by Ted Halstead
Kharlov paused and then shook his head. "Shooting Nemtsov sent four messages. The first, doing it within sight of the Kremlin, said opponents aren't safe anywhere. The second, doing it while Nemtsov was with his girlfriend but leaving her untouched, said we don't care who sees us do it. The third, blaming the killing on perhaps the least credible suspect in Russia, said we're only going through the motions of a cover-up. Because we want you to know we did it. The fourth, making sure the suspect died, too, said there would be no official reason to continue the investigation. Such as it was."
Neda frowned. "Maybe the fifth was that they didn't care what anyone outside Russia thought."
"True. And besides naming the plaza across the street after Nemtsov, another truth is the Americans and Europeans didn't do much. But while we're on the subject of assassinations, you're really thinking about Vasilyev, yes?" Kharlov asked quietly.
Neda looked up quickly and jerked her head in a way that Kharlov knew was meant to remind him they were probably under observation.
Kharlov shook his head. "Naturally, I won't discuss either our mission or his here. But you are worried about him, aren't you?"
Neda said nothing and just glared across the table at Kharlov.
"And I understand you have something of a soft spot for Grishkov too since he helped you make it out of Iran," Kharlov said flatly.
Neda's glare, if anything, intensified.
Kharlov nodded. "Well, then think about this. The best chance that their mission is called off is that we are successful with ours."
Neda frowned and then slowly nodded.
Then she stood and put down what was left of her coffee.
Kharlov rose as well and grinned. "Yes, let's get back to it."
Chapter Nine
Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant
One Hundred Kilometers South of Shanghai, China
Plant Complex Director Wu walked up to Qinshan Senior Manager Tan, who tried to keep the groan he felt from reaching his face. What now?
Tan turned away from the technician he had been speaking with, who had the sense to scurry off. The Director coming down to reactor operations was never good news.
Putting a smile on his face he knew had to look insincere, Tan said brightly, "Good morning, sir! How are things looking today?"
"Well, better than I thought. You know I had questions about the safety of the extra fifty megawatts we started squeezing out of this old lady a few years ago. But so far, I haven't found anything wrong," Wu said.
Tan breathed a sigh of relief. Qinshan was the oldest nuclear plant still operating in China, and had been built over thirty years ago. Much of its non-nuclear equipment like turbines, pumps and motors had recently been replaced in a major refit. But the reactors themselves had been left untouched.
Tan was beginning to feel his age as well. Sadly, he mused, a refit wasn’t an option for him.
Tan hadn’t been looking forward to retirement after reaching sixty. But he was starting to change his mind.
Wu was Tan’s boss, even though Wu was ten years younger. That didn’t bother Tan. He had plenty to deal with, and didn’t have any interest in adding more work.
"I'm glad to hear it, sir. We've been doing our best," Tan said with all the confidence he could muster. But he knew from Wu's expression that something else was coming.
There was nothing Tan could do except grit his teeth and hope for the best. It had been three months since Wu had been appointed to oversee both the Qinshan and Fangjiashan nuclear plants. Since only about ten kilometers separated the two plants, Tan had to agree that made sense.
And since Fangjiashan was twenty years newer than Qinshan, it was also logical that Wu was more concerned about his plant's safety.
None of that made Tan's life any easier.
"I know my concerns may seem excessive. But you know why I was appointed," Wu said, his eyes glittering.
Tan swallowed hard. Yes. He knew.
Just before Wu's appointment, there had been an accident at Qinshan resulting in the release of a small amount of radioactivity. Tan's old boss had done everything right in response. There had been no casualties and only a brief interruption in power production. Nobody outside the plant had any idea that there had been a problem.
But Tan hadn't seen or heard from his old boss since. And Tan knew better than to ask what had happened to him.
"This past weekend, I drove to Shanghai, for the first time since I moved here. Do you know what I noticed?" Wu asked.
Tan knew. Just as he knew, he had to play along with Wu while he made his point.
"No, sir, what?" Tan replied.
"Thanks to traffic, it took me over three hours to get into Shanghai proper, even though the city limits are only a hundred kilometers away. But you know what has happened to the farms I remember were in this area when I visited Shanghai as a child?" Wu asked.
"They're gone, right?" Tan said, his heart sinking.
"Exactly so," Wu said. "Instead, there are industrial plants, apartment buildings, shops of all sorts. I'm not going to say every square meter between here and Shanghai has been paved over. But it's not for lack of trying."
Tan had to nod agreement. The growth of Shanghai's suburbs had indeed been spectacular, even by Chinese standards.
And much of that growth had been in the direction of this nuclear power plant.
"So, if something serious went wrong here, how many people do you think could be affected?" Wu asked.
Well, there it was, Tan thought bitterly. As though he could do anything about where Qinshan had been built.
"I'm not sure, sir. Quite a few, I'd guess," Tan said stoically.
Wu nodded. "I'm not sure either. My guess, though, would be in the millions."
