Razing Beijing: A Thriller

by Elston III, Sidney

  Stuart slid back the sleeve of his sweater; almost 7:00 P.M. Under power, the sailboat glided past the Nomini light house to starboard, its silhouette bleak against a faint gray sky. His eyes eventually found their way to Emily’s. She returned his smile and brushed strands of hair from her face.

  Stuart said to Joanne, “I’ve got an unfortunate situation I was hoping you could advise me on. How much do you know about settling an estate when there aren’t any heirs?”

  “You mean, intestate?”

  “I guess.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  “I don’t think so, a guy from Thanatech. So how does ‘intestate’ work...?”

  WHITECAPS WERE FROTHING the inlet and the sky was threatening to unload. Stuart reached down to throttle back the Volvo Penta diesel. He then noticed the figure walking tentatively to the end of the dock, hands in his pockets. It was Thackeray—perfect timing, he thought. Ashley would know what to do.

  Mystic closed on the dock and Stuart notched the throttle lever to neutral. Ashley shouted to Thackeray, who readied his hands, suddenly unsure of taking commands from a little girl at the bow of a yacht that was barreling straight at him. Ashley steadied her feet, and with all her might flung the coil of rope—Thack’s eyes went wide as he reached to retrieve it. Ashley shouted again; Thackeray passed one loop around a dock cleat and pulled out the slack.

  With the sailboat securely cleated to the dock, Stuart shut off the engine and covered the instruments in the midst of a downpour. Emily and Joanne joined Ashley racing up the dock for the boathouse. Stuart had known for some time Thackeray’s visceral fear of the water, so he waved him aboard.

  He was below deck switching off the instruments when Thackeray’s wobbly legs appeared descending the steps. “Dammit Thack, you’re letting the rain in!”

  Thackeray planted his feet at the base of the stairs. “Awesome. It’s like the Ritz Carlton down here.”

  Stuart slid the hatch cover and shut out the pounding rain. “I’d have shamed you aboard long ago if I’d known how to do it.” He removed two cans of Coors from the fridge. He handed one along with a towel to Thackeray. “What brings you out here?”

  Thackeray toweled the rain from his beard. “You never came back to watch the senator’s demo the other day.”

  “Shit, I still had the whole evening in front of me to waste. Did I miss something spectacular? Nobody said anything at dinner.”

  “They wouldn’t have. Perry was too busy calming Milner to bring them down to the well. I guess the senator must’ve shit his pants. We gave him earplugs, you’d have thought he’d be prepared to hear something loud. But anyway, we found this on the destination cart.” Thackeray removed a cellophane bag from his pocket and handed it to Stuart.

  “What is it?” Stuart held the bag up to a recessed overhead light. He saw what looked like the sharp corner of broken quartz, no larger than a shirt button. Then it dawned on him. “I don’t believe it...Thack—you’ve done it! Teleportation! Why the hell hasn’t this news been bouncing off the walls?”

  “Only a couple of us know about it.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re not so sure it’s very good news.” He put the beer to his lips and tilted his head back.

  Dumbfounded, Stuart looked again at the small chunk of quartz in his hand. The entire target pyramid weighed shy of fifteen pounds. “So what if it’s not the whole enchilada. You’re a lot further along than you were a month ago.”

  Thackeray looked at him as if the news he was about to deliver would signal the end of all humanity. “Actually, it’s probably very bad news.”

  Stuart finally realized that Thackeray displayed not the slightest sense of triumph. “What do you mean?”

  Thackeray crushed the empty beer can. “One of our Swiss buddies came up with a theory. Even Keilig seemed to dismiss it at first. I happen to respect him. Did you know he’s one of the world’s renowned—”

  “We all think Keilig’s a genius. What theory?”

  “Well, Vaughan came into my office some months ago, back when we were having all that trouble getting Reedy off dead-center. By then we were consistently failing to get the target object to reappear. Back in the nineties, early quantum teleportation experiments demonstrated we could entangle two photons, separate them, then entangle one of them—call it the messenger photon—with what we at CLI would call the target photon. Pooff—both target and messenger are destroyed. The destination photon assumes all quantum and classical properties of the original target photon—you have the essence of teleportation. I guess it’s sort of easy teleporting one or two particles.

