Identity Thriller: Midnight in Karakorum
By Tom Kagy | 17 Jul, 2026

In the prologue to this geopolitical thriller Jack Tang sets in motion a daring transPacific plot to overturn the existing order as the only way to secure freedom for himself and the woman he loves most deeply.

Tom Kagy (00:00.174)
Hello, this is Tom Kagy with Unconventional Wisdom.

Whether we like it or not, geopolitics is a big part of identity for us Asian Americans. The images Americans have of Asian nations like China, Japan, India, North and South Korea, and Vietnam directly impacts how we're seen by fellow Americans.

For some it even impacts their ability to work, travel, and communicate freely, because Asianness combined with links to technology are seen to pose a national security threat. This is the situation faced by Jack Tang, the protagonist of Midnight in Karkorum. My effort at capturing how Pacific Rim tensions exact a high price from civil.

Some Asian Americans. Writing it was my entertainment back in the days before streaming TV. You might call Karakorum an Asian American geopolitical fantasy, because its protagonist is trying to untie the Gordian knot of tensions that keep us trapped in a false light at best, and at worst deprive us of the normal freedoms enjoyed by other Americans.

Why Karakorum? Some of you might recall that it was the capital of the thirteenth century Mongol Empire, by far history's biggest empire by land area, dwarfing the combined domains of Alexander and Rome. Karakorum was originally just a supply base established in twelve twenty by Genghis Khan. It wasn't until about fifteen years later that

That his third son, Ogadai, turned it into a true capital, ordering city walls, a palace, the famous Tumen Amgalan, or Palace of Myriad Tranquility, and permanent buildings built by artisans drawn from conquered lands across Eurasia. At its height under Ogadai, Guyuk and Munkh.

Tom Kagy (02:22.567)
During around the span of twelve thirty five to twelve sixty, Karakorum became remarkably cosmopolitan, especially for a city built on a mostly barren Mongolian plain and devoid of the resources needed to support its population. To sustain itself, the city needed hundreds of cartloads of deliveries from northern China every day. Karakorum of that day contained mosques,

Buddhist temples, even a Nestorian Christian church with quarters for Chinese craftsmen and Muslim merchants, according to the accounts of a twelve fifty four visit by the Flemish friar William of Rubrik. He was especially impressed by the silver fountain built by a captured Parisian goldsmith. It had four separate spouts dispensing wine, mare's milk, mead,

And rice wine. For a brilliant three or so decades, Karakorum was the dominant capital of the world. It was the scene of great kurultaies, those are gatherings that drew envoys, even the Pope and various European kings bringing tribute from far flung corners of the empire, like Kiev, and from the East Korea.

But the death of Gengis' grandson Mongke in twelve fifty nine set off a succession war between his brothers Kubalai and Ariq Boke. Kubalai, who held northern China, won the war by just starving out Ariq Boke, who held Karakorum and the steppe heartland. After that, Kubalai moved the empire's capital to China, and Karakorum went into swift decline.

I don't want to get too caught up with my fascination with Genghis Khan and his progeny except to explain why I chose Karakorum for the title. It was the vulnerable capital of a vast empire, much in the way Washington DC is the capital of an equally vast geopolitical empire, which finds itself in direct competition with China. Why Midnight?

Tom Kagy (04:50.544)
It connotes lateness of hour and the turning toward a new day. A new day is exactly what Jack Tang needs to secure freedom for himself and for the woman he loves most deeply. From the confinement imposed by the tensions between two powers, both great, but both with vulnerabilities that Tang has taken great pains to learn and exploit.

Geopolitics is engrossing and it's very consequential, but it's not exactly fun reading. So I conceived Midnight in Karakorum as a hopefully thrilling joy ride that cross sections the power powers and personalities that preserve the geopolitical tensions across the Pacific.

So here then is

Midnight in Karakorum

Prologue

Jack Tang swiveled toward the window and saw mirrored the storm in his own mind.  Black clouds were devouring an unholy sunset.  The roiling darkness cracked, roared, cracked again.  A gust tore leaves off a nearby eucalyptus and slapped them like leeches against the plate glass.

Tang closed his eyes and took a ragged breath as he considered for the hundredth time what lay in store for those closest to him.  He shook his head and let the calfskin chair spring upright.  Remorse was a luxury he couldn’t afford.  A vicious game had been forced on him.  He had no choice but to play it on a level they hadn’t expected.  The outcome would reshape the world, but that was merely incidental to securing the safe return of the woman who had given him everything. 

