“Do you have a blueprint of the place? There was probably something attached to the contract when you bought it.”
“Those are filed with my attorney,” Johnny said. “What would that matter? And how would someone else see it?”
“Libraries, government offices—there’s a lot of material available onsite and online,” Jack said. “As for why it would matter, we won’t know until we have a look. You have the two-bedroom place upstairs and a small basement, as I recall?”
Johnny nodded.
“I’d like to look at both, if that’s all right.”
“Of course,” Johnny said.
Maggie went to check out a customer while Johnny took Jack upstairs. They looked out the window. There was nothing in the line of sight that stood out, no obvious targets for potential terrorists like flight paths or a police station. It wasn’t like the old days when someone needed a neighborhood place for a stakeout. That could be done from a car or even a laptop and a small sound amplifier from a park bench. They went downstairs. The cellar was unique for the street—there weren’t a lot of basements in earthquake zones—but it was small and there was no back entrance. Johnny used the area for storage. Jack was a wine connoisseur and his impression was that it would make an adequate wine cellar but not much more.
Nothing jumped out at Jack. No motive even suggested itself. They went back to the grocery. Maggie was chatting with a young man who looked to be about thirty. He was well dressed and buying an orange juice.
“I’ll check with the few friends I’ve got left in law enforcement,” Jack said, “see what they think. Are you going to be OK here?”
Johnny grinned. “We’ll be fine.” He cocked his head toward the counter. “That’s one of Maggie’s martial arts school brothers. He stops by every afternoon. I’m sure that word will spread. They will make certain there are brothers and sisters coming in and out, walking by, available at the other end of the phone.”
“Nice,” Jack said. He used to have that kind of camaraderie at the GNT network. His staff, the other hosts, the news anchors and reporters. All he had now was his camera operator, Max. And she was freelance, only around when he needed her.
Johnny and Maggie thanked Jack and they agreed to be in touch as soon as anyone had any information to share. Even though Jack didn’t boast the kind of clout or access he once did, Johnny seemed relieved to have connected with someone who knew what to look for and where to look for it.
Jack decided to walk for a while and started down Washington Street toward the Ferry Building. He loved the new marketplace of stores nestled within the brick-and-ceramic arches carefully restored to look like the 1898 originals. The preservation of history kept it from feeling like a mall, and the smells from the bakery, the cheese store, the coffee shop, reconnected him with the city as a whole. San Francisco was a permanent friend and companion to whom unconditional, unwavering love was given and returned. Every street held a memory, every corner the promise of something new. It made him smile when nothing else did. Like now.
Jack found a corner of the marketplace that gave him some privacy but still let him smell the coffee from the coffee shop. He made two phone calls. One was to FBI field director Carl Forsyth, whose very grudging trust Jack had gained after preventing the Golden Gate Bridge from becoming ground zero for a dirty bomb. He didn’t mention the grocery in particular, just asked Forsyth if he had received any alerts regarding Chinatown or anyone who might have designs on businesses there, other than the usual thugs and punks. The answer was negative. Forsyth wasn’t brusque with Jack; he just had nothing to give him.
The other call was to Detective Sam Jason of the SFPD. Jack had helped him back in 2009 when Jason, who was off duty, tried to apprehend a gang member for fare evasion at a near-deserted San Francisco Municipal Railway stop. The man told the officer he had a gun and tried to flee; Jason killed him with a single bullet to the spine. It turned out the man was unarmed. Jack found out that the dead man had been accused of rape six months earlier and might have participated in a holdup the year before that. His coverage encouraged a witness who had heard the victim say he had a weapon to come forward.
Jason looked up the report on Yu Market from the responding officers.
“They’ve got a photo of the Chinese guy from the grocery camera,” Jason said. “No match in any of our databases. They found the SUV abandoned on Marina Green Drive, rented with falsified documents. The lab’s got it now.”
“Run-of-the-mill gangsters wouldn’t bother with fake IDs,” Jack said.
“Not likely. And they were smart enough to leave it where there were no cameras. I’ll let you know if forensics comes up with anything.”
Jack thanked him, hung up, and wandered out of the marketplace. Apparent outsiders, a singularly targeted location, and now forged papers used to rent an SUV. Plus a getaway site that was blind to the SFPD. There was something here; it was a wedge for something else. Whatever that was, it was well organized if initially overconfident. The men would be back.
~ * ~
Sammo Yang had never been to America. He spoke English adequately, having undertaken its mandatory study for seven years in primary and secondary school. But he knew nothing about America other than what he saw on the news or heard at the China National Space Administration, where he worked for his entire professional life. Now that he was here, the thirty-five-year-old Beijing native felt distaste pooling in the back of his throat.
