Razing Beijing: A Thriller

by Elston III, Sidney

  For years to follow, Deng Zhen struggled to find meaning in his loss. Had it all been some never-to-be-repeated bureaucratic anomaly, its unfortunate victims trampled in a rampage of giants? Mao Zedong had famously denounced Deng Xiaoping, the cherished leader who would eventually succeed him, as a Capitalist Roader. While their families shared no blood relation, Deng Zhen later determined that his family’s politically unpalatable name had made them a target.

  Once Mao was dead, the Cultural Revolution finally over, China’s new leadership was wary of pursuing yet another bloody purge. They allowed the vast majority of guilty to remain, unreconstructed, among the twenty million members of the Communist Party. To the tens of millions who had witnessed the Cultural Revolution’s barbaric delirium, this administrative blunder meant they would pass their loved one’s executioner in the street, or stand beside him at the bazaar, giving rise to unspeakable hatred. Deng Zhen, on the other hand, had never gotten a good look at those who had butchered his family.

  It was this legacy which collided tonight with Dr. Wu’s single word utterance—a title, however unspecific, that threatened to make a mockery of Deng’s greatest aspirations. Hours later his hands trembled with resentment: gaogan. Was it possible—a government official, presently in a position of power? If the woman was telling the truth, how long had she known—why had she not told him before? How did she know? This gaogan presumably would have been barely a young adult at the time of his family’s destruction. Deng closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.

  Will I never make peace with this?

  The illuminated alarm clock displayed 4:17 A.M. Dr. Wu had agreed to take him to see Liu Qun before administering her morning sedatives. If he arrived at the hospital a few minutes early, perhaps the nurse would allow him to see her right away.

  * * *

  FROM DENG’S SEAT inside the dingy reception lounge of Capital Hospital, he saw the orderlies push gurneys; women labored behind over-stuffed laundry carts; day-shift nurses noisily went about conferring the status of patients with their departing counterparts. Amazingly, not one could direct him to the patient named Liu. At some point Deng had become Commissioner Deng and the flurry of activity surrounding the reception took on a hushed silence.

  At 7:10 A.M., Dr. Wu finally appeared at the administration desk. After a surprised glance his way and a blustery exchange with the staff nurse, the neurologist approached Deng in the reception. In that instant Deng knew that Liu Qun was dead.

  “I am deeply sorry,” Wu began, his eyes betraying the tempered grief of a man long accustomed to lost battles.

  “When?” asked Deng.

  “Early this morning. Apparently there was nothing that could be done. A tragic development.”

  Deng felt an empty sadness for the poor woman. At the same time, he could not deny feeling a trace of relief.

  Wu said, “I should have arranged your visit last evening. I achieved nothing but opening old wounds.”

  Deng recalled Wu specifically saying last night that his friend’s condition was stable. Again the word gaogan resonated with his thoughts. “Are you certain of the cause of death?”

  “The tumor had ravaged her medulla oblongata. Some portion of her involuntary functions simply ceased.”

  “Will you conduct an autopsy?”

  “For a patient such as this, no. Her condition had been fairly well established.”

  Limping toward the hospital exit, Deng forced himself to accept that there had been no guarantee the woman would have solved his tragic riddle. Now her implication of a high government official was going to haunt him.

  Deng found Ji Peng with his face buried beneath the People’s Daily. The driver jumped nervously when Deng opened the passenger door. “To the office,” he said with a resigned sigh.

  They had begun to drive away from the hospital when the Shanghai rolled to a stop.

  “What is it, Ji?”

  “Someone is waving us down.” Ji nodded toward the rearview mirror. “There in the blue smock, coming this way.”

  Deng turned to see Dr. Wu jogging toward them. He rolled down the car’s rear-passenger window.

  Wu produced a small white envelope and handed it in to him. “The nurse found this a moment ago,” Wu said, struggling for his breath. “She thought you might still be here and rushed it to my attention.”

  Deng took the envelope. “From Liu?”

