Razing Beijing

by Sidney Elston

  He was fielding similarly vacuous questions when two mid-rank PLA officers entered the room. They were accompanied by their civilian intelligence officer, whom Deng immediately recognized as the deputy minister of state security. The two uniformed men paused while the younger stripped away a wax seal from a large envelope, removed the contents and handed one of the two sheets to his senior. They strolled purposefully past the Standing Committee and assumed positions before separate consoles.

  “An historic moment, comrades,” Deng observed, his voice sounding a note of fatigue that probably didn’t square with his inspirational words.

  After verifying that the documentation was in order, Deputy Minister Chen Ruihan stepped away from his PLA charges and approached Rong Peng.

  “There were no problems revising the target parameters,” Chen reported with strident confidence and, as Rong could readily see, profound relief.

  119

  THE SKY ABOVE BYRD INTERNATIONAL was scudding overcast but gradually clearing. Across the country, patrolling military jets could be heard in place of commercial air traffic as the aviation ground-stop was slow to be lifted. From inside the Richmond tower, controllers watching the active runway noted the high-speed ground roll of the arriving Citation.

  The airplane slowed to a fast clip before veering onto the ramp. The executive aircraft no sooner rolled to a halt when ground crew slammed chocks into place and began transferring luggage from the jet to the back of a waiting van.

  Waiting for Stuart as he stepped off the plane was the black FBI agent whom he recognized from his interrogation several weeks ago. “You guys should compare notes on interrogation techniques,” quipped Stuart, earning himself a bemused look from McBurney. “Where are—”

  “Miss Chang and Mr. Thackeray drove themselves to CLI,” Agent Hildebrandt said. “I understand you’re both in some kind of all-important hurry.”

  Stuart noted the man’s testiness. “Then I guess they’re all right?” He climbed into the van behind McBurney, as Special Agent Nick Brophy piled in behind them.

  “A little battered,” Hildebrandt acknowledged from behind the wheel of the van. “I tried to coax them to the hospital so that they could be looked at, but Miss Chang ’bout ripped my head off.” He dropped the shift into gear and gunned the accelerator. “Somebody mind telling me what the deal is with CLI this morning?”

  McBurney cast a glance over his shoulder at Stuart. “You know the deal.” He gazed out the front passenger window as they passed various idled aircraft. “This business with Mr. Stuart and his colleagues involves an urgent national security matter. I’m afraid that’s about all I can say.”

  “Yeah, well, your national security matter became my domestic responsibility the minute I charged a CLI employee with conspiracy to commit terrorism.”

  Stuart asked, “What are you talking about?”

  Agent Brophy dropped a thin stack of pages into Stuart’s lap. On top was a mug shot taken earlier that morning. Stuart looked at it and asked, “Steven Reedy, a terrorist?”

  Hildebrandt described the stake-out to apprehend Paul Devinn that culminated in Reedy’s arrest. “And maybe a few counts of espionage.” He caught Stuart’s eye in the rear-view mirror. “Surprised?”

  The more ominous question for Stuart was what Reedy’s arrest might portend. “I don’t know if I am or not. Has he admitted to anything?” Stuart handed the pages to McBurney’s outstretched hand.

  “We think Mr. Reedy’s the mercenary type, and they usually do. The early indications are he’s not going to be much help apprehending Devinn.”

  “Holy Christ—now I know where I saw this guy!” shouted McBurney.

  Hildebrandt said, “Who, Reedy?”

  “No!” He held up a faxed photograph of Paul Devinn. “Someone videotaped him walking past the van where they staged the Holocaust Museum attack. Except he wasn’t walking past it, he must’ve been walking away from it. I remember asking if he might’ve been the driver, but your Agent. Kosmalski essentially advised me to pound sand up my ass.” McBurney frowned. He turned toward Hildebrandt. “I had understood Lance Lee might meet us here at the airport.”

  Hildebrandt suddenly looked as though McBurney had just reached across and slapped him in the face. “Why would you think that?” He shared an uneasy glance with Agent Brophy.

