The Thought Cathedral

by Nathan Williams

  The azure, polygonal-shaped contours along one of the far walls was, she knew, a stack of boxes with computers and printers in them. Other shadowy shapes were, in fact, stacks of panels for cubicle walls, boxes and cabinets stuffed with bulging files of research projects long since completed, and a miscellaneous assortment of other tools and equipment.

  Tobyn Collier, one of five co-workers who’d been temporarily placed in the basement along with Lee, had already arrived and was deep in concentration on a project.

  Lee, maneuvering down an aisle that had been kept clear through the center of the room, gently sat her workout bag and black leather laptop case onto the floor by her makeshift desk, and flopped down on her chair. She flipped on a small desk lamp she’d placed next to her two computer screens and initiated her computer’s start-up sequencing.

  She leaned in close to the computer screen, examining the contours of her oval face: her slim nose, dark, thin eyebrows and dark eyelashes, wide mouth with thin lips that spread easily into a broad smile, high cheekbones, and rounded chin. Her hair was parted down the middle and pulled back, taut against her skull, and tied with a violet band in the back. She was dressed in black dress pants, a white tank-top and a thick, violet polyester sweater that zipped up in the front to fend against the cool of the basement, and her black heeled dress shoes.

  Lee’s computer screens were, initially, pitch black but, after a moment, one of them turned gray-ish white and small, multicolored particles of light began to appear on the gray background. The particles were black, brown, red, blue, green, purple, orange, and a myriad of other colors. More and more of them appeared until they began moving and clustering themselves into two thick bands of multicolored speckled “noise,” one on top and one on the bottom. The particles began moving across the screen, the top band from left to right and the bottom from right to left. They began morphing into each other to form an indistinguishable shape until, eventually, the particles morphed into an image that was a portrait of Galileo Galilei. Below this image, the words BROOKLYN VENTURE CAPITAL appeared in black. Under the company name were fields to enter her username and password. Lee entered in the required information, pulled up a file from a folder she’d labeled PORTAL/SYSTEMS/DEV, and began the tedious work of developing code for the company’s intranet portal.

  Lee had been working for almost two hours, until about ten o’clock, when her concentration was broken by a rapping on her small desk.

  A female messenger had materialized out of the darkness. “Ms. Lee?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’ve been summoned to a meeting.”

  Lee frowned. This was highly unusual for her. She was used to being left uninterrupted for the majority of the workday.

  “Meeting? Is it Janak Patel?”

  Janak Patel was Lee’s immediate supervisor for her development work on the portal.

  The young woman frowned and bit her lower lip.

  “Um…no. Charlie Monroe.”

  “You mean, Charlie Monroe the founder and CEO?”

  “The very same.”

  Odd.

  “When and where?”

  “Immediately. Mr. Monroe wants to meet with you in the small conference room on the fifth floor here in the building.”

  So weird. What’s going on? With a knot in her stomach, she exchanged her sweatshirt for a more formal burgundy blouse, locked her computer, and made her way toward the fifth floor.

  Lyn Lee stepped softly up the grand central staircase, her feet plodding atop the black iron rungs, and occasionally grasping the black iron handrail with her right hand for support. After summiting the staircase, she walked swiftly down the full length of a hallway, her steps softened by tann-ish gold carpeting with a brown and amber green leaf design on the sides and a three-foot-wide burgundy stripe down the middle. At the end of the hallway, she opened a mahogany door part way and knocked.

  “Come in,” said a raspy, deep male voice.

  A lively old man had made his way to the door and escorted her into the small carpeted office with a gentle wave of his hand.

  “Welcome, Ms. Lee,” the old man said with a smile. He extended his hand and Lee shook it. The hand was large, with thick fingers, and the shake was firm, but warm.

  “Can I get you anything to drink? Water? Coffee?”

  “No, thank you,” Lee said.

  “Please, have a seat,” he said, waving at one of the chairs. He glided around to the opposite side of the table, taking a seat in the first of three chairs.

