Read Online Darkness Under Heaven by F. J. Chase - Free Book Online

that?”
    â€œOh, it’s already done,” Avakian replied under his breath. “Only question is how long they make us wait before they pull it out.”
    â€œI have to get out of here,” the girl whimpered.
    â€œKeep your mouth shut and you will,” Avakian muttered back.
    There was face involved now, and because of that Avakian knew they wouldn’t give anything up easily. The only thing he had going in his favor was that the authority in the room didn’t want to leave in case the American barbarian Avakian made a scene or otherwise embarrassed himself, but they also weren’t willing to wait around all day. He settled back, crossed his legs, and refused to look at his watch.
    Finally another uniformed cop came in with papers and handed them to the desk officer. Who motioned Avakian back up.
    With one elbow on the desk and cupping his chin in his hand, Avakian read every word. Then he flipped back to the front page and pulled a black Sharpie from his jacket pocket. And carefully blacked out all the propaganda. That is, all the admissions of guilt and responsibility, all the promises that the United States would never allow such a thing to happen again, and all the groveling thanks to the Chinese people for their forbearance. “I understand the shopkeeper has been compensated?” he said to the desk officer.
    The commissioner nodded.
    Avakian crumbled up the page dealing with that and dropped it into the wastebasket next to the desk. The only sound in the room was his marker squeaking across the paper. He initialed the beginning and end of each blacked-out section, and signed and hand-numbered each page before affixing his signature at the end. He walked the paper over to the bench and handed Brandi the pen. “Sign it.”
    â€œI can’t sign anything without my lawyer,” she said in a too-loud little girl whisper.
    Avakian bobbed down until they were mouth to ear and hissed, “Sign the damn thing!” She signed.
    Avakian took it back to the desk. “I will wait for a photocopy of this particular document,” he said, pointing down at it.
    The desk officer again looked over Avakian’s shoulder, then barked out an order. One of the enlisted cops grabbed the papers and ran off with them. “You must sign these,” he said, sliding the Chinese version across again.
    Avakian pushed it back. “You can sign that you witnessed me put my signature to the English version.”
    Another look over the shoulder. The Chinese document was withdrawn.
    The cop returned with the copy. Avakian flipped through it again. “There seem to be two pages missing.”
    For the sake of form, the uniform was dressed down for his carelessness. He dashed off again and returned with the two pages.
    Avakian checked them, too. “Are we finished, gentlemen? If so we’ll let you all get back to work.”
    A bag of personal effects was turned over.
    One of the cops held a hand to the door. Avakian gave Commissioner Zhou a small bow. Wouldn’t do to act too buddy-buddy in front of all his people—someone might get the wrong idea. He nodded to the rest of them. “Thank you, gentlemen.”
    The car just happened to be waiting outside that particular exit.
    Doctor Rose looked at it and said, “How did that happen?”
    â€œChinese efficiency,” Avakian said.
    Once they were in the car Brandi took a deep breath and said, “Am I out now?”
    â€œWell, you’re out. For now,” Avakian replied from the front seat.
    She took another deep breath, and it came out at just shy of a scream. “I want to know why the FUCK it took so long to get me out of there!”
    Avakian glanced over at Doctor Rose, whose eyelids were at half staff and who gave him a weary little nod, like this was exactly what she’d been expecting.
    Avakian was only amused. The kid was quite a piece of work. “It didn’t take us this long to get