by Lee Goldberg
“I’m sorry the food on your trip didn’t agree with you,” the president said.
“Neither did most of the leaders I met with after your incendiary tweets,” the vice president said.
These private lunches were intended for candid conversation but the truth was the president didn’t appreciate the candor. Penny made no secret of his disapproval of the president communicating to his base in blunt 280-character statements that often contradicted positions made by his vice president, his secretary of state, and other cabinet members.
“All I said was that too many South American countries are run by corrupt, power-hungry, cokehead politicians controlled by their drug cartel puppet masters, which is true. I didn’t say they were all corrupt.”
“You didn’t say they weren’t, either.”
“They know who they are,” the president said.
The president hated Penny’s weakness and kowtowing to the political elite, here and abroad. He’d chosen Penny, the double-chinned former governor of Ohio who was ten years his senior, as his older and far less photogenic running mate to shore up party support and gain a wingman who could kiss Senate ass, something the president sure as hell wouldn’t do.
The president had never held public office before winning the White House and both political parties viewed him as a threat to their way of life. He didn’t get to the Oval Office, or create a financial services empire that made him the tenth richest person in the world at age fifty, by caring what anybody thought of him, least of all politicians.
“Speaking of geopolitical issues,” Penny said, stifling a burp, “Senator Tolan’s sudden death gives us an opportunity to reassess his foreign investment in the US legislation and its broader impact.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because with tensions ratcheting up in Asia, and with our own economy still on shaky feet, we need China as a political and economic partner for both our regional and domestic interests right now.”
The only thing that Penny liked better than kissing Senate ass, the president thought, was kissing Chinese ass. Penny and Chinese president Xiao Guangchang were old buddies, going back twenty years when Xiao, then a lowly Chinese agricultural minister, came to Ohio to study farming and stayed with Penny, who was a state legislator at the time. Penny had visited Xiao in China often since then and never missed an opportunity to boast about his special relationship with Xiao, the third most powerful man on earth after Russia’s leader.
“That was the attitude of the last four administrations and look what’s happened,” the president said. “The Chinese built military islands to take the South China Sea, they smuggled nuclear materials into North Korea, and now they’re on a shopping spree buying up American companies. The next thing you know, they’ll own McDonald’s and turn it into Panda Express.”
Penny flashed an unusually smug grin, downed his 7-Up, and set the empty glass on the table. “The fact is, with Tolan dead and without his influence in the Senate, there’s nobody to champion his bill and the bipartisan votes aren’t there for it, either. The ill-considered and dangerous protectionist movement he was trying to start in the Senate died with him.”
“But there are empty seats on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States that I can fill with departmental appointees who will take a tougher line on China,” the president said. “They’ll find a reason to reject every Chinese acquisition, even if what they want to buy is a fortune cookie factory.”
Penny gave him a cold stare. “That would be seen by the Chinese as a direct provocation.”
“You mean a big fuck you,” the president said, looking Penny in the eye. “And that’s exactly what it is. Fuck them all.”
“You’re playing a dangerous game that you can’t win. The Chinese own most of our multitrillion-dollar government debt. That’s a marker you don’t want them calling in.”
“Your buddy Xiao does that and I’ll slap a two-hundred percent tariff on every product coming into the US from China. But Xiao won’t do that. You know why? Because he’d have to take on Europe, too.”
“The EU isn’t tightening rules on Chinese acquisitions or investment.”
“They will be. The EU is going to back my play and prevent China from buying companies over there that do business in the US.”
“Why would Europe do that?”
“So we’ll keep defending them from the Russians.”
“You’d pull out of NATO over this?” Penny asked, incredulous.
“No, but we might pack up most of our toys that we have over there and we might be slow to answer the phone, too, if they call for help,” the president said. “That’s what I’m going to tell the European heads of state at the G8 summit in Paris.”
“You’ll not only antagonize China but you’ll enrage our European allies, too,” Penny said. “I would strongly advise against that.”
The president leaned across the table and pointed his fork at the vice president.
“I would strongly advise you to start thinking about your friendship tour to Africa.”
The president was pretty sure Penny released a silent fart. He was tempted to order the Secret Service to arrest the vice president for trying to kill him with poison gas.
The vice president stood up. “Pretty soon, you’re going to run out of continents to banish me to.”
“Then we’ll just have to start looking at islands, won’t we?” The president grinned. “Seems to me that we’ve been neglecting Madagascar’s strategic importance for way too long.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Oakwood Apartments, Universal City, California. June 26. 11:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.
Ian stood in front of the dry-erase board, walking Margo through the plot of his new novel, what little there was of it. Margo sat on the couch, her bare feet resting on the Straker script on the coffee table.
“The basic premise of my novel is this,” Ian said. “China is invading the United States with cash, not soldiers. They are buying key companies across our economy. Hotel chains, movie studios, drug companies, carmakers, agricultural seed companies, you name it.”
“The economy is boring.” Margo yawned to underscore her remark. “I thought you wrote thrillers. There’s nothing thrilling about mergers and acquisitions.”
