A Global Deception: The Subversion of Our Planet

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CHAPTER ONE

Shanghai, China

Another smog-laden day slides imperceptibly into dusk, and only the rush of night finally pushes the stubborn colors of the haze to a discernible black resolve. Such are the polluted skies of modern Shanghai with its industrial-strength pollution. Masses of people are on the move, and few bother to stop and marvel at the unlikely beauty of a lovely sunset forming a backdrop to Pudong’s skyline—unlikely because the dazzling upper rays of sunlight are seen displaced through a prism of airborne dirt. It is a regularly occurring and exquisite wonder of urban nature unseen by the hurrying Shanghainese.

Captain Hanchow Liang, China’s secretary of external affairs, also took no notice while leaving central Shanghai, walking and dodging taxis, bicycles, and then rickshaws on his short trek to the Puxi market area, adroitly balancing a precious package as he weaved through the crowds. His special errand would have been ultimately faster on the Shanghai Metro rapid transit line but far less secure in those crushing hordes. The well-dressed five-foot-six pedestrian, wearing gold-rim glasses below long ebony bangs, in need of trimming, to mirror his narrow eyebrows, crossed the small park along the Huangpu River. He penetrated the now-thinning throngs of the marketplace, and any casual onlooker might have misjudged the covered cage he carried as a recent purchase of a canary or songbird from one of the hundreds of vendors in the pet section of Huangpu’s open bazaar. But Liang clutched his package more as a treasure than as a house pet. His thoughts tonight were of engaging in the semifinal competition of his beloved sport, but his pounding heart was far from Shanghai; it beat in the tiny town of his youth, Lijang.

The man’s steps were hurried but measured, with a free hand clasped over a gold-and-red sash closely fitted onto a bamboo cage.

The wide paved streets narrowed as he entered the pungent market area, and he was forced to negotiate around shopkeepers, most with handmade cigarettes balanced on their lips as they were in the midst of cleaning up the day’s debris from their trade, sweeping the zones around their individual stalls. Dancing straw brooms glided swiftly and deftly in final preparation for ending a sweltering business day.

Reaching his destination on a thin ancient lane off the main inner access road, Liang knocked a furtive rhythm on an old, windowless red door and waited only a moment for a recognizing welcome. The man and his cage quickly gained entrance, and the shabby door closed in anonymity behind him with a soft click. Except for the vibrant food smells in the outdoor market, the din of the room he entered was little different from what he had just left in the bustling street. A vintage air-conditioning unit rattled little effect and precious modest relief of the ambient temperature. The cigarette smoke and perspiration smells burned his dark-brown eyes behind his designer glasses and swathed his bespoke gray suit with spent tobacco and body odor. It mattered not at all to an overdressed Liang.

Meaningfully he marched through the noisy crowd to a threadbare drapery barrier and stepped behind it and into a five-square-meter space containing two long tables surrounded by a dozen men with similar cages, most uncovered but definitely bearing precious cargo as well. The others exchanged knowing glances with Liang but maintained their solemnity and attended to their work. Liang found an open surface, placed his cage down carefully, removed his suit jacket, and then ceremoniously began to remove the colorful sash as he mingled with his serious companions.

This was the prep area where the combatants received last-minute nutrition, subtle stimulation, and a delicate massage, while the handlers contemplated their strategies and fantasized elusive winnings.

Just beyond the soiled drapes stood the stage where fights were being held, and each man listened to the nasal high-pitched voice with the timbre of an auctioneer and the guarded excitement of a horse racing announcer. The participants behind the drapes took in every word, absorbing each triumphant inflection or misfortune of their competition. Winning shouts in Wu Chinese mounted among groans of defeat, and then the tense silence was followed by a man in a colorful vest throwing back the drapes and summoning the next contestants. It was Liang’s turn. When their names were called, Liang and his sparring partner looked up with wide-eyed affirmation and gathered their cages. Liang straightened his tie and ran a hand through his coal-black hair, which had fallen partially over one eye; he inhaled once deeply, and he was ready.

