The Thought Cathedral

by Nathan Williams

  Lee glanced at the clock on Maliq Okoye’s smart phone: 1:52 p.m. A few moments later, she approached one of the men in tuxedos guarding the entrance to the conference room. He forced a droll half-smile as she approached, made a cursory glance at her pass, and waved her through. The conference room was a large, thickly carpeted room with a complicated series of geometric designs in varying shades of brown. Natural light shone from the ceiling as well as from a series of vertical lights on the walls. In between the lights were a series of original works of art, all matching the brown and tan color scheme. A phalanx of folding chairs had been arranged across the width of the room, from the front of the room to the back. Lee followed a group of men and women around the perimeter until she found the section marked off for the media. At this point, the majority of seats were taken, but she fought her way to a seat near the middle.

  As a handful of stragglers claimed the remaining seats, three men in suits and ties walked quickly along the perimeter of the room, moving toward the front until they came to a silver lectern. Two of the men, who Lee surmised were American, were being led by a man of Chinese descent. Lee used Okoye’s smart phone to flip through the photos of Far East Marketing’s executives and was able to verify that the Chinese man was Qianfang Zhang. Though his hair had turned a more solid shade of gray and he was carrying more weight than the younger version in the digital photograph, it was not hard to identify him by his aged face.

  A moment later, two silhouettes appeared in her peripheral vision off to her left—two Chinese men in suits. One of the men was very tall and lithe, wrapped in sinewy muscle. The look of the man sparked an immediate reaction from Lee, and it caused her to do a double take. She searched the recesses of her memory until she saw the image of Ambassador Wu sitting across from her in his drawing room. Behind the ambassador, through the tic-tac-toe design of the shelves, she again saw the man appear in the hallway, open the door to an adjacent room, and enter. Thinking back to the night at the ambassador’s apartment, she recalled that she had seen the man slip out of the room and exit the apartment a few minutes later.

  Lee studied the man as he sat down at the front of the room, crossing his right leg over his left. His face was long and thin with a thin Fu Manchu and he had a large Adam’s apple. His dark hair, which was cut ultra-short and came to a widow’s peak in front, highlighted his oval-shaped head. The man had a wide mouth and thin lips that seemed to naturally curl upwards at the corners, giving him an odd, fixed expression of restrained mirth. He leaned over slightly as the man who’d entered with him spoke into his ear. Lee’s focus on the man with the Fu Manchu was broken when Zhang tapped the microphone.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for attending our ceremony this afternoon.” The man paused for a moment, letting the crowd come to attention. “For us here at Far East Marketing, this day has been a long time coming. As Mr. Ward and Mr. Neal have come to realize, doing business in China can be rather like trying to navigate a skiff through the swells of a restless South China Sea. I know they will vouch for me on this.” The man turned to the American men, smiled wanly, and cleared his throat.

  “For those who don’t know, my name is Zhang Qianfang. I’m the Chief Executive Officer of Far East Media and Marketing Solutions. We are here today for two reasons. First, we are here to celebrate the successful launch of our largest client to date, MediTronic, into the Chinese marketplace. This launch has been our most challenging, but also our most rewarding to date, and I’m going to have Mr. Ward and Mr. Neal speak to about their experience in just a moment. However, we do also have an important and exciting announcement to make, which I’ll be doing at the end of our event here today!”

  Zhang’s seasoned voice continued, “We have a diverse array of people attending our event this afternoon, and I know that a good many of you present today are executives, analysts, and others who have expertise in the medical software industry. So, many of you are also aware of the recent changes in China pertaining to documentation standards and software stability that have affected MediTronic’s entry into China.”

  Lee’s attention on Zhang was interrupted by the appearance of a slender woman and a young Chinese man walking together who had slipped along the perimeter to the front rows of chairs. They’d come in by using the same route the ambassador’s assistant had arrived by. The young man whispered something into her ear and, for a moment, she turned toward the crowd, toward Lee, and Lee saw that she was smiling brilliantly. It was a smile she was familiar with—a smile that belonged to Susan Meng.