Tang’s eyes came open as though seeing her face.  How would it have aged during five long years?

The price demanded for her return had been an act of treason against the United States.  Tang had paid it only to be met with more demands.  It hadn’t taken him long to begin seeking a global solution. 

Failed statesmanship had separated families and split humanity between glut and privation.  The divisions had been perpetuated by men who coined power from fear and hatred.  Two generations of demagogues had tied Asia into a Gordian knot of petty rivalries and dangerous alliances.  The situation had produced countless victims of which he, Jack Tang, was only one.  Gordian knot.  And hadn’t Gordius himself prophesied that the man who succeeded in untying the knot would rule Asia? 

A half-smile tightened Tang’s mouth.  The ancient Greeks—a myth for every occasion!

Of course there had been Alexander the Great who had simply cut the knot with his sword.  An arrogant act.  Of course arrogant Alex never did rule Asia.

“Tickets will be at the gate, Jack.”

Startled out of his reverie, Jack Tang swiveled around as a tall unsmiling woman laid a thick envelope soundlessly on his glass-topped brass desk.  He had always entrusted sensitive tasks to those like Alice Chen who, as a fellow descendant of the northern Chinese Ching clan, could never escape full lifetime accountability.  The ultimate reward for her years of devotion, he blocked from his mind.  She was one of those Tang had already mourned in his heart. 

“A limo will pick you up at the other end,” she continued.  “Sure you don’t need a ride?” 

“I’m sure,” said Tang, scribbling several lines on a sheet of paper.  He folded it and slid it toward her.  “Goodnight, Alice.”

It was time to move on to the non-delegable tasks.

Tang picked up the phone, which he knew was tapped, and dialed an overseas number.  Whoever answered said nothing.  “The nightingale sings its ageless song,” said Tang in Korean.  For several seconds he listened intently to the quality of the silence, then quietly hung up. 

With a deep sigh Tang picked up the thick envelope, hefted it—hardly adequate for what it was purchasing—slippped it into his black silk jacket and got to his feet.  At 6-2 he was unusually tall, like many men of the Ching clan.  His elegance of form and movement impressed those who expected Asians to be stubby.  His face radiated equal parts intelligence, strength and sensitivity.

Jack Tang strode out to the carpeted hallway.  It was six-thirty, but as he had expected, Cyrus Sung was buried behind stacks of papers and a glowing computer terminal.  Sung jumped up with a simpering smile.  Like Tang, Sung was a tall man.  The most visible difference was Sung’s wire-rim spectacles, the wan smile and the slight stoop of his shoulders.

“Sit, Cyrus,” Tang commanded, slipping into a chair.  “How’s Mary and the kids?”

“Fine, Jack.  She’s looking forward to seeing you at the fundraiser Thursday.”  Sung laughed ingratiatingly.

“She’s seen me before,” said Tang, giving his chief financial officer a quick grin that accused and forgave in a single stroke.  “It’s the First Lady she’s looking forward to seeing, you mean.”  Tang knew he was a little too American in the way he cut up smalltalk.  He also knew that his employees idolized him, saw only his success, generosity and debonair, his occasional appearances on society pages.  They knew nothing of that part of his life which, for the past five years, had dominated his every waking thought. 

“Her too,” Cyrus Sung admitted with a laugh.  “You know women.”

“A great wife like Mary deserves a little champagne and a new dress from time to time, Cyrus.  And those handsome little boys of yours.  Here,” said Tang, taking out two hundred-dollar bills and stuffing them into Sung’s hands.  “Stop by the toy store on your way home and buy them something nice from Uncle Jack.  Don’t forget now, because I’ll ask them the next time I see them.”

“No, no, Jack,” Sung protested though he knew it was useless.  “You already gave them so much for Christmas.”

“Don’t deny a childless uncle this small pleasure.”

“Who’s stopping you from having your own family, Jack?”

“Never found a woman who’ll have me.” 

“Don’t talk foolish, Jack,” said Cyrus.  “There must be a line of them.”

“I don’t see one,” insisted Tang.  He reached into his pocket and taking out his car keys.  “Do me a favor, Cyrus.  I’m going to the airport tonight and don’t want to leave my 850 there overnight.”

“Sure thing.”  Sung jumped up and took some keys out of his black suit trousers.  “It’s just a Chevy Blazer, you know with kids and all...”

