Wall of Night

by Grant Blackwood

  “He oversees a cultural exchange program,” Tanner said. “When he heard about my book—”

  The agent waved his hand, bored. “Book? What book?”

  “It’s called Glorious Zhongguo.”

  “You are declaring a camera. Where is it?”

  Tanner produced the camera, a top-of-the-line digital Nikon.

  “Photographing of restricted areas is forbidden: Police stations, government buildings, military bases—all forbidden. You must have camera when leave. If not, you will be fined.”

  “I understand.”

  “Now bag.”

  Tanner set his duffle on the counter. The agent unzipped it, rummaged inside for a moment, then withdrew a copy of U.S. News and World Report. “What is this? Why did you bring this?”

  “I wanted something to read.”

  The agent flipped through it, frowning and shaking his head. “This is not allowed.”

  “Why?”

  “Political. It is political.”

  Tanner had half-expected this, but it still surprised him. The fact that he could probably buy the very same magazine in one of the airport’s shops told him the magazine itself wasn’t the issue, but rather that he, an arrogant waiguoren, or “far country person,” had dared bring it into the country.

  The agent rifled through the rest of his bag, studying his razor, tapping his comb against the counter, unfolding his map and holding it up to the light, unrolling his socks … The process continued until Tanner felt the first flutter of fear in his belly. It doesn’t mean anything. You‘re American and you‘ve rubbed him the wrong way, nothing more.

  The agent finished with his bag, then stuffed the contents back inside and shoved it across the counter. He stamped each of Tanner’s documents and handed them back. “Welcome to China.”

  He hadn’t walked fifty feet when two charcoal-suited Chinese men stepped in front of him and flashed their IDs. They were plainclothes PSB inspectors.

  “Good evening,” the taller one said in English. “Your passport and entry documents, please.”

  Tanner handed them over. “Have I done something wrong, Officer?”

  The inspector gave the paperwork a cursory glance, then handed them to his partner. “You will please come with us, Mr. Colson.”

  “Am I under arrest? Have I done something wrong? Perhaps I made a mistake on my—”

  The inspector stepped forward and cupped Tanner’s elbow. “Please come with us.”

  They led him through a locked door and down two flights of stairs to a small, windowless room with a table and three chairs. Sitting in the corner was the suitcase he’d checked aboard the plane.

  Bad sign, Briggs thought. They’d seized his bag before they had approached him, which meant this wasn’t a random stop. Though not yet ready to push the panic button, he felt himself tensing.

  He scanned the room for cameras or peepholes; there were none. It was just him and these two inspectors. If the time came, he’d have to disable both of them quickly.

  He rehearsed it in his mind: Search them for anything pertaining to him, take the documents and luggage, hail a cab, get into the city, find the cache drop and pray Mason’s embassy people have already stocked it, then go to ground … With any luck, an hour after leaving the airport he would be lost in Beijing’s ten million-plus population.

  He prayed it didn’t come to that. His job was going to be hard enough by itself; doing so while being hunted as a fugitive would make it nearly impossible.

  “Please sit,” the lead inspector said.

  Tanner did so. The inspectors remained standing, the tall one at the table, his partner beside the door. Smart boy, Briggs thought. Have to reach him before he can get out the door …

  “Where are you staying, Mr. Colson?”

  “The Bamboo Garden Hotel on Jiugulou Street.”

  “You list your occupation as photographer. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “Tell us about your book.”

  “It’s not my book, actually. I was hired by the house—”

  “The what?”

  “The publisher—Random House in New York.”

  “Please continue.”

  “It’s a portrait on China called Glorious Zhongguo.”

  “You used the traditional name for our country—why?”

  “It’s what you call your country; it seemed appropriate.”

  “Quite so. The word China is a Western invention. Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “You are an employee of this publisher?”

  “No, I’m freelance—I work for myself.”

  “You are an entrepreneur?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “We have entrepreneurs now, you know.”