“You have to look deeper.” Ian pointed to a newspaper clipping, one of many taped to the dry-erase board. “For example, the Chinese own the second largest hotel chain on earth. They are bugging the rooms, acquiring every guest’s credit card data, and infecting all their guests’ computers with Trojan horses every time they connect to free internet. I bet you didn’t know that.”
“No, I didn’t, because it’s bullshit.”
“There’s more. Almost all of our electronics are being manufactured in China—iPhones, TVs, laptop computers—because the labor is so irresistibly cheap. But we’re actually paying a very high price. All of those devices are being secretly hardwired to watch us and track our every move.”
“Give me a break,” she said. “You sound like Ronnie spouting his paranoid conspiracy theories.”
She was referring to actor Ronnie Mancuso, the star of Hollywood & the Vine, who had fled Los Angeles to live as a survivalist in a remote corner of the Nevada desert, waiting for the end of the world, when Ian and Margo ran to him for help while they were being pursued by assassins. Ian had figured that Ronnie could teach them how to live off the grid and become invisible to their high-tech pursuers. Without Ronnie, Ian and Margo would never have survived their ordeal or beaten their adversary. Now, recently released from a mental institution, Ronnie was starring in a revival of Hollywood & the Vine.
“You’re forgetting that Ronnie was right,” Ian said.
“You’re forgetting that he’s certifiably nuts.”
“The Chinese are trying to hack our minds, too.”
“Of course they are.” Margo sighed and massaged her brow. “Are you going to start wearing aluminum foil around yo
ur head like Ronnie to block their voices?”
“The Chinese are using a different approach to get into our heads. They’re buying movie studios to spread their propaganda through films.”
“Like your Straker movie?”
“Probably,” Ian said.
Margo lifted her feet, picked up the script, and offered it to Ian. “Show me.”
“It won’t be on the page. It will be subliminal, embedded in every pixel.”
Margo tossed the script back on the table. “I hope to God that you don’t actually believe all this bullshit.”
“I don’t have to. I just have to make the reader believe that it’s possible. It’s what we call the willing suspension of disbelief.”
“Okay, that’s all dandy. What I’m not hearing is a story. What’s Straker doing?”
“You’ve heard in the news about all those Hong Kong businessmen who have been kidnapped by Chinese authorities and taken back to Beijing?”
“Yeah. What’s with that?”
“I don’t know. But what if one of them is an old buddy of Straker’s? So Straker goes to Hong Kong to investigate the disappearance and uncovers the invasion conspiracy. Now only one man—Clint Straker—stands between China and the hostile takeover of our nation. That’s the story.”
Margo leaned back on the couch and thought about it for a moment. “That’s a nice logline for a book jacket, but what’s the businessman’s relationship to the conspiracy? More importantly, what’s the ticking clock? Why is the takeover coming to a head now? And how does Straker stop it?”
“Those are very good questions and I don’t have answers for any of them,” Ian said. “I hope to come up with them in Hong Kong.”
“In other words, you have nothing.”
“I always start with nothing,” Ian said, taking a seat next to her on the couch. “That’s what makes my job so terrifying.”
“No, that’s what makes your job hard,” she said. “What makes it terrifying is when someone takes your story, turns it into reality, and tries to kill you to cover it up.”
“True,” Ian said. “But how often can that happen?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Iskenderun, Turkey. June 27. 10:45 p.m. Turkey Time.
The Chinese man who’d called himself Fung in Hong Kong was now Simon Chen. He sat alone in a tiny bar at the corner of Yavuz Sultan Selim and Kanatli Caddesi in central Iskenderun, an industrial eastern Mediterranean port city in the Hatay Province of southern Turkey. The bar had the ambiance of a Chevron station mini-mart and the odor of someone deep-frying fish in a men’s locker room.
Iskenderun had been around since 330 BCE. It was established by Alexander the Great, after his victory over the Persians on the Plain of Issus, as a place to work on his tan and eat oranges. Perhaps Iskenderun was nice then, but now it was street after street of square, featureless concrete storage units for human beings. The buildings resembled prison blocks with neon-lit, street-level storefronts. What the city had then and still had now was strategic significance. It was thirty-two miles from the Syrian border and was the nearest port to Aleppo, a mere sixty-one miles away.
As a result of the city’s proximity to a country ravaged by a devastating war, the bar was teeming with smugglers, terrorists, refugees, and mercenaries all nursing what looked like glasses of milk—actually raki, licorice-flavored alcohol that turned milky white when mixed with cold water—and eating meze, sarma (rice-stuffed vegetables), and sliced melon with their dirty, calloused fingers while doing business with either the Syrians or the rebels or the refugees. There was blood-soaked money to be made here.
Chen was dressed in a loose-fitting white shirt, tan linen jacket and slacks, and leather penny loafers, the outfit of a cocky but stupid businessman who’d wandered into the wrong bar. He sat at a table with an untouched glass of raki, bought to rent his seat while he waited for his contact to arrive. There was a briefcase on the floor beside his feet. Many men cast glances at the briefcase and thought about taking it from him. He could see their intentions in their shifty eyes, the twitch of their cheeks, and the nervous tapping of their feet. But these were violent men, and despite his clothes, they knew a killer when they saw one. He had the gaze of a man who saw death everywhere he looked. No one bothered him.
