Razing Beijing: A Thriller

by Elston III, Sidney

  Burns looked straight ahead as he jogged. “So, how’s your new budget coming together?”

  McBurney replied between breaths: “A thing of beauty.”

  “You’re aware of the pipeline attack?”

  “Yes, sir.” It was impossible not to be. McBurney’s flight from Los Angeles was boarding when the Sierra News Network broke the story, announcing with shrill horror that a major spill had occurred when a corroded section of the old Trans Alaska Pipeline failed in an ecologically sensitive region. Minutes later the Interior Department released their own statement, confirming that TAP operations in Valdez had indeed registered a pressure drop in a segment between Fairbanks and the Tanana River. The same report claimed that, although the shutdown command immediately triggered gate valves to close and pump-drive turbines to disengage, an eight-hundred mile, 1.5 million ton python of pressurized oil barreling over the tundra cannot be stopped on a dime. By the time it was over, a sloppy 13,000-barrel spill had occurred. Investigators working to ensure the safety of personnel entering the area hampered clean-up efforts, further raising the ire of environmentalists.

  Burns said, “I understand your mystery terrorist group called in again.”

  “Free Palestine?” The group claiming responsibility for a handful of domestic attacks seemed not to have affiliations with any previously known terrorist groups—in which allied intelligence agencies enjoyed some level of infiltration—thus hampering Task Force efforts to locate members.

  “And they finally left a finger-print,” Burns announced. “FBI recovered some shards embedded in the tundra from what appear to be remnants of a shape-charge backing plate used in the building demolition trade. Bureau’s already traced one to its theft from a site last year.”

  McBurney seemed to recall that the demolition devices were serialized. It also seemed to him that any serious criminal wanting to cover his tracks would consider that possibility, if in fact they weren’t already aware of it. “Stolen from where?”

  “Ankara.”

  Recent years had witnessed the unfortunate incursion into Turkey of the militant Islamic extremism that was hampering economic development throughout the Caspian region. McBurney sensed Burns was looking to him, as the Agency Task Force representative, to swing into action now that he was armed with this nugget. “I wonder if Mossad could provide us a lead.”

  “Already have. Nahman Weir called me almost right away.” Director Burns was known to enjoy as solid a personal rapport with the Mossad general director as ever existed between the two intelligence leaderships. “They’ve had similar pipeline attacks. He wanted to know where over here to funnel everything they knew. I told him you were assigned to the president’s task force.”

  McBurney felt the football injury in his right knee beginning to stab. So the job in Alaska had broad implications.

  “Before I forget, Weir took the opportunity to remind me they would still like our file on Ahmadi.”

  “I already gave them everything we have. He wants what the FBI refuses to hand over to me, which I’ve learned include surveillance details of Ahmadi’s visit to the Senate Russell building.”

  Burns didn’t respond.

  “Do you remember?”

  “Oh I remember, all right. Last night I received an unofficial heads-up call from a friend at the Post. The significance isn’t clear but I think it’s got to do with your Senator Milner blackmail threat.”

  “Somebody’s taken it public?”

  “Sounds like it. He was vague on details and wouldn’t reveal the identity of his source, naturally. I haven’t finished going through the Early Bird yet but you ought to pick up today’s copy of the Post. The gist of it is, somebody leaked that a senator was threatened in an attempt to alter the legislative landscape.”

  “Holy shit...”

  Burns threw him a glance, conveying to McBurney the distinct impression he was being kept in the dark. “You still believe Ahmadi was burned?”

  “Had to be.” McBurney grimaced. “But I want that FBI file. If he was burned and tortured, how could his masters ransack the place and overlook the satellite data? I think the Bureau took the low-hanging fruit approach. I guess they’re under a lot of pressure.”

  “What’s the latest on our botched defection?”

  McBurney knew that the physicist debacle was bound to come up. “Beijing reports that Zhongnanhai is still furious about it, that they’re using it to pre-empt every other issue previously on the table.”

  “Shit.”

  McBurney took several minutes to remind Director Burns how the defection attempt had depended upon their primary agent inside Beijing, whose illness and subsequent death could have significantly impacted the outcome.

  Burns looked at McBurney. “You’re certain SIREN is dead?”

  “Unfortunately yes. I’ll have my staff construct a full-blown analysis on what that’s going to mean.” Director Burns clearly understood that SIREN had been the last of their deep Beijing assets.

  “Do we know where they’re keeping Zhao, the physicist, and his wife?”

  “Rotger claims to know for a fact that they aren’t being held in Qincheng, or for that matter anywhere else in the gulag. He thinks they may actually be somewhere inside Zhongnanhai.” Zhongnanhai was the government compound inside which few Chinese citizens and even fewer foreigners were allowed. The implication was that McBurney’s high-stakes attempt to defect them had been justified.

  “Huh. What’s Rotger’s latest thinking on the regime transition?”

  “Rotger’s afraid that Rong Peng, remember he’s their Military Affairs second-in-command—”

  “I know who he is.”

  “I guess Rong is gaining political ground. We think he and his cronies are the driving force behind proliferation and other weapons technology violations.”

