U.S.S. Seawolf am-4

by Patrick Robinson

  High above them, the Skyfari moved slowly by; the CIA agent, photographing the three men on the bench, blended in perfectly with the crowds watching the other lions.

  Admiral Bergstrom said nothing. He just stood and walked away, leaving the plastic shopping bag behind. Then Richard White too stood up and left, carrying the bag. He walked slowly back through the zoo entrance, back toward the Veterans Memorial, but before he reached the huge edifice, he slipped into a black sedan that sped him across the city to Lindbergh Field, home of San Diego’s International Airport.

  Honghai Shan used a different car, a dark green limousine that took him away from the city straight up the freeway, north to Los Angeles International Airport. The next time the two men saw each other, they were in adjoining seats on the United Airlines flight to Hong Kong. The cassette player was on the floor, right next to Rick White’s left leg.

  The flight took off at 10:00 on this Wednesday evening, but because of the 16-hour time difference, they would actually arrive in China at 6:00 P.M. Friday. The journey itself was 16 hours, like flying from New York to Paris and back, and the two American intelligence agents spoke quietly about life in Hong Kong, about the old days of British rule, and about the continuing buildup of the Chinese military.

  They were old friends and had faced danger before, but to each of them there was something lethal about the package they must get into Hong Kong at all costs. Shan was not worried. As the senior Chinese overseas tourist executive he was responsible for bringing millions and millions of American dollars into the People’s Republic every year. He was a privileged traveler, with many friends in the highest reaches of the Communist Party. Most of the customs officers knew precisely who he was, and it was literally years since anyone had asked him even to open a bag, much less search it.

  The chances of someone asking him to open the plastic bag were remote. Requesting him to break open the packaging to the cassette player, and then ordering it to be dismantled, were odds too great to calculate.

  And so it proved. Honghai Shan walked straight through customs at Hong Kong International, receiving a nod and a bow of greeting from the officer in charge. Rick White’s suitcase was routinely opened but not searched. And both men were home by 8:00 A.M.

  At 9:30, Shan left his office on the 10th floor of Swire House along Chater Road, and walked briskly through the Central District to the offices of the California Bank. There he met Richard White in the lobby, and handed over the package they had transported halfway across the world.

  The two men smiled and shook hands, and the American hurried back to his office on the sixteenth floor, where he instructed his secretary Suzie Renrui, a Chinese-speaking divorcée from San Francisco, to render him unavailable to anyone.

  He locked the door and unpacked the cassette player. Then he took a small screwdriver and began to undo the slim holding bolts that locked the outer casing together. Inside there were no electronic working parts, just two sealed black plastic bags, ingeniously fitted into place, one of them containing a heavy six-inch-long box, about four inches wide and an inch deep. The other felt as if it held a five-inch-square box plus a round camera lens of some kind, plus wiring, plus screws or bolts that rattled against each other.

  Rick White did not know what was in the bags, and he never would. Meanwhile he took from a shopping bag a fine-looking melon, which he had cut in half and then spent a half hour hollowing out before he came to work. He had dried it carefully, and now he placed the two plastic bags carefully inside. When he put the upper half of the melon on top of the lower half, it fitted perfectly and the contents were completely hidden.

  He had another look inside the hollow cassette and found what he needed, a small length of inch-wide plastic adhesive tape, black and yellow in color. He spread it out, ripped the protective covering off the sticky part and wound it carefully around the circumference of the melon, binding the two halves together. The words around the melon now read SOUTH CHINA FRUIT.

  He repacked the parts of the cassette player into its original box, and with the melon in a separate plastic bag, he slipped out of the office, told Suzie he would be gone for less than 30 minutes, and headed for the elevators. On the way, he dumped the box down the incinerator.

  Once outside he moved fast, walking quickly between the skyscrapers, and then heading into more intimate streets, toward the market stalls down between the teeming shoppers in Li Yuen and Wing Sing streets. It took him 10 minutes to find the stall he wanted, Jian Shuai Fruit and Vegetables, which comprised three long barrows, containing every possible kind of produce. At one end was a pile of melons, several of them bound with the black and yellow plastic tape of the South China Fruit Corporation.

