Razing Beijing: A Thriller

by Elston III, Sidney

  Thrusting his chin forward, he stepped past the guard through the doorway and into the elevator.

  The door slid closed—Deng let out a deep breath of relief. He reached out of habit to select the subterranean level for the tunnel back to his office, but hesitated. For what was likely to be his last decision as technology czar, Deng selected the street level instead.

  121

  LINDA POTTER APPEARED STARTLED by a presence beside her desk. Her surprise gave way to a smile. “Welcome home, Stu.”

  “It’s good to be back.” Stuart meant it more than the woman could possibly know.

  She scrutinized his appearance. “Poor thing, you look as though you haven’t gotten much sleep.”

  “Have you seen Thack and Emily Chang around this morning?” He already had a good idea where he would find them.

  The smile faded; it seemed that Stu was also badly in need of a shower. “As a matter of fact, Milton was in early to see Mr. Perry,” the office manager replied with a measure of distaste. “But I haven’t seen either one of them since.”

  Stuart was joined by McBurney and the two FBI agents.

  “How about Steve Reedy?” Stuart asked out of curiosity.

  “Steve’s wife called in to say he wasn’t feeling well.” Mrs. Potter eyed the three strangers. “Ralph’s been expecting you. He’s alone now and doesn’t appear to be on the phone. Why don’t you go in?”

  Stuart led McBurney and Hildebrandt through the suite past the executive conference room. Outside Perry’s office, he knocked on the door. There came no reply, so he swung open the heavy paneled door. “Hey, Ralph?”

  Stuart nearly choked. His partner was reclining back in his chair, eyes calmly fixed. From the hole in the center of his forehead a trickle of blood ran beside the bridge of his nose and pooled in the corner of his eye. Against the leather seat back atop Perry’s shoulder was a wet, lumpy mass.

  The odor of spent propellant still in the air jolted the FBI man—Hildebrandt rushed inside with his handgun drawn. “Brophy!”

  Brophy bolted through the doorway and moved quickly with Hildebrandt to secure the office, their firearms extended and sweeping all corners of the room.

  Hildebrandt reposed his weapon. “Is there any other way out of here?”

  Stuart shook his head.

  Hildebrandt asked Brophy to find out who had been in and out of the office. “We’re talking minutes ago. Call in back-up from the Richmond office. And make sure this time they put the local PD on alert. Get a coroner in here!” Brophy charged out of the office past the stares of Stuart and McBurney. “Don’t either of you two touch anything,” Hildebrandt told them.

  McBurney turned away from the murdered executive. “We should have known something like this was coming,” he told Stuart with weary sadness.

  Hildebrandt caught the remark. “Would you mind sharing with me why we should have known someone would be murdered while in his own office?”

  “I presume for the same reason someone was tortured inside his own home.”

  “I’ve had about enough of your spooky riddles.”

  Stuart turned and walked miserably out of the office.

  Hildebrandt watched him leave and turned toward McBurney. “I thought I’ve been pretty up-front with you.”

  “You have absolutely been that.”

  Hildebrandt pointed at the corpse. “Then fill me in on what this is about.”

  McBurney undid the top two buttons of his shirt. “We have reason to believe certain technology pioneered by CLI was stolen by a foreign government.”

  “That’s not exactly news. The Bureau investigated espionage here months ago.”

  “It appears to have been used to develop a very effective weapon.”

  “That may be national security, it’s also espionage. What kind of weapon?”

  McBurney blinked. “We’re well beyond the point of espionage here. Apparently this thing’s already being aimed at the United States.”

  “ ‘Apparently?’ You Langley types need to have enough sand to stick your necks out. What kind of weapon?”

  McBurney lowered his gaze.

  “Oh—you don’t think I’m smart enough to understand.”

  “No, I don’t think I’m smart enough to explain it.”

  The grinding wail of the fire alarm startled both men. They bolted for the door and nearly toppled Agent Brophy heading the opposite way.

  Brophy was pale. “Perry’s secretary described a lawyer that was just here. This guy fits Thackeray’s description of Paul Devinn.”

