“I’m In Control Here”

After Reagan Gets Shot / My Visit to China with Alexander Haig

A powerful black sedan sped through the capital chasing two American flags whipping above its lacquered hood. A short motorcade kept up behind in single file. The streets were essentially empty of other automobiles; traffic was bicycles pedaled in dense murmurations of men and women uniformly buttoned up to their chins in ill-fitting green tunics and just-as-baggy blue ones. Many wore caps adorned with a red plastic star up front.

A colorless sky spilled inside the Hongqi limousine through windows that framed the spectacle outside like so many anachronistic newsreels from where I sat on a jump seat facing the secretary of state, the two of us in back alone. He was in shirtsleeves, shuffling loose-leaf documents on his lap and casting glances through half-readers raked down the bridge of his nose at a newspaper unfolded beside him on top of his jacket. He seemed distracted: a sigh, a deep breath, a backhanded brushing away of his tie. I lowered my Leica.

“Remember that story in the Post,” I asked, “a few weeks ago about the ex-special ops guys whose cover got blown before they crossed the Mekong into Laos, that POW rescue thing?”

“Yeah?” he said, without looking up but with an inflection that implied unease about what would…