The applauding crowd watched Liang carefully. He was no stranger here. Many knew him as the secretary of external affairs for the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, and everyone there knew him as a regular at the club who won more bouts than he lost. They examined this proud man, in tailored dress pants and starched white shirt with sleeves turned up two rolls—this man who still had perspiration on his forehead from moments ago having hastily walked from his office in a large Chinese Communist Party building for these few hurried moments of anguished leisure at the fight club. The white-collar warrior wore a tight, resolute steel mask as he walked to the raised competition platform. His sport represented more than a little friendly competition; for Liang, this was a metaphor for life, albeit one of considerable contradictions.

CHAPTER TWO

Leavenworth, Kansas, 2010

Winter in the state of Kansas can be as severe and unfriendly as most anywhere in the northern continental United States. The sun stops probing the state’s plains, temperatures plummet, snow blows horizontally, and the incessant wind drives icy particles in 360 directions, miraculously managing to keep enough within the state borders to mount gigantic drifts and cause staggering traffic jams and cardiac-triggering sidewalk shoveling for dutiful spouses. Locals joke that winter at least gives them a brief respite from tornado season.

This reoccurring seasonal inconvenience adversely affects most normal-functioning citizens. It is oblivious only to schoolchildren, who love it because they know no difference, Eskimos who may have wandered south for the winter, invalids and seniors who are forbidden to venture outside during this meteorological phenomenon, and souls resting in thousands of cemeteries, having already paid their dues to Old Man Winter.

There is another, often-forgotten group, though, an unnoticed and costly segment of Kansas society that resides in the state, albeit not voluntarily, and hardly notices the chilling climate and wind-chill factors: the federal prisoners at Leavenworth Penitentiary.

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

Clank…screech…slam!

Light had hardly shown its puny morning presence through the ten-foot-high wire-encased window when the hostile sound of a cold steel door being unlocked, then rubbing against a steel door frame and slamming against the concrete wall, brutally pierced the quiet of Mario Delgado’s prison cell. He raised his head calculatingly, and his pale-green eyes met those of Rob, the sullen-faced guard who’d given him his thunderous wake-up call for most of the last ten years. They ritually stared at each other and recognized that the other’s eyes looked different today. Was there gentleness in the jailer’s gaze? No, sensed Mario, resignation was more like it. Resentment mixed with a little regret that his feisty ward would no longer be around to accept his regular doses of verbal abuse.

Mario traded the gawk with a soft faintness, a look not seen on his face since his entrance to Leavenworth Prison in late 2002. The uniformed man sensed the moment that he and Mario now experienced and stood unaccustomedly stoic and mum.

Mario sat a moment longer, inventorying the now-familiar surroundings while trying to purge the memories of this ignominious stopover in his life’s journey, for one final liberating instant. Against a backdrop of slanting shadows formed by the thick window screen, he eyed with displeasure the two areas where he spent the most time and where he had done his deepest thinking on getting out: a small cot with a stiff pillow and a stainless steel portable potty. A jaunty crease broke his rigid face as he deliberated leaving the twenty-three-acre walled facility today. He was so ready!

The acreage had sounded huge to him when he was first admitted, until he realized that the prison population was similar to so many hugely overcrowded cities he’d been in. Leavenworth was stuffed with almost twice the intended capacity of twelve hundred souls. Mario knew that planners always underestimated the demands on things like metropolitan services, urban housing, transportation, traffic infrastructure, and school classrooms, and he discovered that even facilities for incarceration of criminals could also be under evaluated and soon congested. He didn’t know why, but it no longer mattered. His stay was over.

Hey, pal, he thought to himself. I’ve done my time in the hothouse, and now it’s my time to start cranking up something hot outside this house and making up for a lot of lost years.

More notable prisoners such as Bugsy Moran and Machine Gun Kelly had occupied buildings on these Kansas premises, and during his stay, NFL star Michael Vick was a resident on Mario’s floor. His mind couldn’t resolve whether that made him feel somehow more elevated by association or depressed by comparison. What had definitely depressed him was the initial realization that this was an all-male detention center, and the lack of any femininity was harsh and unusually cruel punishment to contemplate. Worse, the tales of latent homosexual behavior that would emerge around him rattled his sexual cage with flashbacks of a repulsive experience involving a female impersonator in a hotel room in Iraq some years ago. While he had successfully avoided the horrors of prison sexual bullying, those scars from Iraq continued to haunt him.

