10:31 (Taiwan Time)
Sunday, November 11, 1973 ‘C’
Taipei Songshan Airport
Taipei, Taiwan
Pham Thi Hien, adopted daughter of Ingrid Dows, at age 26 in 1973.
The sky was partly cloudy and the ambient temperature proved to be mild when Ingrid exited the Boeing 717 VOYAGER that had brought her from Seattle, but the wind was fairly strong, the Taipei Songshan Airport being in close proximity to the sea. Going down the mobile staircase which had been rolled up to the side of her aircraft, she couldn’t help notice that the airport had a military section to it, with a row of F-10 jet fighters parked on a tarmac separate from that used by commercial aircraft. Those jet fighters actually bore the markings of the Republic of China Air Force, something that didn’t surprise Ingrid, as she knew that the Republic of China, better known as Taiwan, was a close ally of the United States and was a critical bulwark against its big, hostile neighbor, the People’s Republic of China, or PRC in short. The United States and the PRC were still in a technical state of war and had been so for a good 25 years, since the time when Chinese soldiers had entered Korea to help their North Korean counterparts expel the American forces from the whole peninsula, a defeat that Ingrid had personally lived through. The murderous air raid that she had led from her base in Vietnam against the Chinese leadership in Beijing some 21 years ago, while fully justified, had then cemented the hostilities between the two countries.
Following other travelers to the nearby air terminal while carrying her small carry-on bag, Ingrid soon walked into the passengers’ arrival section and inserted herself into one of the lineups which quickly formed in front of the customs and immigration checking booths. As she was waiting in line, she saw her daughter Hien waiving happily at her from an upper observation gallery and waived back at her. When her turn came at the booth facing her, she handed her passport to the customs agent while smiling to him and speaking in fluent Mandarin Chinese.
‘’Good morning! I am here as a tourist and also came to visit my daughter, who works at the American embassy.’’
With her words already softening the attitude of the customs officer, the latter raised an eyebrow on seeing that Ingrid’s passport was a diplomatic one. Opening it, the man examined the pages containing her photo, name, particulars and special observations. He straightened up in his chair on reading the sentence ‘The bearer is a personal advisor to the President of the United States of America.’ Quickly scribbling a note about that, he then stamped her passport and gave it back to Ingrid, along with a yellow ticket, while bowing and smiling to her.
‘’Welcome to Taiwan, Miss Dows. Once you will have recuperated your luggage, you may present this yellow ticket to the agents in charge of customs inspection.’’
‘’Thank you very much!’’ replied Ingrid, smiling back while taking her passport and the ticket. She then walked out of the arrival hall, heading towards the nearby luggage retrieval section, where she was able to recuperate her two suitcases after a seven-minute wait beside the luggage carrousel assigned to her flight. Those suitcases in turn made a few heads turn around her when she headed towards the customs checking counters, towing them behind her: they were modern affairs with integrated wheels and telescopic handles, which she had received as gifts from Ken Dows ‘B’, the timeline counterpart of her long-dead husband and a field agent of the Time Patrol. At the customs counter where she presented herself, an agent took her yellow ticket and waived her through without further ado, as that yellow ticket probably marked her as a visitor to be treated with deference. Once clear of the customs area, she found herself in the public arrival lounge, where Hien nearly jumped on her, happily hugging her.
‘’Oh Mom, those two years you spent in Space were long ones for me. I missed you so much!’’
‘’And I missed you as well, Hien.’’ replied Ingrid while returning her adopted daughter’s hug. She then took a step back to look her up and down. At the age of 26, Hien was a truly beautiful young Asian woman. While small compared to Ingrid, she had a most graceful body, with curved hips and well-shaped legs.
‘’Look at yourself! You are a fully-grown woman now. Men must be swarming around you.’’
That remark brought a malicious grin on Hien’s face.
‘’Oh, many men are certainly trying their luck with me, but I am quite selective in my choices and take only the best.’’
‘’And that’s the way it should be, Hien. Let them earn your favors, like I do. I do hope that you still have a bed for me available at your apartment, or will I have to share it with one of your lovers?’’
