Razing Beijing: A Thriller

by Elston III, Sidney

  “I’m curious about something.” Abrams finished reattaching a tiny transistor torn away during the crash. He let out a deep breath and flipped away the magnifying goggles strapped around his forehead. “Is Stuart stupid or just crazy? Exactly what is it he’s hoping we find?”

  Emily turned from her monitor toward Abrams. She understood why he might be on the defensive; the implication that one of her staff might be responsible for the crash was hard to gloss over. Her own personal thoughts regarding Stuart ran the extremes; she simply did not know what to think any more. She was aware of the rumors, that he had disregarded and ultimately abandoned his family, yet she had seen the warmth in Stuart’s eyes when unashamedly dropping pressing business to receive a call from his daughter. Emily found it difficult to ignore how she felt whenever she saw him—the flare of his shoulders and back against the slim of his waist, the chiseled line of his jaw. There was that intense way he looked at her, as if he knew what she was thinking. For one so strong and decisive, had his flip-flop first to cancel and then proceed with the flight been a responsible decision—or an act of spineless capitulation? “We’ll know what he’s looking for when we find it.”

  “Maybe.” Abrams lowered the goggles back into place. He picked up the soldering iron and held the tip to the light so he could study it. “Maybe not. Especially if what I heard about Stuart is true.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Hasn’t anyone else heard?” Even from fifteen feet away the goggles made Abrams’s eyes appear comically huge. “Rumor has it our vee-pee is getting the boot.”

  21

  Monday, May 4

  SETTING HIS JAW against the inevitable pain in his hip, and with the aid of a cane that his colleagues rarely if ever saw, Deng lumbered to his feet from inside the car. He made his way up the gravel walk to his home and readied himself for the embrace of his jubilant grandson.

  Instead of throwing a tackle, young Deng Ping tugged on his arm and, with a child’s lack of discretion, loudly announced that a funny-looking stranger was waiting inside. They entered their home and he relinquished the cane to his grandson, who ran off swinging it to-and-fro.

  “Hello, Dr. Wu.” Deng concealed his surprise upon recognizing their visitor, clad in blue smock and soiled white trousers. The man’s close-cropped hair had receded, his eyeglass lenses several diopter strengths thicker.

  “It has been a few years,” Wu acknowledged with a smile. “Despite my awkward intrusion, your family has been wonderfully gracious.”

  Deng had first met the Swiss-trained neurosurgeon during Wu’s lobbying effort on behalf of the Hebei Hospital Commission for approval to import Western medical gear. Thoroughly stymied by the bureaucracy, Wu had prompted Deng’s first foray into China’s woefully backward system for the delivery of medicine. All he had done in the end was pull a few strings. Tonight he wondered why Wu had chosen to seek him at home. “Is there some way I can be of assistance?”

  “Actually, I am here to see you regarding a personal matter.” The doctor cast an uncomfortable glance at family members in the kitchen.

  Deng led his visitor out of the dining area to his private study. There he gestured Wu to the only chair in the room as his daughter-in-law appeared carrying another.

  The doctor’s expression turned to one of deep concern. “I find myself without the appropriate words,” Wu began after Guangmei had left them alone. “You are likely to find them extremely distressing. For that, I am sorry.”

  Deng nodded patiently.

  “Several days ago we admitted a patient, a fifty-three year old female, complaining of an acute headache. She claimed not to have had any recent injuries that might be related to the discomfort, which apparently began some months ago. There is no prior history of severe headaches, memory loss, difficulty with her vision, that sort of thing. Yet her pain became quite severe and the next day she experienced a grand mal seizure.”

  Deng wondered what expensive piece of equipment the doctor was about to request. “I presume you know why?”

  Wu furrowed his brow. “MRI revealed that a large tumor had invaded the medulla oblongata.”

  “How awful.”

  “Yes. This sort of brainstem tumor is completely inoperable. I have examined similar structures before. Often they are associated with a history of physical trauma. Apparently, that is the case here. This I cannot confirm, as the woman has never married and is without immediate family.”