  “Now, this guy Franz’s theory goes something like this.” Thackeray’s lips turned down in a sneer, as if bile was ascending his throat. “As you teleport larger and larger objects, naturally the quantity of particles increases—more atoms, more molecules. Franz is afraid that maybe the quantity of possible destinations increases exponentially to the number of particles.”

  “Destinations...as in plural?”

  “For all we know, little bits of our pyramids are scattered all over Creation—literally. If Franz’s fears hold true, the target object would never fully reconstitute.”

  Stuart stared at his trusted project manager.

  “It’s just a theory,” Thackeray added.

  “Why haven’t I heard of any such theory?”

  Thackeray smiled weakly. “Wouldn’t exactly appear in keeping with the program, would it?”

  “Thack!”

  “Hey, they only came up with it sort of back-of-the-envelope.”

  “You seem to have bought into it!” Stuart pondered the implication of flushing tens of millions of dollars down the proverbial toilet.

  Thackeray saw that Stuart was turning red. “You don’t have to shout.”

  “How the fuck do we control a process like that!”

  “We don’t, of course. Like I said, it’s only a theory, one of many. There are still the other obstacles to worry about. We’re a long way from incorporating the improvements you got Perry to approve.”

  “But if Keilig’s people are right, this is a goddamn showstopper! Multiple destinations?! You can’t just sit on information like this!”

  “Jeez, Stu, will you calm down? I don’t see moving a piece of grit from one table to the other as any reason to jump up and down.”

  57

  Monday, June 15

  “I HAVE BEEN ORDERED back to Beijing tonight in order to brief the brass,” Deng informed his top two engineering managers. “Please bring me up to speed on the interferometry work. However...” He slipped his laser protective goggles on over his last few square centimeters of exposed skin. “I have neither the time nor interest in a doctoral thesis.”

  Deng managed to see Wen-ho glance at Valeriy Korzhakov and tightly smile. From the moment he had met the young, Beijing-appointed replacement for his missing physicist, Deng considered the man a bit too clever. “Enjoy life’s humor while you can, comrade. A few more negative briefings like my last one, and we are all going to be reported missing.”

  Wen-ho’s mouth fell open to speak. He abruptly closed it and returned Deng’s glare.

  Korzhakov broke the heavy silence. “This way, Commissioner.”

  Deng followed the ex-Soviet directed-energy weapons specialist and Wen-ho through a door-lock.

  Their short walk did little to ease the tension as they emerged atop the five-story tall gantry. Deng did his level best to conceal his deep personal pride. Supported vertically in its assembly jig, stabilized by two 35-tonne overhead cranes, stood Satellite Weapon Number Two.

  Korzhakov explained to him, “However convinced we are of a software glitch in our orbiting vehicle, we cannot on basic principle ignore the possibility of a systemic error in the beam steering mechanism, even something which might include...well, the dreaded ‘H’ word.”

  “A hardware problem.”

  “Correct. So, the interferometry test underway permits us to
assess the processing of the laser beam from the instant that it is generated, to when it fully emerges from inside the weapon. As you know, the beam must criss-cross between a handful of adaptive mirrors, each with a role in steering, compensation for thermal blooming, and other atmospheric effects. During our test we articulate these mirrors, very precisely, and compare the actual measured shift in wavelength—”

  “To the beam’s nominal path length,” Deng surmised.

  Korzhakov smiled broadly. “The actual is subtracted from nominal and reported as error.”

  As complicated as it sounded, Deng suspected this probably represented something of a simplification. The purpose of the Pointing Control System originally devised by the Soviets now included terrestrial fluorescence detection—an innovation unique to the Chinese design.