‘’Me, sharing my lovers? Never! Knowing you, you would steal them with a single bat of your eyes. Don’t worry about your lodging while in Taiwan: I temporarily kicked out my lovers for the duration of your vacation here. Or do you really want to share with me?’’
‘’Hum, I may have to think seriously about that, Hien. I am not against a threesome either.’’
That made Hien laugh briefly.
‘’You will never change, Mom: always on the hunt for some fun time.’’
‘’As long as it does not detract from or impede my work. Well, let’s go to your place! Do you have a car or did you come by taxi?’’
‘’I came by taxi. I still don’t have a car and my salary as a junior attaché at the State Department is not exactly worth shouting about it.’’
‘’You know that I would be most happy to help you in that aspect, Hien.’’ replied Ingrid while following Hien towards the external taxi stands. Hien shook her head in response.
‘’Thanks, Mom, but I want to make it by my own. Besides, I don’t like driving very much, even though I am a competent driver, and the public transportation system in Taipei is more than adequate for my needs.’’
Getting into a taxi after its driver put her luggage in the trunk, Ingrid looked around her from her seat as the car rolled out of the taxi stand. Hien then spoke to her in a sober tone, using Vietnamese.
‘’You better keep your passport handy, Mom: there are quite a few checkpoints between the airport and downtown Taipei.’’
‘’Still the same paranoid bunch, hey?’’ replied Ingrid, also using Vietnamese to prevent the taxi driver from eavesdropping on their conversation. While an ally of the United States, the ROC was in truth a one-party state which was still under martial law, and this since its establishment on Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War, in 1947. An ageing Tchang-Kai-Chek was still in power, even though he was now a sick old man, and ruled Taiwan with an iron fist, using a permanent national state of emergency to counter any dissent to his rule. When she had visited Taiwan in 1952, in order to obtain some precious information about Communist China for an incoming military operation, she had encountered no less than six military checkpoints between the airport and the ROC Intelligence Ministry building, all manned by suspicious and heavily armed military policemen, while government informers lay everywhere. Her trip to downtown Taipei today proved no different, with their taxi having to stop in succession at a total of five military checkpoints. However, the diplomatic passports held by her and Hien greatly helped speed up their taxi’s passage through those checkpoints.
Thanks to all those checkpoints, it took their taxi over one hour to arrive at the apartment building where Hien lived. Ingrid paid the taxi driver, leaving him a sizeable tip, then climbed with Hien to the second floor of her building, where Hien unlocked the door of her apartment and invited Ingrid in. She however spoke in a near whisper once they were both inside, with the door closed and locked.
‘’By the way, that old woman who was sitting in a rocking chair in the entrance lobby is a paid government informant who reports on any suspicious goings in and out of the building. The embassy’s CIA officer warned me about her.’’
‘’That’s always useful to know. So, how do you like your work here in Taiwan, Hien?’’
‘’It is a satisfying job, while my superiors are good people. Since the vast majority of Chinese intellectuals and artists fled Mainland China after the end of the civil war, in order to escape persecution and arbitrary arrests by the Communists, there is quite a large artistic and intellectual community in Taiwan. Much of my time is used in arranging cultural exchanges between Taiwan and the United States and helping various visiting artistic groups, like orchestras and popular singers. I also help connect local writers with American publishers.’’
‘’All nice things, I must say. Compared to you, I could be said to be an insatiable warmonger.’’
‘’Don’t say that, Mom!’’ protested Hien, instantly serious. ‘’You helped my country of birth to get out of a disastrous war and saved it from a Chinese invasion. Without you, Vietnam would now be a puppet state of Communist China. You also defended Western Europe and Poland against a massive Soviet invasion and brought peace to Palestine. And let’s not also forget about your defense of the Philippines against the Japanese and your role in pushing back the Nazis in Europe. You may be good in a war, but you are an even better peacemaker.’’
‘’A peacemaker… I certainly could live with that title.’’
‘’And you will, mark my words. Now, let’s unpack your bags, so that we could then go eat something at a nice little restaurant I know nearby.’’
As Ingrid started unpacking her suitcases and suspending her clothes in the closet of Hien’s bedroom, her daughter smiled and spoke with some amusement in her voice.
