by James, Mark
Chinese Premier Xiong Deng Hu had grown up an orphan in the Shanghai slums, an unusual background for the leader of the most populous nation on Earth.
Deng Hu’s rise had been one of fortuity: from the slums to the watch he found belonging to the wealthy casino merchant; from the slums to a job at the casino; from the slums to a life as the wealthy man’s ‘lost son’; from the slums to a party apparatus position; from the slums to the Party Chairmanship. In his mind, all things arose from the slums.
When the Second Great Restoration occurred in 2021, he’d been strategically positioned – more fortuity, more fortune. And when General Jinping finally approached, he’d said that he was ready. In a rare misstep, the Chinese President, Li Zhenhcai, had then refused their overtures and, predictably, perished in a car accident, the computer chip controlling the limousine’s hydraulics reprogrammed and the car launching into a ravine. Soon, General Jinping was also dispatched, a quiet death at his vacation retreat in Dadonhai, another thread cut.
Deng Hu looked down the long table at the others – at his subordinates, allies and enemies, all gathered together like a coil of vipers. He could feel a rare tension rise in the room, reminding him of the distillation of survival, of that groan in the pit of the stomach when you couldn’t find something to eat. It was the ocean he’d learned to swim within.
“Your report,” he said to Xi Lintao, Director of the Ministry of State Security, the Chinese Intelligence Agency. It was an order, not a request.
Lintao fidgeted with his papers. He was fully aware of what had happened to General Jinping – and to three other colonels since.
“Yes, Mr. Premier,” he finally said, “we’ve completed our investigation in Shaanxi Province, pursuant to your instructions.”
Deng Hu waited and Lintao looked down again. “The interrogations of the villagers produced consistent results: all individuals reported visual anomalies in the skies directly proceeding the earthquake – ‘a glowing cloud,’ ‘the sky lit from within,’ ‘cascades of soft light’ – the same with each.
Deng Hu didn’t respond. He knew that silence could also be a weapon.
He stared and stared, imagining a glowing cloud suspended over the table, trying to see its ultimate meaning.
He leaned back, “We’ve seen that the Americans are lax in most circumstances, but react as an unleashed dragon in others; they are lazy when lost in the things of their capitalism, but rabid when threatened. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 – these events show us this pattern well.”
He rose, “To defeat an enemy, any enemy, one must first ask: What is their truest nature? The answer for these Americans? They are a sleeping dragon. To our credit, we have been patient and used this knowledge against them. We have not engaged the dragon militarily, or squandered resources on stealth fighter jets that will never fight. Rather, we have conducted a quieter war, so quiet that the dragon has not stirred. We infiltrate their computers, planting viruses that can activate like bombs. We steal their most valuable technologies, without ever investing in the research ourselves. And we’ve conducted economic proxy wars against their underbelly, sapping strength in faraway deserts, moving with a cold logic and a quiet strength. And all the while the dragon has slept. This has been our fifty-year plan.”
As he said it, he circled the table slowly and around the backs of his enemies. With each pause, they felt the person who might one day cause their death. Deng Hu knew this, and in each pause watched for the telltale flinch, the motions that revealed hidden fear. It was a knowledge he stored.
“But we should never forget Hiroshima – its core meaning. The Americans preach to us their Christian values, but aren’t they the ones who invented mass civilian targets, who, in their own Revolutionary War, perfected the art of guerilla warfare? And, yet, what did they call us in our most recent wiretaps, slant eyes?”
Having rounded the entire table, Deng Hu resumed his seat. “Doctor,” he said, looking down to the oldest man at the table, the only one who hadn’t flinched, “What is the status of our transmitting dishes?”
For the past four years, enormous tunnels and rails had been built underground in the Heilongjiang Province along the Amur River, seeking to hide the dishes’ construction. On the ground above, the openings from where the satellite dishes would arise only looked like more silos. The Americans would never suspect more nuclear silos.
“Preparations proceed,” Dr. Zheng said.