His credentials as an attaché enabled him to pass quickly through Customs at the San Francisco International Airport. The diplomatic papers, on a China-based aircraft, would make it virtually impossible for American authorities to find out his true identity. He spotted a radiation detector tucked in a corner of the ceiling. He noted the security cameras, which would not help the Americans identify him. Though he had happily shaved the beard he had worn in Afghanistan, he had on a fisherman’s black wool cap with a brim and sunglasses. He also wore a white windbreaker specially made with magnesium fibers for seam threads. The garment was highly reflective and created a lens flare that smeared the video image whenever he moved. The large plastic case he carried was not inspected, set off no alarms. He was met by a tall, efficient consulate employee who ushered Sammo to the van waiting curbside.
“Did you have a pleasant flight?” the youthful consulate worker asked.
Sammo didn’t care that the question was banal. It was a joy to hear his language being spoken on the ground in this awful, arrogant land. Sammo’s father had overseen a shoe factory for an American firm in Nanjing. When the firm got a better deal in India, they closed the shop literally overnight and Sammo’s father was out of work. His parents had died within weeks of one another four years ago. They had both been in their fifties.
Sammo earned a degree in physics from Nanjing University with a doctorate in acoustics and engineering. He went to work for the CNSA in their top-security spy satellite program where he developed a method of intercepting secure wireless signals even in the vacuum of space. That brought him to the attention of the science office of the Central Military Commission. That brought him to Afghanistan, challenging himself in ways undreamed of, equipped with skills he had never expected to possess.
Now it brought him here.
Mistreating the citizens of the People’s Republic of China was bad enough. It represented everything the Chinese people had fought against, going back over a century to the Boxer Rebellion: the exploitation of hardworking citizens by foreign powers. But the actions the Americans had taken in the past six months had been intolerable. They would be made to pay dearly for that.
Sammo looked through the dark-tinted window at the airplanes riding gray plumes skyward while others seemed to float to earth. He looked at the towers of some city in the distance, at identical-looking stores offering food and electronics, at the occasional gleaming flashes of the waters of the Bay. He had read on the government’s Xinhua News Agency website that Chines
e banks effectively owned America. That did not instill him with feelings of pride but with revulsion: he did not want to own this place, he wanted to see it crushed and dismantled, the way his father had lost face for being unable to keep his factory, the way his family had been broken.
“This is the freeway called the 101,” the consulate employee said helpfully. “We are headed north to San Francisco. That is the famous Bay on our right and just there,” he pointed, “one can see Candlestick Park. That is the location of the San Francisco American football games.”
Sammo’s mouth twitched downward and he snorted quietly. He had no interest in American sports madness. No longer listening to the consulate employee, Sammo sat with the case on the floor in front of him, his mind alert; he had slept well on the airplane, still exhausted from his trip to Afghanistan but exhilarated by the results. He was eager to begin the second part of the mission. Through intermediaries in Beijing, Jing Jintao had sent him a cryptic message that he wished to see Sammo as soon as he arrived, that there might be another way he could help his country.
Sammo was anxious to hear what the revered statesman had to say. He was willing to help in any way possible.
“Excuse me,” Sammo said. “I was told that upon landing we would—”
The consular aide held a finger to his lips. He took a notepad from inside his gray blazer. That in itself told Sammo all he needed to know. They were being followed, and by a car with wireless surveillance equipment. If he tapped keystrokes on a laptop or numbers in a cell phone, they would be intercepted and read.
New arrivals are watched, he wrote. We have standardized clothing at the consulate that helps to confuse—
Sammo took the pen. I need to see it now. Have the driver pull over with mechanical difficulty. Raise the hood. Be prepared to head toward the original target.
The aide looked at him. Sammo removed his glasses. His eyes, his jaw, were hard-set. There was no confusing what he had written for a request. The young man understood and wrote instructions for the driver.
The driver read the instructions, and acknowledged with a nod. He pulled off the freeway at the Grand Avenue Exit and stopped at the curb in front of a line of trees. He shot a questioning look in the rearview mirror. Sammo nodded that the location was fine. He had already set the case on his lap and was working the combination lock.
The driver exited and raised the hood. The aide watched silently as Sammo removed a device from the foam padding of the case. It looked alien, like a stiff, sectioned sleeve from a ceremonial costume in the Mulan of Mars comic books he had read as a child. Sammo removed his windbreaker and fitted the device over his right arm. He had, in fact, made it from a long universal arm brace that was jointed at the elbow. He fitted one foam section over his bicep and another over his forearm, adjusting them until the bend in the device matched the bend of his elbow. He tightened several screws so the foam wouldn’t shift. Then he slipped a hand strap between his thumb and index finger and fitted a small cap over his thumb like a thimble. When the entire unit was secure he removed its plastic sheath, revealing a tube on top of his forearm that extended from the crease in his elbow nearly to the knuckles at the base of his fingers. The tube was cushioned on the forearm foam section and connected by wire to the cap on his thumb. On the underside of his forearm and wired to the tube attachment was a fingerprint scanner. Sammo pushed his left index finger against it. The tube hummed.