‘’Not a single dress in your wardrobe: only female suits with trousers. You are still as much a feminist as you ever were.’’
‘’You nearly need to be a feminist when you work in an environment impregnated with machismo like the Air Force, Hien. And you are incorrect about my wardrobe: I still wear from time to time my Chinese slit dress and my Vietnamese Ao Dai{1} outfits. I just chose not to bring them on this trip.’’
‘’If you say so, Mom.’’
After another couple of minutes Ingrid was done with her unpacking and both women left Hien’s apartment, going down the stairs and exiting the building. As the duo walked down the sidewalk, Ingrid started asking questions to Hien in a low voice, to avoid being overheard.
‘’Tell me, Hien. I had only limited access to World news while in space and I would like to get up to snuff on the actual geopolitical situation. What is the state of the relations between the PRC and Taiwan?’’
‘’As icy as ever, Mom. There is zero love lost between those two governments and I don’t expect any improvements in that matter anytime soon.’’
‘’And the state of relations between the PRC and the United States?’’
‘’The same as with Taiwan. The Communist Chinese still remember very well your devastating air raid on their leadership compound in Beijing, even after twenty years. In particular, the Communist Chinese leaders still want your head on a platter.’’
‘’Well, it’s nice to see that they haven’t forgotten yet about me.’’ replied Ingrid, doing her best to minimize that point. ‘’Is Deng Xiaoping still in charge in China?’’
‘’He is, but the political scene in Beijing can rightly be described as a dog’s breakfast: palace intrigues and back stabbings are a constant there. While Washington believes Deng to be a hardened Communist, the few remaining survivors from the old guard, mostly army generals who had been away from Beijing at the time of your raid, consider him too moderate and accommodating towards us. If I would be Xiaoping, I would sleep with only one eye closed.’’
That made Ingrid chuckle briefly.
‘’Oh, the price one has to pay to retain power. Thank God that I never became a politician and stuck to flying. I am too honest anyway to make a good politician.’’
They continued chatting together while walking along the fairly crowded sidewalk, until Hien opened the door of a small restaurant advertising Cantonese cuisine. Ingrid took a good sniff of the appetizing odors inside the restaurant and smiled.
‘’Aaaah, real Chinese cuisine! Our cooks on the CONSTITUTION did their best, but there is only so much that you can do when you only have freeze-dried or canned products. Let’s take that corner table next to the front window.’’
A waiter came to them as soon as they sat down at that table, bringing them menus and filling glasses of water for both of them. He then left them to give them time to study their menus. Ingrid only needed a minute or so to make her mind.
‘’I will go for the shrimp dumplings and a noodle soup with bamboo shoots. We had only instant noodles aboard the CONSTITUTION and I sorely miss freshly-made noodles.’’
‘’I think that I will have the same: this restaurant serves top-notch home-made noodles.’’
‘’Perfect! Let’s order!’’
Calling the waiter back to their table, Ingrid then gave their orders in fluent Chinese, making the man bow to her before walking away.
They had been waiting and talking together for maybe two minutes when a small group of Caucasian men entered the restaurant, obviously intent on sitting down for lunch. Ingrid, absorbed in her conversation with Hien, didn’t see one of the men abruptly stop while staring at her, then change direction to walk towards her table. She became conscious of the man’s presence when the latter stopped a mere pace from her table and spoke to her with a distinct British accent.
‘’Miss, are you General Ingrid Dows?’’
‘’Uh, yes! What can I do for you, mister?’’
‘’You can take THAT!’’
Taken by surprise, Ingrid was unable to avoid the powerful right hook to her jaw that the man then delivered. The resounding hit projected her back while she was still sitting and she ended up with her back on the floor, half knocked out. The man, apparently in a mighty rage, then jumped on her and started punching her savagely as Hien was screaming in horror.
‘’YOU BITCH KILLED MY FATHER TWENTY YEARS AGO, WHEN YOU SANK THE HMS TIGER OFF PALESTINE.’’