  Lee quickly glanced away from Susan Meng and slunk a bit in her chair. As a flood of images from the past few weeks washed through her memory, she pondered whether or not Ambassador Wu and his wife were present, not to mention Phua Youhong. As Susan Meng and the young man took a seat in the vicinity of Zhang’s vacated spot, she resisted the temptation to turn and scour the audience behind her.

  The room broke into quiet applause, and Lee realized abruptly that Zhang had finished his introduction. One of the Americans, the one who Zhang had introduced as Jonathan Ward, ambled to the podium. Lee sat quietly as Ward summarized the challenges incurred by him and his management team as they had navigated the Chinese regulatory landscape. When he finished, Ward passed the microphone to Neal, who spoke a few words. Neal was followed by one of Zhang’s operations executives, who was then relieved by Zhang.

  It was forty-five minutes punctuated from beginning to end with the occasional flashes of light coming from the media throng, the clicking of the cameras marking the seconds as they passed slowly by. In his conclusion, Zhang revealed his big announcement: the presence of the governor of Sichuan Province in China, who announced a series of steep tax breaks and other incentives within two of China’s major technology zones targeted specifically to the medical software and supply industries. A storm of applause reverberated throughout the room at the news, and Zhang invited all attendees to stay for hors d’oeuvres and juice, which had been brought in by the hotel staff. Lee sat quietly in her seat, taking fake notes on her notepad as the crowd began to disperse, making their way back into the lobby outside the conference room.

  At the front of the room, near the lectern, the corporate executives milled about for a few minutes, shaking hands and speaking in hushed tones. Lee was only twenty feet or so from the first row of chairs and, to avoid being seen and recognized, she slid over a couple of seats and hid behind two other reporters who continued to sit, engaged in a conversation. A moment later, the two reporters she was using as cover stood and made their way toward the perimeter aisle, leaving her completely exposed. She grabbed her purse, followed the reporters to the perimeter aisle, and slid back through a double-door into the lobby adjacent to the conference room. In the lobby she stood wedged behind a cluster of attendees and, on her right, a thick fern plant, waiting anxiously for the executives to exit the conference room.

  Three minutes later, Zhang appeared surrounded by two other men in suits. Neither Susan Meng nor the ambassador’s mysterious assistant were with them. Lee cautiously followed him and his entourage as they led her back to the center of the hotel, down an escalator, and out to the front of the hotel. Lee, reasonably certain now that they were going to be leaving the hotel, dashed out to her car along 8th Avenue. She tossed her purse into the front seat, started the car, and threw it into drive. She made a left turn back onto 44th before pulling alongside the street. To her left, she saw Zhang and the two suits step into a black Renault.

  Lee followed as the Renault pulled onto 44th Street, drove west to 9th Avenue, then turned north on 9th Avenue. She followed the sedan northbound on 9th Avenue to 57th, where it turned left and continued for two blocks before pulling into a parking space alongside the road. Lee overshot them intentionally and pulled in three spaces ahead. Adjusting her rear view mirror, she saw the three men exit the sedan, pass underneath a tree, and enter a light beige-colored brick building. Lee stepped out of the sedan, stepped up onto the walkway along
57th, and entered the building.

  Her heels echoed as she stepped into a waiting room with a floor of opal marble and a vaulted ceiling of gray stone. Off to the right, a narrow staircase of gray stone spiraled up to the second floor. A dapper old man in a white suit and blue vest stood behind a register next to an arched entryway with an Italian relief engraved into it. The relief depicted a farmer standing amidst a field of corn, rice, and tomatoes. Below the relief were the words il ristorante.

  Lee approached the man hesitantly. “Pardon, sir. Did you see three older Chinese men enter?”

  “Yes, of course,” the man said, pointing to the stairs. “They’re upstairs. Will you be joining them?”