  Hildebrandt swore.

  “It’s worse. That alarm? The woman says she can’t be certain the guy ever left the building. Mr. Stuart seems to think he might actually be downstairs.”

  Hildebrandt said, “Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves.” He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Nick, find out if Gail Carter’s night goggle man this morning, Miller I think, remembers spotting a silencer on the end of Devinn’s handgun.”

  The junior agent pulled out his cell phone to comply.

  Resting his hand on Linda Potter’s sob-wracked shoulder, it appeared to Stuart that his plans were falling apart. While the FBI struggled for direction, he weighed the idea of having Linda page Emily and Thackeray back upstairs to the lobby. But what if he happened to inadvertently lure them into Devinn?

  Stuart pulled Hildebrandt and McBurney aside. “We don’t have time to screw around,” he said. “If anything happens to those two downstairs, a lot more people could die. We have got to get ourselves down there.”

  “Mr. Stuart, the FBI does not train its agents to respond like cowboys,” Hildebrandt pointed out. “Whatever else you might’ve thought this was, it is now a homicide investigation. I cannot allow you or anyone else to interfere.” Curious employees were now pouring from their offices into the lobby on their way outdoors. “Devinn has probably bugged out. Either way, you my friend are out of it. Especially as it would otherwise mean endangering yourself and other folks. This is an armed criminal.”

  “That’s precisely why we need your help. You hear that alarm?” Stuart explained that the building code required all security access doors to deactivate in the event of a fire, and remain so until re-armed by the responding fire marshal. “It’s possible Devinn coerced Perry into revealing that before killing him.”

  Hildebrandt did not appear to be moved.

  “All right then, fuck it—you can try to stop me. Sam?”

  McBurney said to Hildebrandt, “Could it be that making you think he exited with the rest of the crowd is exactly what he’s counting on?”

  Agent Brophy approached them while stuffing his cell phone inside his coat. “Miller does recall seeing a silenced weapon. Forensics dug a forty-five caliber slug out of a second floor bedroom wall.”

  Hildebrandt muttered another swear. “Brophy and I get to call the shots down there every step of the way. And try not to get shot, okay? It’ll be my ass if you do.”

  With the alarm blaring, Stuart led the trio past the elevator and into the stairwell.

  “How big is this facility?” Agent Brophy asked as they descended the steps.

  “Offices for three-sixty, plus the well—that’s the applied physics lab, roughly the size of a basketball court with an observation loft. The computer area houses, I don’t know, a few dozen of these refrigerator-sized servers and so forth. That’s where my two engineers should be.”

  “You don’t think the alarm might bring Emily out?” McBurney asked.

  Stuart held up his watch. McBurney got the idea; time was running out. He directed them to the windowless steel door on the landing of the fourth flight of stairs. A burnished aluminum placard indicated ‘Sublevel 2.’

  “Back,” Hildebrandt advised the civilians as both FBI agents drew their weapons. Brophy pulled the door open and Hildebrandt stepped through. McBurney and then Stuart entered, with Brophy closing the rear.

  Stuart pointed out the illuminated green
light over the steel access door to the Project facility—the fire alarm had in fact disabled the lock. More disturbing, the security monitor that displayed the number of facility occupants showed a tally of three.

  Hildebrandt acknowledged with a grudging nod. “Are there a lot of places to hide in there?”

  The look on Stuart’s face needed no explanation.

  “Terrific.”

  This time, both FBI men led the way their weapons drawn. Stuart and McBurney followed them into a large, poorly lit room. The two ceiling-mounted emergency floods cast hard shadows, making it relatively easy for someone to lay waiting within the darkened maze of cubicles. The droning alarm could only further mask Devinn’s advance on his quarry.

  “I can throw the breaker for the lights,” Stuart quietly suggested.

  Hildebrandt briefly considered that. “You might alert the wrong people.”

  They advanced through the sea of cubicles, around the corner and down to the end of a darkened corridor.

  Hildebrandt studied the closed door. “What’s through there?”

  “The other half of the corridor,” replied Stuart. “I’ve never seen it closed before.”