He had trembled at those disturbing reflections. Mario was so ready to leave it all behind.

The about-to-be-liberated man and his brawny six-foot-two ex-keeper exited the ten-by-twelve foot cell silently, absent the usual harangue and conflict, to begin an awaited walk to the warden’s office. The tiled corridor was empty, except for the omnipresent scent of a heavy, chemically clean phantom tang living in the ambient air. Mario listened to the occasional snore and the first morning rustle of the other inhabitants as he started the echoing walk, which now felt ten times longer than he remembered.

Inside the prison’s less-than-elegant main office, inadequately warmed by a noisy space heater, a warden’s assistant showed Mario to a brown-painted wooden coffee table in front of the office’s reception seating. There, he found a loosely stacked bunch of starched clothes assembled in the middle of the table like a thrift shop offering to a homeless man. It made a strong imprint on the senses of a man who was about to start over.

"Guess I am sort of a homeless man now," Mario reflected silently.

The warden himself said nothing and simply stared out the door of his office at the scene in front of him.

A prison assistant instructed Mario to hurry up and take the apparel behind a recently erected blind, place his prison garments into the stainless steel receptacle provided, and get into the new clothes.

Mario eyed the garments, looked up at the other men in the room, peered back down at the new clothes, scratched his chin, and sighed. He loosened the drawstrings of his prison pants and let them fall to the floor, kicked them away, pulled down his undershorts, turned away from the group, and bent over the table to retrieve the new attire.

Hey, pals, take a good look at this skinny ass, ’cause you ain’t gonna see it around here again. Then he picked up the new garb and went behind the white plastic screen.

The veins were bulging on his jailer’s neck as he erupted. That prick just mooned us, Warden. Can’t we do something?

Don’t sweat it, Rob. Let him have his little bit of revenge. After all, you got your licks in over the last ten years. Frankly, I admire his spunk.

Rob pouted and swallowed loudly.

The ex-prisoner now donned new black denim trousers and a long-sleeved green-and-yellow checked woolen shirt, utilitarian black leather shoes, wool socks, and a government-green zip-up fleece jacket. There was no mirror, but he could just feel the trappings of an ex-con written all over him.

Mario stepped out with an air of smugness, all the while thinking, Fake it till you make it, pal.

The warden gave Mario $200 in federally allotted cash, which Mario quickly folded and stashed in his new back pocket without a comment or look. Some legal-looking papers were then placed on the desk to be signed, including the perfunctory release forms, along with an envelope containing the over $600 in cash and personal items he had surrendered over ten years ago. He had all but forgotten about his possessions. Mario pocketed the folded wad of cash and an old address book and then, with his acerbic grin, swept the other items into the waste can next to the table and peered at the other three men in the room. He addressed the warden.

Warden, I’ll award you three tin cups out of a possible ten for food and accommodations and one out of ten for ambience. I won’t even try to rate these prison fashions I’m wearing, and as far as your staff of goons, I don’t know how low on a human scale I’d have to go to rate how bad they suck. You need a new Human Resources Department, pal.

The guards collectively held red-faced, tight-mouthed scowls and were barely able to control themselves while the warden merely smirked. In his twenty-three years with the federal prison system, he had seen and heard a lot worse parting shots.

Mario turned and was quickly escorted through the open door and out of the warden’s office by a frumpy middle-aged woman, with too much hair and excessive makeup, who had counseled Mario for the last thirty days in preparation for his prison release. She was the penitentiary psychologist, and her name was Elizabeth Bundy. She had gotten to know prisoner #62936 pretty well in their daily sessions within the last month.

Mario, you shouldn’t have done that. You know you can catch a lot more flies with honey than sarcastic taunts.

Yeah, I know, Liz, and I’d love to catch their flies in the prison lawn mower and turn it on high.

It’s not good to burn bridges, Mario.

I get that, but I’d rather leave some of my discontent here than take it with me. They actually deserved more.

I understand, Mario. However, you’ll do better on the outside holding some things in.