  “Tucked beneath her mattress.”

  Deng studied the thin scrawl of his name, the light hand having skipped unevenly over the edge of the seal. “Wait.” He tore open the envelope.

  The characters were shakily arranged, as if by the hand of either a child or a very old person. Nonetheless, the clear construction of the sentences was testament to the coherence of the author at the time it was written, dated yesterday.

  My Dear Friend,

  How sad I am as I write this. Your reading it can only mean that my worst fears have come true.

  We have each lived through the most tumultuous of times. There are things that I should have told you, private things affecting you that you are entitled to know. My reasons for not informing you earlier are no longer important.

  I trust Dr. Wu was thorough in his communication, for his safety and yours.

  You must know, my Zhen, that I have always adored and respected you. That this was so from afar was not of my choosing, you stubborn old fool!

  I have made numerous good friends and acquaintances in this life. I fear my strength will not endure the effort of writing them all. Bid them goodbye, on my behalf? Perhaps you recall our old acquaintance Kang Long? Please find him and pass on our final farewell. Please do not be disappointed.

  Forever,

  Liu Qun

  Certain he had missed something, Deng read the letter again. The name Kang Long meant little to him.

  He looked up from the note. “Doctor, you will see that an autopsy is conducted.” Anticipating Wu’s objections, he added, “I will sign the appropriate documents. You will personally inform me of the findings.”

  “Very well.”

  “Thank you, doctor.” He nodded to his driver and the car started rolling again. Deng folded the letter back into the envelope and stuffed it into his coat.

  24

  Tuesday, May 5

  PAUL DEVINN WATCHED a pale and slouching Sean Thompson shuffle into the restaurant, his eyes puffy and pink. The Stouffers located 47 miles south of Cleveland, Ohio was unreasonably warm. Thompson unzipped his goose down ski jacket and sat, shivering, in the opposite side of the booth.

  Stuart’s investigation was apparently converging on the cause of the crash. Devinn would have preferred not compounding the risk to his operation by meeting with Thompson tonight simply to hear what he had already independently confirmed.

  “You look unhealthy,” Devinn observed. “You need to take better care of yourself.”

  Thompson instantly appeared angry, his lips narrowed, and Devinn expected some sort of rebuke. “We’ve got a big problem and you’re worried about my health. What the hell do we do?”

  Devinn smiled disarmingly. “First, we get you something hot to eat.” He waved down a waitress.

  Thompson dipped his trembling spoon below the steaming surface of bouillon, and Devinn realized that he now faced three separate facets of the same root problem, the least of which was burying the evidence of sabotage. Probably his greatest challenge was seated before him—Beijing’s perception that the operation was spinning out of control could only be hastened by the unraveling of his accomplice. Unfortunately, the options for dealing with Thompson were few. Devinn imagined a dark, smoke-filled room where a similar calculation was being made for dealing with him.

  “Tell me something, Sean. How are you getting on with your boss?”

  Thompson slurped the last of his soup and put down his spoon with a shrug. “We get along, I guess.”

  “You guess. What about your colleagues, are they treating you any differently?”

&
nbsp; “What are you driving at? It’s not like anyone has time to sit around—”

  “It’s important not to change your behavior, either inside or outside the workplace. Have you noticed unfamiliar vehicles following you to or from work?”

  Thompson shook his head.

  Devinn looked into the parking lot at the midnight-blue Porsche 911 that Thompson had driven to the restaurant.

  Thompson followed his glance. “Relax, it’s only a lease.”

  “I know things in Mojave didn’t exactly turn out the way either one of us planned. If the engine had blown up on the ground—”

  “I feel like a murderer.”

  “I know how you feel, but you’ve got to sit tight.”

  “What the fuck could you possibly know about the way I feel?” Thompson’s eyes were wide and searching. “Now we got the FAA”—Thompson counted them off with his fingers—“probably the FBI, a half-dozen crazed vendors each frantically trying to prove somebody else is at fault, Stuart’s whole division and specifically my boss, who is constantly breathing down our necks and digging into every nook and cranny of the fucking engine control!” Thompson’s eyes bulged as they stared at each other across the booth.

