Chapter 24

Shanghai – China

#17, Way of the People

January 16

The explosion in #1422 of the Lanhua Teacher's Apartment complex destroyed that apartment, and seriously damaged the one on either side of it and the ones above and below. Thus it was that the watchers of Dr. Fa were out on the street and could not check their listening devices until early in the morning of the next day. Being state of the art, and thus, completely electronic, some of the disks used to record everything were damaged. The equipment that they were part of was severely damaged.

All that meant that the equipment had to be given over to the techies for recovery of the disk information. That would take time, probably a couple of days.

In the meantime, a search of the apartment could be and was being done. The local police and fire fighters were first on the scene, but were followed within hours by Colonel Sun's security team. They found what they expected to find: badly damaged corpses of a slight male and a somewhat larger female, dressed in the Fa's clothing. At first glance it seemed to be a tragic death of the famous scientist and his daughter. It was close enough to the time when the grand daughter would have been coming home that they were still looking for the little girl.

They couldn't know that the little girl in question was being carried on her grandfather's shoulders across the open drainage ditch in the middle of the night.

Colonel Sun, himself, was on his way to the south, where he kept his mistress and a very nice 'alternate' household. His main household, of course, was in Beijing, with an appropriate wife and son. Contacted by cell phone, he cursed to himself and ordered his car to turn around. Over the incomplete highway system of central eastern China, he was still ten hours from Shanghai. He'd be back by noon, at the latest. The sexy Indo-Chinese woman who was waiting for him would just have to keep waiting. This Chaing thing was just too important.

The future of the New Chinese Empire was hanging on this project.