  McBurney described his communications with Special Agent Peter Kosmalski.

  As the minutes passed, Stuart found the dynamic between these people increasingly strange.

  “BECAUSE IT WOULD BE AGAINST THE LAW,” Ralph Perry replied matter-of-factly.

  Milton Thackeray was regretting whatever instinct had led him to seek the CEO’s permission. Then again, triggering the alarm and summoning police would have defeated the purpose. “Does that mean you’ve disabled the access door so that no one can enter?” he asked.

  Perry stared hard at the haggard figure standing in front of his desk. On his short list of reasons for coming in early that morning was drafting his plan to present to the board for riding out the congressional snarl. He was actually hoping to hang onto his employees. He hadn’t expected to be confronted with reasons for firing them. “Thack, I just told you, it’s against the law. What that means is, any one entering the facility without court approval is going to jail. And losing his job.”

  That sounded to Thackeray like the security system had not been disabled, at least not yet.

  “What happened to your face?”

  “Someone broke into my house.” Thackeray turned to leave.

  “You should take the day off,” Perry advised the retreating form.

  Thackeray met up with Emily outside the executive suite. He ignored her inquisitive stare as they crossed the floor of the lobby.

  Emily hesitated at the blaze-orange barricade cones positioned in front of the elevator. “So what did Mr. Perry say?”

  “Only that we could go to jail.” Thackeray pushed the button on the wall and the elevator doors slid open. Emily stepped around the cones and joined him inside.

  Five minutes later, Ralph Perry sat brooding in his office, feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders. His secretary disturbed him to say that he had another visitor.

  He glared at the intercom. “Who is it?”

  “Mr. Carl Smith. He said he’s with Joanne Lewis’s law firm. They apparently sent him down to help us deal with our problem.”

  “Send him in,” Perry replied at once.

  Smith entered a moment later and introduced himself. Perry offered the lawyer the chair in front of his desk.

  “Our first order of business, Mr. Perry, is to resurrect the effort to win an injunction,” Smith suggested without preamble.

  Perry eyed his guest. He decided he might have misjudged the man by his casual attire. Under the circumstances, he found Smith’s no-frills manner encouraging. He leaned back in his chair. “I’m listening.”

  “Of course, our case should receive special consideration given the unfortunate circumstances surrounding Ms. Lewis. Especially if we provide evidence of your security compliance.”

  “Then you don’t expect there to be a problem rescheduling our hearing?”

  “No, but in the interest of my being conversant on the subject, perhaps you should bring me downstairs and familiarize me with the security.” Smith stood up from his chair. “I don’t suppose I can just walk on in.” He smiled.

  Perry frowned.

  “The offices downstairs are empty, aren’t they?”

  “Listen here, Smith. If you still think you need to, I can arrange for that later. Right now, I’ve got a pile of...” He watched the man reach behind the small of his back. Perry’s eyes went wide at the sight of the pistol with a silencer attached to its barrel.

  “We’re both busy men, Mr. Perry. I won’t waste your time with a lot of questions. Just tell me how to gain access to this facility of yours.”

  “You can’t gain access,” Perry said, voice taut. He wondered if there was som
e way for him to warn Linda. He glanced at the intercom...

  “Forget the intercom. Answer the question.”

  “The security is biometric. You would need to be logged into the system.”

  Smith shrugged. “Then you take me inside.”

  Perry didn’t move.

  The moment passed with what appeared to be Smith’s resignation. He rounded the desk with disquieting calm, flattened his palm over Perry’s mouth and fired a round into the executive’s left knee. Perry screamed into the lawyer’s hand.

  “Bad decision. Now your only option is to tell me how to disarm the security system myself.” Smith held his hand fast against the sobbing moans and pressed the silencer to the CEO’s eyebrow. “I don’t suppose a power failure would disable it. What happens to security during an emergency, like a bomb scare? Or what if, God forbid, a fire or ambulance crew needs to get inside?”

