Razing Beijing: A Thriller

by Elston III, Sidney

  One of two CIA officers in the conference room, Samuel McBurney was absently scribbling on or flipping through pages of the Activity Summary that Kosmalski regularly provided the team. “Well that’s certainly a pattern,” he muttered almost under his breath.

  McBurney looked up after a moment to find everyone staring at him. “What I meant was, hasn’t it struck anybody as unusual that, what is it, seven? Seven incidents of terrorist attacks all claimed by this one outfit have yielded barely a smidgen of evidence. Isn’t that a pattern? I’d call it a pattern.”

  Kosmalski cast an insolent gaze around the table. “We’re dealing with criminals, Sam. Terrorist investigations take time. These criminals generally prefer not to leave the evidence we need to indict them.”

  “Criminals,” McBurney reflected as he leaned back in his chair.

  “What would you call Free Palestine?”

  “Well, Mossad maintains they’ve never even heard of them. They call themselves ‘activists,’ we say they’re criminals...”

  “And the punch line is...?”

  “I thought terrorists seek to politicize their acts by telling us first and foremost who they are, and then that they plan to continue unless this and that and so-forth happens. Granted, some terrorists do intend to simply terrorize people, anonymously disrupting economies, altering behavior, et cetera. Our criminal groups all seem to share a notorious skill for covering their tracks—yet they always call in to take credit. Isn’t that strange?”

  “We suspect that the Holocaust Memorial job was assisted by someone inside, whose capture would threaten the broader cell. I’m still not sure what you’re driving at.”

  Reminded again that he hadn’t the patience for work involving teams, McBurney glanced down at the computer printout. The inch-thick Activity Summary—a list of investigations compiled by the Department of Homeland Security—included an executive summary which served as the task force’s principal working document. An appendix of raw data made up the bulk of the document, information that consisted of hundreds of single line-item entries citing investigations throughout each of the FBI’s fifty-five field jurisdictions within the United States. For reasons he did not fully understand, McBurney found it fascinating to sit in these briefings and flip through the pages. A variety of Homeland analysts employed sophisticated social network software to harvest data and link, say, a bank transaction in Tucson to a handgun purchase in Wichita. A cryptic description of each entry was assigned an eight-character alphanumeric designator and grouped by jurisdiction. They were further subcategorized by type, such as ‘White Collar,’ ‘Narcotics,’ ‘Terrorist,’ ‘BATF,’ ‘IRS,’ ‘Homicide,’ ‘Espionage,’ and so on.

  McBurney asked Kosmalski why some of the entries showed up in multiple categories.

  “In those instances there may be multiple charges involved,” Kosmalski replied. “Or maybe the investigation hasn’t been narrowed yet.”

  McBurney glanced over several entries that had caught his eye.

  Kosmalski asked in a disinterested tone: “Find something?”

  “Maybe.”

  They all watched as McBurney flipped from one dog-eared page to the next. He circled several entries with a ballpoint pen. “I don’t suppose any of this is already in DESIST?” he asked, referring to the comparable foreign database maintained by the CIA.

  “Just hand ‘em over. I’ll have somebody pull down the information before the next...”

  McBurney ripped five pages free of the binder and slid them across the table.

  Kosmalski took a moment to scan the circled items, his face turning a deeper shade with each one. “Someone will get back to you.”

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, McBurney answered his telephone.

  “Kosmalski here. You can ignore my email. I sent over that information on the files you requested. I don’t suppose the secure package courier showed up with it.”

  “Nope,” McBurney said, glancing at his in-basket. He thought Kosmalski sounded more uptight than usual. “Everything okay, Pete?”

  “That’s Peter, if you don’t mind.”

  “If you say so. What the hell difference does it make?”

  Silence. “Not much, Sammy.” Kosmalski cleared his throat. “You might try to show a little more enthusiasm for the Task Force. In light of the fact that all of our necks are on the line.”

  The file descriptions that had caught McBurney’s eye the previous day all indicated having either suspects of ethnic Chinese origin, an overseas Asian connection, or both, such as ‘Customs seizure of computer components - outbound Shanghai,’ or ‘Suspected H1-B processing violations - China.’ Kosmalski’s downbeat tone meant good news—something in the files he asked for must have nothing to do with terrorism.

  “I guess I’ve been a little distracted lately. I may be heading overseas again soon but you’re absolutely right. I promise to try harder. So, what did you find out?”

  Kosmalski explained that four of the eight cases McBurney had circled were already closed. These involved incidents of domestic narcotics trafficking and unlikely to be of any interest. Among the other four, Kosmalski described one kickback involving an overseas weapons contract, one suspected money laundering, and two cases of fraudulent passport violations. “We’ve seen quite an increase of those.”

  “What about the money laundering? That seemed sort of interesting.”

  Kosmalski agreed. “That goes back to a suspicious activity report filed by a Customs official in Cleveland. The inbound passenger was returning from the British Virgin Islands via Vancouver, and claimed to be traveling for personal reasons but had only remained at each destination for a matter of hours. A few days ago, an agent of ours was pursuing what he thought was an unrelated incident. He made a routine TECS inquiry and discovered the SAR.”

