still here as fighting raged in the city then they had for sure been forced out now. Green hardtops trundled in and out as they used the concrete outbuildings of the eastern walls for storage, before leaving through the green gates.

The chapel itself was a modest Russian baroque church. Seemingly unscathed from the fighting, its walls still retained a bright vibrant orange and its white-framed windows unshattered by bombs, bullets, or grenades. A single steeple stood behind its solid oak entrance, the tower capped with a green crown the matched the lightly windowed dome; both held aloft golden crucifixes that rose fixed to point at the sky with holy defiance to the Chinese atheism below. Red gutter drains snaked down every outer corner.

Turning to it, he breathed relieved as he opened the heavy wooden doors.

Once inside he was greeted to a final silence. A sanctuary that while distant was all the same near. It was also empty.

Russian iconography decorated the walls, yet there were no pews and very little furniture left. Tsung's feet echoed on the hardwood floors as he moved about, breathing in the nostalgic smells of preservation and heritage; that dusty musky smell brought on by careful repainting and re-varnishing. It permeated the air.

“Comrade.” a woman's voice said suddenly.

Tsung jumped, surprised. Turning on his toes he found and met the speaker with a frozen panicked look. Laughing, the woman that had to be Tu Ma smiled.

She was a small woman, portly but not wide. She looked up at Tsung from behind large glasses as she sat at a wooden table along with another officer.

“Sorry, comrades.” Tsung bowed nervously.

“Your forgiven.” sighed the other officer, “Give me a moment, I'm almost done.”

Tsung nodded and backed away. Turning back to the quartermaster, the discussion he must have stopped was resumed, “You're going to have to get with Huei Wen personally if you have to.” he said, “But so far as things go I don't believe my medics have enough bandages; not after this passed affair. We had some thousand wounded from both sides flooding my hospitals and on my surgery tables. With most of it gone to chase the front I'm not given much to work with here.”

“I understands.” Tu Ma acknowledged, if stressed. A stray hair swung against her forehead as he hung out from under her olive-green cap.

“Good, thank you.” the surgeon officer sighed, relieved. He bowed as he got to his feet, “We're committed to try and serve the civilian population too so the need is still constant. We're touching the bottom of our spare supplies as-is, so please get us more.”

“I will, I will.” an exacerbated Ma placated, “I'll put your demand forward this evening.”

“Afternoon.” the surgeon demanded.

“Yes, afternoon.” she said, correcting herself. Relieved an understanding had been made, the surgeon bowed again, and headed for the door.

With its muffled thud, Tsung had his audience with Tu Ma.

“What is it?” she snapped, crankily. She starred down Tsung with an assertive look that itself burned.

“A, uh-... A couple things.” Tsung fumbled, surprised, “If you'll answer, that is.”

“I'll try.” she grumbled, she opened up a book on the table and tapping a pencil against her head thumbed through the pages, “Where are you from, and from who?”

“First Liaonang Cavalry, Sun Song.” Tsung repeated.

“Thank you.” she skipped several pages in her reports, and settled in on one. Running her finger down the list she went through the items.

“Sun Song, reported a damaged tank, lost it completely in the battle. Shanghai'd someone else's so he could get back into the field. I filed the requisition order later that evening and haven't heard anything.” she stated bluntly, shutting the book added emphasis to the fact she intended this audience to be done, “No doubt you're owed ammunition rations but it goes without saying, but if Song's not even supposed to be here: why are you here?”

“Because I really had a more, uh- personal question.”

“No, I'm not available.” she shot early, standing up.

Tsung recoiled back, “No, that's not what I wanted to ask.” he said.

“Fine, what was it?”

“I'm just looking for coffee, one of your cashiers said I should look into it by asking you since no one seems to have any.” he explained on quick breaths, “And uh- just wondering if you can say you got any?”

Tu Ma gave him a long glowering glare, “I haven't been able to get any.” she said, “There's a war going on in Africa and way I hear it the Ethiopian navy was just destroyed by the Spanish. They can for now no doubt move between here and there, but a lot of sailors aren't taking it. They don't want to risk being intercepted and captured by the Spanish, or whatever those bastards will do.

“So no, I haven't been able to procure any Ethiopian coffee. That sort of thing isn't even part of the official ration list so it's not on any priority for my CO to look at getting: let alone me.

“Now if you wanted tea you could probably be supplied. But we're not getting coffee, that's for the civilians back home. But I doubt the availability for that will remain for long, because Vietnam as I gather isn't producing coffee as it was under the French.

“Next question?” she spat.