  The man was thin, but not in a gangly way. His head was mostly bald, but a remaining chrome of whispery white hair remained around the perimeter. His large, wide eyes had an unusual watery appearance with ebony irises, the combined effect of which made him seem hyper-aware of everything around him. Lee noticed that the outer corners of his eyes wrinkled when he smiled and he had laugh lines around the edges of his mouth. He was dressed in a conservative black business suit with a black tie.

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me today,” he said. “My name is Charlie Monroe.”

  As if he needs to introduce himself, Lyn thought.

  “I’m the founder and CEO of our fine company.”

  Lee smiled and nodded attentively.

  “I’m sure you’re wondering why you’ve been called here today.”

  Lee nodded again. “Yes,” Lee said, adding another smile.

  “I have an unusual request to make of you today, Ms. Lee.” Monroe let the statement hang for a moment. “We have been having a problem of late here at the company concerning theft of some of our most sensitive information. Much of it from Project Magus which, your supervisors tell me, you’ve been a part of as well.”

  Lee nodded again. “That’s true, I’ve been working as an analyst on the project.”

  Monroe smiled. “But you’ve been spending the majority of your time recently working as a developer on the portal?”

  “That’s correct, yes, Mr. Monroe. I’ve been spending less and less time on Project Magus, since we’ve already achieved much of what we’d set out to do.”

  “Yes, of course. We have a serious problem, not just with Magus but also with a few of our other programs as well. We have a mole in the company. Someone is stealing information, and we’d like you to help us identify this individual.”

  Lee was truly surprised. This had come from out of nowhere.

  “Why me?” Lee asked.

  “For a couple of reasons. As you know, the portal has been up and running for a while now and we continue to expand and improve upon it. It’s become a foundational part of our organization. The bulk of Brooklyn Venture’s communications are transmitted through the portal in one form or another. And, since you’ve been involved in its development for quite some time now, we feel you’d be a very good fit for the job.”

  Monroe hesitated, waiting for a response from Lee, but Lee didn’t offer any.

  “The second reason is because—” Monroe hesitated, being careful with his words. “—and I hope you don’t feel offended by this. The second reason is because we believe the mole is likely passing the information to the Chinese government. You do speak at least one dialect of Chinese? Is that correct, Ms. Lee?”

  “Yes, I do. Mandarin. Beijing dialect.”

  Monroe bowed slightly. “Excellent.”

  Lee was ebullient. This was something completely unexpected and, as a whole, she liked unexpected things.

  “How exactly would you have me go about doing this?” Lee asked.

  “Initially, we’re going to scan you and place you in the portal as a Help Sponsor. We want you to observe who’s coming and going from the sensitive areas in the portal and make yourself available to our researchers and employees. We want you to log what you see. You’ll be working with the FBI. You’ll be forwarding your observations to them. We’ll just sort of take it from there and see where it goes.”

  “How much time will I be spending in the portal?”

  “For n
ow, you’ll be in the portal for the entire duration of your day. You’ll be working your normal hours for now. Things could change depending on how things go. It’s very possible we may need to call you in at irregular hours if we need your language skills.”

  “I understand,” Lee said.

  “You’ll agree to help us then, Ms. Lee?”

  Lee smiled again. “Yes, of course. I’ll be happy to help in any way I can.”

  “Excellent,” Monroe said. “It’s important you understand that I’ve agreed to allow you to be under contract with the FBI during your time working on this project. Also, in addition to the contract, you’re going to need to sign a non-disclosure agreement and successfully complete a background exam and lie detector test by the FBI. This project is classified by the U.S. government, Ms. Lee. Starting from this point forward, you’re strictly prohibited from speaking about this with anyone other than myself or designated FBI officials. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Mr. Monroe. This is very clear.”

  “Very well. Hold on, while I bring in the FBI.”

  A few moments later, Monroe re-entered with a man and woman dressed in formal attire.