  “Why is it closed now?”

  Stuart shook his head.

  Hildebrandt reached out from his crouch, pressed the latch release bar, and began to open the door. The fire alarm fell suddenly silent.

  Hildebrandt exchanged a stunned look with Brophy. “Hey Stuart, did we just get locked out of anywhere?”

  “The computer room,” Stuart offered, eyeing the FBI men. “That’s where I expect to find Emily and Thackeray.”

  The foursome ran full bore for the remaining length of the corridor. Stuart directed them left. Passing through several more office areas, he led them finally to the door behind which Stuart hoped they would find Emily and Thack safely at work—he pushed their grisly discovery of Ralph Perry out of his mind.

  Out of breath, Stuart pointed at the numeric keypad embedded in the wall. “I don’t know the combination.”

  FROM HIS CROUCHED position behind a videoconferencing cabinet, Paul Devinn was able to peer across the darkened conference room through the glass partition at anybody passing by in the corridor. Lee had warned him correctly after all, he realized. Stuart and the CIA officer had not been alone.

  Devinn held his wristwatch to capture the light and saw that it was 10:02 A.M. Time was running down, but to exactly what he didn’t know. Devinn froze when another interruption broke the silence.

  HILDEBRANDT HAMMERED the door with the butt end of his pistol. After several seconds, the door remained closed. He rapped again, harder this time and accompanied by Stuart shouting Emily’s name. The thumb tang on the door handle toggled. The FBI agents stood back and readied their weapons. The door swung slowly inward.

  Emily Chang peered from behind the other side—she froze, terrified, upon seeing two handguns leveled at her. Her eyes flickered to Stuart.

  “Stu!” She pulled the door open and flung her arms around his neck.

  Stuart held Emily in his arms wearing an embarrassed smile. Before long, Emily seemed aware of the stares and withdrew her embrace.

  Looking full at Emily’s bruised, swollen cheek, Stuart became incensed. “Are you okay?”

  Hildebrandt shared a look with McBurney. “Why don’t we move this little reunion inside.” Agent Brophy remained outside the door to post watch.

  Inside, Emily held Stuart’s gaze. “We’ve run into some serious problems.”

  “So have we all. We found Ralph Perry dead.”

  Emily gasped. “Devinn? He followed us here?”

  “Some of us think so.”

  Having herded everyone inside, Hildebrandt’s interest turned to the droning electronic buzz. “What’s back there?”

  “That’s a computer server farm,” Milton Thackeray replied. “There’s also a flight of stairs that lead down to a door to the well. It was locked when I checked it an hour ago.”

  Hildebrandt wielded his handgun and disappeared to investigate.

  “Let’s hear about these problems you’re having,” said Stuart, at which point McBurney became the object of uneasy looks. “Sam knows we intend to hijack the satellite.”

  Thackeray’s smile revealed a chipped tooth. “Hijack, huh?”

  “I quit using the word ‘hack.’ Doesn’t sound appropriate for what we intend to do, you know, render perfectly harmless something so dangerous.”

  “Ah...okay. Whatever words you choose, things are shaping up pretty shitty.” At the top of the list Thackeray cited the absence of the satellite encryption algorithm and key. Emily added with disappointment that they had not completely run the software test simulation.

  “Sounds like we’re screwed,” McBurney noted, giving voice to everyone’s fear. “I presume Deng indicated when he’d be able to send this information you need?”

  “I’m not ready to give up on Deng,” Stuart insisted. “He thought it was going to take time to get his hands on the necessary files. And he had some issue with black market Internet access to deal with before he could send it.”

  McBurney cocked an eyebrow.

  “Deng and I figured we had no choice but to forego the next attack sequence, if in fact there was one, so we decided to aim for this morning. By the way, he said the random key authentication makes it impossible to hack into this thing until after the system is already armed.”

  Emily and Thackeray exchanged a look of disbelief. “Our window has always been that narrow?” Emily asked, realizing with dread the implied lack of time for testing their new code. “When did you plan on telling us?”