Tan didn't know what to say to that. Especially since Wu was probably right.
But apparently, Wu hadn't been expecting an answer because now he was thrusting a plant-issued windbreaker towards Tan.
"Let's take a walk," Wu said and led the way to a door outside the plant.
It had been quite a while since Tan had been on one of the maintenance walkways that circled the reactor buildings. He had no trouble, though, remembering the cold, spray-filled breeze that blew in from Hangzhou Bay.
Qinshan was surrounded by water on three sides.
Waving his arm at the bay, Wu asked, "Does our location remind you of anywhere in Japan?"
Tan wasn't a fool and answered immediately. "I'm sure you're thinking of Fukushima, sir."
Wu nodded. "You know, the last estimate I saw said that cleanup there will take about forty years."
Tan winced but said gamely, "Yes, sir, but we don't see tsunamis here like the one that hit Fukushima."
"That's true," Wu said. "But what about typhoons?"
Tan shrugged. "China has been hit by typhoons before, but I checked when I started working here. The weather has never been a problem at this plant."
"You're right again. But do you know when and where the last big typhoon struck China?" Wu asked.
Tan shook his head.
"Typhoon Mamie in 1985. It made landfall along a stretch of coast from south of here up to Shanghai. A thousand factories had to shut down. Over six million trees were blown over. Nineteen rivers overflowed. More than a hundred thousand homes were damaged. A million people were directly affected," Wu said and then paused.
"Of course, this plant hadn't yet been built. That happened five years later," Wu said.
Tan nodded slowly. "I didn't know that," he said with grudging respect. "You are suggesting we should take precautions against the sort of seawater infiltration that damaged the Fukushima plant. In the event of storm-driven waves that make it past our current physical barriers."
"Correct," Wu said. "I know you will need additional resources. Draw up an action plan for my review, and I'll get it to Beijing."
Tan nodded. "Typhoon season is just beginning, which I suppose is what started you thinking about this. But you know there's no
chance we'll get what we need approved in time for any big storm that comes our way this year, right?"
Now Tan got to see one of Wu's rare smiles. "Even I have to admit that 1985 was a long time ago. I think this time the odds are with us."
Part of Tan thought if he saw it, Wu would be afraid of his own shadow.
Another part, though, wished Wu hadn't just said that.
Chapter Ten
Shanghai, China
Chen Li Na had been making good use of her Gateway. She had used it to accelerate her efforts to recruit and organize a rapidly growing network of pro-democracy activists who all had one thing in common.
None of them believed the Communist Party should have a monopoly on power.
Chen's problem was that's about all they agreed on.
The single largest group was unhappy with China's economic problems and believed Party mismanagement and corruption were to blame.
Chen's parents had been among the many victims of one corrupt official, a man who demanded bribes to turn on water service to residences. He had the bad luck to be among the one percent of such officials to be arrested and turned into a national example.
When police searched his lavish home, they found over twenty million American dollars' worth of various currencies.
The next largest group were victims of the Hukou residence permit system. Anyone who had not been fortunate enough to be born in a large city like Shanghai could not simply move there. At least, not legally.
Chen had been lucky to have world-class software programming skills that had made several Shanghai companies actively recruit her. All had included a residence permit among their inducements.
But that made Chen one of the fortunate few.
At a minimum, all migrants from the countryside to the city were required to obtain a temporary residence permit. But that required a job offer, and those were increasingly scarce these days. And if the factory or construction company closed, the permit couldn't be renewed.
Naturally, some migrants came without a permit at all.
This meant any work those migrants found would be at the lowest pay.
And that, lacking a residence permit, no child the migrant had could be enrolled in a school in the city where the parent worked. About a fifth of all children in China had to live apart from their parents as a result.
Over sixty million children were separated from one or both of their parents most of the year while they attended school in rural areas and lived with grandparents or other relatives.
No residence permit? No access to subsidized housing. Or government health care. Or welfare, pension, or social security payments of any kind.
And if you had a problem with any of that, the authorities had a simple solution. You could be sent back to wherever in rural China your official records said you belonged. Even though, in some cases, you might have never actually lived there.
Never mind. Government records were never wrong.
That principle also applied to the Pinyin social credit system, which had become a growing source of resentment to government authority. Large enough to give the residence permit system real competition for the title, "most hated Communist Party policy."
Pinyin took the concept of a financial credit score found in other countries and added a long list of other factors. These resulted in the possibility of reward or punishment, depending on a person's behavior.
So, you could get a high Pinyin score from paying bills on time, donating blood, giving to charity, and avoiding any action that annoyed officials or businesses. That could mean less waiting time at a hospital or a discount for a hotel stay.
The government placed a much higher priority on using the Pinyin system to punish bad behavior.
Such as? Well, it was a long and continually growing list. Failing to sort recyclables correctly. Jaywalking. Making a restaurant reservation and failing to show. Eating on public transport.