“I get the message, Cyrus, you want another raise,” said Tang, grabbing the keys and slapping his chief financial officer on the back as Cyrus raised a wounded protest.

In his office Tang opened a black leather briefcase identical to the one he had given Cyrus Sung for Christmas.  It contained a pair of wire-rimmed glasses identical to Cyrus’s.  Tang slipped them on, grabbed the briefcase and stooped his shoulders before hurrying toward the entrance. 

“‘Night, Mr Sung,” said Jesse, the African American security guard.

Tang gave him a weak smile and a jerky wave as he hurried by. 

As always Cyrus’s black Blazer was parked in the reserved space next to Tang’s white BMW 850i.  Without a glance at his own car Tang pressed the Blazer’s remote key, reached across to drop the briefcase on the passenger seat and stepped into the driver’s seat.  As he pulled out and turned onto the street, he checked the rearview mirror to make sure the blue-gray Corolla parked down the street wasn’t following. 

For a mile Tang traced the route Cyrus would take.  Satisfied that he hadn’t been tailed, he pulled off the wirerims and made several quick turns.  A half hour later he drove into a quiet tree-lined Danville neighborhood and, despite the rain, parked in a dark stretch a half block from the cobbled walkway of a beautiful two-story Mediterranean set behind a Spanish garden meant to be enjoyed only by the gardener.  The house had cost Tang a million dollars cash.

The tall white door was opened by a Chinese woman with beautiful eyes, long and luminous under exquisite eyebrows.  An indefinable air of tragedy permeated every feature of her flawlessly white face, adding to their beauty but robbing them of any trace of the joy normally associated with beauty.  Her face had figured in a thousand dreams, Tang knew.  Maybe it would return to haunt his own nightmares.

“Come in.”  The woman’s words rang with a silence that belied the fleeting upturn of the lips.  The living room was now well and expensively furnished.  Only the best would do for this woman and her family.

“How is Emily?” said Tang.

“She’s doing very well, all A’s,” the woman said.  “She’s the top student in her class.  She’s number one on her tennis team.”  The tragedy in the woman’s eyes didn’t mask the pride.  “And Nancy is doing very well too, all A’s.  She just gave her first recital.  Jason is strong and healthy.  He’s starting nursery school next week.”  The woman came close to smiling as she spoke of the boy who had never seen his father.

“He will be very proud.”  Tang cleared his throat.  ”And you?”

The woman shrugged, bit her lip.  “I’m just trying my best.”

Tang nodded, letting his silence pay tribute to her sacrifice.  “He misses you all very much.  He’s looking forward to seeing all of you.”

“When will that be?” Her eyes wavered between hope and fear. 

“I can’t say yet.”  By the time Tang summoned the will to meet her gaze, she had sensed his evasion and was avoiding his eyes.  He fought the urge to hurry out, away from this tragic woman and her tragic family.

“And how is his mother?” said Tang.  Despite his resolve, he found himself moved.  Who knew better than he the ties between a mother and her son?

The woman seemed at a loss for words.  Before she could speak, Tang heard slippered feet rushing down the spiral staircase.  It was the old woman.  She was dressed in flannel pajamas, her white hair as wild as the look on her wrinkled face. 

“Where is my son?” she screamed in Mandarin.  “What are you doing to my son?”  Her words broke into hysterical, disjointed syllables.  She was halfway down when a tall teenage girl caught her and tried to pull her back up.  “Tell him I must see him before I die!”

“My mother has been ill,” said her daughter-in-law.  “This is not good for her.”  Her eyes were fixed on the carpet.

As he rose Tang laid the thick envelope on the coffee table.

“The United States government appreciates your family’s sacrifice.”

“We don’t want that dirty blood money!” screamed the old woman.  Unable to free herself, she spat.  A few drops wet Tang’s face.  They felt like acid in Tang’s mind.

“Wait.”  The wife grabbed Tang’s sleeve as he bowed and turned to leave.  “Please give him this.”  She handed him a plain manila envelope.

Tang took it without meeting her eyes. 

He was grateful for the rain.  He wiped a hand across his face, impatient to wash off the burning of the old woman’s spit.  Inside the Blazer he took a bracing breath and willed himself to shake off the morbid thoughts.  He was doing everything in his power for that family.  But time was running out. 

This is the darkness that will usher in the dawn, Jack Tang reminded himself as he shifted into gear and accelerated into the rain.