  Korzhakov led them down spiral steps that wound around the satellite—Deng admired in silent awe the satellite’s exterior contour. Beneath the matte black ablative surface that was designed to defeat bombarding radar and laser energy, thousands of capillary tubes circulated high-pressure liquid helium for cryogenically cooling the spacecraft’s copper skin. At 73 Kelvin, bulk infrared signature during orbital maneuvers would blend the vehicle into the background of space for even America’s most sensitive detectors. It struck Deng as ironic that stealth was so far their most successfully proven feature, yet the steps taken to acquire the enabling technologies had nearly exposed the Security Ministry’s foreign subterfuge and terminated the entire undertaking.

  Korzhakov directed Deng’s attention through an access plate that had been removed to expose the focal plane, located thirteen meters behind the primary mirror. “Deep inside the carbon composite bowels of the PCS is the heart of the optical sensor suite—the retina of the eye, as it were. The Visual Light Photon Counter array...ah, here we are. Looks like we have some initial results.”

  They approached a portable computer console connected to an umbilical snaking out of the satellite. The avalanche of numbers marching down the monitor all reported mechanical system error in the range of .00000015 meters—less than a quarter wavelength of light.

  Not bad, thought Deng, considering the complexity of the mechanism. He looked up from the monitor to find Korzhakov wearing a self-satisfied grin.

  “From an altitude of 300 kilometers,” Korzhakov said, “I will deliver you point-and-hold stability within the button on your shirt.”

  “Your bravado strikes me as a bit premature.” Deng scratched his cheek through his nylon mask. “This is good news, then?”

  “It certainly strengthens the case for an isolated software glitch.”

  The men resumed their descent of the stairs. Deng recognized numerous ‘off-the-shelf’ technologies, from charge coupled devices and piezoelectrics to wave front processors—many of them similar to those in use aboard the James Webb Space Telescope, currently loitering beyond the moon’s orbit within the second LaGrange point. That such technologies had been lifted by necessity from another country’s shelf still managed to give him pause. Descending all the way to the assembly floor, the trio stood quietly for several moments gazing up at their towering creation. At length, Wen-ho excused himself in order to attend the daily status review.

  Deng watched the man leave. Wen-ho’s ongoing attempt to assign blame for their current problems to the foreigners seemed like a flawed strategy for fostering their cooperation, and only the latest wrinkle of an unfortunate eleventh hour management shuffle. Notwithstanding the man’s grasp of English and technical wherewithal, his eyes and ears in Xichang was proving to be a thoroughly incompetent manager. Only this morning, a trusted member of his staff approached him with evidence that Wen-ho was secretly reporting directly to Rong and his cronies inside Zhongnanhai. Dr. Zhao’s absence, he sorely realized, was taking its toll.

  He regretted his inability to draw Korzhakov deeper into his circle of trust. “The Americans strive to capture fluorescence at the individual photon level.”

  “They will never achieve that,” Korzhakov sputtered. “Certainly not from orbit.”

  “As usual, they have set for themselves an ambitious goal, so they’ll need another invention or two before they arrive. We, on the other hand, do not seek replication. Our computation and energy needs are simplified by half.” In fact, whereas the American spectroscopy sought to capture individual photons, only a fraction of fluorescing material—just a few thousand molecules, no more really than those liberated during normal sublimation—should be adequate for quantum entanglement to initiate the Chinese process.

  The onus of achieving that now rested firmly on the shoulders of the software developers, the very engineers who seemed to Deng increasingly lost at sea with neither a compass nor a rudder. In his mind he began composing the report to his superiors. He imagined their panic upon hearing it.

  Deng turned to Korzhakov, “Tell me what more it is that you need.”

  “I’ve told you what we need. Our inability to write proper code is the problem. And at the heart of that problem lies a skill vacuum—a very unique skill, unique to only one of our physicists.”

  Deng was tired of excuses. “Unfortunately, this is one error we have to correct with whatever skill is already at your disposal.”

  58

  “DEVINN WAS JUST ANAL enough to have settled two months advance on his rent, utilities, and everything else, whether or not it was part of a ruse,” Stuart told Emily, somewhat dejectedly. He stopped short of suggesting that they were wasting their time.