  Burns mulled on that bit of news for several moments. “The President’s not going to like hearing any more blame pinned to his buddy Rong. We know that the general secretary is fond of the man. Do we have any idea how a guy coming in from almost nowhere is expected to consolidate power?”

  “Not yet, and no one’s thrilled with the prospect of Rong taking over the reins, except for maybe, well, President Denis.” McBurney was growing short of breath and his knee was hurting more with every lap. “The issue for Rong or whoever winds up in power is how strong his support is among the PLA. Rong likes to speak openly about liberalizing trade agreements and religious freedom, but behind the scenes he must be doing something to curry favor with the hard-liners.”

  “China’s been through enough transitions to know better than to push a weak leader onto the scene. What do we think Rong’s doing to schmooze the conservatives?”

  “Maybe Rotger’s revelation of Rong’s weapon’s trafficking...?”

  Burns frowned. “It would need to be more substantial. Hell, we’re talking about the next core leader of China. I could certainly see nuke proliferation as part of a larger strategy. By the way, how do your friends in Japan feel about the latest cloud on our national missile defense horizon?”

  “Cloud?”

  “Here at home. The final appropriations phase for NMD is scheduled for congressional review next week. Word is that support on the Hill is evaporating. I guess final appropriations is under attack.”

  “This late in the game? What’s driving it this time?”

  “If you believe what you hear, more hand-wringing over Korea and China and God knows who else responding with another arms race, ratcheting India and Pakistan further into the fray and blah, blah, blah. Think about it. Appeasement has never worked in history, not once, and yet people seem to think...” Burns’s face became blank. To McBurney’s great relief, the DCI reigned in the pace from slow jog to casual walk. “I guess I don’t know what people think.”

  McBurney repeated what Director Burns already knew, the near total absence of any significant arms escalation in direct response to American missile defense. “We’ve given that pi
tch to the staffers so many times that they don’t want to hear it any more. They can’t be serious about pulling the plug now.”

  “Sure they are. And if the senate filibusters, they could delay or cancel the launch at Vandenberg carrying the final SBIRS deployments in, what, six weeks? You know what that means?”

  “It means policymakers vacillate and eventually the world will respond to the prospect of our missile defenses—meanwhile we don’t deploy them.” It meant the worst of both worlds. McBurney caught himself about to remind Burns there existed one credible escalation theory, admittedly unproven, whereby China was in the process of fielding some sort of countermeasure—their disappearing satellite. Besides, the conventional fears moved the conventional wisdom in Washington. “There’s no indication that Beijing has actually followed through on their threat to MIRV mobile warheads, to cite just one example. None of the other players on the radar screen can afford to do much. For that matter, money’s been tight in Beijing.”

  “That’s what I mean—hand-wringing. And the President is pissed.”

  “He is?” That had to be among the biggest political shifts he had ever heard of. He wondered which of the many special interests arrayed against NMD was responsible for this latest congressional waffling. “I thought President Denis detested missile defense.”

  “Just forget I said that. One other thing, Sam.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  Burns studied his face for a moment, giving him the feeling that there was something out of place. McBurney brushed his hand over his mouth.

  “Do you like your job, Sam?” Burns bent over to tie the laces of his running shoe. “You’ve expressed misgivings in the past.”

  McBurney was stunned into silence. Upon his return from an abbreviated retirement, he had chosen to be clear about his disagreements with the way the Agency was run, and not simply his widely held view that clandestiny had taken a back seat to technical intelligence gathering. He believed that hyper-political correctness was stifling morale and risk-taking and ultimately turning away the most talented individuals. He specifically recalled discussing these things in Burns’s office following the Director’s swearing in. McBurney regretted that particularly frank discussion as he pondered the Director’s question.

  “I like my job just fine, Lester, I...look, who can deny feeling a little wander-lust at some point in their career?”

  Burns straightened up and ran his arm across his forehead. “Things around town are getting a little...tense.” He looked McBurney in the eye. “If I were you, I’d start taking the Task Force a little more seriously.”

  McBurney grappled with what could only be an unveiled threat of being sacked from his job. “I think they’re convening this morning.”

  “Be there.”

  ON THE 5TH FLOOR of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, steering committee membership of the Joint Counter-Terrorism Task Force had grown from eight to fourteen. CIA intelligence officer Samuel McBurney was notably unaccounted for, and so thirteen tense law enforcement and intelligence professionals had arranged themselves around the table, their hands resting in their laps or clutching mugs of coffee. Included now were six senior representatives of the Drug Enforcement Agency, the theory being that nothing less than an inexhaustible supply of illicit drug money was being laundered into terrorist organizations in order to fund their seemingly unstoppable jihad.

  Special Agent Peter Kosmalski finished reading the summary minutes of Friday’s meeting. The latest of their forty-three ongoing independent investigations was underway in response to the Trans Alaska Pipeline attack, which already had debunked the corrosion failure theory of early press reports.

