Razing Beijing: A Thriller

by Elston III, Sidney

  “Pulling Number Two from assembly would ruffle some feathers,” Korzhakov suggested in supreme understatement.

  Exhuming Dr. Zhao, their star physicist, from the dead bowels of State Security would be even more of a chore, Deng wanted to say. “I suppose we have no choice.”

  DENG TRIED TO DISREGARD the indignity of the vacant chair on the other side of the desk. He began to contemplate the man to whom it belonged. State Security Deputy Minister Chen Ruihuan, a man some twenty years his junior, showed other signs of operating under duress. Deng had witnessed it often enough; a young star exhibits proficiency and captures somebody’s eye, is dredged from obscurity and cast into a position of power—the new replacing the old. There he learns he is less a favored son than a powerless puppet. Veterans of the process know him for what he is. If he survives the turbulent political campaigns, he proceeds to build his own base of sycophantic lapdogs.

  What misdeed of corruption have they managed to pin upon you? Deng wondered of Deputy Minister Chen Ruihan, who seemed to him unsuited to his new role. By what means have they threatened to spill your children’s blood?

  The young State Security cadre strode into his office and offered Deng his apology.

  They got right down to business. The agreement for which Deng had been summoned was one he had made with Chen’s predecessor—a man now missing and presumably banished. “The satellite device’s targeting algorithms have proven to be fundamentally inadequate for the demands of orbit. The engineering package obtained by your ministry should have corrected this problem. However...” Deng explained the basis of his decision to pull the second satellite weapon from final assembly.

  Chen surprised Deng with a shrug. “We are all eager for a successful demonstration as soon as possible. What matters most to state security is that we rid ourselves of this particular intelligence resource we keep at your disposal. In a very real way, you and I share in that risk. Of course, I don’t profess to understand the physics involved.”

  Deng studied his colleague. “Unfortunately, my job is not so straightforward as you seem to view your own. Mere physics … this is the domain of college professors.”

  “Forgive me, Commissioner. I did not intend to generalize or in any way deny your heroic accomplishment.”

  “Well, as you might have already noticed in your brief tenure, with this project we are tilling unbroken ground. I have responded to Vice Chairman Rong’s prodding and scheduled a seven-day workweek. The result so far seems to be only a decrease in efficiency. As the program continues to slip, there will be yet more masters to whom I must answer. Everyone seems to have jumped to lean on me, as if I am some sort of a ditch-digger.”

  Chen held up his hands. “Rong has made clear to me that I am personally responsible for ensuring the Second Directorate complies with your technology needs. If it’s true that we have, then as the Americans say, is the ball not in your court?”

  “I’ve lost a key scientist,” Deng reminded him pointedly.

  Chen leaned forward. “It has come to my attention that some of the foreign scientists overindulge in alcohol. Such a problem could easily overshadow one man’s absence, no?”

  “Even had I noticed anyone drinking, Korzhakov and his men would be better drunk than most men are sober. If you wish to help solve my problems, answer me this. Why do I encounter such stonewalling on the subject of Dr. Zhao’s availability?”

  “That is because Comrade Zhao’s convalescence is taking longer than his doctors predicted.”

  “I see. It would be helpful for Zhao to at least review some reports from his hospital bed. Nothing too taxing...?”

  “I am afraid not.”

  “Now you are speaking as his doctor. Zhao is that debilitated, is he? Perhaps better medical attention would yield a faster recovery. Perhaps you are unaware that included in my role is the need to be kept abreast of our latest advances in medicine. In a very real way, you bear the risk of keeping Zhao from his Fourth Line responsibilities—especially if unnecessarily so.”

  Chen’s expression hardened.

  “All I would need to know are the specifics of his ailment.”

  “I will pass along your suggestion, Commissioner. You can be assured that for the time being at least, Zhao is receiving adequate medical care.”