And doing anything – anything – that made an official believe they should lower your score.
For example, complaining about governmental incompetence or inaction. Or failing to pay a bribe.
Want to know why your Pinyin score is low? Or who was responsible for lowering it?
Too bad.
Though, to be fair, there was one way you might find out what the authorities said you had done wrong. Pinyin-lowering infractions, along with full identifying information on the miscreants who had committed them, were sometimes posted online.
And sometimes shown on electronic displays at major city intersections.
The consequences of a low Pinyin score went beyond the denial of loans or employment that people with a low credit score experienced in other countries.
By 2019, the last year the government released official numbers, twenty-seven million people had been denied permission to buy airline tickets. Six million had been refused high-speed rail tickets.
The consequences didn't stop with the person who had the low Pinyin score. Want to get your child into the right private school? Or a public university?
Well, their school grades might be good enough. But if one or both parent's Pinyin score was too low, then the child's grades wouldn't matter.
Chen smiled as she looked at her sleeping girlfriend, Tang Yanfei. Chen might be doing well for her young age, but on her income, she was still lucky to afford this apartment within Shanghai city limits, only a short distance from her office.
Tang's job didn't pay nearly as well. Chen accepted no rent from Tang and instead had her buy groceries and contribute to the water and power bills.
Chen loved Tang, but she was always practical. The apartment, so close to her office, was in her name alone.
A long commute would have left Chen with no time for what she thought of as her "other job." Organizing resistance to the Communist Party.
As she looked around the dark apartment, though, Chen had to sigh. There was no bedroom. Chen was sitting up on the bed that folded out from her sofa, in what during the day was her living room.
Chen leaned over and carefully brushed Tang's hair away from her nose and mouth. She had always been a restless sleeper.
Chen frowned. Her mental inventory of groups with grievances against the Party always ended with her own. Same-sex couples.
True, overt employment discrimination had mostly stopped. Chen's company knew about Tang but didn't care.
A new "legal guardian" system helped cover issues married couples took for granted. Visitation rights at hospitals. Inheritance.
But there were many other rights denied to same-sex couples. Starting with the right to have children, either through in vitro fertilization or adoption.
And in Chinese society, the government pretended same-sex couples didn't exist. Cultural references in any form were banned, particularly in television programs and movies.
Chen had grown up feeling there was something wrong with her. It was a feeling she hated and still struggled with even after three happy years with Tang.
Chen smiled as she looked at Tang, who was still sleeping peacefully. She owed her a great deal. First, her sanity.
Just as important, Tang was her right hand in organizing resistance to the Party. Tang was the only person who had her absolute trust.
Yes, Tang was still sleeping. But what had woken Chen? Normally, she was an even heavier sleeper.
Chen checked her phone. At night, it had been set to activate only for emergency alerts. No activity.
Well, nothing in her tiny apartment was moving. Something outside?
Still holding the phone, Chen pulled her drapes back a fraction and looked outside.
What was that?
Chen had to squint to see it. A small black disk hovering next to a window two floors down.
Her heart thudding in her chest, Chen lifted her phone and focused its camera on the hovering disk. She made sure the drone filled the screen center before pressing the button that would send the recording directly to the phone's removabl
e SD card.
It wouldn't do for the recording to show enough background to allow her building to be identified.
Chen stopped recording once the drone began to rise silently towards the floor just below hers. Then she backed away from the window after carefully closing the drapes behind her.
At this hour, there was minimal sound or video for a drone to collect. That just left one other possibility.
Wireless signals.
They were looking for Gateways.
Chen shook her head. The government would never rest until it had hunted down all its opponents.
Organizing was important, but now that phase was over.
It was time to act.
Chapter Eleven
Near the Chinese-Indian Border
Sergeant Xu looked down at the food in his bowl with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. The cooking he'd enjoyed during his recent leave with his family had reminded him of how breakfast, and for that matter every meal, was supposed to taste.
The food doled out by military chefs was never wonderful. Here at a front-line deployment, though, what was turned out by temporary field kitchens could best be described as…edible.
If you were really hungry.
Corporal Guan grinned as he saw Xu's expression and correctly guessed its cause.
"Your mother's cooking spoiled your appetite for what our chefs can manage?" Guan asked innocently.
Xu scowled but said nothing. Noncommissioned officers like Xu didn't normally eat with enlisted men like Guan, but everyone knew the relationship between a sniper and his spotter was different. Each depended on the other to stay alive in a way that encouraged close cooperation.
In this case, for Xu, that meant keeping his temper when provoked.
Besides, Guan was right, not that Xu would ever admit it.
Instead, Xu just growled in a low voice, "I don't see why any of us are here in this infernal frozen wilderness. Just about all the rest of China is warm and pleasant. As far as I'm concerned, the Indians are welcome to it."
Xu felt a sudden breeze behind him, and then Guan pale and jump upright, followed by all the other soldiers in the dining tent.