The room was candle-lit and windowless, the radio was playing a slow, syrupy jazz tune translated to Mandarin, and between your cigar and his pipe, a decent fog had gathered around the ceiling before the meal even began. It was a pleasant evening, and the Agency knew it. That's why they scheduled the rendezvous here, after all. Colonel Lloyd Leighton (if that was his real name) rotated a bird toward you on a lazy susan. It was a small duck, vibrantly red with caramelization and full of rice, bits of meat, and salted egg, whatever that is.
"Notice how the cavity's torn?" Leighton said, pointing at the hole with his chopsticks, "They don't use a knife. A knife disconnects the muscles altogether, where pulling 'im open keeps more muscle systems intact."
"Oh? Why do they do that?" You asked, piling some stuffing into your bowl. It was an interesting factoid, but the old man had that excited glint in his sunglasses that he always got when he was going somewhere with something. You figured you'd ought to humor him.
The Colonel slurped his soup and scraped a bit of shallot out of the silver horseshoe on his face, "The muscles have to be kept together, or the duck becomes inert. the muscles become stiff and unusable."
"Weren't they already unusable? It's a dead duck." You dug into your rice. It was a delicious collection of tastes. A shame you had to enjoy it under such unfortunate circumstances.
"Sometimes you have to work with something in all its faculties. That's where all these muscles come in. If they're all connected, they'll all pull on each other. The bird will be able to stretch, and you'll be able to put more stuffing in it. More food for everybody to enjoy, right? If the muscles are just stiff, inert rocks, you can force in everything you have to offer, but the duck will be unable to cooperate, ya dig? Instead of stretching, it'll just push the muscles around, deform, rip, and suddenly you've gone and doomed the thing, because it'll never cook evenly."
"What's your delicious metaphor for this briefing, Sir?"
"Sometimes a scalpel is better than a hammer. But sometimes, what a country really needs is a good pair of hands guiding them somewhere. If Shanghai is gonna be a state in this century without having trouble for centuries more, they have to be guided, not cut up, not subjugated. Do you think you can do that?"
"Am I supposed to sabotage Han Tsin or not?"
"By all means, but try to make sure there's something constructive to fill in the power vacuum, right?"
"Am I supposed to judge what's a constructive influence or not?"
"Call me a sentimental old man all you want, 827, but I'm pretty sure you and I both know you're a boyscout at heart. An assassinating, womanising boyscout, sure, but hey, we're not all perfect. Deep down, you'll do what's right for America and Democracy in general. That's why you're Agent 827, not pencil-pusher 942."
"You've got a mighty high opinion of me, Sir. I hope I can live up to them."
"I've got a feeling you will, kid. Any questions?"
"Three."
"Well shoot."
"Who am I allowed to piss off, who am I supposed to be friendly with, and is it sacrilegious if I pour this stir fry over the plate of duck rice and eat that?"
"Friends and enemies are your prerogative, kid. I'd just recommend trying not to get any wizards or ETs after us, and don't make any alliances too contingent on the Commies... Because, as much as we're talkin' about statehood and rebuilding, when push comes to shove, we want the next Chinese regime holding American bombs. A little something to counterbalance the Cuba situation, y'know?"
"And mixing up dishes?"
"I guess that'd be pretty touchy. Like asking for condiments, you can't do that here."
"Well shucks. I guess I'll have to make this combination myself sometime."
"Heh, maybe."
You were full now that the conversation had ended, with just enough space left to finish your wine, "Until next time, Colonel. Thank you for the evening."
"You're welcome. Do us proud."
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Shat out this mess trying to haphazardly establish my setting. It's an alternate reality where China was Axis, the war lasted 12 years, and the Cold War gets a little bit lukewarm and salty, since England had nukes first (Or, rather, they reverse-engineered them from the ruins of a nuked London and their half of Germany) and the technology was stolen from them by the Soviets and America. China's invasive empire gets divided amongst the Allies, and Russia makes Mongolia, Japan, and Manchuria into Soviet countries in order to form a buffer against an increasingly capitalist China.
Basically, how do I improve this? Nothing's flowing right, and I need some help with this, because sometimes a story I write is fluid and sometimes it isn't, and I don't know any specific techiques that'll get my ideas out and also not be choppy or run-ons.
Also, there are actual ETs and Wizards in this story. Just wanted to ge that out there so that Aliens and Wizards wouldn't be out of place when they actually showed up. I need them in here. Not just because fantasy universes are fun, but because fantasy is all I have. After all, 'realistic' spy thrillers are only credible when the author is a 60-something ex-marine whose picture in the back of the book always shows him wearing a leather jacket and/or holding a wine glass. Anyway, is there any way I could better work wizards and aliens into the story so that it doesn't sound offhand and forced, when Lloyd could easily just be using the terms sarcastically and/or using codenames?