  “I think you’re overreacting,” Devinn said evenly. “I haven’t heard a single word mentioned anywhere about foul play.”

  “I’m the one in the hot seat.”

  Several other diners turned to cast disapproving looks. Devinn scolded himself for meeting Thompson in so public a venue. “You really don’t have so much to worry about.”

  “And why is that?”

  “You’re better off not knowing why.”

  Thompson glared. “That’s it? I’m the one hung out to dry, and you say I’m better off not knowing? Give me one reason...oh what’s the difference.”

  “Okay, look. In a few days you’ll begin to see indications that the investigation is leading to a dead end. Why should you believe me? I’ll let your net personal holdings speak to that.” Devinn’s tone was soothing, conciliatory, convincing. “And the less you know about it, the less likely you are to respond inappropriately when—”

  “When I’m arrested? One less thing I’ll be able to sing about?” Thompson shot quick, nervous glances around the room and out the window, fidgeting with his spoon, shaking his head.

  “We’re in this together.” Devinn turned up his palms. “You’re just going to have to trust me. I’ve had to steer through far worse than this. Be patient. On the bright side, by all rights you are a wealthy young man. Have you forgotten Cole’s deadline? All you have to do is ride this out another few days.” He glanced outside again at Thompson’s car, glistening ostentatiously beneath the exterior floodlights where the moron had chosen to park it, two spaces away from the entrance. “I would have advised against the Porsche,” he lightly observed. “But I must admit it’s a beauty.”

  25

  HIDDEN DEEP WITHIN an old and crumbling section of its sprawling Cleveland aircraft engine complex was the Thanatechnology Electronics Lab.

  Emily Chang could not help being both nervous and a little amused. Nervous, because the company’s top technical intellect were huddled in front of her computer, poised to pass judgment; and amused because she thought standing shoulder-to-nose would demand a degree of civility. Instead, the bickering only intensified. A final protest over the glare on the screen extinguished the fluorescent lights. Now each peered breathlessly over the shoulder in front of them, focused stares reflecting the green wash of a computer screen.

  The analog simulation of their focus depicted the flat panel display of a modern airline cockpit, with the important distinction that several dozen engine parameters were being tracked. The object was not to simulate an airplane but the rotating masses and various fluid flows and pressures that comprise a jet engine, the behavior of which was mimicked by hundreds of computerized algorithms. Thanatech routinely used this particular simulator to qualify new electronic control units before their shipment to airline customers.

  Robert Stuart reached out his right hand and gripped the simulator’s throttle lever. He eased it gently forward—Emily held her breath. The ECU retrieved from the debris in Mojave, which she and her staff had finished nursing back to health a few hours earlier, interpreted Stuart’s command to deliver more thrust. Cockpit dial indicators for fan speed, fuel flow, exhaust gas temperature, compressor discharge pressure, variable stator and propeller pitch angles all danced around before settling into their acceptable range within the green arcs.

  Stuart hesitantly removed his hand from the lever, and turned toward Emily. She knew instantly by his expression that her boss was firmly in the camp of the persuaded. Morton Hackett stood nearby, the corners of his mouth turned down in their customary sneer.

  “You still don’t believe it,” Stuart accused him.

  The chief engineer responded as if poked in the ribs. “I don’t believe what?”

  “You think we’re putting you on.”

  Hackett brushed past Stuart in order to peer over the recovered ‘box.’ Hundreds of multicolored wires neatly drawn together with plastic ties and spilling over the sides of the box failed to repair the image of a crushed and disemboweled robot. “My friend,” Hackett muttered, “engineering is not a faith experience. It isn’t religion. Something either merely is. Or something merely isn’t.”

  Stuart laughed.