  “I’ve heard that.” He’s fishing, Tanner thought. Was this waiguoren an advocate for the spread of the disease known as capitalism, or did he recognize the sanctity of Chinese culture and tradition?

  “What’s your opinion of China’s entrepreneurial system?” the inspector pressed.

  “I don’t really have one. I just take pictures. I let the politicians worry about that other stuff.”

  The inspector stared at him for a moment. “Spoken like a true artist, Mr. Colson.” He reached down, picked up Tanner’s duffle, and placed it on the table. “May I?”

  “Help yourself.”

  The inspector unzipped the duffle and pulled out the Nikon. “Very nice. How much memory?”

  “Eight megs,” Tanner replied.

  “You can take many photographs with this?”

  “A couple hundred on the normal setting.”

  “Technology is wonderful, isn’t it?”

  Another lure. “It can be; it also has its downside. There’s a lot to be said for the simple, uncomplicated life.”

  The inspector returned the camera to Tanner’s duffle and returned it to the floor. He then reached into his lapel pocket and withdrew a sheet of paper, which he placed on the table before Tanner. “This is a statement that you will not, under any circumstances, take photographs of police stations, government buildings, military facilities, or any other similarly restricted areas. If you do so, you may be subject to arrest and imprisonment. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then please sign.” Tanner did so. “Furthermore, you will be prepared at all times to present upon request, your camera, film, and permit to any local official. Do you understand this also?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then please initial here.”

  Tanner did so.

  “Thank you,” the man said, then gestured to his partner, who stepped forward and handed Tanner his documents and passport. “You are free to go. Enjoy your stay in Beijing.”

  Tanner gathered his luggage, climbed the stairs to the main concourse, and stepped outside.

  The sidewalk teemed with milling passengers. Taxis honked back and forth. Many in the crowd—Beijing natives, Tanner guessed—were wearing white surgical masks. Except for rare days when the wind was blowing right, Beijing lived under an near-constant smog warning. Tanner looked to the southwest, toward the city proper, and saw a grayish brown cloud hanging over the skyscrapers. Already he could feel his throat stinging.

  He made his way to the curb and spotted a free taxi across of the lane.

  “Wanshang hao!” the driver called through the side window. Good day. “Taxi, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  Tanner climbed in the back. “Where go?” the driver asked.

  “Tingsonglou Hotel.”

  “Mei wenti!” No problem. “Huang tou tai gao le.”

  It took Tanner a moment to piece together the words. Huang tou tai gao le … The literal translation was “Blond hair too tall.” Evidently, the driver considered him something of a freak.

  With a blare of his horn and a shout out the window, the driver swer
ved into traffic. Within minutes they were away from the airport and heading toward the city.

  In the back, Tanner stared out the window. He looked down at his hands. They were shaking.

  Welcome to China, Briggs.

  43

  Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

  As Tanner was heading toward Beijing proper, Cahil was suffering through a white-knuckle landing aboard a Soviet-build Anatov-27 whose floor had more patches than an Appalachian quilt.

  He gripped the armrests tighter and glanced at his seatmate, an elderly Mongolian man wearing purple pants, a yellow tunic and a splotchy fur hat. He reminded Bear of a Mongolian Willy Wonka.

  “Boombity, boombity, boom,” Willy yelled over the roar.

  It was a fair impression of the sound the wheels were making on the rutted landing strip.

  “Yeah,” Cahil replied. “Boombity.”

  Abruptly the engines died away, leaving behind only the sound of the thumping tires. Cahil realized the pilot had shut off the engines to conserve fuel, a priceless commodity in Mongolia.

  As the plane coasted to a stop, Cahil felt a tap on his shoulder.

  “No more boombity,” Willy said with a toothless grin. “Stop now.”

  “Never volunteer yourself, Bear,” Cahil muttered.

  The answer to the game Cahil had come to call “Where in the World is Mike Skeldon?” had been answered two days earlier by a static-filled, ten-second phone call.