  Mr. Jian himself came toward him. “Good morning, Mr. White. Hold open bag, please,” he said, picking up two of the melons and placing them carefully inside. Even Rick hardly noticed him remove the other one and deposit it back next to the till, so swiftly did the fruit seller operate. Then he came forward with a handful of Hong Kong dollars. “Your change, Mr. White, thank you…thank you very much…next, please…you like some snow peas, madame?…ah…good choice.”

  Rick White vanished into the crowd, heading back through the streets into the skyscrapers. Back on the sixteenth floor he made Suzie a gift of the two new melons and settled down to work, his task on behalf of his government now complete.

  Back in the narrow throughway off Li Yuen Street, Jian Shuai temporarily handed over the fruit-selling operation to his wife and daughters. Then he packed a box full of mixed produce, cherries, snow peas, peppers, rice, lichees, spinach, broccoli and one melon. Still wearing his white apron, he stopped a passing taxi at the end of the street and had the driver take him down to Aberdeen Harbor, a couple of miles away on the southwestern coast.

  The sheer impossibility of finding anyone here in the crowded madness of this waterborne community, where 80,000 people make their homes on floating sampans, did not daunt Shuai. And he hurried through the insane commerce of the place, past the floating restaurants, looking out at the gentle chaos of the East Lamma Channel, dodging trucks and delivery boys, searching for the big fruit and vegetable junk owned by his friends Quinlei Zhao and Kexiong Gao.

  These two were familiar traders on these waters, buying fruit from all of the remote farmers on the fertile islands in the area. Their boat was a big heavy-sailed 40-footer, and with a decent quartering wind they could slice along at 10 knots. They were expert seamen, and careful buyers of the best produce. They had also worked for the CIA for years, yet still moved busily through the trading channels, no suspicion of any kind attached to either one of them. Zhao and Gao, both fortyish, were the consummate field operators in an area swarming with Chinese spies.

  And now they waited, scanning the dockside for the sight of Shuai, carrying his box along the waterfront, watching for the familiar figure of the CIA’s most successful messenger. Gao saw him first, and stood up, yelling, “Over here, you idiot…you’re late and we’re in a hurry…SHUAI! OVER HERE!”

  In the frantic race for sales that kept Aberdeen Harbor in a daylong turmoil, this was normal banter between traders. Perfectly normal. Just the way Zhao and Gao liked it.

  Shuai came on over, carrying his box, and handed it over, shouting, “All right! All right! Who you think you’re yelling at, hah! You don’t order till yesterday — you think you own my company? Here, take it…and mind you pay on time, for a change.”

  And with that he disappeared back into the throng, Gao yelling behind him, “You don’t get a move on, we don’t order no more…you hear me?”

  He took the box of produce and placed it in the middle of another pile. Then he began to cast the lines and pull up the big gaff-rigged sail. Within moments they had caught the nice southwest monsoon breeze, which drove them out into the Pearl River Delta, where they headed the junk northwest, up around Lan Tau Island, and then on upstream toward Canton.

  These were treacherous waters for all but Chinese national
s. Heavily patrolled by the coast guard, the seaways through the Delta are not open to foreign shipping. The Chinese authorities have ruled that the Lema Channel, which is, effectively, the southern approach to the Pearl River, is closed to all non-Chinese vessels. This widespread paranoia by successive governments reached back to the Opium Wars with Great Britain 150 years previous.

  If you want to sail upriver to Canton you have to be Chinese, in a Chinese boat, with a special permit to navigate the waters. And even then you may well be stopped and questioned. Only the trading regulars, local men, well known to patrolling customs and river police, were never harassed. Which was why Zhao and Gao rode the southwesterly without a care in the world, for hour after hour, selecting a course up the center, staying clear of the shoals along the left bank where two major rivers split into a thousand tributaries and then meander across green wetlands, only about a foot above sea level for almost 50 miles.