A small, dented panel van pulled up outside and Batu, his Turkish contact with the Syrian rebels, was at the wheel. It had taken months of working with the bony, skull-faced little man to get to this moment. Batu had no allegiance to anything but money and was getting a fee from both parties for arranging the deal. But Chen expected the Turk would try to rip him off at some point in the transaction.
Chen picked up his briefcase, walked outside, and got into the passenger seat of the van. He could feel every spring in the seat cushion. Batu smiled, showing off a mouth of missing teeth, his gums so rotted that it was nearly impossible for a tooth to stay rooted in place. His breath smelled like a corpse left too long in water.
“This is the big night,” Batu said in English.
“Tomorrow you can buy yourself a mouthful of gold teeth,” Chen said.
Batu laughed, nearly spitting one of his remaining teeth at Chen, put the van into gear, and pulled away from the curb. They headed north, then took the palm-lined Cengiz Topel Caddesi southwest along the waterfront until they left the city behind and reached a dead end. But they kept going, through a rotting cyclone fence and into a weedy lot dominated by an abandoned, half-completed five-story building, the cinder block and rebar ruins of a condo development project that ran out of money years ago.
Batu steered the van into the center of the ruins, where four Syrians, each wearing sweat-stained khakis and armed with automatic weapons, stood in front of four wooden crates that resembled coffins and a large van that was used to deliver the cargo. The space was lit by the headlamps of their two vans and a bright moon.
Chen got out and approached the leader, Tarek, a rebel who was lucky to be alive since his strong body odor surely made his presence on the battlefield known to the enemy from a hundred yards away, two hundred yards if they were downwind. Batu remained inside the van so he could make a quick getaway if things went bad.
“Do you have the money?” Tarek asked in English.
“Show me what I’m buying,” Chen replied.
Tarek nodded to his men, who used a crowbar to open the crates, while he kept his weapon loosely aimed at Chen. The men brushed aside a layer of straw and removed several rows of raki bottles to reveal the component parts of a portable antitank missile system.
“A Russian-made 9K135 Kornet-EM antitank guided missile launcher, compact and easy to assemble,” Tarek said like The Price Is Right announcer describing the final showcase. “Used by Syrian rebels against the corrupt Assad regime and smuggled out of Aleppo before the city fell. Note the original Russian markings.”
It worried Chen that Tarek thought the markings added value for him. Chen crouched down and examined the missile system, which was comprised of three basic parts: the missiles, the tripod launcher, and the sighting system. He checked the launch tube, about the length of a bag of golf clubs, to make sure it wasn’t bent and that the wires weren’t corroded. It was good. He wasn’t worried about the sighting system. He intended to upgrade and retrofit it anyway.
“It’s easy to carry, fast to assemble, and can be freestanding or mounted on any vehicle or boat. Two people can carry the whole thing.” Tarek continued his sales pitch while Chen examined the goods. “It fires a thermal-sighted, laser-guided missile tipped with a high-explosive warhead and has a range of five miles.”
Chen moved to the next crate and examined the two missiles—each about four feet long, a half foot in diameter, and weighing seventy pounds—for bulging and sweating, both big problems with aging ordnance left in the desert heat. A bulge meant the explosives inside the missiles had expanded and moisture was a sign that they were breaking down into a liquid as unstable as nitroglycerin. These missiles were sweating more than Tar
ek and his men.
“It’s an excellent weapon,” Tarek said. “Bargain priced at thirty thousand American dollars.”
Chen stood up. “No deal.”
“We were told you were a serious buyer,” Tarek said, his voice edged with anger. “We brought this to you at great personal risk.”
“You certainly did.” Chen got into Tarek’s face, nearly nose to nose. Tarek’s men tensed up but the Syrian held them back with a raised hand. “One bump in the road with this shit and you could have blown yourself up. You would have deserved it, too, for trying to rip me off. What kind of asshole do you think I am?”
Tarek smiled and shrugged. “Obviously a more discerning and knowledgeable one than I am used to dealing with.”
Chen smiled, too, dissipating the tension. “You must not get many repeat customers.”
Tarek laughed and waved at two of his men. “Bring my new friend the other crates.”
The two men set down their rifles, went to the back of the van, and pulled out two more crates. They set them down in front of Chen and Tarek, opened them with crowbars, and revealed four more missiles. Chen examined them. No bulges, no sweat.
“That’s more like it,” Chen said, rising to his feet.
“Do we have a deal now?” Tarek said.
“We do.” Chen went to Tarek’s van, placed the briefcase on the hood, and opened it up.
Tarek picked up a random stack, flipped through the bills, and then placed it back in the briefcase, closed the lid, and snapped it shut.
“Seal the crates and load them into this gentleman’s van,” Tarek ordered his men, who did as they were told. “See, I do like some repeat customers.”
“You didn’t like me so much a few minutes ago.”
“I’ve never had a Chinese customer before. I didn’t know what to make of you,” Tarek said. “Now I do. I will remember you.”