  As most every law enforcement and intelligence officer in the country knew, ‘TECS’ stood for the Treasury Enforcement Communication System that allowed various agencies within the United States to share monetary-specific information. McBurney recalled that Tortola was a preferred offshore money haven for officers in the People’s Liberation Army.

  “And?”

  “The long and short of it is an Ohio State Police homicide investigation, victim white male late-twenties, appears to be a narcotics trafficking clash. But we now learn that a principal in the murder investigation recently made the quick trip to Tortola.”

  “A quick trip sounds pretty amateurish, like somebody hiding money from a spouse.”

  “I think the principal is unmarried, but yeah, it’s this sort of thing that triggers a suspicious activity report. Apparently you figured out she’s also a Chinese immigrant.”

  McBurney looked up as an Administrations secretary walked into his office clutching the mail pouch from Kosmalski. “Your files just walked in.” He reached out and waved his fingers impatiently. The woman dropped the pouch on his desk, turned without a word and marched off.

  “I don’t think they’ve drawn a complete list of suspects yet,” Kosmalski said. “I do know that she—a Chinese computer engineer—is currently under surveillance. Do you happen to recall hearing about that test plane that crashed a few months ago in the California desert?”

  Cradling the phone under his chin, McBurney tore open the mail pouch seal. “Should I?” He slid the contents onto his desk.

  “Probably not. The investigating agent noted that these engineers are working on that particular aircraft program, which is a disturbing angle to this.”

  “Why is that?”

  “You don’t find it disturbing that people designing airplanes are narco-traffickers?”

  “Oh. I see your point.”

  “Anyway, you’ll find it’s so far pretty much a narcotics-related murder investigation.”

  “Do they know the cause of the crash?”

  “The file doesn’t say. I presume they must know something by now. Sam, it’s probably a dry hole from your point-of-view. I sent you the file because I get
so tired of watching you poor bastards flail around all the time.”

  McBurney found the folder containing the money-laundering file. “I’ll take all the help I can get. In fact—”

  “I know, I know, the Ahmadi and Senator Milner surveillance records. I keep telling you it’s out of my hands.”

  That’s progress, McBurney thought. At least now Kosmalski seemed ready to admit, albeit implicitly, that the FBI actually had conducted surveillance of Ahmadi’s attempt to extort the classified satellite information from Senator Milner. “Whose hands have it?”

  “If the politics change, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “I’m counting on it.” McBurney crossed his legs, sat back in his chair and began flipping through the file. “Thanks, Peter.”

  “See you at the next briefing.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  McBurney discovered that the file contained little more than a preliminary compilation by the investigating agent. There were three photographs; the first showed a slender woman exiting the lobby of a bank, shadowing her face from the bright sun with her hand; the same woman, her Asian face clearly visible as she stepped from behind a palm tree in front of the bank and into the street toward whoever had taken the photograph; a portrait presumably taken for a passport or driver’s license—very attractive, McBurney observed. He flipped through to the back of the file. Details of the Chinese-American woman’s background and the amount of money involved were not even mentioned. Too early in the game, McBurney supposed.

  He closed the folder and tapped it on his knee, wondering who he could find to look into it. Most of his staff were already loaded up with juggling other responsibilities. He stared, thinking, at the investigating agent’s name and division address on the front of the folder. McBurney picked up the phone.

  “Peter, Sam again. Do you mind if I drop your investigating agent here a line?”

  * * *

  MCBURNEY ARRANGED his layover enroute to a budget review in Los Angeles in order to meet with Kosmalski’s agent in the FBI Cleveland office. His flight out of Dulles arrived in Cleveland nearly two hours behind schedule. Nonetheless, appearing at the airport to greet him was Special Agent Edward Hildebrandt, a thirty year old black man with a square jaw and iron-firm handshake.

  “Mr. Kosmalski let me know you were coming,” Hildebrandt said, his accent sounding maybe Alabama or Louisiana. “Welcome to Cleveland.”

  The FBI’s Cleveland Division was housed in a sleek new building located not far from the airport west of town. McBurney followed Hildebrandt through bustling office areas and people of various ages rushing about with security badges clipped at their waists, all of whom were as well dressed as Hildebrandt. They entered a large but hushed area crammed with modular offices. Once seated inside Hildebrandt’s cubicle, McBurney glanced at several pictures of the FBI agent with his wife and young child, a boy who wore an infectious smile. Two diplomas hung on the partition behind the desk, one from the University of Kentucky and the other from the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.

  The two men appraised one another across a small round table.

  “We’re not accustomed to CIA showing up out here asking questions about murder investigations,” Hildebrandt advised his guest with a smile. “What exactly is it you’d like to know?”

  “I’m sure Agent Kosmalski reminded you how limited my CIA purview is.”

  “Yes, sir, he certainly did.”

  “And that our mandate overrides all that nonsense?”

  “He might have mentioned something.”

  McBurney nodded. “So far as domestic investigations are concerned, the Agency is always interested where there exists the possibility of espionage on behalf of a foreign state. That includes industrial espionage. In this case, money laundering allegedly conducted by a Chinese national I find particularly interesting.”