  Hackett’s face burned red as he looked Stuart squarely in the eye. Then he turned to Emily and softly complimented her. “Very nice work, Emily.”

  “Thank you, but my staff truly deserves all the credit,” she said, smiling.

  Hackett nodded graciously, turned to leave, paused as if to say something else, and continued out of the room.

  “This thing actually works,” Ian Vickers pointed out.

  “Don’t sound so surprised,” Emily replied airily.

  Stuart asked, “Have you found anything unusual?”

  “We haven’t had a chance to put it through its paces. Unfortunately the next phase of the effort is not going so smoothly.”

  Stuart stared questioningly. Emily Chang quietly suggested they step outside the electronics lab. He followed her slender, blue-jean-clad figure into the corridor, where the two were alone.

  Stuart again noted the faint, pleasant aroma of perfume. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “I’m having a personnel problem.” This she confided with a whisper.

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  Emily shook her head vigorously. “Thank you, but no. To be fair, the code we are trying to write is very complex. It’s difficult to know whether this particular engineer’s delay is legitimate or...or attributable to something else.”

  “Who are we talking about?”

  “I’d rather not say, not yet.”

  Stuart was reminded of this particular manager’s inclination to struggle with unresolved issues rather than kick them out in the open. “We’re not exactly in a position to let problems drag on. What something else are you alluding to?”

  Emily sighed. “Well, there is personal illness involved. I just think he should be making more progress. He and I disagree on this point. We’ll work it out.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, I am sure.”

  “Listen, I’d already decided to talk to Cole about a deadline extension. Your success here with the ECU ought to help.” He noted the dark circles under Emily’s eyes. “How are you holding up?”

  She smiled. “We’re all a little tired, I suppose.”

  Stuart nodded reflectively. “I’ve been meaning to discuss something with you.”

  She smiled expectantly. “Have you?”

  “I know there’s been a lot of controversy regarding my role. You know, after all of your inputs I yielded to my boss and his decision that we finish the Mojave test flight.” As usual, Stuart tried and failed to read her expression. Her dark and inquisitive eyes seemed to track every movement of his own, to convey
understanding yet dispel invitation. She was beautiful, extraordinarily intelligent—and complicated. “I’m not trying to defend myself. Obviously it was a tragic error.”

  “It don’t see how it matters, really, what I or anyone else might have to say about that.”

  “Perhaps. I could see how lingering doubts about my judgment could make it tough on anyone’s motivation around here. Your own, for that matter. Not that you’ve given me any reason to think so. Quite the opposite.”

  Emily reached behind her neck and shifted her hair around in front of her shoulder. “I’m not aware of any problems stemming from that.”

  “Well, keep up the good work, Emily. But not tonight, okay? You owe it to yourself to just go home, or go out and have a good time or whatever it is you like to do. You deserve some time off.”

  * * *

  IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT by the time Emily did arrive home, Stuart’s advice roundly ignored.

  Atop the short flight of steps from the parking lot to her studio, she clutched the grocery bag to her hip while unlocking the door. Stuart’s expression of remorse earlier that day had surprised her—again she found herself not certain what to think of the man. It was frustrating keeping her every emotion a secret. Since Sandy’s calamitous death, she had virtually no one to confide in or turn to for advice. She reprimanded herself for the self-pity; if after university she had returned home to China, by now her parents would have goaded her into marrying someone whom she might not even love. For all she felt for her parents, it was difficult to relate to many of their traditional values. Yet she would give anything to one day introduce them to the man she did love.

  The good news was that she knew they were alive—missing perhaps, but alive. Encouraging news had finally come the night before last through her cousin. According to Jake’s e-mail, a neighbor reported seeing her parents slip out of their home before dawn one morning several weeks ago. Word had spread that her father stole his mother away to get the medical treatment she needed to survive. Emily was certain that they would contact her as soon as possible from wherever that happened to be. Still, the lack of any such word was cause for worry. Thank God there’s work to bury myself in. In truth, she did have one friend to whom she could turn.