‘’STOP! SOMEONE STOP THIS MADMAN!’’ yelled Hien while trying to pull the man off her mother. While their waiter reacted quickly and ran to the rescue, the other men who had entered the restaurant with the assailant mostly did nothing, staying frozen near the entrance. After absorbing two more punches to the face, Ingrid went over her surprise and immobilized the man’s right fist by squeezing his wrist in a superhuman grip. A noise of crushing bones was accompanied by a loud scream of pain from Ingrid’s attacker. Ingrid then followed on that by putting the sole of her right boot against the man’s stomach and then catapulting him in the air. The British flew clean off the floor and flew against a wooden wall, against which he loudly impacted, creating a large hole in it. Grimacing with pain and holding his fractured wrist, the man collapsed on the floor as Ingrid, a bit wobbly, got back on her feet. All the other people in the restaurant were now frozen with stupor and staring at that scene, everybody except Hien, who went at once to her mother.
‘’Mom, are you okay?’’
‘’I…I will be, Hien. I may end up with a couple of bruises but I have lived through much worse. Let me check on that man.’’
Ingrid then walked slowly to the man rolling on the ground while whimpering with pain, making the companions of the man stiffen up, ready to defend him. Ingrid gave them an unsympathetic look but stayed two paces away from her assailant.
‘’I suppose that you are all British, gentlemen?’’
‘’Yes, we are!’’ replied one of the men, a short but beefy man in his forties. ‘’Are you really General Dows?’’
‘’What if I am? You would then all jump on me, like your friend did? The Palestine War of Independence happened twenty years ago and what I did then was a legitimate act of war against a ship actively supporting Arab planes intent on bombing my airbase. I am truly sorry that this man’s father was one of the victims of that war, but he should blame instead the stupid British politicians who decided to backstab the United States then.’’
Before any of the four British men could reply to her, the restaurant’s owner came to them, armed with a big kitchen knife and started shouting in broken English.
‘’YOU, NO MOVE! POLICE COMING!’’
On her part, Ingrid looked calmly at the owner and spoke to him in Cantonese.
‘’Then you better call an ambulance as well, sir: this man will need hospital treatment.’’
The restaurant owner nodded to that, then shouted to his wife to get on the phone while staying put himself, his knife still up. The now nervous British, who knew how severe the local authorities were about civil disturbances, didn’t dare move or try to flee, with one of them kneeling beside his wounded comrade to assess his wounds. He soon looked up with shock at Ingrid.
‘’His right wrist is completely shattered. How did you do that?’’
‘’Simple: I squeezed it! I could have killed him, but chose not to. He can count himself lucky in that he didn’t take out a knife or a gun on me.’’
The British’s face hardened as he stared at her with hatred.
‘’You killed over a thousand Royal Navy sailors off Palestine, miss, and…’’
‘’And British commandos wearing unmarked uniforms attacked my airbase at night, killing 46 of my people and even attacking the house where my six-year-old daughter was. Your government then compounded its treachery with moral cowardice and hypocrisy by refusing to acknowledge those commandos as being British soldiers. As a consequence, those soldiers ended up being executed by Israeli firing squads as terrorists and saboteurs. This all happened twenty years ago and you still carry a grudge about that? You better change your attitude, and quickly, mister.’’
Ignoring the British men from then on, she turned to face the restaurant owner and, pulling her wallet out of a pocket, gave him 200 U.S. dollars while bowing to him.
‘’Please accept this as reimbursement for the damage to your restaurant my visit indirectly caused, sir.’’
The owner, most pleased at getting a sum that easily covered at least three times the cost of the said damage, took the money and bowed deeply to Ingrid.
‘’The lady is too kind. Consider this incident forgotten on your part.’’
As if to emphasize his last words, a squad of Taiwanese military policemen then rushed inside the restaurant, their batons high.
‘’NOBODY MOVES! WHAT HAPPENED HERE?’’
The restaurant owner stepped forward at once, presenting himself and describing to the senior MP what had happened. That MP first looked at the whimpering British man on the floor, then at the large hole in the wall, before eyeing Ingrid with disbelief.
‘’You were able to project that man this strongly against the wall, miss?’’