The scientist handed the case to the aide and put his windbreaker back on. He was still wearing his cap and sunglasses. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, opened the van door, left it open, and lit the Hong Mei. Sammo did not smoke as a rule, but it proved useful as a signal at night or a distraction, as now.
He casually walked to the front of the van. He pretended to be interested in what the driver was doing.
“Where is the vehicle that was following us?” Sammo asked.
“It is an Escalade SUV. He continued past and turned right at the corner. He will circle and come back, then probably stop toward the end of the block. There.” The driver pointed to an open space behind a brown delivery truck. There was a stop sign; Sammo recognized the shape and color from his training. The Americans would have to wait before turning.
“You are ready to get back on that freeway?” Sammo asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“You know the original destination?”
“I do, sir.”
“Tell me when you see him coming up the side street,” Sammo said. He faced away from the spot, leaning against the van, looking idly at the trees. Smoke curled from the cigarette. He enjoyed the smell. That, too, reminded him of home.
The driver stood on the street side of the van, looking around the open hood. He moved his hands idly among tubing and caps, his eyes on the end of the block.
“He’s coming, sir.”
“Close the hood, get back in the van. We will be going north.”
The driver obeyed.
Sammo drew back his right hand sleeve so the tip of the tube was exposed. There was no sight; he didn’t need one. He had practiced the differential like a circus marksman who had to shoot from the hip. The Escalade pulled up to the stop sign. Sammo pressed his index finger to the top of the thimble. There was a sound like compressed air escaping.
The Escalade did not move from the sign. The electromagnetic pulse from Sammo’s device had disabled every electronic system in the SUV.
Sammo jumped back to the door, pulled it shut, and the van sped from the curb. He kept the cigarette, after grinding it out in an ashtray; there was no reason to leave even a partial fingerprint or his DNA. The van was back on the 101 headed north in under a minute. Sammo looked out the window, back at the exit. The Escalade was still at the comer. One of the FBI, perhaps CIA, agents had emerged. He was shouting into a cell phone.
“He doesn’t seem happy,” the aide remarked.
“He has no reason to be,” Sammo said. “His car is dead. And his cell phone is not working. Would anyone else know our vehicle plate number?”
“The consulate has three vans and one limousine that travel to the airport,” the aide said. “I’m certain the license numbers are all on file.” It had taken him a few moments to gather his thoughts. He still wasn’t quite sure what he had witnessed.
“How are they able to track us going forward?”
“The only license reading devices are on the bridges so that is not a concern. It is possible they may try to spot us using helicopters—”
“I don’t think so,” Sammo said. “Not when they begin to consider what has just happened.”
The aide knew better than to ask what did happen. He was still sitting with the case on his lap.
Sammo removed his windbreaker, shut and unstrapped the device, and nestled it back in its padded container. He did not smile, did not show the satisfaction he felt at having met American overconfidence with something new, something he had helped to create.
Something that would show these people what it was like to interfere with Chinese progress, something that would cause them to lose what his parents had lost—dignity, face, and their very lives.
~ * ~
Suitland, Maryland
Dover Griffith had reread the Truth Tellers transcript a dozen times. Even though it was clear that Jack Hatfield was right about Squarebeam and Hawke, she couldn’t figure out how this might have impacted the Chinook in Afghanistan. The military would have been aware of any Squarebeam technology being used there. The Tangi Valley was not exactly a hot spot for development anyway. It wasn’t impossible that the technology could have shown up there and “whatever remains, however implausible, must be the truth, “ she remembered, but there was a reason why Sherlock Holmes refused to be an employee of any government agency. Dover couldn’t pass a what if up the chain of command.
She set the transcript aside and concentrated on sifting through the data coming from the crash site. She was still st
udying the horrifying, heartbreaking photographs of the wreckage when her computer pinged an alert. It was from the Intelligence Coordination Center of Homeland Security. This division made certain that all data collected by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, INTERPOL, and other intelligence-gathering services was “cross-pollinated”—shared among appropriate departments. Because of her background in Chinese, Griffith received the alert from the FBI. It was a report filed by the San Francisco Field Office less than ten minutes before:
At 1:46 P.M., Pacific, an FBI vehicle with a two-man complement was on a routine SFO-to-San Francisco tail of a Chinese consulate van with one unknown passenger and a single carry-on case. The van left the 101, ostensibly with engine trouble. Agents followed, circling the block. Upon renewing visual contact the pursuing vehicle suffered complete electronic failure, including all forms of communication and GPS. The van quickly departed, headed north.
A Time for War Page 6