  “The connection you just made is speculative.”

  “Think so? In your report you indicate obtaining a subpoena for the woman’s credit card and telephone records. From this I assume you found she had...I believe her name was...” McBurney bent over to remove the file folder from his briefcase.

  “Her name is Emily Chang.”

  “Right. Chang purchased an American Airlines ticket to Tortola, and then on to Vancouver. Why don’t we start with what first led you to subpoena the woman’s personals?”

  Hildebrandt scratched the side of his forehead. “We haven’t learned anything from her credit card records because we haven’t received them yet. Are you familiar with the Thanatech test aircraft that crashed a few months back?”

  McBurney earlier had skimmed Hildebrandt’s discussion of the test aircraft that crashed in Mojave, California. “Not really.”

  “You may not have heard much out in D.C., but it made big news around here. Killed several folks with family in town, including the Thanatech CEO’s daughter.”

  “What do they think caused the crash?”

  “They claim to know, although I don’t think it’s yet been made public. The crash occurred about the time the division was embroiled in another case, an Internet child molestation...” Hildebrandt shook his head. “But they’ve had NTSB sitting in on the crash investigation from the get-go. I assume they all know what they’re doing.”

  “You’re still leading up to how it is you decided to subpoena the Asian woman?”

  Hildebrandt studied McBurney uncertainly for a moment. “Ohio State police had classified the Thompson incident a probable drug-related homicide. Dipping my toe in that water I found what I thought were some inconsistencies. Like, the victim’s cell phone was recovered by a highway maintenance crew several miles from the scene in a ditch. When narco-scumbags steal cell phones they typically use them to contact their cutouts in South America, or whoever. This perpetrator left the murder victim’s expensive car at the scene. That’s a little out of the ordinary.

  “My supervisor and I decided to follow up. He assigned a couple of us to interview the whole lot at Thanatech, which was tough. Some of these engineers work a lot of overtime and are constantly running all over that plant out there.”

  McBurney stared unblinkingly at Hildebrandt.

  “We surveyed the residence of the murder victim’s immediate supervisor—yep, you guessed it, Emily Chang.”

  “I didn’t see that nugget in the report.”

  Hildebrandt spun his chair to remove a file folder from the cabinet beside his desk. He produced a set of photographs similar to those included within the file forwarded by Kosmalski.

  “I expect that the credit card records, once we see them, will agree with the itinerary entered in TECS. We typically ignore cut-and-dry homicide matters unless we’re drawn in by other non-mitigating factors. It probably would’ve been only a matter of time before we matched up the TECS notification with the suspected narcotics homicide—”

  “Who matched up the Tortola photos to Emily Chang?”

  “Treasury, once we asked them to confirm her identity. They were pretty tight-lipped as to how, by the way. Must be they pay the locals to spook...to recon the banks. The banks can hide behind their privacy laws all they want, but I’ll bet Treasury has a photograph on record of every foreign depositor going in and out of ‘em.”

  “So we don’t really know—”

  “That she illegally transacted funds? Only what the photographs and her itinerary imply. What I’d really like to know is what she did in Vancouver. Her trail disappears after stepping off the plane, so she must’ve arranged to have somebody there pick her up. Where was I... Oh, after first sitting with her at Thanatech, we wanted a follow-up and rang the bell at her residence. Nobody came to the door. Car registered under her name was in the lot and we heard music playing softly inside. It seemed Miss Chang was ignoring us.”

  McBurney narrowed his gaze. “Sounds like maybe she’s afraid of something.”

  “Sounds like she’s hiding something.”

  McBurney thumbed t
hrough Hildebrandt’s report. “What does she have to say about all this?”

  “She hasn’t said much of anything.”

  McBurney looked up from the file.

  “When I interviewed her at work, I couldn’t say that I would characterize her as a murder suspect, or for that matter a narcotics user. But she was evasive about something, and that prompted me to make the TECS inquiry, and then we filed to subpoena her financial and telephone records. We have her under surveillance. There’s your answer.”

  “Has surveillance uncovered unusual behavior?”

  “Hey, we’re barely done with the administrative inquiry.”

  McBurney pondered what Hildebrandt meant by that and glanced at his watch, mindful that he still had a flight to catch. “Has there been anything to suggest that she’s involved in clandestine exchanges of information? Maybe while walking her dog, or playing handball? Your profile on her says ‘limited traveler,’ but does she come into contact with traveling businessmen? She’s a naturalized U.S. citizen. What about records of visits by family members from China? Who is her family in China? Does she correspond with Chinese students or other alumni from college?”

  “Some of that we can start to learn from financial and telephone records. I was thinking maybe you could have somebody dredge up her background overseas. Our Legat tried, but—”

  “Have you requested technical surveillance?”

  Hildebrandt leaned forward. “This is America. We have to abide by the law, and here in Cleveland we have one limp little prick of a U.S. attorney who’s going to see that we’ve got a by-the-book, bona fide, reasonable suspicion—”

  “You’ve got this Treasury SAR, don’t you? I’d like to know whether or not she communicates with the Chinese embassy or any of the other diplomatic representatives of the PRC. Does she log onto the Internet?”