  With Dick Mason and the CIA’s resources at his disposal, Cahil had moved Kycek to a safe house in rural Virginia, where a team from Langley’s Science and Technology Directorate set up a phone-router for Kycek’s home number in Asheville. From Monday morning forward, all Kycek’s incoming calls were automatically routed to a switchboard in the safe house’s basement.

  Promptly at noon on Tuesday, a call came in. As instructed, Kycek let it ring three times, then picked it up. As he did so, the CIA technician flipped on the recorders and the speakers.

  “Hello?” Kycek said.

  “Ready to travel?” the voice asked.

  “I’m ready.”

  “Tomorrow morning, Ronald Reagan. Go to the TWA desk; there’ll be a ticket waiting for you.”

  “Okay,” Kycek said. “Uh, should I bring anything?”

  “Yeah: warm clothes.”

  The line went dead.

  Kycek hung up. Cahil turned to the technician, who said, “Not enough for a solid trace, but it was overseas, that’s for sure.”

  “Warm clothes,” Kycek said. “Wonder what that means? Russia, you think?”

  Cahil shrugged and clapped him on the shoulder. “Not your worry anymore,” he replied, then thought, Yeah, definitely Russia. But where and why?

  Russia via lovely Mongolia Cahil thought as they slowed beside the gray terminal building. Painted on its front in bright red and black was a fur-hatted Mongol on a galloping horse. Cahil assumed it was the Mongolian state seal. Just to be sure, he tapped Willy and pointed.

  “Suhe Baator,” Willy explained. “Suhe the Hero.”

  “The liberator of Mongolia,” Cahil replied.

  “Yes, yes! Great liberator. Kharasho!”

  Kharasho was the Russian word for “good.” Though the Russians had been gone for over a decade, their legacy lived on. Many Mongolians still spoke a mixture of Mongol and Russian along with a smattering of Dorbet, Buryat, and a dozen other dialects.

  The plane shuddered to a stop. As if on cue, the passengers leapt up. The door was flung open by the lone flight attendant.

  When Bear reached the door, instead of stairs he found a telescoping aluminum ladder leaning against the Anatov’s fuselage. He climbed down, then let himself drop the last few feet to the ground, stirring up a cloud of fine, gray dust.

  Despite himself, he smiled. “One small step for man …”

  Within minutes the passengers, aircrew and maintenance people had disappeared into the terminal building and Cahil found himself alone with the dust and the plane. A gust of wind blew across his face and he shivered. From horizon to horizon, the sky was a pristine, unblemished blue. The travel book he’d read on the flight called Mongolia “The Land of the Million Mile Sky.” He now saw why.

  These were the steppes of the Mongol hordes. Seven hundred years ago, Genghis Kahn and his tribe of bantam-size horsemen rode out of these grasslands and conquered half the known world. It must have been an awesome sight, Cahil thought: the bleak green hills, the blue sky, and in between, tens of thousands of Mongols, spearheads jutting skyward like the branches of a moving forest.

  Maggie would love this, he decided. She was a born and raised Montanan, a child of Big Sky Country. Of course, Montana had nothing on Mongolia. This was nothing but sky—millions of square miles of it. Thinking of her and the girls, he felt suddenly lonely.

  They’re fine, he told himself. They’re fine, and you’ll be back to them soon.

  The airport sat atop one of the foothills in the Hentiyn Nuruu mountain range; below lay Ulaanbaatar proper. Aside from a few multistory buildings and coal-belching smokestacks, most of the city’s structures were squat affairs similar.

  The air was filled with the tangy scent of what he guessed to be mutton, the cornerstone of Mongolian cuisine: Mutton, mutton fat, and mutton juice combined with gnarled potatoes, bland radishes, and soggy cabbage.

