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Always had. He found people interesting, could imagine himself in their circumstances; this was one of the qualities that made him a leader, a good naval officer, and a decent human being.
    General Tang Ming climbed into a small van with public address system speakers mounted on the roof. Sitting in the passenger seat of the van holding a microphone, the general explained the facts as he understood them: The bank had loaned all the money it had and had no more to pay to the people in the crowd. It would not open its doors.
    Since waiting for an event that would not happen was
    ile, Tang ordered the crowd to disperse. The language he
    . used was Mandarin Chinese, the dialect of northern China,
    of Beijing, and of most of the soldiers under his command.
    Unfortunately, it was not the language of the people in the
    crowd, most of whom spoke Cantonese or English.
    As General Tang harangued the crowd in the street outside the Bank of the Orient over a loud, tinny PA system in a language few understood, the crowd became more boisterous. Some people began shouting, others produced stones and bits of concrete from construction sites that they threw toward the bank windows. Several men nearest the main entrance to the bank pounded on the door with their fists, shouting, "Open up and pay us!"
    Others in the crowd, sensing approaching disaster, tried to leave the area by passing through the cordon of soldiers. Almost by reflex, the greatly outnumbered soldiers tried to hold the crowd back. They struck out with billy clubs and rifle butts. Inevitably the conflict panicked onlookers, many of whom gave in to their urge to flee all at the same time. Those in the center of the crowd began pushing those on the fringes toward the soldiers.
    A shot was fired. Then several shots.
    General Tang was still holding forth on the PA system from the passenger seat of the van when the first fully automatic burst was triggered into the crowd by a frightened soldier.
    People screamed. More shots were fired into the crowd, random insanity, then the soldiers were either trampled or ran before the fear-soaked mob trying to escape.
    A sergeant in one of the tanks on the edge of the park tried to aid the escape of his fellow soldiers, who ran past the tank in front of a wall of running civilians who were also desperate to escape. The sergeant opened fire at the civilians with a machine gun mounted on top of the main turret. The bullets cut down several dozen people before the gun jammed.
    In three minutes the sidewalk and street in front of the bank contained only dead, dying, and wounded people, many
    of them trampled. More than a hundred people lay on the pavement and grass and in the flowerbeds, some obviously dead, some bleeding and in shock.
    General Tang climbed out of the public address van and stood staring uncomprehendingly at the human wreckage. He hadn't recognized the muffled pops as shots since the public address system was so loud, and he was initially pleased when the people he could see from the van began to move. Alas, by then the situation was out of control. Surprised by the panic evident among the civilians he could see through the van's windshield, Tang stopped speaking and heard, for the first time, the shooting, the shouting, and the screaming.
    Staring now at the people lying in the otherwise empty street, he became aware that several officers were beside him, shouting questions.
    The thought that ran through the general's head was that the crowd should not have run. It was their fault, really. He certainly hadn't given orders for the soldiers to shoot.
    "Pick them up," he said and gestured toward the dead and wounded. The officers beside him looked puzzled.
    "Pick them up," General Tang repeated. "Take them to the hospital. Clear the street."
    When the first shot was fired, a nervous Jake Grafton raked two old ladies from their perch on the retaining wall and shoved them onto the ground. Then he threw himself on top of them.
    He didn't