  “Ms. Lee, this is Special Agent in Charge Milt Reardon and Agent Jillian Frank.”

  Lee stood and exchanged greetings with the officers who, she thought, looked the part. Reardon stood about six feet tall with broad shoulders, white beard, and thinning gray hair. He was dressed in a black suit with a striped tie. Agent Frank, dressed in a mauve suit with hints of auburn, was tall and lean, with short, straight brunette hair with a slight reddish tint to it. Her complexion was pale in color, which matched her German name.

  The rest of the meeting was spent ironing out the details of their partnership. The gist of it was that she was to report any urgent findings directly to Agent Frank and Reardon via encrypted emails using an FBI-issued laptop and meet with them once a week at a location of their choosing. She was to expect to be “on call” and to make herself available at any and all hours of the day. After they had ironed out the remaining details, including the scheduling of the background and lie detector tests, they released her back to the “dungeon” to complete a restless remainder of the workday.

  Beijing, China

  Wednesday, December 31, 8:17 a.m. China Standard Time

  Joe Leonard sat on his padded office chair in his Beijing apartment, placed a toasted bagel and orange juice on his desk, and booted up his desktop computer. He took a bite of his bagel and sipped at his juice until, at the correct place in the start-up process, he hit the F10 key twice followed by the F5. His screen turned black with a red line in the top left corner. He typed in his ten-digit security code and pressed the ENTER key. A few moments later, the Central Intelligence Agency intranet appeared on his screen.

  He found three new emails, two from his immediate CIA supervisor Jeff Abrams and one from Xavier Hirsch, the head of the CIA’s Beijing office. Leonard clicked on the one from Hirsch which was, as was his custom, more a brief statement than a wholly constructed thought.

  Joe,

  Still on to meet with Min Liu 7 p.m. tonight. I’ve got her optics. Will drop by the Ricardo building at 6 p.m. to pick you up unless you hear otherwise from Ms. Liu.

  X.H.

  Leonard briefly basked in the glow of his recruitment of Min Liu, a translator for China’s Ministry of State Security. It was a recruitment that had begun with his meeting of Liu’s sister, Jiang, back in May of the previous year. Jiang, the marketing manager for an antique and furniture store based in Beijing, had stopped in to Ricardo’s Logistics to solicit assistance for the exporting of their goods overseas to Europe and the United States. The recruitment had taken place over the course of seven months, culminating in the pitching of Min and Jiang at their home in a shanty in northwest Beijing. Granted, the relationship with the Liu sisters was still in its infancy and still precarious, however, it had the potential to be a major coup for the entire Beijing office. Not to mention what it could do for Leonard’s career within the agency.

  As Leonard typed his reply—that they’d be meeting Liu at a tiny Chinese eatery located a few blocks from her apartment—his computer pinged. Abrams had seen him come online and sent him an instant message. He studied the message in his IM window, which appeared in green letters on a black background.

  Abrams: You there, Joe?

  Leonard finished typing his response to Hirsch, in which he confirmed the meeting with Min Liu. It would be their second meeting with her since she’d formally accepted their proposal to spy for them.

  As soon as he’d sent his reply to Hirsch’s email, he frowned as he read Abrams’s IM. In a normal job, he would’ve been put off having received an IM from a boss at that hour of the morning. But it was routine procedure in the CIA. At least, it was routine in the Beijing office. IMs were more secure than using phones, and he was too busy running around all parts of Beijing to meet face-to-face with his superiors very often.

  Leonard: Here, Jeff.

  Abrams: Nice job with Liu. Lot of potential with her. Hirsch is impressed.

  Leonard: Thanks. Have to say she was the easiest one I’ve had yet. Honestly, she fell into my lap.

  Abrams: Maybe. But she did fall.

  Leonard: She did.

  Abrams: Couple things for you.

  Leonard: Go ahead.

  Abrams: Your agent at PetroChina, Gu Xiantu, is making more demands.

  Leonard sighed.