“Yes, doctor, thank you – another statement of the obvious. And?”
The doctor knew how much rope, or leash, was allowed the people at this table. Yet something in him did not want to do what Deng Hu said, every time he said it, particularly in front of the his own allies, his own enemies.
The doctor looked down the long table, squinting through his glasses, “Seven days. The array will be ready in seven days.”
†
“We have another hit,” Josh said. “This one coming out of San Francisco.”
“Go on,” Mac said.
“The information came from another email from our friends, you know, the ones lost in Paris. They’re absolutely convinced of this blood eyes connection.”
“Say nothing more, Josh. Send the info over the laptop. You know, the laptop.”
Mac opened the laptop and looked down at the message from Josh, opening the attachment.
It was a black-and-white newspaper photo of a woman with her face frozen in anger. The text partially read, “…Jennifer Huff was removed from the recent Coroner’s Inquest Hearing…”
Mac skipped to the article. It implied that Jennifer Huff was mentally unstable. He focused on the words that Josh had highlighted, “…after the hearing, Ms. Huff yelled to reporters outside of the courthouse, “They were blood eyes! Eyes of blood I tell you! I saw them! Let me go!” Ms. Huff, the wife of Daniel Huff, was then escorted…”
“You still there?”
“Still here,” Josh answered. “What do you think? It occurs to me that our wayward friends might not be so looped after all.”
“Tell me what’s going on,” Mac said.
“This lady, Jenny Huff, they can’t find her – disappeared, bank accounts cleared, the family car MIA. So we went to the next of kin, Daniel Huff’s parents. They OK’d it.”
“Timeline?”
“The body is being exhumed as we speak.”
†
“Actually, that’s the reason I was late,” Jack said, unpacking his suitcase on the bed and looking around for the laptop charger. “I know we said that we’d take the letter over later tonight, but I was passing close to the police station on my way from Nord Station and I started thinking that it might be smart if we stayed inside as much as possible tonight. We have thirty-six hours to figure it out – what we’re doing next. No use wandering all about Paris and screwing it up.”
Lani was still in the bathroom after taking a shower, unpacking her makeup and toiletries, trying to find a semblance of normalcy as she spaced the bottles on the marble vanity. She called out, “I know, Jack, but I was hoping the letter would give us, well, an excuse to get some fresh air…I know what you said, I agree – it’s a risk. But is it really? The orbs are out of commission for the time being and our fake skin is holding up fine. There are thousands of American couples out on a Thursday night in Paris, right? Do you think Garneau will get the letter by tomorrow morning?”
Jack had delivered a letter for Garneau at the police station on his way to the Paris apartment, slipping it into the drop box and then hurrying back to his taxi. It altered Garneau’s instructions.
“I expect so, it’s his home office and I marked the letter, urgent. We aren’t set to meet him until noon – he should get it. If not, if he still goes to the corner phone booth, we’ll watch until he leaves and then use the laptop again. But, as we said on the train, we need to start looking at this as if it’s an intelligence operation. And while we can trust our laptop to be secure, I can’t really trust Garneau’s email account – we should have thought of
that earlier. The letter drop is safest. It may be archaic, but it’s still the best way. If we have to use the laptop with Garneau, then we have to. Hey, did I ever tell you about what Mac once told me about how the NSA sifts all emails and internet communications mining for certain words, looking for connections? It’s done under the Patriot Act, allegedly looking for bad actors. But to be sure, though, they’re still looking through all of our mail. Someone out there had the means to set us up and I’m wondering if they can also sift the internet, get into people’s emails. Best that we run this more seriously, take the initiative, as if we are up against someone like that, rather than look back and be sorry.”
Lani came out of the bathroom, a towel on her head, “It’s all scary to me. You always think you’ll see Big Brother coming up on you, but it’s a creeping sort of thing – one day it’s just here. The real problem is how to get rid of it when the country doesn’t need it anymore, or realizes they never did. Scary.”