  SOME NINETY MINUTES LATER, seated inside the lobby of Capital Hospital, Deng waited impatiently as the battle-weary surgeon delivered apparently devastating news to a young couple seated on the opposite side of the lounge. At some point Dr. Wu glanced over and made eye contact with Deng. Several minutes passed before Wu left the couple to grieve on their own.

  Doctor Wu apologized for the delay. “No doubt you are here to inquire about the post mortem on your lady friend.”

  Wu sat down opposite Deng and clasped his slender hands together. “I am afraid I have bad news. I should have left word at your office. There will be no autopsy performed.”

  Deng frowned. “Did my secretary not forward the authorization?”

  “The problem was indeed a bureaucratic lapse, only here, at the hospital. It seems the body was cremated before the authorization came through. I am deeply sorry.”

  Once again Deng found it difficult to read how much of the doctor’s chagrin stemmed from his daily travails.

  “You never explicitly said so,” Doctor Wu continued, “but I think I understand your concern that foul play might have played a role in her death. I can assure you that she died of the trauma sustained in her youth.”

  “But you cannot be absolutely certain.”

  “True, not without an autopsy.”

  Deng absorbed the finality of the words. A wrongful death in this case would have been grounds for him to request an official investigation. “I see.”

  “Forgive me if I am intruding, but do I take it that her letter yielded no further insight? I recall she claimed to know—”

  “Who butchered my family? I am operating under that assumption, Doctor, based only on what you quoted her as saying. It seems whatever secrets Liu kept have died along with her.” With the help of his Internet-savvy son, an exhaustive search of the unfamiliar name mentioned in Liu’s deathbed note yielded nothing conclusive.

  Another matter came to mind. “Are you familiar with a program we approved some years ago to computerize hospital admissions records?”

  Wu’s expression brightened. “We are now able to closely monitor blood type and supply—I am intimately familiar with it. The system has been expanded to provide other benefits, such as prison donor organ availability.”

  Deng removed a folded slip of paper from inside his coat pocket. “Another acquaintance of mine checked into a hospital, I believe somewhere in the central provinces. Undoubtedly he is accompanied by his wife, but I have no idea who his other relatives are and no easy way to determine his whereabouts.”

  “That’s actually not uncommon.”

  Deng chuckled. “The grand bargain of age and wisdom includes infirmity and forgetfulness.”

  “Would you like me to locate him for you?”

  “If you please.” Deng handed him the slip of paper with the physicist Zhao’s name.

  “I will personally search hospital admissions and get back to you within the next day or so.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Deng rose. “But do not burden yourself contacting my office. I’ll call on you, here, in a couple of days.”

  46

  INSIDE THEIR SEVENTH-FLOOR suite of Baltimore’s Annapolis Inn, the only sound was the crackle of ice melting in alcohol. The ethnic Chinese man, whom Paul Devinn had known over the years simply as ‘Lee,’ reached to place the tumbler of scotch on the low polished table.

  “You will stay away from Stuart,” Lee said, staring at Devinn with unblinking eyes. “Including his home, his family, his workplace.”

  Devinn looked down at the table, where the clutter of maps and instructions were part of a larger plan he could only imagine. Rather than being taken aback, he found his hand
ler’s reaction intriguing. “I was thinking, you could access your sources—”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Lee’s expression darkened.

  Devinn wondered why his handler should care a whit about Stuart, except maybe as an irritating reminder of a blown operation? “It’s possible that Stuart has been screwing the Asian woman all along,” Devinn reported, choosing his words carefully.

  Lee stared.

  “If her secrets are his secrets, that would make me—us—doubly vulnerable, particularly should the authorities decide to dig deeper into my disappearance. I’m certain you agree it’s in our interest that there be no trail linking us to their Mojave incident. Frankly, I don’t plan to spend the rest of my days looking over my shoulder.” He had to be careful not to overplay that risk. When it came to maintaining their own distance from the risk of exposure, he suspected they would stop short of nothing.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Lee assured him.