  As the sun set, the breeze dropped slightly. The vegetable junk had been running since midday, averaging nine knots, which now put them in the vicinity of the city. When the river split 12 miles downstream from the center, Gao steered for the north fork, keeping to the right in a line of other small boats heading into the wharves of Canton.

  And for the next mile they were just another trading junk, bringing the freshest produce from the lower Delta up to the hotel and wholesale agents who awaited them each evening. But now Zhao for the first time switched off his navigation lights and left the convoy, sliding into the shadows, not yet lit by the rising moon. The little sonar sounder soon showed them in less than five feet of water, and Zhao brought the junk about, heading back along the shore, below the industrial suburb of Huangpu.

  It was lonely along here, out of the main north fork throughway, but it required a lifetime of knowledge to avoid running aground, even in a skiff that drew no more than two feet fully loaded. The warm, light breeze hissed through the miles of bullrushes off their port beam, and Gao watched the sounder, edging along through the dark shallow water. Every time it showed only four feet below the keel, he told Zhao to “pull,” nosing the boat to starboard into a fractionally deeper channel.

  And now they could see a familiar clump of willow trees hanging almost above them, and Zhao pulled in the sail, cutting the speed to only two knots, and they drifted quietly in toward the land. Up ahead was another boat, and Gao picked up three quick flashes of light. “That’s him,” he hissed. “We’re right on target.”

  And now they could hear the splash of oars as the little rowboat made its way toward them. “Dong! You there?”

  “Okay, Zhao…I’m coming alongside.”

  The two boats bumped together. They shook hands, and the box of fruit with the single melon was handed over. “Hurry now, Zhao…you go quick…go now…there’s patrols everywhere.”

  “Good-bye, little brother…take care now.”

  Zhao laid the big junk onto a southwest course, and the light breeze gusted now over his port bow. The sail was already tight and he kept it there, heading the boat up, steering out into the channel, switching the navigation lights on again.

  And far away, in distant San Diego, three separate checks, each one for $10,000, were being deposited in three separate bank accounts, owned by Zhao, Gao, and young Dong, three Chinese nationals preparing for a new life in the USA, a country none of them had ever even visited.

  Quinlei Dong rowed to the shore, leaving the old boat surrounded by reeds, moored to an iron bar he had hammered into the muddy shallows long ago. From here to the road was almost a mile, but the grasses were tall and Dong wore high gumboots as he squelched his way forward, carrying the box, splashing his way back to his car.

  It took him 25 minutes in the pitch dark, and then he stood in a clear stream that ran under the road, cleaning off his boots. He put them in the trunk with the box of fruit, reversed the car out of the woods and hit the main road into Canton. It was almost 10:00 P.M. and he looked forward to a late dinner at his small home in the market area, right off the Liuersan Road, by the Shamian Island bridge.

  He and his wife, Lin, had lived there for 15 years, since they left college in Beijing. Both of them had been in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and they had seen several friends and one cousin shot down and killed by the military. As such they had elected to get out of the capital and move to the quieter, warmer city of Canton. And there they had nursed their grievances against the ruling Communist party, vowing one day to leave China for the United States, as so many of their friends had done over the years.

  Young Quinlei had been recruited by the CIA before he left the university, during the six months following the massacre in the square. And in the ensuing 17 years he had built up a nest egg of almost $450,000 in his bank in San Diego, keeping Langley informed of the arrivals and departures of ships, personnel, and a myriad of other naval detail.

  Dong’s degree in electronics saw him rise rapidly in the Navy dockyard, not working on the ships, but in the many operations rooms on the shore. He had made himself a computer systems expert, and had personally installed many of the major lighting grids throughout the yard. At 37, he was the deputy chief electrical engineer, a civilian position, but always working closely with the Navy executive.