  Leonard: I was afraid that might happen.

  Gu Xiantu was a chief engineer at PetroChina, China’s largest oil company and one of the biggest companies in the world. There wasn’t a day that passed that Leonard didn’t harbor regret about his development of Gu. If he could make up a profile for a more difficult agent, he couldn’t think of one. Gu was intense, obstinate, and quick to anger. He’d had formal studies in Western law, so he was careful about his use of language, particularly with respect to his negotiations with Leonard and his other CIA handlers. Gu was also very aware of the resources and other leverage available to him, and he used them whenever he could to manipulate the CIA. Thus far, he’d already bargained successfully for automatic admission for his daughter to an American university and for two increases in cash compensation for the information he was providing.

  And, though the information was valuable, it was far from any sort of king’s ransom. Not only was the information not coming directly from national level C.C.P. leadership, but the really useful information came only sporadically in bits and pieces. Additionally, with Gu being only a senior engineer, the information he was gathering wasn’t providing direct exposure to Chinese policy as a member of the executive management team might have been able to provide. However, PetroChina was a major player in China’s plans for technological development and energy consumption and, as such, it ultimately did shed some light on the C.C.P.’s intents and motivations, if only indirectly. At least, it did if and when the analysts in Langley were able to put the pieces together.

  Given the level of servicing required of Gu, Leonard wondered why Hirsch and the other managers in Beijing hadn’t decided to cut ties by now. He felt fairly certain that the only reason was because it was rumored that Gu was going to be up for an executive level position at the company’s next board meeting. But that meeting wasn’t for another three months, so Leonard was stuck with having to tread water with Gu until then.

  Abrams: Hirsch wants you to meet up with him again and try to calm him down

  Leonard sighed again and rolled his eyes. Gu was one of only four regular agents he was currently active with, but was responsible for at least seventy percent of his time and energy. It would help if they’d give me something to work with, Leonard thought.

  Leonard: Do I have any room for negotiation with Gu?

  Abrams: None at this time. You need to find a way to buy some time with him.

  Leonard: It’s getting more difficult with Gu. I’ll do what I can.

  Abrams: Exc
ellent.

  Leonard waited for Abrams to continue, but the curser sat blinking and frozen in place on his screen. He was about to gather his backpack and electric cycle and leave for the day when his IM pinged again.

  Abrams: Any other potential leads at this time?

  Leonard sighed again. He’d recently let two of his agents go that he’d begun developing soon after his arrival in Beijing, and they were pushing him to get back up to a minimum of six that were at least at the developmental stage.

  Leonard: I have a researcher for a nanotech firm by the name of Mu Haoping. Worked for SinoTech, a state-owned nanotech company based here in Beijing, until he was purged by the senior leadership there last year.

  Abrams: Purged?

  Leonard: He was let go due to a disagreement as to the direction of the research. Or at least that’s what state media says. Mu studied in Europe. I think it might have been something different than just a disagreement in direction of research.

  Abrams: You’ve made contact with Dr. Mu?

  Leonard: Not yet. But Mu himself stated in the news article that he wants to start his own nanotech manufacturing firm in China. I made a call over to our contact at China Equity to see if Mu has been in touch with them for handling an IPO.

  Abrams: And?

  Leonard: And they confirmed that, indeed, he did place an inquiry to them.

  Abrams: What’s your next move?

  Leonard: China Equity is hosting a fundraising meeting for Mu on Wednesday at ChinaEquity. I asked my Ricardo’s contact over there if I could attend, and he agreed.

  Abrams: How’d you swing that?

  Leonard: Ricardo’s has been working with China Equity for a while. We’re often interested in companies that have recently gone public because, often times, their intent is to use the extra capital for business expansion and they are in need of our consulting services.

  Abrams: I see. So this is free marketing for Ricardo’s.

  Leonard: No, not free. We pay them a fee for this, of course.

  Abrams: Sounds promising, Joe. Keep up the good work.