  “Don’t you see—”

  “This is really beyond your brief, Mr. Devinn. Already you took it upon yourself to mishandle the matter of your agent, whose murder I had to discover on my own. You convinced me that your haste was probably justified. My workload in the wake of your bloody Rivergate fiasco still hasn’t...oh. You might be interested to know something. The FBI did, in fact, determine the location of the stolen Vandenberg launch data that you failed to extract from Ahmadi.”

  Devinn stared back at Lee. So the Iranian had been holding out on him, after all. “Going forward, I’ll adjust my methods accordingly.”

  “Now, it is true that you are paid to endure a certain level of risk for our client, and our philosophy has been to defer to you as the bearer of that risk an appropriate level of judgment. The fact remains that we were right, and you turned out to be wrong, about the level of risk with your execution of the Thanatech objective. But I cannot impress upon you enough—I insist—do not overstep your mission. You will only make matters worse by going after these people and inviting further scrutiny. I hate to think of the consequences if we can no longer be confident in our mutual trust. Do we understand one another?”

  “I understand.”

  “That’s good, because we’re going to be very busy in the coming weeks.” Lee nodded toward the assortment of documents spread over the table. “The same men are going to assist you again.”

  “I’m a little worried about that.”

  “Exactly what are you worried about?”

  “Well, it has been awhile since we eliminated Ahmadi. You seem convinced the codes and cutout procedures are still valid.”

  “The security protocols work just fine.” Lee nodded assuredly, his eyes dancing affectionately over the documents on the table.

  “You seem certain of that.”

  “I have put them to a little test. Had Tehran still been in the loop, or somehow managed to re-establish them, Ahmadi’s network would not have responded. You’re certain your calendar is clear?”

  “Six weeks—I think I get it,” Devinn confirmed, having already agreed to that twice.

  47

  THACKERAY GESTURED EMILY CHANG toward the thick stainless-steel door, already open to reveal four, two-inch diameter slide bolts retracted into the door jam—a brass plate displayed the name of a prominent vault manufacturer in York, Pennsylvania. He smiled at Emily, who wondered what it was about her newly assigned project that warranted so many safeguards. “I think you’ll understand when you see what’s inside.”

  Recessed into the wall beside the facility entrance, a computer screen displayed in bright-blue characters the date and time along with the indication that ‘79 occupants’ were currently admitted. Below the screen and keyboard were viewing goggles and a touch screen.

  Thackeray explained. “This thing simultaneously scans the retina of your left eye and the digits of your right hand, while comparing the features to those in our database. Hey, Stu, housed inside this baby is one of your old argon LSU-2’s.”

  “Magnifico,” said Stuart.

  “You ought to be proud. We’ve shipped over a thousand of ’em.”

  Emily asked, “Isn’t a retinal image alone impossible to duplicate?”

  “Actually, that’s all the original system featured. Then the government sent people down to evaluate our security. DOE is sketchy about it, but somewhere—Sandia National Lab, maybe? Guess it doesn’t matter. Some contractor’s security system was compromised, and the breach apparently occurred within the database. The solution is the redundancy you see here—two independent biometric scans, each connected to an independent computer system installed and maintained by separate contractors, one US and the other UK.”

  “It’s funny that Perry never mentioned this,” Stuart observed. “Sounds like expensive overkill.”

  “It isn’t cheap. Each database provider has to comply with verification that no common employment histories exist, such that no one person can readily crack both architectures.”

  “Impressive,” Emily said.

  Stuart asked, “So do we use it or just admire it?”

  Thackeray stooped slightly in order to engage the system; a small red luminescent reticule appeared on his cheek and disappeared into his eye as he drew his face against the rubber goggles. He also rested his open hand on the touch screen. “It’s activated by pressing your forehead against the pad,” Thackeray explained for Emily, “like this.”