  Each day he reported for work at 8:00 A.M. finishing at 5:00 P.M. He was subject to random searches by the guards on the way out, but not on the way in. And now he was preparing for his biggest task yet on behalf of his American masters. By Monday morning he and Lin would be on their way. They had just two more nights left in the little house near the Shamian Island bridge.

  Many of their possessions were already packed. Their nine-year-old son Li was asleep, and Lin had gone to much trouble preparing what might be their last meal together in China — a superb Shao Xing chicken, cooked whole in Hua Diao wine, accompanied by flat rice noodles.

  They dined together at the end of the small kitchen, drinking only water and saying little, as if afraid even the walls might have ears for their conversation. For tomorrow morning Dong would begin arguably the most dangerous mission ever attempted by a local CIA field operative in this part of the world.

  They cleaned up after dinner together, and were in bed before midnight. Neither of them slept much, and by the time dawn broke over the city, Dong was already up, unzipping the melon and removing the electronic parts it hid so efficiently. He ripped open the black plastic bags and studied the small black box, the power pack that would last for around six hours. He checked the terminals, checked the wiring, checked the length of wire he had been given. Then he checked the main fitting, walking to the window, staring through the lens, focusing the cross-hairs, fitting the lens to the square box, then checking the connection between the power pack and the square box, nodding with satisfaction when he flicked the switch and watched the green light flicker, then glow firmly in the morning light. He was getting a half-million dollars for this. There had to be, he knew, no mistakes.

  He carefully placed the black electronic parts in the lower section of his toolbox, hiding them among rolls of wiring and tape, keeping them separate, to look like random pieces of an electrician’s box of tricks. At 7:30 on this Saturday morning, his telephone rang and when he answered, a voice said simply, “Yes.” He knew who it was, the same man he had worked with for many years, an American broadcast executive downriver in Hong Kong.

  Rarely has the word “yes” signaled so much. It meant that the American satellite operators in Fort Meade, Maryland, had picked up the red infrared “paint” on the pictures from space, showing that Seawolf’s nuclear reactor was running again as she lay alongside in the Canton base.

  It meant that the electronic laser beam that would illuminate the precise area of the deck above the reactor should now be fixed in place.

  It meant that Arnold Morgan was about to do what he had said he would do. He was going to hit Seawolf, and put Canton’s naval dockyard out of action with it.

  Quinlei Dong said good-bye to Lin, who was trembling w
ith fear but refusing to cry.

  “Please, please be careful,” was all she could manage.

  He placed his toolbox in the trunk and started his little car. He drove briskly east, along the Liuersan Road, and crossed the People’s Bridge. From here it was a straight 15-minute run down to the dockyard, and when he arrived the routine was simple.

  “Hello, Mr. Quinlei,” said the guard at the gate. “You work too hard — it’s Saturday…should be home with the family.”

  “No, Sun…not too hard…too slow…should have been finished last night!”

  The guard laughed and waved him through, shouting, “You hurry up, now…nice day to take out the family.”

  Dong drove slowly through the grim dockyard buildings, noticing as he had done constantly these past few days that the place was literally crawling with guards, all along the jetties, and then in a mighty regimented group near the American submarine. Quinlei the electrician, his privileged status displayed in a red and white sticker on his windshield, stayed away from the main dockside areas, driving along the quiet streets between the buildings a block from the water, a block from the submarine.

  He had deliberately left incomplete a rewiring job he had been working on all week, up in the ceiling above an ops room. And now he made his way up the stairs once more, nodding to the guards at the doorway, and mentioning that he was going up to finish the new terminal for the main computer. The guards had seen him coming and going for two weeks and scarcely responded, just smiling and saying, “Okay, Mr. Sparks.”

  At midday, he walked downstairs again, carrying his toolbox and his small lunch bag. He turned to the senior guard and said, “I’m going to have lunch down by the water, but I’ll be back. I’ve run into a problem, so don’t lock up…this thing has to be running for Monday morning. Right now I’ll be lucky to have it running by New Year!”