  “Oh, no. I’m their hostess and guide for our company. I just need to be sure where they’re at. I thought I’d lost them.” She smiled and affected a posture of relief.

  The man nodded, peering through a pair of silver bifocals. “As you wish,” the man said, re-directing his attention to a small computer monitor on the desk.

  Lee sighed, exited the restaurant, and went back to her rental to wait for the men.

  Chapter 37

  Manhattan, New York

  Thursday, March 6, 5:38 p.m. EST

  Lee had prepared for a wait in her car to the extent that she’d brought a pair of all-terrain hiking shoes, a twenty-ounce bottle of water, and a lunch. Lee, once again, checked the clock on the dashboard of the rental. 5:38 p.m. As the shadows cast by the sun along 57th Street had grown longer, Lee had grown more restless. At one point, she’d exited the car, and re-entered the restaurant to inquire with the gentleman host as to whether Zhang and the two other men were still there. The old man acknowledged that, in fact, they were still there with a nod of his head before dismissing her with a slight wave of his hand. She’d returned to the Fiat skeptical, a skepticism that had steadily grown as the minutes passed by. Had they slipped out a back door? She knew the sedan they’d arrived in earlier was still there because, on three separate occasions, she had checked for herself.

  Finally, at 5:52, Lee spotted them as they exited il ristorante, walked across the sidewalk, and re-entered the Renault. In her side-view mirror, she saw Zhang pull onto 57th Street. She eased the Fiat into the westbound traffic, following closely behind Zhang and his cohorts. Traffic honked and roared all around her, and it took all of her concentration to stay with Zhang.

  Zhang led her west on 57th Street for a few blocks to Henry Hudson Parkway, where Zhang turned north, following along the western perimeter of Manhattan along the shoreline. They exited the parkway onto Interstate 95 and then led Lee on a path north and east along a series of roads, including northbound Interstate 87 and Interstate 684. Traffic smoothed out on I-684 and, when Lee realized the two vehicles had been on I-684 for nearly fifteen minutes, it occurred to her how focused her concentration had been up to that point. Her back ached, and she took a moment to stretch her arms out in front of her and massage the soreness in her neck. She kept Zhang in her sights as the median markers slipped by. The surly sun slid behind the Manhattan skyline to the southwest, and the sky turned to inky blackness spotted with sapphire stars.

  Lee slowed the Fiat slightly as she followed the Renault onto an exit ramp and then onto Interstate 84. Zhang was headed toward Danbury, Connecticut, a town of 80,000 or so residents on the Connecticut border. A short while later, however, Zhang continued along I-84, which traced a route that skirted the northern perimeter of Danbury, before exiting I-84 onto U.S Route 7. Lee followed Zhang almost straight north on Route 7 for a short time before she was forced to slow as they proceeded into Brookfield, which appeared a smaller community than even Danbury. Lee glanced wearily at the clock, which now read 6:32 p.m., and for the first time Lee began to question how long she was willing to continue. She had eighty dollars in cash on her, but she doubted this was even enough to rent a decent room in the area. This doubt only grew as she continued north on Route 7 until it eventually became Route 202 as she followed Zhang up through New Milford. She was ever so close to giving up and turning around, when the Renault abruptly turned onto Route 37, a narrower road that took her in a direction generally west and southwest.

  Once out of New Milford, the geography of the land had become heavily forested, and the difficulty of keeping Zhang in her sights without raising alarms increased by an order of magnitude. Route 37 narrowed and she entered into a twisty stretch, requiring that she navigate a series of sharp turns. Lee’s nagging doubts as to whether or not she should continue following Zhang eased as the sedan continued to decelerate and it appeared as though the driver was trying to find his way to a nearby destination. This feeling was further confirmed when the Renault abruptly turned left off of Route 37 onto a narrow road, which took them deeper into the forested landscape. A sign along the road indicated they were near Lake Candlewood.