  The computer screen changed hue; the message ‘100% complete’ coincided with an audible tone. The name ‘Thackeray, Milton, EN-381’ flashed onto the screen. A light above the door changed from red to green, indicating admission approval; Thack stepped through the doorway past infra-red scanners. The light above the door reverted to red.

  Following Stuart and Thackeray through, Emily’s entrance took a few extra minutes in order to log her into the system.

  Stuart turned to Thackeray. “You mentioned to me the other day something about extra security precautions. When was it that they came down on us to implement this redundancy?”

  “A little while ago.”

  “Emily was born a little while ago. Can you please narrow it down some?”

  “We—” Thackeray cast a nervous glance toward Emily.

  “Emily’s entitled to know as much as I am.”

  “Perry’ll have my ass. Is that what you want?”

  “If he doesn’t, I will.”

  Thackeray let out a deep breath. “Perry’s freaked about word getting out that CLI practices lax security and if you ask me, they blew the whole damn thing way out of proportion. Chrissakes, we’re talking about one suspicious incident, okay, one that we know about. The bureaucracy was bad enough already. This all hit the fan at about the time we wrapped up work on that Reedy boondoggle I was telling you about.”

  “What suspicious incident?”

  “We’re going to be late for the test.”

  Stuart stared him down.

  “Why don’t I just show you? Emily needs to know the vault procedures any way.”

  “Good.” Stuart frowned. “Another vault?”

  Thackeray led the way down a wide corridor, explaining for Emily as they walked that the project facility was comprised of four subterranean levels, including the floor of the laboratory or ‘well’ where all of their tests were conducted. Most of the work in the office areas was dedicated to the tele-transportation project, the exception being a few engineers to support the Satellite Telecom Services unit. They paused beside the glass wall of a room where a videoconference was taking place, its participants flipping pages on the table in front of them.

  “Tell us more about the vault,” Stuart said.

  Thackeray replied, “How much do you remember about the nuts and bolts of writing proprietary software?”

  Thackeray’s question prompted for Emily disturbing images involving her effort to resurrect the damaged Thanatech engine control. Sabotage...blackmail...murder...

  Stuart cast her a knowing glance. “I’ve
got the luxury of surrounding myself with people smarter than me to take care of that.”

  “Smarter people than you, huh? Could you please narrow that down some?” Thackeray turned and led them into a large office area full of shoulder-height cubicles. A few conversing employees paused mid-sentence as they entered the room. “Everyone here, forty or so software engineers and thirty-odd systems analysts, writes software for two of the five modules that control the tele-transportation process, Exciter and Power Modulation. Between sublevels four and three are six office areas just like this one. A total of one-hundred ninety-seven software people, so the point is, CLI spends a lot every day to write proprietary software. That investment of time and money has to be protected. This way.”

  They followed Thackeray down two flights of stairs; more offices, another wide corridor to a single steel door. Stuart waited while Thackeray shared the five-digit security code with Emily that he keyed into the cypher pad. They stepped through the doorway into chill, clean air—not antiseptic clean, as in sterile, but electrical clean as in ozone and sublimated plastic. The powerful hum of supercomputers filled their ears.

  Thackeray noticed Emily rubbing her arms. “We keep it a steady sixteen centigrade in here.” The reason for that, he explained, was to control the environment for the multiprocessing, refrigerator-sized IBM / Sun servers—eighty-two of their most powerful—delivering up to 5 quintillion calculations per second. Three-hundred miles of fiber-optic cable snaked beneath the recessed tile floor connecting them all. Operating the supercomputer required that CLI maintain its own 20-megawatt power station and emergency back-up; cooling provided by six 1000-ton industrial chillers had the capacity to air condition an entire 90-story office building. “By the way, five exaFLOPS ranks this baby among the top three fastest computers in the world.”

  Stuart asked him, “Whose rank first and second?”

  Emily flashed him a teasing smile. “China has both top slots, of course.”