Despite her drab features and stern demeanor, he had grown to like Dr. Bundy and was happy for the brief time he had been in her release program. Still, he felt the need to bitch a little and let out some pent-up frustration. He just smiled at her and said, OK, OK. I hear ya, Doc.

Dr. Bundy put some more papers in front of Mario to sign, gave him a copy of a certificate of some sort, and reached out to shake his hand.

You’re a free man, Mario. I’ll walk out through the entry hall with you, and since you have no one picking you up, I’ll show you the way to the bus stop. It is only two short blocks.

They shuffled through the old wooden-paneled lobby filled with partial glass-fronted cubicles containing dozens of staring, questioning eyes focused on their new ex-con alumnus. As always, they assessed the chances that the man being released would make it outside the walls of Leavenworth and how he would end up.

Mario felt the desire to shout out an appropriate Leavenworth college cheer before he went out onto the field of life, but instead he raised his arm and pumped the air twice. It was stupid, but it felt good.

A new shift of employees was just arriving, and Mario and Liz stood back as they noisily hustled inside out of the chill and into the warm hall, unbundling themselves from the cold-weather clothes they wore. Dr. Bundy reached up and gave Mario a light hug and wished him all the best. He was at loss for words or an act of human response. He had been in a cage for over three thousand days and had forgotten, so he drew in his lips in an emotional gesture, shook his head affirmatively, and barely verbalized, Thanks, Liz, and walked out the huge double doors.

She knew Mario wouldn’t look back at her; no one ever did.

CHAPTER THREE

Leavenworth, Kansas

April was still viciously cold in Kansas, and a federally provided generic winter fleece jacket stood little chance of buffering the chill and shrieking wind for very long. His short-lived good-bye was now forgotten, and only the cold occupied his mind.

The low bidder wins again, Mario posited as he put his hands into the prison coat and shivered along the paved path to the small side street that would lead him to Metropolitan Street and the bus stop just a thousand yards from the penitentiary’s exit doors. Getting out of the shadows of the huge building and onto the partially sunny pavement did nothing to warm the skin of a Cuban-born former inhabitant of Miami and Central America.

Shit, they should’ve waited to spring me in the spring, Mario humorously speculated.

As each step away from the detention center distanced him from the past ten years, he made a strong mental effort to forget about the frigid air and his stay at Fort Leavenworth; however, his mind couldn’t help but dwell on the circumstances that put him there. All in all, the break from his acquisitive life hadn’t been as bad as expected, but it had sorely derailed the rising ambitions of a very determined and motivated man. Actually, he had been pretty fortunate that he didn’t have to serve the full sentence of fifteen to twenty years. He was a hot commodity to certain elements of the drug world, and he rationalized that it was just as well that he stayed penned up as long as he did as tempers and memories became more clouded. Mario could have shortened his imprisonment even more, maybe to zero, if he’d been willing to divulge all of the information he possessed. But that was out of the question in Mario’s mind because he retained sensitive information that he hoped would be as good as a nice fat annuity for him in the now-near future.

He fully intended to exploit that advantage over those wealthy self-righteous pricks that had been knee deep in the illegal drug business. He had had years of spare time to formulate his plan, and now that he was free, he would write out the details with names and times of infractions, secure the data in a safe-deposit box to be opened only upon his death, and send a copy of the disclosures to each of the people from whom he intended to extort millions of dollars. He rationalized his prison time as well spent if it could yield the extravagant payday he expected in the near future.

By not telling all of the details to the feds, it had cost him extra years of his life, but it should make him tens of millions of dollars. Not a bad investment, he reasoned. Mario also realized that the federal government wasn’t finished with him yet, but they seemed less important to him than securing his comeuppance from his former employers.

Ruminating on this anticipated largesse, as well as the new sensation of freedom and planning his next step in life, Mario proceeded toward the bus stop with a wide smile on his frosty cheeks. He unconsciously, and certainly uncommonly, ignored his surroundings, aware only of the direction in which he walked and little else.

The city’s brick-and-wood bus shelter, with a dirty plastic cantilevered roof and a faded advertisement for a local radio station, was just ahead, and he was vaguely aware that a few riders were huddled there. His latent survival senses didn’t distinguish the hooded man slouching outside the bench area, smoking a skinny cigar and intermittingly showing the whites of his eyes as he traced Mario’s slow gait.