  “But not recent trauma.”

  “No, remote trauma. I suspect during the Turmoil.”

  “Ah.” Sometimes, it seemed to Deng, their Cultural Revolution was destined never to end. “Will she survive?”

  “Her condition is terminal.” Wu frowned and gazed past Deng’s shoulder, engrossed in the dire clinical minutiae.

  The gravity of the pronouncement hung in the silence. Deng shifted in his chair. “Doctor, I appreciate this poor woman’s dilemma. I fail to see what I—”

  “Forgive my confusing the issue. It is at her insistence that I am here tonight. You are acquainted with a woman by the name of Liu Qun?”

  Deng was stunned; the mishu’s attractive face came instantly to mind. He recalled that more than mere friendship had presented itself, but at the time he was happily married and not predisposed to such dalliance. They remained friendly over the years and on the rare occasion that commission business brought him to Public Security headquarters, Deng found it irresistible to stop and talk with the effervescent woman. “Yes,” Deng grimly acknowledged. “I have known Liu for quite some time.”

  Wu removed his glasses, carefully folded them and inserted them into his shirt pocket. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he said: “It would seem she wishes to help you—she expresses concern for your well being.”

  “For my well being?”

  “I must preface her message with my own professional disclaimer of sorts. I have no basis to accept or deny the truth of her claims, medically or otherwise. That said, I remind you she is suffering from a serious malady of the brain. It is difficult to estimate the extent to which this effects her mental acuity, particularly her long term memory.”

  “It sounds as though the woman is on her deathbed.”

  “She appears to be in complete control of her faculties,” Wu assured him. “I would not have entertained her request to come here had she not convinced me of the...gravity of the matter. She possesses a secret, a secret she is only willing to share directly and in strict privacy with you.”

  Deng had no idea what this could possibly mean. Liu’s position in the Ministry of Public Security undoubtedly gave her an extraordinary amount of access. Had she heard something in particular about his vulnerability to the succession? “Then, you know the nature of this secret?”

  The doctor studied him for a moment, his eyes heavy with sympathy. “The patient claims that during the turmoil of our Cultural Revolution, your parents and sister were victims of a horrible crime, an unsolved murder. Like so many of us... Comrade Deng, is this true?”

  Deng returned the doctor’s inquisitive stare; he felt the familiar throbbing inside his head. Another thought was forming—more a warning, a faintly buzzing alarm to silence the unassuming doctor, when Wu leaned forward and said: “Liu claims to know who murdered them. It is apparently someone you know.”

  22

  STATE SECURITY DEPUTY MINISTER Chen Ruihan gazed through the window of his new office. Beyond the ministry’s East Chang’an Avenue gate, and PLA sentries bearing Kalashnikovs, the chaotic Beijing mix of bicycles and vehicles clogging the pavement between Pudu Temple and the Forbidden City had receded with the arrival of dusk. A white-gloved traffic policeman stood passing the time, swinging his arms and conversing with the occasional Tiananmen Square pedestrian. Chen found himself somehow drawn to the scene, unambiguous in its tranquility, a scene probably gazed upon countless times by his predecessor—right until the man’s abrupt elimination.

  Behind him, the ministry’s director
of foreign affairs, Ni Tanxing, cleared his throat.

  Chen turned from the window. “I suppose it’s plausible that the dissident is unaware of the fate of her parents,” he said, reluctantly ceding a point. “What about the agent?”

  “You mean, could the agent be aware of the family connection?” asked Ni.

  Chen held his stare on the older man.

  Ni shrugged. “I do not see how the American agent could or should be aware of something so remote from his world. Furthermore, the dissident woman he refers to has Anglicized her name. The agent’s request to have us apply pressure through her parents here, in China, appears legitimate in every other aspect. The agent claims that his primary asset up to this point, a young engineer, is no longer considered reliable. So far as the identity of the dissident’s father, and his recent apprehension,” Ni shook his head, “a strange coincidence.”

