“Thank you, sir,” Director Burns quickly replied, unsure exactly what it was they had just been given permission to do.
7
TWO DAYS LATER, Lester Burns closed McBurney’s top-secret folder before sliding it back across his desk to its author. “I spoke to Herman later that evening. He accused us of sham intelligence work. He’s convinced the lynchpin of your espionage scenario is still only a garden-variety terrorist.”
“Well...he’s not entirely wrong.”
“He all but threatened to advise the President to revoke approval of your finding.”
McBurney noted the Director’s use of the word ‘your.’ “With Ahmadi dead, Herman’s safely positioned himself in case things go south.”
Director Burns smiled. “You won’t let that happen, of course. And you have to stop goading poor Herman. He’s obviously in over his head.”
“Poor Herman? Who can’t think of a time poor Herman played loose with the facts?”
Burns lurched for a box of tissue and sneezed. “Aw, damn, excuse me. Didn’t Mohammad Ahmadi have ties to that sheik fellow, the one who helped put the Shiites in power in Lebanon?”
“Sheikh Ibrahim al-Amin led Hezbollah resistance in the early eighties. Ahmadi was sent there to be his advisor.”
“So, it is plausible Herman’s right in that Ahmadi had a handle on two Holocaust terrorists.”
“I never said he was wrong. In fact, it would be dishonest not to acknowledge at least some discrepancy in all this.”
“In what way?”
“I was more than half serious with that swipe I took at Herman for buying into Ahmadi’s conflicting mindsets of terrorism and espionage. Even I could more readily see something like drug trafficking and terrorism, where our profilers tell me there’s more synergy. But…” He hiked up his shoulders. “I’m more interested in the flip side of Herman’s coin, Ahmadi’s discussion with Senator Milner on missile defense. The FBI’s sitting on information about their conversation, I’m sure of it, but they deny it exists. How’s that for Homeland Security teamwork?”
“Let me guess.” A spark of recognition glistened in Burns’s eyes. “The FBI told you their superiors won’t allow you access because of its sensitivity to domestic issues—meaning politics.”
“I suppose there’s a perverse sort of logic in trying to protect a U.S. senator. In any case, the finding will let us pick up where the Ahmadi file ends.”
“When do you leave?”
“I fly to Bangkok on Monday.”
“The President just signed the finding. That gives us two months before filling in Congress—he’s bound to be edgy about it.”
“Our plan calls for extracting Zhao and his wife next Friday. I feel good about the advance work being done.”
“Good. Make sure it’s a story with a happy ending.”
They stood and Burns extended his massive hand over the coffee table. “Sam, now hear me on this: No stunts. No heroics. No diplomatic crises. No splashy headlines.”
“Stunts, me? No, sir.”
Burns released his grip. “Call me if you get into a jam—oh, almost forgot to tell you. I did push Herman regarding our need to coordinate with the FBI on their follow-up to this Ahmadi/Prouty investigation. I said that we can’t allow the agency to get blindsided again on espionage matters.”
“What did he say?”
“He actually agreed. We then both agreed that a good place to start is for you to participate in the President’s Joint-Counter Terror Task Force.”
“What!”
“You heard me.”
“But they’re not interested in espionage. Shit, the president funds the friggin’ NCTC. What’s he think they do? Terrorism is about the only damn thing on the FBI’s radar.”
“They invited you in on Ahmadi, didn’t they? Just think of it as an opportunity for you to network, establish better ties.”
“Where do I fit that into my schedule?”
Director Burns glared at him. “Herman assured me that the president was fully confident in the FBI’s handle on domestic espionage matters. I’m not aware of any reason to disagree. Neither are you.”
8
Friday, April 3
Hong Kong, China
THE SQUALL LINE of thunderstorms barreled through Kowloon trailing a silence as heavy as the humid spring air.