  “Before I get to the pipeline investigation, our deputy director of counter-terrorism received a phone call over the weekend from President Denis.” Kosmalski paused to see that he had their attention. “The President was accompanied on the line by Rabbi Goldberg of the Holocaust Memorial Council. They called to convey their ongoing support, and to express their concern that they had not heard of any developments in our investigation. You can imagine the box where the deputy assistant director found himself. You can also imagine his subsequent conversation with me.”

  Kosmalski positioned his oval brass wire rims down below the bridge of his nose. “On a more positive note, Fairbanks dispatched agents to investigate this pipeline mess and they’re reporting a couple of early home runs.” He explained that, with the help of Mossad, they’d already established a link between recovered demolition fragments and the site of a deteriorated Ankara hospital, ransacked prior to being demolished early the previous year, as well as those found after a pipeline attack in Netanya, Israel. Apparently, such pipeline incidents did not typically achieve a great deal of damage, more nuisance and political statement than hazard. They were a regular fact of life in places like Nigeria, and it was being reported TAP will be repaired and back on-line in 36 hours. None around the conference table were surprised to hear that Free Palestine was claiming responsibility, the eighth such claim.

  “Alaskan SkyTours is one of these biking package tour outfits. One of their guides became suspicious and describes two bicycle tourists, whom he claims to have thought were Greek or possibly Turkish, peeling off from their group a day or so before the bombing. They were supposed to rendezvous later but didn’t. Fairbanks followed up with a check at the last hotel where they were seen. The night clerk reported a parcel delivery to their room. FedEx trace goes back to Detroit, a cellular call, and a stolen credit card.

  “From what we know of their descriptions the two may have split up, but on the evening before the blast at least one of them boarded a Korean Air Lines flight in Anchorage, direct to Seoul. Turkish passport checks out counterfeit. Remnants of a timer were found at the blast site. The scenario’s plausible.”

  From Seoul the trail disappeared. “We’re working with our legal attaché to try and screen airline manifests for any unaccounted outbound...well, well. Today is our lucky day.”

  Sam McBurney stormed into the room and marched directly to where Kosmalski was sitting. There were splotches of red on his face as if he’d just taken a hot shower.

  McBurney thrust today’s Washington Post in front of Kosmalski’s face. “You and I need to talk.”

  McBurney followed Special Agent Kosmalski into an empty office up the hall from the Task Force meeting and shut the door behind them. The expression on Kosmalski’s face made him all the angrier; he slapped the newspaper down on whoever’s desk separated them, sending loose sheets of paper fluttering to the floor. “What the hell kind of dirty deal is this? After weeks of stonewalling me, half the Milner blackmail conversation shows up in the goddamn Washington Post!”

  Kosmalski took the accusation as an affront. “We’re as upset about it as you are. I have no idea who leaked that story.”

  “You don’t look very upset. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, you can pony up a copy of the surveillance tape you made of our foreign espionage spy. I know damn well you wired either Milner or his office or both.”

  For many seconds, Kosmalski said nothing. “What makes you so sure the Post article is about Milner? It never directly mentioned him.”

  McBurney felt his anger flaring again. For all he knew, the last remaining key to recouping his counterespionage investigation—and his credibility—was buried somewhere within the details of that surveillance. He stabbed his finger onto the newspaper. “You know what’s going on here?”

  “I know what’s going on here.”

  “Somebody’s been sitting on this until just the right moment.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You read the article! The message is loud and clear: ‘Better not support missile defense, senators! We have dirt on you and we will use it!’ Ahmadi might as well have blackmailed the whole fucking congress.”

  Kosmalski’s skin looked as though it was about to ignite. The moment passed. “I can see where you might think that.”

  “You still
insist on sitting on that surveillance tape?”

  “I already explained. It’s not my decision to make.”

  McBurney placed his hands on the desk and leaned toward the FBI man. “But the argument that its contents could be used to compromise an elected policymaker just went down the rat hole.”

  Kosmalski folded his arms. “There’s more to it than that.”

  McBurney studied his colleague. The article made specific mention of the FBI surveillance—not the existence of a digital record of that surveillance, only that a ‘leading committee chair’ had been threatened into withdrawing support from missile defense. “I wonder if either the Post or the Times would be interested in the story behind the story, you know the one. There just might be a senator left who hasn’t got something to hide, one who’d also be interested to learn that the senator we’re talking about here is the Appropriations Chairman.”

  “Maybe they already know and they agreed to sit on it.”

  “Then they know that the FBI leaked it?”

  “You don’t have any evidence that it was the Bureau who...are you threatening me?”

  “Why not? We’re a team—you fuck me over, then I fuck you over. Do you expect me to believe Milner picked up the phone and volunteered that somebody threatened him with his own dirt?”

  Kosmalski didn’t have an immediate answer for that. “Perhaps Ahmadi wasn’t working alone. Whoever was working with him could’ve leaked the story to the Post. We don’t know who that is and the Post isn’t saying.”

  “Give me the tape. I’ll find out who it is.”

  Kosmalski laughed.

  “Why not?”

  “Why don’t we sit down, Sam.”

  McBurney observed the worried expression on Kosmalski’s face. Both men sat down. Kosmalski tapped his hand on his knee, avoiding McBurney’s gaze.