“Ah- no, no other questions.” Tsung mumbled. He felt truly defeated, “But I guess I'll update everyone else about the tank. I suppose...”

“Good, now get the fuck out.”

[h2]Moscow[/h2]

In the darkness of the tunnels there was an absolute peace never before experienced. Walking through puddles as water dripped from over head Vasiliy strolled down the tracks of an abandoned metro tunnel. There was an eeriness to the air as he walked along. It hung still and moist in the air like some dark and sacred tomb, full of monsters.

But in the echoing splashes of his footsteps and the distant drops of water that leaked through cracking cement there was no other sound or indication of life. He was very and truly alone as he swept his torch across the rounded tunnel face. Loose strands of fraying cable and rusted sagging conduit clung from the side of the concrete vault's walls.

Once for some time Vasiliy had dreamed of skulking through the unknown tombs of ancient kings. To go to Egypt and the Levant and dig out some once great crusader fortress or Saracen castle. To perhaps travel to Jerusalem and dig under the Dome of the Rock to find the fabled ruins of the old Jewish Temple. Precariously preserved in ancient granite somehow, and built over top like some lost Parthenon. But as his interest waned as he aged he lost the dream.

On some fundamental level it perhaps stayed with him. But shifted its focus from the ancient to the contemporary. To not just see sacred sites with their magical shroud of mystery. But the hidden sites of the modern world, themselves dressed in the magnetic intrigue and force of the state. And he obtained that. Before the dying twilight of the Czar's vast empire to Finnish anger Vasiliy had only once walked the dark halls of the Kremlin; to no important matter but the delivery of routine papers on Makulov's behalf. But that visit had placated the young child in him to see the mysterious and the hidden.

But then, here he was again. Within the Kremlin, but not just inside of it: under it. He drew his flashlight to the ceiling and swept it along the center spine of the great tunnel. This voyage had re-awoken that child again and it gnawed at him to explore this even greater secret. It was by no means spectacular, a long tube of concrete and tubing, subway rail dominating the sandy, gravel floor under his boots. Sometimes he'd walk through a puddle and the sound of its splash would echo for so long it sounded eternal. But there was no wasteful touch of decadence in here. It was spartan.

The tunnel's location was not easy to find, but knowing now where it is meant it would not be difficult. It had avoided the cliché of the book in the bookshelf, or the disguised lever on the wall. If perhaps related, its button was a rosette in a wall in the private bedroom of the Czar, but not only there but the bathroom. There was loose lips that were paid to learn this.

So now it was time to begin acting. Who knew how long those mouths would remain sealed.

Coming on the end of the tunnel Vasiliy knew the time was fast approaching. Preparations were all but done. He stopped on his trail, scanning his flashlight up the large iron door that now block his way. Beyond it was the red line and their best chance of getting out alive. That last minute siren of doubt spoke to him. She said it was suicide, it was fruitless. That they'd best need an army.

But clicking off the flashlight to see the tunnel's darkness in all its glory Vasiliy shut her away and embraced that last awoken child in him. He was in one of Moscow's many great secrets, and it was time to feel it in its entirety.

Suicide or not.

[h2]Novosibirsk[/h2]

A dark sky drifted in over the capital of the Siberian communist state. With it, so too did the lights of the city turn on. The streets glowed and buzzed with amber light as the lamp-posts hummed to life and so too the houses, apartments, and buildings along the narrow streets. Novosibirsk shifted from its day-time life to the night-life as Chinese manufactured cars ferried the families and workers of the city to evening shows or bars for a night of respite from work, and to distance themselves from the war.

Despite the conflict moving in their favor, there was almost a cautionary tension in the city because of it. In some way, the phantom fears of the post-war riots of their first war with the Republic still hang over the minds and consciousness of the people.

An Angua stood with his back turned to the table. Cast in the glow of warm incandescent light and with the soft glow of street lights against his back he stood to address the small room of Chinese intelligence agents, and their Siberian partners. He held the room in waiting silence with still statuesque eyes. They sat in a room at the top of a three-story town-house, which had become the inconspicuous center of Siberian operations for the Intelligence Bureau. Just outside the window the long straight march of one of Novosibirsk's main drags raced towards the river.

“Our men now have well and now crossed the Om River.” the chief of intelligence to Huei Wen began, he held out his right hand, open palm. His long face stiff as a boulder as he looked out at the men sitting or standing around the spacious top-floor sitting room. Some with their arms crossed leaned against the red and white candy-cane stripped wallpaper. Others yet sat around a tea table in the middle of the room, where a warm kettle sat at its center as a polite offering, “And they go further. Tyumen has been liberated from the Republican foes and Comrade Wen continues his march to the eastern-most capital of Yekaterinburg.