  “But if their authorities—”

  “Respectfully, I believe the danger of a link being drawn between the girl and her father is dwarfed by the potential consequences of our inaction. We have been following the situation there very closely. Our inaction risks an expanded investigation, one possibly leading to us, with all of the unpleasant repercussions.”

  Chen was reluctantly inclined to agree, yet their American agent was suggesting a precarious solution. He realized that being only recently appointed to deputy minister hampered his ability to more properly assess the risk of the astounding operation. Chen lowered his gaze to the message. The American’s handler had endorsed his agent’s sense of urgency by way of a footnote to the body of the encrypted request.

  An anxious young man appeared in the doorway and realized he had interrupted. He turned to leave but Chen waved him inside. The intelligence officer approached the desk and crisply saluted his superiors. In his hand he held a small recording device.

  “What is it, Major?” Chen asked.

  “This surveillance was taken barely an hour ago and immediately brought to my attention.” He explained whose voices they would hear, that a child evidently generated the tapping sounds in the background, and that the end of the recording coincided with the sound of both subjects departing the technology commissioner’s flat.

  They listened to the most critical few minutes of a roughly nineteen minute recording. Chen and Ni looked at each other in stunned disbelief.

  Chen shut off the recorder. “Did they go to the hospital?”

  “The housing official claims they took a short walk around the commissioner’s residence. Afterward they observed the doctor drive away in his car. The commissioner returned to his flat, bid his family good night and promptly retired for the evening.”

  Deputy Minister Chen took several moments to contemplate what he had just heard. He glanced at his watch; it was only 7:47 P.M. “Very good, Major.” Chen stood from his chair and rounded his desk. “My congratulations to your staff. You will accompany me at once to Vice Chairman Rong’s residence and present this discovery to him.”

  “Comrade?”

  Chen stopped at the door and turned.

  “The request...?” Ni held up the folder.

  Chen studied his foreign affairs director. He would prefer to postpone his decision on the delicate Mojave issue. Perhaps he should get a feel for Vice Chairman Rong’s take on the subject. At the same time, it was important he appear decisive to his reporting chain of command; these were not times to risk the perception of being unqualified, or hesitant to shoulder the responsibilities of his post. Another question came to mind: What decision would his predecessor have made?

  “You may proceed with the agent’s request, Comrade Ni.”

  EIGHT BLOCKS AWAY in the neurology unit of Capital Hospital, the patient in bed number 7 drifted in and out of an unsettled sleep.

  Her eyelids eventually drifted open, and Liu Qun fixed her drugged stare on a water stain in the acoustic tile of the ceiling. The morphine intravenous drip induced a cloud of semi-conscious confusion, punctuated with spontaneous moments of lucidity.

  Doctor Wu... She remembered sending her doctor to find Deng, a friend whose allies were dwindling in number. How could I have forgotten to warn the doctor? Liu certainly knew better and chided herself for the oversight. If the security apparatus happened to intercept Wu’s message...the possibility conjured up old familiar fears. She was a woman well acquainted with the visceral treachery of many in her government.

  Perhaps there might be a way to make certain her secret survived her—her final act of rebellion. Overcoming great lethargy, Liu rolled onto her side and reached for the box of stationery beside her bed. Resting her head back onto her pillow, she closed her eyes and collected her thoughts. She was afraid of what might lay before her. It troubled her that she felt such regret at this stage of her life—regret at having never been married, or borne children; regret for having not taken better care of her ailing mother, with whom she would soon reunite; and recently, her regret for having failed the CIA, the physicist, and his poor ailing wife on their trek to salvation. She had always wondered if the CIA had others like her. She hoped that her work for them over the years had not been in vain.

  Liu opened her eyes and smoothed the thin pad of paper. She pressed the point of her pen to the paper, and carefully constructing her words, she began to write.

  Some unknown time had passed when, having drifted off to sleep again, Liu opened her eyes. The orderly had his back to her as he put something in his pocket, still leaving—or was he leaving again...already? Perhaps she was still dreaming. Had she only imagined the orderly before? When did I dream?