  “I’d have told you a lot sooner. I hadn’t planned on being held for interrogation by government thugs.”

  McBurney ignored him. Hildebrandt rejoined the group, apparently satisfied there were no immediate threats.

  Stuart asked Emily, “What time is it in Beijing?”

  “They’re thirteen hours ahead. It’s coming up on eleven P.M.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Yeah, oh shit,” Thackeray agreed.

  “I’ve go to ask. Where do you put the satellite’s location right now?”

  Thackeray studied his monitor. He looked at Stuart. “Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and haulin’ ass.”

  Seeing she had been through a lot physically, Stuart worried about the internal sort of torment that Emily might be battling now. He wondered how she was grappling with the latest revelation regarding her parents. Did she actually suspect that her father might be working to defeat them—from within the very bowels of the Beijing satellite center?

  Now didn’t seem the time to bring up the fate of her father. “Why do I get the feeling that Devinn is sensitive to our schedule?”

  “I think he knows our schedule,” Emily said, something like hatred in her eyes, “but definitely not our objective.”

  “How about telling me?” Hildebrandt said in a fit of frustration. “What schedule, and just what the fuck...excuse me, Miss Chang. Just what is going on here?”

  McBurney gestured toward the two software engineers. “Why not we just worry about protecting them from your suspect. Sounds like we need to buy them a little time.”

  Linda Potter’s trembling voice came over the public address system requesting that Stuart call her extension. Stuart picked up the nearest telephone. “Linda, this is Stuart...yes, we are...he is...thanks, okay, I’ll tell him...no, we’ll let Mr. Hildebrandt handle that.” He hung up the telephone. “Two FBI guys upstairs say they’re here to see you.”

  “That was fast,” said Hildebrandt, observing how little time had elapsed since Brophy phoned in the request. “How do I get back inside this place without having to set off the fire alarm?”

  Stuart suggested that Hildebrandt call from the visitor telephone outside the security entrance. They would send Agent Brophy to readmit him along with the arriving FBI.

  On his way to the elevator—he assumed it was working now—Hildebrandt arri
ved at the security concourse. Oddly enough, he found the door ajar. He knelt to examine what appeared to be a circular rubber disc of the sort used beneath furniture. Obviously somebody—Devinn?—had placed it there to prop open the door. He was tempted to drop it into his pocket, thought better of it, and returned the makeshift doorstopper to where he’d found it.

  * * *

  “WHAT THE HELL, Rong, why the blank stare?” the Second Department chief ribbed his fellow committee member, gesturing toward the largely blank Sony projection screen. But the insinuation was genuine.

  Rong was beginning to think that he should not have permitted the commissioner to leave just yet. I warned Chen not to distract the old bastard.

  Catching Rong’s glare, Chen Ruihan offered his explanation to the department chief that they should expect to see an aerial image of three buildings, arranged around a parking area full of automobiles, before the image converged on that which housed the enemy technology archive. The rooftop of this building, he said, will appear congested with telecommunications gear. “The video transmission will be activated when the attack sequence is imminent.”

  Chen’s revelation succeeded only in sparking impatient guffaws. Those in the audience were understandably bored.

  Minutes later, the committee members quietly exchanged comments around a replenished tray of tea and coffee service. Rong stood nearby with arms folded, nursing a cigarette, disappointed himself by the lack of activity. As he surveyed expressions weary after an extended day of work, he wondered what he might do to rekindle interest in this new style of warfare. The authentication process conducted by his loyal recruits had been of mild interest; there had been some suspense associated with watching them coordinate the inputting of their various codes. Their synchronized rotation of keys was to Rong arcane but seemed to impress his colleagues. This had all been followed by a dazzling accumulation of data to watch.

  Rong glanced up at the video monitor. It reported to him that the satellite was following a declension of minutes and seconds on its way to the target, whose geophysical definition, Chen assured him, coincided with a facility located slightly northeast of Richmond, Virginia. Once more, their attack would be staged within the contiguous borders of the United States. At least that achievement warranted a measure of excitement, pity though it was he had yet to attain the position from which he could relish it.