Hunched over the desk inside his hotel room, McBurney snapped off his satellite phone. Satisfied that the dolts in Langley had followed through with their payment to Sun Stone, the unsavory snakeheads whom the CIA had contracted for the physicist’s extraction, he next dialed up the e-mail account of a small Shanghai meat-packing outfit. That the entity didn’t exist was probably a stroke of overkill. Any messages intercepted by unauthorized parties were thoroughly encrypted, and indecipherable even in the unlikely event the key had somehow been compromised.
McBurney pressed the cursor and the liquid crystal display scrolled down through the customary routing jargon and re-read the text of the message:
<
Export thru border unchanged, delays, paperwork, all unpredictable. Advise your shipment will arrive well fed any way. Poachers a risk, they outnumber but aimless now. Will post advisory when clear for final meat-on-hoof inspection\
The bastardized message confirmed that the ruse of sending the couple north was in fact misleading Chinese security forces. By no means had this objective been considered probable. The original route and preparations for exfiltrating the Chinese physicist and his wife—so far as Sun Stone understood, pro-democracy activists seeking political asylum in the West and one of them seriously ill—was to move the defector and his wife by train from their home in Xichang to Kunming. From Kunming, the border to Laos was still a yawning 400 kilometers—but south, the most direct route. Amid great gnashing of teeth, this plan McBurney rejected on advice of his Beijing station chief, who had passed along a warning from the only reliable Beijing asset under Agency control. According to their source, codenamed SIREN, China’s security apparatus response to the physicist’s unapproved absence would be instantaneous. Despite the very best travel document forgeries, pursuing the most direct route to the border would be suicidal. SIREN believed that the Ministry of Public Security would not expect the couple to head north, deeper into the mainland. The agent’s warning triggered much head-scratching within Langley’s operations cubicles. North is where McBurney decided to send them.
McBurney glanced at his watch; China time 11:27 a.m. Roughly a day and a half had transpired since the defector and his wife set out on their journey. In a few hours they should be boarding their flight from Wuhan to Hong Kong. What concerned him even more than Sun Stone’s operation of misfits was that the e-mail message had not been updated since the Agency’s Beijing agent posted it some twelve hours ago.
What McBurney needed was the final green light to proceed with the extraction through Chek Lap Kok, and his last communication had allowed no possibility for SIREN to misinterpret that need. Should SIREN so advise, the alternate route via the harbor would be executed. This contingency McBurney didn’t much care for. Last fall the Chinese authorities apprehended a political dissident whom the Brits were trying smuggle out; Victoria Harbor and its environs had since been descended upon by mainland security. The airport was risky enough, but Chek Lap Kok did offer an element of surprise. Here again, input from SIREN had convinced him that the airport was an unlikely extraction point given the defector’s origin so far afield of Hong Kong.
Unfortunately, McBurney was twenty-five minutes late with his signal to the extraction team. He could either call off the extraction altogether, at this point logistically impractical, or interpret the lack of word from SIREN as a green light. He reluctantly made his decision, and keyed in the coded message to scrub the alternate plan.
McBurney heard the sound of another approaching car. He watched a passenger van roll to a stop in front of the hotel lobby, where it dis
charged a crew of airline pilots and flight attendants. One of the men, tall and graying, stepped out from beneath the portico and briefly studied the clouds overhead before disappearing behind the others into the lobby.
McBurney tucked the satellite phone inside his coat. He casually arranged his belongings should maid service venture in, this to play to the camera lens peering from somewhere, long a fact of life for any foreigner visiting China. McBurney slipped the card key to the room into his pocket. Time for lunch and a little shopping.
BY THE TIME he returned to the hotel it was almost two o’clock in the afternoon. He went to the bar carrying his small bag of gifts and ordered tonic water with a wedge of lime from the bartender, whom he figured was probably assigned his post by the People’s Liberation Army. When the clock behind the bar read 2:27, McBurney finished his tonic, left his tab on the bar and headed for the elevators.
A short time later, having dozed off on the sofa in his room, McBurney was surprised when the telephone rang.