“They leave behind them an extensive span of un-watched, or under-guarded territory.” Angua continued, “There is admittedly little that Comrade Wen can accomplish to this effect, or Comrade Afanasi. Both must consolidate their numbers at key locations to police this new territory. But, if the first war was an example: some party will take advantage of this and destabilize the war.”

He let his words hang in the air as he held out his other hand and opened the palm, completing in his mind the image of conquest and consolidation, “It befalls the men in the shadows to hold this territory and to consolidate it for them. Acting on our own powers, resources, and terror to identify and carve from the landscape the opposition that would rear back up and bite the glorious mission in the ankles and drag us back from where we began limping and wounded.”

Wrapping his hands behind him he stepped aside and turned to the window. Looking out at the kaleidoscope of light and night in the streets and alleys he continued, “In 1976 dissatisfaction with the war in part from dissident factions tore through the streets of Novosibirsk demanding the head of Nikolov Nitski. To calm their anger comrade Nitski was forced to end the war. This we know, this we all know.

“Though their faith in the cause has dissipated in the events after, and civil war has allowed us to hunt down and destroy the worst of the reactionaries I feel there may still be the threat. And one that will become darkly galvanized with the more Russian home-land that we lead to liberation.

“The future for us will no doubt not be clean. But I say: when has it not? But what we may do is necessary, and we shouldn't forget it.”

Silence began.

It was a persistent contemplative quiet that rested on all the ears. Outside the traffic of the streets rattled muffled through the windows. In the lower floors soft music dripped up through the floorboards and echoed up the narrow staircases to where they were now.

“Do we know who we're targeting?” a Russian agent asked, his heavy bear hands were wrapped about his burly barrel chest. A thick beard hung like moss from his chin, but otherwise his head was bald, even his eyebrows.

“The Mafiya I feel will be our most important organized threat.” Angua answered, he tapped the window glass, “And they're somewhere in the city, they're over the country. How many affiliates I'm not certain, but that will in our cause to find out. Any individual who we have suspicions might be dealing with now, or had dealt with the Mafiya in the past will be held under our lens. We'll chip our way into their ranks and burn it out from the inside.”

The Russian man nodded along, blue eyes shown with a knowing and eagerness as a wanting smile crawled under his heavy facial hair, “We must break them.” Angua continued, “It will be a hard task for certain. But we should not shy away from whatever tools we have at our disposal.

“Secondly, we should investigate and pursue any leads as to the Resurrection movement from the past. They may be dead, but I will not excuse my doubts on their viability to seek out any remaining rebellious groups. Old, former leaders may still be in contact with others.

“But since the civil war many of these men have been filed or are imprisoned. This gives us ultimate freedom to re-open their information and crawl through their leads to retrace the lines of relationships. Do not consider any connection innocent, have your suspicions comrades: and then prove them. The stability of the mission and of the Revolution depends on it.”

“Fine, fine,” smiled the Russian bear, “But can I ask another question?”

“You may.” Angua bowed.

“Who is organizing this?” he asked, “Beijing? Novosibirsk? Who are we working for?”

“Neither.” Angua replied, to the surprise of the room. He glossed over the surprised faces with a blank expression, “That is to say I have not been sanctioned to put this together by either government. This is an independent mission and we will use our own independent programs to see it out. But the information we acquire does not go to either command, but to all of us.

“I understand this interferes with our oaths and our loyalties. And I invite any of you in this room who do not see this as complimentary to the current larger mission at hand to depart. But I hope, and request of you to put aside this meeting, forget about it, and to not speak of it.

“I can not be sure how well our enemies are embedded, and in some ways we must suspect our commanders even as being the enemy. Ours is a army built on suspicion, do not stop from questioning.”

Again, the same nervous silence washed over the present men. Some shuffled, look to their neighbors with deep wondering looks. Waiting to see if the other would get up and turn from the room. To Angua, this was to know where their own loyalties lay: to men or to revolution.

He breathed a breath of euphoric relief and happiness when no one turned to the door, and he cracked a thin smile as the deal was sealed. At the center of the room a Chinese agent leaned forward from his chair, pulling his revolver from his coat, and placing it on the table before him. “My gun is yours!” he declared. A bald head gleamed in the light, and a faded tattoo of a serpentine dragon traced the lines of his high, wide cheekbones to his eyes and then up to his brow, opening its snarling bear mouth against the glossy dome of his head.

“How do we procede?” he asked.

“That is exactly what we must know now: how, and where do we start.”