  Lee followed the Renault as it periodically disappeared around a bend, but Lee could still see the sedan’s lights through patches of foliage. A few moments later, Lee realized they had decelerated to fifteen miles an hour, and she panicked, unsure whether she would be able to stop altogether without attracting any additional attention. Ahead of her, the Renault had turned gently into an even narrower road, into an area where the woods had thinned. This road appeared to end a hundred meters or so into the forest, where she was able to make out a rather large ranch style dwelling constructed of logs.

  She decided not to chance the extra attention, so she continued westbound for a short while until she had rounded the next bend. She pulled the rental along the right shoulder, turned off the ignition, and stepped out of the car. Immediately, a frigid breeze bit into her exposed face. She re-entered the front of the Fiat, torso first, in order to retrieve her scarf from the front passenger seat. She took a moment to tie on the scarf, before she began the trek back around the bend to where Zhang’s Renault had gone.

  Lee, still in her heels, cursed to herself as she turned her ankle twenty paces into her trek. The road here was paved but not maintained well, and she had to proceed very slowly to avoid further damaging her feet. A couple of uncomfortable minutes later she found herself standing in a small clearing in the trees, gazing through her smart phone at the lodge where Zhang and his cohorts had taken refuge. With the zoom feature on the camera, she was able to verify that the Renault was parked out front in a gravel lot. The lodge was a dual-level structure, and she noted the only illumination came from two of the windows on ground level, where vague silhouettes shaped like human beings appeared periodically.

  A few moments later, a man in a suit appeared near the front entrance. He’d materialized either from the forest or from the rear of the lodge. A moment later, more movement caught her attention from the right side of the structure. A second man had appeared—a man who was carrying a lantern or flashlight. He was walking away off into the forest to the west of the lodge, moving away from her and down a slight slope. The light he held in his hand flickered occasionally like a distant star as he passed behind trees. He seemed to be following a narrow trail, which led him to a slightly lower elevation from the lodge. The trail led him to another structure, which was smaller and also constructed of logs. However, she found that the lower half of this structure was blocked from her view by the land due to the fact that it was at a lower elevation. She was much too far away and there was too much foliage for her to make out any additional detail, anyway.

  She felt a sudden pull of fatigue from the long evening and the fact that she was still in her heels and dress clothes gave her pause to go any further. As she pondered her next course of action, another rush of biting wind convinced her it was time to leave. She returned to the Fiat, executed a U-turn, and drove back the way she came. She pondered on the drive back whether she should make an attempt to examine Zhang’s properties in closer detail. By the time she’d found her way back to I-680 southbound leading back into Manhattan, she’d decided that she would.

  Beijing, China

  Friday, March 7, 10:48 a.
m. CST

  Leonard pushed open the doors located at the front entrance of Haidian Industrial Designs, passed through the security check, and walked quickly through the long axis of the building. Along the way, he was greeted by stately Agnes Ottinger, though she appeared engrossed in a phone conversation with a field officer who was elsewhere in Beijing.

  The requisite counter-surveillance run prior to his arrival had gone as well as could be expected in that he’d passed both of the tests he’d set for himself: the first test, the more important of the two, was the evasion of any potential surveillance being done by the Chinese state. The lesser of the two, but important for Leonard nonetheless, was that his body seemed to hold up reasonably despite the physical stress he had put it through. The only remaining aftereffects from his assault and its aftermath were the occasional bouts of vertigo, where he felt himself losing his balance for short periods of time. Additionally, he felt a lingering sensitivity to brightness, which still made him prone to a headache or two.

  He returned Ottinger’s greeting and took the stairwell at the rear of the building up to a small conference room on the second floor, where Hirsch and Abrams were waiting for him.

  “How’re you holding up?” Abrams asked as he checked that the door had shut tightly behind Leonard. Hirsch appeared haggard, his tie loosened and hanging over his dress shirt, which he’d unbuttoned at the neck.

  Leonard followed Abrams to the conference table. Abrams sat down opposite him with Hirsch at the head of the table.