  OUTSIDE THE ELEVATOR on Sublevel 2, Thackeray stooped while gripping the handprint scanner as a second laser simultaneously scanned his retina. There followed the familiar hiss of air as three-inch diameter bolts retracted into the heavy steel doorjamb. Waiting for an alarm but hearing none, Thackeray pushed the door open and entered the facility. Emily was similarly admitted. They slow-jogged beneath contingency lighting through the vacant office catacombs and corridors. The cypher keypad lock with its six-digit code for entering the supercomputer facility proved equally cooperative. That the massive array of servers inside were running was a surprise to neither of the engineers. Wordlessly, catching their breaths, they switched on their monitors and activated their user accounts. Short of an emergency or a malfunction, the IBM / Sun was never shut down.

  What Thackeray had not expected was the level of cpu activity indicated by the processor displays. “Perry must still be selling timeshare. That explains why the access codes haven’t changed. They need to have the place accessible to systems personnel.”

  Emily wasn’t paying attention to Thackeray. With several hundred employees not endeavoring to load up the system that morning, the servers were faster than usual. She began scanning the long list in her e-mail account that had accumulated over the past week.

  Thackeray’s priority was to pull up the files they had been in the process of testing at the moment Devinn cut the broadband service to his house. This done, he next began hunting for the output data of code testing already—partially—completed. He also pulled up the orbital mechanics relationships arranged in spreadsheet files, eager to pin down the minutes remaining to complete their tasks, certain the news wouldn’t be good...

  Emily already was reaching her own dire conclusion. She looked for something, anything suggesting Chinese origin among her downloading e-mail. With each line that appeared on the screen, her dread only deepened. “I’m not finding anything here.”

  Thackeray stopped typing and looked at her.

  “How much time do we have?” she asked.

  “Exactly one hour and forty-five minutes. Unless we don’t have the encryption, in which case it won’t really matter.”

  120

  DENG ACCEPTED THE TELEPHONE handset from the communications officer and pressed it to his ear. “Yes?”

  “It’s Peifu.”

  Deng thought his son sounded short of breath; a commotion like shouting in the background made it difficult to tell. He gazed across the room. Rong was mired in discussion, his hands behind his back, where an extended arm and a flick sent cigarette ashes to the floor.

  “Good to hear from you.” The phone weighed like lead in his hand. “Is everything in order?”

  FOUR KILOMETERS ACROSS TOWN, associate professor Deng Peifu positioned the cursor on his computer screen over the final block of files. “Having a little trouble on this end,” he replied to his father, his eyes pasted to his computer screen as he toggled the execute key. Bit remains of his father’s compact computer disks now occupied several cafeteria trash bins. His problem was that the computer hard drive wiping routine was taking its time. He disabled the software’s erasure verification features, but it didn’t seem to have had much effect. “I am afraid that I got the package off later than you wanted. A couple of goons were following me, so I had to stage a little distraction.”

  Peifu straddled the distance to the window and looked down at the students gathering in the plaza. Police wearing riot helmets were sizing up the unruly crowd from inside their cars—five of them now, strobe lights flashing. The steady chant of ‘Free China! Free China!’ grew even louder when several students unfurled a banner from the rooftop of the opposite building—Peifu simply had to smile. Amidst the rancor he had not grasped his father’s words. “What did you say?”

  “I said, but there were no technical problems?”

  Peifu whirled around at the sound of fists hammering against his door. He looked at his computer monitor, where presently the erasure graphic announced 37% complete. Not enough time, he thought, his panic rising.

  “The package was sent,” said Peifu as he considered the computer unit on the floor beside his desk. He took a step back and, summoning his strength, drove his foot into the side of it. The thin aluminum housing caved in with surprising ease. “What more can I tell you, I am only a music professor. And I’ve a slate to clean now, if you know what I mean!” Next he jumped up and down in his attempt to crush the computer’s internal components. “Hold on, Father,” he said before setting down the phone to free his hands. Still not certain that he had sufficiently damaged the hard drive, he reached down and ripped the unit free of its cables. After checking so as not to hit anyone, he hurled the damaged computer out the window. He watched it break apart on the pavement five stories below.