  “That’s such a negative way of looking at it,” Emily teased him, smiling. “If he was so efficient, why did he choose to cancel the Maserati lease instead of simply parking it in a garage for two months?”

  Emily’s point notwithstanding, Stuart found it hard to hold out hope for a mission increasingly likely to fail. Arriving in Cleveland early that Tuesday morning armed with little more than Paul Devinn’s address, Stuart’s visit to the post office branch was met with a polite rebuke that policy prohibited even acknowledging a change in delivery status. Emily encountered similar obstacles during her own excursion that morning. Unconvinced that a scrutinizing customer was merely trying to acquire service similar to that of her neighbor and friend, Paul Devinn, the local cable and Internet service providers had each refused to discuss it. With Marlene Schwegman’s help, an Internet search and credit report had also proven to be disappointing sources for uncovering leads.

  They had learned by morning’s end that Devinn put a two-month hold on both his racquet club membership and local newspaper subscription. Their only real success, such as it was, consisted of Emily’s discovery during her visit to the city’s one Maserati leasing company. There she learned that unless Devinn’s lease expiration happened to coincide with his departure, surrendering the car would trigger a cancellation clause costing thousands of dollars.

  Stuart concealed his annoyance at the raucous jumping and shouting of two undisciplined children several booths away, their parents obliviously relaxed and sipping beverages. “I had the impression he’d been planning this trip for some time. Could be he’d gotten a special clause written in to coincide with his plans.”

  “Without knowing for sure, I find it suspicious.” Emily leaned forward and touched her hand to Stuart’s arm. “Don’t give up. We still have our acting audition, don’t we?”

  Stuart raised his glance from her hand, and their eyes met—he smiled. Suddenly aware, Emily withdrew her hand.

  Stuart had hoped to avoid having to rely on their little impostor stunt. It wasn’t clear that wielding a few legal terms and a couple of phony business cards would lend credibility to any of their lies. It was not as if he and Emily were professional sleuths—an avenue he might’ve pursued, were it not for the convenience of pulling together personal loose ends that the trip to Cleveland had also allowed.

  “How did your deposition this morning go?” Emily asked, still blushing.

  “Wonderful! Nothing like a lawsuit to breathe new li
fe into a man. You know, I’ve been thinking how easily somebody in Devinn’s position might recruit an accomplice. For instance, how much did you know about Sean Thompson?”

  Emily took a sip of beer from her mug. “You mean, personal things?”

  “Personal things.”

  Emily frowned. “Sean had a doctor-brother living in Cincinnati he’d occasionally driven down to see. I knew that he was moody. He didn’t seem to be dating anyone. Sometimes he did not seem decisive about things. I certainly never thought he used drugs.”

  “And you worked closely with him for years. You didn’t mention anything that might indicate a criminal side, certainly nothing to suggest that he might be corruptible. A human resources director, on the other hand, has access to information that could be used to construct a profile. First step would be deciding which technical skills to recruit. From that list of employees, it would be a matter of a little systematic digging into things like prior employment records, extracurricular activities, personal finances. The arrest record of any Thanatech employee is bound to be nil, but even minor offenses like cheating on a college exam, I don’t know, maybe racking up speeding tickets, might offer clues for who to approach.”

  Emily folded her arms at the prospect of somebody peering into the personal lives of her and her staff.

  “Did Thompson ever mention having any debt?”

  “Not that I recall. He certainly seemed to have enough money, drove a nice car.” Emily bit her lower lip and looked at him. “I know how he might’ve sabotaged the flight.”

  “Something in the software, right?”

  “I mean specifically. Sean had access to software that interfaced the engine control with the aircraft’s flight management computers. Have you ever heard of a ‘Trojan Horse?’ ”

  A horse that practices safe sex? Stuart was tempted to say. “I can imagine what it is.”

  Emily looked at him strangely. “I’d like to ask Ian Vickers to check out the memory module.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you. Where is it?”