Mario’s temporary loss of functional vision also caused him to miss the white SUV parked just on the other side of the bus shelter with two well-dressed men staying warm in its heated front seats. The exhaust-spewing vehicle had all the appearance of someone dropping a person off at the bus stop while allowing the person to stay warm until the bus’s arrival. Though he couldn’t tell it, behind the half-fogged windows, one man was watching every breath that Mario took while the man in the driver’s seat peered intensely toward the bus cubicle and the hooded stranger. Normally these three men, out of context in this everyday setting, would have stood out in Mario’s trained eyes, like a black lab on a white rug. But uncharacteristically oblivious to his environs, Mario’s brain was now drifting through the Caribbean. He was recounting the Sunday morning in Jamaica when he and a fellow American, Don Anders, were startled from their temporary imprisonment by an Iraqi operative and were able to escape in separate directions during an armed assault on the drug-manufacturing plant where they were being held. Just before splitting up, and suspecting the worst outcome from his plight, Mario had given Anders a man’s name and a Cayman Islands bank account number to be accessed by him if Mario should not make it out alive. The account held several millions of dollars that Mario had accumulated in his years of deal making and influence peddling in Latin America.

His mind tried to completely paint out the trauma from that ordeal and to fixate mostly on retrieving his money from Anders and reestablishing his once-covetous lifestyle.

Anders had written to Mario several times while Mario was in Leavenworth, so he was confident the money had not been touched, and he envisaged its safe retrieval from the bank in the Cayman Islands. After he negotiated a split with Anders, he needed the balance of that nest egg to get his life established again while defending himself from some of the associates he had pissed off during his employment in the illegal drug business.

Man, maybe I’d have been safer in the big house a little longer," he reflected momentarily, remembering the force and vicious manner with which those villains went after their adversaries.

No, he concluded, more prison time wouldn’t work for him; however, the likely consequences of his past did greatly concern him and gave him more reason to get his hands on the offshore money as fast as possible.

The screeching of air brakes signaled a bus was pulling up to the shelter, and its noise brought Mario back to the moment. A quick glance up revealed that it was the bus he needed to take to the airport. He slowed his pace so the other passengers would enter first, reflexively displaying a social shyness common to newly released felons.

As he shuffled the last steps to the bus, the hooded man dropped his cigar and executed a quick darting move from outside the small enclosure toward the rear of where Mario was walking. He was pulling a glass syringe from his pants pocket and placing it into the folds of the wool material of his hoodie as he closed the distance on Mario. All the passengers were now on the bus, and it was Mario’s turn to board, leaving the hooded man on the curb. He put his leg onto the bottom step to hoist himself into the cabin, all the while missing the drama unfolding two yards behind him.

The two men from the parked SUV had scrutinized the scene thoroughly and had timed an exit from their vehicle to arrive and intercept the hooded attacker only milliseconds before he put a twenty-one-gauge needle into Mario’s neck and slipped away unnoticed. They seized the assailant and slapped a gauze sponge saturated with a potent respiratory relaxant and neurotoxin onto the attacker’s face, which overpowered him and rendered his voluntary body muscles and vocal chords instantly useless. The men worked like a choreographed team of dancers as they simultaneous swept the assassin up and frog-marched him to the SUV before the bus had let off the brake. Fogged windows on the bus screened the movie-like scene from the riders and in particular Mario. As the bus departed, one of the dancers went back to the assault scene to sanitize the hit zone and to retrieve the abandoned syringe with his plastic-gloved hand.

Mario shuffled down the dirty and wet aisle and found a seat near the back of the vehicle. He contemplated his next stop, the Lambert–Saint Louis airport, and tried to visualize how an American airport would look after his ten years of being out of the civilized world. He hadn’t a clue that the scene at the small bus stop had almost ended with a last stop at the Saint Louis morgue. While luck was with him at the moment, he never knew it; he was about to embark on a tumultuous journey for which he would need to sharpen his defense mechanisms and reshape his future quickly.