‘’That’s correct, Sergeant. I am General Ingrid Dows, of the United States Military Space Command. I came here to have lunch with my daughter, who is working at the local American embassy. That man on the floor then entered the restaurant and attacked me and punched me a couple of times, so I defended myself.’’
The MP straightened up on hearing her rank and saluted her.
‘’Then, be assured that you will not be bothered further, General. I will only need to take note of your name, along with a short deposition, then you will be free to resume your lunch in peace.’’
Ingrid gave that information with good grace, with the MP taking notes in his pocket notebook. The MP then looked at his men and barked an order.
‘’GET THOSE ASSHOLES IN THE TRUCK! THAT ONE ON THE FLOOR AS WELL! HE WILL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL BOOKED BEFORE GOING TO THE HOSPITAL.’’
The British men tried to protest this but a liberal use of batons by the MPs cut their protests short and they were soon dragged out of the restaurant. Ingrid slowly shook her head in disappointment as she watched the MPs leave with the British.
‘’Damn! I was hoping that this was by now forgotten, or at least forgiven.’’
‘’The British do still have problems accepting the fact that they are now only a secondary World power, with their precious empire mostly gone.’’ said Hien. ‘’I am sorry that your vacation in Taiwan started on such a shaky footing.’’
‘’You certainly were not at fault here, Hien, so don’t blame yourself for this. Let’s return to our table: I am still quite hungry.’’
Sitting back at their table, the two women were promptly served by their waiter, who had been told by the owner to take special care of them as customers. Ingrid took the time to savor her first bites before resuming her conversation with Hien.
‘’Okay, we were on the subject of Communist Chinese leadership before that little incident. What about the relations between the PRC and the Soviet Union?’’
‘’Not too good, actually. There actually were a few border skirmishes between Chinese and Soviet soldiers along the Amur River, in the area of Mongolia. We believe that hardline, old guard Chinese Army generals are fueling those border clashes and that Deng Xiaoping is incapable of reining them in, lacking the needed political support in the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, which is dominated by army generals. This business of having mostly army generals or ex-generals in charge in China actually concerns my ambassador, Patrick McConaughey Junior, who is worried that they may decide one day to invade Taiwan. You must know that the Communist Chinese already attacked Taiwanese-held islands in the past, right?’’
Ingrid nodded slowly her head at that.
‘’Yes: the Quemoy and Matsu Islands attempted invasion of 1955. We had to threaten China with atomic bomb strikes to make the Communists back off.’’
‘’But now the Communist Chinese have their own atomic bombs, along with bombers and missiles able to carry them.’’ added Hien, her expression sober. ‘’Now, the Chinese won’t be deterred so easily.’’
‘’You’re right, Hien. Unfortunately, there is not much that we could do about this: the Congress has little appetite for another war in Asia and so does President Kennedy. The fact that the Tchang Kai-Chek Regime is in reality a military dictatorship is cooling down a lot of the resolve about helping to defend Taiwan against a Communist attack. To make matters worse, we have Communist Korea, sitting close to the Japanese islands and with a brutal, unpredictable dictator in charge. To be frank, our forces in the Pacific are way too extended and overcommitted to my own taste. Any region-wide coordinated attack by combined Chinese and Korean forces would tax our forces to the limit.’’
‘’And…do you believe that such an attack could happen, Mom?’’
‘’That’s hard to say, Hien. There are too many unstable and unpredictable political factors and players involved in this. I give it a fifty-fifty chance for such a scenario to happen in the next few years.’’
Hien was silent for a moment while mentally digesting those words, then forced a smile on her face.
‘’Well, let’s forget that doom and gloom talk! What are your plans for your new command? What will be your first priorities?’’
‘’First of all, I must secure the cooperation of the other service chiefs in order to organize my new corps and to get the personnel I need to be transferred from their actual service branches. Then, I will need to secure some extra budgets in order to initiate the most urgent priority projects on my wish list. However, you can be assured that the other service chiefs will defend their own portions of the defense budget and personnel tooth and nail.’’
‘’Ouch! That could be brutal.’’
‘’Indeed!’’ said Ingrid, sighing heavily at the thoughts of the bureaucratic infighting ahead of her.