  The orderly paused and turned to look inside the room. The white cloth bandages around the woman’s head—applied to conceal her unsightly baldness—framed the soft smile receding from her slowly relaxing face. As he quietly closed the door, she was already dead.

  23

  HIS SKIN SOAKED with perspiration, Deng threw off the sheets and slid to the edge of his bed. After some forty-odd years he still could not escape the nightmare. Deng glanced fleetingly at the cherished family portrait on his night stand and shook his head. It really was all so long ago.

  What would become the endless nightmare of the Cultural Revolution began in the sweltering August of 1966. Teenaged radicals barged into Deng Zhen’s Beijing classroom, declaring themselves Red Guards and denouncing all students as rightist intellectuals. In young Deng’s eyes there was no greater hero than his father, a decorated Red Army soldier who had fought for China’s liberation. Yet the Red Guards accused the respected school principal of being a reactionary, an enemy of China who had conspired to undermine Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward.

  Since a falsehood quickly dies without reinforcement, the Red Guards rushed forth in the heat issuing threats. Drought-stricken parents and children seeking relief in the Wenyu were forced back to the riverbank to witness them struggle Deng’s father. To publicly witness his torture, Medical staff were wrenched from the hospital; elders from the tranquility of their gardens; rail workers from repairing track for trains already doomed to cease operations. This is the fate awaiting class enemies. This is the fate awaiting their families who conceal and refuse to denounce them. No cries for mercy echoed in the dusty streets as the principal of Middle School Number 8 and his wife were paraded around on a flatbed truck and beaten with heavy clubs.

  Eventually the marauding youths rallied outside the Deng family home. There the executioners dragged both of the accused from the truck and kicked the patriarch to his feet. Two of the Red Guards inserted a bamboo pole between his back and the crooks of his elbows. A single accusatory ‘Stinking ninth class!’ pierced the air as they lashed the man’s wrists across the front of his waist. Head lolled forward, his battered lips drooling blood and bits of teeth, a length of hemp was tied to each end of the pole extending beyond his shoulders.

  Barely conscious, Deng Jianxing flickered his eyes over the crowd, unaware of the rape of either his wife or their ten-year old daughter as he was hois
ted from the branch of an old poplar. The wretched man’s feet, dangling over the ground, quivered spasmodically after a club to his genitals. Following a howl of approval the youngster redoubled his grip, preparing his next blow. The spray of blood, when it came, spattered a few of the scowls ringing the mob—the elder Deng hurled a scream at the bolt of pain that began in his foot and exploded in his brain. Before passing out, the forty-six year old father muttered something that sounded like a prayer, further enraging the Red Guards close enough to hear it.

  Alerted by friends, young Deng raced home to their hutong to see flame and smoke roiling over the bonfire that consumed his family’s heirlooms. As he battled to contain his rage, he slipped behind a neighboring home and worked his way around to the wall surrounding their courtyard. His fingers dug into familiar cracks in the stone while he inched his head over the crest, and there he froze. Strung from a tree was his slack and lifeless father. On paving stones beneath shredded strands that were once his feet was a spreading pool of blood. Deng gasped for air. Movement on the ground drew his eye to his sister, whose parting words to her brother that morning were a promise not to linger by the village well. She was sprawled on her back, naked below the hips. Each thrust of the Red Guard atop her caused her delicate legs to convulse.

  A primordial growl escaped Deng’s throat as he pulled himself up, but his toes slipped from the cracks. He managed to regain his foothold when suddenly the tail of his shirt was grabbed from behind. He kicked and clawed to secure his grip, determined that if he couldn’t save his sister then at least he would strangle her rapist. He glimpsed a lean figure beside his father lift a machete before powerful arms hurled him backward through the air. He struck the ground on his hip with an audible crack—a neighbor’s callused hand clapped over his mouth to muffle his scream. Before passing out, he heard the fateful thud from over the wall.