CHAPTER FOUR

Shanghai, China

Tension had mounted in the room full of anxious betters as the match began, with wet foreheads above hand-cupped mouths shrieking encouragement to their favorites. This was a championship bout, and tens of thousands of dollars were at stake in this dimly lit series of rooms housed in the perennially poor Haniapu neighborhood. But then again, Chinese were legendary for raising the art of betting to Olympian levels. This particular sport, along with hundreds of other seemingly obscure gaming activities, defied wealth and social status and drew a cult-like following. Designated locations for wagering in China were inconsequential, and opportunities for betting on anything could be found practically anywhere and anytime.

Liang was twirling a wisp of bamboo back and forth across the long straight antennae of General Tang. A green-colored spotlight highlighted Liang’s prized fighting cricket. His creature was acting aggressive and doing a superior job in backing down the opposing fighter. An outcome was imminent. Either Liang’s insect would go for the kill, or his opponent’s large male would spring from its cornered position and overwhelm its attacker. A pivotal moment was pending. The tenseness was palpable as the cricket masters manipulated the contestants, perspiring in their pursuit of a champion.

The crowd now began breathing quietly, and the ambient sound was like the collective breathing of a pack of restrained hungry dogs anticipating their dinner, anxiously panting but obediently controlled.

Liang felt victory in his grasp and a feeling of satisfaction that triggered a mental flashback. His obsession with crickets had come over twenty years earlier, after he left his rural and childhood upbringing in the city of Lijang, in Yunnan Province, to study away at school. Liang would daydream in class of the earthy sounds and feels of a simple country life and the rituals and acts of the dongba, the spiritual leader of his village, and of his Naxi people, who played a major role teaching young Hanchow harmony between man and nature. Liang’s central beliefs were based on man and nature being half brothers, born to two mothers with the same father and destined to exact revenge upon humans who used up too much of the land’s natural resources. The Naxis maintained strong links with their Tibetan ancestry and continued to live a Buddhist-like life with Buddhist art, natural cures, and simple food, at peace with the animals and their fellow man. The Naxi even attended Tibetan temples in Lijang, where many regularly prayed. It was a passive and nonaggressive existence that Liang had left behind to pursue his naval career, and he promised himself that when he settled down, he would reclaim a portion of his calm, bucolic childhood in that urban environment that was luring him toward wealth and power. The paradox of a military career following a Buddhist disciple’s upbringing preyed on Liang’s mind just as the act of fighting crickets was a contradiction to basic Buddhist beliefs. His overwhelming desire to be rich and powerful produced a schizophrenic effect, causing the young Liang to intermittently abandon his Buddhist soul. He advanced into maturity balancing and rationalizing these inconsistencies. It seldom bothered him any longer as he now practiced an enigmatic personal philosophy, or attitude, based on relative importance, an invention he had watched his adult peers practice for twenty-five years, most prominently within China’s political elite. At present, true to his word of embracing nature, the Shanghai condo in which he lived housed two large Tibetan mastiff dogs, three Himalayan cats, a dozen Siamese fighting fish (betas), lacquered bird cages with a rare canary in each of the eight rooms, and shelves of small clay pots containing chirping crickets. Because of Liang’s prestigious rank in the government and to no small degree his majestic canine guardians, guests not only accepted his idiosyncrasies but lauded the exotic domestic atmosphere in his presence while secretly despising the odors of the alien household pets. It was an uneasy but mostly pleasant compromise with his childhood rearing in Lijang, and Captain Liang couldn’t have cared less what his guests and colleagues thought.

The noiseless electricity in the room sparked Liang’s mind to switch back to focusing on the now and on winning tonight’s finals.

As he leered at his opponent, his purist attitude that eschewed the bastardized culture of drugs and steroids that so many Chinese were administering to these insects crossed his mind. Special mealy worms and countless lady crickets were as far as Liang went in preparing his sixty-day-old prize male gladiators. He treated them as he lived his life, with a virtually natural regimen. Liang frowned, but only fleetingly. The fight’s nail-biting end was now imminent, and the room became mausoleum-like quiet.