“I know how to get rid of it,” Jack said. “Pull it up by the roots, like any weed.”
“Unfortunately, easier said than done,” she said. “Once it’s out of the bag, that’s it – another Pandora’s Box.”
“Maybe,” he said, looking towards the hallway. “Hey, so you know, I’m going to leave my sleeping stuff here. I’ll sleep over there, by the table, but I’ll use the shower and bathroom down the hall, give you some privacy.”
“By the way,” he continued, hauling the suitcase from the bed, “while you were in the shower we received another message from Mac. No news on the Croatian accounts, but he said we may be onto something with this theory on a connection between the major’s death in Kauai and the ambassador’s. I think it was the Dan Huff article on the ‘blood eyes’ that finally brought him around. Just hope we’re on the right track. He’s having Huff exhumed, with an autopsy tonight by Takamura and will send us what they find after that. He should have some information by tomorrow morning. Hopefully, they’ll find patterns there too, give us some sort of direction.”
Jack looked down at the laptop he’d left open on the bed, at the picture of the burn marks from Della Norine and the major compared against those from the ambassador and his French mistress.
Lani moved over next to him and stared down at the screen. “I’ve been trying to figure them out, if there’s some type of meaning there. But, to be honest, they always look like a bunch of dots. Maybe that’s all they are. We’re pushing so hard, because we need to, maybe they start to look like something when they’re not?”
Jack moved to the door, “Well, we’d better hope not, because I’m starting to get a bad feeling from Mac on these Croatian accounts. Flat out, they should’ve found something by now. They have the best computer minds in the world working the problem, including Josh, and so far – nada, zip, zero.”
He turned, offering her the best smile he could muster, “Because, my dear, when it comes to signs, that’s never a good one.”
†
Biaggi awoke into an impenetrable fog – the glazed fog of two bottles of the most exquisite Barolo that he and Mario had downed last night at their favorite jazz club. He’d met a woman there around midnight and, at first, had thought that she might be in his future. And then had come the questions: Again, what car do you drive? Exactly, where do you live in town? All spaced too close together, out of context.
Tell me, what are your dreams? Words that he’d never heard pass over a woman’s lips…
Shaking his head and the fog with it, he threw off the covers. He was late and he absolutely hated being late – to anything. It was simply rude. Thank God he’d had his suit pressed. He grabbed a quick bite from a semi-stale farinata flatbread, holstered his weapon and headed down into the streets.
His residential street was quiet, the reason he’d never moved. This early, only the sweeping of the corner deli owner broke through the quiet. All of his neighbors – Ciana Marinucci, the glove vendor next door, Signora Presti, the elderly lady across the street – woke with leisure, in time with the rising sun and in accordance with the rising day, as it should be, the Italian way.
He turned the car key twice – he’d lost the electronic key somewhere and didn’t want to brave the bureaucratic paperwork to procure another – and watched as the key latch resisted, as it always did. He needed to be careful not to break it off – particularly, as he always reminded himself, when he was deep in the midst of one of his self-inflicted fogs. There was a certain responsibility in being a rogue. He tried the key a third time – slower, like the lock always liked – and it turned with ease.
Breaking out from his neighborhood, the world became louder – conversations on the corners rising with the Florence heat, the incessant honking of the cars at the tourists as they texted while crossing the streets, a far off siren heading to somewhere unknown. He crossed three successive intersections, the crowds increasing as he went, then traversed the edges of two piazzas and finally parked the car at the station. He still had two minutes.
Sandro Amarante was already waiting in the chair outside of his office, reading a ragged magazine that he’d nabbed from the front waiting room.
“Good to see you old friend,” Biaggi said. “Did you have a nice trip from Roma? And, thank you for coming on short notice.”
“It was no problem,” Amarante said, “I was already heading to Vernazza – a long weekend. It offered a good excuse for a few extra days.”