“Ello, Kenneth?” said the voice on the other end.
“Yes?”
“The airline called and asked us to leave as early as possible for the airport.”
McBurney saw from his watch that this was some sixty minutes earlier than planned. “Why, is it the weather?”
“Still calling for clearing skies,” he heard the man say. “Apparently it is going to take extra time to check ourselves in. Security is being tightened for some reason or other.”
9
A DEEP RUMBLE announced another arriving flight as McBurney peered through binoculars across the span of darkness to the terminal’s bright interior. People’s Liberation Army soldiers and uniformed police were inspecting tickets of all the departing passengers. No Chinese officials had so far boarded their aircraft, a Singapore-bound Swissair 747-400, whose flight crew would provide McBurney with limited assistance as a favor granted to Lester Burns and the CIA. The tarmac glistened beneath a diesel-powered cart pulling away from the plane with an empty luggage train. A passenger tram sitting idle beneath the plane’s wingtip appeared to be empty.
Twenty minutes earlier, one of Sun Stone’s men posted inside the terminal had contacted McBurney first to confirm arrival of the targets—the husband pushing the wife in a wheelchair—and second to say they were about to proceed with their planned distraction. He had not received any subsequent updates.
“Every out-going flight is being delayed,” Hans Schuetter informed his copilot. Seated behind the controls, the Swiss pilot looked beyond his cockpit and whistled at the sight of aircraft, luggage carts, fuel trucks and passenger trams clogging the gates and taxiways surrounding the terminal building, many abandoned wherever space would allow. “If they keep this up they will have to re-open Kowloon.”
McBurney lowered the glasses. “Can they do that?”
“No, but soon there will be nowhere to park incoming flights. Just look at it. How could anyone expect to control such a mess?” Schuetter held one hand to his headphones and muttered something as he altered the frequency selection on one of the aircraft’s receivers.
McBurney felt the vibrating alarm inside his coat. He retrieved his satellite phone and pressed it to his ear. “Speak to me.”
“We lost them.”
The heavily accented words, nearly a whisper, burst into his brain. “What do you mean? Where?”
There was a pause, the sound of a toilet flushing. “Near the gate. Wheelchair. We lost them.” The connection went dead with a decisive snap.
McBurney held the phone to his ear, gazing at the terminal and looking for wheelchairs. He was vaguely aware of Schuetter moving his hands about the cockpit, speaking into his microphone in efficient, professional phrases.
McBurney turned off the phone and placed it inside his coat. “Save me a seat.”
Schuetter cranked his head around. “Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“You cannot. We are number eight for departure.”
“I’ll be back in a few minutes, before you finish your checklist.”
“We do not have any minutes!”
“Just stall the fuckers. Make something up. I need more time.”
“Holy Christ, look at this,” the copilot cut in.
All three men watched a Cathay Pacific 767 on final approach and about to touch down. Flying abreast of it were two Sukhoi fighters. The China Air Force jets continued low over the runway after the 767 landed. They then veered off in bank turns and disappeared into the gloom.
Schuetter said, “I wonder how many people understand what it was they just witnessed.”
With PLA flooding the terminal, McBurney knew it meant that Beijing had strong-armed the Hong Kong Authority into a complete abdication of local control. “You will not move this aircraft without my saying so,” he ordered the men. “Is that understood?”
“Look there.” Schuetter pointed outside toward the departure gate. “Are they by any chance our special guests?”
McBurney looked through the windscreen. A broad-shouldered man in a hospitality jacket was swiftly pushing a woman in a wheelchair through standing pools of water, thin streams of water flinging up from the wheels. Beside them an older man struggled to keep up. They were heading toward the plane. A rumble accompanied a gray puff of smoke as the co-pilot started an engine.
Schuetter said to McBurney, “Somebody will be watching them, no?”
