It would be a stroke of luck on par with winning those absolutely farcical Powerball jackpots, but I suppose that if you keep anything around long enough, you will eventually find a use for it.

His own nation wasn’t any better. Shi could admit that to himself. It was a common way to repay political support, after all. Tanks, oil leases, various contracts of all sorts . . . those were the bargaining chips used to secure political support and funding. Legalized bribery by whatever name you called it.

Washington had better warning than New York, he could tell. Or, more accurately, better defenses to buy time for evacuations. The streets were empty, but he could see the men in armor on the rooftops, the Close Air Protection flights passing overhead, and sometimes, as his car moved through the street, he could see the motion of heavy armor down other streets from his position.

It all felt rather familiar to Shi. He had grown up in Beijing and lived in the city during the last year of the War when Confederate air raids were raining explosives down on their heads almost unopposed.

The silent car slid to a halt outside the Block embassy, and he quickly got out and hurried inside. He didn’t believe that he was in any danger at the moment, but the intelligence he was holding had unnerved him. There had been a time when having something even a fraction as sensitive would easily have resulted in a lethal sanction from any one of a number of sources, not all of them Confederate or Block in origin.

Once inside, Shi relaxed marginally and made his way to the secure room, ironically passing through more security and invasive scanning techniques than he had in the White House.

He settled behind the desk that sat in the small secure room, wrapped in a Faraday cage and several layers of absorbent materials to prevent vibration induction systems, and turned on the computer that linked directly to a laser uplink on the roof.

Let us hope that the enemy hasn’t begun to eliminate orbital assets as of yet, intentionally at least.

Several satellites and key orbital assets had been taken out of play just as incidental damage resulting from the battle in orbit, and most consumer-level electronics were still down from the massive electromagnetic pulse that had resulted from the destruction of Liberty, but much of the Block (and, he presumed, the Confederation) assets were still intact as of his last check.

The laser link was successful and he found himself linked directly with the Home Committee for Security of the State.

“Shi,” he said, modulating his tone carefully. “Ambassador. Washington.”

The system parsed his phrase, checking his voice for tremors that might indicate coercion and, of course, against the database that held all his biometric data. It took just over two minutes, but he suspected that most of that time involved getting hold of someone of sufficient rank to take his contact.