Amarante was a Senior Intelligence Analyst for the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna, the Italian intelligence agency, and had done work in both Mali and Niger, work that was never discussed. They’d met when Biaggi had been dispatched to Rome on a multi-homicide case and had become good friends for those three months, as they found they were both confirmed bachelors who cherished good wine, good jazz and the exquisite women who could sing it. Biaggi was not sure of all of the dark places that Amarante had been, but what he did know was that Sandro was one of the smartest people he’d ever met.
Biaggi handed him the plastic evidence bag.
“You’re right,” Amarante said, turning the blackened flake over in his fingers, “it’s a tracking tag, a rather sophisticated one. Only a few companies in the world manufacture them, all for sovereigns, of course – they regulate these things, you know. They can’t regulate anything important, but, when it comes to their little toys, they become more, shall we say, focused.” He looked closer, “Intriguing…”
Amarante pulled out a magnifying glass from his attaché. “I can’t see any markings – and there wouldn’t be a manufacturer’s mark, we’re not talking Murano glass here – but there could be tell-tale signs of origin. Say, composition, size, and so on. Unfortunately, this one’s too degraded. That’s what it is, though. Sorry I can’t be more help, Giovanni. Where did you say you found it, on what part of the body?”
“The coroner removed it from the top of the crown. It was implanted just under the skin. For what purpose, we don’t know.”
“Well, I do,” Amarante said, leaning forward and handing the bag back. “Someone wanted to keep an eye on this fellow, to be sure of his whereabouts. Who did the victim work for? I don’t think you mentioned it.”
“But why would a person let a chip, or a tag, or whatever, be implanted in his skull? Who would even allow that to happen?” Biaggi asked, befuddled.
Amarante smiled, “Well, maybe he didn’t know. Maybe someone didn’t want him to know. They just wanted to keep an eye on him. And possibly terminate him, if need be. Who did you say he was with again?”
“That’s scary,” Biaggi said, becoming even more perplexed, “I mean, how could that be done? Someone – a government, say – just floats in and cuts the top of his head open and drops in a chip, sews it up and no one ever notices?”
“Actually, it’s much easier than that. Imagine, someone places a toxin in his drink at work, ends up sending him to the hospital, but not a real hospital, not a real ambulance. He wakes up and they tell him, ‘You
passed out, then fell and hit your head.’ Viola, the stitches are explained and the man goes about his day, not knowing a thing. Later, the stitches come out and his life goes on. Except now, he’s marked as a potential target; no more than a thing to someone who is watching.”
Biaggi didn’t like hocus-pocus. For him, when one looked back at the end of every case, all of the clues you missed were simply the things you were looking past. “I guess, but…”
“That scenario would apply to a private organization, where the victim could be isolated in a controlled work environment, with a false ambulance or hospital created. If it was a government, though, they would have used an insertion team.”
“A what?”
“A paramilitary insertion team – CIA, NSA, this GMA group they now have. They would’ve come in at night while you slept, having tracked you and your loved ones’ movements for weeks, patterning your behaviors. They would enter your dark room seeking to anesthetize you – through an injection, an airborne agent, probably aerosol-delivered, as they would certainly be wearing masks – and that would be that. They would cut a razor-like slit, slide the tag in and coat the insertion site with a sealing gel. You would then wake up in the morning and wonder where the sore spot in your hair had come from. You look in the mirror and have a hard time seeing it. You are careful while you shower, as it hurts when you touch it, and leave it alone for the rest of the day. The body heals the rest, the gel dissolves and, again, that is that.”
“Aero-Con Corporation, U.S. based,” Biaggi said. “Our victim was some sort of scientist, or a developer, no one will tell us. And, we have no idea how he ended up dead in a B&B bathtub in Firenze. Mio Christo, this world is getting crazy…”
“Ah,” Amarante smiled, leaning back, “that could be your source. Aero-Con is a big player, globally – thermal/magnetic imaging technology, advanced weapons systems, biometric contracting, satellites, the new Mars rovers, they do it all. They’re bigger than General Dynamics.”