  Peifu grabbed the telephone. “Sorry. I think we are okay. Wish me luck!” Snapping off his cell phone, he tossed it also out the window to the ground.

  A splintering crash sent the door sailing across the tiny office, and the police rushed in behind it.

  DENG ZHEN HEARD the connection break. Shaken, he returned the telephone to its cradle on the communications officer’s desk.

  Deng took a moment to confirm what he had seen take place while on the phone with his son. The three meter Sony screen summarized the satellite critical status—the weapon was armed, its targeting parameters up-linked. The countdown to the expected attack had passed below the ninety minute mark. The hologram depicted the satellite about over the Caspian Sea, hurtling east toward Turkmenistan and China beyond. Whatever the outcome, it was out of his hands.

  Deng approached Rong in the midst of debate over some military tactic with several of his PLA officers. The powerful vice-chairman broke off from the discussion. “What is it, Commissioner? You look ill.”

  “Actually, everything appears to be proceeding well.” Deng dabbed the sweat from his face. “But I am afraid that I must leave at once. An urgent family matter requires my attention.”

  Rong seemed to consider this as he drew on his cigarette—Deng saw something pass between him and Chen Ruihan. Rong said to Deng, “The most important thing we have in this world is our family—I admit thinking on occasion that you have been neglectful of yours. Before you leave, I must express my displeasure. Many of us on the Committee do not have the luxury of time.” He gestured toward the weapon countdown timer.

  Deng had fully expected that particular complaint. At 11:02 P.M., his notoriously impatient guests were agonizing the indignity of having to wait another hour and twenty-nine minutes to attack time.

  Deng apologized. “It was not my intent to waste anyone’s time. I merely thought the Committee members might find it interesting to observe the entire procedure. If you prefer, I can arrange to have you escorted to more comfortable quarters, and then returned, here, in time to observe the finale.”

  “Never mind all that. Incidentally, a few of us note that a layer of clouds has been reported over the target area. Will this present a problem?”

  “Ah. Well, I am not privy to the military objective.” He explained once ag
ain that, although laser energy tends to be dispersed by atmospheric water vapor, the orbiting computers determine the severity and compensate by adjusting beam characteristics.

  Rong studied him for several moments. “I hope you are able to resolve your personal problems, Commissioner.”

  Deng approached the exit where a white-gloved Unit 8341 security guard held open the door. Pausing, he turned to make a cursory sweep of the room. Through the glass wall of the room where the analysts huddled to work, he happened to glimpse the unexpected presence of a man familiar to him. Deng turned his attention back to the count-down digits; he couldn’t just leave the man here, could he?

  Deng turned toward the guard waiting with the door. “I’ll be only a moment.”

  Dr. Zhao greeted Deng with a weary smile, the peculiar scars on his cheeks still evident. “I was summoned to help with a few last minute targeting changes,” Zhao explained. “So, I get to join you in your grand moment—”

  “You must leave, and leave now,” Deng said. His order drew some curious stares from a few of Zhao’s colleagues. In the time it had taken him to approach the physicist, Deng had prepared what he would say. He softened his tone. “That phone call I took was for you, from the hospital. Apparently, your wife desires you there.” He held Zhao’s gaze.

  “But...at this time of morning? I will return the call. Actually, our satellite has not yet even passed over our heads. I should be able to visit her, and then return in time—”

  Deng gripped the man’s shoulder and squeezed. “Go to your wife. Stop wasting time, hers and yours. I believe you owe her that.”

  Deng’s words struck the intended target. Worried recognition crept into the brilliant physicist’s eyes. “She seemed fine only a few hours ago...” Zhao nodded slowly. “I shall gather my things.”

  Returning alone to the exit, Deng felt regret for having so rattled his friend. By the time Zhao reaches the hospital and learns he was lied to, it would no longer matter.