Liang’s opponent abruptly cursed boisterously, threw his bamboo wisp, and spurned the spectators and bettors, who jumped up, cheering Captain Liang’s peewee pugilist as he was declared the victor after the opposing fighter had had enough and jumped out of the clear plastic fighting enclosure. Money was loudly exchanged around the room, and Liang was ceremonially presented several thousand dollars. He kept his eye on the door during the entire ritual, always wary of police cracking down on this illegal betting and embarrassing a government official. However, his addiction trumped his allegiance to party don’ts, and he soon beckoned to a young ring assistant nearby to tend to his prizefighter. A handful of paper bills accompanied his instructions, and a heavy sigh soothed his tense expression and helped refresh a usual calm demeanor.

With a tidy sum of money in his pocket, he wiped his forehead, buttoned the sleeves of his shirt, put on his suit jacket, and withdrew from the stage with a younger ringside friend and government colleague, Ming Jintao, and together they strode into the small adjacent lounge for a toast with traditional maotai liquor, or baijiu. This was not only a traditional Chinese drink but the very alcoholic concoction that US president Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao toasted with in Peking in 1972 for the ceremony to open China to the United States. Tonight, the brew was somewhat symbolic as he contemplated his next conquest, for Liang and his tight clique of Chinese colleagues were firmly focused on opening up the United States to China.

Ming put his arm around Liang’s shoulder and asked, How does it feel to be champion once again, Mr. Secretary?

Following a long swallow of spirits and revealing a victory smile, the winning contestant downed a second round of maotai. Liang shined with confidence from his win and exuded unusually expansive behavior from his usual taciturn persona. His cricket game face had dissolved as a new zealous glow shone from behind his dark eyes.

Winning is an honor, Ming, but winning the right way is everything. The real winners in life are the ones who use and enjoy environmental gifts of this planet and are able to direct their futures by setting standards of natural excellence and sustainability. These so-called contestants tonight are bogus competitors to our sport. They use artificial methods in their attempts to rise to the top, but I have studied nature and apply her time-proven methods to achieve success. The world, just like these misguided failures in cricket fighting, has turned its back on nature and the lessons she teaches. Science may try to save and prolong life, but it’s in defiance of natural laws. We rescue unfit fetuses, vaccinate against bacteria that once claimed the lives of weaklings, and artificially maintain life for years past natural termination. Our food supply consists of processed and enhanced products, animals are fed vitamins and antibiotics, and our people are housed in manipulated environments that consume energy from nuclear power plants. Our populations continue to overproduce, they are synthetically maintained in old age, and their lives are unnaturally prolonged, creating disastrous over population. We can’t continue to fool Mother Nature, Ming. In the past she equalized life on our planet with a steady balance of fecundity to populate and offsets of famines and epidemics to diminish population. Now I fear we have gone too far in altering that stability and are headed toward a great abyss. Before it gets worse, there has to be a correction against the planet’s implosion from too many people and precious few natural resources. Nature dictates the truth! She calls out now, begging for someone to listen. Liang poured another drink.

Ming was completely overwhelmed and unprepared for this serious rant from the secretary of external affairs during a supposedly relaxed celebratory drink. He did manage to mount a weak defense to the remarks.

Don’t you think some of the technologies you denounce have been useful to mankind? Artificial birth control, as an example, is cutting down on births all over the world, so the misuse of natural resources will be reduced through fewer inhabitants.

Liang wiped his mouth and answered. Yes, but as the name implies, it is artificial, and it hasn’t successfully stopped the rise in population, has it? The citizenry needs to be taught to regulate their families naturally.

But other advances help families and communities exist in a healthy and productive manner. That helps the state, Ming added.

It helps only temporarily, Ming. And just think of how many of the earth’s resources and how much money it takes to make these people live longer and prolong life falsely. The world’s population must be managed as soon as possible, or we are all doomed.

Almost as an afterthought, he added, And China should be the world manager, as he poured another drink.

Ming was dumbfounded as he fought for words. Captain Liang, tonight we honor your victory, but I will think more about your hypothesis. It is somehow a contradiction to life as I know it. There are huge movements worldwide for the green planet you picture. In addition, I’m afraid one would have to employ some paradoxically unnatural devices in order to change the current direction.

But the captain was becoming inebriated and was not to be deterred. Ming’s counter comment caused Liang to sit straighter, and a nervous tic appeared in his left