  He followed the road down out of the foothills, across a bridge spanning a muddy river, and reached a road his map called Engels Avenue. Somewhere in the distance he heard strains of music, and it took him a moment to recognize it: “Hey Macarena …” Ulaanbaatar, it seemed, was several years behind the newest tunes. Bear imagined a group of squat legged, dusky cheeked Mongol teenagers dancing the Macarena and found himself laughing.

  He veered left down Engels and soon reached the Ulaanbaatar railway station.

  He checked his watch: 11:30. Skeldon’s written instructions, which had been attached to the ticket at Dulles, had been curt: Go to the train station and wait. You’ll be met sometime after noon.

  Bear mounted the deserted platform, explored a bit, checked the train schedule (the next arrival was due in in three days from Ulan-Ude, Russia), then found a bench and sat down.

  At three o’clock, a green, Russian Yaz truck—the Soviet version of the U.S. Army’s deuce-and-a-half—screeched to a stop beside the platform. The driver’s door opened and a man climbed out.

  The mysterious Mike Sheldon, Cahil thought.

  He matched Latham’s description to a tee: a few inches over six feet, rangy but muscular, blond buzz cut, and a hawk nose. As Skeldon walked toward the platform, Cahil could see his eyes scanning the ground around him. The LRRP on patrol. Retired or not, Skeldon was still a soldier-scout at heart

  Skeldon mounted the platform steps and walked to Cahil’s bench. “You’ve lost weight”

  And you’ve lost your Southern twang. The persona of Joe-Bob the Handyman was gone.

  “Thanks. You trying to pick me up?”

  “You’ve lost weight,” Skeldon repeated impassively.

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  “I went to Jenny Craig, so what?” Cahil growled. “Look, I’ve been flying on a death trap for the last six hours. Can we save the quiz for later?”

  “No. Where’d you go to college?”

  “Purdue. Dropped out in my senior year, joined the navy, and went into EOD—Explosive Ordinance Disposal.”

  “Separation date?”

  “My DD-two-fourteen says May ninth of eighty-nine, but they got it wrong. It was the tenth.”

  Skeldon asked him a few more questions, then nodded. “Grab your bag and follow me.”

  Skeldon drove away from the railway station and turned onto Peace Avenue. The road teemed with goats, horses, automobiles, and pedestrians, all of whom seemed to be obeying their own personal traffic laws. “No traffic police, I assume?” Cahil said.

  “Nope,”
replied Skeldon.

  “How many people in the city?”

  “Half a million. About forty percent of them live on steppes just outside the city in gherrs.”

  “What’s a gherr?”

  “It’s what we call a ‘yurt’—you know, those teepee-like things.”

  “All year around—summer or winter?”

  “Summer’s about a month long here; blink and you miss it. Mongols are tough.”

  “Genghis Khan.”

  “Yep. Tough.”

  An hour later they were twenty miles outside the city and traveling northeast on a rutted dirt tract. On either side of the road the steppes and rolling hills spread to the horizon.

  “Can you tell me anything about where we’re going, what we’re doing?” Cahil asked.

  Skeldon glanced at him, hesitated a moment, then replied, “We’re headed to Naushki, on the Russian border. Once we’re across, we’ll link up with our team outside Kazachinskoye.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “You and six billion other people.”

  “You said ‘team.’ I thought it was just you and me.”

  For the first time since they met, Skeldon laughed. “You kidding me? For where we’re headed, we’re gonna need all the help we can get.”

  44

  Germantown Memorial Hospital

  Neither Dutcher nor Mason were under any illusion: the course they’d chosen could not only land them in prison, but could, if ever made public, shake the country to its foundations. Love him or hate him, Phillip Martin was the democratically elected president of the United States. Neither of them were comfortable in the knowledge that what they were planning was nothing less than a coup d’état.

  “We can dress it up and dance it around all we like,” Mason confided in Dutcher, “but the plain truth is, we’re talking about overthrowing our own head of state.”

  “I can live with it,” Dutcher replied. “Can you?”

  “Ask me later.”