McBurney strained his eyes. Two PLA soldiers stood inside the boarding gate peering out through the darkness. “Not if they can’t be blamed for an obvious error. Most of all they abhor a bad scene.” Zhao and his wife did not appear to have been apprehended, after all. That had to be one of Sun Stone’s people walking with them...fifty meters to go.
“Okay! Wait here while I—” McBurney choked off his words when suddenly the interior of the tram idled beside the Swissair jet was illuminated. Two passengers stepped down to the tarmac—McBurney felt a stab in the pit of his stomach. Instead of boarding the flight, the figures headed for the trio with the wheelchair—the man pushing the wheelchair redirected it toward them.
“Is there a problem?” asked Schuetter.
They were close enough now for McBurney to recognize the physicist; in the wheelchair, his wife’s head lolled and she appeared to be unconscious. One of the men from the tram unbuttoned his suit coat, perhaps to reveal to Zhao a pistol holstered under his armpit. The words presently being exchanged between the physicist and the men were not difficult to imagine; sick...quietly...immediately...hospital...die.
Zhao rather abruptly elbowed the airport hospitality escort aside and began wheeling his wife toward the passenger tram. He paused only once to look back at the jumbo jet’s boarding stairs—at the freedom he was being denied. Above the din the tram’s engine roared to life for the return to the terminal.
McBurney swore loudly and slammed his fist against the side of the cockpit.
10
Monday, April 20, Four Weeks After the Crash
Cleveland, Ohio
STUART UNDERSTOOD IT was posible to be both drawn and repulsed by the very same image. The enlarged aerial photograph of Mojave Municipal Airport was taken the day after the crash, the twisted and charred aircraft debris vaguely reminiscent of a World War II bombing raid. Whenever he looked at the chart, Stuart still found it difficult to prevent other images from forcing their way into his thoughts until, finally, the tightening in his chest forced him to look away. At the same time, he was by necessity drawn to it. Its role in re-creating the sequence of events would eventually allow them to isolate the single flaw that had precipitated so much destruction.
Yet another unproductive meeting had come to a close. Those leaving the conference room with their various tablet devices in hand included the usual twenty or so of Stuart’s staff, engineers who for the most part went about investigating the crash with a sort of detached objectivity. These folks, by their very nature, would normally be drawn to so daunting a forensic puzzl
e—though not one involving body parts belonging to people whose lives they had previously shared. Stuart wondered how each was coping with the explicit details, especially in the evening while home with their families.
He turned his attention back to the chart. Aircraft and engine fragments had been recovered and catalogued, thousands of items, each a potential key to solving the riddle. Engineers kept track of that information by pinning onto the chart a mosaic of small labels and multi-colored thread. Red-colored thread fanning out both sides of the runway depicted the sequence of release and trajectories of projectiles upon ripping free of Thanatech’s disintegrating engine. Surrounding the charred hulk of what was once a satellite video transmission van were labels identifying many of the victims: Mulally, Karen, office director California state legislature, age 27; Hickok, Thomas, cameraman, WMJV-TV, age 33; Greene, Candace, journalist, WMJV-TV, age 25; Kress, Charles, Thanatech executive officer, age 53; fourteen others labeled as deceased or with various injuries. A mile and three-quarters further down the runway from the van was where the forward fuselage had come to a fiery halt: Reilly, Victor, age 51, and Harris, Christopher, age 54, Thanatech test pilots. Not far from where the tail section and both of the engines had tumbled to a stop were found the remains of Sandra Cole, Thanatech engineer, dead at the age of 29.
Stuart reached to pick up the phone ringing from the center of the conference table. “He’ll see you now, Mr. Stuart,” he heard the caller say.
STUART OBSERVED with profound pity Jim Cole’s effort to project what simply had to be an unsustainable air of composure. Until arriving this afternoon to his office, he had seen the CEO on only three occasions since the accident, one of them Sandy Cole’s funeral. On none of these occasions had Stuart seen Cole so much as raise his eyes to look at him.
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